Item #: 3974DVD Category: FANTASY Format: DVD MPAA Rating: PG

Woolly Rating: 5/10 (185 votes)

MEMBER COMMENTS ON THIS VIDEO

jd	Dec 28, 2004 @ 19:38:34

<[:-( tony randall does the peter sellers thing
this is a good looking film but it got on my nerves. randall is undoubtedly good at the multiple role thing, but i get sick of being preached at, especially when the sermon is highly suspect. though a very liberal / pc movie for its time, dr. lao's "no speakee ingrish" dialect was grating, and the trick of having him speak primly like tony randall when he wanted to didn't exactly soothe my rash. as far as i'm concerned, this movie is a steaming pile of pc hypocrisy, way too facile. its the sort of film that that slides through the tract so blandly that the very types it seeks to condemn watch it in clueless, smug contentment, certain that they could never be anyone like that, and it serves to reinforce their evil sheep-think racket rather than erode it.

Snooze. zzz. Look! Whoa! Barbara Eden! Snooze. zzz
A Chinese man rolls into a dusty Western town bringing with him life-changing philosophic wisdom. Is it David Carradine as 'Grasshopper' Caine? You wish it were, but no, it's a different white man in Asian get-up, Tony Randall as Dr. Lao, proprietor of a "Twilight Zone"-style circus where the real show is gleaned from the hyprocrisies, hatreds and lusts plucked out of your own mind. "The Twilight Zone" reference here is appropo, since the screenwriter apparently wrote for that TV classic. This movie has about enough material to sustain a good half-hour TZ segment, but not enough to sustain a pretty trying 100 minutes. Creator/director George Pal seems more interested in effects than in lively story telling and the thing trudges along--to borrow JD's word, annoyingly. Tony Randall still gets a lot of praise for his multiple roles, but to me his hatred at making this movie comes through in a central performance that seems, at best, indifferent. Good makeup is often confused for great acting; probably the case here. From the moment Randall speaks in his faux pidgen English, the discomfort factor flies off the scale for me. It's getting harder now to tolerate white actors speakee 'Confucious say' dialect with no conjunctions in this day and age of mainstream box office success and audience respect for authentic Chinese humans on film ('Crouching Tiget..." etc.). It's doubly troubling when this heavily message-laden movie seems to want to preach community, diversity, tolerance and all things good. I realize that there's no malicious or intentional racism here; and that the Peter Sellers, Alec Guiness multi-ethnic thing was pretty common back then. White guys will continue playing Shakespeare's 'Othello' probably 'til the end of time, for instance. But there's something especially odious about the amount of time, expense and imagination that went into making such a GOOD makeup transformation of Randall into a Chinese man, and then putting into his mouth the worst kind of stereotypical '30s' b-movie Chinese goobledygook English (no pun intended). The wacky surreal circus is kind of interesting, it traces its lineage from 1923's "Waxworks," through the 1935 version of "Dante's Inferno" and predates the macabre big-top-type antics in "Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory," "Something Wicked This Way Comes," and "Killer Klowns from Outer Space." As it happens, I't rather watch any one of these films again over this George Pal movie. Political correctness or educational high-mindedness became a dreary scourge in a lot of '60s kids movies; Chuck Jones' "The Phantom Tollbooth" is one perfectly dreadful example; a fair cartoon feature undermined by leaden, lumpen attempts to 'educate' its audience. The National Film Board of Canada's state-subsidized pc-cartoon factory churned out a slew of heavy message animations that won every imaginable award for their heavy-handed serious intentions (usually anti-war or anti-rat-race) and since have been thrown on the junk heap of the now-unwatchable. This film has the feel of a lot of 1960's western-set movies and TV shows, very slow and self-satisfied; laconic to the point of inducing somnambulism. I perked up only once, when Barbara Eden as the repressed librarian (shades of "The Music Man') lets go her inhibitions in the lust-inducing presence of one of Dr. Lao's manifestations: a demonic-looking half-man, half-goat from mythology, Pan. The gorgeous young Eden, brownish-reddish hair falling away from her rigid bun-do, sweating, gyrating and starting to lose some clothes as Pan's erotic flute tune gathers heated momentum... For a minute, the film strays from chaste 'family' fare, and it's a welcome development. But then, alas, the movie falls into its rut again to tie up all the loose ends and the greedhead baddie is put in his place. A lot of fans of kids' movies, sci-fi and fantasy fare admire and enjoy this film. It's just not for me. * The 7 Faces of Dr. Lao (1964) - 2005 Kevin Rayburn

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horrible... (beachmonkey)

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... ()

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a genius reality check 4 our race we may live in the white mans land & call it hme bt in doing that we deny the truth of our being. All brown skin people nomatta hw light r african rayalty ... (lady swirl)