Customer Reviews

Watch the Birdie [VHS]

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4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

what is wrong with this picture, Red Skelton Arlene Dahl Ann Miller in a remake of a Buster Keaton film "the Camera Man". the answer is...Nothing at All. it is a great and funny movie, on tape as it is here, or in a dvd format, it was make by MGM and Red plays three people in it. i watched it right away when it came in, i only wish i had an audience here in my house to see it with. it must have been wonderful years ago to see real comedies at the movie theaters in stead of the junk they make now a days.

Red plays Rusty Cammeron (also plays Rusty`s father and grandfather) who runs a photography shop.
He decides to earn some extra money as a free lance photographer, but is just as inept at that as he is at running the camera shop.
The fun really gets going when he accidently takes a photo that exposes an embezzlement scam.
While this is not one of Skelton`s very best feature films, it is very funny and well worth watching.

There are no less than seven different films entitled "Watch the Birdie," dating back to the 1920s. All of them concern photography. This Red Skelton edition was scripted by Ivan Tors, who would later create many famous disaster flicks and TV series like "Flipper" and "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea." Keep a look out for a cameo by Jeff York-- he was a dead ringer for Li'l Abner when he played the Al Capp comic strip character in the 1940 movie, which also featured Buster Keaton as the strange little Indian, Lonesome Polecat. Keaton contributed some of his classic sight gags to "Birdie."

THE STORY: Red portrays three generations of Cammerons: Rusty, who manages his dad's photgraphic store, the father (Pop) and grandfather (Grandpop). Rusty tries to earn extra cash as a freelance photographer. A woman named Lucia (Dahl) who accidentally causes him to fall into the sea from a boat, becomes affectionate toward Rusty. She helps him make a go of the camera shop. Rusty soon realizes that Lucia's business manager (Ames) is embezzling her money via a housing project. When Lucia has Rusty take photos of the construction site to promote the project, he unwittingly captures proof of the scam.

As of 12/08, this movie is only available on VHS. YELLOW CAB MAN, a Skelton vehicle released the same year, is not yet on DVD, either.

Parenthetical number preceding title is a 1 to 10 viewer poll rating found at a film resource website.

(5.8) Watch the Birdie (1950) Red Skelton/Arlene Dahl/Ann Miller/Leon Ames/Pamela Britton (uncredited: Don Brodie/Lurene Tuttle/Jeff York)