The Anti-Fascist ‘Bedknobs and Broomsticks’ Deserves Its Golden Jubilee

Hi, Matt.

Shut up racist R1

Oddly enough there was a thread about this last week.

I'll say what I said then, I prefer Candleshoe. Why doesn't anyone ever talk about Candleshoe.

Speaking of fascists, can’t they write one article about this movie without mentioning that bitch with the umbrella? That movie was so bad that that is what Disney should’ve pulled instead of the movie they did pull from circulation.

I think Candleshoe is on Disney+. Watched it recently, David Niven delivers.

The uncut DVDs should still be available relatively inexpensively. They could easily have used seamless branching to include both cuts on Blu-ray but they were too cheap and/or lazy.

I must ask, though, who made the call to make the villains better-looking than the heroes?

[quote] The uncut DVDs should still be available relatively inexpensively.

What is on those that isn't on the cut version? Is it X-rated?

How did Matt manage to return?

I don't remember this being labeled as anti-fascist. When did that happen? I just loved 'Bobbing along on the bottom of the beautiful briny sea".

When anyone recommends a film to to me, I will now query if the film is cut or uncut. Good work, men.

I guess Attmay's shrink is back from the vacation and his prescription has been refilled.

I think Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was actually still in production when England decriminalized homosexuality.

Hi Matt.

This film would have been so much better had they been able to cast Julie Andrews in the lead.

^^^here we go!!!

There would be no Disney studios if that had happened. She almost bankrupted Fox and Paramount. And even so, they still would have cut anything over two hours.

No wonder people believe Walt was a fascist. I'm surprised Disney would even make B&B if that were true.

I'll take the actual Black people over the blackface minstrels any day of the week.

Disney has screwed over almost every live/animated mix except the one that deserves it the most.

Besides, if she had made the film, she would have invited more comparisons not only to her old Disney role, but to [italic]The Sound of Music[/italic], which they now own, as well. Best to let someone else have a chance to star in it.

Even so, the obviously edited two hour cut still beat LucyMAME at the box office and the Oscars. The difference is they were not directly released against each other, but three years apart. Lucy breaking her leg pushed it back even further.

The Loon is back! Bedknobs & Broomsticks is utter shit compared to Mary Poppins, which has a vastly superior score,

No, R21, it doesn't. It has shit that was sued for plagiarism. And you sound like Raymond Marble plotting against Divine.

More and more people are waking up to the reality that B&B is better. Disney stacking the deck against it by cutting it has not changed that.

Which one got sued? Which one got called blackface by the New York Times?

[quote] I don't remember this being labeled as anti-fascist. When did that happen?

They use magic to beat up Nazis. That's the whole point. They proved women's suffrage alone was not enough to bring equality to the sexes. Miss Price's father was in the military in WWI, but she could not serve. This is how she did what she could.

Which one is a mentally ill aspie who claims he was molested while watching Mary Poppins?

Which one is an ableist prick who is just begging for retaliation?

The real message of the movie is that racist sexist antisemitic homophobes deserve violent retaliation. They deserved it in 1940. They deserved it in 1971. They deserve it even more now.

Anyone who hates this movie is a Nazi, plain and fucking simple

Nazi-punching: if it's good enough for Disney movies, then it's good enough for real life.

Walt should have told that old Australian biddy to go fuck herself.

Walt should have told that old Australian biddy to go fuck herself.

Audrey Hepburn deserved the Oscar for [italic]My Fair Lady[/italic], too!

No, Hepburn did not. Anne Bancroft deserved it for The Pumpkin Eater, although some would say Kim Stanley for Seance on a Wet Afternoon.

Angela Lansbury was a presenter at that ceremony.

Hepburn already had an Oscar but so did Anne Bancroft and Sophia Loren. The arguments against her performance just do not hold water and nor do the arguments against Bedknobs, Song of the South, Pete's Dragon or any of the other Disney musicals the studio pushes aside in favor of its worst one.

[quote] No, Hepburn did not. Anne Bancroft deserved it for The Pumpkin Eater, although some would say Kim Stanley for Seance on a Wet Afternoon.

Both pointing in the same direction: that Julie Andrews deprived someone more deserving of an Oscar.

Then 30 years later, once home video and the children of Baby Boomers have to absorb this crap via cultural osmosis, she pissed away her last chance at a Tony when no one else from that drag show got nominated. She should have just taken it graciously and given that speech if she had won.

Bancroft was superb. So was Kim Stanley, and she didn’t already have one. Song of the South is pushed aside because it’s perceived as racist and is unshakable now.

That perception is not only wrong but racist in and of itself. Disney pushed aside a movie with Black people in it for one that makes whiteness a qualification of being perfect.

And don't you dare tell me Roddy McDowall's homosexuality wasn't a factor in them cutting his scenes again after putting them back.

R21, you need to shut the fuck up with your hate speech. That's a fucking order. You want fascism, keep using that word and you will get something even worse than fascism.

Treguna Mekoides Tracorum Satis Dee!

R40 seems quite special needs.

R42 would make a great lampshade.

Since anyone who hates this film is a fascist, all fascists will be subjected to the same fascism they advocate and enable.

Your taste in media is a reflection of your intelligence, your social class, and your moral worth. And if you don't like this film, then you have none.

The more you Julie Jihadists lash out at superior films, the stupider you look.

[quote] Julie Andrews was offered the role of Miss Price, but turned it down for fear of being typecast after Mary Poppins. When she eventually changed her mind, Lansbury had already accepted the role.

That's interesting. I guess Julie felt the same way.

Ok, I rented this last night on Amazon Prime, inspired by this thread. Hadn't seen it since I was a wee gayling back in the 70s and all I could remember was the animated section and the body-less knights marching into battle; turns out, those are the two best sequences in the film -- the special effects for the latter sequence were excellent. But the musical numbers are lackluster; the big production number, "Portobello Road," seems a jumble due to the dissolves between dances, rather than presenting it as a cinematic whole -- according to Wikipedia, this is due to the heavy cutting prior to release; chopping 30 minutes out of the film does make it seem very abrupt and episodic, and it's clearly evident with the reduction of Roddy McDowall's part. Lansbury doesn't appear to have her heart in it -- the role begged for somebody more affected, like a Maggie Smith or a Margaret Rutherford, but I can't think of somebody who could've done that AND sing and dance. Tomlinson comes off better, and the three kids are quite good. A very mixed bag.

R48 I said in another thread that I have this movie on DVD and was only able to get through an hour of it before I have up because it was so boring. Does it get better or should I just not bother watching the rest?

r49, the second half is better than the first.

And there's the hot Nazis in the climax.

Meanwhile, Disney+ added a 99 44/100 complete cut of [italic]The Happiest Millionaire[/italic] that runs 170 minutes. Just the exit music is missing.

[quote]the role begged for somebody more affected, like a Maggie Smith or a Margaret Rutherford, but I can't think of somebody who could've done that AND sing and dance.

Margaret Rutherford was almost dead and Maggie Smith turned it down only to make [italic]Sister Act[/italic] and [italic]Harry Potter[/italic] movies years later.

R48, you should have gotten the DVD version. I really think that is the definitive version of the film. Some of Angie's best scenes were the ones that didn't get shown until the 1990s after [italic]Murder She Wrote[/italic] and [italic]Beauty and the Beast[/italic] had already happened. Cutting "Nobody's Problems For Me" left her without any emotional response to Mr. Browne walking out. They also cut her standing up to his ladies' man act earlier. And taking "With a Flair" out except for one talk-sung line that becomes a non-sequitur without the rest of it makes Mr. Browne look stupid instead of somebody who used to be good at his job but had been reduced to selling his supplies just to survive. Roddy McDowall's role only makes sense in the restored cut. The audio redubs are no worse than the sloppy attempt to censor the opening song in [italic]Aladdin[/italic].

As a child, I knew this was bad special effects with pointless musical filler and cheap cartooning. Plus, the payoff was war victory instead of hidden stolen treasure. Blech.

Seeing it as an adult, I was surprised how casually we used witchcraft as plot devices. Audiences really took a religious turn.

That 22 minutes of animation cost $1 million. If that doesn’t sound impressive, remember this was right before inflation really started to go into overdrive. That would cost nearly $7,000,000 today for something that is the length of a single TV sitcom episode.

And now Muriel proves she is a fascist by graying out the thread.

I saw it as the Radio City Christmas movie as a boy. Have you ever seen 6,000 people demand their money back all at the same time? They said it didn't feel like Christmas more like December 7th.

Yawn, R56.

You must have been confusing it with LucyMAME. It’s a wonder the Music Hall wasn’t torn down after that one.

This movie sucks because the Nazis were right.

You are selling British Imperialism to children.

R56 I saw it there too... along with the Rockettes and the Christmas show. I loved it but what did I know at that age? I doubt I'll ever watch the movie again, I'd rather live with happy memories of the night.

If you saw it at the Music Hall, you didn't see the whole thing.

Believe or not and I don't believe it even though I was there the audience at the Music Hall loved Mame.

It was At Long Last Love that almost closed the place. So why are copies of the bluray going for insane amounts of money? What is it about this film that has turned it into a cult classic?

[quote]Believe or not and I don't believe it even though I was there the audience at the Music Hall loved Mame.

WB had money to pay seat-fillers to cheer out loud. Disney didn't.

I was with four friends who I'm pretty sure were not paid by WB and they had a blast. Also WB would pay thousands of people to show up at a matinee after waiting hours on line?

Joseph Stalin is the real hero of this and every other WWII movie because Joseph Stalin is the hero of WWII.

Robert Stevenson was a reactionary Tory fascist who directed this vile anti-communist propaganda. Making National Socialists the enemy is just more of the same.

Since National Socialism is socialism, Hitler did nothing wrong by allying with Stalin to form a bulwark against anglo-ameriKKKan imperialism. The British Empire killed more Indians than the National Socialists killed Jews, so who's the real villain here? It's that fat racist Tory imperialist war criminal Winston Churchill and anyone who supports his war crimes. Look up what he did to the Mau-Maus in Africa, including Barack Obama's grandfather. Miss Price and Mr. Browne are tools of imperialism. The Blitz was payback for British imperialism.

Not only that, Walt Disney was a racist pedophile who knowingly and willingly did business with the Italian mafia just like that fossilized neoliberal sellout Norman Lear, who had Archie Bunker call England "a f*g country" time and time again starting the same year. That's why this piece of imperialist fascist propaganda let an Italian, Don DaGradi, who should have been called Don DeGrademe, co-write the screenplay. Is this your idea of a separate peace? If it wasn't for Italian fascism, then National Socialism never would have happened.

I'd rather watch a movie version of [italic]Springtime For Hitler[/italic]. This is the same thing but for Churchill. At least the Nazis admitted socialism works by putting the word in their name, and it was more than just a name. They allied with Stalin, they supported socialized medicine, and they made progress in the field of transgender research. They were true socialists. And spare me all that talk about what he supposedly did to the Jews when Israel kills more Palestinians on a daily basis.

All your criticisms of National Socialism are as transphobic as they are anti-socialist. If trans women are women, then National Socialism is Socialism. Ergo, the left should embrace it.

And if Disney banned [italic]Song of the South[/italic] for racism, then they should ban this for the exact same reasons. I'd rather watch a movie that was nothing but white people than watch people of color be used to prop up imperialist propaganda.

And they should ban [italic]Pete's Dragon[/italic] because Helen Reddy was a TERF!

Not one of them will you hear about from shitney and their reactionary fascist agenda.

Fuck this movie, fuck Disney, fuck that Manson-enabling handmaid Angela Lansbury, and fuck the British Empire.

You fucking limey imperialists think you're morally pure, huh? Honestly, I'm starting to agree with my sister Dee on a lot of key issues.

Just for this, those little brats' aunt deserved to die in the blitz because the blitz was payback for British imperialism, and Miss Price deserved to have her workroom destroyed. She used witchcraft to promote an illegal and immoral empire in its campaign of worldwide terrorism. To make the Axis powers the bad guys here is not only disingenuous, it's fucking racist and xenophobic. Why? The National Socialists allied with the Japanese. The Japanese are not white. Hitler allied with nonwhites. The so-called "allies" did not yet they were more than willing to send Black men to die in their illegal wars to help Israel. To demonize a regime that willingly allied with a nonwhite country is the worst form of white supremacy. It is racism by proxy. Your anti-German racism is fucking sickening, and it is typical of you zionist khazars. My sister Dee was right about that part. The Sherman brothers are khazars. Irwin Kostal is a khazar. Khazars are fake Jews.

Everything Hitler did is your fault, ameriKKKa. And there would be no ameriKKKa without British Imperialism. To single out the National Socialists for acting in the best interest of Germany is typical right-wing zionist pilpul. Israel does worse before noon than the Third Reich did in all 12 years of its existence, and Israel has been doing it longer.

Is all of this Matt? I mean, this is some hardcore crazy going on here.