More Animals! More Doing Stuff!

We’re just a wonder and cop dog away from closing out Animals Doing Human Stuff Month here at the Dog—er, Doll’s House, but let’s make a puppy (& monkey) play date out of today for a quick three-stop field trip!

First, grab a handful of quarters to enter the Dollar Theater Massacre, where blogger Eric has found what might be the pick of the litter when it comes to Dogs Doing Human Stuff cinema: My Ghost Dog. 

Apparently, this movie has Nazis, violence to teen groins, a child who causes everyone he cares about to die, dated Michael Jordan references, and bullies paid back in a vat of acid. Now while Eric may not have been impressed (like Ghost Cat, it would seem My Ghost Dog needed more ghost dog), his review is hilarious and incredibly enticing. Thankfully, Eric spares me the drive to throw My Ghost Dog on the already packed queue because he kindly compiled a truly fantastic little clip reel that captures the film’s greatest--and they are GREAT--moments.

Quite possibly, the best 6 minutes of your life.

For those who need a little more of the monkey kingdom in their lives (i.e., everyone), Wayne Kotke, our favorite living impaired blogger, covered the 1978 documentary Koko: A Talking Gorilla. According to Wayne, this movie includes both gorillas wearing makeup AND nerdy scientists with Prince Valiant haircuts. 

I dare you to try and stop me from watching this.

While you’re there, be sure to skim through Wayne’s archives. You’ll never think of Ziggy quite the same way.

What’s that? You want MORE monkeys? Of course you do! That’s why the esteemed Thomas Duke of Cinema Gonzo is on hand with Spymate, a little straight-to-DVD film featuring pre-Screfourem’s Emma Roberts and more importantly, a superspy chimp. A superspy chimp that, if Sir Duke is to be believed, can wield a jet pack, skateboard, snowboard, AND has control of martial arts. Oh, and did we mention Pat THE KARATE DOG Morita has a small role?

And that it has a chimp using a jet pack. Seriously, what more could you possibly want?

Nothing that I can think of. I could die now and come back as a ghost dog tomorrow and feel satisfied with all the Animals Doing Human Stuff movies the world has been given by unexceptional directors, C-list actors, and in general, the nation of Canada. I strongly encourage you all to check out the three aforementioned gentlemen’s posts for some great laughs and even, aws. Because c’mon! Look at that:

And that:

And really, just...c’mon! 

Ladies & Gentlemen, The President...and a chimpanzee dressed like a cowboy

Arnold Schwarzenegger seriously screwed up any chance I have at writing an effective intro to Bedtime For Bonzo, the 1951 comedy wherein Future President Ronald Reagan plays papa to a chimpanzee who wears human clothing. I wanted to make a great point about how anyone born past a certain point of familiarity with Reagan as an actor can’t help but be completely fascinated and even dubious that a man who once made a living mugging onscreen with a well-trained chimp would later go on to become one of the most powerful humans in the world

See, in the old days—but post Reagan as an actor, so not THAT old days—the biggest performance we’d get out of our politicians was their baby kissing or tax questions tap dancing or the juggernaut saxophone performance and failed spelling bee of the ’92 election. Our politicians were former lawyers turned public speakers who lived in suits and permanent smiles. They weren’t movie stars.

Then a man who once played a pregnant male scientist, futuristic robot, and Danny DeVito’s twin brother became governor and everything relevant to Bedtime For Bonzo changed forever. 

At least for my generation.

Quick Plot: Peter is an up and coming psychologist engaged to the stuffy word generally reserved for female dogs daughter of his boss. When his future father-in-law learns that Peter’s own pops was a convict, the wedding is called off and Stuffy Word Generally Reserved For Female Dogs seems okay with that. Not overly happy, but more “okay, we’ll just wait til Father rethinks this,” rather than “I love you and support you and will try to change my father’s mind.”

For whatever reason, Peter decides to fight for his rather apathetic fiancee’s approval the way any future president would:

Befriending a monkey.

It’s a little more complicated than that, I suppose. In addition to wanting to marry an awful woman, Peter is keen on proving his theory of nurture over nature and what better way to do so than to train a wily chimp in the ways of a good and pure nuclear family? Thusly does he embark on hiring a mama—who conveniently enough is a sugar sweet young lady who seems poised to play the foil of his beloved at every turn—and begin daily routines of a healthy breakfast, kissing mama before leaving for work, and of course, putting Bonzo to bed.

Naturally, a series of misunderstandings leads to a second broken engagement, arrest, chimp dressed like a cowboy, job loss, chimp sale, burglary, chimp in glasses, and love triangle, that last of which is egged on by Peter’s partner, a foreign scientist who might actually be cinema’s classiest pimp. This being a 1954 family comedy, all ends well, even if not every member of the cast rides off into the sunset wearing a seatbelt.

High Points

I’m not necessarily keen on the man’s politics or his understanding of the food pyramid, but future president Ronald Reagan is actually quite likable in the lead role, even when being engaged to a total snob

Low Points

Surprisingly enough, there isn’t that much drama or intrigue to be found inside a film about a psychologist trying to train a chimpanzee

Lessons Learned

Almost 23 is not so young

A papa should tell a mama when he’s almost engaged to someone

You can’t be a dope without a college degree

Hearing the future president shout “You’ve got to help me find my monkey!” makes me realize how no man can repeatedly say ‘monkey’ without sounding weird. It’s not just you, Harvey Keitel!

Standard Animals Doing Human Stuff Trope Tally

New Kid In Town: X

Recent Dead or Divorced Parent: X

Montage: X. Although there is a prolonged musical sequence involving the monkey on a bicycle, which is sort of the older generation’s version of a montage.

New Friendship: Check

Potentially Inappropriate ‘Friendship’ Between Child & Unrelated Adult (Human): X. 

Evil Corporate Enemy: Check. Heads of universities make for formidable villains

Original Song: X

Bully Comeuppance: X 

Small Town Values: X

Back To Nature Moral: X

Overall Score: 2/10. I guess the tropes have an expiration date after all

Rent/Bury/Buy

Having never seen Ronald Reagan act in a film, Bedtime For Bonzo was certainly an experience of sorts. It’s not every day you watch a future world leader cradle a chimpanzee in his arms and feed it with a baby bottle. Reagan apparently despises this film, which somehow makes the whole thing that much more amusing. Kind of like thinking ketchup would be a good serving of vegetables for the youth of America...

How You Doin'? Well, honestly, not so hot

If there's one nook in television land that encapsulated the latter end of the 1990s, it can be found in Central Perk. Never a fan myself (I'd much rather share a big salad with Elaine while rolling my eyes at George's latest antics and poking the bill towards Jerry), I can at least appreciate the influence that Friends had on the landscape of American pop culture. Yes, All In the Family was groundbreaking and Arrested Development was utter brilliance, but neither show can boast a haircut named after its lead.

How odd then, that in the center of its smash success most of Friends' fresh-faced stars (well, most and David Schwimmer) would stumble through such box office failure. Though Courteney Cox lucked out with Scream and Lisa Kudrow enjoyed moderate success in the lovable Romy & Michelle’s High School Reunion, the other few made bland to horrible choices of how to spend their hiatus. Jennifer Aniston bored audiences in The Object of My Affection, while Matthew Perry bumbled in Almost Heroes. Despite the growing stigma of being typecast as their NBC counterparts, I imagine all six of those future millionaires were relieved to slip back into that studio.

None more so than Matt LeBlanc, who easily made the worst decision of all his costars--and possibly, all NBC actors ever--by signing up to star in Ed.

Let me explain: Ed is a movie about a minor league pitcher who finds his curveball after befriending the team's new third baseman, a farting chimp.

Do I need to say that again? Ed is a movie about a minor league pitcher who finds his curveball after befriending the team's new third baseman, a farting chimp. 

You see where we're going with this...

Quick Plot: On a sunny green farm in Oregon, Matt LeBlanc plays Joe--

Look, let's get one thing straight: I am not going to refer to any character Matt LeBlanc plays as anything but Joey until I deem the man worthy of shedding that skin. I didn't even watch Friends but throughout Ed, I found myself completely incapable of remembering LeBlanc's character's name and hence, I'm just saying it's Joey. If you don't like that, then go find another blog that's about to devote far too many words to Ed, the movie about a minor league pitcher who finds his curveball after befriending the team's new third baseman, a farting chimp.

That's what I thought.

Joey is an aw-shucks savant of sorts who gives up homer after homer while playing for the Rockets, a minor league team composed of 'wacky' players with unmemorable quirks (cross-eyed, clumsy, preppy, Hispanic). In order to boost fan interest, the slimy owner brings in a chimpanzee for mascot duty but GET THIS: the furry guy is like, TOTALLY a good ballplayer. Before you can say "I DIDN'T SEE THAT ONE COMING!", Ed Sullivan (because why not?) is as big a star as any minor league player can be.

And 23 minutes into Ed, the monkey farts.

120 seconds later, Joey rolls his eyes and announces "I'm gonna spank that monkey!"

Dear readers, I don't know if I've been able to properly capture what it is about Animals Doing Human Stuff that I find so fascinating as a subgenre of live action film, but I hope that Ed helps to spotlight it. See, Ed is an awful, awful awful piece of cinema. I say this with nary a drop of film snobbery. I have an original poster of the second made-for-TV Ewok movie hanging above my desk as I type. I harbor no elitism when it comes to entertainment aimed at younger crowds.

But see, from its first shot to awkward last one, Ed is an undefendable piece of work. Though the animatronic title character was crafted with skill (and let it not go unsaid, creepiness), just about every other aspect of this 90 minute dud seems lazily burped onscreen. And  yes, I'm including the burps, of which there are many.

See, Ed is lovable because he FARTS! And BURPS! And makes weird noises in the bathroom. And eats strawberry ice cream that he then spits through his nose and it's that much funnier that it's strawberry ice cream in the same way that it's always funnier when a chimp farts. Ed might have a good eye at the plate and golden glove on the field, but he also steals bases by pantsing the second baseman. 

Don't worry: it's all in the montage.

And if you missed the first one, there's another!

My favorite thing about Ed, however, is not Matt LeBlanc's soulless performance or the fact that Joey's Single Mom Waitress Walking Cliche Love Interest inexplicably owns a golden Madonna cone brassiere and blond ponytail wig. These things are special in their own way, but clearly, the greatest tool this movie has is its sound effects. Or rather, one slide whistle that must have been blown 182 times in this 90 minute movie to signal anytime Ed does something WACKY. 

I might have thought Chain Letter had a lot of chains, but I tell you: Ed's use of the slide whistle must have singlehandedly kept that product in business for the remainder of the 20th century.

Outside of sound effect hijinks and the occasional monkey driving a car (matched, naturally, with slide whistle sound effect hijinks), Ed has little to offer most of its audience. There's a chemistry-free romance that butts in uninvited, a randomly sad character arc for the sole likable player on the Rockets' roster, a child actor forced to be precocious, toupee humor at the expense of the wealthy villain, a barely cohesive attempt to know anything about baseball, and because why not? animal abuse when Ed, now a star attraction, gets traded and randomly tortured. Because that's how most minor league ballclub owners treat their expensive investments. Torture. Throughout it all, LeBlanc's character that isn't Joey  keeps being pushed into the spotlight when really, if you're already putting an audience through as awful a film as Ed is, you might as well AT LEAST give them more time with the baseball playing chimpanzee.

No such luck.

Lessons Learned

It’s called a ball game because it involves a ball...and is supposed to be fun

Letting a chimpanzee play baseball is equally important as letting women vote and black men be presidents

People from Oregon are into choking...when it really counts

God listens to prayers made by little girls to awaken mortally wounded chimpanzees just in time for the big game

Would You Rather...

Costar Jack Warden has weathered some bad films. You have to wonder which he was less proud of: playing the grizzled minor league team manager fighting for the rights of a chimpanzee in a little hat, or as Junior's grumpy grandpa in the awful (yet memorized by me) hit Problem Child.

Look! It's...

Future Jesus Jim Caviezel as an unlucky infielder, Parks & Rec's Jerry as an announcer, and, far more impressively to someone like me, Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead and Kindergarten Cop bit play Jayne Brook as Ed's Single Mom Waitress Walking Cliche Love Interest!

Montage Mania!

While their respective partners go out on a lukewarm date, Ed and Single Mom Waitress Walking Cliche Love Interest's daughter make an absolute mess of their humble home. Following the fartacular sequence, the pair finish cleaning up their room, scrubbing that kitchen floor, getting the garbage out of sight, and yes: all this action coincides precisely to the lyrics of the played song, Yakety Yak

As if that weren't enough, director Bill Couturie finds a way to cram in a remix of Take Me Out to the Ballgame to show off Ed's incredible fielding skills. It's a montage double!

Standard Animals Doing Human Stuff Trope Tally

New Kid In Town: Check (he’s an adult, but it’s Matt LeBlanc, so you know...)

Recent Dead or Divorced Parent: Check, just not the main character

Montage: MULTIPLE

New Friendship: Check

Potentially Inappropriate ‘Friendship’ Between Child & Unrelated Adult: If a chimpanzee counts, then check

Evil Corporate Enemy: Check

Original Song: X

Bully Comeuppance: Check

Small Town Values: Check

Back To Nature Moral: X. Ed seems far happier eating processed foods, presumably because they fuel louder, ergo more comical farts

Overall Score: 8.5/10

850? That's a decent batting average.

A-Paws Meter

Ed is exactly what you'd expect from a Razzie nominated baseball playing chimpanzee film made in the '90s. Thankfully, it's also on Netflix Instant Watch, so I have minimum guilt about giving it 94 minutes of my life. The only real downside is that only now do I realize how much funnier hijinks are when performed with the aide of a slide whistle. To think how I've squandered 30 good years without that fact...

Jeepers! Jennifer's Creepers

Allow me to start with a totally shallow assertion that has nothing to do with horror but everything to do with my personal jealousy:

Jennifer Connelly has and has always had one of the most fantastic heads of hair in the history of cinema. Possibly mankind.


Seriously. It positively glistens. I thought about digging out those 3D glasses that have been sitting on my nightstand since My Bloody Valentine because the shine was that bright that I needed the shade.


Creepers, aka Phenomena, is a 1985 horror/thriller/mystery by Italy’s favorite hit-or-miss surrealist Dario Argento.  While it never attained the popularity of some of his earlier giallos, it did boast an awfully impressive poster that hung on display in my local video store throughout the late 80s. 


A few years before entering the Labyrinth, Jennifer Connelly played Jennifer Corvino*, the impossibly gorgeous poor little rich girl with a natural kinship to insects, chimpanzees, and a wheelchair-bound Donald Pleasance. While her superstar father is off filming on location, Jennifer is sent to an exclusive yet terribly lax boarding school in a creepy European village ("People call it the Swiss Transylvania." “Why?” "I don't know. They just do.") run by one severe ice queen and a frumpy bee-a-phobe/former Mrs. Argento. Despite her glorious mane and celebrity pedigree, Jennifer has some difficulty making human friends. Perhaps she should stop sleepwalking (a major sign of snobbery, according to the cool kids) and start listening to the Bee Gees, who get a major shout-out from a 14 year old girl who not only sports a Bee Gees t-shirt, but also makes a Bee Gees reference in class, just in case you didn't know that she liked--you guessed it--the Bee Gees.

As we expect from any good Argento heroine, Jennifer finds herself caught up in a violent web of nightmare imagery, slow motion death scenes, and oddly mismatched musical scoring that ranges from 80s metal to electronically mixed opera. (One can't help but wonder how acting against the beats of the band formerly known as Goblin gave Ms. Connelly an edge in fighting creatures known as goblins.)

But back to the story: A creatively violent killer has been hunting teenage girls and while the cops are pretty clueless about how to catch him, they are smart enough to call upon invalid entomologist Pleasance for some pointers on when the murders took place based on corpse worms. He in turn sends the young Jennifer out to investigate along with a sarcophagus fly. Remember how that lovable lug Luto was friends with rocks, so when trouble was brewing he could let out a howl and boulders would come a’rollin? Jennifer has a similar relationship with creepy crawlers, be them stinging wasps or sweet lil ladybugs. As you might guess, this comes in handy more than once, although Argento is skillfully restrained in avoiding insect excess. 

Call it Suspiria: The Middle School Years. Like Argento's best-known classic, there is an eerie Snow White vibe that threads itself throughout the story, from the dark-haired ingenue lost in the woods to a witch's house with its own juicy secrets. I won't go any further for fear of spoiling what is an original film culminating in one of the most bizarre (yet in hindsight, very strongly foreshadowed) climactic end scenes I've seen in some time. Personally, I'm always intrigued when a filmmaker like Argento scales back to tell a smaller, more personal story (similar to George Romero’s Martin). Supposedly Argento has said Creepers one of his favorites, and I can see why: this is an intriguing, teasingly paced film that slowly pulls the audience in and leaves them with a finale that’s somehow simultaneously hysterical, horrifying, and damn adorable.


High Points:
Two very different but most excellent decapitations


Donald Pleasance and Jennifer Connelly, particularly during their shared scenes

One word, two times: Swarm


The entire last 20 minutes


Low Points:
I have a pet peeve regarding 'special guest stars' in films. Since the movie-making process is a temporary thing, isn’t everybody involved a guest? Thus, when the music of Creepers is provided by 'special guests' Iron Maiden, Motorhead, and more, what does that mean? Did they do all their recording on a party boat?

Lessons Learned:
Exclusive private schools in Switzerland are run like reformatories, with forty kids to a desk-less class. Expect sudden outbursts and mass chanting of “Screw the past!” and “Richard Gere!”  to occur during literature lessons.


Insects + 13-year-old girls make fantastic detectives, especially when investigating a violent serial killer known for killing 13 year-old-girls

Sophie is French


Winning Line:
“Please. I’m a foreigner and I’m lost.”


Repeat Offender:
Like many horror films centered around a beautiful woman, this one includes a subplot in which someone is trying to stick her in a mental asylum

Doll Alert:
Patience...a creepy little image starts the beginning of the gloriously Grand Guignol ending.


Rent/Bury/Buy:
Buy: This is included in Mill Creek's Drive-In Classics Pack, but only as the edited American version. My copy clocked in at a mere 83 minutes. The uncut film is out there, with 20 minutes of extra footage (much of it dialogue and plot based) and while I always champion the cheap, I would recommend the investment. Fans of Argento will enjoy his signature style wrapped around a film that is genuinely different; general horror lovers should love the fantastically sublime finale; Jennifer Connelly admirers can be creepily pleased to see she was pretty much always a ridiculously beautiful downer, even as a young teenager. I, on the other hand, continue to envy her even more now that I see she spent her childhood with both Jim Henson and Dario Argento.

*Maybe it's my Long Island experience talking, but the name Jennifer Corvino so does not sound like the virginal maiden Connelly's meant to represent. There's something about the Italian Americanness of it (pronounced in my head in a flat smoker’s voice as ‘Jenifah Cahvino’) that calls to mind a hairdresser with press-on nails and acid-washed jeans. Is it just me?