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One of the funniest movies ever made! (Spoilers)

posted 17 years ago by MrPie7
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I watch it every time it's on! The ending always leaves me weak with laughter. Tears of mirth steam down my face. The WHOLE TOWN rolling flaming tires down into the junkyard! The explosions! Brando's ENDLESS cries of "Bubber!". Paul Williams singing that hit tune as the inferno blazes: "Bubba Bubba Bubba Bubba Bubba". The "middle-class" morons who probably read about "wife-swapping" in "Time" or "Newsweek" and thought they were swingers. Robert Redford whining about the prison food especially the beans. "They SMELLED!" As his voice cracks. Janice Rule as the ultimate castrating Biotch. Robert Duvall as the most henpecked man in history. All the characters are either totally good or totally evil. That santimonius liberal Lillian Hellman must have thought she was portraying the "average American" citizen: as blood and lust-crazed loonies. Every one a racist and bigot. Ready to lynch an outcast, beat a black man or toady to E.G. Marshall, the rich guy in town. Steve Ihnat who gets so carried away by the fun that he beats up the town sherriff and murders Bubba Reeves in cold blood in front of dozens of witnesses including the police. Too bad Hellman forgot to give him a motive for even being involved in this idiocy at all, let alone risking a probable life sentence over this nonsense. If Ed Wood Jr ever had a big budget, THIS is the film he would have made.

[–] mea-12 17 years ago

What's funny is it looked as though Brando wanted to crack up with laughter every time he spoke. Poor guy, his facial muscles probably ached.

mea-12

[–] MrPie7 17 years ago

Actually, I think Brando took this insane piece of drek seriously. He was so out of touch with any sort of reality, I'm sure that he believed that this was an important "message" film and that he felt this was an acurate portrayal of
"middle America". This movie is typical of the kind of idiosyncratic projects he undertook during the "60s that reflected his disillusionment with American society, and that were designed to preach his peculiar world view. Because of these kind of films, and his notorious difficulty as an actor, his popularity, once immense, had shrunk to the point that the moviegoing public avoided his projects like the plague. It took the "Godfather" to ressurect his once formidable status.

[–] brefane 17 years ago

What's funny is that Bubba is not only a remarkably coiffed escaped con on the run, but that he seems to be the only normal person the town ever produced.

Hellman disowned the project. The director and Hellman were at odds with producer Sam Spiegel.

[–] MrPie7 17 years ago

Yep, that was the point of the film. The "normal" guy is hounded and persecuted by this "typical" American town. I well remember my parents rolling burning tires at every eccentric or minority group member that ever lived in MY town. Ah, those were the days! The warm and tender brotherhood of a lynch mob!

[–] taijiquan12 17 years ago

Although the town's reaction to Bubba's escape was over exaggerated, and the "middle class" folks that were partying all night acted more like teenagers than adults, I'll still say that this movie is a decent watch.

You said that every character in the film is either totally good or evil, which wasn't the case at all. In most films, Val Rogers, the industrialist who has a grip over the small town would be portrayed as straight evil, a corporate miser without compassion or dignity. There are plenty of scenes that present him as a less than admirable person, but you also see that he cares for his son, and even tries to help Bubber escape the madness at the junkyard. Even though he pistol whipped the black man in the cell and overrode Brando's authority, we see he actually had positive motives, and wants to help the protagonist. In this regard, you can't call him a straight good or evil character. Bubber himself is another character who wasn't totally good or evil. Although he does seem to be one of the more rational people in the movie, remember that in the beginning he aided in deceiving the old man that was ultimately murdered by lying in the road and pretending he was dead. He's also a convict, and most movies of that time wouldn't often ask you to sympathize with a convict. If the movie was as melodramatic as you claim it to be, then it would be about Marlon Brando (the sheriff) going after the Robert Redford (the "bad guy") Jane Fonda's character was portrayed as positive, but she had cheated on her husband. If the movie was as black and white as you claim, then Fonda's character would've been portrayed strictly as a wild whore with no morals, but she's also one of the few sane people in the town.

You call the town "typical", but I hardly think that's what this was supposed to represent. It exaggerates the idea the people in small, nowhere towns like the ones in the film are greatly affected by dysfunction, since everyone's so close. It was meant to show how the generally wholesome and friendly image of the American village can turn and twist into a nasty manifestation of mob mentality. Granted, there are some silly parts in the film, but if you look at the type of movies that were made in the 50's, before this film, it's actually somewhat daring. The church lady is obnoxious, and the townspeople themselves, not the wealthy, not the criminal, are the ones who are at fault. Most American movies glorify small towns and their values, and praise the humble folk in them. You don't find then or now movies that are critical of the people or of religion. In the way people in this movie acted towards Robert Redford's character's escape I saw shades of how some people acted after 9/11; completely driven into a with hunt mentality with little to no actual information on the supposed "threat". Robert Duvall also fits into this analogy, as his character had a conscience about the evils happening but was willing to do nothing, showing the historical constant of people who take a bystander mentality.

All in all, yes, there are some extremely corny and silly parts of this movie, but it has an all-star cast and a style and script that deviates from typical American cinema. When Robert Redford's character is killed, the perceived threat is gone, but you're not given closure to the irresponsibility of the townsfolk, who were the greatest threat the whole time, due to their fear and lack of discipline. I'd enjoy it if more movies were made about blurred morality and villains who aren't always righteously punished (just without the flaming tires and twistin' teens).

"Bulls**t MR.Han Man!!"--Jim Kelly in Enter the Dragon

[–] MrPie7 17 years ago

I stand by my review. Of COURSE this town is supposed to be "Typical", otherwise why would such universal themes as bigotry, friendship, alienation, and parental concern be presented. If it WASN'T supposed to be "typical", where is the dialog about "this isn't normal" or "this will make the town a laughing stock thru the state"? Not ONE line to this effect is uttered. Val Rogers is trying to HELP Bubba? No, he didn't care at ALL about Bubba until he saw that the only way to help his son out of this mess was to rescue Bubba , since Jake would not abandon him. A large part of his concern about his son was that this behavior of helping Bubba PLUS his involvement with Bubba's wife would destroy the family's reputation . In addition, Jake, thus serving a long prison term after being convicted of aiding and abetting, would be unable to run the family business; a cherished dream of Val's. Ok, so one character has a tiny little bit of humanity ( a father's concern)to go along with his overwhelming evil.Duvall is nothing more than a cowardly, inefectual, toady. The fact that he UNDERSTANDS that these actions are wrong and does NOTHING, just makes him MORE evil. The reason he spills his guts to Val Rogers is NOT to prevent a tragedy, but to ingratiate himself with the boss. The one thing that you claim makes Bubba a little shade of gray is him deceiving the old man. But he didn't intend, nor was he responsible for the old man's demise. Thus, he is still the innocent and virtuous "misunderstood rebel". Can you say "stereotype"? As for "melodrama" of hunting down the criminal without mercy, nowhere does it say the SHERRIFF has to do it to create this melodrama. The townspeople perform this function rather nicely. The SHERRIFF's melodrama is in his untarnished and fanatical devotion to risking everything to try and save Bubba. Just breaking a few stereotypes does NOT make this film any less of a melodrama any more than a 98% Asian cast would make "Imitation of Life." less of one. And speaking of stereotypes, if Jane Fonda's Anna isn't "the whore with the heart of gold", the archetype doesnt EXIST!

Yes, people muttered a few threats after 9/11. After all, the whole nation, not just the Trade Center and Pentagon was the target of a conspiracy to hurt us all, and there was concern that the attacks would continue. Are you suprised that people were upset, and that a few made stupid statements? And BTW exactly WHERE were Muslims attacked by rolling flaming tires down on them? What law enforcement officials were attacked by these imaginary angry mobs to get at them? How many terrorists were MURDERED by a mob to prevent them from getting a fair trial? This film is a liberal's paranoid fantasy of what would happen if those "mean spirited" reactionaries get their way.

[–] taijiquan12 17 years ago

Just to adress one part of what I said, when I was talking about 9/11 and people's mob mentality reaction, I didn't mean literally there were people throwing burning tires like in the movie or anything like that. I was just saying I drew a paralell between the way people in the movie didn't actually know that much about Bubba or what he planned on doing, yet since the people wanted a common outlet for the agression, used him as a scapegoat.
After 9/11, many Americans wanted to go to war, despite not really knowing who initiated the attacks or who to get revenge against. What do you call the hanging of Saddam? I'm not saying Saddam Hussein is comparable to Robert Redford's character, but Saddam's execution was used as a way to show that the government was making "progress". Just the same way, the townspeople believe that justice has been served when Bubber gets shot, when they really didn't have a good perspective on the situation in the first place. It might not have been the best analogy, but I was just reminded by the movie how people can easily get into a witch hunt mentality without knowing the whole story first.
I still don't think the town was meant to represent any old American town, it was a place far enough removed from the outside world that things like you saw in the movie could happen. I'm not saying that the scene at the junkyard when everyone really went nuts wasn't silly. Of course it was. However, I just don't think that the movie was that terrible; flawed, but not terrible.
On another note, one thing that could've evened everything out a bit more would've been the filmmakers showing what Bubber did to get in prison. In the scene where he tricks the old man and initially helps in assualting him, we see that Bubber is capable of doing immoral things and willing to jeopardize his friend's safety when he convinces the junkyard owner to help him. I think if they would've capitalized on showing the other side of his personality a bit more, that could've been an improvement.

"Bulls**t MR.Han Man!!"--Jim Kelly in Enter the Dragon

[–] MrPie7 17 years ago

Yes, I understand that you didn't mean people were literally rolling burning tires. But, there is a HUGE difference between the angry talk after 9/11, which was mainly due to frustration that our enemies were too cowardly to reveal themselves, and actually taking ACTION like the violent, crazed, maniacs in the town. The gulf between WORDS and DEEDS is IMMENSE. So I don't really see a vaid analogy. Saddam was not hung for 9/11 but for hideous crimes against his own people. By that time people had LONG since calmed down about looking for an enemy, since we were fighting them in Afghanistan. When I am provoked I may SAY to my wife that I want to kill her, but I'm NOT going to do it. Or even consider it. This film was an exercise in liberals congratulating themselves on their "tolerance, justice, and basic decency" as opposed to those rotten conservatives who are racist, greedy, and sadistic. In other words Barbara Streisand must have LOVED this movie!

[–] taijiquan12 17 years ago

I know Saddam wasn't hung explicity for 9/11, I was just saying that the adminstration felt they had something to show for all their efforts when they got him, as if that small victory justified all of the mistakes before hand. I was saying that's similar to the movie when the man shoots Bubber and the town afterwards feels a sense of safety despite their insane actions, the government wanted people to feel the same sense of safety when Saddam was captured.
The action that was taken was by the government, not the people. I was saying that the mob mentality of wanting to hunt an unknown enemy gave the administration confidence and support in going to war. I realize that nobody took action like the townspeople did, but there were many people who that mentality, they had that intention in their thoughts, even thought they might not have literally taken torches to mosques or whatever, that witchhunt mentality was present afterwards as a result of fear. This is just like in the movie when the news of Bubber's escape drives the town into a frenzy. The only difference is in the movie people went nuts and trashed the town looking for Bubber, while in reality people gave support for the war and wanted someone caught badly enought to rally behind a leader who wanted to take us to war for all the wrong reasons and against all the wrong people.
I still am not convinced that there was a liberal motivation behind making this movie, it just struck me as a morality tale. Liberals don't commonly portray the people, the townsfolk as being evil while glorifying government and authority figures. A more liberally biased film also wouldn't have shown the industrialist as possessing any compassion at all (what little they did display), but I could be wrong as I don't know who financed the film or what the intentions were when making it. I also don't get the Streisand reference. I don't know much about her, is she especially liberal or something?

"Bulls**t MR.Han Man!!"--Jim Kelly in Enter the Dragon

[–] MrPie7 17 years ago

Is Barbara Steisand LIBERAL??? Is the Pope a Catholic? In the middle of her most recent series of concerts she inserted an anti-Bush sketch. When someone from the audience commented he had paid over a thousand dollars for tickets to hear her SING, not parade her political opinions, she dropped the "MF bomb" on him in a rant that went on for some time. The film in no way supports any government. The reason that the film shows Brando's sherriff as the hero is because he PERSONALLY defies the bigoted townies AND Val Rogers. Where do you get the idea the town feels a sense of "safety"? The VIEWER may feel this, but the town's attitude is one of being abashed, if not downright ashamed.

I'm not going to debate Iraq with you, because in my opinion, your argument is filled with assumptions, opinions, and outright distortions of a complex and important situation. I have stated my views on Iraq several times on IMDB forums and am no longer interested in debating people who can't accept that there are 2 sides to an issue and somehow feel that the opposing side is "EVIL", as is Bush, and that conservatives have a "hidden agenda" for somehow immorally profiting from the war. I, and most of the folks who hold conservative opinions on Iraq, are SINCERE in our beliefs. We are not in league with Satan! Why is it every time I state a conservative opinion about a film, some liberal wants to bring Iraq into it?

[–] mea-12 17 years ago

MrPie7, I feel exactly the same way you do. Thank God there are at least a few of us left. I do predict sadly however, that there will be no conservative party left in this country 15 years from now.

mea-12

[–] MrPie7 17 years ago

Mea, it is a mystery to me why liberals can't accept that conservatives have different opinions about the issues than they do. Of course since they are so right, we must not only be wrong, but deliberately wrong. If we are deliberately wrong, we must therefor be evil. The famous liberal "tolerance" extends only to those whose views are more liberal than theirs. Thus, Obama's buddy Rev. Wright is ok, but Pat Robertson, Robert Schuler, and Billy Graham are crypto-fascist religious bigots.

[–] 17 years ago

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[–] activista 9 years ago

@MrPie

Mea, it is a mystery to me why liberals can't accept that conservatives have different opinions about the issues than they do.

Really? From what I've seen online and in the news,it seems that most conservatives (especially the Tea Party ones)would rather shove their world view down everyone's throat while claiming that THEIR way is the only damn way to think, and constantly hate on anyone that's liberal just because FOX news told them to do it, and because they can't think for themselves, apparently---it's better to just toe the party line than actually question the status quo. So what's you saying is a bunch of BS---stop trying to play the victim card when it comes ot being conservative. Nobody's stopping y'all from saying a damn thing---I mean, FOX news is nothing but a mouthpiece for conservatives, anyway. But too many conservatives act like nobody should have one damn bad thing to say about them or criticize them,ever. There's more than enough room for diversity of though in this country---we have a right to it---but apparently, that's lost on these Tea Party freak idiots, whose influence finally seems to be waning since they lost so damn bad in the last election (ha ha ha ha ha!)

THE CHASE was fun to watch for me---it's not some unrealistic goody-goody tract or anything---the characters actually come off as far more complicated and real than most Hollywood films I've seen from that era. I really liked it. And it was simply trying to be more realistic about human nature---nobody is portrayed as any kind of saint in the film, that's for sure,or all good or aoo bad, like one of the previous posters said. I also liked the fat that the few roles played by the blsck actors in the film weren't stereotypical,either.

[–] urgeking 8 years ago

MrPie7: This movie may be over-the-top and exaggerated in a number of ways, but so are your posts about it here. I do note the fact that eight years have gone by since then, but, anyway:

Of COURSE this town is supposed to be "Typical", otherwise why would such universal themes as bigotry, friendship, alienation, and parental concern be presented.

You can't present such themes unless the town is supposed to be "typical"? Is there some rule I missed?

If it WASN'T supposed to be "typical", where is the dialog about "this isn't normal" or "this will make the town a laughing stock thru the state"? Not ONE line to this effect is uttered.

Um, maybe the filmmakers thought the audience in 1966 would be able to figure that out all by themselves...

And BTW exactly WHERE were Muslims attacked by rolling flaming tires down on them?

But, there is a HUGE difference between the angry talk after 9/11, which was mainly due to frustration that our enemies were too cowardly to reveal themselves, and actually taking ACTION like the violent, crazed, maniacs in the town. The gulf between WORDS and DEEDS is IMMENSE. So I don't really see a vaid analogy.

You are aware, aren't you, that lynchings were going on in the South almost up until the year this movie was made, and it's been reported that a few have actually happened since then? (Such as the black man dragged to his death behind a pickup truck a few years back-- in Texas, if I recall correctly.)

And here in the U.S. since 9/11, a number of Muslim citizens, as well as Sikhs mistakenly thought to be Muslims (their attackers probably thinking, "So what, same difference"), have been attacked and sometimes killed by individuals trying to get some sort of 'revenge'. No, the attackers weren't lynch MOBS, but they were influenced by anti-Muslim attitudes held by many others.

I'm no wild fan of this movie; it should have been done with much more subtlety and restraint, and that might have happened if it had been made five or ten years later. Instead it was turned into a big splashy trashy Hollywood entertainment vehicle-- 1960s showbiz entertainment values, as distinct from 'liberal Hollywood values'.

As for those values, note that Horton Foote grew up in Texas and Lillian Hellman was born and partly raised in Louisiana. What they might have been thinking was, "We saw some of these attitudes around us when we were young, and this movie will show what could happen if they got totally out of hand-- which might be just around the corner." In the real-life American South, black children had just recently been jeered and assaulted for trying to go to school. The Freedom Riders' bus had been set on fire. In other words, you could turn on the news in those days and see real-world context for the mob mentality presented here.

I have stated my views on Iraq several times on IMDB forums and am no longer interested in debating people who can't accept that there are 2 sides to an issue and somehow feel that the opposing side is "EVIL", as is Bush, and that conservatives have a "hidden agenda" for somehow immorally profiting from the war.

"Evil" aside...
"Somehow immorally profiting"? Starting with Halliburton and various oil companies, a lot of "somehow" had been exposed and documented before 2008. If I were more cynical than I am (and maybe I am), I would suspect that such profiting was one real reason for W's (and Cheney's) "Mission Accomplished" banner.

And, yes, Redford was way too pretty and too 'refined' for the role of Bubber. So how about a remake? ;)

[–] palomine 10 years ago

If Americans had bothered to use common sense, they would have been able to see immediately that 9-11 was an inside job, orchestrated by traitors in the CIA, the FBI, NORAD, the FAA, the U.S. military and a thousand other government agencies. The twin towers were brought down by controlled demolition, and that right there was enough to prove the attack wasn't carried out by 20 Arabs operating out of a cave in Afghanistan. It was a sophisicated attack. Instead of directing their anger at Iraq and Afghanistan, they should have gone after the traitors in the United States who pereptrated the whole affair. See this:

http://www1.ae911truth.org/en/affiliate-marketing-program/874-why-i-am-convinced-911-was-an-inside-job.html

[–] Hancock_the_Superb 15 years ago

I didn't find it funny at all, aside from Marlon Brando sounding like Boomhauer from King of the Hill. It was more a combination of boring, nasty and weird, stacking the dramatic deck for the most dubious of messages.

"Some men will say we are traitors. Some will say we're patriots. Both will be wrong."

[–] MrPie7 15 years ago

"It was more a combination of boring, nasty and weird, stacking the dramatic deck for the most dubious of messages."

That TOO! And a KILLER cast just adds to the fun!

[–] nickm2 15 years ago

Shoot I must have seen this movie 35+++ years ago; the only reason I saw it was because I had a crush on Angie Dickinson & she looked HOT in this flick!

NM

[–] 15 years ago

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[–] 398 14 years ago

While I want to avoid the political debate in this thread, I agree with the OP that the one-dimensionally nasty characters, the focus on soap opera for much of the movie, and the wildly overheated melodrama of the last third makes it more campy than dramatic, despite a number of strong scenes criticizing racism.

A few things I found risible:

1. Redford's hairdo--they could have at least given him an unbecoming prison cut. Realism was not aided either by Redford being clean shaven even after more than a day running about the swamp.

2. The vice-president of the bank and two other businessmen in swanky suits pistol-whip and beat the sheriff within an inch of his life in his own office. No one, including the sheriff, makes much of this severe felony.

3. The badly beaten sheriff, looking like Messala after he lost the chariot race, lurches out his office door and rolls down the front steps in front of a gaping crowd. No one except his wife even tries to help him.

4. Despite a beating that might have taken his life and would certainly have put him in the hospital for weeks, Brando is back on the job within minutes.

5. The movie ends on a totally motiveless shooting of a man who was going to the chair anyway. I guess this was supposed to be a comment on Ruby's shooting of Oswald.

6. The relentlessly nasty, greedy, spouse-swapping, violent, drunken, out-of-control folks who made up the town I found more a laughable cartoon than a probing critique of American (or Texan) society. It was just too heavy-handed to be effective.

[–] gtbarker 14 years ago

I can understand why so many find this movie uncomfortable viewing and so seek to ridicule. Afterall the world is full of 'respectable' people who find it the most natural thing in the world to find courage in mob-handed bigotry.

[–] RobbieCalifornia 13 years ago

The film was just plain awful. If someone intended to make a film about bigotry, surely they could have come up with something better than this. It was shockingly bad.

Lillian Hellman seemed to have been at her best when she was writing about herself. I know this was based on something by Horton Foote, which I haven't read, so it's hard to tell who was responsible for the cheesy dialog, ridiculous characters and situations.

[–] 13 years ago

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[–] mike-848 8 years ago

I agree. What a waste of some very talented actors. None of them were believable in their roles.