THE LORDS OF FLATBUSH
The Lords of Flatbush (stylized on-screen as The Lord’s of Flatbush) is a 1974 American comedy directed by Martin Davidson and Stephen F. Verona. The film stars Sylvester Stallone, Perry King, Paul Mace, Henry Winkler, and Susan Blakely. Stallone was also credited with writing additional dialogue. The plot is about street teenagers in leather jackets from the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York.[3] The movie, along with American Graffiti, the television hit Happy Days, the musical Grease and its like-named film version, and novelty rock act “Sha Na Na’’, was part of a resurgence in popular interest in the ’50s greaser culture in the 1970s.[4]
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IT’S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD
It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World is a 1963 American epic comedy film produced and directed by Stanley Kramer with a story and screenplay by William Rose and Tania Rose. The film, starring Spencer Tracy with an all-star cast composed largely of comedians, is about the madcap pursuit of a suitcase full of stolen cash by a colorful group of strangers. It premiered on November 7, 1963.[3] The principal cast features Edie Adams, Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Buddy Hackett, Ethel Merman, Dorothy Provine, Mickey Rooney, Dick Shawn, Phil Silvers, Terry-Thomas, and Jonathan Winters.
The film marked the first time Kramer directed a comedy, though he had produced the comedy So This Is New York in 1948. He is best known for producing and directing, in his own words, “heavy drama” about social problems, such as The Defiant Ones, Inherit the Wind, Judgment at Nuremberg, and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. His first attempt at directing a comedy film paid off immensely as It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World became a critical and commercial success and was nominated for six Academy Awards, winning for Best Sound Editing, and two Golden Globe Awards.
The film premiered on November 7, 1963 at the Cinerama Dome with a running time of 192 minutes. However, against Kramer’s wishes, the film was cut by its distributor United Artists to reduce the film’s running time to 163 minutes for its general release. In 2014, the Criterion Collection released a restored version that is closer to the original 202-minute version envisioned by Kramer.
The film featured at number 40 in the American Film Institute‘s list 100 Years…100 Laughs.
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NATIONAL LAMPOON’S
ANIMAL HOUSE
National Lampoon’s Animal House is a 1978 American comedy film directed by John Landis and written by Harold Ramis, Douglas Kenney and Chris Miller. It stars John Belushi, Tim Matheson, John Vernon, Verna Bloom, Thomas Hulce, and Donald Sutherland. The film is about a trouble-making fraternity whose members challenge the authority of the dean of the fictional Faber College.
Produced by Matty Simmons of National Lampoon and Ivan Reitman for Universal Pictures, it was inspired by stories written by Miller and published in National Lampoon, which were based on Ramis’ experience in the Zeta Beta Tau fraternity at Washington University in St. Louis, Miller’s Alpha Delta Phi experiences at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, and producer Reitman’s at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.
Of the younger lead actors, only the 28-year-old Belushi was an established star, but even he had not yet appeared in a film, having gained fame as an original cast member of Saturday Night Live, which was in its third season in the autumn of 1977. Several of the actors who were cast as college students, including Thomas Hulce, Karen Allen, and Kevin Bacon, were just beginning their film careers. Matheson, also cast as a student, was already a seasoned actor, having appeared in movies and television since the age of 13.
Filming took place at the University of Oregon[5] from October to December 1977. Following its initial release on July 28, 1978, Animal House received generally mixed reviews from critics, but Time and Roger Ebert proclaimed it one of the year’s best. Filmed for only $3 million (equivalent to $14,462,755 in today’s money) it garnered an estimated gross of more than $141 million ($679,749,490 in today’s money) in the form of theatrical rentals and home video, not including merchandising, making it the highest grossing comedy film of its time.[4][6]
The film, along with 1977’s The Kentucky Fried Movie, also directed by Landis, was largely responsible for defining and launching the gross-out film genre, which became one of Hollywood’s staples.[7] Animal House is now regarded as one of the best comedy films of all time.[8][9][10][11]
In 2001, the United States Library of Congress deemed National Lampoon’s Animal House “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry. It was No. 1 on Bravo’s “100 Funniest Movies”. It was No. 36 on AFI‘s “100 Years… 100 Laughs” list of the 100 best American comedies. In 2008, Empire magazine selected it as No. 279 of “The 500 Greatest Movies of All Time”.
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TRADING PLACES
Trading Places is a 1983 American comedy film directed by John Landis and written by Timothy Harris and Herschel Weingrod. Starring Dan Aykroyd, Eddie Murphy, Ralph Bellamy, Don Ameche, Denholm Elliott, and Jamie Lee Curtis, the film tells the story of an upper-class commodities broker (Aykroyd) and a poor street hustler (Murphy) whose lives cross when they are unwittingly made the subjects of an elaborate bet to test how each man will perform when their life circumstances are swapped.
Harris conceived the outline for Trading Places in the early 1980s after meeting two wealthy brothers who were engaged in an ongoing rivalry with each other. He and his writing partner Weingrod developed the idea as a project to star Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder. When they were unable to participate, Landis cast Aykroyd—with whom he had worked previously—and a young but increasingly popular Murphy in his second feature-film role. Landis also cast Curtis against the intent of the studio, Paramount Pictures; she was famous mainly for her roles in horror films, which were looked down upon at the time. Principal photography took place from December 1982 to March 1983, entirely on location in Philadelphia and New York City. Elmer Bernstein scored the film, using Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart‘s opera buffa The Marriage of Figaro as an underlying theme.
Trading Places was considered a box-office success on its release, earning over $90.4 million to become the fourth-highest-grossing film of 1983 in the United States and Canada, and $120.6 million worldwide. It received generally positive reviews, with critics praising the central cast and the film’s revival of the 1930s and 1940s screwball comedy genre, though they criticized Trading Places for lacking the genre’s moral message and instead promoting the accumulation of wealth. It received multiple award nominations including an Academy Award for Bernstein’s score and won two BAFTA awards for Elliott and Curtis. The film also launched or revitalized the careers of its main cast, who each appeared in several other films throughout the 1980s. In particular, Murphy became one of the highest-paid and most sought after comedians in Hollywood.
In the years since its release, the film has been praised as one of the greatest comedy films and Christmas films ever made despite some criticism of its use of racial jokes and language. In 2010, the film was referenced in Congressional testimony concerning the reform of the commodities trading market designed to prevent the insider trading demonstrated in Trading Places. In 1988, Bellamy and Ameche reprised their characters for Murphy’s comedy film Coming to America.