Houdini / Those Daring Young Men in Their Jaunty Jalopies Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		3.5
Audio		3.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.0

Houdini / Those Daring Young Men in Their Jaunty Jalopies Blu-ray Movie Review

Two decidedly different films starring Tony Curtis.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman May 3, 2011

Note: The scores above are averages of the two films together. Please see individual listings for more detailed individual scores.

When Tony Curtis died in September 2010 he was fêted as one of his generation’s greatest actors, but when looking at Curtis’ admittedly long oeuvre, there is a rather surprisingly small amount of real standout films. There’s Sweet Smell of Success, possibly Curtis’ finest overall hour, despite his (one) Oscar nomination for The Defiant Ones. And Curtis certainly displayed range in films as far flung as Some Like it Hot and Spartacus, but it’s at least arguable that his contributions to either of those could have been equaled by any number of Curtis’ contemporaries. Curtis was an old fashioned movie star, not necessarily a great actor, and as such, he followed in the grand tradition of other stars who came up through the studio system and carved out huge and hugely successful careers by basically playing themselves over and over and over. In looking over Curtis’ lengthy list of films, one is struck by how marginal, albeit undeniably entertaining, so many of them were. Curtis went with the flow, it seems, and if that flow took him to everything from Francis (as in the talking mule) to The Bad News Bears Go to Japan to, perhaps more charitably, well remembered if slight fare like Operation Petticoat, who can really blame a performer for wanting to stay employed? This new double feature (on two Blu-ray discs) of two of Curtis’ films for Paramount finds the actor at the relative beginning and end of his decades-long career. Houdini, a 1953 pseudo-biography of the famous magician, is often cited as Curtis’ breakout starring role, and it provided his first co-starring vehicle with his then-wife Janet Leigh. Those Daring Young Men in Their Jaunty Jalopies came along in 1969, well after Curtis’ heyday and just on the cusp of the era when he migrated increasingly to television and to supporting roles in less than stellar material. The films together make a rather odd coupling, but they provide a nice pair of bookends to a career that may not have ever had Olivier-esque ambition, but which managed to make often impressive forays into a vast number of disparate genres.

Houdini
Film: 3.5
Video: 3.0
Audio: 2.5

Houdini as an entertainment is typical early 1950s fare, big, glitzy and fairly predictable in its combination of niche career path (in this case, famous magician) interwoven with a heartfelt love story. As a biography of the real, honest to goodness Harry Houdini, it’s pure, unadulterated hokum. But this was the film that put Curtis on the map, more or less, and it’s not hard to see why. Curtis is unabashedly charismatic throughout this film and perhaps more importantly he has incredible physical presence, which helps to make his version of Houdini something athletic and magnetic. The film, a rather odd production choice for famed special effects wizard George Pal, dances around the real facts of Houdini’s fascinating life, intercutting the magician’s increasingly brazen escape attempts (one of which goes horribly awry, unlike anything that happened in real life) with Houdini’s courting and marriage to Bess (a lovely and spunky Janet Leigh).

This is a standard rags to riches story, highlighted by some amazing, putative “magic” tricks, but managing to avoid virtually everything that made the real Houdini such a fascinating figure. Houdini’s famous fascination with spiritualism and the afterlife is only hinted at here in passing with regard to the death of Houdini's mother, probably because it would have been unseemly to early 1950s Eisenhower-era audiences. Instead we get Houdini, lulled into a concentrated state by a spinning crystal on a chandelier, suddenly able to extricate himself from a straitjacket. He’s warned not to go too far with his magical abilities, as a famous precursor, a certain Von Schweger, had to quite plying the magician’s trade when he feared he had become too powerful. (It's interesting to contrast this element with the much later The Prestige). Silly? Without question, yes. Entertaining? Absolutely, at least in the wide-eyed manner that was part and parcel of that era’s filmmaking.

What ultimately elevates this film above its own limited biographical ambitions is the chemistry between Curtis and Leigh, which is palpable. Both performers are young and extremely charismatic, and they obviously have a deep felt rapport with each other. If much of Houdini feels awfully pedestrian to us now with our cynical and jaded modern sensibilities, the freshness of Curtis and Leigh at this early point in their careers helps to offset that slightly stale feeling and it imbues the film with enough energy that will keep most people entertained, if not exactly completely involved.

Those Daring Young Men in Their Jaunty Jalopies
Film: 2.5
Video: 3.5
Audio: 3.5

Those Daring Young Men in Their Jaunty Jalopies was Ken Annakin’s follow-up to his immensely successful 1965 Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines. Flying Machines was a critical darling in the mid-1960s, a film which was embraced for its silliness and slapstick mayhem, and was praised for its lavish production values and all-star cast. By the time Annakin got around to releasing his putative sequel four years later, several things had changed which led to the film not being very well received, but the biggest thing that Jalopies simply couldn’t overcome is that Jalopies in a very real sense had already been released, and actually in the selfsame year of 1965 that Flying Machines was, and indeed with the selfsame star of Jalopies, Mr. Tony Curtis.

That film, of course, was Blake Edwards’ delicious spoof The Great Race, a film which reunited Curtis with his Some Like It Hot co-star Jack Lemmon, but which for some odd reason was critically reviled at the time of its release. The intervening years have actually been much kinder to Blake Edwards’ brand of comedy than they have been to Annakin’s, and watching The Great Race in tandem (no pun intended) with Those Daring Young Men in Their Jaunty Jalopies proves an exercise in what sharp screenwriting and directorial savoir faire can mean with regard to a film’s relative success or failure. While The Great Race is over the top and decidedly satiric, full of completely insane performances (especially by a madcap Lemmon, evincing a very unusual “villain” role, albeit one hysterically exaggerated), Those Daring Young Men in Their Jaunty Jalopies is a huge, lumbering mess of a film which despite its impressive physical production, is bloated, way too long and severely lacking in any real laughs.

Much like The Great Race, Jalopies concerns an international race in the early days of automobiles, in this case the Monte Carlo. We're introduced to a wide array of various characters, including a German (Gert Frobe) and two nitwits Brits (Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, arguably the funniest people in the movie), some amorous Italians and a bevy of girls. Curtis and Terry-Thomas (who is playing the son of his character from Flying Machines) are co-owners of a British car concern but are rivals for the race's prize. This is a film that would have benefited from a much shorter running time (it clocks in at over two hours). Jalopies takes far too long introducing characters and subplots and then scatters what little energy is left in a series of mostly unfunny adventures as the cars make their way through various topographies. At least the scenery is very pretty in an otherwise overblown production that is not one of Curtis' finer moments.

Houdini / Those Daring Young Men in Their Jaunty Jalopies Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Both of these films arrive on Blu-ray with AVC encoded 1080p transfers. Houdini is presented in a 1.37:1 aspect ratio and Those Daring Young Men in Their Jaunty Jalopies is in 2.35:1. There are both pluses and minuses to both of these high definition presentations. For DNR-phobes, it appears little if any restoration was done on either of these, and both look like they were sourced from prints. Perhaps surprisingly, Houdini shows considerably less damage than Jalopies does, though alert viewers will note all manner of flecks and specks dotting both presentations. That said, there's a good deal more of those flecks and specks present in Jalopies. Houdini looks just slightly soft, especially when compared to Jalopies. Colors in both features are quite robust, though Houdini is too pink-red at times, especially with regard to flesh tones. Colors are just this side of blooming several times through Houdini as well. The image is considerably sharper, with less aggressive color, throughout Jalopies, though the film's frequent use of opticals leads to greater dirt and grit on several segments. The increased resolution also makes the film's fairly ubiquitous use of process shots completely apparent, with fairly omnipresent green haloing surrounding characters at times.

Houdini / Those Daring Young Men in Their Jaunty Jalopies Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

No lossless audio options are offered on this Blu-ray, and instead we're given standard Dolby Digital 2.0 mixes on both of these films. On the audio side of things, Jalopies is the clear winner, with an overall spry sounding track that presents dialogue, ubiquitous sound effects and Ron Goodwin's charming if self-derivative score fairly well, considering the lossy constraints of standard Dolby tracks. Unfortunately, the news is considerably worse on Houdini. This film's soundtrack suffers from some fairly bad damage, including lots of cracks, pops and even thumps that sound like bad edit points. There's also a fair amount of hiss that becomes more apparent in quieter moments. All of that said, virtually all of the dialogue is clear, though there are a couple of warped moments that interfere with a clear presentation. I frankly can't recall if the film suffered from these anomalies the last time I saw it on television, but whatever print was used for this transfer did not have the best source elements for a trouble free soundtrack.

Houdini / Those Daring Young Men in Their Jaunty Jalopies Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

No supplements are offered on this budget priced two-pack.

Houdini / Those Daring Young Men in Their Jaunty Jalopies Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

These may not be state of the art transfers, but those of us who love classic films, or at least films from the classic era, should be encouraged by these new licensed Paramount titles which Legend is putting out. While the films have not undergone significant (if indeed any) restoration, they also haven't been overly tinkered with, and so we get a fairly filmic looking presentation here, albeit one with some passing issues, as noted above. There are trade-offs in both of these films. Jalopies is unquestionably the weaker of the two films, but it has the better audio quality by far. If Houdini is hackneyed, especially to modern sensibilities, it offers two entertaining lead performances and its image quality, while perhaps too florid for some, exhibits fewer scratches, flecks and other blemishes than does Jalopies. Together these films offer Curtis in his dramatic and comedic guises, and while both films themselves leave something to be desired, it's fun to see this star in such different productions. Recommended.