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419,086 | 1,609,079 | 72,546 | 1 | As Italian as Chico Marx , but not as funny . | The enormous success of ' All in the Family ' inevitably spawned a flurry of imitations . ' The Montefuscos ' - - created by Persky and Denoff , both of whom had done excellent work on ' The Dick Van Dyke Show ' - - was an attempt at an Italian-American version of the Bunker mentality , as in Archie Bunker . Instead of... |
418,938 | 1,609,079 | 15,087 | 1 | After you , Alphonse . . . | ' Love and Glory ' was directed by Rupert Julian , whose best-known credit is the silent version of ' The Phantom of the Opera ' , starring Lon Chaney . But Chaney and Julian quarrelled very bitterly during production of that film : Julian was ultimately dismissed from the set , and Chaney took over the direction himse... |
418,706 | 1,609,079 | 180,165 | 1 | Skip the movie , watch the saddle . | Spade Cooley ( whose nickname referred to his protuberant lips ) had a semi-successful career as a singing cowboy , a sort of downmarket Roy Rogers performing on radio and television . ( He even got mentioned in an episode of Jackie Gleason's ' Honeymooners ' . ) Cooley's minimal talent soon lost momentum : by the earl... |
419,660 | 1,609,079 | 41,714 | 1 | Sodom and Begorrah ! | The " Old Mother Riley " series of comedies , starring Arthur Lucan ( in drag ) as an Irish scrubwoman , and his wife Kitty McShane as Mother Riley's daughter , are all quite dire , but this one is the worst entry in the series . At least the other entries have titles which give you some sense of their plotlines , but ... |
418,278 | 1,609,079 | 368,818 | 1 | Julie Andrews kisses herself . | Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke were so brilliant together in ' Mary Poppins ' ( in spite of his wretched faux-Cockney accent ) that it's a shame they don't recapture that chemistry here . This very weak variety special is directed by Andrews's long-time husband Blake Edwards . Despite their long happy marriage , Andre... |
419,725 | 1,609,079 | 431,591 | 1 | Foul ball ! | ' Abner the Baseball ' is an extremely low-budget cartoon from Paramount , the studio that consistently produced the least entertaining and least imaginative animation . The opening credits of this cartoon ( with a choral theme song ) place so much emphasis on the title character , they make this toon seem intended as ... |
418,804 | 1,609,079 | 12,646 | 1 | Instant amnesia . | Larry Semon was ( at best ) in the lower second rank of silent-movie comedians , more likely in the third rank . Buster Keaton , in his memoir co-written with Charles Samuels , commented that Semon tended to fill his comedies with all sorts of outrageous gags which had nothing to do with the plot or the characters . Co... |
418,496 | 1,609,079 | 10,472 | 1 | Not enough pistachios in ' Mixed Nuts ' . | I was not surprised to discover that ' Mixed Nuts ' was recut from footage in two other shorts : this film's storyline is incoherent . Also ( in the print I viewed , at least ) the photography in some scenes is so dark that I could barely follow the action . Stan Laurel , pre-Hardy , plays a lunatic who thinks he's Nap... |
418,638 | 1,609,079 | 14,706 | 1 | Close the shutters , pull the drapes . | The 1987 suspense film ' The Bedroom Window ' has one of the most ingenious premises I've ever seen . We know the killer's identity all along , but we can't guess what will happen next . This 1924 movie ( otherwise totally unrelated ) has the same title , but this ' Bedroom Window ' is meant to be a whodunnit rather th... |
418,514 | 1,609,079 | 309,279 | 1 | Skip this documentary , watch the episodes instead | Amos ' n ' Andy was a phenomenally popular American radio programme , transmitting five days a week from 1929 to 1960 ! Although this was a comedy series , Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll ( the actors who wrote the scripts and played all the male voices ) had the brilliant idea of using serialised plotlines which ... |
418,765 | 1,609,079 | 80,738 | 1 | ' Deadly ' doesn't begin to describe it . | Lawrence Sanders wrote a series of novels about NYPD detective Edward Delaney ; popular in their day , they have not remained in print . Sanders actually gave them sequential titles : ' The First Deadly Sin ' , ' The Second Deadly Sin ' , ' The Third Deadly Sin ' . The series died before Sanders ran out of sins . Frank... |
418,299 | 1,609,079 | 30,078 | 1 | Bing's big boo-boo ; Lillie's shilly-shally | ' Doctor Rhythm ' is the worst film Bing Crosby ever starred in . Bing made this movie at his home studio Paramount during one of his best career arcs . The film has good production values , especially an impressive studio mock-up of Manhattan's Central Park . So , why is this film so painfully dull ? Part of the probl... |
418,296 | 1,609,079 | 236,553 | 1 | Too many babies , not enough laughs . | Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy had extensive ( separate ) film careers before they were eventually teamed . For many of Ollie's pre-Stan films , he was billed on screen as Babe Hardy . . . and throughout his adult life , Hardy was known to his friends as ' Babe ' . While touring postwar Britain with Laurel in a music-hal... |
419,291 | 1,609,079 | 307,437 | 1 | Is it love ? No , just heartburn . | ' Is That You , Love ? ' begins with the odd menage of three bachelors who live together : an exporter , an engineer and an all-purpose egghead , none of whom will ever see fifty again . It's not clear why they co-habit , as they're all well-off financially and aren't discernibly gay . ( I'm not so sure about their pom... |
419,546 | 1,609,079 | 27,898 | 1 | Paltry poultry ; you've seen this plot before . | Several of Disney's " Silly Symphonies " cartoon series were adaptations of classic stories in the public domain , but there was only one story which that series adapted twice : Hans Christian Andersen's ' The Ugly Duckling ' . The Fleischer studio's cartoon ' The Little Stranger ' almost seems to be a reply to Disney'... |
418,440 | 1,609,079 | 8,372 | 1 | Lost but no loss , Stan Laurel's bicorn-y debut . | Some footage from ' Nuts in May ' ( 1917 ) - - Stan Laurel's very first movie - - was salvaged five years on and edited into ' Mixed Nuts ' , another of Laurel's pre-Hardy comedies ( from a different production company ) , but ' Nuts in May ' in its original form almost certainly no longer survives . The obscure produc... |
419,158 | 1,609,079 | 37,655 | 1 | William Bendix meets Alec Guinness | In 1953 , Alec Guinness starred in an hilarious movie called " The Captain's Paradise " . Guinness played the bigamous captain of a ferry that plied back and forth across the Straits of Gibraltar . . . bigamous , because Guinness's captain had a wife at each end of his ferry route , with neither wife suspecting the oth... |
418,858 | 1,609,079 | 14,583 | 1 | Her missionary position . | Robert Hichens was a prolific author who is now almost utterly forgotten except for his ghost story ' How Love Came to Professor Guildea ' , which is widely anthologised . The first time I read that story , it quite bored me . Years later , I read it again and was deeply horrified . ' The Voice from the Minaret ' is a ... |
418,346 | 1,609,079 | 128,998 | 1 | Bolshevik , Bolshoi , Bullsht ! | It's not impossible for propaganda to be artistically successful . Quite a few German movies produced by the Third Reich ( and blatantly pro-Nazi with it ) have entertaining storylines and good performances despite their dreadful political agenda . I've seen a few Soviet movies that succeed as artistic endeavours while... |
419,621 | 1,609,079 | 224,042 | 1 | Goose-steppin ' out with my baby . . . | The movie ' Cabaret ' , filmed in the 1970s but set in Berlin just before Hitler's rise to power , features a very annoying scene in which a smug policeman explains that he allows these new troublemakers ( the Nazis ) to beat up communists because they keep the communists in line ; he smugly predicts that some other bu... |
418,853 | 1,609,079 | 208,654 | 1 | Not a feature that's stirring . . . | UPDATE : Gentle readers , do not be fooled by the fact that this IMDb review has received so many negative ( un - " useful " votes ) . ALL of those votes were cast by the same person , a very sad individual with too much free time on his hands . . . who sends me emails at regular intervals , demanding that I change thi... |
418,658 | 1,609,079 | 213,298 | 1 | I'd rather hear ' La Cucaracha ' | ' The Last Meeting ' is a bittersweet romance taking place over the course of about 25 years . In the early scenes , Soler ( José Crespo ) is a struggling young violinist . We hear very little of his actual fiddling - and what we do hear is obviously dubbed - but he's handsome and charming with it , which is this movie... |
418,331 | 1,609,079 | 28,060 | 1 | Unsavoury Savo | I saw this movie in 1974 , at the National Film Theatre in London , and I've absolutely no desire to see it ever again . ONCE in a blue moon is plenty ! In the 1930s , Jimmy Savo was a starring comedian on Broadway . One of Rodgers and Hart's greatest musical comedies , ' The Boys from Syracuse ' , was created as a sta... |
418,809 | 1,609,079 | 14,405 | 1 | The director's wife hanged herself ! | Major Rupert Hughes was one of those weird real-life characters whose life story would make an excellent movie . He was an uncle of Howard Hughes , and appears to have acquired some of the same mental disorders as that billionaire . Rupert Hughes dabbled in several art forms - - he wrote a novel , he wrote a book of hi... |
419,548 | 1,609,079 | 37,831 | 1 | This is definitely a ' Turkey ' . | I find Tex Avery's cartoons hugely variable . His Screwy Squirrel toons are hilarious , and I regret that he made only three of them . His best Warners toons ( ' Thugs with Dirty Mugs ' ) are both innovative and uproariously funny . But his Droopy cartoons just stink , and far too much of his other work is quite dire .... |
418,994 | 1,609,079 | 22,038 | 1 | What's the German for ' this movie stinks ' ? | Serves me right for watching German comedies . ' Kyritz-Pyritz ' is a mistaken-identity farce , but it's trite and predictable and there's nothing here I haven't seen in literally dozens of bad sitcom episodes , dinner-theatre disasters and Brian Rix comedies . I'll make allowances for the fact that ' Kyritz ' was made... |
419,371 | 1,609,079 | 239,353 | 1 | Common clay | ' Der Dorfsgolem ' literally means ' the Village Golem ' , and the title is meant to be funny . Just as in Britain and America ( where we tell jokes about ' the village idiot ' ) , Germany has a long tradition of humour based on ' hicks ' and foolish rustic types . ' The Village Golem ' is a comedy , but it's not very ... |
418,953 | 1,609,079 | 333,832 | 1 | Marjorie Daw as the Golem . | I viewed a very poor print of this very poor film . Marjorie Daw stars as Joan Thayer , a wronged woman - - apparently American - - who somehow ends up in Paris , where she tries to drown her sorrows by jumping off a quay into the river . ( She must be in Seine . ) She's rescued by a handsome Legionnaire ( Warwick Ward... |
418,652 | 1,609,079 | 18,481 | 1 | X plus Q equals zero | The most interesting thing about ' The Thirteenth Juror ' is the middle initials of its two leading players , Francis X . Bushman and Anna Q . Nilsson . This is surely the only time in film history that an actor with the middle initial " X " was teamed with an actress with the middle initial " Q " . And I was thinking ... |
418,653 | 1,609,079 | 18,521 | 1 | The Kaiser won't surprise her | ' U 9 Weddigen ' is one of those dead-earnest dramas that tries to make deeply meaningful statements such as ' War Is Bad ' , but which has nothing significant to offer . The early scenes are set in the last years of the 19th century . Mathilde Sussin plays a German widow with two strapping sons . After her husband's d... |
418,542 | 1,609,079 | 146,367 | 1 | Did he say ' mer ' or ' merde ' ? | I've always found the dilettante Man Ray and his artistic efforts to be deeply pretentious , and I've never understood why his work attracts so much attention . Apart from his Rayographs ( which he invented by accident , and which are merely direct-contact photo prints ) , his one real contribution to culture seems to ... |
419,139 | 1,609,079 | 27,176 | 1 | Village idiots | ' Village Tale ' is based on a novel by Philip Stong , an Iowa newspaperman who is now best remembered for writing ' State Fair ' , which became a Rodgers & Hammerstein musical . Actually , the best-known piece of text authored by Stong is not usually attributed to him . It was Stong who wrote the widely-reprinted stat... |
418,686 | 1,609,079 | 25,187 | 1 | When they catch Dillinger . . . | ' Going Spanish ' is Bob Hope's film debut , and ( as reviewer Snow Leopard astutely observes ) is notable ONLY for that reason : this low-budget short just isn't funny . Some vaguely Latin American music is performed , but this too is negligible . Arguably , it's also notable that this film was produced by Al Christie... |
419,059 | 1,609,079 | 163,719 | 1 | I guess I'm supposed to burst into tears , or something . | I disliked everything about this movie , beginning with its bathetic title which attempts to manipulate us into liking ( or pitying ) the main character . This movie is pitiful in every aspect , apart from MGM's usual excellent production values . In Hollywood's golden era , a trip to the movies meant several short sub... |
418,945 | 1,609,079 | 16,200 | 1 | A wrecked auto sight for this parasite | ' The Parasite ' ( with its overwrought title ) is an extremely misogynistic melodrama , an example of what I call a ' bad woman ' story : one of those dramas in which a vampire ( in Kipling's sense of the word ) sets out to destroy people in general and men in particular , not for financial gain nor for any other cred... |
418,654 | 1,609,079 | 18,692 | 1 | Bland blonde blunder | ' Beware of Blondes ' is a very early example of the caper film , but it can't quite seem to make up its mind whether it's a comedy or a drama . Several of Raymond Griffith's films feature a necklace or some other valuable piece of jewellery as a McGuffin : ' Beware of Blondes ' feels like a Raymond Griffith comedy wit... |
418,309 | 1,609,079 | 13,855 | 1 | Lunt and a runt . | ' Backbone ' is a turgid romance that ping-pongs back and forth between two different centuries , with the same romantic leads doubling in both periods . This sub-genre seemed to be fairly popular in silent days , another such example being the recently rediscovered Valentino film ' Beyond the Rocks ' . The most notabl... |
419,210 | 1,609,079 | 20,670 | 1 | Fanny batters the big screen | Fanny Brice is one of those old-time performers who remains well-known only indirectly , through an impersonator : nowadays , most people who think they're familiar with Fanny Brice's style as a performer are actually recalling Barbra Streisand in ' Funny Girl ' and ' Funny Lady ' . ( A similar problem exists with Geor... |
418,727 | 1,609,079 | 125,021 | 1 | Short back and sides | ' Bothered by a Beard ' could be considered an early example of " mockumentary " . This short film consists of a series of vignettes which purport to show how men have contended with their facial hair ( and its removal ) through the centuries . Unfortunately , this movie isn't funny enough to succeed as a comedy , and ... |
419,180 | 1,609,079 | 59,997 | 1 | The jokes date back to the Stone Age . | I saw " It's About Time " when it was transmitted in Australia . At that time , the cheapest American sitcom ever made still had a much larger production budget than the most prestigious series produced in Australia . . . but I still noticed the general cheapness and shoddiness of this ( only vaguely funny ) sitcom . P... |
419,296 | 1,609,079 | 12,172 | 1 | nearly a nasty Occident . | Sessue Hayakawa had a respectable career in silent-era Hollywood as an actor in films produced by white men for white audiences . But , as a Japanese man contending with the racial prejudices of the time , Hayakawa nearly always played villains . . . usually wily Orientals who lusted after decent white women . Because ... |
418,251 | 1,609,079 | 18,772 | 1 | Mr Magoo has a Bimbo | George K Arthur ( a chirpy little Aberdonian ) and Karl Dane ( tall and slack-jawed ) were an immensely popular comedy team of the silent era whose career slowed in talkies , largely due to Dane's thick accent ( he was a Dane by name and a Dane by nature ) , combined with the fact that neither was an especially good ac... |
418,441 | 1,609,079 | 222,664 | 1 | This movie made my brain want to wash its hands . | I was not surprised to learn that Arthur Lipsett , who created this film , later committed suicide . ' 21-87 ' reveals an extremely bleak and pessimistic view of humanity . To say that Lipsett ' created ' this film might be overstatement . It consists of a few soundbites dubbed onto scraps of documentary film footage ,... |
419,491 | 1,609,079 | 170,260 | 1 | Chitlin's and grits | This movie is bilge . There are times when I'll actually look for a bad movie on television ; namely , when I'm cleaning house or updating my computer records , and I want to have some mindless rubbish playing in the background on TV : something just interesting enough to keep me from getting bored , but not interestin... |
418,304 | 1,609,079 | 152,672 | 1 | Hand me the Kryptonite ! | Of all the major Hollywood studios , Paramount may well have had the worst animation department . The excellent cartoons exhibited in Paramount cinemas in the 1930s ( the Popeyes , the wonderfully rotoscoped Superman cartoons , the Betty Boops which I personally dislike ) were made by the Fleischer studio for distribut... |
419,390 | 1,609,079 | 376,155 | 1 | The Candy Man can't . | Sammy Davis Jnr was a dynamically talented performer , whom I always enjoy watching . His talents were at their peak in the mid-1960s , during the period in which this variety special was made . Unfortunately , it's very poor stuff . This musical special tries to make some ' serious ' observations about childhood , but... |
418,257 | 1,609,079 | 31,465 | 1 | Put it back , thief ! | George Raft was never much of an actor ( as he freely admitted ) , but I fondly recall the ironic desperation in the performance he gave in ' If I Had a Million ' . In that movie , Raft played a cheque forger who unexpectedly receives a legitimate cheque for $1 , 000 , 000 , made out to himself . . . then he realises t... |
418,893 | 1,609,079 | 10,112 | 1 | Not even ' sub ' standard | ' False Faces ' ( there's no ' THE ' in the film's title ) is being marketed on video as a Lon Chaney movie . Buyer beware ! Chaney plays a small role , having far less screen time than Henry Walthall and Mary Anderson . That wouldn't be bad if this were a good film . ' False Faces ' LOOKS like a good film , possessing... |
418,351 | 1,609,079 | 14,025 | 1 | Physician , heal thyself | I'm going to trash this movie , but where do I start ? Veteran character actor Hobart Bosworth plays a Park Avenue surgeon with a much younger wife ( Claire Windsor ) . Doctor Walters has adopted a foster son ; annoyingly , the foster son is named Foster . That's Raymond Griffith as Leonard Foster , the stepson . Griff... |
419,341 | 1,609,079 | 152,606 | 1 | The front man needs a front tooth . | Streamlined Swing was directed by Buster Keaton at the lowest point in his career , when he was under contract to MGM but they refused to make proper use of his comedic talents . This film was a showcase vehicle for " The Original Sing Band " , an unusual vaudeville act consisting of several young black men who play ... |
418,541 | 1,609,079 | 125,073 | 1 | Regardez les tootsies ! | If anybody out there knows what the title ' Emak-Bakia ' means , please let me know . I've always found the dilettante Man Ray and his artistic efforts to be deeply pretentious , and I've never understood why his work attracts so much attention . Apart from his Rayographs ( which he invented by accident , and which are... |
418,593 | 1,609,079 | 339,210 | 1 | This ' Superman ' can't fly . | It's a Bird It's a Plane It's Superman was the unwieldy ( and comma-less ) title of a 1966 Broadway musical that ran for less than four months . The score by Charles Strouse and Lee Adams produced not a single hit song . . . although " You've Got Possibilities " was recorded in England by Matt Munro . ' Superman ' wa... |
418,647 | 1,609,079 | 7,202 | 1 | Pastafazoola for Little Mary | SPOILERS SPOILERS'Poor Little Peppina ' is not one of Mary Pickford's better efforts , although it's a creditable attempt at a change of pace for Little Mary . There's a long prologue in which she doesn't appear at all , her screen character being only an infant . Peppina's father is a wealthy landowner who helps send ... |
419,634 | 1,609,079 | 214,803 | 1 | . . . but not worse than this movie ! | George Jessel was an extremely annoying performer whose work has dated badly . In vaudeville , his speciality was a monologue in which he supposedly had a telephone conversation with his mother : this unfunny gimmick required him to ask questions into a prop ' phone and then repeat ( for the audience's benefit ) all th... |
418,926 | 1,609,079 | 29,209 | 1 | Joe DiMaggio , stick to your day job | I can enjoy a truly brainless musical if it has some snappy songs and an interesting cast . " Manhattan Merry-Go-Round " is a brainless movie with a few dull songs , and guest appearances by celebrities who ( mostly ) don't show up long enough to do anything interesting . Some great character actors are in this film ( ... |
419,403 | 1,609,079 | 164,044 | 1 | Soldier boy is a girl , and it gets worse . . . | ' Haiducii ' is the centrepiece of a trilogy of Roumanian films directed by Horia Igirosanu , dramatising the struggle of the Roumanian people to overthrow the tyrannical Pharinote : the Greek regents installed by the Holy Roman Empire as rulers of Roumania . The first film in the triptych is ' Iancu Jlanu ' ( 1928 ) ;... |
419,062 | 1,609,079 | 280,994 | 1 | Little Tich did it better , way back in 1900 . | When talking pictures came in , a lot of vaudeville performers were able to preserve their acts on film . . . notably in the Vitaphone shorts filmed in Brooklyn ( NY ) , which typically ran for ten minutes . Unfortunately , some vaudeville acts didn't deserve ten minutes on their tod , so several of them would be lumpe... |
419,184 | 1,609,079 | 293,175 | 1 | Acidic Hasidic foolabout . | Hester Street , in Manhattan's Lower East Side , was where many immigrant Jews settled in the last decades of the nineteenth century and early decades of the twentieth . There's even an excellent film , ' Hester Street ' by Joan Micklin Silver , about that time and place . Although the term ' ghetto ' might be too hars... |
419,590 | 1,609,079 | 259,751 | 1 | About turn , retreat ! | ' Zu Befehl , Herr Unteroffizier ' is a very bad German comedy . The title translates as ' You Give the Orders , Mr Noncom ' , and the rest of the movie is just about as hilarious . The fact that any German production company was making army comedies AT ALL in 1932 really gives one pause . Proceed at your own risk . Th... |
419,591 | 1,609,079 | 24,802 | 1 | War is hell . | ' Two Good Comrades ' is a comedy about the German army of occupation in France . That could be a very funny subject for a dark comedy , but what we get here doesn't even come up to the level of " ' Allo , ' Allo ! " . Paul Hörbiger and Fritz Kampers play a couple of German infantrymen in the Great War . Their regiment... |
418,303 | 1,609,079 | 110,587 | 1 | Too many Ding-a-Lings in the script . | There's a certain sort of movie or television fare that I like to have tuned in on telly in the background while I'm doing boring housework . The show has to be interesting enough to divert me , but not interesting enough to demand my full attention , because then I won't get the housework done . ' Mr Write ' came on w... |
419,588 | 1,609,079 | 17,130 | 1 | Trouble is bruin ' | ' The Bear's Marriage ' is a very strange film . It has the general ambiance of a folktale , with much of the bloodshed and cruelty that many actual folktales possessed before they got bowdlerised for the nursery . This silent film was made in the early days of the Soviet regime , yet it takes place in Czarist Russia a... |
419,174 | 1,609,079 | 29,091 | 1 | He scumbles with his fingers , in an obsolete technique . | The plot of this movie is as ridiculous as its misspelt title . I've never heard of Jefferson Machamer , but he was apparently a successful comic-strip artist . Still , his career as depicted here is sheer wish-fulfilment : he has a huge opulent studio , and he pays gorgeous models to lounge about so that he can sketch... |
419,230 | 1,609,079 | 38,442 | 1 | Danger : Death by boredom ! | Beginning in the first year of Queen Victoria's reign , there were rumours in England of a bizarre criminal nicknamed Springheel Jack , who was allegedly able to leap to superhuman distances and heights . The legend lasted into Edward VII's time , with the result that a few minor but genuine criminals began calling the... |
419,268 | 1,609,079 | 440,383 | 1 | Shut up and shoot her ! | ' False Number ' was a stage play dramatised for German television . This low-budget production would have been more effective if some pre-filmed exterior sequences ( especially of the robbery ) could have been inserted ; as it stands , all the most exciting events in this drama take place offstage and so must be rehas... |
419,215 | 1,609,079 | 61,528 | 1 | Nothing fine in this mess | Jay Ward , the creator of Bullwinkle , has earned my undying respect for proving that intelligent scripts plus bad animation will make a better cartoon than superb animation with bad scripts . In 1967 , Ward cobbled together a feature-length compilation of clips from various Laurel & Hardy movies , which was released b... |
418,735 | 1,609,079 | 16,926 | 1 | God owes me a refund | ' God Gave Me Twenty Cents ' could be a great title for a comedy film , but this silent sudser is a serious movie . Deadly serious . It was directed by Herbert Brenon , whose films were always tinged with an air of unreality . This was an asset when Brenon directed fantasies ( ' Peter Pan ' ) or films with unusual subj... |
418,325 | 1,609,079 | 285,582 | 1 | Bing bungles badly , buh-boo-boo-buh-boo . . . | I'm very much a Bing Crosby fan , but his TV special " Goldilocks " is nothing special . This is a musical cartoon , retelling the famous story of the Three Bears : a story that really can't sustain itself over a half-hour format , even with the addition of songs and commercials . The cleverest aspect of this cartoon w... |
419,671 | 1,609,079 | 301,298 | 2 | Two suicides in one movie | In my IMDb review for ' Jitters the Butler ' , I describe the comedy team of Clark & McCullough , as well as the similarities between funnyman Bobby Clark and his contemporary Groucho Marx . . . and the circumstances leading to Paul McCullough's suicide . ' Fits in a Fiddle ' is another Clark & McCullough comedy short ... |
419,073 | 1,609,079 | 416,005 | 2 | A pigment of your imagination . | This is one of the extremely low-budget Mickey McGuire short comedies which were ground out by Fontaine Fox's production company , based on a character in Fox's ' Toonerville Folks ' comic strip . The only real points of interest in these crude comedies are the presence of the very young Mickey Rooney and the influence... |
418,639 | 1,609,079 | 28,273 | 2 | Comes the revolution , comrade . . . | In the mid-1930s , Paramount Pictures sponsored an early experiment in auteurism when Adolph Zukor permitted Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur to write , direct and produce several films at Paramount's east coast studio in Astoria , New York . I'm a front-row fan of Hecht and MacArthur , but their scripts need the discip... |
419,224 | 1,609,079 | 21,923 | 2 | Harry Gribbon ties a ribbon on a greasy grimy gibbon | Ralph Spence wrote his play ' The Gorilla ' in the mid-1920s , when Broadway audiences had already seen several dead-earnest thriller plays about spooky old houses full of trapdoors and masked villains . The posters for the 1925 Broadway production of ' The Gorilla ' acknowledged its predecessors , by ballyhooing : ' O... |
418,951 | 1,609,079 | 19,491 | 2 | Not remotely funny : never was , and never will be . | The wits of the Algonquin Round Table are my comedy gods , but Robert Benchley is the false idol in the pantheon . I've never found Benchley funny , and never understood why so many other people do so . His jokes are painfully obvious to me : in ' How to Be a Detective ' , when Benchley escorts a criminal to the penite... |
418,356 | 1,609,079 | 246,529 | 2 | Below Larry Semon's usual standard . | I viewed a print of this Larry Semon comedy that came from a Czech archive ; all the original dialogue cards had been cut out , and a small number of titles in Slovak spliced in . The film would have been better with no titles at all . In the late 19th and early 20th centuries , ' counter jumper ' was the term used in ... |
418,398 | 1,609,079 | 43,876 | 2 | Bungle in the jungle | ' You look like Old Mother Riley ! ' said Harold Steptoe in the classic 1972 sitcom episode ' Die Now , PAYE Later ' , upon discovering his father Albert in women's clothes . Actually , Wilfrid Brambell in drag looked a lot more like a biological female than Arthur Lucan ever did , but the joke reveals how popular Old ... |
418,890 | 1,609,079 | 30,468 | 2 | . . . but not as kicked-off as I am . | If you actually want to know anything about Joe Penner , there's substantial information about him in my IMDb review of his alleged comedy ' The Day the Bookies Wept ' , which is a poor film but a much better ( and funnier ) movie than this one . ' Mr Doodle Kicks Off ' is utterly execrable . First , an inglorious mome... |
418,420 | 1,609,079 | 47,634 | 2 | . . . but he should have stayed away | The most interesting thing about ' A Stranger Came Home ' is that it's based on a novel by George Sanders . . . yes , I'm reliably informed that this was the well-known character actor of that name , not some other George Sanders . But our favourite cad is nowhere to be seen in this film , and nor is there a " George S... |
418,857 | 1,609,079 | 19,589 | 2 | A loose woman in a tight spot . | I'm told that ' The Woman Disputed ' is one of those mongrel films made in two versions - - silent and part-talkie - - for release at a time when talkies were clearly the coming thing , but most cinemas were not yet wired for sound . I've viewed the Library of Congress print , which is silent . With other films from th... |
418,375 | 1,609,079 | 19,833 | 2 | Barthelmess is barely " tol'able " as this David . | The movie ' Drag ' has nothing to do with cross-dressing , although there are some elaborate theatrical costumes seen in the later reels . The title reflects the fact that this story's protagonist - - I can't quite call him the hero - - is dragged down by his wife and his in-laws . ' Drag ' is yet another of the many ,... |
419,033 | 1,609,079 | 28,540 | 2 | Well , this movie sure SEEMS like 23 - hours . . . | 23 - Hours ' Leave was originally a story by Mary Roberts Rinehart , an author hugely popular in her lifetime who is now largely forgotten . The story was filmed in 1919 as a starring vehicle for Douglas MacLean . He must have liked it , because MacLean obtained the film rights and produced this remake in 1937 , with... |
418,520 | 1,609,079 | 136,208 | 2 | Rootin ' Teuton , rushin ' Prussian | ' Fridericus ' is one of several German films recounting the military career of Prussia's king Friedrich the Second . An earlier version , the silent film ' Fridericus Rex ' ( made before Hitler's rise to power ) , has little to recommend it beyond a good performance by Werner Krauss in a supporting role . ' Fridericus... |
418,352 | 1,609,079 | 15,030 | 2 | Not-so-special " K " | ' K the Unknown ' is a faithful adaptation of a novel simply titled ' K ' , by Mary Roberts Rinehart . . . who is now remembered only for her spooky-house thriller ' The Bat ' . The heroine of ' K ' is Sidney Page ( Virginia Valli , very pretty in her stylish bobbed hair and nurse's uniform ) . Sidney lives in her moth... |
418,215 | 1,609,079 | 32,365 | 2 | More plausible than Hitchcock's version . | ' Creo en Dios ' takes its title from the first words of the apostles ' creed in Spanish . This Mexican film was made more than a decade before Alfred Hitchcock's Canadian film ' I Confess ' , yet there are startling parallels between them . In ' I Confess ' , a Catholic commits a murder and then confesses the deed to ... |
419,297 | 1,609,079 | 6,343 | 2 | dis-Orienting | Sessue Hayakawa had a respectable career in silent-era Hollywood as an actor in films produced by white men for white audiences . But , as a Japanese man contending with the racial prejudices of the time , Hayakawa nearly always played villains . . . usually wily Orientals who lusted after decent white women . SLIGHT S... |
418,646 | 1,609,079 | 6,201 | 2 | If the camels die , . . . WE die . | Lou Tellegen is a footnote in theatrical history , having played opposite Sarah Bernhardt as her handsome romantic leading man during her last great tour . ( If Tellegen's acting ability had matched his looks , Madame Sarah would certainly not have chosen him ! ) Tellegen's autobiography ' Women Have Been Kind ' is lau... |
418,879 | 1,609,079 | 171,769 | 2 | Toothless comedy | It's an odd coincidence that England's two most famous Northern comedians - - George Formby and Frank Randle - - were both from the small town of Wigan , Lancashire . ( Stan Laurel was born in Lancashire too , but I consider him an American comedian : Laurel's comedic style was English but not especially ' Northern ' .... |
419,376 | 1,609,079 | 24,386 | 2 | Too right : no funny business | Gertrude Lawrence was a vitally important stage actress of the 1930s , who is now largely forgotten because her film career was negligible . Like some other stage performers of the same era ( such as Fanny Brice and George M . Cohan ) , ' Gertie ' Lawrence is now primarily known because of a film about her , in which s... |
419,212 | 1,609,079 | 4,870 | 2 | A lass and a lack of a good script | For some reason , many silent films with contemporary settings had flashbacks to ancient times . The most obvious example of this is Cecil B . DeMille's ' Male and Female ' , with its flashback to Babylon . . . and , indeed , several of DeMille's movies from the Jazz Age found convenient excuses for sending the main ch... |
419,445 | 1,609,079 | 10,469 | 2 | Billie's billets | Billie Burke , in real life the wife of Florenz Ziegfeld , is now remembered only for putting a wastebasket on her head to play Glinda the fairy . As so few people have seen her in other roles , it's not widely realised that Burke's Glinda routine was no act : she went through her entire career with that annoying twitt... |
419,242 | 1,609,079 | 130,640 | 2 | He's reckless but he won't be wreckless . | There is one action-movie genre which I absolutely despise : the one in which motorists drive irresponsibly and recklessly , at maximum speed with minimum brains , and the audience are expected to cheer them on . In real life , plenty of innocent people have been killed because some idiot with too much testosterone and... |
418,947 | 1,609,079 | 390,788 | 2 | Weak satire , hideous backgrounds | I saw ' Up Sunday ' when it was originally transmitted , and I'm apparently the only person who saw it : Auntie Beeb scheduled the episodes late at night , just before the sign-off test pattern . This programme was meant to be sociopolitical satire in the style of ' TW3 ' , but fell far short of the mark . The best par... |
418,846 | 1,609,079 | 53,192 | 2 | Ten seconds of the Volantes | A Private's Affair is a ' musical ' in only the most charitable sense of the term . If one song performed over and over throughout a feature-length movie is enough to make that movie a ' musical ' , then " A Private's Affair " qualifies . During the opening credits , we hear a song called " It's the Same Old Army " .... |
418,516 | 1,609,079 | 32,255 | 2 | Sink this ' Bismarck ' ! | The 1940 film ' Bismarck ' was one of the Staatsauftragsfilme : the ' state-produced films ' of the Third Reich which were clearly meant as Nazi propaganda . Rather than blatantly extolling Hitler , these films typically chose a powerful figure from German history and depicted him favourably , careful to stress similar... |
418,615 | 1,609,079 | 17,973 | 2 | A southern belle goes ding-dong . | The title of this Civil War melodrama has two meanings . ' The Heart of Maryland ' suggests that its heroine embodies the heart and soul of her native state Maryland . But her name is Maryland Calvert , so the title also refers to the heart ( or mettle ) of this story's heroine . The nitrate print which I viewed was so... |
418,425 | 1,609,079 | 24,153 | 2 | Dinehart's big break is a bust . | Alan Dinehart is very nearly at the top of my list of all-time favourite character actors . The underrated Dinehart was usually cast as smooth-talking characters at the edge of the law or slightly beyond it . He was often useful to a plot line as the hero's immoral buddy : the cynical guy who would bend the law for the... |
419,702 | 1,609,079 | 18,431 | 2 | Bubble and squeak . | I saw ' South Sea Bubble ' at Cinefest 2006 , in Liverpool , New York . The American audience clearly disliked this stiff-upper-lip film , not so much because of its extreme Britishness as down to its extreme badness . There was a great deal of shifting and squirming in the audience round me while I was trying to conce... |
419,367 | 1,609,079 | 18,349 | 2 | Ed Wynn wanted to destroy this movie . | It's interesting how comedians can be extremely successful in one medium yet utterly flop in another . Morecambe and Wise were hugely successful on television , yet their movies are awful . Fred Allen was hilarious on radio , yet painfully unfunny on television ( where his physical appearance may have been a handicap )... |
418,910 | 1,609,079 | 26,060 | 2 | Alfred less than Abel in substandard Douglas Sirk | Alfred Abel had a long career as an actor in German films , but is remembered for only one role : as the master builder in ' Metropolis ' . Two different film historians in Europe have separately told me that Abel also directed a substantial number of films , but neither historian has offered me specifics for this . IM... |
418,454 | 1,609,079 | 152,122 | 2 | One very clever idea . | UPDATE : Somebody named " CC the Movie Man " has written a review of the 1949 Warners cartoon ' Rabbit Punch ' starring Bugs Bunny , but has mistakenly posted it to the web page for THIS movie : a 1955 Paramount cartoon ( also titled ' Rabbit Punch ' ) starring the more obscure Moe Hare and Tommy Tortoise . This explai... |
418,697 | 1,609,079 | 29,708 | 2 | The Duncan Sisters did it better . | Tex Avery's 1937 toon ' Uncle Tom's Bungalow ' is arguably a rehearsal for his more elaborate rehash ' Uncle Tom's Cabana ' made ten years later for a different studio . However , I found ' Uncle Tom's Cabana ' completely unfunny in addition to being racist . ' Uncle Tom's Bungalow ' is just as racist ( or maybe even m... |
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