Sometimes when you least expect it, a dramatic or comedy film suddenly erupts into a musical number. For the sake of listicle distraction, here are 10 musical numbers from non-musical films that should get you singing along when you least expect it.
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In concept, a film trailer is supposed to pique audience interest into seeing a production that will soon be playing in theaters. Sometimes, however, a trailer has the opposite effect and creates groans or giggles when it should be sparking excitement. Here is an extremely objective list of 10 trailers that fell far short of their goal in creating buzz for their feature films.
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In the shabbier corners of cinema, there are the monsters who create wonder – you wonder how they ever wound up on big screen. For those who like movie monsters that inspire more smirks than shrieks, here are 10 creatures who give monsters a bad name.
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This dinky little two-reeler would have been lost to obscurity had it not been for the unlikely presence of Curly Howard in his only outing without fellow Stooges Moe Howard and Larry Fine. Curly and his comrades were working with Ted Healy at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in the early 1930s and the studio occasionally split them up for separate appearances, with Curly being dumped in “Roast-Beef and Movies” in a new comedy act featuring George Givot and Bobby Callahan.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the release of “3 AM.” What, you never heard of “3 AM”? Well, if you’re an Orson Welles fan, you’ll recall that film was directed by Gary Graver, the cinematographer on Welles’ “The Other Side of the Wind” – Graver needed to take on the skin flick job to because he couldn’t cover his bills working on Welles’ on-again/off-again project. As a favor to Graver, the Big O did uncredited work in editing a steamy masturbatory shower in “3 AM.”
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You must admire the audacity of filmmakers who try to remake classic films – after all, it takes a lot of guts to attempt a production that exists solely to one-up its heralded predecessor. But that’s not to say that it cannot be done – after all, William Wyler’s “Ben-Hur” and Martin Scorsese’s “The Departed” were remakes that won the Best Picture Oscar, while John Huston’s “The Maltese Falcon” and “Moby Dick” and Franco Zeffirelli’s “Romeo and Juliet” were superior to earlier film adaptations of those beloved works.
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My problem with “The Shining” is that it was made at the wrong time by the wrong people. It should have been made by the Columbia Pictures short subjects department in the mid-1940s with Shemp Howard as Jack Torrance, Vera Vague as Wendy Torrance, Dudley Dickerson as Dick Halloran, and (in a loan-out from Hal Roach) Billy “Froggy” Laughlin as Danny Torrance. And behind the camera, Jules White would direct the film by filling the Overlook Hotel with a gorilla throwing pies and skeletons operating on clearly visible wires.
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