pixrox1

. . . to encompass 18 minutes of Mr. Arbuckle? As they used to chant around the smoking butte campfires, "The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind; the answer is blowing in the wind." The imminent bisection of Nell in the sawmill is about what we've come to expect in any Arbuckle production. This director was particularly prone to providing cruel and unusual punishments for the women always in distress when it came to his pictures. No doubt the film studio chiefs tried to tone down these carnival assaults by dividing up his films into tiny bite-sized chunks.

. . . easy, especially if you're not working in a vehicle with dual controls, as required for safety reasons in most American states. Apparently, EXTRA ORDINARY is set and filmed in some backwater zone dubbed "Ireland," named so because most if not all of its denizens are always angry. Such Ire-rich beings naturally consort with all manner of demons, underworld imps, ghostly goblins and whatnot. Ire-land also suffers from a severe shortage when it comes to imagination, so it's not very surprising to find the main characters of this feckless flick going by such monikers as "Martin Martin" and "Thorny Rose." Because swallowing and upchucking gallons of ectoplasm constitutes the main activity depicted within EXTRA ORDINARY, this gauche travelog is best viewed on an empty stomach.

. . . there's little else for him to do but STRIKE UP THE BAND. Mickey Rooney plays some mean air drums throughout THE STRIP, with his voice being dubbed in as well by either Don Knotts or Mickey Mouse. Such a patchwork approach to a film was necessitated by the low rent nature of its production studio, then on its last legs before being gobbled up by Warner. If Bogart and Bacall had been cast here as Frankie and Johnnie, many of the song and dance numbers could have been cut in favor of a happier ending. But the house that sicced BOUNTY and WIND upon America always opted for chintzy gloom and cheap fakery as opposed to sound pioneer Warner's superior technology and pricey superstars.