Tidbits for March, 2019

Oliver Hardy in The Fighting Kentuckian (1949).

Max Linder engages in a few stock routines in King of the Circus (1924).  He gets stuck in a revolving door. . .

he becomes infested with fleas. . . 

and he gets chased by a lion.

Marcello Mastroianni performs the "trying on hats" routine in Marriage Italian Style (1964).

 

Lon Chaney Jr. returns as The Wolf Man in a 1960 Mexican horror comedy called La Casa del Terror.

The 1971 comedy Les bidasses en folie (English: Rookies Run Amok) stars the comedy troupe Les Charlots, who were essentially a French version of The Monkees.

I liked this recent profile on British talk show host Michael Aspel.  The guests featured in this clip include Mel Brooks and Oliver Reed.

Karl Dane and George K. Arthur build a pre-fab home in a Paramount short called A Put Up Job (1931).  An epic Buster Keaton gag is dismally downscaled in the film.

Acrobatic comedians Charles O'Donnell and Jack Blair recreate their popular stage act in The Plasterers (1929).

Here is the vaudeville comedy team of Tom Howard and George Shelton featured in a 1932 Paramount Pictures short called Breaking Even.

 

Here's Howard again in The African Dodger (1931).

 

 

The host of the "Dark Corners" YouTube channel pointed out a remarkable similarity between a crucial scene in The Monster and the Girl (1941) and a crucial scene in The Godfather Part III (1990).

You can find the full video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbEN7VS5HLM.

This is a classic Christmas album.

Suicide comedy is the focus of Hunky Boys Go Ding-Dong (2018).

Emo Philips, Randy E. Aguebor and Derek Mears

Here is a very funny British comedy team, Tash and Ellie (Natasia Demetriou and Ellie White).

The first Doctor Who, William Hartnell, and the third Doctor Who, John Pertwee,are featured together in the 1953 British comedy Will Any Gentleman. . .?.

Ouija Seance: The Final Game (2018)

The Swimming Pool (1969)

La Horse (1970)

 

 

A tough farmer (veteran tough guy Jean Gabin) battles heroin dealers who have been using his grandson as a courier.

Strip-tease (1963)

Quelques messieurs trop tranquilles (English title: Some Too Quiet Gentleman) (1973)

IMDb User The Belgian Bear:

The sleepy little village of Loubressac is well on its way to becoming a ghost town.  To save the town, the local citizenry hatch a plan to attract tourists.  To their horror, the plan misfires when a group of hippies are the first to move in.  The hippies' free and unconventional ways quickly upset the staid lives of the locals.  Then one of the locals is found murdered, and suspicion inevitably falls on the newcomers.  Eventually, the locals and the hippies join forces to solve the mystery, and in the course of their adventures learn to respect each others' ways.

François Truffaut dismissed The Wicked Go to Hell (1955) as "vulgar," but the film has attracted more than its share of fans over the years.

The film begins as a prison drama, but a prison break occurs halfway through the film and the convicts who escape enter the cynical and sexual realm of film noir.

The convicts, Macquart (Henri Vidal) and Rudel (Serge Reggiani), figure to use a beach shack as a hideout.  The idea doesn't go over too well with the shack's owner (Guy Kerner), who resists the surly intruders only to be shot dead for his efforts.

The man's grieving girlfriend, Eve (Marina Vlady), will not let this crime go unpunished.

She uses her feminine charm to play the two brutish men against each other.

The men never stand a chance against her manipulations.

The Letterboxd website reports, "Not only do these heels go to Hell, but they do so with a spectacular flourish."