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Reviews
Catalina Caper (1967)
Time Machine
Everybody seems to be missing the point.
Of course the movie is bad. You were expecting maybe Casablanca?
There were an awful lot of awful movies, but that's no reason not to watch them, as long as you understand the premise.
Bad as it is, it must be taken within its context and its time. I was there. No one went to see these movies for anything more than guys and girls in what was then the minimum of clothing, dancing in that 60's way that has never been duplicated. That's what we went for and that's what we got.
And what riches! Impossibly blonde guys who in real life were nothing of the sort, the mid-leg bathing trunks that I still consider some of the most attractive for men ever designed. (Spare me the droopy "jams".)
Most of the girls are at least believably blonde, buxom and healthy. No stick figures here. These girls EAT.
And on that subject, so do the boys. They're not sloppy, but neither are they gymmed to death, waxed and shaved to perfection. When we watched these kids, we felt we could hang out with them on a equal basis.
That's the real secret of this movie, and scores of others like it. It was fun; it was relatable; it was entertainment. Plot, schmot.
You sort of had to be there, and I'm glad I was.
Mardi Gras (1958)
What's not to like?
This movie has had me on the hunt for years, and it seems to have vanished off the radar. As far as I can tell, it has never been recorded, either on VHS or DVD. I don't understand why.
It's not a great movie, but better than many that are more available. I'd love to have a good copy.
I saw the movie in the theater when it was first released, and for some reason never forgot it. It has always been a fond childhood memory.
The cast is young and fresh - Pat Boone in the first flush of his success, Tommy Sands at the beginning of a career that had a short life, and Gary Crosby, eerily channeling his father Bing - and they seem to be giving it their all.
The "girls" - the lovely Christine Carriere, the enormously talented Barrie Chase, and a peppy Sheree North - match the boys step for step.
The result is a pleasant romp through the world of 50's musicals.
Sure, the plot is ridiculous, but who really cares? Relax and have fun.
BTW, although the movie was filmed on the lot for the most part, there is some very interesting vintage stock footage of the New Orleans Mardi Gras celebration and parade.
George White's Scandals (1945)
Escape to 1945
I gave this film "5" out of "10", but there's a caveat.
The movie itself might be described anywhere along the continuim, from "Awful" to "Excellent", depending on what the viewer is looking for. My rating is purely arbitrary.
It's total escapist fare, one of hundreds of films ground out during WWII to divert the American people from the horrors of war for an hour or two, and it must have done its job. It's certainly diverting.
But what it is, more than anything else, is a time capsule of the fashions, manners and mores of a particular time and place. It is the year 1945 preserved in amber, and it was completely dated by 1947.
From the showgirls in the musical numbers - pompadoured, lacquered and outrageously costumed in what looks like whatever the wardrobe department had left over, to the irrepressible Joan Davis dressed to the nines and beyond in shoulder pads, sequins and hair, hair, hair - this picture is a never-ending parade of "What Not to Wear", '40's style, and it's a hoot.
Add a couple of silly romantic sub-plots and the slinky Jane Greer as the backstage back-stabber, and you have the whole package. There's even leading man Phillip Terry - briefly married to Joan Crawford in real life, and the scene-stealing Margaret Hamilton thrown in for good measure. And believe me, anyone who can steal a scene from Joan Davis and Jack Haley in their prime is guilty of grand theft thespeus.
So there you have it. This one is not likely to show up on AFI's list of anything. If you're looking for a Golden Age musical, this isn't it. But if you're in the mood to spend a little time watching how your grandparents did it, this one's for you.
My Blue Heaven (1950)
Not even the title makes sense
I'm as much a fan of the musicals of Hollywood's Golden Age as anyone - probably more than most - but this one stumps me.
Playing radio husband and wife personalities, Dan Daily and Betty Grable, who inexplicably dance on their radio show, lurch through 90 minutes+ of mediocre songs and dances, melodrama and good ol' 1950's sexist hilarity for no discernible reason.
The movie opens with a shot of Grable in her underwear, talking to a man, who we see as the camera pans, is her doctor, who gives her the good news: she's pregnant. She rushes from the office straight onto the stage of her radio show, where she proceeds to tell Dan, live on the air, through a series of vague hints, never uttering the word "pregnant".
Cut to a baby shower given by their show-biz cronies during which the mother is all but ignored while the husband is subjected to a series of tasteless jokes regarding his part in the proceedings. Dan of course gets crocked - it's 1950 and everyone drinks like a fish and smokes like a chimney - and Betty has to drive them home. On the way she slams into another car and into a fire hydrant, which is played for a laugh before we discover that Betty is injured. She loses the baby, and a rather unsympathetic doctor tells her it's unlikely that she will ever have another. This is a musical comedy?
This plot twist starts the couple on their quest to adopt, but the head of the agency disapproves of show folk - too unreliable. Nevertheless, they hand Betty a baby; then almost immediately snatch it back on the grounds that they are not suitable after all. There goes baby number two.
The couple distract themselves by going into television and a series of lame musical numbers that not even Grable and Daily can salvage, all broadcast in brilliant color - in 1950. There is one rather bizarre spoof of the musical "South Pacific" which had opened on Broadway the year before, complete with lines taken directly from the score, and a very bad impersonation by Daily of Ezio Pinza, the Broadway lead. The question is, "Why?" The show was not brought to the screen for 8 more years, and one has to wonder just how much of the movie audience had any idea what they were doing.
There is a side distraction in the person of a very young Mitzi Gaynor in her first major role, as a predatory dancer on the show with her eye on Dan. When Betty catches them playing house in his dressing room, she takes the attitude that boys will be boys and shows Mitzi the door.
Another baby comes and goes - don't ask - and the whole mess ends with the original adoption agency deciding that they can have a baby after all, and Betty discovers that she's pregnant again. Now they have three babies.
If you haven't given up long ago, that's their idea of a happy ending.
Add a lackluster David Wayne and Jane Wyatt as a poor man's Comden and Green and the wonderful Louise Beavers in the thankless role of yet another maid, and you have a whole that is far less than the sum of its parts.
Taken all in all, "My Blue Heaven" is a time capsule that you enter at your own risk.
Land of the Pharaohs (1955)
Let them wear lame!
Oh dear. Is it up to me again? Let's see: Yes, it's a 1950's spectacular, spectacularly made. Yes, there is literally a cast of thousands. Yes, it has a spectacularly grandiose music score. Yes, it has a young Joan Collins practically slithering across the polished sets in scene after painful scene.
The pros and cons of the story and cast have been ably presented elsewhere on this site, and much has been made of what all it has to offer.
What doesn't it have? A shred of authenticity. It has always flummoxed me that given the millions lavished on all of the above, it seems that not a penny was spent on research. Or if it was, the results were studiously ignored.
The cast, male and female, vamps around in various versions of a '50's evening gown, with enough gold lame to choke a horse. As far as I know - and I do - not a square inch of lame has ever been found in any Egyptian tomb. They wore fine linen - fine enough to be almost transparent, which should have been enough to satisfy the Joan watchers.
And in the much lauded - even elsewhere in these reviews - horde scenes, the main feature is hundreds and hundreds of camels. The ancient Egyptians didn't have camels. They rode horses, and they drove chariots, but they didn't have camels.
Why does all this matter? I don't know. But somehow it does. Why not just do it right? It would probably have been cheaper.
It would certainly have been better.
Band of Angels (1957)
Real Gone With the Wind
It amazes me the length reviewers will go to find some redeeming quality in this overblown potboiler. If Douglas Sirk had ever dabbled in the Old South genre, he might have come up with this, but if he had, he would have done it better.
As it is, the film is a victim of its time, a sanitized soap opera with racial stereotypes behind every cotton bale. Poor Clark Gable mostly looks embarrassed trying to reprise his Rhett Butler, and Yvonne De Carlo is hopelessly mired in dialogue that would have made a Marx brother blush. Vamping around in a series of more and more improbable 1950's gowns, complete with pumps and nylons, she is asked to convey the nuances of a mixed-race female character in 1860's New Orleans, armed with lines like, "He can buy me but he can never OWN me." and variations on the theme of "Unhand me, Sir!".
Add to that a young Sidney Poitier struggling valiantly to bring some semblance of social conscience to his character and you have the hot mess that is Band of Angels.
The idea that this film can be compared on any level with Gone With the Wind is ludicrous, and does the potential viewer a disservice.
Watch Band of Angels if you must - obviously, I did - but don't say I didn't warn you.
New York, New York (1977)
Scorsese's New York, New York just doesn't work.
The thing about Scorsese's New York, New York is that people seem either to love it or hate it - I'm with the latter - but even those who love it seem compelled to admit that there are parts of it they hate. These include, but are not limited to, the plot, the characters, the actors, the direction and the sets. What's wrong with this picture?
The film is excruciatingly overlong, even "trimmed" to the current 165 minutes - a complete production number, now restored, was cut after its initial run in the interest of time - and yet there is take after interminable take of DeNiro inwardly emoting to telephones, saxophones, blank walls,virtually anything that would stand still and be photographed. This elevates self-indulgence almost to an art, but it's painful to watch,and worse than that, it's boring.
So it's a "dark" 1970's take on the movie musical. There's no happy ending. I get it. Fine. But if you want to see a dark, unhappy musical, see Love Me or Leave Me, incidentally one of Doris Day's finest performances. It delivers what New York,New York doesn't.
Much has been made of Scorsese's brave attempt at a genre for which he wasn't known, but he did that twenty years later, and spectacularly, with The Age of Innocence. Oddly, that one has slipped off the radar as well, but it doesn't deserve it.
New York, New York does. Let's face it, Marty muffed it with this one. It was panned by the critics and ignored by the public when it was first released, and it deserves no better now. It is not a "lost" gem; it is a rightfully discarded failure.