Arnold
Arnold (1973) Rewatch? ✅
Well, it’s a rewatch but I mean, I scarcely remember it and the last time I sat through it I was 14 and I haven’t been 14 for a while now. Still, a rewatch it is.
And man, mixed feelings on it as me at my ancient age. It is painfully early seventies with the emphasis on the painful and I imagine your enjoyment of it entirely hinges on how tolerable you find that thankfully brief in cinema period of farce where an ensemble cast fools around a bit, someone stares at some tits once or twice and the jokes all seem like incomplete thoughts, just enough to qualify as an attempt at a comedy, not enough to raise a laugh.
I’m trying to think of something to liken it to and it’s all a bit something, but without a thing. Imagine an old house version of Carry On Screaming but without the comedy chops, or jokes. Imagine a seventies sex comedy without the sex, or the comedy but it’s exactly that sort of vibe. Imagine trying to do the flippancy of Dr Phibes but it just hasn’t got the energy necessary to pull it off. It’s messy, it’s inelegant and yeah, oh man, it is so of its time.
And yet, there’s still a fair bit to enjoy. The whole conceit is fun and in fairness, it all probably did look so much better a film on paper. There is an absolutely gorgeous black cat and they get the chance to muck around with a severed foot and we all know that’s the kind of gig a cat’s agent hopes to get for their client and the important bit for a film about a dead lord leaving a house full of death traps for people to walk into, the death traps (and deaths) are really quite fun! As is the dead lord.
It really is a shame the more farcical elements miss as much as they do, there’s something here, it’s just not quite there. And like with the graves, gravedigger and copper that the film returns to constantly, you can see where the joke is trying to be with them, I’d even wager it could work as written, but then someone puts an accent on and I dunno, no, it’s gone now, sorry.
Everyone else seems to be having a good time though, it’s got a little song and thankfully treads fairly lightly on the seventies sexism stuff (though it’s lightly by 1973 standards, not by sexism standards) so it makes for a fair enough tatwatch film in my books.
I can definitely see why I never rushed to give it a rewatch sooner though.