The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T. (1953)

Ever since I was a child myself, being force-fed junk like "Snowball Express", I've loved a good "children's film." I hate to use the words, since a good movie is a good movie, whatever its target audience (and the best so-called "Children's Film" can be enjoyed by adults--and adults who have not lost their sense of wonder. And though the reputation of "The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T." has been enhanced by its being rejected (by the sort of people who adopt troubled dogs at the pound, like a cousin of mine, rather than the cute ones), it fails at the primary goal of all movies: entertainment.First, the good! Hans Conreid, one of the great underrated actors, dances between shining wonderfully and chewing the scenery (also wonderful) as Dr. Terwilliker, who wants to have his piano students doomed to playing a very long piano. It was Conreid's big chance as an actor, and he made the most of it.Also excellent are the Dr. Seuss-designed sets! They're wackily Seusslike. It's too bad it's a place dominated by the evil Dr. Terwilliker, for what child, under better circumstances, wouldn't want a playhouse like this! Every shot in Terwilliker's palace has something worth seeing.Most importantly, since he has the central role, former "Lassie" star Tommy Rettig isn't bad as Bartholomew Collins. His singing voice is dubbed, but that's just fine with me. Like the kids in "Mary Poppins" he's not overly cute and his dilemma seems real. It's too bad he's stuck in that awful cap (I never liked beanies and refused to wear them at Rettig's age).Some parents have complained about the film's dark side. Trust me: kids are more resilient than today's mushy parents credit them for. They might get nightmares (who doesn't--you wake up, so what?) But kids enjoy being frightened. One of my all time favorite Christmas films is "Scrooge" with Albert Finney and it scared me witless when I saw it in the theater.Unfortunately, the film is a musical. This is a mistake so many children's films make. Since this is a movie about a piano teacher, songs do make sense, but the production lurches from one leaden song to another. Only a couple, focusing on Terwilliker's evil side, have any merit. You're still not going out whistling them.But children's flicks don't just have great children, they have to have great parents (acting-wise, that is). The actress playing Bartholomew's mother (admittedly a small part) lacks charisma and her career petered out by the time she was forty. The pivotal adult role, the heroic plumber August Zabladowski, requires a third- or fourth-string Danny Kaye. While it's funny to hear Bartholomew running through Dr. Terwilliker's palace calling "Mister Zabladowski!" over and over, when he actually arrives he's uninteresting.It's a film worth seeing--once--for Dr. Seuss' design. But just because a movie has a poor reception doesn't mean it's "Le Sacre du Printemps" all over again. I suppose one day "Heaven's Gate" will be reconsidered as a cult classic by folks who adopt an air of superiority by pretending to enjoy a film most people found dreadful. Sometimes, in the end, films are dreadful. Perhaps by recasting the mother and plumber or tweaking the songs they might have had a minor classic. Instead, they have the not-so-rare phenomenon of a children's film crafted . . . for adults, because it will bore rather than scare kids. And it bores adults when Conreid leaves the screen. It's not a good movie when you're watching the wonderful backdrops rather than the actors.

--SPOILERS-- Bart Collins (Tommy Rettig) is a prisoner to his piano instructor, Dr. Terwilliker (Han Conried). Terwilliker has built a castle, the Terwilliker Institute, where he's planning to have 500 boys play the the world's biggest piano for the rest of eternity. He even went as far as to ban all other musical instruments solely because they aren't the piano.Bart learns that his mother is second-in-command of the Terwilliker Institute and has been placed under Terwilliker's mind-control as well. He resolves not only to save her, but also escape the castle as well. The boy turns to the plumber August Zabladowsky (Peter L. Hayes) for an ally, but has to convince him that Terwilliker's no good first.They free Bart's mother and Zabladowsky defeats Terwilliker's conjoined twin henchmen (connected by a beard!)... but their escape is foiled and are sent to the dungeon. With hope hanging by a thread, Bart and Zabladowsky attempt to modify a bottle of Air Fix into a "Music Fix" to trap the music from the piano and ruin Terwilliker's plot.Through the magic of a hearing aid, "Music Fix" works and defeats Terwilliker. However, the concoction goes critical and destroys the castle in a nuclear blast.--End Spoilers--A really good family film, but unfortunately one that's easily overlooked. If you liked WILLY WONKA AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY, you would enjoy this: a lot of vignettes in the castle wouldn't look too out of place there.Terwilliker is just the type of villain you'd love to hate: a slimy personality with a gallon of egotism on the side ("We shall play the greatest song ever written. *I* wrote it!"), easily rivaling Conried's more famous portrayal of Captain Hook. Bart is an innocent, but headstrong, boy hellbent on saving his mother from Terwilliker's influence and you want to see him succeed.The music is excellent, but seeing as Dr. Seuss himself was near- godlike when it came to poetry it comes as no surprise that so many of the songs felt fun. He also had a hand in the plot and screenplay, elevating this to a level that 2000's THE GRINCH WHO STOLE Christmas and other such pop-culture joke-laden re-imaginings of his work can't reach. In fact, the lack of such factors helps the movie's aging.If there's any weaknesses, I would have to say that the Non-Piano Dungeon sequence went on for a little too long.Other than that, it's a quirky little romp that I would strongly recommend.Five stars. Grab a cup of pickle juice and give it a watch!

From the fertile mind of Theodor "Dr. Seuss" Geisel comes this charming, funny, wacky musical-fantasy. Young Bart Collins (Tommy Rettig) is once again suffering through the infernal piano playing lessons that his mother Heloise (Mary Healy) insists he take. It might not be so bad if his instructor, Dr. Terwilliker (the well cast Hans Conried), weren't such a demanding individual. Overcome by the dreariness of these lessons, Barts' mind begins to construct an elaborate vision: a colorful, tuneful kingdom that Dr. T rules with an iron fist. Among the touches: people who play instruments other than the piano are confined to dungeons.At its best, this is a fun diversion that does play like a Dr. Seuss book come to life. The choreography is most impressive, with a large cast of dancers & musicians dressed in the Seuss tradition. The songs are catchy and performed with gusto by this talented cast, also including Peter Lind Hayes (Healy's real life husband) as easygoing plumber August Zabladowski, who becomes a father figure to Bart. The production design by Rudolph Sternad is first rate, and there are some ingenious sets. Funny visual gags add to the fun, such as a pair of henchmen who share one single extra long beard. The script by Geisel and Allan Scott is worth noting, as it has humor for both adults and children alike.The whole cast is appealing, but Conried is a special treat as the highly theatrical Dr. T.If modern viewers are looking for something different to show their kids, they could do a lot worse than this.Eight out of 10.

Now this is something of a find, and of course I wonder if I had seen Dr. Seuss' The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T as a kid what I would make of it. I imagine I would embrace it even more than I do now; as it is, as a grown man, this is just incredibly wild, odd stuff, and not all of it works but it's certainly a unique achievement. It's like Seuss' Alice in Wonderland with little touches of Wizard of Oz (the whole "You were there, and you were there, and you" aspect, even for subtle things like bearded figures in photos on top of a piano), and it's certainly nothing if not unique.The easiest way to describe what it's about is that its a... musical about a fascist dictator only he is obsessed most of all with getting his piano army to play perfectly (the 5,000 fingers belonging eventually to the many children - probably not 5,000 total, it just sounds cool, but I digress). There's a little boy named Bart Collins (a decent child actor in Tommy Rettig) and he is in the real world kind of pressured/forced by his harsh piano teacher Dr. Terkwilliker to keep playing and playing, and his mother (Healy) does the same. But he falls asleep (or is it hypnosis of some kind, dun-dun-dun) and enters into a kind of nightmarish world where Dr. T is the ruler and he has minions and jailers and a whole system set up - but most of all a very, very long piano.Why is he obsessed with the piano? Eh, honestly, who cares after a certain point; he's one of those self-aware movie villains (or at least Seuss is clever enough in the writing of him) to know that it's just the fun of being villainous that's the thing. He's the sort of guy who has a musical number about people getting him dressed with his wide array of a wardrobe. Meanwhile there is the opposite side of Dr. T, the Nice Guy leading man Mr. Zabladowski (Peter Lynd Hayes, the only plumber I can think of with pomade in his hair all the time keeping it just perfect), and Bart needs to help him so that he won't be turned as a puppet by Dr. T (and as his mother has become in this world), or worse.This moves around with the sort of wild invention, manic and vivid set designs, and sense of continuous, rambunctious, over the top play that has made Dr. Seuss so beloved over the past century. I think you'll either go for it or you might not, depending on your quota of weird and odd images. Did I mention it's a musical? Or I should say it is but only about 25 minutes into the film. That's one of the flaws of the movie, where it has music to it but it doesn't show itself as being what it really wants to be until Mr. Zablowski and Bart share a song (a soft number, probably the least effective). Then again once it gets into it, and Seuss' creative lyrics start to spout off, it's a lot of fun.Some of the movie drags here and there - yes, even at 88 minutes - primarily with a sequence involving a bunch of green-skinned men who are jumping around and playing musical instruments (it feels like 5 minutes is spent on a xylophone alone). I should complain about the excessive musical numbers - even a black elevator operator in one scene gets a song (only black man I should note, which is strange unto itself but not uncommon for 1953) - but that's actually where the movie kind of shines and the singers do wonderfully (albeit not the actor actors I don't think, except for Hans Conreid who can do no wrong here).There are a lot of really creative ideas here, such as the device that sucks up all the air in a room and makes it sounds warped and silly, or little things like giant hands and arms that stick out of the wall and can open up doors. It's all so much that I'm tempted to say that it would have been a little easier to take - or just greater visually speaking - had it been an animated film, with its music easy enough to interweave. But with live action it's both a success and kind of a slog a couple of times as I mentioned, with the actors doing fine more or less except for Conreid who is, I should say again, spectacular here as he eats up the scenery but doesn't go so far as to take you out of the scene in its context. He's having the time of his life here, and Seuss created something unique in its time and place: a live-action children's musical with some subtle (or not so subtle) satire about dictatorships and oppression for kids.