The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T. (1953)

Really Surprised!

Fresh and Exciting

Admirable film.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

Thank goodness half the musical numbers were cut and thank goodness for FF on the TV remote. However too bad the many long rehearsed bearded roller skating twin scenes were left out. It would have been better if they could have gotten Danny Kaye and Bing Crosby as planned but then it is understandable that they turned down the opportunity to appear.It is interesting how this does have the Dr Zuess look as well as the fifties time period making this film in corour and I liked the Wizard of Oz and Willy Wonka analogies. Just the same I would rather take piano lessons than watch this again.

From the fertile mind of Theodor "Dr. Seuss" Geisel comes this charming, funny, wacky musical-fantasy. Young Bart Collins (Tommy Rettig) is once again suffering through the infernal piano playing lessons that his mother Heloise (Mary Healy) insists he take. It might not be so bad if his instructor, Dr. Terwilliker (the well cast Hans Conried), weren't such a demanding individual. Overcome by the dreariness of these lessons, Barts' mind begins to construct an elaborate vision: a colorful, tuneful kingdom that Dr. T rules with an iron fist. Among the touches: people who play instruments other than the piano are confined to dungeons.At its best, this is a fun diversion that does play like a Dr. Seuss book come to life. The choreography is most impressive, with a large cast of dancers & musicians dressed in the Seuss tradition. The songs are catchy and performed with gusto by this talented cast, also including Peter Lind Hayes (Healy's real life husband) as easygoing plumber August Zabladowski, who becomes a father figure to Bart. The production design by Rudolph Sternad is first rate, and there are some ingenious sets. Funny visual gags add to the fun, such as a pair of henchmen who share one single extra long beard. The script by Geisel and Allan Scott is worth noting, as it has humor for both adults and children alike.The whole cast is appealing, but Conried is a special treat as the highly theatrical Dr. T.If modern viewers are looking for something different to show their kids, they could do a lot worse than this.Eight out of 10.

Now this is something of a find, and of course I wonder if I had seen Dr. Seuss' The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T as a kid what I would make of it. I imagine I would embrace it even more than I do now; as it is, as a grown man, this is just incredibly wild, odd stuff, and not all of it works but it's certainly a unique achievement. It's like Seuss' Alice in Wonderland with little touches of Wizard of Oz (the whole "You were there, and you were there, and you" aspect, even for subtle things like bearded figures in photos on top of a piano), and it's certainly nothing if not unique.The easiest way to describe what it's about is that its a... musical about a fascist dictator only he is obsessed most of all with getting his piano army to play perfectly (the 5,000 fingers belonging eventually to the many children - probably not 5,000 total, it just sounds cool, but I digress). There's a little boy named Bart Collins (a decent child actor in Tommy Rettig) and he is in the real world kind of pressured/forced by his harsh piano teacher Dr. Terkwilliker to keep playing and playing, and his mother (Healy) does the same. But he falls asleep (or is it hypnosis of some kind, dun-dun-dun) and enters into a kind of nightmarish world where Dr. T is the ruler and he has minions and jailers and a whole system set up - but most of all a very, very long piano.Why is he obsessed with the piano? Eh, honestly, who cares after a certain point; he's one of those self-aware movie villains (or at least Seuss is clever enough in the writing of him) to know that it's just the fun of being villainous that's the thing. He's the sort of guy who has a musical number about people getting him dressed with his wide array of a wardrobe. Meanwhile there is the opposite side of Dr. T, the Nice Guy leading man Mr. Zabladowski (Peter Lynd Hayes, the only plumber I can think of with pomade in his hair all the time keeping it just perfect), and Bart needs to help him so that he won't be turned as a puppet by Dr. T (and as his mother has become in this world), or worse.This moves around with the sort of wild invention, manic and vivid set designs, and sense of continuous, rambunctious, over the top play that has made Dr. Seuss so beloved over the past century. I think you'll either go for it or you might not, depending on your quota of weird and odd images. Did I mention it's a musical? Or I should say it is but only about 25 minutes into the film. That's one of the flaws of the movie, where it has music to it but it doesn't show itself as being what it really wants to be until Mr. Zablowski and Bart share a song (a soft number, probably the least effective). Then again once it gets into it, and Seuss' creative lyrics start to spout off, it's a lot of fun.Some of the movie drags here and there - yes, even at 88 minutes - primarily with a sequence involving a bunch of green-skinned men who are jumping around and playing musical instruments (it feels like 5 minutes is spent on a xylophone alone). I should complain about the excessive musical numbers - even a black elevator operator in one scene gets a song (only black man I should note, which is strange unto itself but not uncommon for 1953) - but that's actually where the movie kind of shines and the singers do wonderfully (albeit not the actor actors I don't think, except for Hans Conreid who can do no wrong here).There are a lot of really creative ideas here, such as the device that sucks up all the air in a room and makes it sounds warped and silly, or little things like giant hands and arms that stick out of the wall and can open up doors. It's all so much that I'm tempted to say that it would have been a little easier to take - or just greater visually speaking - had it been an animated film, with its music easy enough to interweave. But with live action it's both a success and kind of a slog a couple of times as I mentioned, with the actors doing fine more or less except for Conreid who is, I should say again, spectacular here as he eats up the scenery but doesn't go so far as to take you out of the scene in its context. He's having the time of his life here, and Seuss created something unique in its time and place: a live-action children's musical with some subtle (or not so subtle) satire about dictatorships and oppression for kids.

Impeccably inverted Masterpiece that could be the most unseen, unadulterated, unsung, great Movies ever. It was an Atomic Bomb at the box office and with critics and as such was swept away by indifference, fear, and misunderstanding in the cookie-cutter 1950's.The expressionistic sets and the Dr. Seuss dialog and songs are fluffy and frightening, bizarre and beautiful. There is a whimsical way about it and yet it is a scathing psychological and sociological indictment on conformity, highbrow Arts (look what all the supposed high minded purveyors of culture tried to do to Comic Books and Rock and Roll), the educational system, and totalitarianism.Quite a lot of deep stuff for Kids, but the best of it (The Wizard of Oz, Willy Wonka) are just that. Layers of concern and empathy for the plight and suppressed nature of us all from the lack of individualism manifested by a xenophobic, ultra-conservative culture.This is a surreal, colorful, playful, experience and all of that subtext can be ignored and overlooked as this Movie is wonderful on the surface as an offbeat Musical/Comedy/Fantasy that has been unjustly ignored and forgotten. This is one of the best Films of the 1950's and can also, arguably, be mentioned as one of the best Films of all time.