EricJ

The original Revenge of the Nerds (1984) has a surprising sweetness that you wouldn't expect from the low-rent title-grabbing "sequels", and a cleverness and sympathy for its characters you didn't generally get from most frathouse comedies from the late 70's to the early 80's. This being the 80's, back when teen-movie protagonists were "picked on" just for not being rich or cool, the movie manages to be "anti-bullying" without being narcissistically self-absorbed, gay-tribalistic paranoid, or clicking persecution-fetish guns to its head: In that it takes the unusual step for the genre of showing the other bad "cool" frathouses on campus--the rich-popular party house and the beer-blast jock house--as utter brainless DOLTS...Who manage to be perfect victims for our heroes' titular (and surprisingly un-mean-spirited) revenge, in that our heroes win out in the end by doing what made them campus outcasts in the first place: Being smart. (And yes, Pixar's "Monsters University" pretty much cribbed the entire script from cover to cover.)

Including Commando Cody's Radar Men From the Moon (1952) serial, which spawned many a popular early MST3K-ism: - "It's the adventures of Jack O. Lantern, Private Eye!" - (rocket-pack chest-dial controls) "Tweak this nip-ple, and this nip-ple, and...awaayyy!"

It's the same reason I find myself watching The Last Starfighter (1984) every time it shows up, even though I wasn't that crazy about the movie when it was in theaters.

Tarzan and Little Mermaid, however.....not so much. (Aladdin's doing fairly well, but only because they used the stage musical to resurrect all the abandoned early storyboards from the movie, like Aladdin having a group of street-buddies instead of a monkey.) Although to be fair, Tarzan was originally imagined as more of a Cirque du Soleil-style acrobatic show in a round theater, and didn't translate well to NY stages. Which left only the "Why did they make this??" complaints with most of the audience and critics. Apparently it's done a little better in overseas theaters, where they have more room to do their original staging ideas.

I remember the problem with it when it came out was the same problem with Frozen: Disney was counting so many dollars from Beauty & the Beast on Broadway, Jeffrey Katzenberg's studio order to create more earthbound human stories (that could be more easily adapted into shows, at the parks, for a start) caused Hunchback's blocking to be deliberately made stage-ready, where the camera swirls all around basically three different sets, with no action that couldn't be duplicated on an Equity stage six months later. As a result, older fans--for whom this wasn't the first Disney animated musical they saw in a theater --felt the movie was hampered, claustrophobic, and didn't seem to have any reason to be animated, except for the comedy-relief gargoyles (who were starting to push the "Wisecracking sidekick" trope to the breaking point). Like Frozen, it felt like we were watching the 85-minute commercial for a forthcoming stage musical we were going to get ANYWAY, regardless of whether we liked the animated or not. To this day, no one can remember why Hercules, the next year, had audiences in full frothing raging mutiny, and (undeservedly) became the studio's biggest theatrical flop of the 90's, but I have a distinct theory of "Delayed reaction". Our "betrayal" issues going from Lion King to Pocahontas still needed one or two more films to work out.

When HuluPlus took the reruns off was when I started considering dropping the service. Which leads us to the WORST detective on TV--Ellery's snooty and frustratingly gullible rival Simon Brimmer (played by an even snootier John Hillerman ten years before Magnum PI).

Wasn't that already posted back at the beginning of the thread?

Think you'll have to. ? It's probably their one GOOD movie (considering they only cameo'ed in "Yellow Submarine")--"Help!"'s filming was squeezed in between tour appearances, and pretty much falls apart into improvisation by the end, "Magical Mystery Tour" is one painful anti-drug PSA, and "Let It Be" is too bitter to watch even if we could see it. But considering that Monty Python came along the same year the Beatles broke up, John always said Python was the "reincarnation" of the Beatles' rebel spirit. And then, of course, you have that historical/iconic yes-it-was-THAT-bad Beatlemania climax, with an audience recruited from real London teen fans:

No, but it does include Norfolk, VA's Ocean View park, which was about to be demolished the next year-- And which demolition was conveniently worked into a (fictional) made-for-TV disaster movie, The Death of Ocean View Park (1979): (Not, of course, to be confused with CA's Magic Mountain in KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park (1978).)

I take it you never watched the series, where she ritually mentioned it once per episode. The show was intentionally cribbing the Carry On comedies, but even they would have considered that shameless.

Every person who watched the show in the 70's thought, "Oh, he's such a bumbler, and he's nagging them into confessing just to get away from him!" No: Watch the show, and when you see that look of "Hmm...", as Columbo's first investigating the scene and picks up one seemingly meaningless clue, he already knows who the prime suspect is. The problem is that the suspect thinks he's made such a brilliant (even combatively smug, as we near the climax) plan to cover up the evidence or one last witness, Columbo needs the suspect to get panicky, drop his guard and lead him to it in trying to tie up loose ends--And the whole episode is one protracted torturing of the suspect through cheery kindness, just for the sake of making him sweat, relaxing him with more bumbling "helpful" act, and then dropping the next big clue-bomb to dig his hole deeper and watch him try to get out of it. Once you start realizing it's all an act, you just start relishing the orchestrated-prank sadism of that "Oh, one more thing..." on every exit. ?

"I've seen those American soap-operas...I've seen their Dy-nasty, and their Knots Landing! I've seen their Flaming-o Road! And even that Falcon Crest!" --Benny Hill

You've probably never heard of Rollercoaster (1977) either, but for us park enthusiasts, it's a mid-70's time capsule of the cheesy old Kings' Island and Magic Mountain parks, back in the days before the Disney Decade, or before Six Flags went national. (And we challenge you to get Lalo Schifirin's creepy-suspense carousel theme out of your head.)

But Curse of the Cat People is okay, seeing as there are no actual cats in it.

As the commentary pointed out, they had a problem in that Rodgers' hardworking life didn't have enough events to film, and Hart's had the kind that couldn't be filmed in the 40's. Both were going to require heavy screenwriter embellishment. If you go with the second and look at it as musical showcase, it's good--There's no real biographical reason to have Judy Garland show up as her young-adult self in one of Hart's Hollywood parties (where she would have been much younger at the time), just so MGM can have an excuse to do a Mickey & Judy reunion. And yes, the Gene Kelly "Slaughter" is good, but I'm not aware of the movie of "On Your Toes"...Has it been shown on TCM?

...Hey, I liked "The Cat From Outer Space"! (Well, as a kid, anyway.)

Ipecac or Syrup of Squill's, either one, I don't care... (Admit it, it was on your mind after the WC Fields thread.)

(Googles)...Fear of chopsticks?? Still, as they say on TV, the mere fact that you have sought treatment indicates that you are not too far gone--Maybe if we started by pinpointing your fears: So, guess "Stephen King's 'Cat's Eye'" (in which the titular creature is good, and ultimately protects Drew Barrymore from other nasty supernaturalia) is out of the question, then?

"Sufferin' sciatica!...Last time, it was elephants!"

Well, most old movies are on Amazon Instant for VOD rental, if you're planning to pay for them... By Prime, thought you meant it was one of those United Artist or Paramount movies that had finally sunk into public domain and was playing for "free" with the annual service.

A great actor, admired by directors like Sekznick and Kunrick.

Well, could be worse:

Sadly, in 1980, Lansbury WASN'T more famous than Wayland Flowers, as Madame was just about everywhere on variety TV and the Hollywood-Squares game-show circuit at the end of the 70's (network variety attracted more than a few gay writers, eg. Bruce Villanch), and even had her own syndie sitcom a year or two later. Melba Moore, not so much, but producers went with who was available. Lansbury was still a Broadway star at the end of the 70's, and while Broadway was still mainstream back then, all the household names we remember Angela for would only come later in the 80's/early-90's.

Just one more, and it's not a musical-- There were seven "Package" films, as Disney had to assemble shorts to get the studio back on its feet during and after wartime: Reluctant Dragon, Saludos Amigos, Three Caballeros, Fun & Fancy Free, Make Mine Music, Melody Time, and...that leaves only Adventures of Ichabod & Mr. Toad. Then we're back in the fairytale comfort-zone, unless you're going into the live-actions too.

At least not since Disney's Bedknobs & Broomsticks (1971), in which Lansbury was the lead, but not necessarily the A-list draw of the movie. Since it was a Disney musical, most people at the time probably remembered her as Julie Andrews. Lansbury's bigger mainstream exposure in 1980 was her Tony award for owning "Sweeney Todd"s Mrs. Lovett role on Broadway, but apart from that, there were more people who first discovered her on the Murder She Wrote series later on in the 80's than realized that the first episode's opening basically cribbed the first scene from The Mirror Crack'd. Just a case of bad timing.