Don't Bug Me

Arachnophobia 

Director: Frank Marshall

Cast: Jeff Daniels, John Goodman, Harley Jane Kozak, Julians Sands

Released: July 18, 1990

"Arachnophobia" is a noun defined as the pathological fear or loathing of spiders. Even though I don't particularly care for spiders, I wouldn't say I have arachnophobia. If I see one on my wall or ceiling, I"ll just grab a plastic cup and trap it under there, then place a measuring cup over it to make sure the spider doesn't get out (I don't want it touching me!). I will either toss it down the toilet, or, if I'm feeling generous, I'll let it outside. My most recent "scary" encounter with a spider was about a year ago. I felt something on my leg and I just figured it was my cat's tail brushing up against my leg because that's what it felt like...but when I looked down, I saw a daddy-long-legs on my bare legs. OMG, I shrieked so loud and brushed that sucker off of me! Ughghghghg! I hate the feeling of creepy crawlies crawling on you! 

However, my most terrifying encounter with a spider happened when I was about six or seven years old. I was sitting in my bed, doing whatever (like I remember...this happened a long time ago! I was probably reading or playing with My Little Ponies because those were my toy of choice!) and I had my bedspread folded over. When I unfolded the bedspread, I saw, I swear to God, I am not making this up, the BIGGEST spider I have ever seen in my entire life. It was black and was about the size of a sand dollar and I remember it looking very shiny, like it had this sheen to it. But like I said, this happened so long ago that I may be remembering certain details wrong! Surprisingly, I remember being very calm and went down to the basement where my dad was and told him there was a spider on my bed and he came up and disposed of it for me. I'll have to ask him if he remembers this. I feel like if this spider was as big as I remember, there's no way he would be able to forget about it! 

But other than those two instances, I haven't had any really bad experiences with spiders. I had already seen this movie twice before (and I could have sworn it was rated R, but it's PG-13) but it still make me shriek out loud several times. I scared my cat, who was sitting next to me, the first time I shrieked. This is the beginning of the movie where an American photographer is in Venezuela taking photos of new species of insects British entomologist James Atherton (Julians Sands) hopes to find in the Amazon. They spray this gas up into a tree and all these different insects fall out and into jars that they have set up to collect them. They hear bigger thumps and notice a few spiders, quite large. The photographer asks Atherton if the spider is dead and he assures him it is and he gets really close to the spider with his camera and the spider jumps on the lens! OMG, that made me shriek so loud, thus scaring my poor cat! Then I screamed again, minutes later, when the photographer, who isn't feeling very well and has a fever, takes a nap in his sleeping bag. Unbeknownst to him, one of the new species of spiders has crawled and hidden in his bag and it crawls in his sleeping bag and I screamed when he felt something and opened his sleeping bag and sees the spider and it bites him on the leg. The guy dies and they think it was because of the fever.

He is sent back to his small home town of Canaima, California along with the spider that hitches a ride in the coffin. The spider makes its way outside where it is captured by a crow who drops dead after the spider bites it and it ends up in the woods near a house with a barn. The Jennings family from San Francisco is moving into this house. Ross (Jeff Daniels) is a doctor who has moved to the small town to take over the practice of the aging town doctor, Dr. Metcalf. He has moved here with his wife, Molly (Harley Jane Kozak - yeah, I've never heard of her either) and his kids, Shelley and Tommy. We learn very quickly that Ross has arachnophobia when his son tells him there's a spider in one of the moving boxes and he has his wife come and deal with it. She tells them that the spider is more afraid of them than they are of it. She lifts it up with a magazine and carries it to the barn. Well, guess who else decided to make its home in the barn? The venomous Venezuelan spider. There is an odd scene of the two spiders rubbing legs together as they have fallen in love and now are going to procreate (ugh!). A huge web is spun in the barn and hundred of eggs are hatched :::shudder:::

Molly, who is a photographer, has found the web and takes photos of it, thinking it's beautiful. It is quite an impressive web. She also takes Ross to see it, thinking it might be good therapy for his fear of spiders. His fear goes back all the way to when he was two years old. He claims he remembers being in his crib in his diaper and a spider crawling along his bare skin, paralyzing him with fear and he has never gotten over his arachnophobia. As he's looking at the web, the ladder breaks and he falls into it and a DEAD RAT is revealed to be caught in the web. The Jennings are laughing about the whole incident, but I would be a little concerned that there's a dead rat in the web...spiders aren't suppose to eat rats! That would send alarm bells off in me!

Ross finds out that Dr. Metcalf has decided not to retire and wants to keep his practice so this means that Dr. Jennings only has one patient, an older woman who is a retired teacher. He (half-jokingly) tells his wife he hopes she has a lot of things wrong with her, but she turns out to be quite healthy. She was on heart medication, but he tells her she doesn't need it anymore. When she is found dead in her house a few days later, he admits he took her off the pills and Dr. Metcalf blames her death on that, but Ross is adamant that she didn't need them anymore and wants an autopsy but Dr. Metcalf refuses. Even though she was technically Dr. Jenning's patient at the time, Dr. Metcalf says he has seniority over him since she was his patient much longer than she was Jenning's patient. What actually happened was she was bitten by a spider offspring that had crawled up her lamp and bit her hand when she reached to turn it off. There was a close call earlier when the spider was crawling on the couch her cat was sitting on and she scooped her up just before the spider reached her. There's also a scene earlier when the Venezuelan spider has just gotten out of the coffin and there's a cat hissing at it and a dog barking at it. I was so worried for all the cats and dogs in this movie the first time I saw this, but the only animal that dies is the crow...oh, and the rat found in the web. I can handle that, but I would have been so upset if any dogs or cats had died!

Ross gets more patients when the high school football coach wants him to give his players physicals. During a football game, a spider crawls into one of the player's helmets (after crawling on the bleachers and a handful of people unknowingly having close calls with it) and when the teen is called to be in the game, he puts on his helmet only to collapse seconds after being tackled. He is pronounced dead at the scene and everyone is confused because the tackle wasn't that hard. Can you imagine being the guy who tackled him, thinking you killed somebody? I would never play football again if I were him! Again, Ross is refused an autopsy of the young man. He has been given the unfortunate nickname "Dr. Death" since all his patients have died after being treated by him.

The next victim is Dr. Metcalf himself when a spider crawls into one of his slippers as he's walking on the treadmill. He's going to take a shower and is about to walk to the bathroom when his wife tells him that the floor is cold and he should put on his slippers....so his wife basically killed him! He puts on the slippers, and, you guessed it, is dead seconds later. Ross and the police arrive at the Metcalf house. Mrs. Metcalf tells them her husband had complained about a spider bite, but one of the police officers thinks he died of cardiac arrest since he had just been on the treadmill. Ross finally gets to have an autopsy performed and the cause of death was caused by an excess amount of venom. Ross wants the two other bodies exhumed so they can see if they were also killed because of spider bites and finds out, indeed, they were. 

He gets in touch with Atherton who says that Canaima sounds familiar to him. Ross soon finds out that the photographer who died on a recent trip to Venezuela was from the same small town and they also find out he died from a poisonous spider bite instead of a fever.

Ross's daughter has a sleepover at her friend's house and he tells the girls if they see any spiders, to run away. We get a scene of the girls scaring each other with spider riddles and songs, and of course, we see a spider slowly making its way down on its web-making material (whatever you call that!). The girls never even notice the spider (and why would they notice such a small creature?), but a doll laying around near them OPENS ITS EYES when the spider descends down. Um, how the hell did a doll manage to open its eyes on its own?? Is this doll related to Chucky or something? Geeze, that was almost creepier than anything with spiders in this movie. There's also another scene where Ross is checking his kids' room to make sure there are no spiders in sight. He checks under the bed and around the room and claims the rooms are "all cleared". Does he really think those rooms are cleared of spiders? Does he know how small spiders are and they can easily hide in every nook and cranny? That would be terrifying if there were spiders around that could kill people within minutes. I'm surprised the entire town wasn't quarantined! 

By this time there are so many spiders that an exterminator named Delbert (John Goodman) is called. His company is called Bugs-B-Gone. This movie is classified as a comedy-horror and he provides most, if not all the comedy moments. He doesn't seem to be a very good exterminator, though, because instead of spraying the chemicals in the rooms where people claim they saw spiders, he just looks around and says, "No spiders here." He does this in the bathroom of the high school coach. The coach's daughter had been taking a shower and she's closing her eyes as she's washing her hair and a spider is crawling along on the curtain rod, then it FALLS ON HER FACE! :::Shudder::: For some reason, she doesn't even notice there's a spider on her face...and she wasn't even under the nozzle! I would understand if she was standing under the water and didn't notice it. The spider crawls down her body and she only notices it when it's on her foot and screams. When Delbert comes to the house, he just looks behind the toilet, but doesn't do a good job because we see that one is hiding behind there!

Atherton sees the photograph of the web that Molly took that's in Ross's waiting room and wants to be taken to the barn because he knows that's where the nest is. He recognizes the web as the same one the photographer took in Venezuela. He goes inside the barn, knowing full well how dangerous these spiders are and knowing he's entering their domain and ends up getting attacked and killed by the OG spider. Delbert later comes into the barn (smartly wearing protective gear...I don't know why EVERYBODY didn't cover themselves from head to toe in hazmat suits) and finds Atherton's body wrapped in the web material. He arrives not long after the spider attacked Atherton so I don't know how the hell he got wrapped up so quickly!

Ross needs to urgently ask the undertaker a question, but his phone is off the hook because he and his wife want to watch Wheel of Fortune without any interruptions. They also make popcorn to snack on while watching it. He arrives at the house to find both of them dead. I understood why the wife died because we see her reaching for a handful of popcorn (while her eyes are on the TV screen, of course!) and there's a spider in the bowl she grabs. So she must have eaten the spider and died from its toxins...but then how did her husband die? Unless the spider bit her hand, she shrieked and flung her hands and the spider ended up on her husband and bit him too? I guess that makes more sense....but you never see how they were killed, just that they're dead when Ross arrives at their house.

Now knowing that the nest is in his barn, he knows he must go back and kill the "Queen". His house is crawling with spiders and he's trying to get his family out. There's a nice little '80s/'90s cultural reference with Family Ties being on TV and they see a spider crawling down the screen on Michael J. Fox's (aka Alex P. Keaton....yeah, I watched Family Ties!) face. Ross tries to kill the main spider but even throwing it into the fire proves to be unsuccessful as it just leaps out back at him! He ends up shooting a nail at it with his nail gun and all this nasty liquid comes oozing out of it. But before that there was this scene that made me jump out of my skin! He sees the spider go through a pipe and is waiting at the other end with a lighter and a can of bug spray so he can light the spider on fire when it comes out the other end, but he waits and waits and nothing happens. When he takes down the flame, the spider comes rushing past him and jumps on his face! OMG, that scared me so much. I feel like spiders should not be this smart!

I found this movie to be more on the horror side, than on the comedy side! I definitely jumped and shrieked more than I laughed! In fact, I don't think I ever actually laughed! I may not have arachnophobia and I prefer to keep it that way....just keep the spiders away from me!

Pop Quiz, Hotshot!

Speed

Director: Jan De Bont

Cast: Keanu Reeves, Sandra Bullock, Dennis Hopper, Joe Morton, Jeff Daniels

Released: June 10, 1994

Oscar nominations:

Best Sound (won)
Best Sound Effects Editing (won)

Best Editing (lost to Forrest Gump)

Speed is one of those movies I wished I had been able to see in the theaters. It's probably been a good ten years since I last saw it and I was getting very into the movie; screaming and shrieking at my TV and holding my breath at certain times and I can only imagine what it would have been like to see it in a theater full of enthusiastic movie goers. This has to be one of those movies that is a great movie theater going experiences. The most recent one I had of those is last year when I saw Jurassic World and you could just feel a palpable excitement in the air and someone was even humming the theme song before the movie started. 

This movie, simply put, is AMAZING! I love it so much! If you haven't seen this movie for whatever reason, what are you waiting for?? Go see it now! Everyone knows this movie as the "Bomb on the bus movie." There are three acts to this movie and the "bomb on the bus" part is the second act, and of course, the longest. But before we get to that, we need a little backstory first.

"I AM AN FBI AGENT!"

Keanu Reeves and Jeff Daniels play L.A. SWAT team members Jack Traven and Harry Temple who are called to an office building where a mad man named Howard Payne (Dennis Hopper) has rigged an elevator full of 13 people with explosions and is threatening to detonate it unless he gets three million dollars. Everyone is rescued and nobody dies, but there are some close calls and when the last person is rescued from the elevator, seconds later it comes crashing down to the ground and smashes into smithereens. Jack and Harry find Payne, but he escapes and detonates his bomb and everyone 

thinks he's dead....OR IS HE???

The next scene is the medal ceremony of Jack and Harry accepting their medals for rescuing the 13 people in the elevator. I have no idea how much time has elapsed since the actual accident. One day? One week? One month? Hell if I know! But we are getting closer to the second act of the movie and this is when things start to get good. A bus explodes after Jack has gotten some coffee and exchanged some friendly words with the bus driver who he seemed to know. Luckily, no one else was on the bus. I had totally forgotten about the exploding bus and it kinda startled me when it happened! As he's running towards the bus to see if the bus driver made it (does he really think anyone could survive that??), he hears a pay phone nearby ringing. Haha, a pay phone! Well, it WAS 1994! He answers the phone and surprise, surprise, it's Howard Payne, the mad man. I should mention that the ceremony was televised and we see a scene of a man with a thumb missing clapping when Jack gets his medal and it is revealed to be Payne. He tells Jack that he's very upset that he messed up his elevator job because he had taken three years to plan this and now he has planted a bomb on a bus! Um, so it took three years to plan the elevator bomb, but a bus bomb only takes a month to plan? I want to know how much time elapsed!! I'm so confused. He tells Jack, "Pop quiz, hotshot. There's a bomb on a bus. Once the bus goes 50 miles an hour, the bomb is armed. If it drops below 50, it blows up. What do you do? WHAT DO YOU DO?" He got the "pop quiz" part from Harry who said that to Jack in the first act when they were trying to figure out what to do. Jack tells him he'd want to know what bus it is and Payne tells him it's the bus numbered 2525. He obviously wanted Jack to find the bus because he easily and readily gives him not only the bus number, but also the location of where the bus left from so Jack races to catch the bus which is now getting on the freeway....and for eight a.m. in Los Angeles, it doesn't look THAT busy. It's busy enough that the bus is still below 50 (we see close ups of the speedometer every few minutes and it does get a bit higher each time). Oh, remember the bus that just exploded? Well, several minutes has passed and there are NO police cars or firetrucks that have come to investigate it or put out the fire. You think someone would have called 911 when they saw an exploding bus, no?

Jack really needs to find this bus and soon because Payne said he will turn off the bomb if he gets his 3.7 million dollars by eleven a.m. and it's eight right now. He races around the other cars as much as he can. The traffic is slowing down because of construction and he gets caught in the roadwork and decides to get out his car and run to the bus and screams at the bus driver to open his doors. Well, of course the driver isn't going to open the doors if they see some random dude running and screaming to be allowed to get on the bus. And he also hits the door with his fist and breaks the glass...would you let somebody like that on a bus? No, I don't think so! And like Sam (the bus driver) said, "This ain't no bus stop!" I don't understand why he didn't just flash his badge and then I can see him being able to get on the bus. The traffic starts to let up and the bus gains some speed. Jack stops a black man in a convertible with a license plate that says TUNEMAN and flashes his badge at him and the guy exclaims, "This is my car! It's not stolen!" and Jack replies, "It is now!" At least he let the guy sit in the passenger seat instead of making him get out like so many other movies do when the main character needs a car and just steals it from some poor soul and makes them get out, probably to never see their car again.

He catches up to the bus and motions for the driver to roll his window down so he can yell, "There's a bomb on your bus!" Because of the wind, the driver can't hear him, so Jack's passenger has to relay the message and after he says, "There's a bomb on your bus!", he realizes what's he saying and turns to Jack and says, "WHAT?!" By this time the bomb has activated because the bus has now reached 50 mph. Jack wants his passenger to write "BOMB ON BUS!" on a piece of paper and hold it up so the driver can see it. He pulls in front of the bus and the guy holds up the sign, but it blows out of his hands and right into the windshield of the bus where the driver sees it before it blows away. Naturally, he lifts his foot off the gas pedal as anyone would do in that situation. Your first inclination would be to stop a vehicle that has a bomb on it and evacuate it! Realizing the bus is starting to slowly down, Jack drives next to the bus and tells him to open the door and tells him to make sure he keeps the bus over 50 mph. He asks his passenger if his car is insured and when he learns that it is, he speeds up ahead of the bus, opens the door, then slams on the brakes so the bus comes by and rips the door off. He tells the man to take the wheel so he can jump on the bus and while he's doing that, a passenger (played by Alan Ruck), who is visiting L.A., takes a photo of him. Now, if this movie were made today, the guy would be taking a video of him and uploading it to social media!

As far as the passengers go, we only really get to know a handful of them. Including the driver and Jack, there are 19 people on the bus. Being that the movie takes place in Los Angeles, there is a diverse group of people on the bus. The driver is African-American; there is an elderly African-American couple and a couple African-American women on the bus; there's an elderly Asian woman; there's a couple of Latino guys; and there are some white people. Obviously the passenger that has the most screen time is the one played by Sandra Bullock, Annie. Even though Bullock had been in a handful of movies before this, Speed was really the movie that catapulted her career. She has been taking the bus lately because her license was revoked for speeding. When she first gets on the bus, she's talking to a passenger named Helen who tells her she likes taking the bus so she can relax all the way to work without worrying about traffic. Oh, haha, movie, how funny! When Jack jumps on the bus, Annie asks him if he's crazy and demands to know what's going on. A young Hispanic guy charges at him with a gun, thinking the police is there for him. I wonder what he did? You know, we never do find out. Jack takes out his gun and points it at him and tells him he doesn't care about what he did and explains about the bomb. A big guy that Jacks nicknames "Gigantor" attacks the guy with the gun and the gun ends up going off and shoots the bus driver in the shoulder. Annie takes over driving the bus and Jack knows she'll be good for the job when she admits to him that her license was revoked for speeding.

Jack has Doug, the tourist, call Harry (he took the car phone from the car he hijacked) so he can tell him about the bomb. He is able to lift a floor panel on the bus so he can look underneath the bus at the bomb. There's a funny moment when Jack says "F**k me!" and Doug hesitates for a moment and translates it as "Oh, darn." The reason Jack had such a reaction is because there was "enough C4 o put a hole in the world." Annie sees that traffic is starting to back up again and wants to know where they should go and Jack tells her to get on the shoulder at the next exit to get off and she does and she is just ramming into poles and signs and other cars. It is such a hot mess! She is now off the freeway and has to run through red lights and has a scary close call when a lady with a baby carriage is crossing the street and she hits the carriage and it goes flying through the air. Naturally, she is freaking out because she just thinks she killed a baby, but then it is revealed - thank God - that the carriage was only full of cans and they go everywhere when the carriage lands.

They now have a police escort which Jack's boss, Mac (Joe Morton) has arranged for them. The police cars go past a teacher with a group of kids waiting to cross the street and after they pass, the teacher thinks it's okay for them to cross now. Apparently they didn't see the huge bus that comes whizzing by and jump back just in time. Mac has also arranged for the bus to be escorted to the 105 Freeway which hasn't been open to the public yet, so they will be able to cruise on that for awhile without worrying about obstacles while they think of a way to safely get the people off of the bus. Mac wants to transfer the passengers from the bus to a flatbed truck that the police are driving next to them, but Jack tells him they can't do that because Payne told him if any passengers get off the bus, then he will detonate the bomb. Jack knows that Payne will know because there are news helicopters above them so he knows they are being shown on TV. He gets a call from Payne (he called the police and asked to speak to Jack) who tells him he better be careful. Jack asks him if he can at least unload the bus driver who's been shot as a show of good faith and tells him it might help him get his money faster. Payne agrees to this arrangement but says he better not let anyone else off. After Sam has safely been transferred, Helen decides to go for it and as a police officer is reaching out to help her, Payne detonates a smaller bomb that he has placed on the first step and she falls and slips under the bus. This is when all the passengers realize that this whole ordeal is real now and they're all very shaken up by the death of one of their fellow passengers. Even though I know the movie would have ended right here if it had happened, I do wonder why Payne didn't detonate the entire bus like he told Jack he would if any passengers got off the bus and he could clearly see that was what Helen was doing. Guess he just wanted to give him a scare before he decided to kill EVERYONE.

As if losing one passenger wasn't bad enough, they soon get more bad news when Mac informs them that a section of an overpass on the highway up ahead is missing....about fifty feet! Jack tells everyone to put their stuff under their seats and cover their heads. OMG....if I were on this bus, I would be so scared! I mean, I would already be scared in the first place because of the, you know, BOMB, but if I were informed that the bus I was riding on was about to jump a 50 foot gap in the freeway, I'd be thinking, Oh, HELL NO! He tells Annie to speed up and just seconds before they reach the gap, he grabs her and covers her head and the bus makes its leap and lands on the other side. It's a little (okay, A LOT!) bumpy, but everyone is okay and they all cheer. I'm sorry, but I call BS on this. There's no way that bus would have been able to jump that! But I loved it!

Jack tells Annie to get off at the next exit which takes them to the airport. This way they can just cruise around the runway in circles. He is granted permission by Payne to get off the bus (he tells them if he is able to get off, his money will more likely be delivered to him). He goes under the bus on a wooden plank with wheel to see if he can diffuse the bomb while talking to Harry, but while that is going on, the bus hits some debris on the runway (uh....I would hope they cleared that debris before any planes took off on that runway!) and Jack gets caught up and he almost goes under the back wheel, but manages to stab the oil tank with his screwdriver and lets go of the wheely device and it goes under the wheel and Annie starts freaking out, thinking they have run over Jack. Ortiz, the passenger Jack nicknamed "Gigantor", looks under the panel and sees Jack hanging onto the bottom of the bus and pulls him up through the panel door. Doug asks him, "Did you have any luck with the bomb?" and Jack replies with, "Yeah, it didn't go off!" Jack is safe, but the bus is now leaking gas and they are about to have an empty tank. Jack realizes that Payne is able to see them because he has hooked up the bus's camera to a TV in his home. He tells Mac this and he gets a TV news crew person to record the bus and then play it so Payne thinks he's watching a live stream of the bus, but it's actually just a tape and this way they are able to transport everyone from the bomb bus to a safe bus. Payne only notices this when everyone is off the bus and it has run into a plane and exploded.

We now get into the third act of the movie and while still exciting and full of suspense, this is where it sort of drops off for me. The reason why I watch this movie is for the bomb on the bus! And not only do we not have a bus with a bomb on it anymore, we no longer even have a bus! The SWAT team has found out that Howard Payne is a former police officer who feels he deserves a lot more than what he got when he retired. Harry and a team go to his home, only to find a huge bomb (of course) that goes off and kills them all. Payne poses as a police officer and tells Annie that she needs to come with him. (Remember, he knows what she looks like from the camera on the bus). When Payne doesn't show up to collect his money where he instructed the police to put it, Jack knows something is up. Now instead of a bus, the movie is taking place on a subway! Jack finds Payne with Annie who has a bomb strapped to her. Payne takes her on a subway. He is holding a controller and if he lets go of the button, the bomb will explode. See, I would rather have a controller where I pushed the button rather than have to hold it down. I would be so worried that my finger would slip! Whenever I'm in a really long line at a drive-thru, I'm always worried my foot is going to come off my brake so if I know I'll be there for awhile, I'll just put my car in park. That's weird, I know. Jack gets on the subway and climbs on top of the car that Annie and Payne are in and Payne gives the remote to Annie to hold (after killing the subway conductor) and gets into a fight with Jack. They are really close to the ceiling and there are these low hanging lights which Payne gets decapitated with and Jack makes this odd comments about being taller which makes no sense.

They manage to stop the bomb, but Annie can't get off the subway because she is handcuffed to a pole so they cling to each other as the subway crashes, but they survive and kiss. However, three years later they are no longer together because that's when Speed 2 came out and Annie is now dating the guy played by Jason Patric who replaces Keanu Reeves in this film. I guess he was smart when he decided not to be in that movie! I saw Speed 2 but I don't remember anything about it except that it takes place on a cruise ship and it was bad. Even Sandra Bullock has said it was a pretty bad movie! I don't remember if they explain why Annie and Jack are no longer together. Watch Speed, but skip its sequel! 

Dalmatian Plantation

101 Dalmatians (1961)

Director(s): Clyde Geronimi, Hamilton S. Luske, and Wolfgang Reitherman

Voice Talent: Rod Taylor, J. Pat O'Malley, Betty Lou Gerson, Marth Wentworth, Ben Wright, Lisa Davis

Released: January 25, 1961

101 Dalmatians (1996)

Director: Stephen Herek

Cast: Glenn Close, Jeff Daniels, Joely Richardson, Joan Plowright, Hugh Laurie, Mark Williams

Released: November 27, 1996

It seems lately that there has been an explosion of live action Disney remakes taken from their animated counterparts. There was Cinderella last year and Maleficent a couple years ago and The Jungle Book out this year and The Little Mermaid coming out soon. But 101 Dalmatians may have been the first to do it since its live action counterpart came out almost twenty years ago. I can't think of any others that were around that time. Let's get one thing straight though: the remake is really bad. Like, really, REALLY bad. There are a couple of good things (mainly Glenn Close), but for the most part it's really bad! The funny thing is, while I remembered there was a live actin remake in the '90s and Glenn Close played Cruella DeVil, I had no recollection of what happened in the movie. I'm pretty sure I saw it (whether in the theaters or on video, I couldn't tell you), but I just couldn't remember anything about it. I couldn't tell you who was in it besides Glenn Close, I couldn't remember what they kept the same or changed from the animated movies, I couldn't remember if the animals talked. It was like I had totally blocked everything about it out of my head! Or maybe I just never saw it...I really have no idea! 

It's been awhile since I've seen the original animated movie, but I still remembered quite a lot. I did have the VHS as a kid and watched it a few times. I had no idea until just recently that it was based on a book by a Dodie Smith that Walt Disney wanted to buy the rights to. (I also didn't know Mary Poppins was based on a book until I saw Saving Mr. Banks.) 

Pongo, the dalmatian patriarch is narrating the story and calls his owner, Roger, his pet. With the remake, you don't get this clever narration since the animals don't talk. (Not saying that would have made the movie any better...it may have made it a lot worse!) Pongo doesn't want Roger, an aspiring musician, to be a bachelor all his life so he decides to set him up with a fine breed of woman. There's a humorous scene where he's checking out women walking their dogs and all the women look like their canine pets. He spots Perdita, who will be the dalmatian matriarch and she is being walked by an attractive woman named Anita who is around Roger's age. Roger and Anita are played by Jeff Daniels and Joely Richardson in the '96 remake. In the original, Pongo has a red collar and Perdita has a blue one, but for some reason, they couldn't remember that in the remake and Perdita has a red collar while Pongo sometimes wears a black collar and sometimes wear a blue one. So unnecessarily confusing! 

Both dalmatians and humans meet in the park in both movies. I will say it is a little more realistic in the live action one when Anita plays fetch with Perdita rather than sit on a bench with her dog sitting next to her, which is what the animated Anita and Perdita do. The dogs take a liking to each other, as do the humans, but it is just so awkward and unrealistic in the remake. I think we can believe the animated character getting together so quickly because they're, you know ANIMATED! But '96 Roger and Anita decide they should get married since their dogs like each other and they're getting married in the next scene! It's the most ridiculous thing ever! They could have at least had a little montage of them dating and then six months later they get married. Sheesh. But one thing I do like about the '96 version is that they tell us how Anita and Cruella know each other. In the animated movie, Cruella is an "old classmate" of Anita's. Maybe a former teacher I would believe because Cruella has to be at least a decade or two older than Anita. We have no idea why these two are friends. In the movie, Cruella is a fashion designer. She's not the Devil Wears Prada, but rather the DeVil Wears Dalmatians! Anita works for her so that's how they know each other. Anita has had some inspiration from Perdita for some new outfits and Cruella sees a picture of her and asks her if her dog has short or long hair; if it's soft or coarse. In both movies she lives for fur and is very excited about the prospect of having a coat made out of dalmatian fur. To me, this is what makes Cruella DeVil the most evil of all the Disney villains. She wants to kill and skin puppies, for God's sake!

After Perdita has a litter of fifteen puppies (at first they only think it's fourteen, but manage to save the 15th), Cruella comes over to buy the puppies but is dismayed when she discovers they don't have their spots. If I were Roger and Anita, I would have told her that this batch would never get their spots. But they don't know her cruel intentions and tell her that the puppies will get their spots in a few weeks and that they need to be with their mother. They also tell her that the puppies aren't for sale when she offers them a huge sum of money which makes Cruella irate. A few weeks later she has her henchmen, Jasper and Horace, who are like the animated versions of Harry and Marv, kidnap the puppies when Roger and Anita are taking Pongo and Perdita for a walk. (I didn't quite understand why they didn't take the puppies too...wouldn't they need a walk as much as, if not more than the older dogs? But I'm not a dog owner, so what do I know?) Jasper and Horace are played by Hugh Laurie (yes, Dr. House!) and Mark Williams (best known as Mr. Weasley in the Harry Potter films) in the '96 version. This is when we find out that Cruella has kidnapped a total of 99 puppies from pet stores. Now I realize that London is a big city, but I find it hard to believe that there would be 99 dalmatian puppies at one time. I say this because I've always found the dalmatian to be a rare breed! I have no idea if it is or not, but I've only seen one dalmatian in real life in my entire life, so to me they're rare! But maybe they're not that rare.

Jasper and Horace lock Nanny (played by Joan Plowright in the remake) in the closet as they take the the puppies. It's a little Fargo-esque in the live action one and seems a bit rough for a movie with a G-rating! This is around the point in that version where the movie really goes downhill (not that it was that great, but wow, it gets really bad starting here!), so I'll talk mostly about the '61 version for now.

When they discover their puppies are missing, Pongo and Perdita send out the "Twilight Bark" which is a way to signal all the other dogs in the city. I guess it's like morse code. This is kind of a funny scene because you hear a bunch of dogs barking and howling and we see an overview of London and hear a human voice shout, "Shuddup, would ya?" The message is relayed to a barn with a sheepdog named Colonel, a horse named Captain, and a cat named Sergeant Tibbs. Colonel mistakenly hears the message as "fifteen spotted puddles are missing", ha! Sergeant Tibbs is the one who rescues the puppies and gets them out of Hell Hall, the name of the DeVil place where they're being held. Jasper and Horace are in the same room, but are distracted by a TV program. How you can't hear 99 puppies leaving one room is an incredible feat!

After Tibbs pushes Rolly, the adorable pudgy dalmatian who's always hungry through the small hole, Jasper and Horace notice all the dogs are gone and know that Cruella will have THEIR hide if they don't find them. By this time Pongo and Perdita have caught up with them and take them to a barn where the cows give all the puppies milk. No surprise to see Rolly is happy about that! They get a good night's sleep in the hay and the next day, after getting help from a labrador and seeing one of his pups gets dirty from soot, Pongo gets the idea for all of them to roll in the soot so they look like labradors. Cruella and her minions are in the same area driving around because they've spotted dog prints. Cruella is suspicious when she sees a  bunch of labrador puppies walking towards a truck and getting on the back of it. When water starts dripping on them and revealing their spots she gets in her fancy-pants car and chases the truck only to get in a horrific car wreck with Jasper and Horace and their truck. I couldn't remember if she died or not, but she is fine. She doesn't even go to jail from what we see.

The reason the live action movie gets really bad at this point is because literally nothing happens and it's so boring! Well, things happen, but very stupid things. It's like an animal-esque Home Alone where animals try to stop Horace and Jasper with stupid hi jinx. A squirrel crosses the wires in their car so that it will start on fire! A woodpecker keeps knocking on the door only to confuse them when they open it to find nobody there! A raccoon puts a rock in the exhaust pipe of their car! A dalmatian puppy pees on a magazine with Cruella on the cover! It's all just very stupid. And it gets really boring fast since the only humans are Jasper and Horace and you're just watching a bunch of animals. Sure, the puppies are cute but watching a bunch of puppies isn't very exciting. At least in the animated version they have personalities and can talk! I got so bored during this time that I started playing with my phone. It felt like it was twenty minutes before we see Cruella again. Glenn Close obviously did her homework because she has the great maniacal laugh; the cool, stiff Cruella posture with the back arched when she laughs; she has her mannerisms down, she calls everyone "You fools, you idiots!" You could tell she was getting into the character and was having fun with it. She was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Musical Comedy (she lost to MADONNA for Evita?? Are you kidding me? Granted, I have never seen Evita but I know that Glenn Close is a better actress than freakin' Madonna! Now if she had lost to Frances McDormand for Fargo, THAT I would understand!) The movie sucks, but Glenn Close as Cruella DeVil is great and I can see why she was nominated for a Golden Globe.

Cruella gets apprehended by the police (after falling into a vat of molasses...which did not happen in the animated movie) along with Jasper, Horace, and Mr. Skinner who she has hired to skin the puppies. (Haha, get it, he skins animals and his name is Mr. Skinner? Yeah...) I did laugh when she tells them that they won the gold, silver, and bronze in the awards for biggest idiots and Horace asks, "Which one of us won the gold?" and she just goes off on them. That was pretty funny. She does go to jail and all the puppies are okay (as they are in the animated version, but we all knew that).

99 puppies = 99 problems!

In both movies, Roger and Anita take all the puppies in because apparently nobody is claiming any of the other 84 puppies. With Pongo and Perdita, they have 101 dalmatians! They decide to move to a bigger place so they have enough room. Roger tells Anita that they'll have a Dalmatian Plantation! Don't get me wrong, puppies are very cute, but I would NOT want 99 puppies. God no! That seems like a nightmare! I don't think I'd even want fifteen! In the '61 version, they are able to buy their Dalmatian Plantation with the money Roger made from his hit song about Cruella DeVil and in the '96 version Roger is a video game designer and used Cruella as his villain and it made lots of money for them to buy a huge mansion in the country.

101 Dalmatians was the highest-grossing movie of 1961!