gunnellis

SonOfMoog wrote an earlier review where he talked about being 11 years old in 1959 and laughing so hard at the movie's end that his sides ached. The scene of Bob Hope stuck halfway through the wagon floor and having to run to keep up with the speed of the horses was so damn funny I thought I would die. I was probably 11 as well. But I was seeing it triple feature style as a re release in !963? 1964?. What is interesting about this scene is that it gave me so much pleasure I naturally wanted to recapture those moments. So I watched it again, the same day. ( My Mom used to leave me for most of the day at these triple features.) It was my first lesson that humor requires surprise and discovery to be truly funny. I watched this no longer hilarious scene play out again with ten percent of it's original impact. Sad, but it's the way we are built. I just re watched it on Netflix Streaming. And barely laughed at all. 57 vs 11 is a big part of the problem there. The cameos are still great. It would be nice to find the original, intact, cut.

There are at least 4 instances of Paul Frees stepping in as the voice actor overlaying the on screen performance of a minor character. It was a lot of fun for a fan of Paul Frees. It made it seem like an Orson Welles movie. With all the lips not quite matching the dialog and the rich voice of Welles replacing the original actor. I wonder if it was just a gun and shoot issue for this movie. Knowing that sound would have to be cleaned up later and that Frees just got handed a copious load. He's also the narrator. It's interesting that this is an aircraft lover movie and that I'm writing about Paul frees being used so much. The Steve Canyon TV series, out on DVD, also has Frees popping up everywhere. And Steve Canyon is aircraft porno.

Ever since I saw What's Up Tiger Lilly, I've had a soft spot for the re-purposing and re-dubbing of movies for a laugh. Some of them are awful like Blobber mouth. MST3K does a variation on the idea via internal dialog and gets a laugh that way. The people that re-dubbed the already re-dubbed Roger Corman adventure "Voyage to The Planet Of Prehistoric Women" made me laugh. It's vulgar and funny. Lots of extra archival Something Weirdesque T and A teaser video and industrial films woven in for extra seasoning. Good job and obvious effort put into a fun hybrid of big budget Russian Sci-Fi flick, Curtis Harrington Pick up footage and Sex Hygiene public domain films. They do something with a syringe and male urethra that soldiers used to watch for education about the clap. That's not too funny. Their comments are. They're cringing along with us.