When I was 10 years old, I thought the 1962 Hammer Film Productions version of “The Phantom of the Opera” was one of the greatest movies ever made. Today – far removed from that 10-year-old version of myself – the slavish enthusiasm I once had for this flick has evaporated, but I still have a fondness for the film’s offbeat charms.
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In 1973, Bing Crosby Productions was focusing on churning out low-budget flicks that were heavily marketed with exploitative flair. (Despite the company’s name, Crosby himself was not directly involved in the creation of these efforts.) With films including “Willard” (1971), “Ben” (1972), “You’ll Like My Mother” (1972) and “Walking Tall” (1973), the company offered a happy blend of violence, horror and thrills in contemporary settings. These titles proved very popular, and the company decided to dust off the concept of a wax museum setting for a horror film and brought back Jack the Ripper as key figure in its murder plot.
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Rabbit Every Monday (1951)
Directed by Friz Freleng
Animation by Manuel Perez, Ken Champin. Virgil Ross, Art Davis
Music by Carl Stalling
“Rabbit Every Monday” casts Yosemite Sam in the hunter role usually occupied by Elmer Fudd, and Sam’s distinctive mix of bellicosity and idiocy expanded the possibilities for wildly original comedy.
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Francis Ford is mostly recalled today as a character actor in his younger brother John Ford’s classic films, but back in the 1910s and 1920s he was a prominent leading man and director. Most of his films from his halcyon days are no longer available, but his 1918 feature “The Craving” is now available in a digitally restored presentation from film historian and preservationist Ben Model’s Undercrank Productions.
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The Three Stooges (Moe, Larry and Shemp) run the Super Slueth Detective Agency (yes, the typo is part of the company’s name) and their specialty is “Divorce Evidence Manufactured to Your Order.” They are hired to find a missing young woman and their strategy is to canvas the area where she disappeared by disguising themselves as door-to-door pie salesmen handing out free samples. When they hear her scream from a seemingly abandoned house, they gain entrance and find they are in the lair of the crazed scientist Dr. Jekyll, who with his fearsome henchman Mr. Hyde are planning to transplant the young woman’s brain into a gorilla that they are keeping in a cage.
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BOOTLEG FILES 882: “Roadhouse Nights” (1930 feature starring Helen Morgan and Jimmy Durante).
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: Nope.
The 1930 feature “Roadhouse Nights” is a production that is more famous for its back story and assembled talent and less celebrated for its contents. To be frank, it is among the most interesting and most boring films ever reviewed in The Bootleg Files series.
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Hare We Go (1951)
Directed by Robert McKimson
Story by Warren Foster
Animation by Phil DeLara, Charles McKimson, John Carey, Rod Scribner, J.C. Melendez
Music by Carl Stalling
One of the weaker entries in the Bugs Bunny series, Robert McKimson’s “Hare We Go” opens in the court of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, where Christopher Columbus is trying in vain to convince the monarchs that the world is round. “It’s-a round like-a my head,” the blonde Columbus declares in his Chico Marx-worthy Italian accent – to which the king bangs his noggin with a mallet, leaving it horizontal while declaring “It’s flat like you’re head!” in the Mexican accent that Mel Blanc used on Jack Benny’s show.
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