The Great Man Takes Wing

Why MCA's DVD release of The Big Broadcast of 1938 came as part of a Bob Hope set is beyond me, when Fields gets top billing and is clearly the only reason to watch the movie! Oh, sure, Bob introduces his signature tune, "Thanks for The Memories," and it's a nice scene. But Fields gets much more screen time and makes the most of it. And, since Edith Head designed the costumes, it's nice to see The Great Man look dashing for a change.

The plot concerns a trans-Atlantic race between two steamships. That's pretty much it: just a clothes horse to hang novelty numbers and comedy scenes on. The novelty numbers are, alas, particularly uninteresting -- most likely the reason why I didn't remember any of them.

Never mind. Fields gets things off to a smashing start with a whirlwind round of golf, careering around the course on a rocket cart and shouting "Get out of the way!" to a throng of cowering caddies, before putting the wings down and literally taking to the air. As the bad-luck brother of the owner of the steamship Gigantic, Fields is meant to sabotage the other boat simply by gracing it with his destructive presence; instead, he lands on his own ship and promptly shuts down the new radio-power invention that was guaranteed to win his company the race.

Dorothy Lamour is on hand, but she can't wait to get rid of Hope so that she can sing and smarm over Leif Erikson as the Young Inventor. Hope's three former wives are also present to insure their alimony payments. Hope himself is the emcee of the Big Broadcast of the film's title, which seems to go on endlessly.

Of course Fields gets a snooker sequence, cheating outrageously and blaming the other fellow. Martha Raye arrives, powering a lifeboat with her own Mighty Lungs, and turns out to be Fields's even more disaster-prone daughter. Fields tries to leave her abandoned at sea.

The race is all but lost before Fields realizes his mistake and assumes command, piloting the boat through a maze of icebergs with approximately the same level of caution that he piloted the golf cart earlier on.

With its gimmicks and effects, this is more like Never Give a Sucker an Even Break than it is like My Little Chickadee or The Old-Fashioned Way, both of which are better comedies. But when Fields is on-screen, he fills it with gusto, even though his health was already starting to wane.

Also on the bill was a Little Rascals comedy, with Alfafa murdering "The Barber of Seville" right and left, and an uncredited Henry Brandon as an evil agent. Brandon was then under contract to Hal Roach, and went on to play the horrible Mister Barnaby in Laurel & Hardy's Babes in Toyland, among other notable but small roles.

And I'm nearing the end of the 1943 "So Bad It's Good" Batman serial from Columbia. Columbia's serials were the bottom of the barrel in most every way, but they had the buying power to outbid Republic on both Batman and Superman. Their Superman literally turned into a cartoon every time he flew, while Republic's Captain Marvel, filmed years earlier, soared convincingly. You can bet your bottom dollar that a Republic Batman would not have been the chubby, frumpy guy in the ill-fitting and ill-tailored Halloween Costume that you see above! Every episode opens with some nifty mysterioso mood music, but once the action starts I keep expecting Graham Chapman to show up with his swagger stick and shout, "Stop that! It's silly!"

The Current (well, in my place) Cinema

I spend my nights in faraway places. Over the past week I've favored DVDs that take me out of myself..

Friday night was Howard the Duck, the George Lucas, Willard Hyuck and Gloria Katz interpretation of Steve Gerber's classic Marvel Comics series. Gerber is dead now, but for my money he was the progenitor of the truly adult comic book: adult not because of sex, gore, swearing and violence but because of their intelligence, themes and cynicism.

Howard the Duck should have made for a great movie. Instead, it is merely passable -- although not the complete bomb that the criticism of the time would suggest. It actually tries to be a fair adaptation of the comic, and the acting standard is pretty high.

But oh, that duck! What were they thinking? It appears to have been a conscious decision to change Howard's appearance from that of a cartoonish duck into something halfway between a human and a real duck. Not only was it misguided, it was poorly executed. The character is so ugly to look at, with that rim of bare skin around his beady little realistic eyes. Very sadly, it ruins the whole movie. The duck should be appealing in a gravelly, grouchy, cartoonish way, and he's not.

Still, I look at this once in a while and try to appreciate the good parts. This was the first time I'd seen it in widescreen since the original release.

Sunday was Goldfinger. I dunno, revisiting Bond seems like the end-of-summer thing to do. Easily the most sexist and least dramatically sound of the whole series, Goldfinger is my least favorite of the Bonds second only to Dr. No. The whole resolution of the plot depends on Bond's ability not just to bed Pussy Galore (Honor Blackman) but, in doing so, to be so revelatory a lover in, literally, just one roll in the hay to turn Pussy from a very lesbian criminal into an upstanding hetero who has seen the Error of Her Ways. It's deeply offensive. The whole third act is a waste really, but what I learned this go around is that I'd forgotten how much there was to like in the first two thirds. A lot of the value in re-viewing these things in widescreen comes from their travelogue quality: they choose these absolutely stunning locales, shoot them beautifully, let you get a good eyeful of it, and then use it as the backdrop for mayhem. Goldfinger is no exception.

Last night was Harper. Another mid-sixties panavision movie made by people who really know how to frame a shot and take you places. For 95 percent of its runtime it's a near-perfect adaptation of Ross MacDonald's novel, The Moving Target. But the ending is terrible, basically chucking out the whole last chapter of the book and replacing it with a freeze-frame that resolves exactly nothing. The villain's multi-layered motivations are mostly lost, and one important plot point involving the Pamela Tiffin character is jettisoned completely. Lauren Bacall has some fun laying on the bitchy stuff with a trowel, Robert Wagner is, well, Robert Wagner, the great Strother Martin shows up in a role that's subversively funny -- but there's a little too much of Hud in Paul Newman's portrayal of Lew Harper / Archer. Still, the main body of MacDonald's hugely complicated plot is intact, it holds your interest, and two hours go by pretty quickly.

Of course there are short features on Friday nights: currently enjoying a disk of Popeye cartoons, and the new serial is Columbia's 1941 Batman. Oy! The costumes! The "acting!" There isn't even a Batmobile -- the Caped Crusaders drive around in a convertible coupe and giggle at each other like little kids. These Columbia serials make the Republic serials look like Lawrence of Arabia by comparison!

Onward! I haven't decided what to have for dinner yet, but I know the entertainment is going to be Farscape.

-- Freder

Weekend Piracy!

It’s hard to believe that I’ve gone through two whole spindles of DVD-Rs and have started on a third. That represents over a hundred VHS tapes that I can now get rid of, literally yards of shelf space cleared -- and I get to watch it all again (for several years I did not own a working VCR, so the stuff was just sitting there, taking up space).

What’s been going through the pipeline? Mostly serials, including THE RETURN OF CHANDU THE MAGICIAN (with Bela Lugosi gloriously miscast in the title role, and prominently featuring the giant wall from KING KONG), MANHUNT OF MYSTERY ISLAND (with Roy Barcroft and Linda Sterling), HAUNTED HARBOR (with Kane Richmond and Kay Aldridge -- BTW, you may not recognize these names, but in the world of serials these are the big stars!) and even KING OF THE TEXAS RANGERS (Neil Hamilton, who played Commissioner Gordon on the TV series BATMAN, plays the Big Bad Villain in this one).

But I’ve also duped a lot of animation (some early MIGHTY MOUSE), a handful of Charlie Chaplin shorts, and some features including GALAXY EXPRESS 999, a double bill of early John Wayne programmers, and Bergman’s THE MAGICIAN -- my favorite of the whole Bergman catalog, still not available on DVD. Go figure.

Where things are available on DVD, I’ve also been trading up, and giving too much money to Amazon. A couple of W.C. Fields pictures are in that category, along with Paul Newman in HARPER (a mostly bang-on adaptation of Ross MacDonald’s hardboiled mystery THE MOVING TARGET), some Universal horror flicks and SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES (you see, I am getting ready fo Halloween!).

The sad part of all this is, I am trying to find homes for all this stuff, and guess what? No one wants VHS anymore. My father has been taking some, but his tastes and mine don’t always run in the same direction. My old friend H______ has said that he will take at least some of it, but when I tried to set up a lunch with him communications fell silent. I have bags of these things that need to go away now. Eventually, I’ll dump them on Goodwill, if some takers don’t come along soon.

How ‘bout it? Anyone out there in blogland want some free VHS?