Reviews

Hallmark has recently developed a number of mysteries in which the protagonist is the female owner of a small shop of some kind. These are the Garage Sale Mysteries (5), Murder She Baked (3), Aurora Teagarden (1), and the related Gourmet Detective Mysteries (2). These last two don't quite fit the category, as the protagonist is a cop, not a shop owner, but they are my favorites of the lot, which is probably why I find it so necessary to include them.

The latest addition is A Flower Shop Mystery: Mum's the Word. It is worse than all the eleven movies listed above.

The problem with the movie is not lack of star power. It has bigger names than any of the other 11. Brooke Shields is still appealing at 50, and Brennan Elliot does a decent job. Kate Drummond is sparkling. It's too bad they didn't give her more to do. Beau Bridges, looking better than in several recent appearances, clearly demonstrates that he is the real professional in the cast. But he has an extremely small part. I'd be surprised if he had more than 2 minutes total on-screen time.

It seems that they spent all their budget getting these big names, and a Mercedes for Abby to drive, and had nothing left to hire a screenwriter.

The only reason I give the writing a 2 instead of a zero is that it contains some good puns, a rarity these days, and not present in the other series. But the dialog itself is atrocious: choppy, unrealistic, awkward and poor at conveying the story. (SORRY, THE QUOTES BELOW HAVE BEEN SEVERELY COMPROMISED BY IMDb'S AUTOMATIC FORMATTING.)

It contains such illiteracies as: "re-open up your store."

"His death was very hard on her, and it was for me too."

"I can promise you one thing. Regarding the date. And it will be a date." "Thank you."

And finally, along these lines, "You know what they say, join the Army and see the world." Of course, it should be "Navy."

It contains such discontinuities as "He asked me for money," when Elvis Jones did not do so -- She spontaneously gave him ten whole dollars.

"Did you know they ID'ed the victim?" "(smugly satisfied) Uh-huh. Did you know his name?" "Billy Ryan." "(shocked) What?? When did this happen?" "I won that round, didn't I?"

The dialog is very repetitive.

"Who's that tank commander?" "What?" "Who's that tank commander?" "Oh, that's Sergeant Major Marco Salvare, 75th Army Ranger Unit." "Wow! When? Where?"

And my favorite: "Oh! There's a car!" "Car?" "There's a car!"

A moment later, "What do you see?" "It's an Escalade." "I know it's an Escalade. Who's driving?" "It's Tony Vertucci in the Escalade."

The flow of scenes leaves much to be desired. It's like Goldstein said, "Oh, let's have a scene in the flower shop, and then we can have one in the bar, and then one at her father's house, and then one at the nursery, and then another one at the flower shop, and then another one at the bar, and then one where Marco runs into Abby when she's jogging," without there being any reason or plot requirement to do so. I often found myself apathetic to where they were at the moment and what they were doing (mostly eating).

Many scenes end lamely. Abby comes home to find a wilted, dried-out bouquet on her doorstep. She looks for a note, but there is none. Break to commercial. Bouquet never mentioned again.

"Look, I got a bar to run, so just... good night." "Bye."

"Have a good day, Abby." "Mm-hmm." Break to commercial.

The story is full of idiotic elements. Abby says, "I told my insurance agent to file a claim against Vertucci," which he apparently did, even though she has no evidence, nothing more than a hunch that he was the one who hit her Mercedes and ran.

All the harassment Abby suffers at the hands of a corrupt cop and county commissioner is very prosaic. Little is made of any of it, she mostly ignores it, and there is no tension or suspense whatever associated with it. It is finally all explained away in a couple of sentences in the next-to-last scene.

In that same scene, Abby's DA ex-boyfriend tells her, concerning Elvis Jones's murder, "But, believe me, this part of the investigation is just beginning."

And in an ironic flouting of modern nutritional knowledge: "I've got meatball parm. Four stars on Yelp. We can eat healthy."

The story is not particularly imaginative, which is the flaw of all the 12 movies I speak of here. Their charm results more from the characters and their interaction than from originality of plot. The best along these lines is the Gourmet Detective series, with the banter between Brooke Burns and Dylan Neal a constant delight. The Aurora Teagarden, Murder, She Baked and Garage Sale series also have some good moments.

But the banter in Mum's the Word between Abby and Marco generally falls flat. It is composed of things nobody would ever say, in an order they would never say them, and for most part comes off as just lame. Brooke does what she can to make her character an indomitable force that can't be turned aside, but is severely hampered by the asinine things she has to say.

"You like to meddle, don't you?" "OK, first of all, I hate that word, and... where do we go from here?"

"Think about how happy it makes people." "Is it making you happy?" "Yeah, as a matter of fact, it is." "Good."

There is another Flower Shop Mystery in post-production right now, and one beyond that in the works. Let's hope somebody tossed Hallmark a clue, and that they will be better than this turkey.

I mean "inspiring" in the most non-religious sense of the word. I have followed the Postables with enjoyment since their first movie. (I didn't know about the earlier weekly series until just now.) One of the things I like about them is that, with the exception of the first, they don't beat you over the head with religion, and are more about the budding relationships between Oliver (Eric Mabius) and Shane (Kristin Booth), and Norman (Geoff Gustafson) and Rita (Crystal Lowe), the enormously talented pair who supply most of the comedy in the series. Rita's last name is Haywith -- with an "I," as she points out when the Chairwoman (Karin Konoval) addresses her as Rita Hayworth. Norman's last name is Dorman.

In this episode they are joined by Mark Valley, who is excellent as always, playing Steve, Shane's ex-boyfriend who is a spy for some TLA. Oliver's jealousy at their interaction, especially when he catches them kissing, battling with his confidence in Shane's loyalty to him, are fun to watch. It also cracks me up that he continues to address her as "Miss McInerney," in spite of all they have been through together. An even higher point is the delivery of Norman's gift to Rita, which is hilarious, sad, and endearing all at the same time.

This episode rises a head and shoulders above all the previous ones, though, in its involvement of the viewer, touching themes that we all must face every day. We are challenged to "pay attention to the little things right in front of us, or they may soon be gone." We are forced to look inside ourselves to find the courage to achieve our destiny. No matter how dark and hopeless things seem to be, we are advised to "hold on tight." And most importantly, to remember that although the world is full of ugliness and pain, if we come across something that is simple and joyous and beautiful, that thing is worth fighting to preserve.

I have watched just about every show on the history of the Bible and the Gnostic Gospels that has been on TV. There have been several good ones on the History channel and Nat Geo.

Bible Hunters is the best one I've seen.

Most of the other programs focus on the Nag Hammadi documents, commonly called the Gnostic Gospels, or the Gospel of Mary and the Gospel of Judas.

This show has all kinds of stuff in it I didn't know. It goes much farther back, beginning with the English baron Robert Curzon, who was the first to discover gospels that did not appear in the Bible in 1837, thus putting the sword to the belief common in the day in England and America that the Bible was the unchanging, revealed Word of God. The controversy this created, and its continuation due to the discoveries that it further chronicles, is the binding theme of the program.

The program then moves to Constantin von Tischendorf, who discovered the Codex Sinaiticus, the oldest version of the complete Bible, at St. Catherine's Monstery, at the foot of Mount Sinai, in 1844. This showed that the Bible as we know it had been tampered with.

We then go to an ancient midden (garbage dump) at Oxyrhynchus that yielded thousands of manuscripts, including many lost gospels.

The quirkiest characters are the Smith sisters, twin Scottish Presbyterian spinsters who made it to St. Catherine's with an entourage, silver place settings and a tea kettle. They became the first women ever to enter the monastery. There they discovered a palimpsest, a manuscript written over an older one on the same pages of parchment, that contained the four canonical Gospels.

The show finally gets to the 1945 Nag Hamadi discovery towards the end of Part 2. I would have liked there to have been a little more on this, but I'm not sure what I would have cut out to make room for it, the rest of the show is so good. My one criticism of the content is that it says the Gospel of Mary was part of the Nag Hammadi documents. While it was published in the book "The Nag Hammadi Library," it was actually discovered before 1900 as part of the Berlin Codex.

The show is in two parts, each an hour long. The host, Jeff Rose, takes us on a journey similar to the way Josh Bernstein used to do on "Digging for the Truth" (2005) on the History Channel. Jeff visits the sites where some of the oldest Bibles were found. There is wonderful footage of the monasteries of Deir el-Surian and St. Catherine's. I particularly liked the shots of the interior of the library of St. Catherine's, which I have not seen before. There is also a short interview with Father Justin of El Paso, TX, the first non-Greek to join the monastery in its 1500 year history.

The high-quality video footage of all these sites, along with the Sphinx and the pyramids, is half the fun. There is also an amusing scene where Jeff tries to rent a camel to go to St. Catherine's with the help of some native children.

I highly recommend this show for anyone interested in Bible and Gnostic Gospel history. It was first shown on BBC-2, and is now being shown on the Smithsonian Channel.

One would think that if you were buying a DVD of "The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy," you would be interested in watching "The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy."

"Not at all" was how much the BBC cared about this evident fact. The VHS tape was recorded at EP speed, and looked terrible! Now, on the 2-DVD set, it is still over-compressed and of mediocre quality.

They could easily have done the transfer at 2-hour, hi-res format, putting the first four shows on Disk 1 and the other two plus some extras on Disk 2. This is what I was expecting when I saw it was a 2-disk set. Instead, to my horror, they crammed the entire 6 episodes onto a single DVD, at four-hour format, and the second disk consists completely of extras.

So if you're most interested in seeing the same clips and the same interviews repeated again and again with slightly different editing, and sleep-inducing out-takes of actors blowing their lines and then saying the "F" word, this set is for you.

Otherwise, I wish I could say, look elsewhere. Unfortunately, this is the only game in town.

I can't believe it's now over $40! I felt ripped off when I paid $26! They should have made a version available with a single disk, for those of us who are actually interested in the program, rather than a bunch of souvenirs from the Douglas Adams Fan Club. That way, at least you'd know how poor the quality was going to be before you shelled out the ridiculously high price.

To give the set its due, it does look better than I've ever seen it before, either on PBS or the VHS tape. I could read things in the computer graphics that I have never been able to make out before. And, with closed captioning, I was able to get a few lines that I'd never caught.

And there is at least one interesting thing in most of the extras. The "Peter Jones Introduction," buried down at the bottom of the second screen, is the best of the lot, the only one that's good all the way through.

"The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy" is the funniest show that's ever been on TV. It's really too bad that hoodwinking as much money as possible out of the public was the BBC's only goal, and that they have treated us and the program so shabbily.

This movie is still good in spite of how hard they deliberately tried to ruin it.

"Dear Prudence" was great, a woman who gets dragged into being a detective by circumstance. She was assisted by a young lad, somewhat reminiscent of the "Hettie Wainthrop" series starring Patricia Routledge.

So how did they try to ruin it? First of all, Prudence is no longer a detective. This was the main point of the entire show, which has now been eliminated completely. Kind of like making an episode of Miss Marple where she turns out to be a knitting instructor on TV instead of a sleuth. I was at about 1:20 in to the film when I finally decided that nobody was going to get murdered.

Second, in "Dear Prudence" her assistant was young, perhaps teenage, cute, shy and geeky, with lots of personality. In "Perfectly Prudence" they have replaced him with a late-twenties, pudgy, unattractive geek with the personality of clammy dumpling dough. Removes half the reason to watch the show.

The other half of the reason, though, Jane Seymour, is quite delightful. She is still looking very good.

Unexpectedly, the movie is stolen by Valerie Azlynn, who has a real flair for comedy. Her crying scenes are particularly hilarious.

I think it's very ironic that the plot of "Perfectly Prudence" is about the network executives trying to ruin her TV show, destroying everything it stood for and totally revamping it purely for the sake of money, when that is exactly what they did to "Dear Prudence!"

All the actors do well with what they're given. So I guess one must blame the director.

But the main fault seems to be the humdrum script. It's too bad, too, because it contains several very funny lines. I laughed out loud more than once.

However, it's at least half an hour too long, which, at 83 minutes, gives you some idea. It seems like it's full of padding. It just goes on and on, one barely animate scene after another. The ice skating rink is a good example. It would have been much funnier at about a third its length. In fact, the whole movie probably would have been a winner at about 35 minutes.

Patsy Kelly is good but doesn't have enough to do. The same goes for Alan Mowbray. It would have been nice if their romance had been an actual subplot (heaven knows there was plenty of time for it). As it is, they have no lives of their own, but are merely used to shore up and fill in chinks in the March/Bruce story. The exception is Kelly's Vibrato scene, which is probably the high point of the film.

Virginia Bruce is stock in a faceless part -- I'm not sure any actress could have brought any life to it. Not a single funny line for her, although she does have the other funniest scene in the film, where she's plugging extension cords into light bulb sockets in the sign outside the window. Frederick March handles a comedic role well. Arthur Lake is completely wasted. See the Blondie series of movies if you want to see what he can do.

The only stand-out is Eugene Palette, who has one of his best roles ever. It's just made for his hard-boiled, uneducated delivery. Unfortunately, he has almost no funny lines. Marjorie Main is a highlight of the film and doesn't even get credit!

I don't think the few genuinely funny parts are worth the hour-plus of yawning which engulfs them.

Why all the low votes? This movie is hilarious!

It's sort of Ghostbusters (1984) meets Ghost (1990), although much funnier than either of those, with even a little bit of Airplane! (1980), believe it or not, thrown in at the end. In spite of all this, Second Sight manages to be wildly original.

An ex-cop, a psychic researcher from Harvard and his pet-like subject have formed a detective agency, using the psychic to help them unravel crimes. They take on a case for $300 helping a nun toward whom the ex-cop has great animosity find out who rear-ended her car.

Sound crazy? It is!

Thrown into the bargain, just about every way you can think of exploiting a clairvoyant is spoofed, from horse racing and the lottery to dating. "Tell me! Is she a Scorpio?"

John Laroquette plays the ex-cop in what is perhaps his breakthrough role. He is good here just like he is in everything I've ever seen him in. I think maybe this is where they got the idea for his McBride character.

Even though John Laroquette gets top billing, the movie really belongs to Bronson Pinchot. He manages to be completely over-the-top without being annoying in the way Jim Carey often is. In many respects he is like a two-year-old running out of control, getting into everything, innocently exploring everything he comes in contact with. Including the opposite sex.

And, also like a two-year-old, I don't see how anyone could not ultimately find him endearing. Even John Laroquette, who is demonstrably tortured by him all the way through, warms to him in the last few minutes.

Stuart Pankin is very strong as the second banana, the Harvard PhD that is the only one who can control Pinchot. Every moment he has on screen is superbly played, and his catch phrase of "very rare!" in describing whatever latest psi phenomenon Pinchot is manifesting is a masterpiece of comedic writing and delivery.

The movie is excellently directed by Joel Zwick, in his only venture out of the small screen before My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002). The pacing is great, never a dull moment. Not overdone, not quite madcap, yet there is something in every scene and at every turn to make you laugh. Sight gags, silly situations, some slapstick. But mostly you'll laugh from the dialog.

The best thing about the movie is the writing, which is surprisingly high quality for a movie of this sort. Only the Airplane and Naked Gun series rival it in taking stupidity to intelligent heights. The thoughtful wittiness of the dialog hits you on the funny bone again and again.

Don't get me wrong. The movie is no Wilde or Coward play, no Woody Allen movie, not even Monty Python. It's definitely stupid humor. But it's delightful, intelligent, clever and entertaining stupid humor.

The special effects are also great, better than I would have expected from a movie of this type. I don't want to give too much away, but I will say that Pinchot does a lot of levitation and zapping of one kind or another during the film.

Don't believe the low ratings on this one. If you like clever dialog along the lines of Airplane and Naked Gun, and ridiculous supernatural stuff like Ghostbusters, I guarantee you'll get a lot of laughs out of Second Sight.

Rarely have I been so disappointed in a film. Bunuel *and* Simon Signoret? What could be better?

I have seen many of Luis Bunuel's movies, and consider myself a fan. From his first, Un Chien Andalou (1929), to his last, That Obscure Object of Desire (1977), I have seen more than half the films he ever made.

Death in the Garden is undoubtedly the worst I have seen. There are three words for this movie:

Violent. Pointless. Boring.

There is virtually no surrealism in the film whatsoever. And absolutely none of Bunuel's unique humor. It consists mainly of two things: people getting shot, and people walking (or running) around.

The film is incredibly violent. The vast majority of the action is people being shot. It is not gory by the standards of the twenty-first century, but it sure is for the fifties, perhaps more so than any movie up to its time.

There are two good things about the film. First, and to my surprise, it is shot in absolutely gorgeous Technicolor. The scenery is breathtaking, and Edward Fitzgerald's sets are also quite eye-catching.

Second, Simone Signoret has never looked more beautiful. Nor more sexy. I found it interesting that somehow they managed to make her look vaguely South American, although I couldn't put my finger on exactly how.

Sad to say, her outer beauty is nullified by her inner personality. She is a monster. She is motivated solely by greed, completely devoid of any human qualities such as warmth or compassion. She doesn't care about anyone else, nor anything except her own advancement and security.

The only thing I really liked was the interview with Victor Fuentes on the DVD. He is extremely articulate, and his viewpoint is continually interesting. He mentioned The Wages Of Fear (1953), which I immediately thought of as soon as the movie started. However, to compare Death in the Garden with Cluzot's movie in any respect except the setting is an insult to the latter.

If it had not had Simone Signoret in it, I would have turned it off after the first ten minutes. As it was, I watched it till the end, but I am not particularly glad I did so.

Want to see a great Bunuel film from his Mexican period? Watch The Exterminating Angel (1962). Want to see a great Simone Signoret movie, where she's every bit as beautiful and almost as sexy as this one? Catch Les Diaboliques (1955). I can't think of any reason for even hard core fans of Bunuel or Signoret to watch this one.

I always get a kick out of watching these Traveltalks, both because they usually have some interesting stuff that I haven't seen before, and also because they're a fascinating cross between naiveté and propaganda.

This one amazed me, however, because of the photography.

I didn't even know they had 3-color Technicolor in 1934!

It turns out this was the first year for live (rather than animated) Techicolor. But it might have been shot in the 1970s. Or any year up to the advent of the CCD camera. I have seen many photographs in National Geographic that didn't look any better than the flower closeups in this short film. And the sky and the water are such vivid shades of blue.

Shot after shot are absolutely gorgeous!

I thought it must be the restoration, but on a closer look, I don't think it was restored, at least not digitally. There are still lots of little white flecks that pop up all through it.

This picture should have won an Academy Award for best cinematography!

This movie is just bad. Big name stars and great acting throughout from everybody can't save this tedious jumble.

Elizabeth Montgomery is the best I've ever seen her, although the character she is given to play is not all that believable -- a wealthy socialite from Westchester County who falls so ragingly in lust in a matter of hours that she's willing to throw away everything she's ever known to become a gangster moll and commit murder. The movie is almost as much about her as about Johnny. I bet she was recruited from here for Bewitched, which debuted the following year. Her first shot in the movie looks remarkably like Samantha on the first episode, except for her Angela-Lansbury-in-the-Manchurian-Candidate hairdo.

Her acting here, though, is absolutely stunning, showing a depth and power I've never seen her achieve in anything else. This is the only possible reason to watch this movie, and even it is not enough for me to recommend that you do so.

I have liked Henry Silva in most things I've seen him in on TV, so I watched this film, interested in an opportunity to see him in a leading role. The thing that impressed me most about his portrayal was that his Italian accent is appalling. Part Mexican, part Russian, mostly American. It is particularly grating because all the other Italian accents in the film are authentic.

Big names from many generations abound: Elisha Cook (Jr.), Mort Sahl, Jim Backus (doing a couple of Mr. Magoo impersonations in addition to his serious lines), Joey Bishop in a fabulous portrayal of a used car salesman, Sammy Davis Jr., Telly Savalas, Gregory Morton and a couple of TV stars, Richard Anderson and John McGiver. The acting from them as well as the other players I'm less familiar with is top notch.

So how can it be so bad? To start with, it is totally confusing. It is set in Sicily, Rome, New York, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Newport Beach and maybe some other locations. It was impossible for me to tell where the action was taking place at any given point, except that when Miss Montgomery is on the boat, you know she's in Newport Beach.

It starts out in Sicily. If you're good at recognizing St. Peter's and the Vatican Palace from the air, you'll know that it has moved to Rome, otherwise you'll think you're still in Sicily. Then it moves to New York. After that, it's anybody's guess, moving from city to city seemingly at random, and without any explanation or even clue that the location has shifted.

I vaguely suspected we were in Las Vegas when I saw The Silver Slipper sign. But before that, there was a craps game, a very enigmatic scene starring Sammy Davis Jr. as a (maybe?) crooked gambler, where Silva holds a gun to Davis's head and makes him shoot winning rolls for some reason that was not comprehensible to me. I don't know if that was in Vegas, or in some illegal place in New York.

Suddenly Elizabeth Montgomery is in LA. Johnny calls her from Idlewilde, which I assumed meant he was in New York, but in the next scene, he is sitting next to her in a convertible, as they drive past a marquee with "PETER LAWFORD" in large letters (second-billed to Jimmy Durante at some LA hotel). Telly Savalas mentions later that he they are Las Vegas, which is the only reason I'm certain some of the movie took place there, but two scenes later, he and the same cronies are in New York. At least, I'm pretty sure they are.

Maybe if you've been to all those cities a lot, so you can recognize any anonymous back street in town, you might be able to follow it, but I sure couldn't.

How can a movie that's "action packed" and confusing be boring at the same time? I blame it mostly on the direction, which is atrocious, but the complete lack of budget and production values are also partly to blame. Lots of useless walking around. Maybe it was supposed to be suspense, which I found completely lacking in the film.

Or any other kind of excitement, for that matter.

Silva kills a lot of people, but the movie is not gory, and he does so completely without emotion, the way he is during most of this stone-faced performance. The rape occurs off-camera, and it takes some extracting to even be sure that's what happened. You see a bit of the explosion, but no aftermath. The stabbings might just as well have been a punch in the stomach. The whole thing is delivered kind of dead-pan, atypical for a gangster movie.

I found nothing about it gripping in any way, although the performances are often riveting. I don't know how many times I looked at the counter to see how many minutes remained. I don't really know why I watched it to the end, which isn't all that great anyway. Like everything else in the film, rather perfunctory, and not much to it. I'm glad Peter Lawford mostly stuck to acting. He only produced four movies, none of which I ever heard of.

Speaking of which, ever wonder why you never heard of this movie, when it has so many big name stars?

The Bishop Misbehaves is actually three movies with slightly overlapping casts. Although it is not as extreme a case, it is similar to The Strawberry Blonde (1941) (which I also reviewed) in that it has a first-class comedy section in the middle that is overshadowed by the other parts.

Part 1 is a dopey love story, the kind of which seemingly thousands abound in Hollywood movies of the 30s and 40s. Norman Foster falls in love with a girl solely because of her looks. He feels that the way to win her is to be as grating, obnoxious and persistent as possible, essentially stalking her. Maureen O'Sullivan is cold, put off and off-putting, not the least bit interested, as she rightfully should be. But after knowing this clod who has no redeeming features whatsoever for a few hours, she is completely and permanently in love with him! I wonder if films like this are one reason the divorce rate is so high -- people thinking they should be like that, too.

Part 1 also contains some of the set-up for the other two parts, particularly Part 3. These portions are completely non-comedic. In fact, the only "comedy" at all in Part 1 is Foster's annoying antics. Gwenn is completely absent from this part.

O'Sullivan was clearly one of the women, like Norma Shearer, who was particularly targeted by the Hayes Code, among other things for her eye-popping nude scene in Tarzan the Ape Man (1932). Here she is quite the opposite, obviously on her best behavior. She wears high-necked blouses, and hardly shows even so much as a bare ankle! Much more businesslike than sexy.

Part 2 begins almost 30 minutes into the film with the entrance of Edmund Gwenn. He is good in everything I've ever seen him in (for a couple of more serious roles, I recommend Foreign Correspondent (1940) and Green Dolphin Street (1947)), but he is simply delightful here. And his sister, played by Lucile Watson, is even more so.

Part 2 is a wonderful comedy, unusual, fast-paced and full of plot twists. Gwenn is a bishop (Anglican, one supposes) who obviously spends more time reading detective novels than writing sermons. Watson is his sister, a strait-laced spinster, called in the opening credits, "fourteen times president of the Primrose League," without any further explanation of what that may mean. Contrary to what you might expect from such a woman, she is a full-bore thrill seeker, absolutely fearless, and nothing but highly entertained by all the exciting and dangerous situations that the film brings her.

Gwenn is like a kid in a candy store, tickled pink to have a chance to try out some of the tricks he has read about in the detective stories. Part 2 centers on his smooth, deft, savvy outsmarting of the criminals. It is absolutely hilarious! Foster and O'Sullivan are almost completely absent from this part, only coming in at the very end.

Part 3 ruined the movie for me. It is a straightforward rescue-the-kidnap-victims-from-the-gang-of-underworld-hoods movie. It is almost completely devoid of comedy, unless you count Gwenn's wrongfully being taken to a shelter for homeless skid row bums, which is only funny because such a thing is so absurd. There is certainly nothing comedic about the home, nor his stay there.

He does a complete volte face from his aplomb in Part 2. He screws up everything he touches. At the end, he is being severely chastised by all concerned, including himself. A downer ending to what is supposed to be a comedy!

Watson is absent from Part 3, as are Foster and O'Sullivan, largely. They spend more than half their on-screen time in this part tied up and gagged. The action centers on two rival gangs of thugs and Gwenn's involvement with them and the cops. The only stand-out in Part 3 is Lilian Bond, who appeared briefly in Part 1, a rich, snobbish moll who ends up being surprisingly respectable.

If the movie had all been like Part 2, I would have rated it a 9/10 and kept it. As it is, I taped over it.

Patsy Kelly burst on the scene at 21 loaded with talent and presence. This is amply evidenced by her debut film, in which she is already a star. She demonstrates both her physical comedy abilities, with numerous prat falls and other mishaps, as well as a bit of her talent for delivering sarcastic one-liners. She has a naturalness and sense of timing surprising in one so young and inexperienced.

The short film is packed with laughs from start to finish. Miss Kelly plays a low-life of the worst kind, a gangster moll who has become rich and now has servants, fine clothes and highfalutin ideas.

Her manners, though, remain those of the most uncultured boor. Similar to Jethro on the Beverly Hillbillies, who thinks he is now a worldly millionaire playboy, Kelly demonstrates even less sophistication as she tries to enter "legitimate" high society, with hilarious results. She wipes her nose on the back of her hand, drinks coffee from the saucer, and licks off her monocle as she tries to act snooty and impress her hosts.

There is even a plot twist stuffed into these laugh-packed nine minutes. Not to mention a pre-Code scene of Miss Kelly nude in the bathtub. You don't see much, but she has never been more attractive.

The directing is surprisingly good for just a little short. Things move rapidly, the camera angles are interesting, it is well lit, and everything fits into place perfectly with no loose edges or flaws of any kind. The timing and delivery of the lines is of the first caliber from all the actors without exception.

No wonder Patsy Kelly went on to become so popular, with a start like this!

There are several musicals from the early 1940s with overlapping cast memberships and similar plots. Among these are Down Argentine Way (1940), Week-End in Havana (1941), The Gang's All Here (1943) and this one.

This is my favorite of the lot, and here's why. Carmen Miranda and Edward Everett Horton.

Carmen Miranda was in all the movies I named above, and she steals the show in every single one of them. But in this one, she has a larger part.

The pairing of Carmen with Edward Everett Horton was sheer genius. The talented Horton had a wide range, from serious parts such as Lost Horizon (1937) to being the narrator of "Fractured Fairy Tales" in the 1960s. His best roles, though, were probably his comedic ones, and he was rarely better than here.

Carmen's wild attraction to Horton is funny enough in itself, simply because it is so unlikely. She is head-over-heels for him and throws herself at him in a way only the Brazilian Bombshell can do. Combine this with the diffident Horton's hesitancy, embarrassment and overall dignified befuddlement and you've got a love story the like of which has never been filmed elsewhere.

Don't get me wrong -- this is not the front story, which takes place between Betty Grable and John Payne. It is a secondary subplot. And the story itself is secondary to the music and dancing.

Still, for me, Rosita and McTavish are the sine qua non of the film, and make it my favorite movie in which I have seen Carmen Miranda.

Another hilarious short with ZaSu Pitts and Thelma Todd.

I didn't know it till I watched these shorts, but ZaSu Pitts is the unrivaled mistress of physical comedy. See my review of Asleep in the Feet (1933) for more on this.

In Bargain of the Century, she falls over the back of a chair and ends up upside down against the wall! The funniest prat fall I've ever seen! As well as one of the most acrobatic.

Thelma Todd has more to do in this one than in the other shorts. She is a very talented comedian in her own right, but ZaSu is such a show-stealer that in the others I saw, she is relegated to basically being a straight man. She gets to be the center of quite a few laughs in this film.

The plot is a good one. Todd gets Burtis fired by claiming she is Gilbert's daughter and getting him to assist her at a bargain sale. Gilbert walks up and the jig is up. Todd and especially Pitts feel bad and say they will find Burtis another job. They let him stay at their apartment until then.

Burtis is an inventor and comes up with all kinds of wild contraptions to "improve" their lives, all of which make Pitts and Todd all the more anxious to see him leave.

In the central scene of the movie, Pitts lures Gilbert up to their apartment (you've got to see how!), hoping to get him to re-hire Burtis, and the fun begins. Or, rather, continues.

The ending is great, the best of these shorts I've seen so far. A one line zinger, and unexpected plot twist all rolled into one!

It's hard for me to think of a better way to spend just over nineteen minutes than watching this very funny short.

This movie is full of laughs from start to finish. I have never seen fashion models on a conveyor belt before, which alone was interesting. But you can only imagine the antics that ZaSu Pitts and Thelma Todd get up to on it.

I would have rated it 8/10 except that, like a lot of these shorts, it has a very unsatisfying ending. Nothing is resolved -- they basically just go off into the sunset. I have noticed this in a lot of Three Stooges shorts as well. They run off, or drive off, and the movie just ends.

It makes me wonder if they suffered from the problems I heard about Saturday Night Live: that they never knew how to wrap up a skit.

In spite of this, Maids A La Mode is well worth the eighteen minutes it takes to view.

I didn't know it till I watched these shorts, but ZaSu Pitts is an incredible physical comedian. Previously I was mostly familiar with her from Greed (1924) and Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch (1934), neither of which is anything resembling comedic. (In case you care, Greed is in my top 100 movies of all time. I hated Mrs. Wiggs.)

I was also surprised to discover that her name is pronounced ZAY-zoo, with a long A. I always though it was ZA-zoo, riming with "has to." But Thelma Todd clearly says, "Come on, ZAY-zoo."

MIss Pitts has a talent for physical comedy that is rivaled only by Lucille Ball and Patricia Routledge, and even they don't really approach what ZaSu is capable of, and demonstrates in these shorts. For one thing, her prat falls are the funniest I've ever seen, by male or female.

Asleep in the Feet is a laugh riot from start to finish. But it is so short, I wonder if some scenes were cut. For example, I'm surprised the landlady didn't have a follow-up after the stew incident -- it seemed like they were setting up the snotty neighbor to take the fall, but it never happened. Regardless, I wish it had been longer.

The basic premise is that, at the recommendation of their snotty neighbor, ZaSu and Thelma take a temporary job as taxi dancers in order to raise $20 so their nice neighbor won't get thrown out. Thelma is buttonholed by a burly sailor who won't let anyone else dance with her.

ZaSu doesn't fare as well. Apparently the men don't find her too attractive. I don't really know why. She's not the raving beauty she was in Greed, but the intervening nine years were kind to her, and I think she still looked quite fetching. At any rate, she's the last to be picked for every dance, and gets some lulus for partners. The funniest is about seven feet tall and yanks her around the dance floor in an animated fashion.

A bit later, her imitation of a fast, sexy jitterbugger is one of the funniest things I've ever seen!

Unlike many of these shorts, the ending is well thought out and satisfying. It leaves you laughing just like they are.

I can't think of a better way to spend just over 18 minutes than getting aching sides from watching this movie!

The Pip from Pittsburgh is one of the better Charley Chase shorts I've seen.

It is so titled because Charley's roommate Griff tells him that the blind date he has set up for him is a "pip." Charley complains that's what he told him last time, when the "pip" turned out to be unattractive to Charley. This time, to protect himself, he makes himself unattractive in order to repulse "The Pip." When he discovers it's the ravishing Thelma Todd, his backpedaling antics make up most of the rest of the film.

Particularly hilarious is the scene on the dance floor where Charley steals his suit back from Griffin. Each of them wearing one leg of the same pair of pants must be seen to be believed.

It delivers lots of genuine laughs. I'd have given it an 8/10 except for the sudden ending which resolves nothing and is rather stupid. It's like they ran out of ideas and just decided to stop in mid-stride.

This is the funniest Charley Chase short I've ever seen, and I must have seen close to thirty of them by now, virtually all of them silent. This one's a talkie.

It's got a lot of genuine laughs, as compared with the usual faint smile, occasional titter and a lot of rolling of the eyes. It's long enough to have a couple of good running gags.

The plot is pretty simple. Charley inherits two million dollars and goes to a resort hotel to avoid gold-diggers. Thelma Todd arrives at the same hotel a bit later for the same reason. She asks for her usual suite, and the manager evicts Charley from it and moves him to a room on a different floor.

Unfortunately, he doesn't have a chance to tell Charley about this relocation before Our Hero goes into the room he thinks is his and finds Thelma there. Each are convinced that the other is a gold-digger after his/her money, and wild antics ensue.

Todd is gorgeous as always, and gets to wear some high-class Art Deco threads in this one, since she's rich.

One of my favorite actors from the Roach stable, James Finlayson, the guy who screws up his face and pops one eye, shines as a particularly stupid house detective. He got the biggest laugh in the whole movie out of me.

If you like Charley Chase, you'll love this film. If you only see one Charley Chase short, make it this one.

I saw We're On The Jury and Ladies of the Jury (1932) for the first time in fairly rapid succession, and in that order.

Ladies of the Jury is a tour-de-force for Edna May Oliver. I think it was her first leading role in a "full length" movie. Her camera presence, facial expressions and delivery make that a very worthwhile movie to watch.

But apart from Miss Oliver, the movie doesn't amount to much. We're On The Jury is more developed and complete as a comedy movie. As I mentioned in my review of Meet The Missus (1937), Victor Moore and Helen Broderick have actual comedic "chemistry" together, something entirely lacking in Ladies of the Jury, which is essentially a one-woman show (although Ken Murray manages to get in a few good licks).

There are a lot more jokes and funny lines in We're On The Jury, and it fits together better. It seems less contrived somehow than Ladies of the Jury.

The note being smuggled out of the jury room is more central to the plot in Ladies of the Jury, yet it is much more rushed and almost glossed over. It is better developed and more effective in We're On The Jury.

If you want to see a movie that has something to it besides Edna May Oliver and can stand on its own, watch We're On The Jury.

"Harper" was years ahead of its time. I had to constantly keep reminding myself that I wasn't watching an episode of Mannix (1967) or Cannon (1971). It has the feeling and ambiance of just about every 70s made-for-TV cop drama. Except it lasts twice as long.

People said Paul Newman's acting in The Silver Chalice (1954) was bad. That was Oscar material compared to "Harper." The sensitive, torn up inside young man from Cat On A Hot Tin Roof (1958) and Sweet Bird of Youth (1962), the starry-eyed idealist from Exodus (1960) and Hud (1963) fumbles badly as he attempts to field a hard-boiled detective role. Mostly he does it through ludicrous mugging and overacting.

Julie Harris is equally miscast as an ex (?) junkie. She is too beautiful and middle-class looking to be the "fungus" she is supposed to be portraying. She can deliver the goods, emotion-wise, of course, but not believably so in this picture.

Shelley Winters is pretty good, but I don't know why she took the part. She is nothing but belittled and insulted by all the men who come in contact with her, made out to be something so repulsive that nobody in their right mind would go near her. "What happened to her? She got FAT!" is how she is introduced, and it goes downhill from there.

In fact, the movie is very misogynistic all the way through. "You're so old-fashioned, I bet you think women belong in the home," taunts Tiffin. "Not in my home," retorts Newman. The only sex he has in the entire film basically amounts to a date rape.

The tits-and-ass appeal are provided by Tiffin and Wagner, she doing a go-go dance in a brief bikini on a diving board that was imitated by both Goldie Hawn and Pamela Rogers on Laugh-In (1967), and he with his Nair'ed chest and plethora of butt shots.

There are lots of laughs, most of them unintentional. The best is when Strother Martin's bracero cult members rise up out of nowhere like zombies in Night of the Living Dead (1968) or The Omega Man (1971) and surround Newman. He even holds them at bay by swinging a burning torch!

Bacall is solid, but her part is small. Most enjoyable moment is an exchange of vilifications with Tiffin, with Newman kibitzing, "Puss, puss, puss" from the sidelines.

Standing out like a beacon amidst all this mishmosh is Janet Leigh, who plays the only character I liked, Newman's ex (?) wife. Once again her part is rather small, but she has the only worthwhile moments in the entire film.

Too bad, too, because with its complex plot and its abundance of quirky characters, Harper could have been another Big Sleep. Instead, it turned out to be more of a Big Snicker.

Although the information contained in this little biographical feature is quite interesting, and the photographs are great, some stuff I've never seen before, I found this short to be almost impossible to watch.

For some unfathomable reason, director Joseph R. Juliano seems to think that the way to keep the interest of the audience in a 1962 theater is to smear a loud, raucous sound track over the narration, almost completely drowning it out.

This is during the *entire* movie, mind you. Not just the opening credits, or some bridge music between sentences. The music does not stop during the entire four minutes of run time. I understood maybe a third of what was said about Myrna.

When I heard "Nick Carter," I was expecting a dark, noir-ish hard boiled detective story, along the lines of Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe. "Sky Murder" is anything but.

I thought the first few scenes of the movie were so bad, I was going to give it a 3 and turn it off. (No movie can score higher than a 3 with me if I can't stand it till the end.)

For some reason, though, and it wasn't any sudden change in plot or acting, I kept with it. It was more than three quarters of the way through, more than 45 minutes into the film, that I suddenly realized this is a rollicking adventure story aimed at eight-year-old boys, with no pretensions of being anything but a good time. It is a comic book come to life, sort of like the old Superman TV show from the fifties.

Once I realized that, the movie became much more enjoyable.

I don't know if an eight-year-old would enjoy it today, though. It's not full of fast action, has no gunfire, and of course it has no CG.

So, without modern kid appeal, and, as other reviewers have shown, it doesn't hold much for adult viewers, I'm afraid this well-done and entertaining film is probably destined for obscurity.

This movie is actually a satire of the Miss America Pageant, although it's rather heavily disguised, especially at the beginning.

Victor Moore has the lead in this movie, a situation I don't think I've ever encountered before. He is the perfect model of a henpecked husband. In addition to providing for his wife and daughter in his job as a barber, he must do all the cooking and housework while his wife spends all her time entering contests and sweepstakes.

She finally hits pay dirt when the Happy Noodle Company selects her as a finalist in its Mrs. America contest. She and Otis must go to Atlantic City for the finals. The irony is that she can't cook or even make a bed, but the contest is determined by how well the contestants can do these things. So of course the unwilling Otis has to bail her out, time and time again.

I wouldn't exactly call them plot twists, but a lot of unexpected things happen as Emma heads towards victory and Otis grows more and more resentful, finally actually becoming assertive! (I wonder if Elmer Fudd was inspired by this character?)

The parodying of Miss America intensifies towards the end, culminating in Moore prancing around in an old-fashioned striped one-piece bathing suit! That one scene is worth the price of admission.

There is actual comedic "chemistry" between Moore and the acerbic harridan played by Helen Broderick. They play very well off each other, trading off which is the "straight man" at the moment.

The romantic subplot is handled better than such things usually are by Anne Shirley and Alan Bruce.

Needless to say, everything comes out right in the end, although not for the reason you would expect. A harmless, enjoyable and rather mindless way to spend an hour.

This movie can't decide what it's trying to be. Or perhaps it's trying to be everything, sort of like a Bollywood (Mumbai) epic.

It starts out as a nostalgic period piece, and a musical at that, set in the Gay Nineties, or perhaps just after the turn of the 20th century. I thought at first that I had recorded it in error. Those who aren't old enough to remember "Sing Along With Mitch," much less "follow the bouncing ball," will probably not recognize most of the old standards that are performed here.

What we mostly see during this section, besides brass bands and barbershop quartets, is Jimmy Cagney engaging in fisticuffs with just about everyone he comes in contact with, because "that's just the sort of hairpin" he is. It is interesting to see a young George Reeves with a moustache.

Then, abandoning the songs, the movie turns into a comedy of the first water, a great deal better than I expected. If it had continued in this vein, I would have rated it at least a 7 and kept it. The dialog is clever and witty, with many unexpected lines, and Olivia de Havilland particularly shines as a Suffragette who's more talk than action when it comes to the pinch.

After the comedy portion, it becomes a fairly mundane love story for a while, with Cagney and Carson both chasing Hayworth and the loser ending up with de Havilland as the consolation prize.

Then suddenly the movie turns into a tear jerker! After this betrayal, I almost didn't finish it out.

But wait, we're not finished with our chameleon act yet! The final quarter of the movie is a didactic morality fable, with speeches and justice for all.

The acting is top notch throughout. De Havilland is head and shoulders above the others, but Cagney and Carson do a great job as well. Rita Hayworth crackles, several years before she even thought of putting the blame on Mame. George Tobias, who is probably most famous for portraying Abner Kravitz on "Bewitched," must have been at the peak of his career, as he gets fourth billing.

If you like pat, sappy Broadway musicals that are a bit on the heavyhanded side, you will like this film all the way through. Otherwise, if you were expecting a comedy, you will probably feel betrayed, as I did.