![]() She doesn’t do anything wrong, rather she too enthusiastically fills out the role she’s expected to play. The worst of Hellzapoppin’ can be summed up by comedienne Martha Raye’s performance. This caveat is sadly necessary because, as you know, nothing dates worse than light entertainment and, revolutionary though it may be, Hellzapoppin’ is no exception. Though writing much more about it would spoil it, you should trust Hellzapoppin is worth a watch. Basically there’s all sorts of strange and hilarious shit going on. There are several arguments with stock footage that unexpectedly morph into an angry defense of the Native American people. A scene where a grown man gets embarrassed and runs through a room of folding chairs, knocking them around while bellowing, is the kind of thing people still pay Will Ferrel to do for some reason. There’s an extremely casual Citizen Kane spoiler, delivered with no small degree of contempt. ![]() Not all of it does, of course but it must be said the worthwhile stuff in Hellzapoppin is still shockingly sharp and far ahead of its time. ![]() What makes Hellzapoppin most striking from a current day perspective is how well a lot of this dicking around actually holds up. It’s both unapproachably dumb and breathtakingly prescient without ever seeming fully aware of the distance it’s going in either direction. It surrounded all these elements about 4 nonchalant layers of metafictional fuckery, just to make sure everyone was paying attention. #OBLITERATION WANDER MOVIE#Hellzapoppin filled itself characters show up for one joke only to never be seen again, running-jokes than made no attempt to jibe with the rest of the movie and consistent and surprising camera footage. I stress again that this movie came out in 1941, years before the Spike Milligan would perfect casually surreal comedy that Monty Python would extract most of the racism from and successfully sell to Americans. All while a cookie-cutter story happens around them, its supposed key events being treated with apathy and indifference. They have to adjust their own film roll, occasionally having bizarre semantic arguments with themselves from 45 seconds in the past. Throughout Hellzapoppin’ the characters fight with the projectionist, who is more occupied with trying to rope an incredibly butch usherette into doing the nasty than running the movie. And so begins one the most aggressive attacks on the fourth wall in cinema history. ![]() Shortly thereafter, the director dismisses the zaniness he sees before him, showing the footage he’s been filming for the story to its stars, comedy duo Ole Olson and Chic Johnson. ![]() Similar to all films based on Broadway shows, the Hellzapoppin begins in Hell. The pitch for Hellzapoppin‘ is as follows: “hey, the anarchic Broadway show Hellzapoppin is pretty rad, let’s jam a story around it and make it a movie…hold on, what if we make the movie about jamming a story around Hellzapoppin’?”. It’s the kind of thing I’d say Charlie Kaufman would be proud of, if this was a college newspaper and Charlie Kaufman had developed the capacity for human emotion. Hellzapoppin’ throws itself further down the meta-wormhole than you’d expect from a movie released in 1941. It’s a shame though, as it means you’re missing out on Hellzapoppin’, one of the strangest and, occasionally, most brilliant comedies ever made. Which, in fairness, is a pretty reasonable thing for your mind not to do. When asked about where you’re going to find one of the best combinations of music and dance in movie history, your mind may not initially wander to a proto-Monty Python/Michelle Gondry piece of slapstick-surrealism from the early 1940s. Sean McTiernan went to hell for snuffing Martha Raye. ![]()
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