Monkey's Movies the Time Forgot

Zorro, The Gay Blade.


Starring George Hamilton, Lauren Hutton, Ron Leibman, and Brenda Vaccaro, and directed by Peter Medak, Zorro, The Gay Blade, believe it or not, is a direct sequel to the 1940's classic The Mark of Zorro.

George Hamilton plays Don Diego de la Vega, a womanizing playboy in 1840's California. He's summoned home by his father, but when he arrives, he finds that his father has died in a riding accident, and his childhood friend, Esteban (Leibman) has become the acting alcalde (or magistrate) in his stead. Esteban immediately raises the tax on the downtrodden workers, and is drunk on his new found power and standing. His wife (Vacarro) has always carried a torch for Diego since the three were children together. Diego, however, only has eyes for the crusading Charlotte Taylor Wilson (Hutton), who wants the peasants to rise up against Esteban's cruelty and unfair taxation. So Diego decides to embrace his late father's legacy and become the legendary masked hero, Zorro.

So far so good, right. Sounds suitably swashbuckling, yeah?

Well, the film is a total farce, and a very funny one at that. Diego is basically an egotistical idiot. On his first night as Zorro, he falls from a window and breaks his foot. He's forced to give his crime-fighting duties over to his twin brother, Ramón, a flamboyant, out and proud gay man who now goes by the name Bunny Wigglesworth. As the new Zorro, Bunny fights with a whip rather than a sword, and abandons the all black color scheme of Zorro for color coordinated, fashion forward outfits.

Can the brothers stop the corrupt alcalde? Will Diego win the heart of the woman he loves?

I'm not going to go much more into the film other than to say it's hilarious. George Hamilton's performance, whether it's as Diego or Bunny, is very funny, he carries playing two very distinct characters well, and he has great comedy timing in his scenes with Ron Leibman, especially. Brenda Vaccaro is fun as Esteban's shrill, nagging wife, and she works well with everyone. Admittedly, Lauren Hutton mostly is there to look pretty and be the serious character in the midst of the farce. But she does that well.

Okay, I have to say this, even though I don't think it matters. This film is not very PC. In our current overly sensitive era, this will probably raise some eyebrows. The very Caucasian George Hamilton's outrageous Spanish accent, and his limp-wristed, effeminate mannerisms as Bunny (who spends part of the film in drag, not to mention he's named Bunny) might be off-putting to some, but the film isn't mocking Bunny. He's the real hero of the story. He's way more competent and smarter than his heterosexual sibling, he's a much better Zorro, and he's actually really noble and resourceful. Yes, the film does use terms like fruitcake and sissy boy, but Esteban is the only one who says them, and he's the bad guy.

Zorro, The Gay Blade is a fantastic film, and I highly recommend it, especially to people who enjoy films like Blazing Saddles, which this would make a good double feature with. Both examine prejudices and hold a mocking mirror up to them.

(I'm not going to assign a rating to any of these films. If I'm writing about them, I obviously like them...)

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"You, me, everyone...we are all made of star stuff." - Neil Degrasse Tyson

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The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T.


Starring Hans Conried, Tommy Rettig, Mary Healy, and Peter Lind Hayes, directed by Roy Rowland (with uncredited re-shoots by Stanley Kramer), this movie was the only feature written by children's author Dr. Seuss, and it's failure as well as his poor treatment by the studio lead directly to his career change, giving the world classic books such as The Cat in the Hat and The Grinch.

A young boy named Bart is forced by his single mother to take piano lessons under the tutelage of pompous, authoritarian Dr. Terwilliger while he'd much rather be outside playing. He gripes to the plumber, Mr. Zabladowski, that his mom is being hypnotized by the pretensious doctor, but isn't believed. Bart falls asleep at the piano, and enters into a surrealistic dream world where Dr. T is indeed controlling his mother, and he's being held captive in a giant Seussian fortress, forced to play piano all day. Mr. Zabladowski is there installing sinks, and Bart enlists his help to free his mom and stop Dr. T's evil plan to...okay, his evil plan makes ZERO sense. He wants to marry Bart's mom and get 500 children to play the world's largest piano. I have no idea what this is meant to accomplish, but then, this film is full of silliness and nonsense.

This film is a musical, with songs by Dr. Seuss. The songs are full of made up words, strange time signatures, and odd rhythms. It is also fairly whimsical, but it feels like there's a sinister undercurrent to it all, especially in the scenes where it's revealed that Dr. T has a dungeon full of non-piano playing musicians (he only likes the piano), and then...well, there's this friggin' guy:

That's good old fashioned nightmare fuel. His weird googly eyes and his haunting voice freaked me out. Seriously, why is this guy in what's essentially a kids movie?

And that's why I wanted to recommend this one. It's so weird and funny and off-putting...everyone who loves Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory should do themselves a favor and see this one. It was just on the Svengoolie show on MeTV, and I think it's probably on DVD or Blu Ray. So very very weird and pretty lovable. The film apparently was heavily edited on it's original release to make it less dark and more suitable for children, and it is, but there's still some wonderfully jagged edges on it.

"FIRST FLOOR DUNGEON
Assorted simple tortures.
Molten lead, chopping blocks
And hot boiling oil.

SECOND FLOOR DUNGEON
Jewelry department.
Leg chains, ankle chains,
Neck chains, wrist chains, thumb screws
And nooses of the very finest rope.

BASEMENT DUNGEON--
EVERYBODY OUT."

The Pirate Movie



1982's The Pirate Movie is a film that others might well describe as a "guilty pleasure," but I will do no such thing. I genuinely enjoy it, and don't feel even a little embarrassed about that.

The film, a send up/total bastardization of Gilbert and Sullivan's comic opera The Pirates of Penzance, stars Christopher Atkins (The Blue Lagoon), Kristy McNichol (Family, Empty Nest), and Ted Hamilton (this movie. Seriously he hasn't done much else). It was directed by Ken Annakin, and rushed into production after a proper Pirates of Penzance film, starring Kevin Kline, was announced. (If you have the chance, watch that one as well, it's excellent...) Pirate Movie was filmed in under three months and was met with derision and scorn upon release, including winning a Razzie award for worst song.

Oh, did I mention this was a musical? It's a musical.

The film begins in 1980's Australia, with nerdy girl Mabel (McNichol) attending a pirate themed festival, where she meets a dashing, and sort of dorky, fencing instructor (Atkins) who invites her to party on his boat. Mabel falls overboard, and washes up onshore of a tropical island, and our story begins. The fencing instructor, now called Frederic, is an apprentice to the dread Pirates of Penzance, lead by the egotistical, and horny, Pirate King (Hamilton). On his 21st birthday, Frederic decides that he must leave the pirates life and go ashore to avenge his parents' deaths (at the hands of pirates), and to attend to other, more pressing biological urges. He swears that the next time he meets the Pirate King, they would be enemies. He's tossed overboard, and ends up on the same island as Mabel and her many sisters.

Mabel and Frederic fall in love and wish to be married, but custom states that her sisters, being older, must marry first. Also, the pirates followed Frederic ashore, and want to get down to some serious raping and pillaging. ("I don't want to be pillaged," Mabel says). So our young lovers take their problems to Mabel's father, the Major General (Bill Kerr), a flighty, bumbling old man with an epic mustache, and my favorite character in the movie. After his awesome song about himself (a rewritten version of the Gilbert and Sullivan tune "I am the Very Model of a Modern Major General" with some ludicrous new lyrics), he tells the young hero that he cannot have his daughter's hand until he raises proper dowry and leads an army to defeat the pirates.

The movie is really very adorable. Kristy McNichol is very cute rather than sexy ("The body is an eight, the mind is a ten."), and Christopher Atkins is like a curly haired puppy, eager to please. The film throws everything it can at the screen, Airplane! style, and most of the jokes stick, at least to me. It revels in glorious 1980's cheese, with synth laden ballads that would have made Gilbert and Sullivan retch, and of course, the aforementioned Worst Song Winner, "Pumpin' and Blowin'," a mildly outrageous single-entendre which will stick in your head for days. Ted Hamilton is no Kevin Kline, it must be said, but his dim-witted Pirate King gets some good laughs, and the film has a shaggy dog charm to it, bad choreography and all.

The Pirate Movie is on DVD, I suppose you could get it from Amazon, most likely.

(oh, can a mod please change the title of the thread to "Monkey's Movies That Time Forgot" instead of "The Time Forgot?" Gracias.)

All right! You started with a great one right our of the gate! This is one of my favorite comedies of all time. Great actor or not (I think he is), I'm a huge George Hamilton fan, particularly in his 80's period. I love things in this like when Zorro carves a "Z" on a tree and the bad guy says it looks like a "2" much to Zorro's consternation. And his sidekick, Paco, who is wearing a bear outfit, but nobody recognizes it as such. Diego saying, "No, you are not a bear. I will allow that you are a duck, but that is all!" Just great silliness. Thanks, Monkey. Time may have forgotten this flick, but we haven't.

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"Miss Jean Louise, Mr. Arthur Radley."

Invasion of the Star Creatures


Invasion of the Star Creatures is a 1962 Sci-Fi/Comedy from Samuel Z. Arkoff's infamous American International Pictures studio. Written by actor Jonathan Haze (The Little Shop of Horrors) and directed by Bruno VeSota, Invasion of the Star Creatures stars Bob Ball and Frankie Ray, as well as Gloria Victor and Dolores Reed.

Ball and Ray play soldiers, Privates Philbrick and Penn, respectively, who find themselves separated from their unit while investigating a crater in the desert. The two hapless chumps get captured by aliens that look like giant carrots ("Wow, that's the first time a salad ever tossed me!") and are taken to a ship where they are held prisoner by two amazonian space vixens called Dr. Poona (Dolores Reed) and Professor Tanga (Gloria Victor).

Yup. I'm not even gonna say anything.

Poona and Tanga.

Yup.

The guys decide that if they're ever going to escape and warn their commanding officer, they have to use their basic, dumb-ass maleness to bond with the aliens and bring peace to the galaxy. They also spend an awful lot of the movie getting drunk and stoned with some offensive native American stereotypes.

This film is pretty dumb. Astonishingly so. Ball and Ray are like a poor man's Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, the costumes for the alien carrot creatures are poorly constructed, and there are so many cringe worthy moments in the film, you'd be tempted to ask "why am I watching this?" But thing is, it's really really funny, too. I'm not saying it's good, but it's funny, and I try to watch it whenever it comes on Comet. I don't even know if it's on DVD or anything. It's a surprisingly amusing flick with some actual laugh out loud moments, perfect for a lazy Saturday afternoon. The film received horrendous reviews when it came out, and it sunk into obscurity for decades. The Sci-Fi channel Comet (a free sci-fi/horror channel you might get on your tv without cable, I watch it on 10.3 out of Providence, Rhode Island) revived this weird little gem, and I've watched it a bunch of times. I don't have much to say about it other than it's just fun. Lots of stupid dialogue, some well endowed space babes, two shlumpy guys who save the earth, and some mild, raunchy humor.