I don’t know about you, but I never liked Labor Day. It is my least favorite holiday, if only because during my childhood it meant the end of summer and the return to school. My favorite holiday is Christmas, so let me be the very first film writer in 2025 to do an article on Christmas movies!
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Half-Fare Hare (1956)
Directed by Robert McKimson
Story by Tedd Pierce
Animation by George Grandpre, Russ Dyson, Keith Darling, Ted Bonnicksen
Music by Carl Stalling
Bugs Bunny picks up a newspaper at a railroad station and reads about wintry conditions that froze the local carrot crop, resulting in rabbits leaving the state “in droves” for Alabama, where carrots are plentiful. Bugs is confused and exclaims, “But I don’t have a drove!” Instead, Bugs climbs into a boxcar on the Chattanooga Choo-Choo and encounters a pair of hungry hoboes who resemble Jackie Gleason’s Ralph Kramden and Art Carney’s Ed Norton. The duo envisions Bugs as their long-overdue meal, but Bugs is not easily captured.
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“Guys and Dolls” is a film at odds with itself. Most of the footage is a pleasant distraction when it should be an invigorating entertainment, and the peak moments are strangely few and far between. At two-and-a-half hours, it constantly runs the risk of wearing out its welcome. And by the closing credits, it leaves the viewer serenely amused rather than knocked out by the greatness it should have achieved.
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Earlier this week, I saw a news item that said Mark Hamill considered moving out of the United States after Donald Trump was re-elected president last November. And my reaction was: Mark Hamill’s still alive? Oh, right, it’s his career that died.
Ever since Hamill toplined the original “Star Wars” in 1977, there has been no shortage of crazy works that try to fly with George Lucas’ imagination but inevitably take an Icarus-worthy plummet from heights where they could not travel. And while the 1982 Turkish film “The Man Who Saved the World” (a.k.a. “The Turkish Star Wars”) has gained cult classic status for its inane pilfering of “Star Wars” and a half-dozen other sci-fi classics, there are other films and television productions that are even crazier.
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Barbary-Coast Bunny (1956)
Directed by Chuck Jones
Story by Tedd Pierce
Animation by Abe Levitow, Richard Thompson, Ken Harris
Music by Carl Stalling
Bugs Bunny is burrowing underground to visit his cousin Herman in San Francisco when he bangs head-first into a giant gold nugget. The swindler Nasty Canasta tricks Bugs into believing he has a depository bank for storing the gold, and Bugs entrusts his new fortune with the miscreant. After Nasty violently waylays Bugs, the angry rabbit vows revenge. Six months later, he tracks down Nasty to the San Francisco casino that he built with Bugs’ gold. Bugs disguises himself as a naïve rural visitor, but this seemingly innocent façade enables him to casually drain the casino of its money by winning Nasty’s rigged games.
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Next month marks the 35th anniversary of the premiere of Martin Scorsese’s “Goodfellas,” which is considered among the greatest gangster films ever made. But for every “Goodfellas,” there are plenty of other films about organized crime that were somewhat more eccentric – and in some cases, they offered an utterly warped consideration of the criminal world. If you are in search of films populated with off-kilter mobsters, then leave the gun and take the cannoli to this line-up of the 10 weirdest gangster movies to shoot their way across the big screen.
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BOOTLEG FILES 916: “The Gong Show Pilot Episode” (unaired taping of the initial concept for the popular game show).
LAST SEEN: On YouTube.
AMERICAN HOME VIDEO: None.
REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS: It fell through the proverbial cracks.
CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE: Not likely.
Maya Angelou once wrote, “I believe that every person is born with talent.” However, the celebrated poet may have offered that observation without having been exposed to “The Gong Show,” a crazed bundle of anarchy that ran on NBC as a daytime program from 1976-78 and as an evening syndication offering from 1976-80.
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