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From: rlz@scgvaxd.UUCP (Jeffry T. Rimpau)
Newsgroups: net.movies
Subject: Re: Re: More on Totally Bad Movies ("Just Imagine")
Message-ID: <426@scgvaxd.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 14-Oct-85 13:02:34 EDT
Article-I.D.: scgvaxd.426
Posted: Mon Oct 14 13:02:34 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 18-Oct-85 20:12:20 EDT
References: <327@cylixd.UUCP> <> <796@nmtvax.UUCP> <20@mit-eddie.UUCP> <1628@trwrba.UUCP>
Organization: Hughes Aircraft Co., El Segundo, CA
Lines: 39

> In article <20@mit-eddie.UUCP> barmar@mit-eddie.UUCP (Barry Margolin) writes:
> 
> >An honorable mention should go to another film that I have only seen
> >during the Science Fiction Marathon, whose name also escapes me.  It was
> >a musical comedy based on the general "Sleeper"/"Things to Come"/etc
> >theme of people who wake up in the future.  While the music was not good
> >(by the midpoint of the film, the audience would scream "Don't sing" as
> >the music was building, and the projectionist even replaced the
> >soundtrack with a rock tape during one of the songs!), it was at least
> >an interesting idea, which is the one redeeming feature of the film.
> >The film itself was pretty bad.  The comedy was bad slapstick, there was
> >a bad love story, and the science just turned into comedy.
> 
> I think you mean "Just Imagine", which takes  the double  honor of being
> both the worst science fiction movie (although I'll admit the acting was
> better than that in "Plan Nine from Outer Space") and  the worst musical
> I've ever seen.  Words cannot describe  just how  incredibly stupid this
> movie is.  Oh,  and it  also featured  incredibly silly-looking costumes
> (on the Martians) and really bad choreography.  
> 
> 		Laura Pearlman
> 		{decvax,ihnp4,ucbvax}!trwrb!ljp


	I beg pardon, but context is everything, especially in film. Recall
that "Just Imagine" was made in 1930. "Things to Come" was five years in the
future, and boy is that a slowwww movie to watch, when there is no background
music. JI typifies the music of the times. Watch "Animal Crackers" or
"Cocoanuts" for the same sort of silly music. I wonder how "Metropolis"
would be as a talkie.
	If one takes offence at the Jewish dialect comedian protagonist of
JI, Woody Allen plays the same role in "Sleeper". Both movies are comedies,
not serious science fiction.
	This followup is probably colored by the fact that I associate JI
with the (now demolished) Sherman Theatre on Ventura and Noble, a nice old
place where the air conditioning worked (had to, it was in the Valley).
You did not dare sit in the seventh to tenth rows: the theatre its low point
there, so aside from not seeing anything, all the loose candy and liquids
pooled there.