New at Pychotronic Review: The President’s Analyst.
This is a rather long look at this very odd, but funny 1967 film written and directed by the co-creator of Barney Miller. When I first saw it, I didn’t care for it that much. But it has only improved with time and viewings. Read all about its plot, my analysis of its deeper meaning, and a look at the technical side of the film.
New at Pychotronic Review: Night Gallery.
The set-up on Psychotronic Review is that we have pages for movies — and now television series. This works especially well for television series, because we may want to write about particular episodes. And that’s even more true with Night Gallery, because the content was so varied. I just wrote an article on a short segment called “Hell’s Bells.” In addition to this, I transferred the article that I wrote here about “They’re Tearing Down Tim Riley’s Bar.” It will be fun adding to it. I’ll undoubtedly get around to doing The Twilight Zone. But it is better appreciated and therefore less deserving of the attention from Psychotronic Review.
New at Pychotronic Review: Ishtar.
We have a new system at Psychotronic Review. We create pages for films. And those pages contain one or more articles about the film. In this case, the article is, Ishtar Is a Funny Movie — Why Haven’t You Watched it? You should know that a film this maligned must have something going for it. And when it’s written and directed by Elaine May, how can it miss? Well, it can’t. It’s just that for some reason, the studio decided to kill it and a whole bunch of people decided to hate it without seeing it.
Andrea introduced me to a Canadian situation comedy, Schitt’s Creek. It features SCTV stars Eugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara as the parents of a once rich family, now reduced to living in a motel in Schitt’s Creek with their adult children, played by Daniel Levy and Annie Murphy. It’s a pretty standard fish-out-of-water story, where the fish are sophisticated and think themselves very much superior to those in their new environment. It very much has the feel of Northern Exposure.
When Northern Exposure was out in the late 1980s and early 1990s, I was a big fan. But when I revisited it a few years ago, I was disappointed. It tries a bit too hard to be quirky, and as a result never really jells into anything believable. Schitt’s Creek does a far better of job of this. For one thing, other than the mayor (Chris Elliott), the local people aren’t odd so much as normal. But more important, the family, though pampered and annoying, are smart and quick enough to understand their situation.
The heart of the show features the son David (Daniel Levy) and his relationship with the motel clerk, Stevie (Emily Hampshire).[1] David is an smart, urbane man in his early 30s who has never really had to grow up. He used to run an art gallery, but that was clearly underwritten by his father. He seems lost in his own world. Stevie is certainly David’s intellectual match, but in a very low-key way. And the best moments between them involve the same formula. David says something clueless; Stevie responds sarcastically, but without a hint that she is doing so; David goes with her sarcastic reply, but again, without a hint that he knows.
David greatly improves Stevie’s life, because his general weirdness amuses her. But the two develop the first honest bond in the series, and by half way through the first season, they sleep together. But the rest of the season and the entirety of the second deals with David’s decision that they not be lovers, because he realizes that Stevie is the only true friend he’s ever had. (In the third season, they end up in love triangle of the Cabaret style — David is pansexual. But I haven’t seen any of these episodes.)
This is the fundamental theme of the entire show: the essence of friendship. The family used to be rich, after all. And they all had lots of “friends.” It reminds me of a line from The People vs Larry Flynt. Larry’s mother is amazed at the number of friends he has at his party, and Larry says in a knowing way, “Lots of money, lots of friends.” When the Rose family, quite innocently, lose all their money, none of their friends step in to help. But in their often crude and clueless ways, the people of Schitt’s Creek do. This is very effectively brought together in the last episode of the second season.
But you don’t have to be too wrapped up in the characters. The truth is that it is a genuinely funny show. A good example of this is the third episode, “Don’t Worry, It’s His Sister.” In it, Johnny Rose (Eugene Levy) having decided to sell the town, is on a mission to fix it up. This is when he comes upon the sign in the image above. No one outside the family sees the pornographic nature of it. The mayor, Roland Schitt (Chris Elliott) protests that it is just a picture of his great grandfather, Horas Schitt. (Yes, the show has a lot of “Schitt” puns. Not just Horas and Roland, but Roland’s wife, Jocelyn.) The episode only gets worse (better), although the denouement was pretty obvious.
There is one thing that bothers me in the show. It’s has more humiliation comedy than I would like. That’s especially true of Catherine O’Hara’s character. (O’Hara really does have no sense of shame as a actor; she will do anything.) But this is made up for by the intelligence of the characters. In fact, there is one really great scene where she is going to the town choir to take it over (she’s a professional actor, after all), only to find that it is quite good and there is at least one singer who is great. So it isn’t The Office, but there are times when I wince.
Of course, it isn’t surprising that I would like this show. It has a very positive message about humanity. And while it makes fun of the foibles of all of the classes, its harshest criticisms are leveled at the rich. I’m surprised there isn’t more of that in entertainment. After all, the rich are a really small demographic. Regardless, I think that Schitt’s Creek a very appealing comedy, that is different enough for people like me to appreciate but not so different that it scares away people who just want a funny show. We’ll see if it ages better than Northern Exposure. I tend to think that it will.
[1] Emily Hampshire reminds me of someone, but I can’t think of whom. And no, it isn’t Ally Sheedy.
New at Pychotronic Review: A*P*E: Meta-Film of a Fine Vintage.
New at Pychotronic Review: Everybody Loves Robot Monster.
In 1992, I went to Hong Kong for the first time. I was sitting in the back of a little Irish pub. And I was pretty drunk. And in walks a Chinese Elvis impersonator in a white jumpsuit studded to the ridiculous extreme that we are all accustom to. Holding an acoustic guitar, he performs “Hound Dog,” collects tips and leaves. You got all that, right? Hong Kong, Irish pub, Elvis. The next day I wasn’t sure myself. I had to ask my colleagues, and they confirmed it: I did in fact see a Chinese Elvis do “Hound Dog” in an Irish pub in Hong Kong. Many people go their entire lives without ever experiencing something as magical.
I love Elvis and even more, I love Elvis Culture. In a sense, Elvis is America: a drug addict who wanted Nixon to make him an undercover DEA agent; a white guy who made millions off the work of poor blacks; and a country rube who somehow connects to a universal audience. In addition to all of this, the music is just fantastic. But it’s the Vegas act silliness that drives the culture. Although I do not particularly like watching Elvis at that stage of his career, I do like what it has spawned. I never would have gone to see one of those shows, but I’d thrill to see Elvis impersonators.
So when I noticed that the film Almost Elvis was available on Netflix, I had to watch it. It isn’t a great film, but it is fascinating. It follows a group of Elvis Impersonators as they compete for the “Images of Elvis” prize for the best Elvis impersonator in the world. It focuses on Irv Cass, a professional from Michigan. Little did I know it, but there is a network of Elvis impersonators throughout the world. If you want one, you call up EEN (Elvis Entertainment Network) and they will send one out. Cass is one them, and seems to make a decent living doing it:
Cass is very free with his opinions of the competition. Since he was one of the most established people in the field at that time, he knows them all. He’s rather good at talking about their strengths and weaknesses. In this way, he nicely systematizes what it is to be an Elvis impersonator. And this brings up probably the most interesting part of the film: race. One of the top people in the field is Robert Washington, who is a black man. Mostly everyone is very respectful of him. But they also admit that he doesn’t look like Elvis because of his race.
But here’s the thing. I don’t think that any of the impersonators looks like Elvis the man. If you take away the hair and the sideburns and the outfits, they just look like random white guys. So really, when we are talking about Elvis, we aren’t really talking about his face. Elvis isn’t a person anymore; he’s an archetype. So to me, it is all about getting up on stage with “the look” (hair, burns, suit) and moving and sounding like Elvis. What’s more, in Washington’s case, he isn’t all that black. Until people started talking about it, I just thought he was really tanned.
All the people said the same thing: I question whether Washington will ever win the title, not because I don’t like him, but because of the judges being, well, racist. This is typical: people generally think their neighbors are more racist than they actually are. At the end of the film, Washington came in second. The good news is he later won the event. Check him out; he’s great:
An academic interviewed for the film referred to the “transubstantiation of Elvis” to explain why people want more than just the music. The music is enough for me. But he’s right: these guys do become The King. And that’s pretty great.
In the margins of a couple of articles recently, I’ve mentioned that was planning to start a new website, Psychotronic Review. But you never know about these things. If I started every website I said I was going to, I would be running about 50 websites right now. But I have indeed started Psychotronic Review, and I think I will continue on with it. Let me explain why.
When I first started Frankly Curious, the idea was explicitly to be a mess: whatever came into my mind. But that idea became worse and worse the better that the site did. Starting at the beginning of 2012, I wrote more and more about politics. And in a way, it became kind of a typical political blog, because most political blogs tend to mix it up. Look at Vox, which is a professional political website (not a blog): it publishes quite a lot about pop culture and science.
But if you look at who reads Frankly Curious, it is a political website. Most of the people who read the site regularly do so because of the politics. And most of the comments are on the political posts. That’s all great. Just the same, for every seven articles I write about politics, I write an article on film, television, and theater. I’ve written a total of 487 articles in that category. And that amounts to almost 6 articles per month. And my single most popular post — Bugs Bunny: Rabbit or Hare? — belongs to that category. So if you removed everything else, Frankly Curious would be a fairly successful film blog.
Now that I know how to transfer all my Google “juice” to a different website, it just makes sense to separate my film writing off to its own website. In addition, I find that I’m more interested in writing about film than I have been. And given that my interest in film is not typical, mainstream film, such a site is likely to attract readers who are interested in it specifically.
I do come at the subject differently from most other people. There certainly are a lot of people who are interested in old low budget films. But most of them are following in the tradition of The Fifty Worst Films of All Time. These are people who like to make fun of these film — who think they are bad. It probably is not a coincidence that I’ve started Psychotronic Review only shortly after getting The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film. Unlike the Medveds, Michael Weldon actually likes the films he discusses.
I’ve always felt rather lonely in terms of my interest in the typical psychotronic film.[1] Most people treat them as things that are just good to laugh at. And those who genuinely enjoy the films usually feel as though they must apologize for it. I like the idea of presenting a fulsome appreciation of them. After all, these films are generally thought of as bad not because the people involved were incompetent but rather because the producers didn’t have enough time and money to do things in a more competent manner.
(Imagine if the airplane crash from North by Northwest were in the middle of a Bert I Gordon picture. Oh, how people would mock it! Yet Gordon would have an excuse that Hitchcock did not. There is something chauvinistic about forgiving the errors of the rich and powerful while holding the poor and weak to ridiculously high standards. That is doubtless one of the reasons that I admire even the shoddy efforts by those who really “should know” their places and not be making such films.)
My intent is to make Psychotronic Review more than just a blog. I want it to be a full-featured website. In the long run, I hope it becomes popular enough to support a forum. The truth is that I’m always looking backwards. But psychotronic films are made all the time. (Don Coscarelli is probably the greatest psychotronic filmmakers working today.) And it would be great if people were talking about that while novels were being optioned and money raised.
But I know that I will get to the point of creating biographies for great psychotronic filmmakers: writers, directors, producers, actors, and whatnot. And I’d like to create a database of psychotronic films with links to where they are available on YouTube or Dailymotion or elsewhere (also Hulu and Netflix and other paid services). In fact, I was thinking of creating something like “On YouTube Now” to go on the sidebar of the blog. It would be a list of 10 films that were currently available to watch for free on YouTube. There are lots of other things I could do too.
This is, after all, the greatest time for people interested in psychotronic films. If it weren’t for YouTube, I never would have been able to see Alabama’s Ghost. Currently, it is only available for sale in VHS format for $18. After that, there’s a copy for $2,459.95. But because of YouTube, I was able to watch it as soon as I learned about it (and write about it almost as quickly). And I hope that Psychotronic Review will make this an even better time for people of this inclination.
As a result of all this, you are going to see some articles disappearing from Frankly Curious. For example, I took the articles Death Bed: the Bed that Eats and Review of Death Bed: The Bed That Eats, and combined them into a single article on Psychotronic Review, Death Bed: The Bed That Eats Review and Analysis. But it doesn’t matter, because if you click on either of those Frankly Curious links, you will be taken to the Psychotronic Review article. Oh, the power of 301 redirects!
In addition to doing this, I will put most of my new film writing over on Psychotronic Review. I’m not sure if that will include things like my articles about Bugs Bunny, but it will include my writing about art films. (You’ll have to wait for my article defining “psychotronic” to get a better idea of why that is.)
But other than that, I don’t see Frankly Curious changing all that much. I might, however, add a list of the newest articles at Psychotronic Review, so you can see if anything is happening there that you want to check out. Of course, that will just list the blog. And like I said, my plan is for the site to be a lot more than just a blog. But it ought to give you some idea.
Finally, if any of you are interested in writing something for Psychotronic Review, let me know. I hope that readers will write articles highlighting some of their favorite films. I doubt anyone will be interested at first. But I hope that the site gets good enough that people will want to be part of it. That includes having Andrea fix the design of the site. I am aware that it looks like I designed it. But I figured it was best to put something up rather than wait.
Regardless, I hope it all works out and that it is as fun to work on as I expect. If it is, I’m sure people will enjoy using the site.
[1] I used the modifier “typical” because the definition of psychotronic is unclear. But I think we all know what a “typical psychotronic film” is: a relatively low budget science fiction film from the 1950s. Good examples are Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Plan 9 From Outer Space.
Last night, I put on the third season of Veep. It’s the show where Julia Louis-Dreyfus plays Vice-President Selina Meyer, and she and her staff behave with about as much competence and integrity that I fear is typical of Washington. Whereas I hate watching mathematicians in movies, because no screenwriter understands what they do, we do understand what politicians do: they get elected — and that’s all that matters in the job.
The best part of season three of Veep is where Meyer is trying to figure out where she stands on abortion rights. Of course, she knows where she stands personally. But every public opinion has to be thought over excessively. Much of the comedy comes from the fact that this is all fruitless. The moral of the series is that it’s better just to do what you believe in. But in the show and reality, politicians are too wedded to the importance of their job titles to do that.
If this sounds familiar to regular readers, it should. It is the Paradox of Power, which I have written about before. Politicians normally only have power so long as they don’t use it. But the question on my mind is why that is. Who wants to have this kind of pretend power? As Jack Stanton says in Primary Colors, “Plenty of people playing this game [are] willing to sell their souls, crawl through sewers, lie to people, divide them, play on their worst fears for nothing! Just for the prize.”
What comes across to me in Veep is the self-importance of all the people involved. And that isn’t just politics. This is even more true of people in Hollywood. But at least they are truthful enough to admit just how vile they are. (Note: this is not all the brown-nosing that goes on during media tours; you need to watch documentaries or listen to director’s commentaries.) But the truth is that politics and Hollywood are just really public expressions of this. This kind of self-importance is actually everywhere in the business world.
This is why people work so much in the United States. It’s amazing to see managers at Big Lots who act like they are doing heart surgery on children. They’re just selling stuff! I’m not saying that this is worthless. I have an unreasonable love of Bumble Bee Snack on the Run Chicken Salad with Crackers Kits. But perspective is in order!
Our biggest problem is our obsession with money. The truth is that many people really don’t care about what money can do; they care about money itself; they see money the same way they do chips in a friendly poker game: a way of keeping score. This is a conservative/libertarian way of looking at value: something is worth exactly what someone will pay for it. It should be obvious that this is specious. Here’s just one example: personally caring for a dying loved one has great value that is in no way equivalent to hiring a nurse to do it for you. This is not an issue that we should even have to debate.
This is all related to issues of meaning, of course. As a culture, we get too much of our meaning from our work. That was fine when work came with dignity. But thanks to people like Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises and Milton Friedman, we live in a society that is in no way subtle about telling people that their work is unimportant if they don’t make a lot of money.
So we have this Veep notion of what work ought to be. We have people who are doing jobs that are no more important than the work done on an assembly line. But they think it is more important. What will they think as they prepare to die? It can’t be much more than, “I helped a politician stay in power, even though she never used that power to do anything of value.” For any thoughtful person, that would be devastating. But just like the manager at Big Lots, these characters are not thoughtful. They will have wasted their lives, but they will never be aware of it.
Chattel slavery came into existence in the United States as a way of controlling poor whites. As long as you can keep people looking down and feeling good that at least they aren’t as bad off as those people, they will never look up and question those at the top. Selina Meyer’s success is a matter of luck. And the show (to its credit) understands this, with its overuse of deus ex machina. Meyer’s political career is over? How about if the president steps down to care for his wife and Meyer is just named president?
It’s interesting that the only man on the show who seems to have any notion of real value, the president, is not in the show. Of course, that’s a good thing. I can’t imagine a real-life president stepping down to take care of his suicidal wife. As Donald Trump would tell you, he’d won the ultimate prize. What does a wife’s health matter in that case? You can always get another wife. The president is the most powerful man in the world — even if he doesn’t use that power as he would like.
Money and power. That’s all we value. And it will be the death of us.
This image is from the television movie Terry Pratchett’s Going Postal, which really is a fine rendering of Pratchett’s work. In fact, I might even say better than his books, but I haven’t read this particular book. Anyway, an element of the film is that people collect pins, much as actual people in our world collect stamps. This makes sense, given that a big part of the movie is the invention of stamps and then perforation.
One of the characters, Stanley, is a pin collector, and so our hero Moist von Lipwig is looking for a way to get him on his side. But how? All the kid cares about is pin collecting. But Moist happens upon a “pin exchange.” The first thing we see inside the exchange is this flier. You probably can’t make out the text at the top. It read, “Pins of every… shape & size.” Then there are two hands holding a bunch of pins, and then, of course, “HOME of ACUPHILIA.”
Now you don’t have to be a bibliophile or a logophile to understand the meaning of “acuphilia.” But if you are a pedant, regardless of the fact that you are a bibliophile and a logophile, you are going to look the word up. The funny thing is, and this gets to the brilliance that is Terry Pratchett, there is no such word. He coined it. Although I have little doubt that through the centuries since the pin was invented, there must have been some people who became obsessed with them for more than their practical value. But no one bothered to make note of it. Those kind of people probably didn’t get out much.
There is very little information about the history of pins, but even the safety pin is 200 years old. Taking a clue from Andrea, pins probably followed closely behind the invention of sewing needles. On that issue, we get a whole lot more information. Sewing Mantra has a great timeline on the History of Sewing Needles. Apparently, needles were first made out of bone and date back 30,000 years! But the first metal needles—made of copper—were produced about 9,000 years ago. So we can assume that pins have been around a very long time indeed.
The problem with seeing pins as something to collect, however, is that there isn’t a great deal of variability with pins—at least not straight pins. This idea is lampooned in the film where Moist wins over Stanley by presenting him with a rare pin, “Number Three Broad-Headed Extra Long.” There is doubtless far more diversity with needles. In fact, I know there is. I remember my mother having needles of all different lengths, thicknesses, and eye sizes. But all the pins were the same. So it is not surprising that there is no word for “pin love” outside the delightfully twisted mind of Pratchett.
Contrary to what you might think, the “acu” prefix, as in “acupuncture,” does not stand for needle or the like. If it did, the word “acupressure” would be pretty stupid. Instead, it means “sharp,” as in “acute.” So “acuphilia” would mean literally “lover of sharpness.” But I think that’s close enough for our purposes. At least for the kind of pins that people collect on Discworld. These seem to be limited to straight pins. As a general category, pins are almost anything that hold two things together. “Pin” isn’t so much the name of a thing as it is a description of the job it does.
So we have bobby pins, which are neither straight nor sharp. (Though I’m sure some people do collect these because there is an endless variety of them—many quite beautiful.) Similarly, you have clothes pins that aren’t anything at all like straight pins. And paper clips are a kind of pin. Copper brads are pins that these days seem only to be used to pin screenplays together. There are split-pins and Cotter keys for use in machining. And then you have the pins on computer cables and the pins used to plug in a device to an electrical outlet. The whole thing can get quite out of control, which is exactly what pins were design to stop from happening.
I don’t know what exactly Pratchett thinks of the idea of being an acuphile. When I started thinking about it, I figured it was rather silly. But like most things, the more you look into it, the more fascinating it is. Even in its most traditional sense, it is interesting. The original pins were invented to hold two pieces of cloth together for sewing. That’s a brilliant solution. I don’t think I ever would have come up with it. There is nothing obvious about it. (Except that we’ve all seen the technique used since our youngest days.)
Pins rule!
I was extremely sad to learn that legendary actor John Hurt died last week. The announcement came on Friday, but he actually died Wednesday, 25 January 2017. I assume it was due to pancreatic cancer, which he was diagnosed with a year and a half ago. But none of the reporting I’ve read has indicated a cause of death. I’m not linking to anything because even the best coverage gives what I think of as a skewed view of his career.
For most Americans, John Hurt is known for one part: Kane in Alien. Admittedly, he is central to the most memorable scene: Kane is with a crew eating a meal when he goes into convulsions, ending in the immature alien bursting out of his stomach. Incredibly cool, but hardly a star part. To me, the only important thing about the part was that Hurt played a huge diversity of roles in a great many different kinds of films. The Internet Movie Database lists 204 films that he was in. And he wasn’t a character actor. He was the star of many of those films.
I first noticed him in 1979, while I was in high school. He played Raskolnikov in a PBS miniseries of Crime and Punishment. Shortly after that, I saw him play Caligula in I, Claudius. I was blown away, “This is the same actor?!” At that point, I would watch anything that he was in. And it wasn’t always pleasant. Neither Night Crossing nor Partners (both in 1982) were compelling films. But he was great in both.
But he was in a lot of films that were deserving of his talent. An obvious one that comes to mind in The Elephant Man, where he played John Merrick (Joseph was the real Merrick’s first name). At the time and to this day, I think he was robbed of the Academy Award. It was given to Robert De Niro for Raging Bull, proving yet again that Hollywood can’t appreciate subtlety in acting (not that I thought De Niro was bad).
The other parts that come easily to mind are Quentin Crisp in The Naked Civil Servant (1975), Max in Midnight Express (1978), Braddock in The Hit (1984), Stephen Ward in Scandal (1989), and, of course, his outstanding performance in Krapp’s Last Tape (2001). There are many more — roles both small and large. I don’t believe a movie ever failed to be better because of his participation.
But to me, John Hurt will always be Winston Smith in Nineteen Eighty-Four. (1984). I had just read the book for the first time when I first saw it. It’s incredibly rare that a film so perfectly captures the feel of a book. But even more, John Hurt wasn’t so much playing Smith as being him. I wanted to find a nice scene with Hurt and Suzanna Hamilton, but the pleasant ones from earlier in the film were too short. This one from the very end is brilliant with both of them completely defeated:
I didn’t know John Hurt. But I’m still sad that he’s gone, even with all the fine work that he left us. I didn’t particularly care when Michael Jackson died or Prince. Nor Carrie Fisher and Mary Tyler Moore, who died on the same day. But John Hurt was something special — at least to me.
The Cat From Outer Space is a 1978 Disney film, very much like many other Disney features from that period spanning The Shaggy Dog in 1959 through to The Love Bug in 1968 to three direct sequels culminating in a short-live 1982 television series. (Ultimately, there was the made-for-television The Love Bug in 1997, starring Bruce Campbell, and then the theatrically released Herbie: Fully Loaded in 2005 starring Lindsay Lohan.) These are formulaic films, produced on the cheap (except for the Lohan film) for an audience that was easily pleased. So it may come as something of a surprise that The Cat From Outer Space was really quite a good film.
Of course, in their way, they all were. They all starred excellent actors. Their scripts were written by very competent comedy writers. There’s nothing to impress a cinephile. But they were professional productions that created exactly what they set out to. Even the special effects were, for their time, quite good. On that front, I’d certainly rather watch The Absent-Minded Professor than North by Northwest.
The only problem with these kinds of films is that they are so very determined not to offend. The whole group of films (and there were a great many more than I’ve mentioned), was parodied brilliantly in Matinee as “The Shook Up Shopping Cart.” In it, Uncle Cedric is a shopping cart. In one minute of screen time, we see all the cliches: the inexplicable but undeniable character, the 1950s social mores, the clueless bad guys, the tired slapstick, and absolutely no moment when any of the protagonists feel like they are in any danger.
Just the same, the other parody in Matinee — “Mantz” — isn’t really any more threatening. It’s all good old fashioned American morality. Consider Plan 9 From Outer Space, where Ed Wood sets up an interesting premise: aliens have come to destroy humanity because we are on the verge of creating a bomb that will destroy the universe. The happy ending of this would be that the humans are destroyed. But let’s give Wood credit: he understood what he was saying, but he also understood that audiences wouldn’t stand for the proper ending.
While watching The Cat From Outer Space, I couldn’t help but compare it to ET the Extra-Terrestrial — made just four years later. Now I know, everyone is supposed to love the film. “ET phone home” and all. But as I sat in the theater at 18 years old, my main reaction was boredom. It had one of those plots that make you feel dragged through the mud. I’m not complaining that it was predictable — that’s given. But it took itself so seriously. It’s a silly film, but it was directed like it was Schindler’s List (which actually had more genuine laughs in it).
So what?! They create a different looking space alien and we’re supposed to think it is any more real? ET is every bit as silly as The Cat From Outer Space. The problem is that the people who made ET didn’t realize that. So it was really nice to sit down and watch Cat, which is totally without pretense. It’s just a silly comedy with a cat: That Darn Cat! with the wonderful addition of a some gentle ribbing of the Cold War mentality of the 1950s.
(One repeated joke is that the general gives a command to the captain. The captain gives the command to the lieutenant. And the lieutenant gives the command to the sergeant — played by Ronnie Schell, who also provides the voice of Jake the cat. Presumably, the sergeant is the only one who does anything. Everyone else just “delegates.”)
The cast is really good: Ken Berry, Sandy Duncan, McLean Stevenson, Roddy McDowall, and Harry Morgan. It’s also filled with a bunch of great character actors — notably Hans Conried, Jesse White, and William Prince. There was also a brief appearance by Alan “Willlburrr” Young. Really, you could just set them all in a room and have them talk and it would be entertaining — even without a cat with a cool collar.
In it’s way, it’s a perfect film. Anyone who decides to rent or buy The Cat From Outer Space will be getting exactly what they expect. That’s not to say that I wouldn’t have changed a few of things. Although the film tries hard, and most succeeds, at given human women their due, it rather fails in the world of cats. The ending goes on for far too long. And the epilogue is totally without merit (even if it does feature Sorrell “Boss Hogg” Booke). But none of that is surprising given that it is a Disney film about a cat from outer space.