Papa Mike's Video #30 + 31: THE LADIES MAN (1961) and THE ILLUSTRATED MAN (1969)

 I happened to catch two "Man" Movies from my father-in-law's rich and varied collection

Kathleen Freeman's reactions to what Jerry is doing here is like everything, isnt it?

Funny! 

 Why? Well, Jerry is such a bundle of unbridled, nerve-shattering Id that, whether you're a man or a woman, you know that someone being all of a sudden being in the presence in a fancy boardinghouse early in the morning packed with the opposite sex and they are all gorgeous and dressed in colorful garb (and you are deeply attracted to them while also have been roundly rejected by one of them at the most vulnerable moment of one's young life), you can't help but laugh. 

Lewis does take things into such absurdity that he has to take things so far that how far it goes becomes funny (an odd comparison but think of when David Letterman used to do it, sometimes I mean); think as one example when Freeman tells Herbert not to damage those priceless glass figurines and of course he does and her reaction is so dramatic he has to wheel her out of the room on a piece of large furniture.

What is the movie's great strength for the most part is that it has no heed to stick to a cohesive structure. This is a series of gags - some of them, apparently according to trivia, scripted by a young uncredited Mel Brooks (he asked to be because the script got changed a lot, but there is so much Brooksian lunacy I think his prints are on it more than not) - and it is less about Jerry Lewis being funny than those who interact with him being the comedy. I mention Freeman but there is also that segment where Herbert just can't seem to get the hat on Buddy Lester, and while it goes on for a while the comedy keeps ratcheting up.

I also neglect to mention the set which is not only the star but probably deserved some like awards recognition or something (the movie was a hit, but guess it would not have been seen as innovative outside of France). But a set is just a set, what matters are the ideas behind how to utilize it and though Lewis and his cameraman do show it off from time to time, after the initial introduction, which is almost poetic in how many beings are in thesr spaces on their way to breakfast, he does make it about how Herbert and others move in the sets and what comedy can come around. And did I mention how beautifully absurd this gets? The butterflies!

The TV news segment with "Up Your Street" and those gags probably (no, for sure) do go on a little too long and is only marginally successful at the execution wacky hijinks (I just don't find Jerry dancing in a silly way as funny as he does or maybe the kids then did); this is largely because of everything else going on in the rest of the film which is so fearlessly surrealistic alrrady and just flat out bizarre, ie when Jerey goes to that one lady's room where she is in the black dance suit and whire make up and the Big Band Jazz group plays like he has wandered into heaven (a major highlight, but there are too many to count). And as one other slight ding against it, the pathos injected into the ending is a little too syrupy for my taste (off set somewhat by the very last several seconds).

So, a lot of fun! There is brilliance here, and most importantly is how well it holds up as something brazenly silly and weird that managed to play to a wide mainstream crowd.

(I'm about to teach "The Veldt" as part of two classes tomorrow. Timely? Just a bit!)

I like a good hardy piece of Rod Steiger eating up and projecting every single chunk of ham and cheesescenery that he can here, which almost includes his co-stars Robert Drivas and Claire Bloom, and him ranting about hoe bad ticks are and how bad they bite and they SUCK YOUR BLOOD, THEY STINK THOSE ROTTEN THINGS you while covered in his "skin illustrations" is fun.

There are two giant marks against this sort-of anthology movie that adapts three of the stories from the book of the Illustrated Man (that had a total of 18 so this is literally a sixth of that): the first is that Steiger, and also Bloom and Drivas, act in all of the segments, not just the wrap-around stories, and that feels like a miscalculation of acting distribution. I get that most of the budget went to those tato-skin illustrations, but one of the fun things in any anthology movie is seeing who gets cast in all of the various segments (see also, oh, Asylum or Tales from thr Crypt or of course Creepshow). Steiger is trying on different characters and yet he is at the same fevered, anguished amd sometimes ornery pitch and it is just too much.

The other gripe is that the direction is just *okay* and there is not a lot of visual flair and imagination from Jack Smight past some standard sci-fi sets and props, and the mark of suspense here can be seen in the climax of the Veldt as in place of seeing the carnage of a lion attack instead it is like a few dozen quick shots and edits in twenty seconds, and it just is not that eerie to me.

On the plus side, the wonderful Claire Bloom does do her best to bring a little more nuance in her scenes with that giant pulsating-throbbing wide-eyed vein of human emotion that is Rod Steiger, so it is not all one tone the entire time. And yet on another hand, Davras is while not a worthless actor is just not up to par with his more seasoned co-leads. At any rate, this could be not so much a film ripe for a remake but that the book itself has so much potential for another adaptation (or even a series ala Fall of the House of Usher).