THE BEST OF ENEMIES (1961)

Set in 1941 during the World War II East African campaign, THE BEST OF ENEMIES tells the (not even remotely funny) comedic story of a British officer (David Niven) and an Italian officer (Alberto Sordi) who, in between people dying and other war horrors, end up taking turns being each other’s prisoner. Hahahahaha! Oh man, that’s funny! I just broke my fuckin’ knee from slapping it so hard. I’m sure the families of the soldiers killed during the various small battles will see the humor in the situation. You see, the one guy would capture the other guy, then…he’d escape and in turn capture the other guy!!! Hardy-har-fucking-har. As the newspaper ad tagline says: “This is war? No! This is fun!!” In fact, if you turn up the volume at 26:08, right as that one guy gets shot in the back, you’ll hear him scream “This is fun!” as he dies.

I’ve always been a fan of David Niven and while I don’t know much about Alberto Sordi, his performance was perfectly fine. The problem with THE BEST OF ENEMIES isn’t the acting or the production values, it’s the shit script. The shit isn’t funny. Like at all. And it’s not just because it’s set during WWII. I have nothing wrong with that. MISTER ROBERTS is one of my favorite movies and it’s very funny. THE BEST OF ENEMIES just isn’t funny. The entire film is two groups of soldiers walking around in the desert accomplishing nothing. Besides capturing each other.

Okay pace, shit story that goes nowhere, dumb ending that resolves nothing, a few boring battle scenes, lots of boring desert scenery, not one single person saying that if they had announced Krys Marshall as the next James Bond immediately after Daniel Craig left the role then we'd probably have another James Bond movie by now if not two, an 100% all-male cast, okay acting, zero gore, zero zombies, a fly landing on David Niven's face.

Negative comments aside, I would be interested in seeing an article or something about the making of the film and some details about the cast. I know almost nothing about early 1960's Italian (or British) Cinema, so I expect the cast was more impressive than I realized. That said, it's still barely worth watching.

[Shout out to the one newspaper ad below that misspelled the word "enemies".]

THAT DARN CAT! (1965)

Not to be confused with That Darn Human Centipede!, THAT DARN CAT! is the occasionally funny and surprisingly dark story of an indoor-outdoor cat who accidentally crosses path with a kidnap victim who is about to be murdered!  During their brief moments together, the poor woman scratches the letters HEL on the back of her watch and slips it on the cat’s neck.  The cat’s owner (Hayley Mills) notices the message and then before you can say “Tomb Mold should release a funk album called “Give Me Sum of Dat Old Tomb Funk’.”, there’s a pack of FBI agents following that darn motherfucking cat all over town.

THAT DARN CAT! is a fun film.  I got a few laughs out of it and was especially blown away by the impressive supporting cast.  You’ve got everybody from the Bride of Frankenstein (Elsa Lanchester) and vampire hunter Peter Vincent (Roddy McDowall) to the Riddler (Frank Gorshin) and Trudy Kockenlocker’s dad (William Demarest) up n dis bish!  As far as the leads go, I always enjoy seeing Hayley Mills and Dean Jones during their Disney years and they are both great here, as usual.

Medium pace, great vintage fashions (especially on Hayley), solid acting by a fantastic cast, okay story that should have been sillier and not as dark, vintage cars, zero nudity, zero gore, a few genuine smiles, not enough cat action, zero cheerleaders, not enough wide shots of the Disney backlot, a bus from “Stupidsville”, a bizarre drive-in movie theater that is showing footage of people surfing with no apparent story.

For what it is, THAT DARN CAT! is totally worth watching for anybody interested in such things.  I'd be down to watch it again.  Fun fact: according to Wikipedia, THAT DARN CAT! was the 5th highest-grossing film for the year.

Remake - That Darn Cat (1997)