This being Thursday, it's time for another edition of Thursday Movie Picks, the blogathon run by Wandering Through the Shelves. This week the theme is "Super Long Titles", which I presume means movies where the name of the movie is long, not the movie itself (see Erich von Stroheim and Greed) or the opening/closing titles go on and on (the closing titles of 2001: A Space Odyssey come to mind). Now, my first thought wasn't a movie, but a song:
Due to legal issues over copyright, in the US the Stars on 45 Medley had to name every song it used, so the real title is quite long. But it's a song, not a movie, so I had to think of three other things:
Joe and Ethel Turp Call on the President (1939). The Turps (William Gargan and Ann Sothern) go to Washington to see the President (Lewis Stone) after their local mailman (Walter Brennan) gets fired. How they got past security I'll never know, even though 80 years ago security wasn't quite as nuts as it is today. This is an MGM B movie, and I have to say the MGM B movies are never quite as fun as the Warner Bs.
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1963). Stanley Kubrick's black comedy about nuclear weapons that's quite good... until Dr. Strangelove (Peter Sellers in one of three roles) shows up; Sellers' mugging for the camera as Strangelove nearly ruins the movie and is a prelude to Sellers' obnoxious non-Clouseau characters he'd play in the second half of his career. Watch Fail-Safe and The Bedford Incident instead.
The Chronicle History of King Henry the Fifth with His Battell Fought at Agincourt in France (1944). Laurence Olivier plays English King Henry V in this adaptation of the Shakespeare play which also serves as an allegory for the world situation at the time as World War II was raging. The movie is unsurprisingly commonly called Henry V, but that's not the full title. How this one ever got made, in Technicolor no less, at the height of World War II is amazing.
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2 comments:
I've seen Dr. Strangelove which I enjoyed. "The Chronicle History of King Henry the Fifth with His Battell Fought at Agincourt in France" sounds like it was supposed to be the script pitch and someone accidentally stuck it on the title instead. lol
Yay someone else that has seen Joe and Ethel Turp!! It's an odd little number but as she always did Ann Sothern made it worthwhile.
I don't watch it very often but Dr. Strangelove has many great things in it chief among them the raft of excellent performances.
I had no idea that was the actual name of the Olivier film. I'm not the biggest Shakespeare fanatic but it's a powerfully presented version of the story with Olivier forceful in the lead.
Mine are nowhere near as solidly constructed but they all share a particular weirdness of tone.
“Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mamma’s Hung You in the Closet and I’m Feelin’ So Sad” (1967)-Madame Rosepettle (Rosalind Russell) arrives at a Caribbean resort for a vacation with quite a menagerie, her 24 year old son (Robert Morse) who acts like a 5 year old, his stamp collection and telescope, a pair of Venus Flytraps, her tank of pet piranhas and her dead husband (Jonathan Winters-who serves as narrator) who she’s had stuffed and travels with them in his coffin that she keeps in the closet. While they are there the hotel’s babysitter Rosalie (Barbara Harris) falls for the infantile young man while Madame is pursued by a crazy ship captain, Commodore Roseabove. Got that? Its theatre of the absurd and the kind of whack-a-doodle thing that could only be produced in the 60’s.
“Can Heironymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness?” (1969)-Superstar Heironymus Merkin (Anthony Newley) is filming a movie of his life surrounded by piles of junk and a bed on a ribbon of beach as his mother and children bear witness. While the Greek chorus of devil’s advocate Goodtime Eddie Filth (Milton Berle) and The Presence (Georgie Jessel) battle for his soul Merkin works his way to the top of show biz becoming a drug loving sex addict along the way. Yet he longs for his lost true love, Mercy Humppe (Connie Kreski) despite his marriage to Polyester Poontang (Joan Collins-Newley’s wife at the time, their real life children play their kids in the film-Thaxted and Thumbelina!). Watching the uncompleted footage in a parallel time the producers of this opus scream for him to come up with an ending. Merkin shuffles through his memories to find some value in his life while singing a couple songs and screwing like a rabbit.
Confused? What with a title like that you were expecting coherence? Watching the film won’t clear anything up for you! Newley directed, produced, wrote & composed the music (all badly) for this exercise in vanity which was originally rated X.
“The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies!!?” (1964)-I really can’t better this IMDB description: "Jerry falls in love with a stripper he meets at a carnival. Little does he know that she is the sister of a gypsy fortune teller whose predictions he had scoffed at earlier. The gypsy turns him into a zombie and he goes on a killing spree."
Or the tagline:
SEE: the dancing girls of the carnival murdered by the incredible night creatures of the midway! SEE: the hunchback of the midway fight a duel of death with the mixed up zombies! SEE: the world's first monster musical!
It’s not good but it’s unique!
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