Candy Candido Movies

Director/animator Ralph Bakshi turns his attention to 1950s Brooklyn in Hey Good Lookin', which looks at greasers hanging out (and making out) on street corners, hot girls, and gang rumbles, all set in a decaying urban landscape. The main action concerns Vinnie (voice of Richard Romanus), the leader of an Italian gang called The Stompers, who values, in equal measure, the perfection of his hairstyle and scoring with girls. His bosom buddy, Crazy (David Proval), more than lives up to his moniker, and his impulsiveness leads to many conflicts, including fights with other gangs -- a real problem because Vinnie is nowhere near as tough as he pretends to be. Things become even more complicated when he finds himself falling hard for Rozzie (Tina Bowman), whose father keeps her on a pretty short leash. Things come to a head in a deadly shoot-out, which may have serious consequences for the three main characters. ~ Craig Butler, Rovi

Robin Hood is one of the first animated films produced by the Walt Disney Company after Walt Disney's death in 1967. For the film, the studio's animators took the Disney tradition of adding human-like animal sidekicks to established tales (Cinderella, Pinnochio) a step further by making Robin Hood's legendary characters creatures themselves. Robin Hood (Brian Bedford) is a wily fox; Maid Marian (Monica Evans) is a beautiful vixen; Little John (Phil Harris) is a burly bear; Friar Tuck (Andy Devine) is a soft-spoken badger; the Sheriff of Nottingham (Pat Buttram) is a greedy wolf; and the scheming Prince John (Peter Ustinov) is a sniveling, groveling, thumb-sucking undersized lion with a serpent sidekick named Sir Hiss (Terry Thomas). The film begins after Prince John and Sir Hiss have tricked the true King into leaving the country on a phony crusade. With the help of the Sheriff of Nottingham, they tax the life out of Nottingham's peasants, leaving them all penniless but with the courageous Robin Hood as their only hope. ~ Aubry Anne D'Arminio, Rovi

Master animator Chuck Jones has created this full length fantasy, his first since being name director of MGM's animation department. A young boy (Butch Patrick) is bored with his life in San Francisco and finds himself in a fantasy land where letters and numbers are at war with each other. He drives through the Phantom Tollbooth and into an animated fantasy land. The voices of Mel Blanc, June Foray and Daws Butler are featured in this story taken from the book by Norton Juster. The boy tries to rescue twin Princesses Rhyme and Reason, who have been banished to a castle suspended in mid air above the kingdom. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi

In this Western, a good-hearted gunfighter helps a young cowboy find the cruel cattle baron who killed his daddy. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

Jimmy Durante plays the patriarch of a down-on-their-luck family of acrobats, who suddenly finds a great deal of money hidden in his house amid the depths of the Great Depression. The authorities suspect Durante of being a thief, but in fact the culprit is a benevolent little squirrel named Rupert. This clever critter has been pilfering money from the obnoxious, wealthy miser who lives in the adjoining house and who decided to stash most of his funds in the wall separating the two residences. The stop-motion animation is the handiwork of George Pal. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

In this musical comedy, a group of clean-cut teens desire to turn an abandoned warehouse into a youth center. Unfortunately they and their two leaders are opposed by the mayor who wants to use the building for his own gain. The kids then put on a show and soon the mayor is convinced to give them the building. Musical numbers include: "Young Man with a Beat" (performed by the Gene Krupa Orchestra), "Sincerely Yours" (sung by Stewart), "Isn't This a Night for Love?" (sung by Stewart), "Household Blues" (sung by Davis), and "Young Man" (sung by Davis, Stewart). ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

During the '40s, Monogram ground out musical comedies by the ton, most of them starring their resident song-and-dance cutie Gale Storm. In Rhythm Parade, Storm plays a young, aspiring singer named Sally, who through a series of misunderstandings is assumed to be the mother of an apparently abandoned baby. This plays right into the hands of Sally's bitchy rival Connie (Jan Wiley), who hopes to ruin the girl's career by fomenting a scandal. By the end of the requisite 68 minutes, all is straightened out, with time left over for 9 musical numbers, some performed by such guest acts as The Mills Bros. and Ted Fio Rito Orchestra. Rhythm Parade was produced in conjunction with Hollywood's Florentine Gardens nightclub, run by one Nils T. Granlund (aka N.T.G.), who appears in the film as "Granny". ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Virtually a textbook example of Howard Hawks' "macho" mode, Only Angels Have Wings takes place high in the Peruvian Andes. Cary Grant heads a ramshackle airmail and freight service, forced to fly in the most perilous of weather conditions to the most treacherous of destinations. Facing death on a near-hourly basis, Grant and his flyers have adopted a casual, all-in-day's-work attitude towards mortality. If a pilot cracks up and dies, it's simply because he didn't have what it took, and that's that. Stranded showgirl Jean Arthur can't stand this cavalier attitude at first, but before long she becomes, in true Hawksian fashion, "one of the guys". Complicating the story is the presence of Richard Barthelmess, who has been persona non grata with the other pilots ever since his carelessness cost the life of one of their number. In addition to a surfeit of guilt, Barthelmess is saddled with a faithless wife, played by Rita Hayworth in her first important A-picture role. Hayworth makes a play for Grant, but he spurns her, finally realizing that, in spite of himself, he's in love with Arthur. Grant himself is riddled with guilt when near-blind pilot Thomas Mitchell insists upon taking on one final flight. Having lost his best friend, Grant drops his hard-bitten shell, and for the first time opens himself up emotionally to Arthur-which of course leads to a nail-biting climax wherein Arthur suffers mightily as Grant faces certain death. Scripted by Jules Furthman from a story by Hawks, Only Angels Have Wings is a treasure trove of terse, pithy dialogue: our favorite scene occurs when, upon discovering that he's about to die, Thomas Mitchell says he's often wondered how he'd react to imminent death-and, now that death is but a few moments away, he'd rather that no one else be around to witness his reaction. Though sometimes laid low by obvious miniatures, the aerial scenes in Only Angels Have Wings are by and large first-rate, earning a first-ever "best special effects" Oscar nomination for Roy Davidson and Edwin C. Hahn. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Battling Hoofer is the reissue title of the 1936 James Cagney vehicle Something to Sing About. Cagney plays Terry Rooney, a New York bandleader who heads to Hollywood when he is offered a movie contract. The down-to-Earth Rooney resists the "star treatment," an attitude misinterpreted by movie executive Bennett O. Regan (Gene Lockhart) as arrogance. When Terry's first film is a hit, Regan orders everyone involved to keep its success a secret from Terry, lest he develop a swelled head! (We don't believe it either.) The best sequence has Rooney chewing out his Asian houseboy, Ito (Philip Ahn), whereupon he drops his "So solly" pidgin English and begins talking like a Harvard professor! Terry gets to romance newcomer Evelyn Daw, as well as veteran vamp Mona Barrie; he also gets to participate in several lively dance numbers. Something to Sing About was the second of Jimmy Cagney's films for Poverty Row studio Grand National: the production values and snappy script work that he might have enjoyed at Warner Bros. are noticeably lacking, but Cagney is always fun to watch. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi