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The Wizard of Oz is the model, though the opening fantasy (olive-suited villains wielding searchlights and multicolored nets) shows that the true kinship is with Menzies' Invaders from Mars. Just about every fear and neurosis of Eisenhower's suburbia magnified in a laboratory experiment, courtesy of little Bart (Tommy Rettig) asleep during music class. "Funny thing about this dream stuff..." The boy's dreaded piano becomes a winding keyboard long enough to accommodate him and 499 other imprisoned pupils, Dr. Terwilliker (Hans Conried) queens over a trompe l'oeil fortress erected out of Dalí and Escher and Gaudí. The pedantic fraud's prissiness and lavender robes are contrasted with the proletarian fatigues of the lumpy plumber (Peter Lind Hayes), who plays grudging surrogate father to the drifting young reveler. Between them is Mom (Mary Healy), by turns a frozen-haired hausfrau, a zombified gilded-cage captive, and a quasi-dominatrix secretary. "If kids had their way, practically no parents would be born at all." The key behind the metronome, pickle juice for courage, hypnotic standoffs and hoedowns for the adults—Dr. Seuss' screenplay cries for a fellow subversive surrealist, but Tashlin is not part of Stanley Kramer's stable. Even with Roy Rowland's flat direction, however, the delirium runs high. "Get-Together Weather" ("For schnipping and schnupping and schnooping and schneeping") follows "Good Morning" from Singin' in the Rain, "We Are Victorious" ("Us gruesome, grimy, gory us") goes to the boxing ring in It's Always Fair Weather. (Down in the dungeon is an entire orchestra of putrefied musicians, an intricate lampoon of MGM ballets.) Yellow buses in sudden proliferation (cf. Ray's Bigger Than Life), the elevator to Hell and the Vigo detonation. "Is it atomic?" "Yes, sir. Very atomic!" The influence extends from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang to Fanny and Alexander. Cinematography by Franz Planer.
--- Fernando F. Croce |