Post by klep on Aug 17, 2020 7:02:47 GMT -6
MOVIE OF THE WEEK for 8/17: Top Secret!
CATCH-UP WEEK!
Note: This week's essay is graciously provided by a guest contributor.
When I was a kid, my family used to watch what my mother persists in calling "dumb, stupid comedies" on summer weekends. Some of these, we would never watch again; some would become family staples, things to be viewed over and over again to the point that now, decades later, my sisters and I each own our own copy. It is therefore extremely appropriate that we of The Dissolve would finally get around to Top Secret! at a point that means I am writing this on the hottest day of the year in my current home.
Nick Rivers (Val Kilmer in his first feature role) is a young American singing sensation. He is traveling to East Germany to sing at a music festival and promote goodwill between the US and the Soviet Bloc. However, he sees Hillary Flammond (Lucy Gutteridge) being threatened and steps in; she turns out to be the daughter of scientist Dr. Paul Flammond (Michael Gough, who eleven years later would be Alfred to Val Kilmer's Batman), who is being held prisoner by the government. He agrees to help rescue Dr. Flammond, because he is already falling in love with Hillary.
Hillary is being helped by the French Resistance, because of course she is. The film's central conceit is that it is a Cold War film that is also a World War II film, because there is no important difference between the two. (Presumably this is in no small part because of how few World War II movies at that time had dealt on any substantive level with the Holocaust.) So when she and Nick go into the country to the Potato Farm and meet Albert Potato (Sydney Arnold), they also meet a whole bunch of French fighters, most notably including Deja Vu (Jim Carter, who you might have seen somewhere before). They also meet Hillary's long-lost lover, Nigel (Christopher Villiers), whom she apparently lived through The Blue Lagoon with.
When is the movie set? It really doesn't matter. For starters, it's the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker follow-up to Actual Dissolve Movie of the Week Airplane! Both movies have the same anarchic disregard to any chronology not in service to a joke. (Quick, what war did Ted Stryker fly in?) The movie's a little less tied to any specific film other than the extended Blue Lagoon riff in the middle, but it definitely shows its film heritage. Nick Rivers could probably be switched out with Elvis in several scenes and raise few eyebrows. It's even Peter Cushing's last film role for an American production.
Like its predecessor, it is also crammed with sight gags and wordplay. There's an 88-second-long sequence set in a Swedish bookstore that's a masterpiece of careful filming—it was shot backwards—and also utterly hilarious. Roger Ebert said it was a movie that was not for everyone, but he definitely felt it was for him, though he said in his review at the time that it didn't have a plot. Which is not true; it has an abundance of plot. It's just that the plot is completely unnecessary except as something to string the gags on. There's an underwater scene that's a parody of a Western bar fight that is really exceptional and serves utterly no purpose, and there's a romantic scene that takes place during a parachute drop.
And of course there's the soundtrack. You can't have a movie with Elvis movie roots without a soundtrack, and Kilmer definitely delivers there. By now, his singing voice shouldn't be a revelation to anyone; remember he sang his own songs when he played Jim Morrison. He sings "Skeet Surfin'" without breaking and "Tutti Frutti" without stumbling, and he sings a soulful ballad (admittedly in-universe a Macy's jingle) and a "let's start a dance craze" song with equal flair. Val Kilmer didn't need big-budget musicals to be a star, goodness knows, but it's kind of a shame that this is one of the closest things he got to one.
OUR NEXT MOVIE OF THE WEEK for 8/24: The Elephant Man
UNSEEN CLASSICS WEEK!
For Unseen Classics Week we're tackling David Lynch's sophomore film The Elephant Man, which brought him wide critical acclaim and eight Oscar nominations. Come join us next week for this character study of a heavily disfigured man living as a sideshow attraction. The Elephant Man is available for rent in the usual places.
NEXT PICTURE SHOW PODCAST for 8/18: Lord of the Flies
Next week kicks off a pairing about what happens when you let a bunch of boys run things, starting with Peter Brook's 1963 adaptation of Lord of the Flies. Join us Wednesday for our discussion of this film, available on the Criterion Channel, HBO Max, and Kanopy as well as for rent on Amazon Video and iTunes.
CATCH-UP WEEK!
Note: This week's essay is graciously provided by a guest contributor.
When I was a kid, my family used to watch what my mother persists in calling "dumb, stupid comedies" on summer weekends. Some of these, we would never watch again; some would become family staples, things to be viewed over and over again to the point that now, decades later, my sisters and I each own our own copy. It is therefore extremely appropriate that we of The Dissolve would finally get around to Top Secret! at a point that means I am writing this on the hottest day of the year in my current home.
Nick Rivers (Val Kilmer in his first feature role) is a young American singing sensation. He is traveling to East Germany to sing at a music festival and promote goodwill between the US and the Soviet Bloc. However, he sees Hillary Flammond (Lucy Gutteridge) being threatened and steps in; she turns out to be the daughter of scientist Dr. Paul Flammond (Michael Gough, who eleven years later would be Alfred to Val Kilmer's Batman), who is being held prisoner by the government. He agrees to help rescue Dr. Flammond, because he is already falling in love with Hillary.
Hillary is being helped by the French Resistance, because of course she is. The film's central conceit is that it is a Cold War film that is also a World War II film, because there is no important difference between the two. (Presumably this is in no small part because of how few World War II movies at that time had dealt on any substantive level with the Holocaust.) So when she and Nick go into the country to the Potato Farm and meet Albert Potato (Sydney Arnold), they also meet a whole bunch of French fighters, most notably including Deja Vu (Jim Carter, who you might have seen somewhere before). They also meet Hillary's long-lost lover, Nigel (Christopher Villiers), whom she apparently lived through The Blue Lagoon with.
When is the movie set? It really doesn't matter. For starters, it's the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker follow-up to Actual Dissolve Movie of the Week Airplane! Both movies have the same anarchic disregard to any chronology not in service to a joke. (Quick, what war did Ted Stryker fly in?) The movie's a little less tied to any specific film other than the extended Blue Lagoon riff in the middle, but it definitely shows its film heritage. Nick Rivers could probably be switched out with Elvis in several scenes and raise few eyebrows. It's even Peter Cushing's last film role for an American production.
Like its predecessor, it is also crammed with sight gags and wordplay. There's an 88-second-long sequence set in a Swedish bookstore that's a masterpiece of careful filming—it was shot backwards—and also utterly hilarious. Roger Ebert said it was a movie that was not for everyone, but he definitely felt it was for him, though he said in his review at the time that it didn't have a plot. Which is not true; it has an abundance of plot. It's just that the plot is completely unnecessary except as something to string the gags on. There's an underwater scene that's a parody of a Western bar fight that is really exceptional and serves utterly no purpose, and there's a romantic scene that takes place during a parachute drop.
And of course there's the soundtrack. You can't have a movie with Elvis movie roots without a soundtrack, and Kilmer definitely delivers there. By now, his singing voice shouldn't be a revelation to anyone; remember he sang his own songs when he played Jim Morrison. He sings "Skeet Surfin'" without breaking and "Tutti Frutti" without stumbling, and he sings a soulful ballad (admittedly in-universe a Macy's jingle) and a "let's start a dance craze" song with equal flair. Val Kilmer didn't need big-budget musicals to be a star, goodness knows, but it's kind of a shame that this is one of the closest things he got to one.
OUR NEXT MOVIE OF THE WEEK for 8/24: The Elephant Man
UNSEEN CLASSICS WEEK!
For Unseen Classics Week we're tackling David Lynch's sophomore film The Elephant Man, which brought him wide critical acclaim and eight Oscar nominations. Come join us next week for this character study of a heavily disfigured man living as a sideshow attraction. The Elephant Man is available for rent in the usual places.
NEXT PICTURE SHOW PODCAST for 8/18: Lord of the Flies
Next week kicks off a pairing about what happens when you let a bunch of boys run things, starting with Peter Brook's 1963 adaptation of Lord of the Flies. Join us Wednesday for our discussion of this film, available on the Criterion Channel, HBO Max, and Kanopy as well as for rent on Amazon Video and iTunes.