I realize I said in my previous post that I was "wrapping up" Musicals Week here by posting some clips, but guess what? I lied.
It's a blast watching clips from musicals for any number of reasons, not least of which is how odd they can look out of context. Then again, some of these clips look weird IN context.
These are a little more obscure, more beloved by cultists and/or cineasts. Let's start with a great, hilarious, utterly out-of-nowhere number from It's Always Fair Weather, directed and choreographed by Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen. Here's Dolores Gray doing "Thanks A Lot But No Thanks":
Movie Movie isn't a musical, at least not entirely. It's a parody of a typical thirties double feature, two movies in one, kind of like Grindhouse, only good. Half of it is a John Garfield-styled social drama, wonderfully titled Dynamite Hands, the other half a Busby Berkeley-type musical extravaganza, Baxter's Beauties Of 1933. Larry Gelbart's script is pure genius, but for our purposes, let's concentrate on this number, from Dynamite Hands. Stanley Donen directed, Michael Kidd choreographed, Ann Reinking supplied the legs:
Shock Treatment had the misfortune of being released in 1981, when Rocky Horror mania still ran wild. It was billed as a sequel, but despite characters named Brad and Janet, it's no such thing. It is, however, a remarkably prescient satire, set in a town that exists only to be monitored on TV twenty-four hours a day. Jim Sharman's direction is relentlessly inventive, Richard O'Brien's script and songs are witty and, as here, occasionally poignant:
That was the wonderful Jessica Harper, a big favorite around here, and not just because of her frequent nudity in the movie Inserts. No, we respect her for her fine comedic skills, and, as you could hear, her lovely singing voice. Here she is, once again bringing real emotion to a very dark, somewhat unhinged movie, in Brian DePalma's Phantom Of The Paradise:
Harper also appeared in Herbert Ross' haunting adaptation of Dennis Potter's TV serial Pennies from Heaven, but she didn't get to sing. Nobody did; it was the movie's conceit that the actors would lip synch to old thirties recordings, representing their dreams of a better world. Or, in this case, representing their truer, baser self. Christopher Walken, folks, dancing up a storm:
Pennies From Heaven is often described as Brechtian, but you can't do Brechtian better than the real thing. Here's Lotte Lenya in G.W. Pabst's film of Bertolt Brecht's The Threepenny Opera. The music, of course, is by one of my all-time heroes, Kurt Weill:
Shifting gears radically, to the stagebound but very enjoyable adaptation of the Broadway hit Lil Abner. This movie is notable, to some of us at least, for the presence of Leslie Parrish, Julie Newmar and Stella Stevens. (I have a story about the effect Stella Stevens had on one young lad's loins...but you probably don't want to hear it.) The presence of three top-heavy actresses and the shitkicker setting suggest a Russ Meyer effort, but no, this is Broadway all the way. And none of those babes are in this scene, but I love it anyway. The song is by Johnny Mercer and Gene DePaul, the staging is "adapted" from Michael Kidd's dances from the stage (he wasn't involved with the movie), and that's the great Stubby Kaye singing:
Kind of an odd choice here, but the 1996 Disney version of Hunchback Of Notre Dame, you should pardon, rang the final bell on that studio's Broadway-styled animated features. It's a frustrating movie, with flashes of greatness, but chock full of cutesy comic relief that simply doesn't belong there, and ultimately a frustrating mess. This opening sequence, masterfully staged and set to a dramatic Alan Menken-Stephen Schwartz score, promises a great movie that never materializes:
Finally, a real cult item. This number from the extremely low-budget extravaganza The Forbidden Zone attempts to convey some of the ambience of a 1930's Max Fleischer cartoon, which explains the guy in blackface, the leering sexuality and, above all, the Cab Calloway bit. This oddity was directed by Richard Elfman, and that's his brother Danny leading the band. Tim Burton was a fan of this movie, and gave Danny Elfman a chance to provide another Fleischer/Calloway riff in The Nightmare Before Christmas...Somehow, I doubt anyone at Disney knew about this:
