Τα 5000 Δάχτυλα του Δρ Τ

Those Eyebrows3.5

which cremaster is this

Evan “Raymond Gun-Virus” Pincus4.5

Seuss's only foray into writing for the live action screen ends up as some deranged sort of kiddie Caligari- demented, hallucinatory, and oh yes, very atomic. There's lot to be said for how much torture, misanthropy and general insanity remains in this version, which reportedly has a whopping 11 musical numbers cut (that's more than are actually in the movie!) due to their being too depraved for general audiences- but even still with the horrors left in the final cut, it manages to admirably keep up its wholesome appearances with a 50's white-bread nuclear family smiling in suburbia. I wish the claim this made to being the "wonder musical of the future" was an accurate prediction to the way cinema would progress in decades to come- we need more kids movies this stylishly nightmarish.

Josh Lewis4.0

Somehow was unaware that Dr. Seuss wrote a lavish MGM-style Technicolor fantasy musical that for some reason was given the full weight and resources of the Stanley Kramer production house, and was so dark and deranged in terms of its post-war commentary that it was slashed in half from its original preview cut into a more sentimental family film package that still retains many of its odd and creepy details. The final result, similarly to The Wizard of Oz, is centered around the subjective anxieties and powerless feelings of a child whose strict piano teacher, widowed mother and kindly plumber become exaggerated characters in an imaginative dream world where the piano playing fingers of 500 children (and his mother's hand in marriage) are soon to be under the hypnotic, tyrannical control of Dr. T who rules his hallucinatory music academy like an evil Willy Wonka in an authoritarian palace of child nightmare logic filled bizarro expressionist architecture, elaborately staged and choreographed musical numbers, and deliriously designed prison cells and torture dungeons where all the naughty children and musicians are chased around and threatened to be "disintegrated" in.Highlights include: the cartoon logistics of the plumber installing hundreds of sinks for all the kids fingers, a giant red ladder to the vast matte painting sky, an absurdist dungeon ballet of green paint skinned musicians (including a man whose entire torso was a tuba wrapped around him like a snake?) overseen by an elevator operating executioner, drinking pickle juice before engaging in a roller-skating fight with a conjoined by the the beard (?) Siamese twin henchmen, and an out of nowhere atomic bomb anxiety finale... The kind of astonishingly expensive box office bomb that unfairly deprived us of what should've been at least a decade of seeing Seuss' strangely expressive creations and witty rhyming wordplay being realized in vivid analog craft.If your kid isn't ready for The Red Shoes or The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari yet this feels like a great gateway drug.Full discussion with SOV horror filmmaker Charles Pinion on ep 327 of my podcast SLEAZOIDS.