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Weirder and Wilder Things
Visiting a friend in Omaha this past weekend, I saw The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T. at the lovely Film Streams theater. I"d never seen the one-and-only Dr. Seuss-scripted 1953 classic, and the spangly print certainly didn"t disappoint. Mostly, though, it got me thinking about everything that"s wrong with Where the Wild Things Are. Both are sui generis translations of maverick beloved children"s authors to the screen in ways that could be "scary" or "inappropriate" for children. And there the similarities end.
Even among surreal, culty kid"s films (Return to Oz is my favorite, but Babe: Pig in the City and Pee-Wee"s Big Adventure come to mind as well), The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T. is singular. A source of dismay for Dr. Seuss (who compared the reviews to an on-set accident where all the children vomited at once) and a financial calamity (losing over $1 million), this weirdest of all children"s movies inevitably became a cult hit (yes, a musical version is on the way). Director Roy Rowland was a journeyman who began his career helming Robert Benchley shorts and acting as assistant to W.S. Van Dyke on the Tarzan movies, and ended up directing spaghetti Westerns. Among other things, The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T is a film in which the director is clearly as confused as any of the spectators; watching him trying to figure out the most efficient way to shoot something this unprecedented is one of the film"s bracing qualities.