Capt. Mondo's World o' Mondo-ness

After putting the kids to bed, this movie turned up on MuchMoreMusic. I had never seen the original when it came out in 1980, and all I knew was that it was a classic turkey -- I even vaguely remember this being said about the film at the time it was released.

From the start I was gripped by its amazing badness. Erika came back from playing with her new mixer at Owen's soon after the film started and we both watched the film in dumb amazement that anything like it could possibly exist.

There's really no plot to speak of, its really just an excuse for a number of poorly executed song and dance numbers, many of which are an uneasy mix of 40s and early 80s musical styles. Most of the critiques of the movie center around its absence of sense or plot or acting, but on top of this we can add that several of the dance numbers are sloppy – if you look closely you’ll see that several of the dancers are off the beat, especially during the big 40s/80s dance scene. Also the film is poorly framed in a lot of the shots – especially the big dance numbers. Apparently in a Gene Kelly’s biography he mentions that the director and producer had no idea what they were doing, and I can believe it. Was also briefly mesmerized by the off-kilter animation sequence, which I correctly identified as a Don Bluth production. Why was it there? No really good discernable reason, really... I also have to wonder: did people really paint large canvas versions of album covers for record stores? The only ones I ever saw were photographic enlargements – so in my mind one of the flimsy underpinnings for the movie is in doubt, which admittedly fits right in with everything else about the movie.

I do have to confess to a guilty pleasure in the music for the film – I’ve always liked ELO, and somewhere I still have a vinyl single or two from this movie I bought as an impressionable kid. Not my taste in music now, but it was fun to listen to again.

This is a film crying out for an MST3K treatment.

Afterwards I went online to try to find out a bit more about the film. Found an interesting site dedicated to what’s left of the shooting locations, plus the many commentaries found by “fans” in the Internet Movie Database, and several sites devoted primarily to smart quips about bad movies. I have to agree with the opinion that Xanadu represents the nadir of the American movie musical (which admittedly may not be saying much. ;-)

An amazingly, enjoyably bad film. If I need to get an “evil” film gift for somebody in the future, this will top my list. ;-)

# posted by Keith : 8:52 AM