This being Thursday, it's normally time for another edition of Thursday Movie Picks, the blogathon run by Wandering Through the Shelves. This week's theme is one that's fairly broad, but that I also think lends itself to more recent movies: Spoofs, satires, and mockumentaries. But, with the studio system, it wasn't uncommon for studios to take jabs at each other and just poke fun at the stars in general. Sadly, I already used Come to Dinner, the 1934 Warner Bros. short spoofing MGM's Dinner at Eight a few months back, so I had to come up with three other movies:
The Coo Coo Nut Grove (1936) and Hollywood Steps Out (1941). These were two Warner Bros. animated shorts, both poking ample fun at the Hollywood stars of the day in a way that audiences of the day would have recognized but that most people today probably wouldn't get; both use the framing story of a night out on the town. The Coo Coo Nut Grove (I think) has the obligatory George Raft at the boat rental gag, while Hollywood Steps Out has, among other things, Ann Sheridan saying nothing but "Oomph" -- Sheridan was known in the day as "The Oomph Girl".
Alias Jesse James (1959). Bob Hope plays an insurance salesman who has to go out to the old west to try to save his job, selling a life insurance policy to Jesse James (Wendell Corey). Jesse gets the brilliant idea to get Hope identified as Jesse James and killed, so that the real Jesse can claim the insurance and keep clear of the law for a while. Hope has the usual in-jokes, but the real spoof here is that a bunch of TV western stars of the day show up in the final shootout to help meek Bob win the day.
The Phynx (1970). The dictator of Albania is stealing American actors and other celebrities, and a supercomputer gets the brilliant idea that the way to bring them back is to create a fake pop band (the titular Phynx) and have themselves get invited to Albania, where they'll rescue all the Hollywood types. It's a parody of the spy genre and to an extent of the teen music movie, with a whole bunch of old stars in small roles, especially for the climactic rescue. Oh, it's also hilariously awful. It's one of those things that's so shockingly bad that it has to be seen to be believed.
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4 comments:
I love the variety of picks we have this week. All the films you came up with are completely new to me but seem really interesting!
These ones are all new to me too. I've only heard of one of them before.
I'm not surprised people haven't heard of my selections. :-)
When I checked yesterday, Hollywood Steps Out seems to be on Youtube in its entirety, but in the wrong aspect ratio. Only bits of The Coo Coo Nut Grove are on Youtube as far as I could tell.
I love Hollywood Steps Out and the Garbo scene made me laugh out loud. I haven’t seen the other 2 but sometimes, bad movies are the best
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