Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with today’s installment of A Movie A Day.
[For those now joining us, A Movie A Day is my attempt at filling in gaps in my film knowledge. My DVD collection is thousands strong, many of them films I haven’t seen yet, but picked up as I scoured used DVD stores. Each day I’ll pull a previously unseen film from my collection or from my DVR and discuss it here. Each movie will have some sort of connection to the one before it, be it cast or crew member.]
So here’s my challenge. I spent 2 hours and 41 minutes watching this film after having woken up at nearly 11pm (I’m on a fucked up sleep schedule right now if you couldn’t tell) and now I have to get my review written up in as timely a manner as I can so Thursday’s AMAD doesn’t post well into Friday morning.
And I have a whole lot I want to discuss with this movie. So here’s hoping the below comes out reading somewhat rational and not the early morning rushed ramblings of a guy trying to say a whole lot as fast as he can.
Where the hell do you start with this movie?
The plot is incredibly simple though the situations and slapstick gets incredibly complex. A dying man tells a group of 5 strangers he buried $350,000 in a park 200 miles from them and the other 2 hours and 20 minutes of the film is the mad-cap dash to this park, every man (and woman) for himself (or herself) and more and more joining in the rush before the end.
Spencer Tracy plays Capt. Culpepper, who has been trying to track down this money for 15 years and finally knows all he has to do is sit back and watch these fools as they race across California and they will lead him to the money.
Jimmy Durante kicks all this off, starting the movie weaving across a twisty highway, passing cars at dangerous speeds. He flies off the road (or “sails” as Sid Caeser keeps saying) in a spectacular crash of metal, glass and rubber. Five people run down to see if he’s okay.
These people are Sid Caeser (who we follow over from yesterday’s misfire William Castle comedy THE BUSY BODY), Milton Berle, Jonathan Winters, Mickey Rooney and Buddy Hackett, leaving wives and mothers-in-law up with the cars.
Durante tells them all that there’s $350,000 buried under a giant W in Santa Rosita Park, 200 miles away before he kicks the bucket… both literally and metaphorically speaking.
These five, average, nice people keep this information from the cops and start to drive away, but they notice no one is letting the others out of sight. Of course the wives are told, including Edie Adams and the gorgeous Dorothy Provine as well as one of the highlights of the movie, the bitchy, harping mother-in-law, Mrs. Marcus, played by Ethel Merman.
They pull over and decide to try to talk it out, but no matter how many ways they figure it someone feels short changed… should only the 5 people who heard it get a share? Or everybody, including the wives and mother-in-law? Jonathan Winter is always fucked over because he was traveling alone, so his share is less than everybody else’s…
Slowly the realize it’s every man for himself and half an hour into the movie it becomes a crazy chase movie as everybody is doing whatever they can for an edge on the others… which, naturally, resorts in everybody getting fucked over, usually multiple times, over the course of the movie.
Lots of cars wrecked, lots of rides thumbed (which brings in more and more characters hunting for this buried treasure as people like Terry-Thomas, Phil Silvers, Dick Shawn, Jim Backus, Peter Falk and Don Knotts pop in and out of the chase), some planes hired, cars stolen, gas stations demolished, cars drowned, small children’s bicycles ridden and hardware stores blown up.
I loved everybody in this movie, but I have to highlight a few individuals.
I thought I was a Jonathan Winters fan before I saw this movie and then I realized I had no real idea just how fucking awesome he is. It was about the time he was hulking out in the gas station, tearing it apart beam by beam, punching through walls, trying to kill a pair of bumbling mechanics who unwittingly helped fuck Winters over that I really fell in love with this movie.
It’s a ri-goddamn-diculous scene, but I love random, over-the-top humor so much and seeing Winters go nuts really did just put me over the top with this movie.
As much as I love Winters he might have to fight with the corpse of Buddy Hackett for my affections. I love Buddy Hackett’s schtick. I’m sure it annoys the piss out of some people, but not me. His voice, his attitude, his wonky eye… just all works for me.
Buddy is perfectly teamed in this movie with Mickey Rooney, another big personality and one that I have a lot of nostalgia for. I’ve seen precious little of his early work with Judy Garland, but I grew up with ‘70s and ‘80s stuff, with a particular love for PETE’S DRAGON where he plays a drunk lighthouse keeper. In fact, Jim Backus, who plays the mayor of Passamaquoddy in Pete’s Dragon, plays a boozer friend of Rooney’s in this movie.
Backus can’t stop drinking even when he’s supposed to be flying a jet, leaving Buddy at the controls in one of my favorite segments in the flick.
Everybody is great in this movie, especially the leads. Terry-Thomas is hilarious as a proper British flower collector who picks up Milton Berle, his wife (Provine) and mother-in-law Ethel Merman early in the flick and becomes one of the main people chasing down the money. He has a great fight with Berle over which country is better, America or Britain, that had me laughing out loud… especially Thomas’ assertion that America is obsessed with bosoms and if women ever stopped wearing bras then the American economy would fail.
There are cameo appearances by everybody from Buster Keaton to the The Three Stooges to Jerry Lewis (perhaps my favorite cameo, where he goes out of his way to drive over Spencer Tracy’s hat) to Jack Benny (my second favorite cameo as he stops to offer help and is verbally assaulted by Ethel Merman… and his face just drops)… pretty much anybody who was funny between 1900 and 1963 that was still alive and willing to work is in this movie.
The filmmaking is top notch as well as the comedy in front of the camera. Shot in animorphic widescreen and in beautiful Technicolor, this flick really does feel epic. Do I think it needs to be 2 hours and 41 minutes? No, not really. There was probably half an hour that could have been cut from the movie and it wouldn’t have been too tragic, but there is something to the brisk, but assured pace that doesn’t falter that really does give this film its unique identity.
In fact, one piece of trivia about this flick is that it was the first film to premiere at the Cineramadome in Los Angeles. Pretty sweet, huh?
Final Thoughts: Director Stanley Kramer had a Herculean task here, juggling some of entertainment’s funniest personalities without short-changing anybody and he does a spectacular job, aided by a great and fun script by William and Tania Rose. From the opening credits, designed by the great Saul Bass, to the closing scene I was invested and laughing along, some 45 years after this film was initially released. If you haven’t yet given it a watch, do yourself a favor and set aside some time over the holidays and give it a spin.
Here’s what we have lined up for the next week:
Friday, November 7th: LIBELED LADY (1936)
Saturday, November 8th: UP THE RIVER (1930)
Sunday, November 9th: DOCTOR BULL (1933)
Monday, November 10th: JUDGE PRIEST (1930)
Tuesday, November 11th: TEN LITTLE INDIANS (1965)
Wednesday, November 12th: MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS (1974)
Thursday, November 13th: DANIEL (1983)
There, I did it! And I have enough time to get some ducks in a row before I go out and buy GEARS OF WAR 2 and lose myself in it for the rest of the day… I know I should be doing more work instead, but… Wait… I’m just doing some research for the Holiday Gift Guide! That’s it! I am working! I swear! (PS If you haven’t already, send me in some suggestions on what you’re looking forward to this year… stuff you’d like to see make an appearance in the Holiday Gift Guide! I’ve gotten some great suggestions so far… I think it’s going to be a great one this year, but there’s always room for more!)
Next time we jump back to 1936’s LIBELED LADY, following Spencer Tracy. See you folks then!
-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com
