Yet Another January Movie Post

New year, new list!

I am still annoyed by the movie industries.

Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl (2024)

Netflix, original English

I love everything I’ve ever seen from Aardman Animations, so this was a low-risk, high-reward Night On the Couch With My Cat. I laughed throughout. Lots of references to previous films, sci-fi films, James Bond films, and even a cameo from Mossy Bottom. Feathers McGraw is the villain we didn’t know we needed.

Neighbors (1981)

tubi, original English
John Belushi and Dan Ackroyd, and yet it wasn’t funny.
That’s all I have to say. It just wasn’t funny.

The Three Musketeers (1948)

arte, Deutsch
I first saw this version on DVD about ten years ago, and I liked how Gene Kelly made all the sword fight scenes dancerly (like “painterly”, only with dance, right?). This time around, I thought he was too old to play the coming-of-age D’Artagnan.

It’s still a good movie. Great costumes and sets, and Lana Turner as Milady is blindingly beautiful. I wanted a bit more creepiness from Vincent Price’s Richelieu, and more screen time for Angela Lansbury, and it probably could have been about twenty minutes shorter, but I understand both the fight scenes and the love scenes were necessary to sell tickets.

Hey, isn’t that: The Wizard of Oz, as the King of France.

Harum Scarum (1965)

Cable (Warner Film), original English
Warning: Cat murder
Our Warner Film channel gave me three new-to-me Elvis pics for his birthday this year, and from the German titles this looked like the worst of the bunch. By 2025 standards, it’s “racist”; and I would add “hopelessly naive” in its depiction of women being happy to be locked up in a compound and used as sex slaves. As a bonus, this one wasn’t “digitally remastered”, so there were after-images and blurry faces as part of the experience.

Our boy Elvis’ performance is lackluster and the sets are mess, but the costumes are shiny and intensely embellished (who knew a country “isolated from the rest of the world for two thousand years” had so much polyester and plastic sequins?), the dancing scenes were fun, and Billy Barty stole the show along with everything else that wasn’t nailed down.

In the first act, Elvis, who is playing an actor (big stretch there), is in a room of Arabs watching his film, and I wondered if maybe he was supposed to be Valentino. Then I realized this film was closer in age to Valentino’s last film than to me watching it. I hate my brain.

Lissi und der wilde Kaiser (2007)

German commercial TV (Sat 1), original Deutsch
An animated parody film from frequent RadishFlixer and Bavarian sketch comedian Bully Herbig, who voices the titular character Lissi, an obvious play on Sissi, Empress of Austria and Queen of Hungary (Mr Radish says it’s animated because no one wanted to see him wear a dress for 90 minutes).

Lissi is kidnapped by a Yeti who made a deal with the devil (shades of Boandlkramer), and so her husband sets out with his overbearing mother and obsequious field marshal to get her back. The other voices are all comedians I recognize from other Herbig films.

Better than I expected; the animation style complemented the story and a lot of the action appears based on various Bugs Bunny shorts. OTOH, I’m not sure who the intended audience was, because there were a lot of sex jokes. Feathers McGraw set the bar for Best Animated Film of the Year so high nothing can come close, but I was entertained for the whole 90 minutes (plus time to fast forward through the hour of commercial breaks).

Double Trouble (1967)

Cable (Warner Film), original English
I was wrong about Harum Scarum being the worst of this year’s offerings. This one, set in London, Bruges, and Antwerp, was decidedly and measurable worse, despite the remastering. The opening credits were promising, with shots of London and some happening jazz music, then the (underage) female lead was introduced, and it went downhill from there. Bumbling jewel thieves and arrogant assassins, stereotypes and sexual coercion. A man dating a girl few days short of her 18th birthday isn’t something I can get worked up about, especially in the 1960s (I used to know some quilters who got married the week after their HS graduation, to men who had graduated years before), but the costumer dressed her like a younger child, and she acted like one, and that made it creepy.

The sets were boring, the rest of the costumes were nondescript, and the dancing was on a level with Beavis-and-Butthead.

You know how I often say “this could have been half an hour shorter?” This one could have been more than an hour shorter. Just film the musical numbers and leave out all the pointless kerfluffle surrounding them.

Had The King only lived in the MTV era…