This is another one of those 70s neo noir movies? I think I’ve actually seen this before, on VHS in the early 80s, but I remember nothing…
This movie is kinda weird — I mean, in a technical sense. While they’re dancing, they obviously had problems with a pickup mic in her bra, so you can hear the chafing. But they kept it instead of flying in a new audio?
The director had a short career…
Man, the performances here are strictly amateur hour.
Even Mitchum is delivering his lines like he’s reading it off a card.
OK, it’s picking up now.
But it’s so weird for a neo noir movie! I mean… look at the lighting here? Could be from a 70s documentary.
And now there’s so much room echo — like they only had one mic several metres away…
Isn’t that… yes, it is.
Comics: It’s what all the prostitutes are reading.
I see signs.
OK, there’s technical problems here, and some iffy performances, but it does really nail the noir thing plot in many ways. It’s satisfyingly confusing. The only problem is the resolution, which should come as a shocking twist — but is so obvious that anybody who’s read a mystery before will call it ahead of time. I mean, there were no other candidates for who Velma was, were there?
Oh man… I think I saw this in a cinema when I was like 11? Can that be correct? And then I saw it again on VHS in the mid 80s.
But more than anything, all I remember from this movie is probably from the Mad Magazine parody of the movie, which I remember reading a bunch of times… like, the guy making the replica of the mountain in mashed potatoes? That was in there… I remember… the movie being really slow? And… the little ditty at the end?
I’m not really a Spielberg fan, but I’m looking forward to watching this again.
Business the modern movie making mind can’t comprehend. So many great details…
This movie just looks so good… the mix of models and matte paintings and practical effects… and the colours! You can’t imagine something looking this good could be made today.
They’d just CGI in all the chairs.
This had a $20M budget, which apparently is $110M in 2026 money… so, I mean, it’s a huge budget, but why can’t they make movies that look this good today with a $300M budget?
(It grossed $300M in 1977, which I guess made it one of the highest grossing movies ever? It’s like $1.5B in 2026 money?) Oh, there’s always Gone With the Wind with $4.5B inflation adjusted bucks.
Here’s the scene! “Mashed potatoes”! That’s the gloopiest, most horrible-looking mashed potatoes I’ve ever seen, though.
Total sausage fest.
It’s such a zeitgeisty movie. Sure, the gummint here is overbearing and overprotective, but it’s basically competent and well-meaning. And everybody’s working together and there’s no nazis using the UFOs to talk about chemtrails. I.e., total science fiction.
But more than that, it’s an odd movie — there’s no real villain here, and there’s very few of familiar plot threads — instead it’s just this situation that’s presented to us an lasts for over two hours. And it’s not boring! It’s very exciting!
How did Spielberg convince the studio to give him All The Money? Had Star Wars already been released? This is kinda the opposite of that, but…
Oh! It’s because it has Cary Grant, and I vaguely remember trying to buy his more obscure (early) movies… a while ago…
Wow. Bought this in 2019. Time flies like a banana.
Man, this is one of those RKO cheapies? Many of the scenes (like the above) are just a couple of guys talking in front of a preposterous rear projection of some scenery: The greenscreen of the era.
So… this movie is about a claque of swindlers — they made some money being snake oil salesmen in the South, and then they lost all their money, and now they’re making their money back by… by… by…
I just didn’t understand the gag here — they swindled the guy with the comedy beard somehow, but…
The film was a commercial disappointment, losing $530,000, making it RKO’s biggest money loser of the year.
…
Filming was meant to take four weeks but ended up taking fifteen with Arnold on $10,000 a week, half of which went to B. P. Schulberg who owned his contract. Costing Small this much money gave satisfaction to Arnold, who had been rejected by the producer seeking his representation as an agent in 1918. Costs blew out on the production and there ended up being at least seven writers on the script.
Yes, this totally seems like a movie that had half a dozen writers that didn’t talk to each other.
Now they’re just doing vaudeville skits.
I think the main thesis of this movie is that the business world is stupid… so the schemes they do don’t have to make sense?
Because the schemes really don’t make sense. They’re the equivalent of the bridge personnel on Star Trek saying “try installing a recursive algorithm” and “rotate the shields”… but for, like, an hour.
It’s so stupid! But not in a good way! It’s just schemes that make no sense, and them slapstick scenes in between. I mean, this could have worked if they’d leaned into being a screwball comedy or something, but they don’t — it just veers wildly between boring scenes of scheming, and then slapstick that’s not very funny.
This movie is just totally inept.
And such a waste of talent.
The director here had been churning out movies in the 20s, and continued in the 30s, but didn’t continue beyond much into the 40s.
The Son of Monte Cristo!?!
You can just see Cary Grant thinking “what the fuck is this movie I’m in? Can I give them the slip and do a Mae West movie instead?! She’s funny!”
This is a very bad movie. There are some scenes that are pretty funny, but it’s still a very, very bad movie. And it’s bad in ways you rarely see — there’s talent both before and behind the camera, but it’s like they’re sabotaging the movie. It’s very strange, and very bad.
