Sunday, May 17, 2015

Top Movie Quotes: 66-64



Continuing the countdown of the American Film Institute’s top 100 movie lines (2005 list).

The next 3 in the countdown appear below.

What a great collection today, three classic lines from three classic movies covering a period 29 years.

* * * * * * * * * *
66. "Get your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty ape."

Spoken by Charlton Heston as George Taylor, Planet of the Apes (1968)

Special effects may be better these days but this would have to be one of the best, if not the best, film in the Apes category. The scene where Taylor finds what is left of the Statue of Liberty and realises that he is still on Earth but in the future; the interspecies kiss (“You’re all so ugly” to Taylor) . . . for the remake the above line was turned around when early in the movie an ape says to a human "Get your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty human."

Some trivia:

Roddy McDowall liked to drive home with his make-up on, shocking drivers on the freeway.

(at around 39 mins) The famous quote "Human see, human do" is based on an old children song that goes, "When you clap, clap clap your hands,/The monkey claps, claps claps his hands. Monkey see, monkey do/Monkey do the same as you."

* * * * * * * * * *
65. “Elementary, my dear Watson.”

Spoken by Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, 1939

I have always liked the Basil Rathbone films of Sherlock Holmes but I also now have a fondness for the Robert Downey Jnr SH films. Interesting touch to make him an action figure as well as a thinker.

Trivia:

The film was released on the same day as the outbreak of World War II: September 1, 1939.

The quote "Elementary, my dear Watson" was made popular by this film. Although it was spoken in the 1929 talkie The Return of Sherlock Holmes, starring Clive Brook, it was never featured in a canonical Arthur Conan Doyle story; although once Holmes said, in "The Adventure of the Crooked Man", "Elementary"

* * * * * * * * * *
64. "Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!"

Spoken by Peter Sellers as President Merkin Muffley, Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, 1968

Black comedy at its finest. Who will ever forget the scene where Slim Pickens rides he nuclear bomb to ground, the biggest ever phallic symbol.


Trivia

Many of the characters have names which are double entendres or innuendos: Jack D. Ripper refers to the infamous London murderer who persecuted sex workers in 1888; 
Merkin Muffley's names refer to female parts - a merkin is a pubic hair wig and muff is slang for women's pubic hair; 
Turgidson's first name is "Buck" and "turgid" is a word describing the condition of an erect penis; 
the Soviet premier is "Kissoff"; 
the Soviet ambassador is named after the Marquis de Sade (the original "sadist"); 
and the title character is called "Strangelove".


1 comment:

  1. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.