NATIONAL LAMPOON'S VACATION (1983)

"You'll be whistling zippity-doo-dah out of your assholes!"

In hopes of being able to spend some much needed quality time with his family, food additive designer Clark Griswold (Chevy Chase), buys a new monster station wagon and sets off on a cross-country road trip to visit the world-famous Wally World amusement park in Los Angeles.  Along the way, all kinds of crazy shit happens.  Everything from visiting inbred family members and eating dog urine-marinated sandwiches to skinny dipping in a freezing swimming pool.  And let's not forget Christie Brinkley as the "Girl in the Ferrari".  God only knows how many kids busted a nut to her back in the 80's!  I know of, at least, one!

Newer audiences today will probably find NATIONAL LAMPOON'S VACATION to be dated and lame, but as a child of the 1980's I have a soft spot for it and can't even tell you how many times I've seen it.  Dozens, easily.  Quick pace, iconic characters, quotable lines ("Yeah, but Daddy says I'm the best at it."), nice scenery, ancient electronics, 80's fashions, a stack of nudie books this high, great acting by everybody, a moose getting punched in the nose, yo mama gettin' fucked, people whistling 'Zip-A-Dee Doo-Dah' out of their assholes, Eugene Levy as a car salesman, Beverly D'Angelo topless, John Candy as a security guard and probably the highlight of the film to me: a surprise appearance by Eddie Bracken!!  Just the mere sight of him brought up memories of the wedding scene in THE MIRACLE OF MORGAN'S CREEK and I immediately started smiling ear to ear.

Highly recommended.  An absolute must watch for anybody interested in 80's movies.

Part 2 - National Lampoon's European Vacation (1985)
Part 3 - National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (1989)
Part 4 - Vegas Vacation (1997)
Part 5 - Vacation (2015)

THE MIRACLE OF MORGAN'S CREEK (1944)

In the small town of Morgan's Creek, Trudy Kockenlocker goes to a farewell party to a bunch of soldiers. While dancing she hits her head on a disco ball and is knocked silly. The next morning she wakes up at home feeling like Hell, but that's just the beginning of it: she's pregnant and doesn't even know who the father is! Remember this is 1944! All she can remember is she thinks she married some guy named "Ratzkiwatzki" or something like that. Devastated by this news she doesn't know what to do so she devises a plan to quickly marry Norval Jones, who's been in love with her since he was a fetus, but when she sees how deeply he's in love she can't trick him like that so...well, I've already told you too much, but take my word for is this movie is hilarious. The first time I saw it I literally laughed until I was crying and my sides hurt so bad I thought I was going to puke.

From a filmmaker's standpoint TMOMC is notable for some great long shots, especially Trudy and Norval's walk when she tell him she's pregnant. It's nearly 4 minutes long and physically covers a lot of ground, but the audience probably never notices it because their too busy laughing at Norval's constant screaming. Also notice how those long scenes are only during the first half of the movie, later on as the excitement grows the shots become shorter and shorter, not to mention a lot more people show up until you have some great Sturges crowd scenes where you have five people talking at once and it's all funny.

I love this movie and cannot say enough things about it. Brilliant script and direction by a true Hollywood master and the acting! How did Eddie Bracken not get at least nominated for an Oscar for his role here? He was hilarious. And lets not forget Sturges normal actors...of his 38 frequent actors 22 were here. Most notable was William Demarest as Trudy's gruff father, Constable Edmund Kockenlocker.

I would really like to know if it's even possible for Hollywood to make a movie like this anymore? Made back in 1944 the story talks nonstop about sex and marriage, but yet it's completely clean language-wise and without any gross-out humor. Everything was done so subtly and so full of satire that it somehow got passed the Hays Office! I love crude humor as much as the next person, but I would be thrilled beyond belief if somebody started making clean screwball comedies like this today. Some of the comedies by Howard Hawks, Preston Sturges, Jack Conway, Frank Capra and Leo McCarey were so rich that I can watch them countless times and never get bored.  Highly recommended.

Funny story: In a interview with Eddie Bracken he said that he came up with the idea of Norval walking through the screen door and didn't tell Sturges, he just did it.  Preston was on the camera and started laughing so hard he actually fell out of his seat!