The final Three Stooges short to receive a theatrical release – although it was not the final short to be produced at the Columbia Pictures studio – “Sappy Bull Fighters” is a rehash of the 1942 “What’s the Matador?”, with the silly trio playing entertainers who get hired to perform a comedy bullfight during a lull in a genuine bullfighting tournament.
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A truly peculiar Hollywood mystery involved Christopher Jones, who became an overnight sensation in the mid-1960s but abruptly walked away from show business after five years in the spotlight. Michael Gregg Michaud, the film historian who documented the life of another troubled Hollywood star in the excellent 2010 book “Sal Mineo: A Biography,” does a brilliant job in excavating the complex story of Jones’ turbulent life in his new work “Christopher Jones – Wild in the Streets – A Biography.”
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Notable as the final animated short produced and released by MGM, this 1967 film is adapted from Frank Tashlin’s 1947 children’s book about a bear who awakens from hibernation to find a construction site was erected around his cave while he was sleeping. A construction foreman accosts the bear and demands to know why he’s not working, but when the bear identifies himself the foreman insists he is only “a silly man who needs a shave and wears a fur coat.” The bear insists he is not an employee, so he taken by the foreman up the corporate chain of command – to the general manager, the third vice president, the second vice president, the first vice president and the president – who all inform the astonished ursine interloper that he is “a silly man who needs a shave and wears a fur coat.” The bear is then taken to a zoo where the occupants in a cage of bears affirms the executives’ insistence that the bear is not a bear.
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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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“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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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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