Aug 4-10  Stoner Comedy Week: I don’t gas reefer anymore, but I love it when people in movies do!

Writer, co-director, co-cinematographer, co-editor, songwriter, stuntman and star Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh, who made his debut in this film. Ram Rahim has also released several music albums and other films, which “typically revolve around himself and his teachings. Many of these are based on social issues and the promotion of God’s worship.” At the age of 23, he was selected as the leader of the Dera Sacha Sauda sect by Shah Satnam Sing, which was a surprise.

His life is, well, complicated. Sure, he’s organized drives for blood pressure, diabetes, cholesterol screenings and tree planting that have been recognized by Guinness World Records, as well as the world record for most people sanitizing their hands simultaneously. He’s worked to eradicate forced prostitution.

But as of 2017, the Indian Film & Television Directors’ Association (IFTDA) and the Cine and TV Artists Association (CINTAA) banned Ram Rahim from future work in Indian film and television for “criminality and moral turpitude.” That’s because he was convicted of a 2002 rape in 2017, which led to 200,000 of his followers going wild in the streets. In 2019, he was convicted of the murder of journalist Ram Chander Chhatrapati, who was trying to find answers on that same 2002 sexual assault. This comes after years of conflict with Sikh and Hindu groups, including him dressing as their deities and tearing pages from their holy books. And oh yeah, the forced castration of 400 members of his religious group so that they could be closer to God.

This may be the most separate the art from the artist review ever, as a result of reading all this after I watched the movie.

Guruji (Ram Singh) is a spiritual leader who has taken on the job of eradicating drug use and gender issues from society. It also has 1.3 million extras — good luck updating the IMDB — including a musical number that has 125,000 performers lighting thousands of candles.

Reviews were not kind: “It is not possible to be prepared for the sensory assault that is MSG: The Messenger,” “Watch it only if your survival depended on it,” “…excruciatingly awful only for non-believer,s” and “Three hours of torture so painful that you start laughing at yourself.”

Gurunji may be a superhero. Or a super villain. He never drives the same car twice. He has Superman’s flight and strength, but also mind powers, like telepathy, telekinesis and mind electricity, which is a thing. Are those enough powers? He’s like when a kid first rolls up a character in a game like Champions and keeps adding things. He also has a special elixir that can cure any disease. And a talking lion. I’m shocked he didn’t add “I have triples of the Barracuda and the Road Runner.”

He can also rap.

Perhaps his kryptonite is his lack of fashion sense, but his main enemy is a terrifying killing machine named Mike.

Yes, you read that.

Despite my disgust with the auteur’s real life, I also have to say that this guy has millions of followers — that’s how this came out in theaters in Canada — and made several more movies, and despite the fact that this is three hours, you know I’m going to watch the rest of them.

Imagine Neil Breen, if Neil Breen had the power to make men cut their dicks off.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Aug 4-10  Stoner Comedy Week: I don’t gas reefer anymore, but I love it when people in movies do!

This is a movie with many audiences.

1. People who love Daft Punk and want to hear the songs from Discovery along with visuals, including songs like “One More Time,” “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” and “Something About Us.”
2. Those who love anime and want to see a new film by Leiji Matsumoto (Space Battleship Yamato, Space Pirate Captain Harlock, Galaxy Express 999) and don’t need dialogue to guide them through the anime archetypes and story.
3. Stoners who are super high.
4. All of the above.

Hi, that’s me, number four.

Keyboardist Octave, guitarist Arpegius, drummer Baryl and bass player Stella have been kidnapped by Earl de Darkwood, a music producer who takes bands from other planets and brings them to Earth as his slaves. Now known as The Crescendolls, three of them are saved by space pilot Shep, who gives his life to free them from their programming.

As The Crescendolls win the Gold Record Award, Stella — still mind-controlled — is saved by the band, who free her and head to Darkwood Manor, where they learn that Darkwood has a plan called the Veridis Quo, which has him getting 5,555 Gold Records and ruling the universe. Their record is the last and Stella is nearly sacrificed before Darkwood and his followers are cast into a pit.

The entire planet of Earth sends the band back home, where Shep is remembered. Or maybe it was all a dream of a child, listening to a Daft Punk album.

Daft Punk said, “The music we have been making must have been influenced at some point by the shows we were watching when we were little kids.” I love that when they started to become famous, they went all in on their influences. I got to see this in a theater at earsplitting volume, and it was perfect; yes, maybe what we had in the parking lot made it even better.

Aug 4-10  Stoner Comedy Week: I don’t gas reefer anymore, but I love it when people in movies do!

Lawrence Kasanoff executive produced movies like Party Camp, Blood Diner, The Underachievers, Dream a Little Dream, Blue Steel, Class of 1999, A Gnome Named Gnorm and Ghoulies III: Ghoulies Go to College before finding success with the Mortal Kombat movies. He also founded the Vestron Pictures genre subsidiary Lightning Pictures in 1986, Lightstorm Entertainment with James Cameron in 1990 and Threshold Entertainment in 1993, which is where this movie came from. Threshold claims to have done the first morphing in a film for Terminator 2, as well as tons of 3D and 4D work on theme park attractions.

Kasanoff and Threshold Entertainment employee Joshua Wexler created the concept that would become Foodfight! in 1997. They entered into a $25 million joint investment with Korean investment company Natural Image, thinking that foreign pre-sales and loans against the sales would cover the budget. Kasanoff also decided to produce and direct the film, despite having no prior experience in animation.

If this was a success, the movies Arcade and Mascots would be next. As those movies never came out, you can assume that Foodfight! was anything but successful.

In fact, it was a mess.

After raising tens of millions of dollars in funding, the film was initially scheduled for a Christmas 2003 theatrical release. It was also said to come out in 2005 and 2007. Then, when a loan was defaulted on, creditors auctioned off the film’s assets and all associated rights to Fireman’s Fund Insurance Company.

In an article in Animation Magazine, “The Long, Strange Odyssey of Foodfight!,” Kasanoff was beyond gung ho on the project, saying, In terms of coming to have an independent digital animation studio making a digitally animated movie right now, I think we’re pretty much it. We’ve got the movie, we’ve got the property, the place, the equipment, the talent, we’re there. Do we believe our next film, Foodfight!, is going to be a huge hit? Of course we do! We think it’s great. We’ve gotten a fantastic response to it. I’ve told people all over the world, and we’re getting a uniform reaction to it. We’re betting a ton that it’s going to be a great movie. We’re risking more on this movie than any other venture I’ve ever been involved in in my life. Every studio but one offered us a deal on the movie, but for us as producers, not for us as the animation studio. We’re never going to be the next Pixar, being for-hire producers with some other shop.”

Before the rights were sold, the hard drives holding this movie disappeared. Industrial espionage was claimed. In 2012, it was released on DVD and on demand in Europe.

So those are the facts. Here’s another one: this movie is weird.

Weird because none of the corporate mascots paid to be in this. They allowed the film to use them, but no one made money. And yet this feels like a sell-out film. And they’re barely in the movie, despite being all over the poster. Somehow, some execs got worried and pulled their characters, like Cheetos’ Chester Cheetah, the Coca-Cola Polar Bears, Count Chocula, the M&Ms (the animators had “mistakenly rendered the Green M&M, a female mascot, as male within the footage shown to company representative”) and cereal mascots like Sugar Bear, Lucky the Leprechaun, the Trix Rabbit, Cap’n Cruch, Sonny from Cocoa Puffs and the Honey Nut Cheerios Bee.

It all takes place in Marketopolis, a grocery store that when the lights go down turns into a neo-noir film where Dex Dogtective (Charlie Sheen) and his partner Daredevil Dan (Wayne Brady) protect other foods from criminals — and run a nightclub called the Copabanana, don’t fall in love — when Dex isn’t pining for his lost love Sunshine Goodness (Hilary Duff). There’s also the new Brand X, led by General X (Jerry Stiller) and Lady X (Eva Longoria), taking over the store, which is populated by the Energizer Bunny, Kid Cuisine and K.C. Penguin, Punchy from Hawaiian Punch, Mr. Clean, Twinkie the Kid, Mrs. Butterworth (Edie McClurg), the Vlasic Stork, Charlie the Tuna (Jeff Bergman), The California Raisins, Tootsie the Owl and Mr. Bubble. These characters are Ikes, or icons, and when they die, their brands die. Someone is killing Ikes — this is a kid’s movie, but has a cartoon cat played by Harvey Fierstein be Harvey Fierstein and a joke from Midnight Cowboy, not to mention the “La Marseillaise” sequence from Jean Renoir’s La Grande Illusion being parodied (thanks as always to my guiding light when it comes to writing things like this, Nathan Rubin) — and there’s a secret plot that’s not all so secret.

This is a movie with Larry Miller playing Vlad Chocool, a chocolate cereal vampire bat who has a forbidden love for Daredevil Dan (this is them getting back at General Mills for not allowed Count Chocula out to play); Chris Kattan as Polar Penguin; Ed Asner as the old guy who runs the grocery store; Cloris Leachman as the Brand X Lunch Lady and Christopher Lloyd as the voice of Brand X.

According to comments made by animators, Kasanoff didn’t seem to realize the difference between live-action and animation, often demanding retakes and notes like “make this more awesome.” He also insisted on bringing his dogs to the studio, one of which was said to be a nightmare. He also reportedly asked for a personal nude 3D render of Lady X, which he would keep and admire.

Either the animation was unfinished in this or that’s how bad it is, a movie that wants to be a tough gumshoe film yet is a movie for kids but filled with outright unpaid product placement and sold off to Europe, who didn’t have most of these characters — or may outright hate them, like Chef Boyaredee — where no one wanted to watch it.

How did this get made?

Why did this get made?

It’s still better than Sausage Party.

You can watch this on YouTube.

To learn even more, watch ROTTEN: Behind the Foodfight!

July 28 – Aug 3 Screwball Comedy: Just imagine, the Great Depression is raging and you’re getting less than a fin a week at the rubber boiling factory, but it only costs two bits to go to the movies all day, so let’s watch some quick-talking dames match wits with some dopey joes!

Based on Joseph Kesselring’s play, this movie was completed in 1941 but delayed until 1944, as the producers agreed to not show it in theaters until the Broadway run ended.

On Halloween, Mortimer Brewster (Cary Grant), a theater critic and author who is anti-marriage and a minister’s daughter, Elaine Harper (Priscilla Lane), get married. On the way to their honeymoon, she goes to tell her father, and he visits the aunts who raised him, Abby (Josephine Hull) and Martha (Jean Adair), who still live with his insane brother Teddy (John Alexander). While there, he finds a dead man; he learns that his aunts have been killing old single men — twelve so far — with elderberry wine that has arsenic, strychnine and cyanide. What a mixed drink.

Then, his evil older brother Jonathan (Raymond Massey) arrives, also a killer of twelve people, with his plastic surgeon, Dr. Herman Einstein (Peter Lorre). Jonathan is said to look like Boris Karloff, who originated the role on Broadway and stayed so that the entire cast didn’t leave to make the movie. Or, as some suggest, the producers forced him to stay, and he was not allowed to participate. He did get to play the part in the 1962 TV movie.

Indeed, in Dear Boris, Cynthia Lindsay wrote that “Josephine Hull and Jean Adair went to their graves believing that Boris Karloff had been so saintly as to agree to let them go to Hollywood to make this film while he stayed on Broadway doing the play. Nothing could have been further from the truth: Karloff was furious and disappointed that he was the only cast member not allowed out of his contract to do the film.”

Warner Bros. even offered Humphrey Bogart to the play’s producers; they kept Karloff.

In The Capra Touch: A Study of the Director’s Hollywood Classics and War Documentaries, 1934–1945, Matthew C. Gunter argues that the theme of both the play and film — directed by Capra — “is the United States’ difficulty in coming to grips with both the positive and negative consequences of the liberty it professes to uphold, and which the Brewsters demand. Although their house is the nicest in the street, there are 12 bodies in the basement. That inconsistency is a metaphor for the country’s struggle to reconcile the violence of much of its past with the pervasive myths about its role as a beacon of freedom.”

July 28 – Aug 3 Screwball Comedy: Just imagine, the Great Depression is raging and you’re getting less than a fin a week at the rubber boiling factory, but it only costs two bits to go to the movies all day, so let’s watch some quick-talking dames match wits with some dopey joes!

Based on the Noel Coward play, this movie has socialite and novelist Charles Condomine (Rex Harrison) looking for material for his next book. He decides to have Madame Arcati (Margaret Rutherford) come to his home and conduct a séance. As an unbeliever, he’s shocked when it brings the spirit of his first wife, Elvira (Kay Hammond), into his life, as she tries to ruin his marriage to Ruth (Constance Cummings), who can’t see or hear the ghostly form of his first bride.

Coward wanted this cast and screenwriter Anthony Havelock-Allen saw this as one of the reasons why this movie failed, saying “The point of the play is a middle-aged man well into his second marriage, having long ago put away the follies of his youth with his sexy first wife, and suddenly being woken up by her reappearance as a ghost. Rex Harrison was not middle-aged, and Kay Hammond, though a brilliant stage actress, didn’t photograph well and also had a very slow delivery, which was difficult in films. When we started shooting scenes with Kay and Rex, it became obvious that Constance Cummings (the second wife) looked more attractive to the average man in the street than Kay. This upset the whole play.”

In his book, A Serious Business, Harrison didn’t seem to enjoy it either: “Blithe Spirit was not a play I liked, and I certainly didn’t think much of the film we made of it. David Lean directed it, but the shooting was unimaginative and flat, a filmed stage play. He didn’t direct me too well, either – he hasn’t a great sense of humour … By that time, it had been over three years since I’d done any acting. I can remember feeling a bit shaky about it, and almost, but not quite, as strange as when I’d first started, but Lean did something to me on that film which I shall never forget, and which was unforgivable in any circumstances. I was trying to make one of those difficult Noel Coward scenes work … when David said, “I don’t think that’s very funny.” And he turned round to the cameraman, Ronnie Neame, and said: “Did you think that was funny, Ronnie?” Ronnie said, “Oh, no, I didn’t think it was funny.” So what do you do next, if it isn’t funny?”

Coward hated the ending that was added, as it has Charles dying — perhaps due to his wives’ spirits — and joining them as ghosts. He claimed that it ruined the best play he ever wrote.

A classic today, it was a box office disappointment for director David Lean in 1945. It did win Tom Howard the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects.

You can watch this on Tubi.

July 28 – Aug 3 Screwball Comedy: Just imagine, the Great Depression is raging and you’re getting less than a fin a week at the rubber boiling factory, but it only costs two bits to go to the movies all day, so let’s watch some quick-talking dames match wits with some dopey joes!

Private detective Ted Shane (Warren Williams) and his former partner Milton Ames (Porter Hall) start to work together again, which hits a bad patch when he learns that his wife Astrid (Winifred Shaw) and Ted were once an item. When Valerie Purvis (Bette Davis) hires them to find a man named Farrow, it ends with Milton and that man dead, and the police thinking Ted’s the killer.

Ted makes it back to their office, only to find his secretary, Miss Murgatroyd (Marie Wilson), locked in a closet. Anthony Travers (Arthur Treacher) is going through his office, and the henchmen of Madame Barabbas (Alison Shipworth) are coming to bring him to the crime boss. Everyone is looking for a ram’s horn filled with gems, which may or may not be real, and Ted plays everyone for fools until he gets the same treatment from Valerie, the real murderer.

Directed by William Dieterle and written by Brown Holmes, this film was made because Warner Bros. attempted to re-release The Maltese Falcon but was denied approval by the Hays Production Code censors. The 1931 one with Ricardo Cortez and Bebe Daniels. The one that we know and love wasn’t made until 1941 and skips the parts that would keep it from playing.

Bette Davis saw this movie as junk. She claimed in her book The Lonely Life. “I was so distressed by the whole tone of the script and the vapidity of my part that I marched up to Mr. Warner’s office and demanded that I be given work that was commensurate with my proven ability,” she later recalled in her autobiography. “I was promised wonderful things if only I would do this film.” She was suspended but needed to cover living expenses for her mother and medical care for her sister. That’s why she made this.

July 28 – Aug 3 Screwball Comedy: Just imagine, the Great Depression is raging and you’re getting less than a fin a week at the rubber boiling factory, but it only costs two bits to go to the movies all day, so let’s watch some quick-talking dames match wits with some dopey joes!

Mr. & Mrs. Smith was the only pure comedy Hitchcock made in the United States — much less a screwball comedy — that he claimed that he made as a favor to Carole Lombard. She plays Ann Smith, whose fights with her husband David are so rough that they last days at a time. She also directed his cameo, making him redo it several times to the cheers of the crew. Man, she sounds like a blast, because she’d also sneak into the parking lot during breaks and put stickers for the opposite political party of her co-star. Robert Montgomery, on his car.

One morning, she asks him a question: would he marry her again if they could do it all over? Considering that he’s lost his freedom and independence, he says no. This gets tested when Harry Deever (Charles Halton) tells them both — independently — that because of a jurisdictional mishap, their three-year marriage in Idaho is no longer valid in New York City, where they now reside.

They break up, and Ann is able to turn David’s law partner and friend, Jefferson Custer (Gene Raymond), on him and even starts dating him. He introduces her to his family and takes her to Lake Placid. David follows with a ploy to get her back.

This is one of the first movies to show a pizzeria, if you can believe that.

You can watch this on YouTube.

July 28 – Aug 3 Screwball Comedy: Just imagine, the Great Depression is raging and you’re getting less than a fin a week at the rubber boiling factory, but it only costs two bits to go to the movies all day, so let’s watch some quick-talking dames match wits with some dopey joes!

The sequel to Topper finds Marion Kerby (Constance Bennett) still on Earth with George already in Heaven and Cary Grant only appearing in reused footage. To get her own place in the hereafter, Mation must reunite Cosmo (Roland Young) and Clara Topper (Billie Burke). That said, Clara left him over a supposed affair between her husband and Marion.

The most famous actor in this might be Skippy the dog, who had been in more than a dozen movies before this and is best known as Asta in the five Thin Man movies. He was also in Bringing Up Baby and The Awful Truth. Check out the press he got: “His owner is Mrs. Gale Henry East, once a prominent movie comedienne…When Skippy has to drink water in a scene, the first time he does it he really drinks. If there are retakes and he’s had all the water he can drink, he’ll go through the scene just as enthusiastically as though his throat were parched, but he’ll fake it. If you watch closely you’ll see he’s just going through the motions of lapping and isn’t really picking up water at all. And, because he has a sense of humor, he loves it when you laugh and tell him you’ve caught him faking but that it’s all right with you.”

It was directed by Norman Z. McLeod, who also filmed the first film, and written by Jack Jevne, Eddie Moran and Corey Ford.

You can watch this on YouTube.

July 28 – Aug 3 Screwball Comedy: Just imagine, the Great Depression is raging and you’re getting less than a fin a week at the rubber boiling factory, but it only costs two bits to go to the movies all day, so let’s watch some quick-talking dames match wits with some dopey joes!

The third and final installment in the initial series of supernatural comedy films inspired by the novels of Thorne Smith, this follows Topper and Topper Takes a Trip. The strange thing is that it may have Cosmo Topper (Roland Young) and his wife (Billie Burke), but it has a totally different set of ghosts.

Wealthy young heiress Ann Carrington (Carole Landis, One Million B.C.) and her best friend Gail Richards (Joan Blondell) are nearly killed by a masked and black gloved Giallo-style maniac when he shoots out their tire. They have a comical time catching a ride — Blondell’s thigh causes a man to crash a car — before Cosmo and his driver Eddie (Eddie “Rochester” Anderson) pick them up and drive them to their destination, the Carrington mansion.

Everything about this place is creepy, so strange that you wonder if Ann and Gail are about to put on diaphonus white gowns and clutch candleabras. There are evil servants, like Lillian (Rafaela Ottiano) and Rama (Trevor Bardette). And the sinister Dr. Jeris (George Zucco), who warns Ann that the father she has never met, Henry Carrington (H. B. Warner), is in poor health. She was raised far away, as her mother had asked in her will, after she and her father’s business partner died in a company mine. Now, her father tells her that tomorrow, on her birthday, she will assume complete control of the family fortune.

Gail makes a fuss about her room being small and takes Ann’s, but who could sleep after a chandelier almost kills them? Somehow, they do go to bed, just in time for that murderer in black to knife Gail, thinking that she’s Ann. But don’t be sad — this is a Topper movie and Gail comes back as a ghost, one who threatens Topper with a scandal if he doesn’t help solve her murder. As for his driver, he claims that he’s going back to working for Jack Benny, because ghosts never showed up there.

Seriously — Gail’s body shows up and then disappears, and I wonder, is this an Edgar Wallace-written Topper? There’s mistaken identity, leather gloved knife-carrying lunatics, family drama, a will — this has it all and by all, I mean it’s totally a Giallo. At least this ends happily, except for the ghosts again scaring Rochester.

Director Roy Del Ruth (The Alligator People) and writers Jonathan Latimer (30+ Perry Mason episodes), Gordon Douglas (who would later direct Them! and In Like Flint) and Paul Gerard Smith put together a fun farce that may not have all the characters of the films, but has the right ones. Blondell fondly recalled the film thirty years later, saying, “It was a hit but has grown on TV viewings because it is public domain. I laugh when I see it. I laugh at Eddie Anderson, Patsy Kelly, Billie Burke, and Rollie Young. It’s a send-up of all those dark house plots.”

You can watch this on YouTube.

July 28 – Aug 3 Screwball Comedy: Just imagine, the Great Depression is raging and you’re getting less than a fin a week at the rubber boiling factory, but it only costs two bits to go to the movies all day, so let’s watch some quick-talking dames match wits with some dopey joes!

Based on the novel by Thorne Smith, Topper was a big deal and the first movie that Hal Roach Studios colorized when they decided to convert their black-and-white films to full color.

George and Marion Kerby (Cary Grant and Constance Bennett) are irresponsible rich kids who wreck their car and suddenly learn that they’ve died. They didn’t do enough good to go to Heaven, but are too nice to go to Hell. Their friend, Cosmo Topper (Roland Young), buys their roadster and ends up with them back in his life as ghosts, trying to make his boring life more exciting and helping him improve his marriage to his wife (Billie Burke).

Director Norman Z. McLeod would go on to make Horse Feathers, Pennies from Heaven, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty and the sequel to this, Topper Takes a Trip. There’s a third film, Topper Returns, which only has Cosmo Topper and is nearly a Giallo. Nom, seriously.

You can watch this on YouTube.