The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T

Rating:
Summary: Yes, sir, it's VERY atomic!
Review: "The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T" is a journey into the extraordinary, the unbelievable, and the entertaining. Albeit, it's wacky, but how else should the wonderful world of Dr. Seuss be? If you are up for a fantastic adventure into dreamland, than look no further!

Bart Collins is your average little boy--he loves his mom, he likes to play with his dog, and there is nothing he despises more than practicing the piano. No doubt his eccentric, but strangely captivating piano instructor, Dr. Terwilliker, has something to do with this. After a particularly trying lesson, Bart falls asleep at the ivories and is transported to the Terwilliker Institute, a prison-castle for tiny piano players like himself. He immediately attempts escape, but finds himself surrounded by a whole lot of bizarre characters, including some green-skinned musician-hostages who do not play the piano.

This colorful film may be a bit quirky, but beneath its oddity is a charming story that is sure to involve you and stimulate your imagination. Every aspect of "Fingers" is truly memorable, from the beautiful set to the catchy sing-along numbers to the original screenplay. This is a movie that the entire family will love--kids can identify with Bart and Dr. Seuss, adults can enjoy the music and choreography, and everyone will want to watch it again and again.

Once you watch "The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T," you'll see why I went crazy when I was able to tape it on TV (and went crazy when someone taped over it!). I couldn't wait until this title appeared on DVD! Get it while it's hot! :)

Rating:
Summary: Yes, sir, it's VERY atomic!
Review: "The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T" is a journey into the extraordinary, the unbelievable, and the entertaining. Albeit, it's wacky, but how else should the wonderful world of Dr. Seuss be? If you are up for a fantastic adventure into dreamland, than look no further!

Bart Collins is your average little boy--he loves his mom, he likes to play with his dog, and there is nothing he despises more than practicing the piano. No doubt his eccentric, but strangely captivating piano instructor, Dr. Terwilliker, has something to do with this. After a particularly trying lesson, Bart falls asleep at the ivories and is transported to the Terwilliker Institute, a prison-castle for tiny piano players like himself. He immediately attempts escape, but finds himself surrounded by a whole lot of bizarre characters, including some green-skinned musician-hostages who do not play the piano.

This colorful film may be a bit quirky, but beneath its oddity is a charming story that is sure to involve you and stimulate your imagination. Every aspect of "Fingers" is truly memorable, from the beautiful set to the catchy sing-along numbers to the original screenplay. This is a movie that the entire family will love--kids can identify with Bart and Dr. Seuss, adults can enjoy the music and choreography, and everyone will want to watch it again and again.

Once you watch "The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T," you'll see why I went crazy when I was able to tape it on TV (and went crazy when someone taped over it!). I couldn't wait until this title appeared on DVD! Get it while it's hot! :)

Rating:
Summary: This movie scared the hooby doobies out of me...
Review: ...when I was a kid. It however did not contribute to my delinquency. Still it left a lasting impression as a towering monument of absurdity.

Rating:
Summary: Bookends For a Dreaming, Paranoid Boy...
Review: Come on, please, lighten up...you'll frighten the bourgeoisie. ... Just enjoy it as fantasy...with some surrealistic sets... campy, yes...in hind sight...but then...who brought such knowledge to such a film as a boy?

A definite must as follow-up (or before) is "Invaders From Mars" (1953) -- also about a suspicious inquisitive boy whom no one will listen to or believe. Is there a correlation between the "octopoid" brain controller of the invading Martians...and Dr. T? You bet! Any correlation to the fright about Communism in the two films -- as in "Invasion of the Body Snatchers?" Hmmm...

Rating:
Summary: A Classic for Children and any adult who took piano lessons
Review: Critics may not have thought this is the most wondeful movie ever made, but the Dr. Seuss sets and simple story of a boy who wants a dad and would rather play baseball than practice the piano is treated marvelously. It is a quirky, genuinely original fantasy. Children of all ages will be drawn into the at times cheerfulness and at other times scariness of the story. There is a timelessness about the underlying story of the loss of a parent that keeps this 1950s movie relevant.

Rating:
Summary: Genuinely Disturbing
Review: Dr. Seuss's 5,000 Fingers

of Dr. T

Genuinely Disturbing!

Reviewed by Bruce Cantwell (visit a-movie-to-see.com)

I always thought there was something a little disturbing about Dr. Seuss. Remember the total anarchy of Cat in the Hat, the hubris of Yertle the Turtle and, of course, the parsimonious Grinch? Illustrations of negative personality traits have always had their tutorial value in children's literature, but Seuss's miscreants always seemed so vivid and his morals tagged on simply for social acceptance.

In this little nightmare, Bart Collins (Tommy Rettig) runs around wearing a "Happy Fingers" beanie, topped by a rubber hand, chased by an army of pudgy men in skin tight suits and balaclavas bearing colorful child-catching nets.

He awakens from his daydream to the stern admonitions of his piano teacher Dr. Terwilliker (Hans Conried) for whom "practice makes perfect."

Bart introduces his young and Betty Crocker beautiful war-widowed mother Mrs. Collins (Mary Healy) and surrogate father figure/plummer August Zabladowski (Peter Lind Hayes). From here, Auntie Em, we're not in Kansas anymore, but at the Terwilliger Institute where we find Bart mano a mano with Dr. T, diligently exercising his "10 Little Dancing Maidens" at the 44,000-key extended bi-level keyboard designed for 500 little boys.

The films most inseussiant highlight is a ballet sequence of by the non-pianistic instrumentalists that Terwilliker has banished to one of his dungeons. Here green skinned trumpeters, string players, percussionists, saxophonists etc. bound about in their tattered tuxes as if performing the halftime routine at the Hell Bowl. How does one play an instrument resembling a man with bells attached to his antlers? You grab him by the neck and shake him, of course. Buglers sway their instruments from right to left while overhead, a percussionist on a rope swings over to bang his drum. A half dozen men in colorful fuzzy mittens man the xylophone. Occasionally, during this bacchanale, there's a cutaway to fresh faced Bart looking on in wonderment. One only hopes he didn't have to witness the event.

There is no moral to this story and no apologies for its perversity. Did anyone have a problem with the roller skating Hassidics who fly about joined at the beard? And what about a piano teacher who wants to wear...well, check it out.

Rating:
Summary: SEARCHING AN EUROPEAN VIDEO VERSION!
Review: Hi! I'm a spanish guy searching crazily this film. I have see it only one time when i was 8 years old and i want to see it another time. But i can't found an european version. If you know where i can found it please write me. Thanks.

[e-mail]

Rating:
Summary: Age shall not wither nor custom stale this wonderful movie
Review: Hollywood could not do a better movie today if they tried, even with modern special effects technology and buckets of money, witness the live-action "Grinch" if you don't believe me. I first saw this movie as a child in the late 1970s where it was a staple of Saturday afternoon movies. What can be said? Hans Conried makes this movie as the campy, completely over the top and utterly mad Dr. Terwilliker.
The story and sets are wonderful, reflecting the fertile, and rather twisted, imagination of Theodore Seuss Geisel. Tommy Rettig is perfect, and never annoying as Bartholemew Cubbins, the precocious child star of the movie, Mary Healy plays his mother and Peter Lind Hayes plays the wise plumber, August Zabladowski.
This movie is billed as a musical, it's not much of one, the songs seem as if they were tacked on to the rest of the production, however the movie is so good that even this cannot detract from it.
The DVD transfer is very good, much better than the earlier VHS transfers, there isn't much in the way of special features, just a trailer and some photo stills, but given the fact that this movie was made 50 years ago this isn't surprising. My only complaint about the disk is that the sound seems somewhat muffled in places, although free of the more objectionable forms of distortion. The scene with Peter Lind Hayes and Hans Conreid attempting to put a whammy on each other is sheerly fantastic.

Rating:
Summary: Age shall not wither nor custom stale this wonderful movie
Review: Hollywood could not do a better movie today if they tried, even with modern special effects technology and buckets of money, witness the live-action "Grinch" if you don't believe me. I first saw this movie as a child in the late 1970s where it was a staple of Saturday afternoon movies. What can be said? Hans Conried makes this movie as the campy, completely over the top and utterly mad Dr. Terwilliker.
The story and sets are wonderful, reflecting the fertile, and rather twisted, imagination of Theodore Seuss Geisel. Tommy Rettig is perfect, and never annoying as Bartholemew Cubbins, the precocious child star of the movie, Mary Healy plays his mother and Peter Lind Hayes plays the wise plumber, August Zabladowski.
This movie is billed as a musical, it's not much of one, the songs seem as if they were tacked on to the rest of the production, however the movie is so good that even this cannot detract from it.
The DVD transfer is very good, much better than the earlier VHS transfers, there isn't much in the way of special features, just a trailer and some photo stills, but given the fact that this movie was made 50 years ago this isn't surprising. My only complaint about the disk is that the sound seems somewhat muffled in places, although free of the more objectionable forms of distortion. The scene with Peter Lind Hayes and Hans Conreid attempting to put a whammy on each other is sheerly fantastic.

Rating:
Summary: a beautiful, well-made and surreal film
Review: i had very vivid memories of seeing this movie when i was a kid and i wasn't disappointed when i got it on dvd. it managed to capture the seussian design technique and sense of wonder far better than ron haward did in that train wreck grinch live-action film. the only things that would have made it better would be some behind-the senes information; how much was he involved in the production, commentaries or interviews by surviving actors, etc...