Talk About Cinema

The old phrase, “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure” applies perfectly to Abbott and Costello in Hollywood . The team’s final MGM movie is a reworking of Buster Keaton’s first sound film, Free and Easy . Free and Easy is one of Keaton’s worst films; Hollywood is one of Abbott and Costello’s best. Buzz Curtis (Abbott) and Abercrombie (Costello) are a pair of barbers in a Hollywood salon. While cutting the hair of agent Norman Royce (Warner Anderson), they come across Jeff Parker (Robert Stanton), a singer who attempts to get Royce to sign him. At the urging of one of his clients, Gregory LeMaise (Carleton G. Young), he decides to pass on representing the boy, so Curtis and Abercrombie decide to take a shot and become Jeff’s agents. With the help of their friend Claire Warren (Frances Rafferty), they attempt to break Parker into show business. Continuing the tradition of the previous two features for MGM, Abbott and Costello are in top form and given plenty of sc...

The Phantom of the Opera may possibly be the most well-known Lon Chaney film. The fact that it’s in the public domain is probably a huge contributing factor, though I imagine the main reason is that this is one of the few horror films Chaney did. Despite how much the public associates him with the horror film genre, in reality, Chaney, Sr. didn’t actually make as many horror films as people might believe. The Phantom of the Opera is interesting for the fact that it does work as an entertaining horror film, despite how much it feels like it shouldn’t. Based off of the Gaston Leroux novel of the same name, The Phantom of the Opera  follows Christine Daaé (Mary Philbin), a singer at the Paris Opera House who is the understudy of lead singer Carlotta (Virginia Pearson in the original, Mary Fabian in the sound version). Christine has been training under the tutoring of a mysterious voice that lives in the Opera House. After being convinced to cut contact with her sweet...

The Naughty Nineties may as well have been called Abbott and Costello Perform “Who’s On First?” because that seems to be the one thing everyone remembers about this film. The rest of the film is basically ignored, and admittedly I can kind of see why, though I still think it’s a decent enough film. Captain Sam (Henry Travers) is the owner of a showboat called The River Queen, whose main stars are Sam’s daughter Caroline (Lois Collier) and Dexter Broadhurst (Bud Abbott). When Captain Sam accidentally gambles away 3/4 interest of his boat to a group of crooked gamblers, Caroline, Dexter, and crew worker Sebastian Dinwiddle (Lou Costello) must find a way to get rid of them. Let’s start with the film’s rendition of “Who’s On First?”. It’s good. I don’t think it’s the best rendition ( The Colgate Comedy Hour version has always been my preferred interpretation of the routine), but it’s still an energetic enough version of the routine, and it’s also the only full version to appear in a...

For  The Popeye Blogathon , I’ve decided to review four holiday cartoons. Why did I choose the holidays as a theme? Because it gives me a unifying theme that allows me to talk about Popeye cartoons from different eras. Popeye originally started out as a character in E.C. Segar’s comic strip, Thimble Theatre . He became popular enough that he was adapted into his own theatrical cartoon series that also proved to be popular, putting him in the same league with Disney’s Mickey Mouse. Since then, Popeye has had multiple incarnations, but in order to keep things simple, I’ve decided to limit it to productions during the Golden Age of Animation. The Golden Age of Animation basically refers to the era where theatrical cartoons remained a regular feature in theaters. There’s some debate as to when it truly ended, though usually the 1960s and early 1970s are cited as approximate end dates. The Popeye theatrical cartoon series lasted until 1957, though a series of television cartoons ...

Here Come the Co-Eds is Abbott and Costello’s contribution to the college movie sub-genre, which had been especially popular with Golden Age comedians, and while the film is no Horse Feathers or The Freshman , they still managed to create an enjoyable film that maintains a fairly good pace throughout. Slats (Abbott) puts together a publicity stunt for his sister Molly (Martha O’Driscoll) in which she pretends to be interested in Bixby College. She is eventually accepted to the school on a scholarship, while Slats and his friend Oliver Quackenbush (Costello) are hired as caretakers. Chairman Kirkland (Charles Dingle), who holds the mortgage for the college, is not happy with her being offered the scholarship and threatens to close down the school unless she is expelled, so the school must raise the money for the mortgage in order to both keep the school open as well as allowing an expansion in their athletics program. The music is a bit hit-and-miss here. Some of the music is actu...

Sorry I was unable to post a review over the weekend. I was sick most of last week and at the moment I’m trying to catch up on stuff I’ve missed. As scheduled, my review of Abbott and Costello’s Here Come the Co-Eds will be up this weekend, so technically there will be two Abbott and Costello reviews in a row, though I still plan on doing them on a biweekly basis, so that will not change. With October coming up, even though I plan on continuing the Abbott and Costello series, for the other weeks, I’ve been considering doing some classic horror films, either from the Universal Monsters series or the Hammer series. I’m not super knowledgeable about horror films, but I still like certain horror films. Anyone have any specific classic horror films you’d like me to review? I’ll try my best to accommodate. Finally, I’d like to announce that I am taking part in my first blogathon. The writer of MovieMovieBlogBlog is hosting a Popeye -themed blogathon , and he has graciously allowed me to...

Abbott and Costello finally returned to MGM in 1944 to make Lost in a Harem . Although Rio Rita ’s story wasn’t really good, it did show that MGM knew how to properly showcase the team’s talents. Lost in a Harem further proves this, except this time they are provided with a better story. Prince Ramo (John Conte), whose throne has been taken from him by his uncle (Douglass Dumbrille), enlists the help of singer Hazel Moon (Marilyn Maxwell) and her buddies Peter Johnson (Abbott) and Harvey Garvey (Costello) in an attempt to get it back. If they help him, he promises to help them return to their home country. They must steal a pair of magic rings from the uncle that hypnotize people while also avoiding being hypnotized themselves. Before moving on with this review, I think it is important to address the fact that this is a film from the 1940s that takes place in the Middle East. Unsurprisingly, there are Middle Eastern stereotypes, notably the fact that many of them keep and use a sp...