Change Your Image
plushing
Reviews
The Happy Hottentots (1930)
Frisco's Daring Performance
It's a daring performance; Joe plays a barely surviving vaudevillian who partners in a terrible act. The joke is the theater is so low that they seem to be the only performers on the bill, so they have to keep doing their crummy song and dance every few minutes. Of course they deteriorate, but here's the thing: Joe Frisco mixes good moves with bad, as if to give us our money's worth by playing a poor entertainer with great verve, sneaking in legitimate grace notes. So he's playing "Joe Frisco", well-regarded entertainer, playing Joe Blow at the bottom of the vaudeville ladder. Billy Gilbert steals all his (brief) scenes. They get a lot of comedic mileage out of repetitious walks.
Hellzapoppin' (1941)
Postmodern
An important reason for bringing this film back (there are bootlegs if you look hard enough) is to show the younger generations that the post-modern bag of tricks was invented long before the 1980s or 1960s. We have breaking through the fourth wall, characters arguing with their creators or engineers, and a general refusal to obey the laws of reality not seen in comedies outside the Marxes. The comment that says a studio claims an old dispute as to authorship credit is preventing release of this film reflects an absurdity on the part of the studio that is beyond stupidity: not sure who the author is, so whoever he is his work will not be seen. How's that for po-mo?