
            Charlie Bucket (Peter Ostrum) lives in poverty (of means but definitely not of spirit) with his mother and four grandparents. On his way home from school one day, his paper route takes him past the gate of the town's mysterious and reclusive, but highly-regarded candy-maker, Willy Wonka (Gene Wilder). As Charlie peers through the gates, a tinker walks by, telling Charlie that 'nobody ever goes in, and nobody ever comes out.Later that night, Charlie discusses this with his Grandpa Joe (Jack Albertson). Joe explains that the man Charlie saw was right. Many years before, other candy makers (especially one Oskar Sluggworth) were sending spies into his factory to steal Wonka's amazing candy secrets. Finally, Mr Wonka locked the gates, and banished all his workers from the factory. Shortly after this, the factory started up, but no one knows who is making Wonka's candies now.The next day at school, word spreads quickly that a contest has been launched, with five golden tickets hidden in five ordinary Wonka chocolate bars. The big prize is that those who find these tickets, will get to visit Mr Wonka's long-isolated factory for a free tour, and receive a lifetime supply of chocolate. The world then goes crazy, with Wonka candies being sold out at almost every store.The first ticket is found by a gluttonous German boy, named Augustus Gloop (Michael Bollner).The second ticket is found by a spoiled little girl named Veruca Salt (Julie Dawn Cole), whose father utilized his peanut factory workers to open Wonka bars from dawn until dusk.The third ticket is found by a girl named Violet Beauregarde (Denise Nickerson), who is an avid gum chewer, having chewed a piece of gum for three months straight to achieve a world record.The fourth ticket is found by a boy named Mike TeeVee (Paris Themmen), who is obsessed with television, particularly programs regarding cowboys.And no one notices a mysterious, trenchcoat-clad man (Gunter Meisner) always showing up whenever anyone claims a ticket.While these children claim the tickets in turn, and while various adults go to absurd lengths to find the tickets on their own, old Joe uses his tobacco money to buy two Wonka bars, one at a time, for Charlie. Neither bar contains a ticket. But the bond between Charlie and Joe is all the stronger for that.Finally the Paraguayan television network announces that an eccentric millionaire, living in the Andes, has claimed the fifth ticket. With (as everyone thinks) no more tickets to hunt for, the world gets back to normal. Charlie spends one night wandering about town thinking of the chance he missed, but is back at school the next day, doing his best to put it all behind him.But the next morning, he finds a gold sovereign in a storm drain next to the candy shop. He fishes out the coin and goes in to buy some candy, including a regular Wonka bar. Then as he goes to claim his papers to start his route, he reads a stark headline: FIFTH TICKET FRAUD. While a crowd of adults is tsk-tsk-ing about the unmitigated gall that Paraguayan con artist showed, Charlie starts, very slowly, to unwrap the Wonka bar he bought. And what should he find within, but the fifth golden ticket!Charlie's discovery electrifies the townfolk: one of their own has claimed the genuine fifth ticket! So his fanfare consists of holding it up and celebrating for about a minute or so with his paper-route customers and anyone who happens to be looking on--no big deal compared to the media hype that greeted the other children, but that doesn't matter. Not to Charlie. What matters is at last he will get a chance to walk into the factory that has mystified him all his life. (The ticket also entitles him to a lifetime supply of chocolate, but he doesn't think of that just then.)But as he turns the corner, he runs into the very stranger who has insinuated himself into all the other celebrations (though Charlie, not being media-savvy, does not know this). The stranger introduces himself as Oskar Sluggworth and offers him stock certificates if he will quietly abstract from the factory a prototype of an Everlasting Gobstopper.Charlie rushes the rest of the way home and announces his find. So great is the wonderful shock that Old Joe can actually get out of bed!Charlie takes time to read the ticket's terms. Under them, the holder may bring one adult companion. Charlie selects Old Joe, who happily agrees.The next morning, the town does put on a celebration, with a band, to see the opening of the factory door. Promptly at ten o'clock, the door opens. Out walks a man leaning heavily on a cane, and follows a pathway on the pavement. He gets to the end of the path, and leaves the cane behind, stuck into the ground. And then he leans over, and is about to fall...and finishes with a somersault.This slightly crazy man is, of course, Willy Wonka. And that entrance sets the tone for the adventure that follows.He calls all the ticket holders to step forward. Verruca Salt insists on showing up first, though hers was the second ticket. Augustus Gloop doesn't care about things like that, and neither do the other children.Willy leads them all inside, where first he asks them all to sign a contract with print that starts out large and ends in being ultra-fine.In the tour that follows, the children, one by one, fall victim to pranks that play upon their most profound weaknesses of character. Augustus Gloop, the glutton, falls into a river of chocolate and gets sucked up in an extractor. Violet, the rude gum-chewer, starts chewing on a prototype that is supposed to have all the taste of a three-course meal, and seems to turn into a gigantic blueberry. Verruca, the selfish ingrate, falls through an "egg-dicator" and down a garbage chute. Mike Teevee, the TV addict, goes through something like a television transmission and ends up reduced to about a twelfth of his normal size.Charlie and Joe have not been immune. Shortly before the accident to Verruca, the two lag behind and steal "Fizzy Lifting Drinks" and end up floating up a chimney and risk running into an exhaust fan! They manage to burp their way down, and rejoin the others, thinking nothing of it. But at the end of the tour, Willy abruptly shuts himself in his office--which, when Charlie and Joe open the door, turns out to have furnishings sawn in half--half a clock, half a sink, half a table--and half a desk, where Wonka sits on half a chair. Joe diffidently asks about the lifetime supply of chocolate the ticket promised. Willy replies Charlie disqualified himself by breaking the contract. "You STOLE Fizzy Lifting Drinks!" he cries. "You BUMPED into the ceiling which now has to be washed and sterilized! So you get NOTHING! You LOSE! GOOD DAY, sir!"All Joe can think of, is that Wonka has pulled a bait-and-switch. Now he encourages Charlie to let Oskar Sluggworth have the prototype Everlasting Gobstopper Wonka gave him earlier in the tour. But Charlie is having none of that. With consummate dignity and grace he approaches Willy one last time and sets the prototype on the half-desk next to Willy's left hand.And Willy almost transforms. "You won! You WON!" he cries, reaching for Charlie to hug him. "Oh, I'm sorry to put you through this. Now I want you to meet someone." In walks Oskar Sluggworth--or rather, a Mr. Wilkinson, who is Willy's executive assistant!Willy then asks Charlie and Joe to join him in one last thrill-ride: the Wonka-Vator, a turbocharged levitating craft with one button he has never pressed, and now encourages Charlie to press. That one button press sends the craft, and the three, to crash through the glass ceiling and to a height that commands a view of the factory and the town around it. Now Willy reveals his true purpose: he sent out the five golden tickets in the hope of recruiting a successor. And Charlie is the sole qualifying applicant. To make the deal sweeter, Willy encourages Charlie to move in at once, with all his family. Charlie enthusiastically accepts this ultimate award.========================================================CommentariesThe original child actors, as adults, recorded a commentary track for the DVD edition of this title. Julie Dawn Cole (Verruca) developed a theory that Willy Wonka did not let those tickets fall at random. Instead, Mr. Wilkinson/"Oskar Sluggworth" deliberately placed those tickets with four children who could each use a lesson in humility, and with Charlie. Willy surely noticed Charlie all his life, and no doubt decided on him as his successor. But first he must test Charlie. Hence the other four contestants, who could never qualify, and the tour taking him conveniently past the Fizzy Lifting Drinks. Hence also how conveniently Charlie could find a gold sovereign in a storm drain, on the very morning he can read a banner headline exposing the Paraguayan claimant as a fraud.The test, of course, was not whether Charlie would forgo the temptation. It was how he would handle rejection due to bait-and-switch. Charlie handled himself like a champion; hence his victory.
    

Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory


            
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The Fox and the Hound

My Body, My Child


            The small beach community of Potters Bluff advertises "A New Way of Life."George Le Moyne (Christopher Allport), a vacationing photographer, snaps photographs on the beach when an attractive young woman (Lisa Blount) approaches. She asks him who he is and what he is doing. When she asks him his name, he refuses to answer. She says his name should be "Freddie," so he calls her "Lisa," and she poses for him until they are surrounded by a group of townspeople. The girl takes his camera away and others in the crowd take pictures as George is beaten, tied up to a post and set on fire.Later that evening, Sheriff Dan Gillis (James Farentino) examines the site of a car accident with George's burned body inside. William G. Dobbs (Jack Albertson), an elderly coroner-mortician, arrives from his funeral home with his hearse radio blaring jazz music, but as Dobbs examines the burned body, George screams and is rushed to the hospital.The next morning, Sheriff Gillis stops at the diner where fisherman Phil (Barry Corbin) and a few other locals ask about the unknown victim. As Dan informs them that the man is in the hospital, he is served coffee by Midge the waitress (Linda Turley) one of the towns persons who set George on fire.That night, an intoxicated fisherman (Ed Bakey) on the docks is murdered by another mob of townspeople, who once again record the event with their cameras.The next day, when Sheriff Dan Gillis asks hotel proprietor Ben (Macon McCalman) if any guests have disappeared, the lawman is shown George's room. Ben claims that the sheriff's wife, Janet Gillis (Melody Anderson), visited the photographer yesterday. When Dan queries Janet, she admits to buying photographic equipment for the school where she teaches. Later, Dan runs into the principal, Mr. Haskell (Robert Boler), who denies purchasing equipment. Dan is then called to another crime scene where the dead and mutilated body of the fisherman is discovered.At the hospital, George is awake, but only his left eye and mouth are not charred. As Dan and the doctor (Joe Medalis) speak in the hallway, the same woman from the beach known as "Lisa" (now dressed in a white nurse's uniform) sneaks into George's room and kills him with a hypodermic needle into the eye.Later, at George's graveside, coroner Dobbs is angry at Dan that he was not allowed to work his "magic," restoring George for viewing. That night, before Janet leaves for a PTA meeting, she hands her husband a roll of 16mm film that her students shot for a class project and asks him to drop it off to be developed.Meanwhile, a family of three stops at the diner to ask for directions and Midge refers them to "Freddie," a gas station attendant who resembles burn victim George LeMoyne, but in perfect condition. As the family drives through the fog, an unidentified creature runs in front of their car and they crash. They go for help at a nearby house, which is seemingly deserted until the family is surrounded by townspeople. The couple and their young son escape, but as they drive away, a woman in the back seat attacks the boy. The couple grabs their child, ripping the woman's hair and revealing stitches on her scalp. She is thrown from the car as it speeds off.Meanwhile, driving the deserted streets, Sheriff Dan Gillis is startled as the family's car races past. He follows but hits a pedestrian. Dan gets out to investigate and finds the man's severed arm on the front grille of his car. The injured man sits up, hits Dan, grabs the arm and runs away. Dan follows the man but quickly looses him. The sheriff rushes home to get ammunition, but instead of bullets, he finds a book on witchcraft and voodoo. He confronts Janet when she arrives home about it. Janet claims that she plans to lecture her students on witchcraft.The next day, Dan drops off his wife's students' film with storekeeper Ernie (Bill Quinn) and insists only he can pick it up. Later, the sheriff gets a phone call from tow-truck driver, Harry (Robert Englund), as he pulls a car from the ocean (it is the same station wagon the family of three was driving). The car is empty, except for a child's toy airplane.Dan pulls skin from the grille of his car and asks the doctor to analyze it. The hotel proprietor, Ben, tells Dan that he saw George LeMoyne, as "Freddie," at the gas station and wants Janet to verify the man is actually George.In her classroom, Janet lectures on voodoo, explaining that the "walking dead" closely imitate the living but are completely at the will of their master, who maintains control by hiding the person's heart. One of her students is Jamie, the same boy who tried to escape with his parents the previous night. Dan arrives at the school and questions his wife why Principal Haskell was unaware of the photographic equipment purchase, but Janet claims it was a surprise gift for Haskell from the PTA. When they reach the gas station, Janet does not recognize "Freddie."Across town, a female hitchhiker (Lisa Marie) accepts a ride into Potters Bluff, but the driver is the recently murdered fisherman. The mob of townspeople attack, pull out the hitchhiker from the truck and her skull is crushed by the townspeople. At the funeral home, Dobbs restores the hitchhiker's beauty with sculpting, makeup and a new eyeball. After Dobbs leaves the room, a shadowy figure appears, touches the corpse and she sits up.Elsewhere, the doctor informs Dan that the flesh from the car's grille has been dead for at least three months. Later, as the doctor studies the flesh under a microscope, townsfolk (whom include Ernie, Harry, the fisherman, Midge the waitress, Nurse Lisa and the female hitchhiker) murder him by shoving tubes of acid in his nose.The next morning, Dobbs arrives at the sheriff's office and is frantic, claiming that the hitchhiker's body is missing from his funeral home, but he does not want to tell anyone because it will ruin his reputation. Dan is further confused to what is going on, when Dobbs claims that Janet visited him several times, assuming the undertaker knew about voodoo.A short time later, Dan learns that the St. Louis police have identified George LeMoyne and want the body. At the cemetery, Dan gets tired of waiting for Dobbs and asks the gravedigger, Sam (Michael Pataki), to dig up George's grave. As Sam digs, Sheriff Gillis searches the funeral home, but does not find Dobbs, who is resting in one of the corpse drawers. At the grave site, Dan and Sam open the casket to discover only a severed heart inside.At the police station, Dan orders the receptionist and secretary Betty (Estelle Omans) to contact the state police in Rhode Island for any criminal or arrest record and background information on Dobbs. While Dan goes outside to wait, the doctor (now a reanimated being) approaches Dan, where he asks the doctor if there is any way possible to raise and control the recently dead. But the doctor dismisses Dan's theory. The sheriff returns to the station where he and Betty read a message on the station's telex that arrives which reads that Dobbs was formerly "Doctor Dobbs", the chief pathologist for over 30 years in Providence, Rhode Island until he was dismissed from his job on October 10, 1969 when he was discovered performing unauthorized autopsies of dead bodies in the city morgue. Dobbs escaped prosecution by a grand jury hearing but on November 30, he had his doctor's credentials removed from the RI medical society, and he left Rhode Island shortly thereafter and settled in Potters Bluff, Maine the following year in the spring of 1970. Dan then wonders what has Dobbs been doing most of this time in town for the past 10 years.Dan picks up the developed reel of film from Ernie (who is hiding his decomposing right hand, being a reanimated cadaver). Dan goes home and watches the film alone (Note: the movie camera that one of the towns person used to film the murders is in Gillis coat closet). In the film, Dan watches an unknown man enter a house and then sees footage of a woman having sex with a man in the house's bedroom before she stabs him to death while the townspeople enter the scene. The woman in the film is Dan's wife Janet. Dobbs is also in the film and watching the events unfold.Dan races to the funeral home where Dobbs screens films of all the murders. Dobbs admits that Janet was his first reanimated cadaver that he brought back to life when he first arrived in Potters Bluff 10 years ago and greatest creation, but will not reveal his secret method to reanimating the dead despite Dan's threats to shoot him. When Janet arrives, acting as if nothing is amiss, Dobbs insists the dead only have the memories he gives them. Part of Janet's skin comes off in Dan's hand, and he shoots her. She continues to talk until she realizes that she is so damaged she can't possibly be alive. Janet states aloud, as if she just realized, "I'm dead, Dan". Dan shoots Dobbs and follows Janet to the graveyard, where she climbs into George's open grave. She begs Dan to bury her and insists she loves him as he gently drops dirt on her using his bare hands.Meanwhile back at the funeral home, the fatally wounded Dobbs revives, plays some jazz swing music on his turnstile record player, and after making his face up, shoves two embalming tubes in his own stomach before falling dead.Outside at the cemetery, the townsfolk zombies, in various stages of disrepair, surround Dan and offer their condolences to Janet being "dead and buried". It is here that Dan is shocked to realize EVERYONE is involved, including the doctor, Betty, Midge, Ernie, Phil, Harry, George, and Nurse Lisa (all of whom are strangely not attacking him). Dan flees from the cemetery and returns to the morgue where Dobbs, seemingly alive, awaits. Dobbs tells Dan, that "there is one more thing" he needs to know. Dobbs turns the sheriff's attention to one of the screens playing the murders, where Dan sees that he himself is Janet's murdered lover. In the final shot, Sheriff Dan Gillis comes to realize that he is also one of the living dead this whole time... when he finds his hands that he used to bury Janet cracked and decomposing. Dobbs offers Dan to fix his damaged hands for him. On this creepy and eerie note, 'Dead and Buried' comes to a close with a freeze frame and fade out.
    

Dead & Buried

Congratulations, It's a Boy!


            The film is a fairly literal adaptation of the acclaimed 1960 novel by John Updike (which Updike later followed with three sequels and a novella). Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom (James Caan) comes home one day from his sad, dead-end job to his sad, cramped apartment to find his sad, pregnant wife Janice (Carrie Snodgrass) asleep, splayed in front of the TV, highball glass in hand. After only a moment's contemplation, he decides to leave. Snatching up his coat and car keys, he's off and running, taking the viewer on a rambling, aimless journey.Set in the early 60's in a suburb of Brewer, Pa - a mid-sized, working class, weary-looking town (think Scranton), the film shows some glimpses of Updike's keen sense of place and time - the songs that play on the radio during Harry's all-night drive to Virginia, the hippie-like outfits and sexual rebelliousness of Harry's sister, the once solid row-houses and factories in Brewer hinting at the urban unrest and decay that is to come. This is Harry's hometown, where in high school he was a celebrated basketball star, but now, at 26, is bewildered that the folks in Brewer seem to have forgotten that. Because Harry can't shake the belief that he is still a star, special, meant for better things, and, because he is beset with a child-like narcissism, that everyone else must see that too.After leaving his wife, Harry goes to visit his old basketball coach who introduces him to Ruth Leonard, a sometime prostitute, who he immediately moves in with. When Janice goes into labor a few months later, he leaves Ruth, eventually returning to the apartment with Janice, their 2-year-old son Nelson, and new baby daughter Becky, and taking a job working for his father-in-law selling used cars. But Harry's restlessness still dogs him and domestic harmony does not ensue.Harry is remorselessly ruled by his impulses, but is troubled and perplexed by how he seems to disappoint nearly everyone in his life: Ruth, the minister sent to lead him back to his family, his parents, his in-laws, his wife and son, even the minister's wife. So he runs. But actions have consequences, a fact lost on Harry even when his lead to tragedy.
    

Jack Albertson

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