Passport to Pimlico (1949)

  Happy All Souls Day!

A handful of children accidentally explode a piece of German ordinance and uncover a treasure trove of the Duke of Burgundy, which includes a document stating that their street is actually not part of England.  The local shopkeeper, Mr. Pemberton (Stanley Holloway), hires an expert (Dame Margaret Rutherford) to authenticate and declare that since the decree had never been rescinded, their neighborhood in London is rightfully the Duchy of Burgundy and thus, no longer subject to His Majesty's rules.  The citizens initially celebrate the end of post-war rationing, but soon find self-governance tricky.  There's borders and customs, currency issues, and national defense to think of, and that's before some French guy (Paul Dupuis) shows up, claiming to be the descendent of the last Duke.  

This is a very cute Ealing comedy that perfectly captures the British wartime spirit.  The characters feel like slight exaggerations of real people, not quite archetypes, but familiar enough to be instantly recognizable.  It's still very much a product of its time so the dialogue is a little antiquated, but well worth seeking out.  And you don't have to look very far, either.  It's streaming for free on Tubi.

Oops! All Horror - Day 18 - I Walked With a Zombie (1943)

  Content warning:  dead animal (sheep), passive racism, suicide (drowning)

Betsy Connell (Frances Dee) is a young Canadian nurse who accepts a position in the West Indies to care for the wife of a sugar plantation owner.  Jessica (Christine Gordon) had a severe fever that left her mind impaired.  She can eat and walk unaided, and follow simple commands, but cannot talk or have any real agency.  Betsy finds herself drawn to Paul (Tom Conway), Jessica's sullen husband but is warned off by his half-brother, Wesley (James Ellison), who claims Paul drove Jessica mad before her illness.  Desperate to restore Jessica's mind, Betsy turns to a houngan, a Vodou priest, for a cure.

Why, yes, it is a more racist Jane Eyre.  Apparently by design.  It was based on a magazine article about Haitian plantation workers' drug use destroying their minds but obviously, that wasn't sexy enough for RKO.  Creative liberties aside, the movie is beautifully shot.  It is also edited down to the bones, clocking in at a speedy 68 minutes.

Gordon is a vacant-eyed doll but dressed impeccably.  Even her voodoo doll looked great.  The men kind of suck but I typically don't care about men's fashion.  Women looked great though.  Conway is the only one in the cast with an English accent which I would probably not have cared about if the movie hadn't tried to explain it as "uh, he and his brother went to different boarding schools."  

If you're looking for vibes without gore or jump scares, here's one for you but you're going to have to whip out the VPN or pay real money to rent or buy.  

The Philadelphia Story (1940)

  Another classic comedy that had aged like milk.  Content warning:  spousal abuse

Socialite Tracy Lords (Katherine Hepburn) is getting married... again.  This time to coal mine owner George Kittredge (John Howard).  It's set to be the social event of the season and the press are not invited. Except that publisher Sidney Kidd (Henry Daniell) has information on a scandal involving Tracy's father (John Halliday) and sends his best reporter, Mike Connor (James Stewart), and photographer, Liz Imbrie (Ruth Hussey), down to blackmail their way in with the help of Tracy's first husband, C.K. Dexter Haven (Cary Grant).  But motivations shift as easily as sand as people's true natures are revealed.

This is just Pride and Prejudice with a Trans-Atlantic accent.  A lot of the gender politics are severely outdated, and not in a fun Oh-that's-just-the-times kind of way.  Apparently, Hepburn loved the scene where Grant shoves her to the ground by her face so much that she had him run it multiple times, but it no longer reads as comedic.  

A lot of the inter-character dialogue is still very sharp, and funny, like every line Dinah (Virginia Weidler) has is a scene-stealer, but overall this movie was tedious and grating.  It's streaming for free on Tubi.   Skip it and watch literally anything else.

The Big Street (1942)

  A rare dramatic turn for Lucille Ball.

"Little" Pinks (Henry Fonda) is a busboy who falls in love with Gloria Lyons (Lucile Ball), a singer at the nightclub where he works.  Gloria is a gold-digger always looking for her next big score.  Her relationship with gangster Case Able (Barton MacLane) is fizzling out, so Gloria starts flirting with another millionaire, Decatur Reed (William T. Orr).  Ables doesn't take too kindly to being replaced and pushes her down the stairs, paralyzing her and ruining her career.  Will her reduced conditions force the proud chanteuse into some humility?

The main story isn't great.  Pinks is too soft and Gloria is too hard.  The supporting cast is what makes this movie worth watching.  Agnes Moorehead, Eugene Pallette, Sam Levene, Ray Collins, and Louise Beavers provide the comic relief as well as necessary heart.  Otherwise, this would be too slight of a melodrama.  But thanks to them, it tips over into a tragicomedy.  Ball plays way against type and it mostly works.  Fonda puts those big doe eyes to good use, mooning over her like a fool.

I own this as part of my Lucille Ball box set and it's unfortunately not available to stream for free anywhere.  It's definitely not one for casual fans but if you're interested in seeing Lucy be less than lovable, it's worth tracking down.

Cat People (1942)

  This is considered a horror movie and I guess it counts, since it does lean into to the supernatural aspect.  But it's not scary.  You could show this to kids and they'd probably be bored.

Oliver (Kent Smith) meets Irena (Simone Simon) at the zoo and begins pursuing her romantically.  They seem made for each other until Irena confesses that she believes she is descended from the Cat People, Serbian witches who were able to shapeshift into panthers if they felt strong emotions like desire, anger, or jealousy.  Out of fear for Oliver's life, Irena refuses to consummate the marriage, so he suggests she visit a psychiatrist, Dr. Judd (Tom Conway), who tells her it's all in her head.  Meanwhile, Oliver confesses his frustrations to his co-worker, Alice (Jane Randolph), who in turn confesses that she's always loved him.  Irena sees them out together and strong emotions are indeed felt.

It has good atmospherics but the sympathies are all wrong.  We're meant to be on Oliver's side as he deals with a mentally ill bride that won't fuck him, and fear for Alice the homewrecker's safety as she is stalked across town.  But in 2026, we are #TeamPanther.  Get his ass, Irena.  It's currently showing on the Criterion Channel with its much trashier (but very fun) 80s remake of the same name.

The Perils of Pauline (1947)

  Content warning:  small instance of blackface, yellowface, and brownface, general old-timey racism

Pearl White (Betty Hutton) wants to quit her job as a sweatshop seamstress and become an actress.  She impresses Julia Gibbs (Constance Collier) who is an actress with a small, traveling troupe and gets an audition with the troupe leader, Michael Farrington (John Lund).  Farrington thinks Pearl is too much for the stage, that she doesn't have the chops or the temperament to be a truly great dramatic actress.  In a huff, Pearl quits, followed by Julia, who gets a small part in the nascent silent film industry.  But a dick-ish director's prank pisses Pearl off and she storms through several sets, impressing the director with her fearlessness.  Her career takes off as the lead in an action adventure serial, "The Perils of Pauline."

This is a fictionalized account of the real Pearl White, who starred in a 1914 serial of the same name.  And fun fact!  They used several of the original serial's actors in either walk-on or one-line cameos.  Love that. 

Considering that the original serial was remade in 1933 (with a different plot), then had this film made about the making of it in 1947, and then had another remake in 1967, it feels weirdly obscure.  I had never heard of Pearl White or her serials, but now I feel like I should hunt them down if only to know what the fuss was about.

It reminded me a lot of Funny Girl, in that both feature a woman succeeding and a man being a sensitive little bitch about his fragile masculinity but Pauline actually has the leg up since Mike gets over himself by the end.  And despite some very dated choices, this doesn't feel as out-of-touch as it could have.  I think it's because it is also looking back, trying to document a very specific moment in time.  It's a little more melodramatic than I personally like but Hutton is so charismatic, I didn't even mind.  I'm really glad I found this.  It's in the public domain so you can find it a bunch of places, including Wikipedia, but I watched it on Amazon Prime.

I Know Where I'm Going (1945)

  Content warning:  dead animal (rabbit)

Joan (Wendy Hiller) has always known what she's wanted from life and gone after it with single-minded focus.  So when she decides to wed wealthy industrialist Sir Robert Bellinger (Norman Shelley), nothing is going to stand in her way.  Sir Robert has rented the island of Kiloran, the whole thing, in the Hebrides to the north of Scotland for their nuptials and Joan takes the English equivalent of planes, trains, and automobiles --in this case, train, ferry, and rowboat-- but finds herself stymied on the Isle of Mull due to weather, which stubbornly refuses to bend to her will.  Also trying to get to Kiloran is a Royal Navy officer, Torquil MacNeil (Roger Livesey).  The more Joan runs into Torquil, the less sure she is and the more her priorities shift, the more determined she is to correct them by getting back on track to her stated goals.  

This is another 40s rom-com and while I liked the story and the particular tropes (forced proximity, pride-and-prejudice, titled-but-poor) I didn't think Hiller and Livesey had any real chemistry together so their mutual declaration felt like a shock to them but also to me.  Also, the "curse" reveal ended up as kind of a shitty pun on the back of a legitimately horrifying backstory and that tonal whiplash was too much for me.  But if you're looking for a light, breezy Powell & Pressburger film shot on location, this one is lesser-known and available currently on the Criterion Channel.

His Girl Friday (1940)

  Content warning: racial slurs, attempted suicide

Walter Burns (Cary Grant) knows he has to do something big when his ex-wife and star reporter, Hildy Johnson (Rosalind Russell), storms into his office to announce that she's marrying a nice insurance salesman (Ralph Bellamy) and moving to Albany.  He convinces her to get a final interview for a man on death row scheduled to be hanged in the morning.  The Post has been running features and trying to pressure the governor into a reprieve in order to sway the upcoming election against the incumbent sheriff (Gene Lockhart) and mayor (Clarence Kolb).  Hildy knows it's a scam to get her to stay and reconcile with Walter but the story is too god to pass up. 

This is considered a screwball comedy because of how fast the dialogue is and how many sudden turns the story takes.  However, it is a little more mean-spirited than, say, Bringing Up Baby.  It is intensely cynical about the lengths reporters will go for a story, more like the comedy version of Ace in the Hole.  It is based on a play that was in turn based on a story written by two reporters and already had a film adaptation in 1931 under its original name, The Front Page.  For this version, the character of Hildy was gender-swapped and made into Walter's ex-wife, giving us one of the definitive performances of Rosalind Russell's career.  

By modern standards, these people are toxic, self-centered, and amoral.  But if you go in knowing that, this is still an incredibly funny movie.  It is blisteringly fast with jokes layered on jokes.  And not just from the main characters.  Nearly everyone (except Bellamy and Helen Mack, as the straight man and the emotional appeal, respectively) has unending quippy lines.  It is a classic comedy even if it stumbles as a romance.  It's streaming on the Criterion Channel and basically everywhere else because it's in the public domain.  It's even embedded in the Wikipedia page.

The Big Heat (1953)

 I had a couple of days off unexpectedly because of the snowstorm so I watched this with my friends.  It's one of my absolute favorite noirs.  Content warning:  violence against women

Philly cop Dave Bannion (Glenn Ford) is investigating the suicide of another policeman, Tom Duncan, which seems pretty cut-and-dry until Duncan's mistress (Dorothy Green) comes forward to contradict the grieving widow's (Jeanette Nolan) assertion that Duncan was in poor health.  Then the mistress ends up dead and Bannion is warned not to keep pursuing the matter.  Obviously, now he can't let it go and decides to go straight to the top and confront mob boss Mike Lagana (Alexander Scourby).  

This is a very straightforward noir that doesn't spend a lot of time on how Bannion solves the case.  He mostly just yells at people until someone tries to kill him.  This is apparently good police work.  But who cares?  The important people in this movie are the women.  Ice-cold Bertha Duncan.  World-weary Lucy Chapman.  Katie Bannion, the paragon of housewife-ly virtue.  And top of them all, bored, callous, gun moll with a heart of gold Debby Marsh, played by the criminally underrated Gloria Grahame.  

What's great about this movie is how it subverts the tropes that were already well-established by giving Debby the emotional impetus, instead of Bannion.  **SPOILERS FOLLOW** Bannion gets a little when he confronts Katie's killer, but Debby's reaction to her disfigurement and subsequent path of revenge, leading ultimately to her blowing the lid off the whole criminal conspiracy maker her a much bigger catalyst to the plot.  **END SPOILERS**  Even though she does ultimately fall prey to the Hays Code-imposed morality, she has much more agency than other femmes fatales of the era.

The Big Heat is one of the most highly regarded noirs by critics, so you don't have to just take my word for it.  It is well worth your time.  It's unfortunately not available for streaming but I already owned it so I just watched my copy.

As a side note, apparently the studio originally wanted Marilyn Monroe for the part of Debby Marsh, which would have been fascinating.  

Lady of Burlesque (1943)

  And now back to our regularly scheduled sex and murder movies.

Dixie Daisy (Barbara Stanwyck) is the headliner of a burlesque show at the old Opera House theater.  It's a good job, despite the constant overtures from the smitten comic relief (Michael O'Shea), until one of the other dancers (Victoria Faust) turns up dead, strangled by her own G-string.  With the cops cracking down, everyone in the company is a suspect.

The script was based on a mystery novel by the burlesque queen herself, Gypsy Rose Lee.  According to the Wikipedia entry, it's a fairly faithful adaptation in as much as the censors would allow.  I thought it was a really fun, light comic mystery with a little bit of an abrupt ending.  Costumes are by Edith Head and are amazing.  There are a couple of musical numbers, including the very famous "Take It Off the E String, Play It on the G String".  That one is sung by Stanwyck, who is a great actress but not a singer.  Still, it adds to the slapdash charm, if you let it.  

It's in the public domain but try and find a good print, if you can.  The one on Tubi is okay, although some of the sound is a little wobbly.  

2025 Horror Watch - Day 6 - Dead of Night (1945)

  Okay, I cheated a little bit to break that weird streak.  This one is from my TBW queue.  Content warning:  ventriloquist dummy, suicide

Walter Craig (Mervyn Johns) keeps having a recurring nightmare about meeting six people at a country house and having something horrible happen.  He tries to convince them that his dreams are real, but Dr. Van Straaten (Frederick Valk), a psychiatrist, disbelieves.  So several of the guests take turns recounting their own brushes with the supernatural.  

This movie is great.  The framing device is a little weak but the cast is phenomenal.  Each story feels fully fleshed out, like its own full episode, but doesn't drag the movie down.  Now, not every story is a winner.  The golf one irritated the shit out of me, personally.  But I can recognize that it was meant to be a mood lightener.  Obviously, the final one is the standout with an incredible performance by Michael Redgrave.  And Hugo, of course.  People talk about "dream logic" in films, which never lands for me, but the nightmare sequence here is actually quite jarring.  There are some great makeup effects in the crowd scenes.  

It's streaming for free on Kanopy, if you have a library card and it's definitely worth checking out if you like your horror more atmospheric and British.

Wilson (1944)

  This has been in my queue for ages as unavailable but fortunately, someone put the entire thing on YouTube.  Content warning:  blackface portrayal of Teddy Roosevelt for some ungodly reason

This is a lavish, borderline hagiographic biopic of President Woodrow Wilson (Alexander Knox) that follows his political career from President of Princeton University to Governor of New Jersey to President of the United States, but also as a Wife Guy and a Girl Dad.  Turns out having three daughters amply prepares you to stand against Congressional hawks and foreign military engagement.  But Wilson is no mere shrinking violet.  He only wants what's best for the country, in a sternly paternal and professorial way.

I don't know if I can adequately express how bizarre this movie feels.  It's so morally upright and virtuous it's almost a miracle Knox didn't achieve apotheosis during filming.  Between the tearful martyrdom of his first wife (Ruth Nelson) and the whither-thou-goest puppy eyes of his second (Geraldine Fitzgerald), there's enough stand-by-your-man energy to power Tammy Wynette like a dynamo.  And the inspiring stump speeches!  Hope you don't get sick of hearing "Hail to the Chief" every 15 minutes.  But it is surprisingly progressive for 1944.  There's Black people in it!  One of them even has a speaking role!  He's a butler waxing nostalgic about how his family served the First Lady's family, but you know.  You can't have everything.

This won five Oscars, which makes sense, but it didn't win Best Picture (lost to Going My Way) and according to Wikipedia, producer Daryl F. Zanuck was livid.  Apparently, he spent a fortune on promotion only to see it lose out to Bing Crosby in a Roman collar.

Watching this in the Year of Our Dumpster Fire 2025 is especially surreal.  Every single one of Nobel Peace Prize-winner Wilson's policies, ideals, and principles has been eroded, gutted, or sold to the highest bidder.  It's funny in a ha-ha-we're-all-going-to-die kind of way.

Anyway, it's a cool 2 hrs and 33 minutes long so pack a snack but it's free on YouTube if you want to absorb some great costumes and righteous propaganda.

To Be or Not to Be (1942)

  This was a Movie Club pick from last week but I had to get through some other stuff first.  

Polish WWII resistance learns that a supposed ally, Professor Siletsky (Stanley Ridges), is actually a German spy about to present a list of family and friends of Polish RAF officers to the Gestapo.  A pilot, Lieutenant Sobieski (Robert Stack), has flown to Warsaw and used his pre-war connection to famed actress Maria Tura (Carole Lombard), now leading the resistance, to have her intercept Siletsky.  Tura's husband, Josef (Jack Benny), pretends to be the Gestapo commander to get Siletsky to hand over the documents.  Identities switch back and forth as Josef and Maria give the performances of their lives.

So the plot does not give an indication of how funny the movie actually is.  It's a comedy about how dumb the Nazis are and that seems really relevant today.  Sometimes the only way to combat evil is to point out how ridiculous it is.  Lombard is luminous in this, effortlessly seducing every single man she comes across.  Normally, it would seem like lazy writing that she's just so beautiful men fall over themselves to offer her state secrets, but with her it seems completely believable.  

It does feel a little dated, mostly because everyone has a different accent and that's just not addressed at all, but it is still very good and remains funny thanks to a very sharp script and fast, glib dialogue.  

There is a 1983 remake starring real-life husband and wife Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft that is also very good.  Either version is well worth watching, but the 1942 one is currently streaming on the Criterion Channel, Kanopy, and (sigh) Max.

Brighton Rock (1947)

  The poster is washed out but that's a baby Richard Attenborough.  

A gang leader (Richard Attenborough) bumps off a journalist (Reginald Purnell) but finds out there's a witness, a waitress named Rose (Carol Marsh), that can throw off his carefully constructed alibi.  He decides to cozy up to the girl, easily winning her over despite pressure from a nosy small-time theater performer named Ida (Hermione Baddeley).  Ida had met and liked the dead journalist and didn't believe the suicide story being floated by the cops.  She took it upon herself to figure it out, following the breadcrumbs right to Rose and her new beau.  

It's so funny to watch old movies and realize that absolutely zero things have changed.  All Ida needed was a podcast and she could have been an OG true crime legend.  

If you're into noir at all, this should be part of your curriculum.  The story is a little underwritten, I think, but the performances are all really solid.  It's streaming on Kanopy with a library card, the Criterion Channel until the end of the month, and (sigh) Max.  Give it a shot.

It's a Wonderful Life (1946)

  Merry Christmas (Eve)!  This was supposed to go up yesterday, but I got distracted with real people.  Sorry, internet people!  

George Bailey (James Stewart) had big dreams:  see the world, become an architect or designer, and leave a lasting legacy, but circumstances always seem to intervene.  Illness, economic depression, and war conspire to keep George in the same small town he grew up in, fighting bitterly against Mr. Potter (Lionel Barrymore), the local land baron, and somehow managing to get married and have four children.  One Christmas Eve, it all comes crashing down as a mistake costs George everything and only divine intervention in the form of a bumbling second-rate angel (Henry Travers).  

Did you guys know there's an hour and a half of movie before you get to the part everyone remembers?  Yes.  Ninety minutes of a man railing against fate and a 30-minute Twilight Zone episode.  

With that in mind, it is utterly shocking how well this movie holds up.  A lot of credit to Stewart, one of the greatest Old Hollywood actors, for embodying the bitterness and despair of a Good Man.  A man who desperately wants things but is constrained by his conscience.  Who believes in doing the Right Thing even when he hates it.  And the other standout is Barrymore as the cartoonishly evil, and still somehow super-realistic Mr. Potter.  (Honorable mention to Gloria Grahame who didn't have a lot to do here but looked fine as hell doing it.)

It's 45 minutes too long and depressing as shit, but goddamn, what a movie.  Christmas classic.  It's streaming for free with ads on the Roku Channel and Amazon's ad-supported tier FreeVee, in case you feel like throwing eyeballs at one of our own Mr. Potters.

Miracle on 34th St (1947)

  Christmas week continues with a TCM classic.  

When Doris Walker (Maureen O'Hara) has to fire her Santa Claus for public drunkenness the day of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade, she's sure she's going to be fired.  But a replacement presents himself immediately.  Kris Kringle (Edmund Gwenn) is so popular, he's hired on to be the official Santa for Macy's flagship store, but the problem is that he thinks he's the real Santa.  And the store's official psychologist, Mr. Sawyer (Porter Hall), thinks that makes Kris a dangerous lunatic.  He conspires to have Kris committed, setting up a legal fight where the state of New York must decide a) if there is such a person as Santa Clause, b) if he is an official resident and eligible for employment, and c) whether or not he represents a danger to himself and others.

I did not remember this mostly being about the court case, but I may have been confusing it with the 1994 version with Mara Wilson and Richard Attenborough.  We watched both pretty interchangeably through my childhood.  But I haven't seen either one in a couple of decades so I could be mis-remembering both.

Anyway, the real villain of this movie is Fred Gailey, the lawyer.  Telling a woman you're sucking up to her kid so she'll date you is gross, undermining her parenting with said child in the interest of promoting your own beliefs is super gross, and volunteering her labor while you plan to undermine her parenting with an accomplice just makes you an asshole.  Honestly, telling a single mom that you're throwing away a safe, lucrative career to bring a bullshit publicity storm about Santa Clause in court that could have been settled in chambers and framing it as her problem because she "lacks imagination" is an egregious failure of emotional intelligence.

This Christmas classic is streaming on Disney+ and Paramount+.  Don't watch the colorized version.  It adds another year onto Ted Turner's life and we can't have that.

Meet Me in St. Louis (1944)

  This is my second pick for Movie Club this week and it almost didn't get posted because the day completely got away from me.

The Smith family are eagerly anticipating the 1904 World's Fair to be held in their hometown of St. Louis, Missouri.  Rose (Lucille Bremer) and Esther (Judy Garland) are boy-crazy teens scheming to get engaged because it's 1903 and what else are they going to do, work?  Younger sisters Agnes (Joan Carroll) and Tootie (Margaret O'Brien) are semi-feral and death-obsessed, but you know, in a cute way.  The only brother, Alonzo Jr. (Henry H. Daniels, Jr.), is mostly away at college and missing the day-to-day shenanigans as Esther sets her cap for the boy next door (Tom Drake).  But when the patriarch (Leon Ames) announces that he's moving the whole family to New York City at the turn of the year, all the girls' plans come into conflict.

I cannot overstate how colorful this movie is.  It is vibrant.  The costumes, the sets, the food, everything is gloriously Technicolor.  This film is most famous for Garland's absolutely mournful "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" but I love the frenetic energy of "The Trolley Song".  It spans 3/4 of a year and I personally feel the pacing drags a little towards the middle, but there are so many great moments it balances out.  

This is a hard time of year for a lot of people so if you just want a little Christmas, not a whole lot, this might be a good choice.  People find it cathartic.  It's currently streaming on (sigh) Max.

The Westerner (1940)

  Hope everyone had a good Halloween month.  We are back to our regular programming.

Drifter Cole Harden (Gary Cooper) finds himself caught in the middle of a dispute between self-appointed Judge Roy Bean (Walter Brennen) and a group of homesteaders led by Jane Ellen Matthews (Doris Davenport).  Judge Bean is firmly on the side of the cattle ranchers and heavily opposes the homesteaders fencing their lands, imposing draconian penalties against them tantamount to murder.  

Gary Cooper always chose such interesting roles.  Cole could have been sly or sniveling but Cooper plays him so nobly.  It might be his name on the poster but Brennen walks away with this show.  Such a good character actor, even here when he's basically the villain.  He's so likable it's hard to root against him.  

I should probably have waited until closer to Thanksgiving because this would be perfect for a post-turkey family viewing, but I actually watched it a month ago and I was worried I would forget about it.  It was streaming on Kanopy but that might have changed.  If you can find it, give it a shot.

Scream-O-Rama 2023 Day 23: The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949)

  This was a Movie Club pick and coincidentally, I didn't have any family-friendly choices so far this month.  Content warning: headless horseman?

The Adventures of Mr. Toad (narrated by Basil Rathbone) sees the rich but irresponsible Mr. Toad (Eric Blore) lose his ancestral home after trading it away for a stolen car, which lands him in jail.  Over Christmas, he escapes and runs to the riverbank where his friends Mole (Colin Campbell), Ratty (Claud Allister), and MacBadger (Campbell Grant) help him steal back the deed from the weasels currently in residence.

Disney nerds will immediately recognize the weasels from Who Framed Roger Rabbit.  

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (narrated by Bing Crosby) tells the story of a schoolteacher in a rural New York community who challenges the town hotshot for the hand of the town flirt.  At a Halloween party, after losing to the schoolteacher on every front, the hotshot decides to scare him out of town by recounting the local legend of the Headless Horseman, a ghost that roams the road on Halloween looking for a head to replace his pumpkin one.

This story is kind of the definition of Everybody Sucks Here.  Ichabod is a fortune-hunting lothario, Brom Bones is kind of a dick, and Katrina von Tassel is a vain bitch looking to stir trouble to feed her ego.  The Headless Horseman song still slaps, though.  

Animation fans will note Ub Iwerks' name in the credits, a mark of quality.  Katrina was obviously an early model for 1950 Cinderella, having the same face and hair, complete with the blue bows on the ends of her braids.  Fortunately, someone calmed down a little with regards to the rest of her proportions by the next year.

It's annoying that the Mr. Toad story is first, both because in the title Ichabod is listed first and chronologically Halloween is before Christmas.  I meant to pay attention to the minute mark where the second story starts so you could just skip right to it, but then I didn't.  The combination is currently streaming on Disney+.

Scream-O-Rama 2023 Day 15: Rebecca (1940)

  Our first (and probably only) Oscar winner for the list.  Content warning:  bullying

Everyone knows Maxim de Winter (Laurence Olivier) is distraught over the death of his wife, Rebecca.  They were the most beautiful, wealthy, accomplished couple, after all.  But he remarries only a year after her accidental death to a paid companion (Joan Fontaine), no less.  The new Mrs. de Winter finds it intolerable living in the shadow of her predecessor, especially with the housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers (Judith Anderson), constantly comparing and criticizing.  Was Rebecca's death a tragic accident or is something more sinister afoot?

I remember trying to read this book in high school and giving up after the first page.  I barely made it through the movie.  Maxim is a total dick and the story doesn't come together until the last ten minutes, leaving the two hours before that full of nothing happening except Fontaine being relentlessly bullied.

And I know thematically why she doesn't get a name but it is super irritating in practice.  Even the fucking dog got a name (Jasper, a Very Good Boy).  Despite her character being a total drip, Fontaine is luminous here, matched only by Anderson being a creepy bitch.  Olivier is good, as is George Sanders, but this is Fontaine's movie.  

This won Best Picture in 1941 and was the only Alfred Hitchcock film to ever win.  It's part of the Criterion Collection but isn't currently streaming right now.  If you're into moody, atmospheric dread instead of gore, this might be for you.