duck soup – This Won't Be For Everyone
J. Burrello
Posts about duck soup written by J. Burrello
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This Won't Be For Everyone
My quest to find and revisit the most interesting movies every made continues.

Once again, films are listed in the order that I enjoyed them.

25. John Stamos (Full House) and Vanity (The Last Dragon) star in Never Too Young to Die (1986), a pretty forgettably bad B-action movie that does at least boast a truly gloriously camp hermaphrodite villain played by Gene Simmons of Kiss. Also Robert Englund appears briefly as a nerd.

24. Christian movie icon, Kirk Cameron, is a firefighter who learns not be such a dick to his wife and his wife learns the importance of valuing her dick of a husband in Fireproof (2008). As far as hokey religious flicks go, the production value isn’t the worst and, despite some alienating dogma speech and strict adherence to gender roles, it does mean well.

23. Adam McKay’s The Big Short (2015) is a sprawling real-life drama peppered with a multitude of characters vexing about the housing market bubble of the early 2000s. It’s an important issue. I just found it rather tedious and don’t remember a single thing from it.

22. Imagine a post-apocalyptic desert world where fascists run orphanages and the orphans form roller skate ball game squads and then an alien orb that can conjure water shows up and stuff. This is Solarbabies (1986). It’s all very stupid, but it has Jamie Gertz and some pretty decent production value.

21. Weirdly I’d seen this one before. C Me Dance (2009) is another low-budget Christian production that features a ballet dancer whose mom dies and then she gets cancer but then God gives her the ability to convert people and make them repent just by looking at them, but then Satan tries to intimidate her into knocking it off. And honestly, with a plot this wacky, had this been an Italian flick from the 60s, it would have made so much more sense. It’s got a few inadvertent laugh-out-loud moments, but not my favorite of the genre.

20. A slasher movie set in a bougie health club? Cue the killer lightning strike opening of Death Spa (1989). Death Spa is a bad slasher film that doesn’t quite make my cut for great schlock, despite its bonkers plot. Two things that Death Spa needed more of: more spa and/or gym equipment-related deaths and a clear point of view (do the filmmakers view the health spa trend with disdain?). As it stands, it just reads as a random location that hadn’t been done yet. A bit more location-specific gore and a dose of satire would have pushed it up a few notches. The ghost/computer nonsense was marvelously stupid though.

19. Legendary horror director, Stuart Gordon, falters slightly in the mostly fun Lovecraft misfire, Dagon (2008). A young couple gets shipwrecked and winds up in a remote Spanish fishing villages where the townsfolk are turning into fish creatures. It’s decent schlock that could stand to be a bit schlockier, but like I said: it’s mostly fun. I’d give it a look if you’re into Lovecraft adaptations. It’s no Re-Animator or From Beyond, but it’s not without its charm.

18. The original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990) is still the best. Before it became a recognized franchise, you have to appreciate just how insane the premise was here. Humanoid surfer dude karate turtles get trained by a rat in the sewer so they can take down an evil gang that grooms children to be ninja. Corey Feldman is reading all of his lines at an 11.

17. I knew nothing about Eugene V. Debs. We didn’t really learn about the American labor movement in school. I only knew Vermont Senator, Bernie Sanders, had mentioned him in a few interviews, and recently tweeted about the documentary The Revolutionist: Eugene V. Debs (2019). So I watched it. It’s a great primer into the socialist, activist, and trade unionist, Eugene V. Debs. People interested in the history of unions and the labor movement in the US should find this character pretty interesting. It really goes to show how much we take for granted and how long people like Debs have been fighting and how far we still have to go to improve the conditions and protect the rights of employees everywhere.

16. Jean Gabin stars as the man who brings the working-class Parisian café-concert to the wealthier elite in Jean Renoir’s French Cancan (1954). It’s a love letter to 19th century showbiz and painters like the director’s own father, Pierre-Auguste Renoir. It’s breezy and enjoyable, especially if you’re into costumes and getting a glimpse into the art scene of Paris’s past.

15. This is basically Batman but in Casino Royale (1967) without the irony (I think). Argoman, the Fantastic Superman (1967) is classic Italian schlock with a groovy Austin Powers aesthetic. Argoman can (I think) do anything. He can use telekinesis and punch people and influence people’s wills and who knows what else. His morals are ambiguous (he’s a skosh rapey and he murders so many people) and when he’s not in his zany outfit, he looks like the archetypal man in vintage ad illustrations. This is for fans of camp.

14. A Chinese company buys a defunct Ohio factory and brings it back to life in the hopes of expanding business in the documentary American Factory (2019) directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert. This is a fascinating look at capitalism, culture clash, and the working class people caught in between. I highly recommend this doc for anyone interested in our ongoing global corporate takeover.

13. I never thought the original Blob from 1958 was that great. It had a kooky theme song and some fun set-pieces, but Chuck Russell’s 1988 remake, The Blob, is everything a good remake should be. A mysterious blob of goo crash lands outside a small American town and proceeds to absorb everyone that comes into its path. It has some added humor, well-done gross-out effects, and some classic 80s punk anti-government satire. The 80s heralded some of the great remakes of classic horror-sci-fi and The Blob deserves to be mentioned alongside Carpenter’s The Thing and Cronenberg’s The Fly.

12. A reincarnating vegetarian superhuman cowboy goes head to head with a corrupt beef franchise restauranteur in the Indian comedy-melodrama, Quick Gun Murugun (2009). It’s like a live-action cartoon complete with outlandish plots and physics-bending action scenes. We laughed a lot. It’s loads of fun if you’re in the mood for something a bit lighter and silly.

11. This low-budget Korean sci-fi comedy romance starts super frenetic and aggressive before it settles you in for a rather unique slow-burn horror. Invasion of Alien Bikini (2011) takes place over one night, mostly in the apartment of Young-Gun (Young-geun Hong), a celibate oddball and runty vigilante. When he rescues a young girl (Eun-Jung Ha) from what he believes to be street ruffians, he unwittingly signs up for the date from hell. Plot twist: she’s an alien and needs his seed by midnight or else she’ll die. But Young-Gun is a chaste and honorable man (and battling a lot of childhood trauma and general social awkardness). Thus a frantic struggle to forcibly extract his sperm ensues. The film is darkly funny and imaginative. I found it reminiscent of another weird Korean film; Save the Green Planet.

10. Before Saved!, there was Jamie Babbit’s But I’m a Cheerleader (1999) starring Natasha Lyonne, Cathy Moriarty, Clea DuVall, and RuPaul. Megan Bloomfield (Lyonne) thinks she’s just your regular, all-American high school girl. But her family knows there’s something terribly, horrifically, unforgivably wrong with her. She’s a lesbian! So Megan gets shipped off to conversion therapy camp. A comedic voyage of self-discovery ensues.

9. Italian cinema of a certain era was certainly a trip. Iconic horror and giallo filmmaker and most assured perverted psychopath, Dario Argento, gives us the works in Phenomena (1985). If you thought Suspiria was a bit nutty and hard to follow, buckle up. Phenomena is a lot of disparate pieces and half-baked fragments of ideas blended together with a sort of hyper-stylized insane dream logic that congeal to form a truly impressive and perplexing, grotesque mess. An America teen (Jennifer Connolly) is sent to a boarding school in a Swiss village plagued by a serial killer who is mutilating young girls. The heroine can also communicate with insects for some reason. Also she sleepwalks. Also she may be developing a split personality. Then there’s an old entomologist (Donald Pleasance) who has a chimpanzee nurse. And that chimpanzee nurse – I cannot stress enough – rules. There’s plenty of clunky dialogue, bizarre character interactions, and gory surprises. The soundtrack seems hilariously mismatched with almost every scene, despite some great standalone themes from Goblin.

8. No one does depressing working class British drama like director Mike Leigh. Meantime (1983) boasts some stellar performances by young Tim Roth, Gary Oldman, and Phil Daniels (also the Trunchbull herself, Pam Davis). Squalor and class dynamics play prominent roles in this story of two brothers stuck in a miserable East End flat with their parents. Cleanse the palate with Leigh’s lighter fare like Happy-Go-Lucky and Topsy-Turvy. And then gear up for Naked, which appears later on this list.

7. Who would have thought that a silent Soviet documentary about the construction of the Turkestan–Siberia Railway would be so cool? Turksib (1929) is that documentary. It’s a fascinating portrait of the region and the peoples who reside there as well as a technical examination of the engineers that built the railway. It’s soft propaganda, but a unique film for fans of trains or folks interested in the history of documentaries.

6. Question: Is Kimiyoshi Yasuda’s Daimajin (1966) the best classic kaiju movie? It’s a definite contender. It might just be my new favorite. While not as iconic as Godzilla or Gamera, Daimajin has something special. It’s framed as a folktale and set during feudal Japan so we get some fun samurai hijinks before the colossal destruction in the finale. It’s a slower movie, but unlike a lot of kaiju movies, the human drama is a bit more engrossing. Around the midway point I was begging for the monster to make an appearance and finally wreak some havoc, but it all builds to a satisfying conclusion. There’s rituals and coups and prophecy and espionage and murder and, once you get to the third act, and that damn stone samurai god wakes up, it’s nonstop awesome. Do not anger the god of the mountain. It’s easy to see how the Daimajin series influenced the later North Korean film, Pulgasari (which also borrows a bit from Harryhausen’s 20 Million Miles to Earth).

5. Micro-budget indie horror doesn’t get much better than Frank Henenlotter’s Basket Case (1982), the tale of a mystery man from upstate named Duane wandering the grimiest streets of New York City with a big wicker basket under his arm. What’s in the basket? That secret is revealed pretty early on. It’s his malformed twin brother. Psychically linked, the pair are on a revenge killing spree. It’s a wild premise, but the fact that every single character (no matter how minor) gets plenty of quirk and “business” to do just gives an added layer of humor and humanity. It’s great and I get why it’s been recommended to me so many times.

4. I grew up watching a lot of classic comedies from the 1930s and 40s. Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, the Three Stooges, etc. But the Marx Brothers were always my favorites. I recently re-watched Duck Soup (1933) and it is just as anarchic and silly as I remember. Watching it with people unfamiliar with the Marx Brothers was a treat. Comedy doesn’t always age well, but we were all impressed with how many jokes, puns, and gags were crammed into every single scene. If you don’t like a joke, wait three seconds and maybe you’ll dig the next one. Light on plot, Duck Soup features the wise-cracking Groucho wooing the regal Margaret Dumont while he acts as head of state of Freedonia, a peaceful bankrupt country on the brink of war with Sylvania. The hilarious Chico and Harpo are Sylvanian spies and the hapless Zeppo is a secretary or something. It’s a rather broad send-up of foreign diplomacy, politics, and modern warfare, but that doesn’t matter. Duck Soup boasts some of the Marxes very best gags and comedy set pieces (including the famous mirror scene). The first six Marx Brothers movies are their best (shout out to Animal Crackers and A Night at the Opera in particular), and Duck Soup is squarely their funniest.

3. I also got to introduce the original RKO Pictures King Kong (1933) to my roommate recently. This is the granddaddy of monster movies and it had always terrified and fascinated me as a kid. Re-watching it again, I will stand by this movie. It holds up (just ignore some of the casual ethnocentrism and misogyny or treat it as a product of its time). This is pure, primal adventure. It’s mysterious jungles, lost civilizations, and a giant gorilla god who kidnaps a hot blonde (Fay Wray) and battles dinosaur after dinosaur. Stop-motion pioneer, Willis O’Brien (who would be a huge influence on Ray Harryhausen), had to develop a lot of new techniques to achieve the myriad of impressive creatures and in-camera effects. Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack’s King Kong is still a captivating technical marvel and shockingly violent adventure after nearly 90 years. As an added bonus, today it stands as a remarkable time capsule of 1930s NYC. Still one of my favorite movies.

2. Another Mike Leigh film. Naked (1993) is truly a depressing portrait of both London and humanity itself. Johnny (played amazingly by David Thewlis) turns up at an ex’s house and just sort of kicks around the joint while psychologically and verbally abusing anyone in his path as he rants in long, snarky, nihilistic screeds. This is a real actor’s film and a real gritty slice-of-life drama. You may feel dirty afterwards, but if you can appreciate despair and pain portrayed in a bitingly human fashion, give it a look.

1. Classic European demons done right. Errementari: the Blacksmith and the Devil (2017) is a delicious Basque horror fantasy directed by Paul Urkijo Alijo. A blacksmith escapes hell and keeps a demon locked up in his workshop until a young orphan girl releases it. I will not reveal any more of the plot. Just watch it. It’s fantastic. Admittedly, I’m a sucker for stories about myth, monsters, and the arbitrary rules that they must follow. Errementari is gorgeously shot and really explores the humanity of its characters in addition to boasting some brilliantly realized makeup effects. And it’s funny too. If you like dark fantasy with rich and familiar yet mysterious atmosphere like November, Border, Tale of Tales, and Pan’s Labyrinth then check this one out. You won’t be disappointed.

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Among the classic silver screen comedy teams there are many greats. Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, Hope and Crosby, the Three Stooges, and so on all have very special places in my heart, however, there is one team who has, for me, always stood out. I speak of the Marx Brothers. With their quick wit, innovative style, musical talent, and anarchic irreverence, the Marx Brothers have more than earned their places in cinema history. They were a unique blend ripped straight from vaudeville and their powers were only sharpened on the big screen.

One of the things that always separated the Marx Brothers from other comedy teams was their number. Most of the great comedy teams were comprised of only two. One would play more of the straight man (Bud Abbott, Bing Crosby) or bear the brunt of most of the physical pain (Oliver Hardy) while the other would be more infantile and always be getting into trouble (Lou Costello, Stanley Laurel) or sometimes they would just bounce lines off every straight performer in the film (Bob Hope). The Three Stooges (the greatest incarnation of which being comprised of Moe Howard, Larry Fine, and Curly Howard) changed things up a bit because there were now three and they were all pretty goofy. Moe would try to keep the boys in line, but his ignorance, belligerence, and propensity to get injured would always knock him down to the levels of the slower Larry and the manically infantile Curly. Cartoonish violence would quickly ensue.

The Marx Brothers had a completely different schtick. Originally there were four of them in the films (a fifth, Gummo, left the group before Hollywood and his namesake was seemingly arbitrarily used as the title to the 1997 Harmony Korine film).

Zeppo (Herbert originally) Marx (1901-1979) was the underused straight man of the brothers, but he only made it into their first five features. Zeppo’s screen time is short and sporadic throughout their movies. He usually played Groucho’s secretary or son or some other minor character who might court the girl or take a letter. It has been said that Zeppo was actually very funny off-screen, but since he did not have a specific comic persona like the other three he got lost in the shuffle. The best Zeppo moments, I think, come in Animal Crackers (1930) when he tries to take a letter that is being dictated by Groucho. My other personal favorite Zeppo scene is the big musical number about going to war in Duck Soup (1933). This number features all of the Marxes at once being equally silly as they sing, dance, strum banjo, beat helmeted guards’ heads like xylophones, and puppeteer an entire room of serious politicos. Duck Soup would be Zeppo’s last movie appearance. Zeppo left as their contract with Universal came to a close.

Chico (Leonard) Marx (1887-1961), renowned for being a bit of a womanizer and gambling addict, was the Italian guy of the group. The Marx Brothers were all Jewish, but in the days of vaudevillian comedy it was very normal to play stereotypical ethnic characters on stage. Chico was the only one of the Marxes who kept the ethnic schtick throughout their film career. His clothing (like Groucho and Harpo) would also stay rather consistent. The same cheap hat and coat would follow him from film to film. His performances consisted of saying dim malapropistic things with a heavy Italian accent, and being a springboard for many of Harpo’s antics. A very fine musician, Chico played the piano in most of their films. His characters were also the most prone to Donald Duck-like exasperation (usually brought on by Harpo). Chico and Harpo were often paired together as lower class vagabonds, thieves, or spies. Some of Chico’s best scenes come when he is with Groucho and his double-talk and mispronunciation carry them down awry verbal tributaries. I think some of Chico’s best scenes can be found in Animal Crackers where he and Harpo play bridge with some unsuspecting ladies (one of which being Marx Brother mainstay, Maragaret Dumont), or when he and Harpo attempt to steal a famous painting during a blackout, or when he and Groucho discuss where the painting might be and after much silly talk Chico asserts that it was stolen by left-handed moths. His best and funniest piano playing scene may also be found in Animal Crackers.

Harpo (Adolph) Marx (1888-1964) was the harp-playing, silent type. Harpo never spoke a word on camera (although he often whistled and honked horns that protruded from his overlarge, tattered trench coats). Always with a shabby top-hat and curly, red wig, Harpo was easily the most clownish of the group. His characters were all happy-go-lucky pantomiming miscreants—often times abused by bad guys or Chico—but he always got the last word (so to speak). Goofy faces (or “gookie” faces for the purists), a far away look in his eye, illiteracy, a voracious appetite, sloppy clothing—containing everything from live animals, perpetually lit candles and blowtorches, coffee, weapons, appliances, etc.—and a strange running gag of loving a horse and the harp were all part of Harpo’s bag of tricks. Some of his best scenes come with Chico in Animal Crackers, and his job interview with Groucho in Duck Soup where after many screwball antics, Harpo reveals his home is a tattoo of a doghouse on his own chest. Groucho leans in to “meow” at the doghouse, when suddenly a real dog’s head pops out and barks at him. Groucho leaps back as Harpo quietly closes his coat and grins whimsically. The most surreal of the brothers, it’s no wonder Salvador Dali was so fascinated by him (Dali actually wrote a script for the Marx Brothers, Giraffes on Horseback Salad, but it was never filmed). One of Harpo’s other great scenes comes in A Night at the Opera (1935) where he disrupts the opera performance at the grand finale of the film. For all his zany antics, his touch at the harp was always smooth and you could see the significance this instrument had on him.

Groucho (Julius) Marx (1890-1977) was the ring leader of the bunch. Unlike Chico or Harpo who were gifted at the piano and harp respectively, Groucho was a guitar player but he seldom displayed his musical talent on screen (he plays the guitar in Go West and briefly in Horse Feathers and promptly tosses it into a lake at the song’s conclusion). He was the wiliest and sharpest of the group. Groucho always wore baggy suits and round glasses and smoked a cigar beneath a thick greasepaint mustache while his painted eyebrows bounced up and down insinuating some sort of sneaky double-entendre. His hunched comic gait was actually a parody of a walking fad from the late 1800s. This absurd walk was another trademark of the Groucho persona. He was usually cast as a shady man of some note who has been brought in to provide temporary guidance to a sinking ship. He was Quincy Adams Wagstaff, president of the financially struggling Huxley College, in Horse Feathers (1932), and he was Rufus T. Firefly, the leader of the bankrupt country of Freedonia, in Duck Soup, and Detective Wolf J. Flywheel in The Big Store (1941). Groucho was very well-read and his intelligence shines through in his improvised dialogue opposite other characters. His wit was so sharp and so quick that actors like Margaret Dumont (his usual foil/counterpart and butt of many jokes) would frequently not understand them. His rapid-fire delivery is reflected best when the other characters can barely keep up with his humorous train of logic. Virtually every time Groucho opened his mouth on camera it was hilarious and it might be difficult to pinpoint his best scenes, although Animal Crackers and Duck Soup features some of his best and sharpest conversations. Duck Soup also features the classic mirror sequence where Harpo, dressed as Groucho, copies his movements to hide his presence and the fact that the mirror is broken.

The Marx Brothers had many classic motifs and running gags, but their brilliant comic timing and talent moved beyond that. They were unique. They were able to be edgier than most other comedians of their day and Groucho made comedy a lot smarter than most. Chico took ethnic caricature to a new level, occasionally mocking his well-known non-Italian heritage in their films. Harpo kept silent comedy alive years after the silent era. Groucho reminded everyone that comedy could be more intelligent than drama if done properly. All having markedly different comedy styles (although all birthed from their vaudevillian New York City roots) they brought comic crassness to new heights when they were together. Whether they’re playing the final football game in Horse Feathers or taking on the gangsters in Monkey Business (1931) they were always innovative and hilarious.

Like most creative minds, they did lose some creative control when they switched studios. Sadly their later films did not have the same spark and fire as their first forays into moviedom. Of their thirteen or so consecutive movies their first six are easily their best and funniest. Their first, The Cocoanuts (1929), is a bit uneven (too much Irving Berlin) but it has some great bits. Animal Crackers, Duck Soup, and A Night at the Opera rank among my all time favorite comedies. Their later films were lacking because they were in want of the real Marx Brothers. A Day at the Races (1937) and At the Circus (1939) were better than Room Service (1938), The Big Store, A Night in Casablanca (1946) and Love Happy (1949) but nothing could measure up to their earlier efforts. Their one period piece, Go West (1940), was probably their last decent one and it’s worth a look.

The studios were trying to control them too much because they failed to realize that what worked in the Marx Brothers was anarchy. They brought anarchy to respectable people and self-important situations when they were at their best. The Marx Brothers attacked aristocracy, art patrons, opera, investors, gangsters, academia, politics, war, etc. Anything that took itself too seriously was deemed a suitable Marx target. I’m still rather fond of that rule. Do yourself an enormous favor and check out some of the greatest comedies of all time; the films of the Marx Brothers.

Originally published for “The Alternative Chronicle” May 4, 2010

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