Comments on: Cine-scabs… pick your favorites

By: Kevin

Kevin — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 13:16:51 +0000

I also dislike the musical number performed in”Frankenstein Meets

The Wolfman”..but..for a different reason.

This is a horror movie about “Larry Talbot”/”The Wolfman”(played by

Mr.Lon Chaney,Jr.).Who after he is brought back to life following a failed

attemp to rob his grave.

He is trying to find a means to be killed..so that he will not turn back

into”The Wolfman”and kill someone else.

In the village of”Varsaria”..the former home of “Dr.Ludwig Frankenstein”

..he meets the daughter of the dr.”Baroness Elsa Frankenstein”(played by

actress and singer Illona Massey)and he asks her to please give him her

father’s records on the secrets of life and death.

She refuses and “Talbot”is bitter about it(She does not realize his

urgent need to find those records and have a surgen use them to

save him from another dangerous spell)so..that night.

When the town is celebraiting the “Festival Of The New Wine”

..that jerk is singing that tune..a happy upbeat tune in a horror

movie.

This is suppose to be a horror film..it’s suppose to be scary

and in that scene..”The Frankenstein Monster”(played by Bela Lugosi)

is going to attack the village.

There is no reason for a serious scene to have a happy tune

be performing as a prelude to violence and horror.

The song is unessiscary,annoying and disruptive to this

scene.

And that is why I dislike this musical number.

By: rhsmith

rhsmith — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 18:44:55 +0000

The thing that makes Bobby Van’s big number in Lost Horizon so endlessly rewatchable (to me) is the rote way he just plows through the thing. It’s as if he’d been singing that song all his life and could just go through the motions, even with all those impressionable kids around him. Watching him perform, it really does seem like he thinks he’s the only one in the room – his movements and shtick are all so locked-down and reflexive. It’s fascinating! That the song, on top of everything else, blows large curd just makes this a deliciously crusty cine-scab.

By: Stephen

Stephen — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 23:55:41 +0000

Funny…I made a mix-CD of Burt Bacharach tunes (by various artists) for my girlfriend, and threw on Question Me An Answer as kind of a joke; the song is patently insipid, and Bobby Van’s weird, adenoidal delivery just makes it moreso. Just when you thought Burt would never top Beware of the Blob…

By: Karen

Karen — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 03:00:03 +0000

The clip from “Hot Summer” reminds me of all those terribly earnest and overwhelmingly perky “Up With People” TV specials from my childhood. All that and bad dubbing! So irritating, yet impossible not to watch.

By: Brad Stevens

Brad Stevens — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 12:30:05 +0000

As cine-scabs go, this one is pretty hard to beat:

It’s the unquestioned low point of the MORE TREASURES FROM AMERICAN FILM ARCHIVES box set, yet the only part of that set I play regularly. Go figure.

By: Colleen

Colleen — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 23:52:16 +0000

After watching that clip of Bobby Van I cannot understand why Lost Horizon was such a big flop when it first came out. The only other Lost Horizon song with music and lyrics just as bad, well, except for all the other songs in the movie, has got to be The World Is a Circle:

The world is a circle without a beginning,
And nobody knows where it really ends.
Everything depends on where you
Are in the circle that never begins.
Nobody knows where the circle ends.

What makes these songs even worse is the fact that they were written Burt Bacharach and Hal David. What the heck were they thinking?

Also glad to find out that there are other people who think Sally Field was embarrassing in the cemetery scene in Steel Magnolia. Funny thing, I had the same reaction when I watched her in Sybil but that time it was because she was dead on as a crazy person walking down the street talking to herself.

By: morlockjeff

morlockjeff — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 18:32:43 +0000

From your list Hot Summer definitely makes me cringe but I can’t stop watching it. There is an out of control musical sequence set at some noisy bar in the 1958 film Fraulein where Theodore Bikel, I think, gets so emotional and hyperactive, spinning around, singing and dancing/kicking like a madman, that the whole movie comes to a grinding stop as you watch in horrified amazement. I saw it on Saturday Night at the Movies several times as a kid and always waited and watched for that completely inappropriate musical number. There is a similar out-of-nowhere musical interlude performed by the uber-lung Olivera Katarina in the sleazy erotic drama Ann and Eve (1970) from Sweden’s Arne Mattsson. It’s another showstopper in all the wrong ways. You will laugh…long and hard.

By: judyge

judyge — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 18:09:45 +0000

On that quote from ‘Dead Reckoning’, in the A M Sperber biography ‘Bogart’, he says Bogie wrote that speech himself and had tried to get it included in another movie previously – afraid I don’t remember which one.
Also Bacall mentions this idea of four inch high women in her autobiography (‘By Myself and Then Some’) and says it’s an idea Bogart used to talk about. Very odd…

By: Jenni, St. Louis

Jenni, St. Louis — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 01:53:38 +0000

Neil,
Quite all right, no offense taken. :-)

By: Neil

Neil — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 01:14:35 +0000

Oh, I really did mean that as a lighthearted reply. I’m sorry if I came across too far otherwise. Anyone who enjoys both wolf and music men is all right with me.