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Dark and Stormy Night
Topic Started: Feb 15 2007, 11:15 AM (525 Views)
Laughing Gravy
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My pal Larry Blamire, the mad genius behind The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra and Trail of the Screaming Forehead, has a website for his next project, a 1930s retro "old dark house" mystery called Dark and Stormy Night. It's gonna be a pip!

http://www.darkandstormynightmovie.com/
"I'm glad that this question came up, because there are so many ways to answer it that one of them is bound to be right." - Robert Benchley
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rodney
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Suddenly a shot rang out!
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KanSmiley
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There was a piercing scream from the library.
http://www.saturday-matinee-memories.com/

intoxicated, adj.: When you feel sophisticated without being able to pronounce it.
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Inspector Carr
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then silence....dead silence.
"Life is a Crapshoot however you need a pair of dice to participate"
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Laughing Gravy
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Broken by the plodding drip, drop, drip of blood on thick carpeting.
"I'm glad that this question came up, because there are so many ways to answer it that one of them is bound to be right." - Robert Benchley
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CliffClaven
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An affable flick by the people who gave us "Lost Skelton of Cardava," a pitch-perfect spoof of low-budget sci-fi/horror films.

This time it's 1930s dark old house mysteries, squeezing in chunks of "Cat and the Canary", "Dark Old House", "And Then There Were None" and other lesser programmers, complete with the reading of the will, a clutching hand, a phantom, a secret passage, a houseful of colorful suspects, wisecracking reporters, damsel in distress, etc.

If you're fond of the genre, you'll enjoy the precision and the clever writing (much more than the just the familiar cliches). Ironically, the film's biggest fault is that it's TOO funny: Every character is written funny and played to the hilt, without a straight man to be found. Usually in something like this, you have everybody playing straight except one guy (Bob Hope or Red Skelton used this formula a lot); or you flip it with one comparatively normal guy surrounded by madness ("Young Frankenstein" managed a neat variation by having Gene Wilder quietly reacting to strange behaviors from his new friends in the castle; when Wilder himself was acting up Marty Feldman became the bizarre voice of reason).

In "Dark and Stormy Night" you have a lot of very funny suspects playing off a comedy team composed of two wisecracking reporters and a New York cabbie. A lot of stuff that would be killer anywhere else is defused a bit here because it's surrounded by equally broad stuff. Even a nonchalant walkthrough by a gorilla (the legendary Bob Burns) loses some comic impact because the other people in the scene mug and react so wildly ("Pirates of the Caribbean 3" had a funny bit where the key-carrying dog made an unexpected cameo. This was similarly made less funny by two characters recognizing the dog and freaking out, wondering how the dog got there).

That all said, I did like this better than "Murder by Death," the all-star Agatha Christie sendup. While Neil Simon appeared to play it straighter and saner, he felt no qualms about throwing logic and even movie-type plausibility out the window as if it were a short TV show sketch (part of this was Simon's own annoyance at whodunits that cheated -- he decided a definitive satire should be filled with definitive cheats). While "Dark and Stormy Night" does take some liberties (the lights go out, and when they come back on the guy who was about say something important is a mounted head on the wall), the plot pulls together as well as any genuine dark old house movie.

Final verdict: good, but not as good as the devestatingly deadpan "Lost Skelton"

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panzer the great & terrible
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I agree with every word. It's funny but not funny enough because it's too funny. Or whatever.

Put it another way: the deadpan irony gets less interesting every time. A joke needs the element of surprise, unless you like the Gilligan/Stooges type stuff.
Edited by panzer the great & terrible, Jun 12 2011, 09:46 AM.
Life is just a bowl of cherries, it's too mysterious, don't take it serious...
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Laughing Gravy
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I combined the two threads for no particular reason, and here's what I wrote a while ago:

Well, I didn't like it as much as Lost Skeleton either, but it's a different kind of film, an out-and-out spoof, not an homage. I began laughing during the delirious familiar opening credits (the characters stand there, eyes nervously shifting side to side) and didn't stop until "The End" came onscreen. I immediately scheduled it for our FNF finale this week. Loved it. When was the last time you saw wisecracking patter in a movie???

The FNF gang went wild for it, declaring it better than "Lost Skeleton" and Trophy Wife in particular said, "This just may be the funniest movie I've ever seen." We've seen it again since then, and I've shown it to friends, all of whom thought it hilarious. I like it better with each viewing, and - what with one thing or another - I think I've seen it 5 or 6 times now. I love it.

P.S. I've discussed the film with Jennifer "Animala" Blaire, a former Ms. Monogram, and told her that she does the best Glenda Ferrell channeling I've ever seen. She really appreciated that, because she admitted she was indeed playing Ms. Ferrell (one of her favorite actresses) in the part. She does a great job.
Edited by Laughing Gravy, Jun 16 2011, 08:37 PM.
"I'm glad that this question came up, because there are so many ways to answer it that one of them is bound to be right." - Robert Benchley
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toddgault
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There are some hilarious gags in it. My favorite is Blamire falling out of a closet like he's dead, then getting up and saying he must have fallen asleep.
Todd Gault..........Serial Buff
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Laughing Gravy
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I think it's the crazy old lady upstairs that makes me laugh the hardest, although Blamire is wonderful in his part as well.
"I'm glad that this question came up, because there are so many ways to answer it that one of them is bound to be right." - Robert Benchley
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CliffClaven
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I especially enjoyed how the British twit's stories all seemed to involved trousers. It was just there, with no big emphasis.
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toddgault
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I love Marvin Kaplin as the mystical seer they conjure up in the seance who sounds like he's projecting himself from a retirement home.
Todd Gault..........Serial Buff
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rodney
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I have now added this to my Netflix queue. Will have to check it out! Sounds great.
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