This is a publication I've essentially been doing since 1992 in various forms. It's mostly movie reviews (as well as other media), but it does occasionally feature my other thoughts on other subjects. It became an official "blog" on February 20, 2005. Over time I hope to add older pieces.
Easily one of my favorite Abbott and Costello films, Who Done It? finds the boys working behind the lunch counter at a radio station hoping to eventually work their way up to becoming writers for the station. When the President of the station is murdered during a live broadcast, the boys step up to solve the case assuming that if they do they can get the job of their dreams. Of course, they get into more trouble than ever and hilarity ensues with some great bits (including the improvised Watts-Volts bit that gets self-referential by mentioning a line from Who's On First?), some great supporting characters (like Mary Wickes) and no musical numbers (a first for an Abbott and Costello movie) as the boys try to solve the case and evade the police and others. The film is flat out funny from start to finish.
The boys are in top form here and this is easily one of their best films. Sure there are recycled plot points, gags, jokes and set pieces but they are all done perfectly and feel as if they had never been done before (right down to the murder mystery in a radio station plot which still is a great concept even if it's been done to death). There is nothing extraneous here (although the Costello & Mary Wickes romance doesn't get as developed as much as one would like) and the film moves at a frantic pace. If you had to pick one Abbott and Costello movie to see if you've never seen one, this would be a good one to start with (there are others that fall into this category as well).
Who Done It? has been released on VHS, LaserDisc (in the Abbott and Costello Comedy Collection Box Set) and twice on DVD; first in The Best of Abbott & Costello Volume One and then as part of Abbott and Costello: The Complete Universal Pictures Collection. The DVDs feature the trailer and an entertaining/informative audio commentary from Frank Conniff (yes...TV's Frank from Mystery Science Theater 3000).
With their return to Universal after MGM's Rio Rita "remake," the boys were put into a film in an attempt to recreate the success of Paramount's Hope & Crosby Road movies. So we get Pardon My Sarong which follows the same formula as the previous Abbott & Costello Universal films. There's some musical numbers (all great, especially the ones featuring The Ink Spots and Tip, Tap, Toe, but they slow down the film) and a love story that's kind of bland (and doesn't really go anywhere). There's two villains (Willam Demerest in the first half, Lionel Atwill in the the second) and the usual antics from the boys.
Pardon My Sarong finds the boys as bus drivers who are being pursued by a police detective (Demerest) when they don't return the bus to the company after escorting a wealthy bachelor (Robert Paige) from Chicago to Los Angeles. After escaping the detective (by accidentally driving the bus into the ocean), the boys wind up working on the bachelor's boat and helping him sail to Hawaii (where they also bring along the sister of a competitor who tried sabotaging the boat). Once they are shipwrecked on an uncharted island their antics involve an evil scientist (Atwill), his henchmen, a group of natives who think Costello is a God and have the ability to break out into an swing number with English lyrics at the drop of the hat (making one think the evil scientist is related to Busby Berkeley).
While this may have been the second highest grossing film of 1942, critics were starting to get a bit tired of the boys (after all they had 6 films released in the previous year, 3 of which were stories that found them in the Armed Forces). But they remained popular with the movie going public. Looking back, this isn't one of their best films, but it certainly has enough laughs to keep it from being one of their worst. Middle of the road Abbott & Costello is a fine way to spend your Sunday mornings.
Pardon My Sarong has been released on VHS and twice on DVD; first in The Best of Abbott & Costello Volume One and then as part of Abbott and Costello: The Complete Universal Pictures Collection.
As an avid reader (at least before becoming a parent where the reading style and content changed) I don't remember what got me to read Frank Herbert's Dune. It may have been the eventual logical progression from a kid falling more in love with Science Fiction after Star Wars to seeking out other forms of it and as a teen hearing of a new movie eventually coming out based on a classic Science Fiction book I hadn't read. Whatever it was I tried to devour that book. It was thick, it was dense, but it was oh so yummy at the end. If there could be a literary classic like Moby Dick or A Tale of Two Cities that was set in the Science Fiction genre, then it was Dune. And reading Dune begat reading Dune Messiah which at less than half the length of the original seemed four times as dense. Admittedly it took me DECADES to finally finish it and move on to the third book...which I am technically still in the middle of reading several years later...luckily, there was a miniseries that combined the 2nd and 3rd books...so I kind of get the story and should probably move on to the later books since I bought them as a teen with the intention of getting through the whole series...but I digress.
As a film buff I don't remember when or the circumstances of seeing my first Alejandro Jodorowsky film. I know it was El Topo and it was a bizarre and surreal experience. So was The Holy Mountain and so was Santa Sangre and so was Fando and Liz (his first film which I saw much later than the others). And I also can't tell you when I first found out that Jodorowsky had at one point been attached to make a film version of Dune in the 70s. But if was certainly after David Lynch's version was out. A more surreal version of Dune was potentially on the table? That blew my mind.
Over the years, via magazines and eventually that repository of all info known as the internet, I learned some of the details of what Jodorowsky was planning...and now we finally have a documentary that examines this film that was never made and most likely never will be at this point. But director Frank Pavitch puts forth a strong argument that this nonexistent surrealist masterpiece that never got made in the mid 70s was actually an inspiration for all the major Science Fiction films made from Star Wars to Alien to Blade Runner to The Matrix. And it is hard to argue with this theory once you see the madness that would have been Jodorowsky's Dune.
Chilean-French film director Alejandro Jodorowsky takes us on a journey from the first inkling of his idea to make Dune into a movie (he had never read the book...only heard it was a masterpiece and when offered a chance to do whatever he wanted after The Holy Mountain by producer Michel Seydoux that is what poured out of his mouth). We get incredibly crazy stories of how he assembled the rest of his team of "warriors" (as he calls them since he really thought he was making the most important and epic film ever)...some were people he desperately wanted at the start (Salvador Dali had to play the Emperor), some were people he didn't know he wanted and found them almost by accident or happenstance (he spotted a comic book with art by Jean Giroud, better known as Moebius, and decided right there they needed to meet and they happened to be staying at the same hotel at the time) and some were people he may have dragged in kicking and screaming (he cast his 12 year old son Brontis in the lead role of Paul and had him vigorously trained in various martial arts). Others that eventually got on board were Dan O'Bannon and H.R. Giger behind the scenes and Orson Welles, David Carradine and Mick Jagger in front of the camera.
Pavitch lets the various interviewees tell their stories and each and every one is fascinating. Jodorowsky holds court and is so charismatic and engaging and insane at times (you probably had to be to match the demands of Dali to appear in the film...he wanted to be the highest paid actor ever and demanded $100,000 per hour, so Jodorowsky & Seydoux realized they only needed him for what would amount to 3 or so minutes of screen time and agreed to pay him $100,000 per minute instead). The excitement and energy that everyone had for this film to be made is infectious...and when they get to why it never happened you feel the disappointment. No...you will be disappointed.
All of the work that was put into the film by all the talent involved in the pre-production process eventually would up in a giant book that was used to sell the project to the studios. If this book was seen by many at the various studios it wouldn't be a hard leap to imagine Pavitch's thesis that the unmade Dune influenced so many other films to come after/instead of it. Some of Ralph McQuarrie's designs for Star Wars feel like Moebius' designs. O'Bannon and Giger wound up working together on Alien and it's a bit obvious that Giger repurposed some of his own work. Even Dino DeLaurentis, who wound up with the rights to Dune after Jodorowsky's version imploded, obviously got designer Danilo Donati to model some of the work on 1980's Flash Gordon after Jodorowsky's Dune.
It's sad this never got made, but it probably could not have been made at the time. The technology didn't exist to truly realize Jodorowsky's dream (heck...that's why Lucas has been continually tinkering with his Star Wars films). Jodorowsky tells of how he did go to see David Lynch's film. I won't spoil his reaction here, but it is honest and heartfelt, rude and priceless...it is a very human response.
Films about film making are almost always fascinating. Jodorowsky's Dune is no exception. The film shows us the excitement, hubris, madness, creativity and kinship that goes into making a movie as well as the hardship, disappointment and sadness when the dream is ultimately not realized. Now someone needs to at least publish the damn book that made the rounds to the studios. It would make a great coffee table book.
After six successful films at Universal, MGM borrowed the boys and stuck them in a very very very loose remake of a Wheeler & Woolsey musical comedy that had been based on a successful Ziegfeld Broadway musical comedy (which essentially launched the careers of Wheeler & Woolsey). The plot finds the boys being hired as detectives at a hotel on the Mexican border and getting involved with Nazi spies. John Carroll and Kathryn Grayson co-star in the love story part of the plot.
The film features none of the boys classic patented routines, but does have a number of funny bits...none of which are as funny as the classic stuff (the highlights being a spinning car lift, a washing machine and a donkey with Hitler's voice coming out of it). MGM was not really known for their comedies. In fact, the studio was pretty good at misusing the famous comedians they did bring under contract (but that's a discussion for another time). The only notable things in the film are Barry Nelson briefly appearing as a secret agent a dozen years before playing an Americanized James Bond on CBS and opera star Kathryn Grayson in her first leading role (she had appeared in a few films before this in cameos or supporting roles...here she has the title role and is third billed after Abbott & Costello).
Rio Rita feels like a step backwards for the boys. More akin to their first film One Night in the Tropics than their most recent films but with more musical numbers that are not as catchy or memorable (assuming one can remember any songs from that film), Rio Rita is a passable way to spend a Sunday morning, but not something that stands up to repeat viewings too often.
Rio Rita has appeared on VHS, Laserdisc (in a double feature with their second MGM film Lost in a Harem) and is available on MOD DVD-R from Warner Archive Collection (which also includes the trailer).
Next weekend: Back to Universal with Pardon My Sarong.
