3-D Thursday: The Mask (1961)

The Mask is one of those movies that I loved as a teenager. It was the first 3-D movie I recorded off of TV in 3-D back in 1986. I watched it repeatedly, even catching it in 2-D, until I got sick of it.

I recently revisited The Mask thanks to an astonishing 3-D Blu-Ray from Kino and the 3-D Film Archive and got to be reminded of what looney fun it was.

The Mask is a not too subtle allegory warning about the dangers of hallucinogenic drugs with the titular object standing in for said drugs. The story concerns respectable psychiatrist Dr. Alan Barnes (the seriously underappreciated Paul Stevens). One of his patients, Michael Radin--a hilariously hyper Martin Lavut--blames visions and nightmares on an ancient Aztec ritual mask. The mask may even have made Radin kill a pretty woman in the rain the night before. Barnes dismisses the notion that the mask is to blame so Radin goes home, mails the mask to Barnes and then commits suicide. Once Barnes gets the mask, he does what anyone would do: he puts it on. When he does, we put on our 3-D glasses and start tripping. Barnes enters a weird and violent world full of demons, human sacrifice, and disembodied body parts.

Barnes thinks the trips are cool but his square girlfriend Pam (Claudette Nevins) thinks he should return the mask to the museum Radin took it from in the first place. What a buzzkill. Luckily, Barnes steals it back before making out with (and trying to kill) his hot secretary. Of course, there's also a pesky piece of wood cop (Bill Walker doing a Jack Webb) who  keeps asking questions about Radin and the mask (but not the girl Radin killed--she's forgotten completely six minutes into the movie). You can tell he ain't hip with that ugly jacket he wears. Oh, sure, Barnes's mind deteriorates the more he trips, but come on--ain't the high the whole ride?

Like I said, the movie is not subtle at all about it's drug allegory.  In the movie's single worst acted moment, Nevins gives an embarrassingly bad speech outright calling the mask a drug. To his credit, director Julian Roffman does try to make the dream sequences look terrifying. However, like too many other "trip" movies, the dreams come off as pretty wild, especially in 3-D. And the 3-D on this is terrific. Like so many other vintage 3-D releases, there's a good amount of depth and a fun amount of pop out gimmick effects without being overly obnoxious.

In terms of the cast, Paul Stevens owns this film. Stevens is best remembered today as Codman in Patton and Dr. Legarde in Marlowe. The Mask was sadly his only starring role and he's a hoot to watch in it. His descent into total bug-eyed psycho is almost worth the price of admission alone. The rest of the cast is sincere and do their parts as such, but yeah. This is Stevens's movie. He should have been better known than he was.

The Mask is a part 3-D film, with three separate dream sequences in 3-D, each one running about five minutes. The rest of the movie is in standard 2-D. Originally shown in anaglyphic 3-D, this may be the best of the part 3-D movies. It certainly beats the pants off Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare. The 3-D Film Archive got hold of the left/right separations for the 3-D sequences and have made the movie available for the first time ever in discrete 3-D. That's quite a feat. They restored the film in a few other ways, too.

Back in the 1980s this was one of the movies 3-D Video Corporation offered to stations forThe Mask on VHS and Laserdisc in 3-D, it was the cut version that was offered. The 3-D Film Archive, however, put those scenes back in and, for the first time since the film's theatrical release, included the original intro to the movie with mask expert Jim Moran. To boot, the movie is being offered in it's original widescreen format. So, basically, this is the version audiences saw in 1961, but even better.

broadcast. It was, in fact, one of only five or six the company made available to non-cable stations, the rest being saved for SelecTV. It came with a 3-D hosting segment featuring magician Harry Blackstone, Jr. and, as such, several scenes from the film were trimmed out to make room for the Blackstone segments. When Rhino offered

The Kino Blu-Ray also includes the anaglyphic sequences in their original format. The DVD has just the anaglyphic version, of course, as well as the Blackstone segments as extras and replicas of the original glasses patrons were given in 1961. I got the DVD for those two reasons as well as getting the Blu. I'll say this about the Blackstone footage: it was fun to watch again, but it is rough on the eyes. Ol' Harry is wearing a red tuxedo and this is in red/blue color 3-D. Just sayin'.

Michael Weldon, in his Bible of Exploitation Films The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film, called The Mask one of the all time great gimmick films. As a gimmick film, it's a load of fun. Sure, it's not as good a movie as Dial M  For Murder or Kiss Me Kate, but it's far better than most of what came after it, at least until the modern run.

So come on, man. Put The Mask On--Now! Take the trip. You know you want to.

Dr. Strangefascist or How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Ignore Jeffrey Wells

I'd like to have a very serious conversation with you regarding a problem facing the world today so monumental, there should be a Constitutional Amendment banning it: 1.85 Fascism. I'm not entirely certain what it is, but it must be pretty bad. I think--and anyone who knows better can correct me if I'm wrong--that it involves Studio Heads, Home Video Distributors, and various other people working in the Entertainment Industry wearing brown shirts with arms band with odd shaped film reels giving a Nazi type salute to their Mad Dictator Bob Furmanek as he commits unconscionable genocide on the tops and bottoms of all movies made after 1952. I know the seriousness of this issue because Jeffrey Wells has said so repeatedly on his blog.

Wait. Jeffrey Wells said so? Oh. That explains quite a lot. Strike that first paragraph. Move along. Nothing to see here.

By now, an unfortunate number of people have heard of Mr. Wells and his insane blog Hollywood-Elsewhere. Part of this, of course, is because of the blog itself. Part of it is the sheer number of people who have devoted countless energies to writing about the blog. Nico Lang at thefrisky.com opens his article on Wells by stating "To say Jeffrey Wells is America's worst film critic is to do a disservice to just how truly, incredibly terrible this man is at his job." Anna Merian at jezebel.com writes of "the disemboweling of Jeffrey Wells, film critic". Those two, among others, were posted in response to a ludicrous tweet by Wells that The Revenant was not intended for women. Nikki Finke at deadline.com once famously reprinted an e-mail from Wells to James Mangold begging for nude photos of Vinessa Shaw. Eric Snider wrote angrily of Wells blowing off a panel he was supposed to do for the Oxford (MS) Film Festival in 2099 due to not being able to get good Wi-Fi. Then there's all the angry reactions to his various fat-shaming articles.

Umm, hi, guys and gals: I know I don't post to this blog as nearly often as I should (time constraints) so you're probably all going to say "who the hell is this guy to give us advice?" but can we all agree that Wells is not a film critic or a cineaste (though he claims to be) and is literally nothing more than a troll? Some have actually correctly identified him as such and yet they still howl in anger at his antics. Seriously, why? Why is anyone paying any attention to him at this stage of the game? Oh sure, here I am writing about him saying that we should stop writing about him, which may or may not be self-defeating.

But of course he's a troll. Consider his tactics. He writes some lunacy that he knows will piss people off. When it inevitably does, someone inevitably writes about the lunacy. Other people, not believing that anyone could ever say that, goes to see if it was actually said. Once they see it, they comment or write about it. Rinse and repeat. The man gets views and in this business, views mean money due to advertising. Any schmuck can pull that trick and more than one has. He's just one of the more successful ones due to his infamy.

"Hey," Jeff Wells says, "if I post that Amy Schumer is fat and unattractive, the internet will blow up and people will come reading my blog". Of course the internet blows up with righteous indignation. Meantime, absolutely nobody bothers to take a look at the guy posting that comment and thinks that if him and Amy Schumer walked into a bar to pick people up, only one of them would have a major problem with that. If you need help figuring out who, it ain't Amy Schumer. Let's just say that I personally wouldn't throw Schumer out of bed for eating crackers.

Of course, Schumer isn't the only woman Wells has found unattractive. He's made similar comments about Melissa McCarthy, Lena Dunham, and even insulted Cameron Diaz for--gasp and horrors--aging! And while Diaz does have the unmitigated gall to be 43, like Schumer, I wouldn't say no to her.  Of course, I can't imagine the woman that would say yes to Wells. I'm not a particularly good looking guy but somebody broke the ugly stick while beating Wells with it.

I'm sorry. Was that a childish thing to say? Sure it was. But don't lie. At least some of you thought it was funny.

In fairness, Wells also obsesses on the weight of male actors like Vince Vaughn. He especially likes discussing their man-boobs for some strange reason. Personally, I don't pay that much attention to topless men in the movies I'm watching, but that's just me. Sorry Chris Hemsworth, your various shirtless scenes do nothing for me. But hey, if Jeff's all about that, go for it says I.

Some of you may have gotten the idea that I'm a little more flippant than some of the other people who have written about him. Though I will admit that I'd totally buy Anna Merian a drink for her article on him. But I'm flippant because I can't possibly take a thing he says seriously. Nobody who calls themselves a cineaste would write and say and do the things that have been attributed to him. Seriously, this is a man who, in a podcast with Jack Theakston (http://www.hollywood-elsewhere.com/images/column/dance13/jackdebate.mp3) actually at 42 minutes in says "Who cares what they wanted? That includes the Directors". Who cares what the Director wanted or intended? A so-called film buff says that with a straight face and expects people to ever value his opinions?

The final clue to the fact that he's not any sort of film buff or critic is the fact that anyone and everyone who disagrees with him is obviously a fascist. All those women who take umbrage at his various sexist and fat shaming remarks? Fascists. Clearly fascists. Bob Furmanek is a fascist for wanting movies to be seen the way they were originally meant to be seen. Imagine that! Wanting to see movies the way they were intended! What's next? Purists being against Colorization? The outrage of it all!

Anyone who has read this blog in the past knows that I've mentioned Mr. Furmanek on occasion for his work through the 3-D Film Archive. What the man has done for the preservation of our 3-D movie history alone gets him sainthood in my book. However, he has also done a ton of research on the widescreen era, carefully documenting not only what was shown in widescreen but what was supposed to be shown that way. In other words, he doesn't just argue for things to be released "cleavered" (as Wells puts it). One of his most famous anti-widescreen arguments involved the 3 Stooges short Goof on the Roof. He pointed out that though the short was released widescreen, it was clearly shot for 1.37 and should have been put on DVD that way. Sony didn't listen to him and released it in widescreen anyhow, but that's not his fault.

Wells's argument is that he's watched these 1.85 films in 1.37 for decades on TV. Yes, well, that's how CinemaScope movies were shown on TV for decades, too. Should we watch Jaws or Star Wars only in Pan and Scan since that's how they were shown on TV? Should we miss out on 2/3 of the picture because "boxy is beautiful"? How about 3-D? Since House of Wax and Creature From the Black Lagoon were shown for decades in a 2-D image on TV,is that how we should watch them now? For that matter, movies were shown with commercials every ten minutes for decades on TV. Should we watch them that way now, too?

Seriously, what "cineaste" claims that movies should be put on video they way they were shown on TV for years, even when that clearly isn't the way they were meant to be seen? No one who is a serious film critic, that's for sure. That and the fact that he just freely throws around the word Fascist ("That word? I don't think it means what you think it means", Jeff) prove the pure troll aspect. We're all being played and sadly, the man is making money off our being played. So yeah, can we come to some agreement that his opinions have all the importance of a five year old donkey turd and move on?

For the record, if by chance he is serious with his "boxy is beautiful" and "this is the way I watched these thing for years" arguments, I have a little message for him:

It's okay, Jeff. The 70s are over now. Disco is dead, all the TVs are color now, and LSD is no longer the cool drug. They even gave women the right to vote. We made it into the 21st Century and Y2K didn't blow us all up. You don't need to stick to the Castle Digest Super 8 anymore, Jeff. They have things now that let you watch the whole movie. They call them Blu Rays and DVDs. Technology is a wonderful thing. It's okay to come into 2016 and be part of the real world.

Serial Saturday: The Invisible Monster (1950)

The Invisible Monster is Olive Films' first Republic serial release on Blu Ray and it looks absolutely spectacular. Unfortunately, it's still The Invisible Monster and that's not really a good thing.


I get why Olive chose to lead off with The Invisible Monster. It's goofy 50s sci-fi with an exploitation title. However, there are plenty of Repulbic serials with exploitation type titles, some of them quite good such as Haunted Harbor. And while it is true that there are worse serials than The Invisible Monster--it never reaches the depressing depths of Man with the Steel Whip or Panther Girl of the Kongo--it's not an especially good serial either.

The serial concerns the machinations of a mad scientist who refers to himself as The Phantom Ruler (not The Invisible Monster, it should be noted). He brings several illegal aliens into the country--a timely theme I suppose--and threatens them with arrest and deportation if they refuse to help him in his criminal enterprises. He's attempting to raise funds for an invisible army with which he plans to conquer the world.

"You clean the office while I raid the hideout, OK?"

Opposing him is Insurance Investigator Lane Carson (Richard Webb, TV's Captain Midnight) and his gal Friday Carol (Aline Towne). Well, Carol is sort of Lane's gal Friday. Despite proving her competency again and again, he tends to tell her in so may words not to come along because it's man's work. I do tend to place movies into the context of their time frame, but the casual sexism exhibited is a bit of a bother since it was just a few years earlier that Republic gave the heroines backbone and skill. Six years prior to The Invisible Monster, Linda Stirling was kicking ass as the titular lead of Zorro's Black Whip and Kay Alrdidge was saving Kane Richmond as often as he saved her in Haunted Harbor. However, by the 1950s, Republic's view of it's leading ladies was as bad as it was in 1936 and that's a shame.


Anyhow, back to the serial.


The Phantom Ruler wears special robes treated with a particular chemical which, when exposed to a particular spotlight, allow him to become invisible. Digest that bit of information for a moment. A spotlight is necessary for the invisibility and he wants to outfit an army to conquer the world like that. Yeah, that's not gonna work. Small wonder he eventually downgrades from conquering the world to conquering the community. God help us, not even the entire city--the community. One tends to get the feeling that had the serial gone much past 12 chapters, he would have downgraded to conquering a broom closet.

Some of you may have read the above paragraph and decided that this thing is too daffy to pass up. While it definitely has it's moments, such as the Phantom growling at one of his henchmen to move the spotlight slowly so he can stay in it or his delusional belieft that he only needs $200,000 (the only sucessful heist he has in all 12 chapters) to fund his worldwide army, it becomes too paint by numbers after a while. Republic serials followed a fairly strict formula and as such they lived and died by their cast. The Invisible Monster is no exception.

The whole community will be wearing them

Webb and Towne are okay as their heroes, but they're both pretty bland. Webb is certainly no Clayton Moore and Towne is no Linda Stirling. There's no particualr spark to their characters except for one amusing scene in chapter one where Webb is attempting to dismiss the idea of receiving help from a woman and Towne is nonchalantly pointing out all the detective work she already did that he didn't get to yet. By this point, Republic was picking their leads based more on their resemblance to stuntman than on acting ability, so we're lucky we got these two. At least Webb sort of tries, unlike later heroes like Myron Healey. The henchman, played by Lane Bradford and John Crawford, fair a little better, but even they aren't up to the standards of mean set by such forties henchmen as George J. Lewis and Anthony Warde. As for the Phantom Ruler himself, well, he's the serial's single biggest liability.


The Phantom Ruler is played by Stanley Price, today best remembered as the frizzy haired henchman to Phil Van Zandt in the 3 Stooges short Dopey Dicks. Stanley Price made for a pretty good henchman, not only in that short but in numerous serials. He was short, frizzy haired, and fairly creepy/bug-eyed. However, like Anthony Warde and George J. Lewis before him*, he mighta been a good henchman but he was a rotten head villain. He has no sense of menace except for when he's threatening the illegal aliens he's brought in. It doesn't help that he looks like a bug-eyed psycho like usual but is trying to play a suave villain. The part really called out for a Charles Middleton or Roy Barcroft, but by 1950 Middleton was dead and Barcroft wasn't doing many serials. Add to that the absurdity of the villain's entire scheme--which in the later chapters even he seems to recognize might not have been as well thought out as he would have liked--and yeah, this comes off as a let down.

 Clayton Moore could drive and shoot at the same time

The action is directed by Fred C. Brannon in his typical fashion. The fights are almost all done from long shot and lack the inventiveness of one of the fights William Witney or Spencer Gordon Bennett directed. It's mostly people punching each other and occasionally breaking a chair or table. I suppose Brannon was efficient enough for the Republic bosses to keep him directing the serials and most of his are at least a little better than the few that followed in the wake of his death but that's like saying Plan Nine From Outer Space is better than The Sinister Urge. Yes, that's true, but what does it really say?


All that said, if you're a serial fan you absolutely should get this Blu Ray, even if only because it's a serial on Blu Ray and that's something in pretty short supply. It looks fantastic and hopefully Olive Films decides to continue to release serials on Blu Ray. And yes, if you like goofy sci-fi from the 50s, you could find worse ways to spend a couple of hours than this. There is a workmanlike professionalism to the enterprise and still some semblance of energy. The chapters are short enough (13 minutes) to be digestable in small doses and get from point A to point B with economy. There's only a couple of times that the stock footage (which is most of the chapter endings) sticks out and that's what happens when you're using stock footage from the 1930s in the 1950s. At the end of the day, The Invisible Monster is a passable if unmemorable serial.


*Anthony Warde took his turn as the head villain of Buck Rogers, Killer Kane. It is universally agreed that he is the biggest knock against that serial. George J. Lewis did it all--hero (The Wolf Dog, Zorro's Black Whip), sidekick (Radar Patrol Vs. Spy King), henchman in too many serials to name, but his two turns as the head bad guy--Federal Operator 99 and Cody of the Pony Express--leave a lot to be desired.

It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World

After several years of making serious--and somewhat depressing--message films, director Stanley Kramer decided to try to make THE comedy of all time. So he gathered most of the greatest comedians of the day, took a huge script that by legend was two scripts--one for dialogue and one for action--and gave us It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, a film that originally ran almost as long as The Ten Commandments. Point in fact, the first actual cut was, according to legend, 5 1/2 hours. It was trimmed down to 210 minutes (3 1/2 hours) before being cut back to 202 minutes. It played at that length for four weeks before being trimmed down to 163 minutes. 9 additional minutes--consisting of the overture, intermission, entr'acte, and exit music were then cut out leaving the movie at 154 minutes. For roughly 30 years, this was the only version possible to be seen. It was the version I first saw when a local station would run it on New Year's Day. And they cut it even further than that, even lopping off the very ending of the movie.


In 1991, roughly 20 minutes of 70mm trims were found and put back into the movie along with the overture, etc, bringing the movie up to 182 minutes. That version was released on VHS and Laserdisc (remember those?) and became, for the most part, the fan favorite version. However, MGM never properly restored the footage, so when the DVDs and first Blu Ray came out, it was the 163 minute version. Fans howled for the longer version and it looked like it would never happen. However, this past week, The Criterion Collection, through the efforts of Film Restorationist Extraordinaire Robert A Harris, put together a 197 minute version, which is probably as close to the original Roadshow as we're ever going to get.


The movie involves a group of motorists who witness a horrific (but spectacular) car crash on a California road. They try to help the driver of that car, a gangster named Smiler Grogan (Jimmy Durante), but he's already dying. Before he (literally) kicks the bucket, he tells them about $350,000 he's hidden under a "Big W" in Santa Rosita State Park. The motorists fail to tell the cops (one of whom is Norman Fell) about the money. They decide instead to go dig the money up themselves. At first, they try to work out a plan where everyone gets shares. But it takes no time at all for them to decide that it's every man--"including the old bag"--for himself and a wild chase for the money ensues. Unknown to the participants, they are being watched by the police, especially Santa Rosita Capt. T.G. Culpepper (Spencer Tracy), who wants someone to lead them to the money. Others get involved, wanton destruction of personal and private property ensues and the film just gets more and more frantic as it goes along.


Like quite a few epics from the 1960's, this film is rife with cameos and guest appearances. Not quite everyone who was someone in comedy is in it, but it comes close. If you know anything about classic comedy from the first six decades of the 20th Century, you'll be delighted at spotting all the actors. The principals were mostly TV actors at the time--Sid Caesar, Milton Berle, Buddy Hacket, Jonathan Winters, Dorothy Provine, Edie Adams, Ethel Merman, and Mickey Rooney are the primary motorists who kick the whole thing off. Phil Silvers, Terry Thomas and Dick Shawn end up entering the race, as does Peter Falk and Eddie "Rochester" Anderson. Along the way, there's appearances by Jack Benny, Jerry Lewis, Sterling Holloway, Paul Ford, Edward Evert Horton, The Three Stooges, Don Knotts, Buster Keaton, Carl Reiner, Arnold Stang, Marvin Kaplan, Leo Gorcey and Jim Backus. On the side of the cops we have Alan Carney, William Demearest, Harry Lauter, Roy Roberts, Zazu Pitts, and Madalyn Rhue. Selma Diamond is the voice of Spencer Tracy's wife. And the list goes on.


Some people have complained that all the cameos make the film distracting to watch, much like The Greatest Story Ever Told. Frankly, I find the latter film much more distracting with it's cameos. It's hard to take a movie about Jesus seriously when you have the actor who played Klinger as one of his disciples, Sidney Poitier helping to carry the cross, Charlton Heston screaming "Repent!" for ten minutes as John the Baptist, and John Wayne as a Roman Centurion wearing a wristwatch and saying "Truly this man was the son of God". In Mad World, the cameos fit. The only sad thing is that many of the cameos will be lost on a lot of young people. It's like watching The Muppet Show nowadays--some of the stars may be remembered and quite a number of them get the question of "Who?". Yes, if you know classic comedy, then almost everybody in the movie will pop out at you. If you're under a certain age, however, it's possible that the only people you may recognize now are Jonathan Winters, Peter Falk, The Three Stooges and Jim Backus. And even poor Jim Backus is a little shaky in this day and age. Actually, you might be surprised to that you would know more of the people than you would think, For instance, Jimmy Durante is the narrator of Frosty the Snowman (Jonathan Winters did the same duty for the awful Frosty Returns). Sterling Holloway was the voice of Winnie the Pooh (and Kaa the Snake in The Jungle Book). Edward Evert Horton narrated Fractured Fairy Tales on Rocky and Bullwinkle. Selma Diamond was on Night Court and in the Steve Martin movie All of Me. Don Knotts did a couple of movies with Tim Conway for Disney like The Apple Dumpling Gang. Jack Benny did a Looney Tunes cartoon spoofing himself (Rochester was in it, too) called The Mouse That Jack Built. Ethel Merman is in Airplane! as herself. Dick Shawn voiced The Snow Miser in The Year Without a Santa Claus. Carl Reiner is in the Clooney Oceans 11 trilogy. Sid Caesar is the gym teacher in Grease. And so on. Do a little research and you may be surprised.


Everybody who was in the movie was a great in their field. Spencer Tracy is one of the finest actors who ever lived. He's essentially playing the straight man in this and he's terrific as Culpepper, whose life slowly unravels during the course of the movie. He holds our attention whenever he's onscreen, even when he's just walking around. As for the comics...well, what can be said? Everyone will have their own favorite among the leads--Jonathan Winters seems to be the biggest favorite, with his hysterical destruction of Kaplan and Stang's gas station one of the best set pieces in the movie. It is to be hoped that should young people actually watch this that they may seek out other works from these great comedians to see what they've missed. I'm probably dreaming there, but I'm allowed.


Funny enough, there's nothing really in the movie to actually date it. Most comedies, even the truly great ones from the past forty years like Blazing Saddles and Airplane! have humor or other elements that firmly put them in their era. It can be argued that Airplane! is funnier than Mad World, but the disco scene--funny as it is--makes it a product of 1980. But the only thing outside of the cars to date Mad World is the appearance of pay phones. Everything else is timeless. The movie could literally have been shot at any given time. That could be why it still works so well and remains so funny. The complete lack of topical humor is the genius of the movie. You could watch it two hundred years from now and the jokes still wouldn't date. Two hundred years from now, people are going to watch Airplane! and scratch their heads at the disco scene (sadly). I'm not knocking Airplane!, mind you. I love the film and it's one of only a few comedies I bothered getting on Blu Ray (I by and large don't need to see comedies in hi def), but the reality is that it's already dating badly while Mad World manages not to.


Oh, and for the young people who wonder why Ethel Merman just doesn't pull out her cell phone to call her son, the answer is they didn't have them back then.


The Criterion Collection Blu Ray is a joy for fans of the film. It includes the "general release version", that is the 163 minute version in gorgeous high definition. But it also includes the reconstruction of the Roadshow version. Now again, this is a reconstruction, so parts of it aren't perfect. Remember, MGM didn't restore the trims, so Criterion could only do so much with them. As a result, there's a noticeable shift in quality whenever the film goes to restored footage. Some restored footage has burned in Japanese subtitles, which are fortunately a little light and small and not particularly obtrusive. Sometimes they have picture but no sound, so subtitles show up. And in at least four or five scenes, there's audio but no picture, so stills get used instead. That, to use Dick Shawn's slang, tends to bug some people, but I'm fine with it. None of those sequences are particularly long and at least three of them explain certain things that happen within the movie. At least one is full on hilarious and never should have been cut and one has a major plot point in it. It's also loaded with great extras, including the most fascinating commentary track I've ever heard. The track not only has great info on who was in the movie but who wasn't in the movie. Bob Hope, Lucille Ball, Ed Wynn and Groucho Marx among others were penciled in but didn't make it.


The Blu Ray also reinstates the police calls that played during the films intermission. Those radio calls are interesting since they clear up a couple of plot points in between the two acts. The history of those calls is that they were piped in throughout the theaters during the original Roadshow engagement until a little old lady complained that they made her think strange men were with her in the ladies room. I'll leave the snarky comments about that to my readers.


This Blu Ray is an absolute joy. Like Twilight Time's Man in the Dark release this week, it's a must buy for anyone who owns a Blu Ray player. The restoration by Robert Harris truly adds to this wonderful movie. All of the general release footage is amazing to look at and the reconstructed footage, though not as nice, doesn't look that bad either. There's some great extras, including a five minute piece on how the restoration was pulled off. Being a Criterion release, the disc is a little pricey--49.95, dual format DVD and Blu Ray, but then again it is 5 discs, so that works out to $10 a disc. "And that's tax free money, my friend." At any rate, it's well worth the purchase. Extremely highly recommended.