jeffclinthill Reviews

The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis (1959–1963)

A teenage version of the Bob Cummings Show

[7/10 · 24 September 2023]

In many ways, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis was a teenage version of the Bob Cummings Show. After playing Bob's nephew, Chuck as a college student for a few years, Dwayne Hickman appeared as Dobie as a high school student with many of the mannerisms of Bob Cummings as Bob Collins. Just one of those mannerisms was the "takes" that he would do whenever sidekick Maynard G. Krebs would murder the English language. The Bob Cummings Show had French Colette DuBois played by Lisa Gaye who when pondering the idea of dating Chuck, said, "Wouldn't that be like you Americans say, 'stealing the baby bed'?" To which Bob did his double take and then reacting, "You mean 'robbing the cradle'?" Like in the Cummings show, Dobie was surrounded by attractive girls, usually with some comic fiasco of an ending with the given girl of each episode. Whereas Bob Collins had his loyal secretary Schultzy always pining for him, Dobie had Zelda. Whereas Bob Collins was forever thwarted by Lola Albright as Kay Michaels, Dobie was forever thwarted by Tuesday Weld as Thalia Menninger.

Thunderball (1965)

Blatantly inaccurate skin diving depictation

[5/10 · 15 February 2023]

You don't have to be qualified in SCUBA diving or mask and snorkel free diving - all you have to do is swim down to the lower part of the deep end of a swimming pool - to know that from around the depth of 9 feet, if you don't "equalize" by pushing shut your nostrils and blowing with your mouth shut, your ears will begin to painfully implode from the water pressure. Therefore, all face masks made for snorkeling and SCUBA diving are equipped with "equalizers" with which the diver uses either his two forefingers or his thumb and forefinger to squeeze his nose and blow.

However, obviously for the purpose of the audience being able to see Sean Connery's full face, in most of his underwater scenes, James Bond in "Thunderball" is wearing a face mask unobstructed with an equalizer.

Another piece of diving equipment is the snorkel. In the underwater scene where James Bond encounters Domino and extricates her foot from coral, neither he nor she is wearing a face mask with equalizers or using a snorkel. Standard procedure when doing such free diving is to swim on the surface face down with a snorkel to observe the aquatic life below, do a surface dive when reaching an intriguing area, explore, and then go to the surface to breathe again. Trying to do this without a snorkel is exhausting.

A snorkel is also standard equipment when SCUBA diving - so that the diver can see where he is going when swimming on the surface. However, in the entirety of "Thunderball," none of the scores of divers is equipped with a snorkel.

Love and Honor (2013)

No technical advisor at all?

[2/10 · 17 September 2021]

Speaking as a Vietnam war veteran who arrived in Vietnam the same summer as the movie takes place (1969) and who went on R&R in 1970, I found "Love and Honor" to be terribly annoying and insulting in its blaring inaccuracies that indicate that the producers did not employ (or else didn't listen to) any form of technical advisor.

1: When going on R&R (or leave) from Vietnam, we traveled in civilian clothes, not in our jungle fatigues.

2: When in any form of uniform, we wore an insignia showing rank. Those in the Army (soldiers) in Vietnam wore small, black, metal rank insignias that the enemy could not see from a distance. The guys in "Love and Honor" are not wearing any rank insignias at all.

3: The movie touts "military travels free." That is only when traveling on a military plane or a military chartered plane when the individual has specific orders to fly. When flying commercial, we showed our (leave or PCS) orders and then got 50% off by flying "Space Available," meaning we may or may not be getting on the next flight or the flight after that or the flight after that. There is absolutely no way any military member could have been on R&R in Hong Kong and from there flown out - let alone fly all the way to and all the way back from some location in the continental United States. And if the two soldiers had had any plans to try that stupid move, they would have elected to take R&R in Honolulu, not Hong Kong.

4: In one scene the soldier tries go say hello to a "round eye" in the states and he gets the finger and a buzz off, baby killer. He mumbles "whatever happened to 'thank you for your service.'" "Thank you for your service" was not invented until the recent, Middle East wars. The first time I heard, "Thank you for your service" was in 2014, when somebody noticed that my car, parked on Fort Bragg, has a (North Carolina) Vietnam Veteran license plate. When we got back from Vietnam (between 1965 and 1973), at best, nobody mentioned our service in that war at all.

Winky-Dink and You (1953–1957)

Saran Wrap and a crayon worked just as well

[7/10 · 5 January 2019]

Instead of sending in my fifty cents (which was a week's allowance) for a Winky Dink and You kit, I used a piece of Saran Wrap and a crayon. It worked just as well.

Father Knows Best (1954–1960)

The first rule of listening

[7/10 · 29 January 2018]

At the time it was first broadcast, "Father Knows Best" was the quintessential American dream family life that was the fulfillment of what had been denied during the Depression of the 1930s (when everyone wished for financial security) and the World War II years of the 1940s (when everyone fantasized what life would be like in the "post-war" years of peace and prosperity). The Anderson family had that ideal life in Springfield in the 1950s. In the 1970s,1980s, and 1990s the American dream shows of the fifties (Father Knows Best, The Donna Reed Show, et al) were, in hindsight, criticized for presenting week after week an ideal family that caused so much of real America to feel inferior and mal-ajusted. Seminars with titles such as "The Way We Never Were" were conducted to assure real life Americans that they were, in fact, "normal," even if they didn't come from a nuclear family of two never-been-divorced, heterosexual parents, two or three children, a college educated, white collar father, a stay-at-home mom, and dog in the back yard surrounded by a picket fence. Decades after the show had run its course, Billy Gray apologized in interviews to the American public for causing mothers all across America to ask their teenage sons "Why can't you be like Bud?" In those interviews Billy Gray declared, "I was just playing the part of Bud as written for the show. Even I wasn't like Bud." However, what I find quite ironic now when watching "Father Knows Best" 60 years later, is that both Father and Mother in "Father Knows Best" week after week violated the first rule of listening to children. Instead of putting down his newspaper, listening, and appropriately responding to his 7 year old daughter, Jim Anderson shrugs, "Not now, Kitten, I'm reading the paper." The other members of the Anderson similarly, week after week, ran in and out of rooms not really listening to each other and giving sarcastic responses to questions and situations. The scripts provided the resulting confusion that caused the comic problems that Father eventually resolved at the end of the show. When seen now in the year 2018, "Father Knows Best" is an object lesson in the value of passive listening that I found opened up a treasure of father-son relationships when I raised my son in the 1970s and a treasure of relationships that I now have with my granddaughter. Put down whatever you are doing when the kid wants to be with you and what will happen is wonderful.

Sea Hunt (1958–1961)

Set Hunt Influenced My Life

[9/10 · 25 October 2016]

I started watching Sea Hunt when it was first broadcast when I was in the 6th grade in 1958. The show had a significant impact on my life: from my lifelong use of Vitalis because it was the show's sponsor - to getting a SCUBA diving license on my own time and with my own money when I was in the Air Force in 1969 - to SCUBA diving in Japan: from Hokkaido to Okinawa. I was also motivated to read Lloyd Bridges' book: Mask and Flippers in 1969. The book is Lloyd Bridges' own personal life story with diving - beginning with trying to make a diving bell out of an old boiler or some other form of tank when he was 12 years old. When his father came by that dock and saw some other boys pumping a bicycle pump into a rubber tube, he asked "Where's Lloyd?" They told him, "He's down there. We're pumping air to him." By that time, Lloyd had already passed out since the bicycle pump didn't work for supplying air. His father dove down, pulled him out, and recussitated him. The rest of the book is also filled with rather stupid things that Mike Nelson would have never done - such as diving with ear plugs. The book also answers some key questions that Sea Hunt fans would have, such as "The first rule of diving is always dive with a partner. Why does Mike Nelson dive alone?" Lloyd Bridges' answers: If Mike Nelson dove with a partner, he wouldn't get into the dramatic fixes that are the show. And by seeing Mike Nelson get into those fixes, the audience gets the message to always dive with a partner." Two other things about the show that I noticed were done for dramatic effect: 1: So that we can see his full face, Mike Nelson wears a mask that does not have the equalizers to squeeze his nose so he can equalize his ear tubes for diving more than 9 feet. He'd bust his ear drums below 15 feet. 2: Mike Nelson for dramatic effect swims with his arms grabbing handfuls of water and pulling back. That is an exhausting motion that does not afford much movement at all. I know: I tried it when diving. All of us Sea Hunt fans will always remember Lloyd Bridges' charismatic narrations: "There he was. Being eaten by a giant clam. I knew he was in trouble."

The Yakuza (1974)

A Cheesy Gaijin's Impression of Japan

[3/10 · 16 August 2015]

I am writing this as a lifelong movie fan, a great admirer of Sydney Pollack's skill at directing everything from the genres of "Jeremiah Johnson" to "Tootsie" to "Out of Africa," someone with a graduate degree in Japanese psychological anthropology from Sophia University, Tokyo, and someone who lived in Japan for 30 years. A cheesy gaijin's (外人の）impression of Japan, "The Yakuza" is chock full of stereotypical things and scenes one will never see in Japan due to strict laws, heavy law enforcement, and the astronomical price of real estate in urban Japan. Immediately after World War II, the Japanese firearm and sword law effectively prohibited the private ownership of both guns and swords. Yet, in "The Yakuza," Herb Edelman's house in Kyoto is an arsenal of swords and firearms openly displayed on the walls. He owns even more guns hidden in drawers. Without any visible means of support, Herb Edelman owns a house in the Kyoto area that is financially impossibly spacious and full of items, such as a huge "Japanese lantern" that looks like he stole it from a shinto shrine. "Gaijin," written 外人 in kanji, is the term that Japanese people colloquially (and rather insultingly) use for "foreigner." It is composed of two characters that literally mean "outside person."

Lawman (1971)

A Western version of "The Wild One"

[15 July 2012]

One fun way of viewing "Lawman" is to see it as a Western version of the 1953 Marlon Brando movie "The Wild One" with an alternative denouement. Both films begin with a bunch of rowdy guys in their twenties and thirties riding into a small town (on horseback in "Lawman" and on motorcycles in "The Wild One")and acting like spoiled teenagers with an arrogant sense of entitlement as they terrorize the place with their rough joviality. An innocent victim of their antics is an old man who is killed by accident. At this point in "The Wild One" J.C. Flippin steps in as the authority figure and the movie ends. In "Lawman" Burt Lancaster steps in as the authority figure and the movie begins.

Hot Rods to Hell (1966)

A sad sequel to "Best Years of Our Lives"

[3/10 · 11 June 2011]

To me, "Hot Rods to Hell" is a pathetic sequel to the character that Dana Andrews played in "Best Years of Our Lives" who tells Peggy (played by Teresa Wright) that all he wants is a good job and a house and a family: in short, the American Dream. By the end of that film, we know that he will marry Peggy and do whatever he has to in order to earn that American dream. "Hot Rods to Hell" takes place twenty one years later, Dana Andrews is married to "Peg" and he has a rebellious teenage daughter and a standard, cookie cutter, gingerbread boy son of about 13. The nightmare scene that he does in "Hot Rods" so much resembles the nightmare scene that he did in "Best Years" that I expected him to again call out, "Bail out! Gredofusky! Bail out!" I wonder how many people in 1967 bailed out of the movie theaters or drive-in movies after that scene appeared - or later wished they had if they stayed to the bitter end.

Video Village (1960– )

A Lighthearted, Lifesize Version of "Monopoly"

[29 July 2008]

"Video Village is the place where people wear a happy face" began the theme song of this monopoly-like game show. As I remember it, two contestants turned a cage with a die in it and then walked the number of spaces that turned up on the die. They picked up tokens (such as "Get out of Jail") and prizes as they continued on their stroll through the village. If they had bad luck, they landed on such spaces as "U Turn" and "Go to Jail." At the end of the show, a consolation prize was the Video Village Home Game. At ages 10 and 13, my brother and I didn't want to pay for a Video Village Home Game in a box, so we made our own out of shirt cardboards. We didn't have a die cage, so instead of "U Turn" we had a space we labeled "U Throw." I think we had more fun making that game than we did playing it.

Hotel de Paree (1959–1960)

A little bit of everything

[14 March 2004]

I remember Hotel de Paree as having a little bit of everything. It ripped off "Gunsmoke" and "Have Gun Will Travel." It was the precursor of The Dick Van Dyke Show and The Andy Griffith Show. It was the coolest role that Earl Holiman ever played. His co-stars were his mirror rimmed hat and his pistol with the mirror on the hand-grip where Paladin's pistol had a knight chess piece. In so many of the other television westerns of the time such as Cheyenne, Sugarfoot, Bronco, and Maverick, the main character would drift into town, get unfairly accused of some crime the villain had done, expose the villain, kill the villain in a shoot out, and then mosey out of town despite the pleas of the townsfolk, including the pleas of the luscious daughter of the richest cattleman in town that he "stay on. We need you."

But in Hotel de Paree, Earl Holiman drifts into town without a cent to his name, and helped by his mirror rimmed hat, kills the bad guy in a high noon show down, and takes over ownership of the town hotel that is run by two French damsels. For the rest of the series he plays a character that is a cross between Matt Dillion and Rob Petrie.

Black Hawk Down (2001)

Accurate Characterization

[5 March 2003]

I was an air force intelligence analyst in Vietnam and I can testify that the film "Platoon" portrays the guys as we really were during the Vietnam conflict: confused, iconoclastic, and sarcastic. Now I am a civilian intelligence analyst on Fort Bragg with the Green Berets and the Rangers and I can testify that "Blackhawk Down" portrays today's combat troops the way they really are: well trained, alert, motivated, and physically fit. The vast majority of them are even so good looking that any given bunch of them looks like a Hollywood cattle call for central casting.