Gene de Paul Movies

The plot of William Friedkin's suspense thriller originated with the same Georges Arnaud novel that inspired Henri-Georges Clouzot's French suspense classic The Wages of Fear (1953). Roy Scheider, Bruno Cremer, Francisco Rabal, and Amidou play four men who, for various reasons, cannot return to their own countries. They end up in a dismal South American town where an American oil company is seeking out courageous drivers willing to haul nitroglycerin over 200 miles of treacherous terrain. The four stateless men have nothing to lose -- and, besides, they'll be paid 10,000 dollars apiece, and be granted legal citizenship, if they survive. The suspense is almost unbearable at times, even outdistancing the tension level of The Wages of Fear in certain scenes. Sorcerer had all the earmarks of a moneymaker, but this picture bombed for a rather odd and silly reason: its glaringly inappropriate title. Fans of Friedkin's The Exorcist may have gone home disappointed that not one sorcerer ever rears its ugly head. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

1959's Li'l Abner was adapted from the hit 1956 Broadway musical--which, in turn, was inspired by the satirical comic strip by Al Capp. Peter Palmer recreates his Broadway role as Li'l Abner Yokum, the handsome, muscle-bound, muscle-brained leading hillbilly of Dogpatch, USA. The citizens of Dogpatch are in an uproar because their ramshackle community has been designated the "most useless" town in America, and therefore a prime candidate for an atomic bomb testing site. At first, the Dogpatchers consider their least-desirable status a great honor, but then they despair upon realizing that they'll have to vacate the premise before the annual girl-chases-boy Sadie Hawkins Day race. Together with his Mammy (Billie Hayes) and Pappy (Joe E. Marks), Li'l Abner is dispatched to Washington DC, to argue that Dogpatch has some vital significance: after all, only in Dogpatch can one partake of the Yokumberry Tonic, the source of Abner's super strength. Shifty billionaire General Bullmoose (Howard St. John) wants that Yokumberry tonic for his own devices, and to that end dispatches his lady friend Appasionatta von Climax (Stella Stevens) to Dogpatch to catch Li'l Abner during the Sadie Hawkins race and thus secure the mountain boy's cooperation via marriage. Li'l Abner's erstwhile girl friend Daisy Mae Scragg (Leslie Parrish) would likewise like to snare Abner in the race, but Appasionata wins, thanks to the squirrelly Evil Eye Fleegle (Al Nesor), whose "triple whammy" paralyzes Abner just inches before the finish line. If you think all this is unbelievable, wait till you see how the story resolves itself. Featured in the cast is Stubby Kaye as Marryin' Sam, who leads the hillbilly chorus in the musical's best number, "Jubilation T. Corpone". Other Johnny Mercer-Gene de Paul tunes carried over from the Broadway version of Li'l Abner are "A Typical Day," "If I Had My Druthers," "Namely You," "The Country's in the Very Best of Hands," "Past My Prime," "Put 'Em Back (The Way They Wuz)" and "The Matrimonial Stomp."The film is staged in the same broad, caricatured manner as the play, which only adds to the fun. An earlier, unrelated movie adaptation of Li'l Abner, filmed in 1940, is best forgotten, as is a series of lukewarm Abner cartoons produced by Screen Gems in the late forties. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This Disney feature-length cartoon combines the most entertaining elements of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. Chasing after the White Rabbit, who runs into view singing "I'm Late! I'm Late!," Alice falls down the rabbit hole into the topsy-turvy alternate world of Wonderland. She grows and shrinks after following the instructions of a haughty caterpillar, attends a "Very Merry Unbirthday" party in the garden of the Mad Hatter and the March Hare, stands in awe as the Cheshire Cat spouts philosophy, listens in rapt attention as Tweedledum and Tweedledee relate the story of the Walrus and the Carpenter (a sequence usually cut when Alice is shown on TV), and closes out her day with a hectic croquet game at the home of the Red Queen. The music and production design of Alice in Wonderland is marvelous, but the film is too much of a good thing, much too frantic to do full honor to the whimsical Carroll original, and far too episodic to hang together as a unified feature film. One tactical error is having Alice weep at mid-point, declaring her wish to go home: This is Alice in Wonderland, Walt, not Wizard of Oz! Its storytelling shortcomings aside, Alice in Wonderland is superior family entertainment (never mind the efforts in the 1970s to palm off the picture as a psychedelic "head" film). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Ichabod and Mr. Toad is a two-part Walt Disney cartoon feature based on a pair of well known stories. The first half of the film is an adaptation of Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, all about gawky 17th century schoolteacher Ichabod Crane and his love for the beautiful Katrina. The girl's vengeful ex-beau Brom Bones decides to scare Ichabod out of Sleepy Hollow by filling the impressionable teacher's brain with stories about the ghostly Headless Horseman--who of course makes an appearance that very night! The second half of Ichabod and Mr. Toad is based on the "Toad of Toad Hall" stories from Kenneth Grahame's The Wind and the Willows. The aristocratic but childish Mr. Toad loves motorcars, but his affection leads him to a jail term when he is accused of stealing an automobile. It's up to Toad's faithful friends to break Toad out of jail and expose the real crooks. One of Disney's better "omnibus" cartoon features, Ichabod and Mr. Toad is enhanced by the narrative skills of Bing Crosby in the Ichabod segment and Basil Rathbone in the Mr. Toad sequence. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Eve Knew Her Apples is an pinchpenny musical reworking of Frank Capra's Oscar-winning It Happened One Night. Musical star Ann Miller takes over the Claudette Colbert role; this time she's not a runaway heiress but a runaway radio star, escaping her stuffy fiance rather than her autocratic father. William Wright assumes the Clark Gable part as the man who helps the girl on her flight for his own mercenary interests, but who eventually falls in love with her. Clocking in at 64 minutes rather than It Happened One Night's 105, Eve Knew Her Apples is more successful as a showcase for the terpsichorean talents of Ann Miller than as a romantic comedy. Columbia Pictures would attempt to musicalize It Happened One Night again with 1956's You Can't Run Away From It, filmed with ten times the budget but only half the entertainment value of Eve Knew Her Apples. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In later years, director Vincente Minnelli would dismiss I Dood It as his worst picture, though a more deserving candidate for that "honor" would be Minnelli's valedictory film A Matter of Time. In this remake of Buster Keaton's Spite Marriage, Red Skelton plays pants-presser Joseph Rivington Reynolds, who develops a crush on glamorous stage star Constance Shaw (Eleanor Powell). "Borrowing" a tuxedo from one of his customers, Joe courts Constance backstage and at a fancy nightclub. Jilted by her fiance, the temperamental Constance marries Joe out of spite, leading to a series of silly situations. In the original Spite Marriage, Buster Keaton proved his worth to the heroine by rescuing her from bootleggers: in the remake, Joe saves Constance from a nest of Nazi spies. Some of the routines-notably a scene in which Joe makes a shambles of a Civil War play, and a lengthy bit in which he puts his drunken bride to bed-were lifted directly from Spite Marriage, no surprise considering that Buster Keaton was one of the I Dood It gag writers. Musical highlights are provided by Lena Horne, Hazel Scott and Jimmy Dorsey, while the film's finale is lifted bodily from the 1936 Eleanor Powell musical Born to Dance. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

To say that Behind the Eight Ball is the best of the Ritz Brothers' quartet of Universal vehicles is faint praise indeed, but it's fact that the Ritzes pack an awful lot of laughs in the film's 60-minute running time. The story takes place at a summer theater in the Berkshire Mountains, where heroine Joan Barry (Carol Bruce) is staging a Broadway-bound musical comedy. Only one problem: two guest stars are shot and killed on two successive evenings, right in front of the audience. Hoping to solve the mystery, detective William Demarest demands that everyone -- actors and theatergoers alike -- return the following weekend to restage the show. But with no major performer willing to assume the fatal guest-star slot, Joan is forced to hire the Three Jolly Jesters (Al, Harry and Jimmy Ritz), Manhattan washroom attendants with showbiz aspirations. Though they're not keen on being set up as targets for the murderer, our three heroes gamely do as they're told -- and miracle of miracles, ultimately reveal that the killings are tied in with a nest of Axis spies! Highlights of this lightning-paced programmer include the Don Raye-Gene Paul hit song "Mister Five by Five" and the Ritz boys' specialty number "Charles Atlas Did It for Me". ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide