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Operation Petticoat

Operation Petticoat

List Price: $14.98
Your Price: $11.98
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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Operation Petticoat
Review: This movie is absolutely hysterical! I've rented it from a local video store several times.

If you're in the mood for a laugh watch this. Cary Grant as the straightlaced, straight faced commander of the Sea Tiger a submarine badly damaged by Japanese bombs. He tells his Commander that the Sea Tiger deserves a better record than launched July 1941, sank December 1941, no missions, no prizes etc.

Tony Curtis is the Admiral's aid who is assigned to the Sea Tiger, apparently after angering the Admiral. He and one of the Admiral's wives won a rhumba contest the year before. He shows up in his dress whites for duty aboard a combat ship with a native carrying his golf clubs.

He may not have combat experience and he may look silly wearing his dress whites when he reports for duty aboard a combat vessel badly in need of repairs, but no one can out scavange him.

When the Sea Tiger needs equipment and supplies, it's Lt. Holden that they turn to. He even steals the Commander's wall.

He funds poker games to gain more supplies and equipment.

When a group of Army nurses joins the crew out of necessity, things get even livlier.

The best line in the whole movie comes from Cary Grant. It seems that one of the nurses is extremely klutzy and she shoots off the one torpedo they have which they intend to sink a tanker ship sitting at anchor. Instead of the tanker they sink a truck.

Arthur O'Connell is the engine room chief who hates having females aboard ship, especially when one of them puts her girdle to use in place of a spring or group of springs they need.

No bad language. No violence to speak of but definitely a lot of laughs.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Great Movie
Review: This was a movie I used to watch as a little girl with my dad...It was great then and even better now.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: The Cast
Review: Tony Curtis and Cary Grant are at their handsomest. You should see Cary in his admiral outfit. But, in my opinion, you may disagree, a very obvious flaw is the weak cast of women. I was casting it in my mind as I watched. Marilyn Monroe would have been hilarious-- and Thelma Ritter as the mechanic. Of course, with a stellar cast, the parts would have had to be better for them. The pink sub is hilarious and the men seem very relaxed, glad to get non-challenging roles. This is a must for the 50's comedies collector and has that great super-bright photography.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: The Cast
Review: Tony Curtis and Cary Grant are at their handsomest. You should see Cary in his admiral outfit. But, in my opinion, you may disagree, a very obvious flaw is the weak cast of women. I was casting it in my mind as I watched. Marilyn Monroe would have been hilarious-- and Thelma Ritter as the mechanic. Of course, with a stellar cast, the parts would have had to be better for them. The pink sub is hilarious and the men seem very relaxed, glad to get non-challenging roles. This is a must for the 50's comedies collector and has that great super-bright photography.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: You almost can't say enough nice things about this film
Review: What can I say? Directed by Blake Edwards (best known for the "Pink Panther" series), a clever, expertly wrought comedy loaded with visual humor as well plenty of dry wisecracks and miscellaneous innuendo for the veteran cast to chew on, it requires few allowances be made by the audience. No doubt very loosely inspired by the real-life adventures of the U.S. submarines SEALION, SEADRAGON, and SPEARFISH, not to mention humerous anecdotes adopted from other submarines, and technically advised by retired wartime submarine commander Rear Admiral Lucius M. Chappel, in a "funny" and sometimes subtle way it is probably the most realistic movie about US submarines in World War II I've seen. It is certainly the most well-made and entertaining. Premise: right after Pearl Harbor, the Japanese prepare to assault the Philippine Islands, and during an air raid on US Navy facilties there, sink the virtually new submarine SEA TIGER. Nonetheless, her only appropriately serious and generally very human commander, Matt Sherman - done very credibly by Cary Grant - is too much of a firebreather to take this lying down. After persuading his boss, the squadron commodore, to let him take a shot at it, he and his ship's company - reduced by transfers due to the boat's sunken condition - manage to raise her from the harbor bottom and commence getting her into good enough shape to escape to Australia before the inevitable Japanese invasion. Unfortunately their repair job, daunting enough already, is impossibly hampered by an apparently bureaucratically-based shortage of critical spare parts and supplies - even toilet paper (a gag in the film derived nearly verbatim from the true experience of the submarine SKIPJACK). At this point Tony Curtis enters as Lt. Nick Holden (the character's name likely-enough suggested by actor William Holden's patented hedonistic bad-boy persona). Having grown up in a neighborhood called "Noah's Ark" ("you traveled in pairs or you just didn't travel"), our Lt. Holden is a journeyman back-alley maneuverer who joined the Navy for the prestige associated with the uniform and what it can get him (in particular, a certain Miss "Super Chief"). His plans have gone horribly awry due to the sudden outbreak of the war; having maneuvered his way into a cushy job as an admiral's aid he finds himself stranded in Manila without his admiral, who now won't be coming out after all. Thus being at loose ends he is assigned as a replacement officer to the SEA TIGER. Facing the alternative of being stuck on Bataan to endure the oncoming Japanese onslaught, he sees it is in his best interest to make up for the seagoing experience he has managed to avoid during his time in the Navy by becoming the boat's Supply Officer and securing everything necessary to get "the . . . submarine" out of there and to someplace where he can get a better deal. Dedicated to his responsibilities as the boat's commander, Captain Sherman is willing to make "a pact with the Devil" and thus Lt. Holden, allied with his handpicked detail of "scavengers" - Seaman Hunkle (Gavin McLeod), a sailor only known as "The Prophet [of Doom]," and of course the trusty marine Sargeant Ramon Gallardo ("there isn't a thief, pickpocket, or fence in the islands that doesn't know, love, and respect him") - commences a supply procurement program which might most charitably be described unorthodox - or less charitably as actually felonious. But he really hits his peak when he manages to "scavenge" five stranded Army nurses and convince the captain that he has to take them aboard. From then on the film becomes a series of amusing battles on the part of the captain to get his sputtering, groaning, band-aid patched submarine safely to Australia while preventing any "exchange of information" concerning the birds and the bees between the crew and their passengers - not the least of which involves Mr. Holden and his submersible "cocktail lounge." It's a struggle made even more complicated by the captain's frequent personal run-ins with an accident-prone and especially buxom young nurse (in the words of the "Chief of the Boat" - "if you wanna know what you're fightin' for - there's your answer") who for all her blunders unintentionally winds up saving the boat and all aboard. Oh, and along the way they manage to wind up with the vessel painted pink (don't ask me how - just try to believe I actually saw a nearly identical performance to the COB's in reaction to a similar problem aboard a nuclear ballistic missile submarine around 1980), have to set up a maternity ward, complete with goat ("the children will need fresh milk"), and accomplish the unique induction of "Seaman Hornsby" into his brief tenure in the Naval Service. The film is actually told as a flashback from about 1960 and ends with a slighlty sentimental and amusing bit of a twist. Clean and wholesome while still being thoroughly adult ("when a man is tired and irritable you can be sure there's one thing he's not getting enough of") this one you can watch with your kids - maybe even after they've reached their cynical teenaged years.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Slip in a tena lady and you'll be fine......lol
Review: WOW!ok, so i'm a massive Tony Curtis fan, but this film is actally the most bizarre, hilarious film ever! The general synopsis has been given in plenty of detail by everyone else, so i'll just rave on about HOW funny this film really is...Now, i have to confess, my personal favourite scene has got to be the one where Tony Curtis steals a pig off some indonesian farmers farm and dresses it in a naval officers uniform and tries to smuggle it onto the submarine by saying it is drunk - thus to explain the rather unusual sounds which emante from beneath the sea mans overcoat!It just keeps snorting, and then he locks it in the loo to hide it and.... well, lets just say that those with weak bladders should stay away from this film - although in all fairness it is probably ALOT funnier at 4 am after much wine has been consumed...*coughs* lol. Well, this is a spectacularly unhelpful review - just WATCH the film! ooo! and also try and see one called "Space Truckers" which features Charles Dance as a half robot thing, uttering the immortal lines: "If i had an anus i would soil myself...." Classic.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: What do you get when you mix white led with red led?
Review: You get a great comedy with Carry grant and Tony Curtis. Along with a great cast you see what life in a submarine can be like. Director Blake Edwards is a master at this sort of movie.

Tony Curtis is Lieutenant Nicholas Holden, an executive officer that is not too ept at sea duty but makes a procurement officer with unique abilities and methods of obtaining needed parts. Toss in a few nurses, some goats and you have the makings of an interesting situation.


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