Sep 24, 2012
Trailer 792 of 906
A hapless Griffin Dunne tries to make his way home from New York's Soho district in this quirky, unexpected black comedy that was nearly directed by Tim Burton, who stepped aside for Martin Scorsese when funding for The Last Temptation of Christ fell through. In some ways this Scorsese's own version of Kafka's The Trial. Sometimes its fractured tone recalls Corman's A Bucket of Blood, so it's only proper to see Dick Miller pop up as the diner owner who intones the film's title. Joe Minion's script was originally titled "Surrender Dorothy".
Oddly enough, Brando didn't marry the female star of this movie--but instead Movita Castaneda, the female star of the 1935 MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY..
Watching this week's TFH ode to blaxploitation makes me want to grow an Afro!.
It's enjoyable, and Racquel's presence makes it memorable (that poster of her in her loins is an icon), but, this is far from the best of Harryhausen..
Thanks for the shout out, David. I look back at this trailer with great fondness...
It played a couple of years back on TCM underground, and "bizarre" does kind of nail it; it doesn't really make a lick of sense, but it's quite entertaining, and I still find myself humming "What You See is What You Get" frequently. The concept of cloning black leaders to undermine the black community's leadership was a precursor to the "Undercover Brother" film years later (though that was mind control drugs, not cloning exactly).
The people of Lunenburg, Nova Scotia (where they still make boats) are still proud of their achievement in recreating the Bounty for this film, no matter what the reaction to the film might have been (I watched it a few years back and also enjoyed it quite a bit, I guess all the bad press at the time really coloured judgement to a degree). It was a sad day in this part of the world when the Bounty met its fate by sinking in Hurricane Sandy...
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