Looney Tunes - Golden Collection, Volume Four
by Chuck Jones
from Warner Home Video
A collection of well known Looney tunes cartoons featuring the animation of Tex Avery, Chuck Jones, Friz Freleng, and Robert McKimson.
Genre: Children's Video
Rating: NR
Release Date: 14-NOV-2006
Media Type: DVD
Like previous installments, the Looney Tunes Golden Collection, Volume 4 mixes favorites from the Warner Bros. archives with relatively obscure older works. Chuck Jones' "Mississippi Hare" and Friz Freleng's "Sahara Hare" and "Knighty-Knight Bugs" (which won an Oscar) offer hilarious performances by Bugs. Two of Jones' earliest films, "The Night Watchman" and "Conrad the Sailor" prefigure his use of subtle expressions in his later cartoons. The disc of shorts by Frank Tashlin includes "Plane Daffy": pigeon see-duck-tress Hatta Mari anticipates Jayne Mansfield in such later Tashlin live-action comedies as Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?
Not all of these films have aged as gracefully. Younger viewers will probably not catch the references to Charlie McCarthy, Bill Robinson, and other old film and radio stars. The Speedy Gonzalez cartoons feature ethnic humor that seems embarrassing today; it's also crashingly unfunny. Each disc offers a disclaimer about stereotypes, noting, "they were wrong then and are wrong today."
The discs are loaded with extras that range from a partial set of storyboards for "Sahara Hare" to three of the "Private Snafu" shorts, which were made for the "Army-Navy Screen Magazine" during WW II. The oddest extra is the documentary Bugs Bunny Superstar, which infuriated many of the Warner Bros. artists when it was released in 1977. Much of its information should be taken with a grain of salt. (Unrated, suitable for ages 6 and older: cartoon violence, some ethnic stereotypes, mild risqué humor, alcohol & tobacco use) --Charles Solomon
The Glass Bottom Boat
by Frank Tashlin
from Warner Home Video
Comedy spy spoof in which Day sets her sights on scientist Taylor, but is suspected of leaking secrets about the new project G.I.S.M.O.
Genre: Feature Film-Comedy
Rating: NR
Release Date: 26-APR-2005
Media Type: DVD
The Disorderly Orderly
by Frank Tashlin
from Paramount
No Description Available.
Genre: Feature Film-Comedy
Rating: NR
Release Date: 12-OCT-2004
Media Type: DVD
The hugely successful collaboration between Jerry Lewis and director Frank Tashlin (including Artists and Models and The Geisha Boy) came to an end with this knockabout hospital comedy, which contains a raft of Tashlin's patented sight gags. Jerry plays an orderly with a strange fixation on a depressed patient (Susan Oliver), but the point of the movie is watching Lewis wrestle with laundry bags or contorting with agony as he empathizes with the intestinal maladies of patients. This is one of Lewis's funniest movies for babbling, too ("Oh, friction--burning"). Meanwhile, Tashlin brings his cartoon sensibility to freestanding bits, such as the montage of wind chimes that ends with a skeleton chattering in the breeze, or the inordinately loud crunch of an apple in a hospital quiet zone. All in all, a good laugh-per-minute ratio in the slapstick realm. Plus Sammy Davis Jr. sings the title song, a weirdly Rat Packish number. --Robert Horton
Caprice
by Frank Tashlin
from 20th Century Fox
Comedy-thriller starring Doris Day as an industrial designer who gets herself into a whole heap of trouble when she sells a secret cosmetics formula to a rival company in Paris.System Requirements:Run Time: 98 minutesFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY Rating: NR UPC: 024543400684 Manufacturer No: 2240068
Cinderfella
by Frank Tashlin
from Paramount
The team of Jerry Lewis and director Frank Tashlin (The Geisha Boy) were at the peak of their hit-making prowess with Cinderfella, a klutzy take on the fairy tale. Jerry is the stepson in a snooty family, dominated by wicked stepmother Judith Anderson and lounge-lizard brothers Henry Silva and Robert Hutton. Fairy godfather Ed Wynn turns up one day, not only promising "Fella" a happy-ever-after but basically accusing the old fairy tale of ruining the lives of countless married couples by raising unrealistic expectations of Prince Charmings in every home. (Tashlin always had a nose for psychoanalytic explanations along with the pratfalls.) The movie's very slow--especially whenever Ed Wynn is around--and has a strange taste for "interior monologue" songs, emphasizing the mawkish side of Lewis's personality. The good comic scenes are worth it, especially a lengthy sequence at an elongated dinner table, which Lewis must navigate repeatedly. His physical skills are showcased in a musical mime to Count Basie's "Cute" (Basie and his orchestra also appear in the big ballroom scene) and some violently geeky dancing. This one is unlikely to win over non-Jerry fans, but the already initiated will be fine with it. --Robert Horton
In CINDERFELLA, Lewis plays Fella, a good natured klutz left to take care of his stepmother and her two spoiled sons in a fabulous mansion. Fantasy provides Fella with a way of coping with his life until the day his fairy godmother appears and helps him win the heart of a beautiful princess.
Son of Paleface
by Frank Tashlin
from Bci / Eclipse
Four years after his hit comedy The Paleface Bob Hope returned to the screen as Junior Potter son of Painless Peter Potter the hapless hero of the first film. The Harvard-bred Junior heads out west to claim his father's inheritance. Returning for the sequel but in a different role is Jane Russell (The Outlaw) as an outlaw named Mike who continually has to save our hapless hero. Also starring in the sequel is the King of the Cowboys himself Roy Rogers and his horse Trigger who portray themselves. Hope teams with the pair to help get to the sequel is the Oscar-winning song "Buttons and Bows." Co-writer and director Frank Tashlin a former cartoonist and screenwriter of the first Paleface also worked with Hope on The Private Navy of Sgt O'Farrell and wrote and directed several Jerry Lewis films such as Cinderfella and The Geisha Boy.System Requirements:Starring: Bob Hope Jane Russell Roy Rogers Iron Eyes Cody and Trigger. Running Time: (approx.) 95 mins/color. Copyright: l952 Columbia Pictures Television.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY Rating: NR UPC: 090096098296 Manufacturer No: 60982-9
Bob Hope returned to the wild West in Son of Paleface, mining the rootin' shootin' genre for gag after gag. Hope plays Junior Potter--another variation on his lascivious, cowardly, yet somehow endearing persona--a college boy who's come to California seeking his father's hidden gold. What he finds is an empty treasure chest, a pile of unpaid bills, vengeful Indians, buxom Jane Russell (as a saloon girl by day, wily bandit by night), and singing cowboy Roy Rogers. It's prime silliness, an ancestor to movies like Airplane! that never let a moment go by without an absurd joke. Russell sashays about in spectacular form-fitting outfits, Rogers yodels a few tunes, and Hope snivels and wheedles his way out of endless scrapes. Good-natured slapstick (though its depiction of Native Americans will raise the hackles on politically correct viewers). --Bret Fetzer
Snow White and the Three Stooges
by Walter Lang
from 20th Century Fox
Many Stooges fans will find Snow White and the Three Stooges painful going, while some might find it quite charming. The film was conceived as a vehicle for Carol Heiss, the 1960 Olympic figure skating champion, but it was obvious that her limited acting would not carry the classic plot very far. So the Three Stooges were substituted for the Seven Dwarfs, and Prince Charming (Edson Stroll) became their companion. The start and end of the film follow the Disney version fairly closely, with Patricia Medina providing the only real acting as the Wicked Queen, abetted by the reliable villainy of Guy Rolfe.
In fact, Snow White lost in the woods is almost a frame-by-frame copy of the Disney sequence, complete with a live tree out of the 1939 Wizard of Oz. This might grab some youngsters' attention by frightening them and some by amusing them, but the love sequences and the forgettable songs might bore them. The fight sequences are possibly too grisly for some children; Guy Rolfe dies by falling into a vat of boiling oil.
As a Three Stooges vehicle, it differs from their other films. Except for Curly Joe's spoonerisms, there is little humor in the dialogue, a bare minimum of slaps (without the reassuring comic sounds), and no eye pokes. (Moe was sensitive to parental complaints about their television shorts.) There is, however, a touching moment when they are mourning the supposed death of Snow White. And you do get to see them in color. --Frank Behrens
The world's greatest fairy tale is about to get a few new and hilarious wrinkles. For starters, it's all live action as Snow White takes to the ice in the person of 1960 Olympic figure skating champion, Carol Heiss. Then, standing in for the Seven Dwarfs,
The Lemon Drop Kid
by Frank Tashlin
from Bci / Eclipse
Bob Hope plays a small-time con artist with a fondness for lemon candy in this film based on a Damon Runyon story. When the Lemon Drop Kid accidentally cheats gangster Moose Moran (Fred Clark) out of his track winnings, the Kid promises to repay Moose the money by Christmas. Creating a fake charity for "Apple Annie" Nellie Thursday, the Kid tricks his gang into donning Santa suits and "collecting dough for old dolls" like Nellie who have nowhere to live. Radio personality Marilyn Maxwell assists as the Kid's girlfriend, while William Frawley and Jay C. Flippen play the lovable, gruff crooks that fall for the Kid's Santa scam.
Hope is great as the fast-talking sharpster, and the comical gangsters are well worth the price of admission. Music by Ray Evans and Jay Livingston (including the classic Christmas song "Silver Bells") makes The Lemon Drop Kid that much sweeter. --Mark Savary
Jayne Mansfield Collection (The Girl Can't Help It / The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw / Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?)
by Frank Tashlin
from 20th Century Fox
Episode Description:Disc 1: Girl Can't Help ItDisc 2: Sheriff of Fractured JawDisc 3: Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA Rating: NR UPC: 024543228318 Manufacturer No: 2232831
The Private Navy of Sgt. O'Farrell
by Frank Tashlin
from Bci / Eclipse
It only seems fitting that after spending so many years entertaining Amreican troops that Bob Hope would have enlisted into the Navy (on film that is) as the title character in The Private Navy of Sgt. O Farrell. When a Japanese torpedo hits a cargo ship containing a shipment of beer Sgt. O Farrell decides to rescue the beverages and deliver some nurses to the outpost for his men. The troops however are more than surprised to receive several male nurses and Phyllis Diller! Diller had worked with Hope before in Boy Did I Get A Wrong Number. Bob turned to collaborator Frank Tashlin to co-write and direct the picture. Tashlin a former cartoonist had penned The Paleface and Son of Paleface (which he also directed) and several Jerry Lewis / Dean Martin films. The film also features Jeffry Hunter who has played everything from Captain Pike on the first episode of Star Trek to Jesus Christ in King of Kings and Dick Sargent of Bewitched.System Requirements:Starring: Bob Hope Phyllis Diller and Dick Sargent. Approx. running time: 92 minutes / color (not rated) Copyright 1968 Columbia Pictures Television.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY Rating: NR UPC: 090096098692 Manufacturer No: 60986-9
+++
