Ask FlickChick

Send your movie questions to FlickChick.

See Maitland "FlickChick" McDonagh and Ken Fox review this week's new flicks in Movie Talk!

Question: There was a movie about a little girl who goes through her mirrored closet door and enters a puppet world with little people with fat faces. There's a library in an apple, and the bookkeeper is a worm, and there's a witch who had to eat some disappearing fruit — maybe pears? — to stay young. Could you please tell me the title of this movie? I heard that it may have something to do with the word "huggies." — Dana

My sister and I have been trying to figure out the name of a movie we saw when we were younger. It was about a girl and how she could step through the mirror in her room and go into a fictional land with weird creatures. I specifically remember her shoe getting stuck in the mirror and the girl having to get some of her creature friends out of jail. Please help! — Alexis

FlickChick: Over the course of my eight years of writing Ask FlickChick, these are only two of the many questions I've received about what was clearly the same fantasy movie. It stumped me until this week, when I quite accidentally came across The Hugga Bunch/The Hugga Bunch Movie, a 1985 live-action/puppet-animation TV feature that was apparently a cross-platform product tie-in with some utterly, unbelievably hideous plush toys the Hallmark company spun off from a series of greeting-card characters. I have zero memories of anything to do with the Hugga Bunch, but the movie clearly crawled into a lot of youngsters' heads and stayed there, nagging at them. Here's a page from a toy-related fan site devoted to the movie. The Hugga Bunch was released on commercial video and is now out of print, but there are used copies available on Amazon and other sites — the cover art makes it look like an animated movie, but it's not. I've also seen DVDs for sale on smaller sites, but I have a feeling they're all bootlegs.

Send your movie questions to FlickChick.

Question: I was recently reminiscing about the first movie I ever saw in a theater. I saw it in the 1970s as part of an elementary-school field trip, and it was about Lafayette's involvement with bringing the French navy to help George Washington defeat General Cornwallis at the battle of Yorktown. I thought the title was something like "Let Freedom Ring," but the only listing I find on IMDB with that title is nothing like the film I remember. Any thoughts on what it might be? — David C.

FlickChick: How about Lafayette (1961), a historical epic about exactly the events you describe? The film was a lavish, French-language French/Italian coproduction, but a lot of dubbed foreign films were released in the U.S. in the 1960s and '70s. You clearly didn't see the film during its initial run, but I remember seeing A Man for All Seasons (1966) on a school trip that had to have been close to a decade after the film was initially released. Lafayette's international cast included U.K. star Jack Hawkins as General Cornwallis, Americans Orson Welles and Howard St. John as, respectively, Benjamin Franklin and George Washington, and French actor Michel Le Royer as the Marquis de Lafayette.

Send your movie questions to FlickChick.

Question: I am looking for the name of an old Western, probably from the late '40s or early '50s. In the movie, a group of famous star cowboys from that era gathered in this particular town to join forces to combat corrupt elements. I can't recall the names of the stars, so if you would, please try to find out for me. — Russell

FlickChick: I think you're remembering Trail of Robin Hood (1950), a Roy Rogers movie about a retired cowboy star — cowboy star Jack Holt, playing himself — who's trying to make a go of a business selling Christmas trees at affordable prices. Naturally, a heartless big company tries to put him out of business, so Rogers rounds up a posse of other B-stars from Western series — such as Rex Allen, Allan "Rocky" Lane, Ray "Crash" Corrigan, Monte Hale, Tom Keene, Tom Tyler, Kermit Maynard and William Farnum — to help out. The whole thing is weirdly self-referential for a low-budget '50s picture, especially the moment when George Chesebro, who spent much of his career playing shifty-eyed, lily-livered curs, throws in his lot with the white hats, declaring: "I've been a villain in Jack Holt's movies for 20 years; now I'd like to be on the right side for a change."

Send your movie questions to FlickChick.

Question: I hope you can help me with this, because it's been bothering me for a really long time. When I was a child I saw this movie on TV about a golem or something — something made of mud — and there's a scene where its arm gets shut in a door and the hand gets torn off and crawls away on its own. Do you have any idea what it was? — Bobby G.

FlickChick: Like the question about The Hugga Bunch, I've been getting variations on this one for years and had exhausted my ideas about crawling-hand movies, golem movies and primordial-slime monster movies like Spawn of the Slithis (1978) and Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster (1971). And then, lo and behold, I stumbled across this one while reading about The Norliss Tapes (1973), a made-for-TV movie I fondly remember, which Anchor Bay recently put out on DVD. Like The Norliss Tapes, which starred Roy Thinnes, The World Beyond (1978) was a pilot that never went to series. In fact, it was a second-try pilot, made the year after The World of Darkness; both were scripted by old TV hand Art Wallace and revolved around former sports writer Paul Taylor (prolific TV actor Granville Van Dusen), who survived a near-death experience and found himself able to hear the voices of the dead. The World of Darkness seems to have left no impression on anyone, but The World Beyond, which was subtitled "Episode 1: Monster" (or maybe "Mud Monster") made a hell of an impression on a whole lot of people. I've seen references to a DVD, but I can't find any evidence that there was ever a legitimate video or DVD release of either World of... installment, and I haven't even run across any sources for bootlegs.

Send your movie questions to FlickChick.

See Maitland "FlickChick" McDonagh and Ken Fox review this week's new flicks in Movie Talk!

Send your movie questions to FlickChick.

See Maitland McDonagh and Ken Fox review this week's new flicks in Movie Talk!

As I suffered through the tedious psychological thriller Premonition, starring Sandra Bullock as a woman haunted by shattering visions of her husband's death, I couldn't help but think of Don't Look Now (1973), a film whose mix of intense family drama and paranormal phenomena not only works, but works so well that more than 30 years after I first saw it, the fleeting image of a child in a bright red coat can still give me chills. So what better choice for this week's DVD Tuesday pick?

Directed by Nicolas Roeg and based on a short story by Daphne du Maurier (Rebecca, The Birds) Don't Look Now begins with the death of a small girl, Christine: She drowns in a pond on her parents' country estate. Her father, John (Donald Sutherland), has a sudden intuition that something is wrong, but arrives too late to do anything but pull his daughter's body, dressed in a distinctive red slicker, from the water. Wracked with guilt, John — an architect — subsequently takes a job restoring a church in Venice. He hopes an extended break from familiar surroundings will help him and his wife, Laura (Julie Christie), get over their child's death. But once there, they meet a blind psychic who claims to have seen Christine; soon John himself begins having visions — of a funeral barge gliding through the canals and a small red-lad figure — that convince him he too can see what ordinary people can't. John's determination to speak to Christine's restless spirit sets the film en route to a twist ending so inexorable it approaches the proportions of Greek tragedy.

The reason Don't Look Now works and Premonition — which I'm now using the exemplify the kind of lazy, pointless thriller in which "clever" twists trump all — doesn't is that Don't Look Now's weird goings-on are rooted in solid characterization. John and Laura, both intelligent, capable people, are unmoored by grief, guilt and despair. Nothing makes sense to them after Christine's death, so they're looking for a new sense and find it in omens and signs. Roeg — a world-class cinematographer before he turned to directing — scatters signposts through the mise en scene in the form of ominous slashes and splotches of red, but where they lead and where John thought they were leading are two very different things.

Things to consider:

Do you care about believable characters in thrillers, or are you just along for the twists and turns of a slick thrill ride?

What twist ending made the biggest impression on you?

Could you enjoy watching that same movie a second time knowing the ending, or would that feel pointless?

Send your movie questions to FlickChick.

Previous DVD Tuesday blogs:

Re-Animator
Casino Royale
Pi
The Prestige
13 Tzameti
The Departed
Suspiria
Kiss and Make Up
Kiss Me Deadly
The Long Good Friday
What Alice Found
The Devil's Backbone
The Descent
The Devil Wears Prada
Pandora's Box
The Thief and the Cobbler
Nashville
Panic in the Streets/Jack Palance Interview
The Pusher Trilogy
Scarface
Slither
Sunset Blvd.
In Cold Blood
Brick

Also: This week's new DVD releases

Send your movie questions to FlickChick.

See Maitland McDonagh and Ken Fox review this week's new flicks in Movie Talk!

I can't believe Re-Animator, one of my great horror-movie viewing experiences of the 1980s, is more than 20 years old. But the release of a new, two-disc special-edition DVD from Anchor Bay is an excellent excuse to revisit it in DVD Tuesday.

The 1980 success of Friday the 13th launched a string of stalk-and-slash movies, and while the cream of the slasher crop includes some top-notch fright flicks, overall it's not my favorite kind of horror film. Which only makes Re-Animator that much more delightfully surprising. A throwback to the golden age of manmade-monster movies based on H.P. Lovecraft's then little-known Herbert West: Re-Animator, master of horror Stuart Gordon's debut film manages the tricky feat of being genuinely shocking and genuinely funny.

Let me be clear: I hate horror comedies in general and horror spoofs in particular. But Re-Animator doesn't make fun of the genre. It finds the dark humor in any obsessive dedication to some warped but worthy-sounding goal that is carried to its deranged extreme — which is a staple of fight flicks in general and mad-doctor movies in particular. Medical student Herbert West's (Jeffrey Combs) "obscene doodling with human body parts" is so grotesque you have to laugh, especially since he himself has absolutely, positively no sense of humor. West couldn't see the humor in reducing his rival, lecherous Dr. Hill (character actor David Gale, one of the film's secret weapons) to a decapitated head in a pan if you diagrammed it for him. But Hill's single-minded pursuit of lovely student Megan Halsey (Barbara Crampton), even after his head and body have been separated, produces the movie's notorious visual one-liner, which I won't spoil for those who haven't seen it.

I can't recommended Re-Animator highly enough, even to those who aren't die-hard horror freaks, though I must warn the squeamish that it's very, very gory. I recently had the great good fortune to chat about the film with director Gordon, and I've used some of his thoughts in the discussion items below. Click through for the complete interview.

Things to consider:

MM: Why has Re-Animator held up so vividly when many horror films of the 1980s now look dated?
SG: I think it's partly because it can still take people by surprise.

MM: Genre filmmakers often talk about the relationship between scares and laughter — discuss horror spoofs vs horror films with humorous elements.
SG: The humor in Re-Animator comes out of the characters, rather than from the impulse to show that we — the filmmakers, the audience — are better than this kind of thing. [Audiences] need to laugh, not because the movie is silly, but because they have to get rid of some of that tension that builds up when you're doing everything right.

MM: Do remakes help introduce a new audience to the classic horror movies of the 1970s and '80s, or do they just drag down the genre by running its icons into the ground?
SG: I really don't like the remake trend. We need new monsters, not rehashes of tired old monsters.

MM: Serious horror buffs and theorists of the genre (guilty as charged!) are quick to see sexual metaphors in horror films. Valid interpretations, or just so much academic nonsense?
SG: All horror movies [are] about nothing less than life and death. Sex is all about creating new life, and death is about extinguishing life. So of course horror movies are all wrapped up in sex!

Previous DVD Tuesday blogs:

Casino Royale
Pi
The Prestige
13 Tzameti
The Departed
Suspiria
Kiss and Make Up
Kiss Me Deadly
The Long Good Friday
What Alice Found
The Devil's Backbone
The Descent
The Devil Wears Prada
Pandora's Box
The Thief and the Cobbler
Nashville
Panic in the Streets/Jack Palance Interview
The Pusher Trilogy
Scarface
Slither
Sunset Blvd.
In Cold Blood
Brick

Also: This week's new DVD releases

Read the Re-Animator Reanimated DVD Tuesday blog.

Send your movie questions to FlickChick.

See Maitland McDonagh and Ken Fox review this week's new flicks in Movie Talk!


On the occasion of a new DVD of Re-Animator, director Stuart Gordon shared some thoughts with Maitland McDonagh about horror, humor and severed heads.

Maitland McDonagh: Re-Animator continues to attract new viewers while many of its contemporaries are gathering dust on the shelves. Why?

Stuart Gordon: Re-Animator is into its third generation now – which I think is partly because it can still take people by surprise. Dr. Hill [David Gale] is an outrageous character -- I mean, he's lusting after that poor girl even when he's a severed head being carried around in a bag. But I think it's also Dr. West [Jeffrey Combs]: He's so myopic, so possessed by the vision of what he wants to do to the exclusion of everything else that his mania is funny and horrifying at the same time. And when you look past the corpses, I think a lot of people know someone like that.

And I really believe that one of the reasons Re-Animator continues to play so well is that anticipates the needs of the horror viewer: They want to laugh, not because the movie is silly, but because they have to get rid of some of that tension that builds up when you're doing everything right. If you give them an utterly outrageous line of dialogue or image they'll laugh because you've provided an opportunity to let it all out. Then you can go right back to playing on their nerves and they're with you.

MM: What's the difference between a horror movie that incorporates humor and a horror spoof, and how do you feel about each?

SG: The thing about the humor in Re-Animator is that it isn’t making fun of the film. It comes out of the characters, rather than from the impulse to show that we – the filmmakers, the audience – are better than "this kind of thing." I don't like horror spoofs because by and large, they're made by people who don't like horror movies. They use the excuse of parody to show their contempt for the genre, which comes through loud and clear.

That's where a movie like Peter Jackson's Dead Alive [1992] differs from the nudge-nudge spoofs: He knows the conventions of zombie movies and he's having fun with them, but the humor comes out of the characters and the situations. They're not cheap gags designed to show how dumb zombie movies are.

I remember meeting Peter at some event and asking him just how much blood he used in Dead Alive, because until then Re-Animator was widely considered to hold the record for most blood spilled onscreen – we used about 30 gallons of fake blood. Peter said they'd used 3000. I suppose you could say Stanley Kubrick used more for the elevator sequence in The Shining [1980], but I don't think that really counts.

MM: Technical skill counts for a lot in horror movies, and pretty much anyone can learn the mechanics of a suspense sequence. So why can't more filmmakers just go by the numbers and make an effective, if not inspired, horror movie?

SG: Because you have to love horror to connect with the stuff under the surface, and that’s where you find what resonates. Take Neil Marshall's The Descent [2005], for example -- he doesn't think he's slumming in horror. He's with it all the way. I think in some ways horror is very unforgiving, and if you make a false step you risk losing viewers and not getting them back.

The genre has always been marginalized, and yet the images it produces are among the most persistent ones in movies. Brian Yuzna, who produced Re-Animator, once said to me that the image absolutely everyone recognizes is Boris Karloff as Frankenstein's monster. They don't have to have seen Frankenstein [1931]. That image, from an 70 year old movie, speaks for itself and people immediately know what it is.

MM: In my Ask FlickChick column, I often get questions that begin "I don't know whether this was really a movie I saw or whether it's a dream I had..."

SG: (Laughs) That's great! Horror movies are like dreams; they don't always make sense in a linear way because their logic is allusive, but it's completely compelling. It's coming from someplace very deep and very potent, which is why those images linger and haunt us.

MM: What are some of your favorite horror movies, the ones you'd recommend to non-fans?

SG: Horror movies just aren't for everyone, and some of that is hardwired in: My younger daughter, who's in college now, still can't bear them. But I love Rosemary's Baby [1968]. It impressed the hell out of my from the first time I saw it, and in Re-Animator I ended up copying Roman Polanski's style. He has a way of putting the viewer into the film, like the scene in The Tenant [1976] when Trelkovsky looks out the window because he hears some kind of commotion on the street. Most directors would have cut to a street-level shot of what was going on, but Polanski keeps you up there, looking down with the character. It's simple and it's brilliant.

After Rosemary's Baby, I'd say Psycho [1960]. Never gets old. And Audition [1999]. That little noise she makes when she's sticking the poor guy full of needles... brrrr!

MM: Why do you think Asian horror movies have made such inroads into the Western horror market when the average moviegoer will do anything not to see a movie with subtitles?

SG: I think Asian filmmakers have made such a splash because they bring a new approach to familiar material. That's what horror buffs want: They love a certain kind of story, but they want to see it with a fresh spin or perspective. Many Asian horror movies are ghost stories of one kind or another. But the way those filmmakers present the ghosts – what they look like, what they want, the way they interact with the living – is fresh, at least to Americans.

MM: So I'm guessing you're not a big fan of the current spate of remakes of horror movies from the 1970s and '80s.

SG: I really don't like the remake trend. We need new monsters, like the cave dwellers in The Descent, not rehashes of tired old monsters.

MM: Serious horror buffs and horror theorists see sexual subtexts everywhere. Do you think that's a legitimate insight, or is it just over-intellectualizing?

SG: I once met somebody who'd written a book about horror and argued that all horror movies are sexual in nature. Vampire stories are about sex with a stranger, someone coming into your room at night and having his way with you. Werewolf movies are about unleashing the beast within. And Frankenstein stories are inherently masturbatory.

I was a little offended at that, since I always thought of Re-Animator as a different spin on the Frankenstein theme. But he said look, Frankenstein movies are all about creating life without a woman. And I had to say, hmmm... I see the point. And that plays into what all horror movies are about, which is nothing less than life and death. Sex is all about creating new life, and death is about extinguishing life. So of course horror movies are all wrapped up in sex!

Send your movie questions to FlickChick.

See Maitland McDonagh and Ken Fox review this week's new flicks in Movie Talk!

Send your movie questions to FlickChick.

See Maitland McDonagh and Ken Fox review this week's new flicks in Movie Talk!

Question: I remember seeing a Zorro movie, probably in the late '70s or early '80s, that featured a song I remember distinctly. I haven't been able to find the title, but I believe Zorro's alter ego was either the king or some other aristocrat. The song lyrics are something like, "He used to be the king/Fa la la la/Zorro's back." Please help me get this question answered so I can get this song out of my head! — Everett

FlickChick: The movie was a Spanish version of Zorro made in 1975 with French actor Alain Delon as "The Fox." The song is "Zorro Is Back," written by Maurizio and Guido De Angelis and someone called "S. Duncan Smith," which sounds like a pseudonym but could be for real, I have no idea. The De Angelises, who contributed to a number of European movie soundtracks in the 1970s, also recorded under the name "Oliver Onions" (named after a 19th-century English writer whose work included several classic horror stories, including "Widdershins" and "The Beckoning Fair One"). The song is on the Bottle Rocket (1996) soundtrack, and you can click here for a clip of it. Or maybe not, if your goal is to get it out of your head. Oliver Onions also has a website: Abandon hope, all ye who enter here!

Send your movie questions to FlickChick.

Question: Where does the name of the movie The Departed come from? — Miller

FlickChick: "The departed" mean "the dead," and Martin Scorsese's The Departed is in part about the hold the "dearly departed" have over the living. The title of Mou gaan dou, the 2002 original Hong Kong film (not Japanese, contrary to what was said at the Oscars) from which it's adapted, translates as "The Nonstop Way," and apparently alludes to the Buddhist religion's most miserable level of hell.

Clearly "The Nonstop Way" isn't a catchy title for a mainstream American crime thriller, and while Infernal Affairs, the U.S. release title of the original film, is a clever play on "internal affairs," it suggests something other than a gritty crime thriller, something with supernatural implications. So Scorsese and his collaborators opted to rethink the title entirely.

Send your movie questions to FlickChick.

Question: I remember seeing a movie in the late 1970s about a plane crash. The only survivor was a young teenage girl; I remember her falling from the sky still strapped to her seat. She ate cake from the plane but it had salt in it and made her thirsty, and she squeezed out bugs from her legs before being rescued at the end of the film. Was this based on a real crash? I always think I'll see it some late night while I'm up, but I haven't seen it for years. — Jacqueline

FlickChick:
This is a question I've answered before, but you're not the only person with vivid memories of the Italian film I Miracoli Accadono Ancora/Miracles Still Happen (1974), which seems to have started airing on U.S. TV in the late 1970s/early '80s. For more details and an odd Werner Herzog connection, click here.

Send your movie questions to FlickChick.

Send your movie questions to FlickChick.

See Maitland McDonagh and Ken Fox review this week's new flicks in Movie Talk!

This DVD Tuesday is Casino Royale, which features the sixth official James Bond, suave Pierce Brosnan's refreshingly rough-edged replacement. Though I'm often perceived as contrarian, I'm 100 percent on board with the opinion that Daniel Craig is the best James Bond since Sean Connery retired his license to kill all those years ago.

I don't think Casino Royale is the best Bond film ever: I find Eva Green a thoroughly forgettable presence (albeit a relief from the prefabricated, anonymous likes of Denise Richards, Teri Hatcher and Tanya Roberts), and I could have done without having to sit through two large-scale action sequences before the start of the story proper. Though to be fair, the parkour sequence is pretty spectacular – I just wish it hadn't been stuck at the beginning as some kind of sop to people who can't imagine a James Bond movie without a mess of overblown stunt sequences. But overall, what I like best about Casino Royale is how assiduously it strips away most of the things I've grown to dislike about the Bond franchise: the jokey quips, the CGI-assisted action set-pieces, the endless chase sequences and the preposterous, Dr. Evil-worthy plots. How great is it that Bond's mission is to take out a scummy financier by bankrupting him at the poker table? And I love that Daniel Craig not only finds the essence of Bond under the layer of mannerisms built up by five previous actors, but actually goes deeper. His Bond is a work in progress, a common thug reinventing himself as a wolf in rouι's clothing. In fact, the scene in which Craig's Bond first tries on evening clothes and realizes how smooth he looks and how disarming that smoothness could be in a pinch is flat-out brilliant. As is the movie's take on the iconic shaken versus stirred issue: When Craig growls, "Do I look like I give a damn?" it makes you glad you're not that bartender. Not to mention that Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen is one hell of a Bond villain.

I've heard it said that people always have a soft spot for the first Bond they saw in a theater (as opposed to TV or DVD), but it wasn't that way for me: Live and Let Die (1973) was my first theatrical Bond, and I never cared for Roger Moore in the role. By the end of his tenure I actively hated him as 007. I loved Connery, liked Brosnan (too light, but after Moore he seemed like a natural born killer), and thought Timothy Dalton never had a real chance — he was stuck in subpar movies and hampered by that no-womanizing idea that blew over almost as fast as he did. I know some heretical Bond-philes think one-movie wonder George Lazenby was the best of all, but I remain unconvinced: I'd rank Dalton around the same — interesting and promising, but there's not enough evidence to make a real call.

Anyway, all this is leading to my recommendation that if you haven't seen Casino Royale yet, now is the time to do it.

Things to consider:

How did secret agent James Bond join the rarified ranks of fictional characters who entirely transcend the specific time and place that spawned them: Dracula, Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Frankenstein, the Phantom of the Opera etc?

What do you consider the best James Bond movie, and why? And who do you think was the best Bond, especially if your pick for best actor isn't the star of your best-movie pick?

Where do you stand on the earlier incarnations of Casino Royale — the 1954 TV version starring Barry Nelson as an American Bond and Peter Lorre as Le Chiffre, the 1967 spoof, and the rogue Never Say Never Again (1983)? Are these movies part of the Bond canon, or are they apocrypha, as the makers of the "official" series like to claim?

For serious Bond-philes, which Ian Fleming book (or short story) do you think should be the next new Bond?

Previous DVD Tuesday blogs:

Pi
The Prestige
13 Tzameti
The Departed
Suspiria
Kiss and Make Up
Kiss Me Deadly
The Long Good Friday
What Alice Found
The Devil's Backbone
The Descent
The Devil Wears Prada
Pandora's Box
The Thief and the Cobbler
Nashville
Panic in the Streets/Jack Palance Interview
The Pusher Trilogy
Scarface
Slither
Sunset Blvd.
In Cold Blood
Brick

Also: This week's new DVD releases

Send your movie questions to FlickChick.

See Maitland McDonagh and Ken Fox review this week's new flicks in Movie Talk!

Question: I read somewhere that the song "Maniac" from Flashdance was originally written for the slasher movie Maniac. I find that really hard to believe, but could it be true? — Gary

FlickChick: This is one of those rumors so nutty you're inclined to believe it, and it appears there's a speck of truth to it — but only a speck. Michael Sembello's "Maniac" was not written for Bill Lustig's notorious Maniac (1980), which starred Joe Spinell as a New York-based serial murderer who stalks and scalps women. Sembello's account of how the song came into being has his writing partner Dennis Matkosky seeing Maniac and scribbling down the (presumably parodic) lyrics, "He's a maniac, maniac that's for sure/He will kill your cat and nail him to the door." Presumably the two worked it into a rough track and set it aside, because Sembello claims that when he was working on songs for Flashdance (which was released in 1983, which means it went into development not long after Maniac opened) the film's soundtrack producer, Phil Ramone, heard a version of "Maniac" and suggested it might work for the film if the lyrics were changed, so they instead described a girl whose "mania" was a burning love of dance.

That "it can cut you like a knife" line always sounded a little odd to me in the context of Flashdance's story of dreams and dancing, but as a holdover from a Maniac-inspired version, it makes all the sense in the world.

Send your movie questions to FlickChick.

Question: I saw an old romantic comedy on TV a while ago and can't remember the title — it's driving me crazy. It was about a daughter who asked her mother how she got her husband to be so perfect; the mom suggests that she train her husband using a dog-training book. The movie was adorable. Do you know the title? — H.B. Spero

FlickChick: I've answered this question in the past, but it never ceases to amaze me how it seems to resonate a full 45 years after it was made. The movie is If a Man Answers (1962), starring teen idol Sandra Dee as the unhappy young wife, and singer Bobby Darin (her real-life husband) as the bad spouse who needs training. Why do I suspect that "H" doesn't stand for Henry or Hugh or Harold or Humphrey or... well, you get the idea.

Addendum: OK, this is the weirdest thing. As I was getting ready to post, I got an e-mail pitch with the subject line, "Quirky Song on YouTube Puts Men in the Dog House." And it gets better. To quote from the e-mail:

Have you ever heard a woman wish a man could be more like a dog?... Well, now there's a song [by Gini Graham Scott]... that expresses exactly this feeling.

The song is called "I Sure Wish a Man Could Be More Like a Dog." The lyrics start off:

Well, I sure wish a man could be more like a dog.
He'd be loyal and true,
no trouble at all.
He'd listen to me,
stop when I say no.
He'd fetch what I want,
and come when I call.

All I have to say is, plus ηa change!

Send your movie questions to FlickChick.

See Maitland McDonagh and Ken Fox review this week's new flicks in Movie Talk!

See Maitland McDonagh and Ken Fox review this week's new flicks in Movie Talk!

Send your movie questions to FlickChick.

Mathematicians live in a black and white world of absolutes and infinitely reproducible results, while mystics deal in ambiguity and magical thinking, and never the twain shall meet. Except, of course, when math becomes so theoretical that the two melt into one mind-blowing mass of golden proportions and lucky numbers. Nearly 10 years before Jim Carrey got tangled up in The Number 23, this week's DVD Tuesday pick pitched camp on the numerical border between razor's-edge rationality and complete lunacy. Darren Aronofsky's super-low budget Pi (1998) was a knockout debut, and if he hasn't yet delivered on its promise (Requiem for a Dream (2000) is a highfalutin' "Just Say No" PSA with style to burn and The Fountain (2006) is a flat-out mess), the film itself looks better than ever.

Mathematician Max Cohen (Sean Gullette) specializes in number patterns, the bigger the better. He's looking for the sequence of digits that will lay bare the order of the world (or life, the universe and everything, in which case it's 42). A true believer in the purity of numbers themselves, he only wants is to be left to the calculations that are slowly driving him out of his mind. But Max's theoretical investigations have attracted the attention of two diametrically opposed, equally fanatical sets of seekers: a ruthless group of financial analysts looking for a way to game the stock market, and a sect of orthodox Jews convinced the true name of God is hidden in a 216-digit number buried somewhere in the Torah.

Shot in stark black-and-white and driven by Pop Will Eat Itself alumnus Clint Mansell's hypnotic score, Pi vividly evokes the chilly horror of being trapped in an unraveling reality where no one and nothing is as it seems. Aronofsky does paranoia right, but also understands the way personal obsessions can reflect larger cultural anxieties: that's why Pi resonates as strongly today as it did when it was new.

Things to consider:

Numerology is to academic mathematics what astrology is to astronomy: What does that mean, and is it true?

Many films try to find a visual way to depict states of mind: Why is that so hard to do, and what films have done it well?

Phrases like "do the math" and "it doesn't add up" are rooted in our cultural convictions about numbers. What are the underlying ideas behind those statements?

Previous DVD Tuesday blogs:

The Prestige
13 Tzameti
The Departed
Suspiria
Kiss and Make Up
Kiss Me Deadly
The Long Good Friday
What Alice Found
The Devil's Backbone
The Descent
The Devil Wears Prada
Pandora's Box
The Thief and the Cobbler
Nashville
Panic in the Streets/Jack Palance Interview
The Pusher Trilogy
Scarface
Slither
Sunset Blvd.
In Cold Blood
Brick

Also: This week's new DVD releases

See Maitland McDonagh and Ken Fox review this week's new flicks in Movie Talk!

Send your movie questions to FlickChick.

Question: I once read an interview with Eddie and the Cruisers/Eddie and the Cruisers II star Michael Pare about the possibility of a second sequel. He said he had an idea for one, so when I found a review online for Eddie and the Cruisers 3, I was really excited although I wasn't so happy that Pare had been replaced as Eddie. Maybe that's why it didn't get any attention – that, plus it was probably released direct to video. But I'd still kind of like to see it and haven't had any luck tracking it down. Can you help? -- Liz

FlickChick: You sent me on a merry chase, Liz. The fact is, nothing ever came of Michael Pare's idea for a second Eddie and the Cruisers sequel, whatever it was. The "review" you found of "Eddie and the Cruisers 3: Working Man Blues" is a hoax, and a really good one. "Working Man Blues" sounds ridiculous, but no more ridiculous then, say, MGM's upcoming WarGames (1983) sequel, Wargames II: The Dead Code, starring Matt Lanter as a teen computer whiz who hacks into a paranoid super computer programmed to run terrorist-attack simulations and directed by Mark Gillard, who once starred in the '70s Canadian sitcom Pardon My French. No joke.

So yeah, you could substitute 21 Jump Street alumnus Richard Grieco for Pare as an aging rocker, and restage key scenes from the first two films so the flashbacks match. That's basically what Eddie and the Cruisers II: Eddie Lives! (1989) director Jean-Claude Lord did for real: He needed a revised scene between Pare and co-star Tom Berenger, who'd picked up a best supporting actor nomination for Platoon (1986) during the intervening years, wasn't interested in coming back for a reshoot. So Lord just shot a new version of the scene, with Eddie talking to a different character from the first film.

"Dorito's commercial star Ali Landry" as Eddie's new love interest, a die-hard hip-hop fan? Check.

The plot's not-quite-timely spin on Farm Aid, which finds Eddie trying to put together a benefit for downtrodden pipefitters? Check.

Oh, and the director is former Perfect Strangers co-star Mark Linn-Baker (you remember, the second banana to quintessential one-trick pony Bronson Pinchot). Checkmate!

Even the poster is a pitch-perfect pastiche. So kudos to the prankster (and his cohorts -- the other two reviews in the column are bogus too, and equally inspired), but my sympathy to the Cruisers fans whose hopes I'm crushing.

Send your movie questions to FlickChick.

Question: As a small child my mother would keep me entertained in her restaurant by letting me watch TV for hours. About 30 years ago I saw a movie titled "Hell's-A-Poppin." It had what seemed to me at the time, every star in Hollywood making a cameo appearance; I have spent several hours searching the Internet to see if there is any reference to it. All I can remember about the movie is that Fay Wray and Joe E. Brown were in it and that at the beginning a man was walking through a theatre with a very small plant searching for a Mrs. Jones; by the end the tree was huge and he was once again yelling out for Mrs. Jones while the audience watched the show on stage. Any help that you can give me would be great -- I'd like to re-connect with this movie if I could. -- Gwenn

FlickChick: The trouble is that you've been spelling the title in a way consistent with the rules of standard English-language spelling. Try Hellzapoppin' and it's a whole different story.

An anything-goes showcase for hugely successful vaudeville comedians Ole Olson and Chic Johnson, it's anarchic, self-referential, broad, sophisticated, cynical, dated, prescient and just plain weird, all at the same time. There's so much happening on so many different levels that a little girl and a middle-aged movie geek can both get sucked in by its unrestrained looniness.

The plot – and I used that word loosely – revolves around the tribulations of a pair of comedians called Ole Olson and Chic Johnson as they try to make a movie for Miracle Pictures. The studio's slogan -- "If it's a good picture, it's a Miracle!" – was appropriated with all due respect by movie buff-turned-filmmaker Joe Dante in his insider comedy Hollywood Boulevard (1976). The diverse cast includes comedienne Martha Raye, a pre-Stooge Shemp Howard and Savoy Ballroom stars Whitey's Lindy Hoppers.

Interestingly, the only group more anxious to get their hands on Hellzapoppin' than people whose little minds blown by seeing it on TV as kids are ballroom dancing enthusiasts: This clip, the only bit of the film I've been able to find online, shows you why.

Now the bad news as it applies to reacquainting yourself. It's never been available on VHS or Region-1 DVD (though there is a PAL-format tape and it was recently released on Region-2 DVD in the UK) and is rarely shown on US TV anymore. Even bootlegs are scarce and this is the point at which I need to say that bootlegs are illegal and revenues from the sale of such copies do not benefit the creators or legal rights holders, who aren't necessarily the same individuals. Sorry, that was cynical. True, though.

In any event, I'd be lying if I said I'd never bought a bootleg of an otherwise-unavailable film. Like, say, Hellzapoppin', which is entangled in a snarl of underlying rights issues, specifically the rights to the original play on which the movie was based, which Paramount Pictures apparently bought for a set period rather than in perpetuity. What where they thinking, you may ask. Well, what they were thinking back in 1941 was that the shelf life of movies was so short it didn't make sense to pay more than you had to for rights. Theater people had already learned to think long-term about the value of entertainment properties: If Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet could remain viable centuries after it was written, it made sense not to undervalue long-term rights. But back then, movies were as good as worthless a few month after they first appeared in theaters: There was no TV, no video, no DVD… there weren't even revival houses. But oh, the frsutrating repercussions!

All thet said, there is a ray of hope: The Marx Brothers' Animal Crackers (1930) was out of circulation for decades for the same reason as Hellzapoppin', and the issues were eventually worked out.

Send your movie questions to FlickChick.


Question: I seem to remember hearing that Pan's Labyrinth, which I thought was one of the top three -- let alone top five -- movies of 2006, wasn't eligible for a best picture nomination at the Oscars. I was recently on the Academy's website and looked up the eligibility rules: I didn't see anything there about a foreign film being ineligible for best picture. Do you know the answer? -- Pat

FlickChick: Pan's Labyrinth was absolutely eligible for nomination in the best picture category. In fact, there's nothing to stop a film being nominated simultaneously in both the best picture category and the best foreign film category. It doesn't happen often but it does happen, witness The Emigrants (1971) and Z (1969).

So Pan was just plain overlooked. I read one theory that makes sense to me: The gist is that Pan made the foreign film cut because there's a special nominating committee for foreign films and they're required to watch all submissions, while best picture nominations are made by the entire membership. They're they're not required to view every eligible film and may not have seen Pan for the same reason many moviegoers haven't: It's in Spanish and they don't like reading subtitles. This is a bias I don't understand and while I'd like to think film-industry professions would feel an obligation to see a movie that garnered such overwhelming acclaim before nominating in the best picture category, I don't.

Do I have your attention?

It really boggles my mind that two of this year's Oscar nominees — best-actress winner Helen Mirren and best-actor nominee Peter O'Toole — were in Caligula (1980), the pioneering historical epic/sexually explicit film. I vividly remember waiting on line to see it when it opened in NYC at the "Penthouse East," formerly the Transluxe East.... I saw Rudolph Nureyev in line, for heaven's sake!

And I just reread Ultimate Porno: The Making of a Sex Colossal, a truly astonishing book by Tinto Brass' first AD, Piernico Solinas, about the shooting of Caligula. All I can say is that in its own sordid way it's the best book I've ever read about a movie spiraling out of control. If you can find a copy of Ultimate Porno, grab it: I bought mine when I was writing The 50 Most Erotic Films of All Time, which includes a chapter on Caligula (more because it was groundbreaking than because it was sexy), and it tells you more about how utterly banal, coarse and awful filmmaking can be than anything I've ever read.

Mirren and O'Toole come off well, though, as do star Malcolm McDowell and featured player John Gielgud.