The Mouse That Roared (1959) Peter Sellers, Jean Seberg, directed by Jack Arnold

Directed by Jack Arnold who directed The Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Incredible Shrinking Man and numerous episodes of Gilligan's Island and The Brady Bunch. He was well-regarded in Hollywood. I found it surprising that he worked on those TV shows, but I always like their look, beautifully directed one-camera sit-coms. 

I was a little disappointed. I imagined a more creative or surprising way in which the Grand Duchy of Fenwick would conquer the United States than stumbling upon America's football-like doomsday bomb. It was like a less realistic proto-Dr Strangelove, but they kept talking about what nice people Americans were. I've been to Canada a couple of times and felt like the biggest jerk. I don't know about other countries, but Canadians are so much nicer than us. Leaders of the Duchy thought they'd declare war on the U.S., be quickly defeated then benefit from a sort of Marshall Plan because Americans are so generous. I don't know how British audiences felt about this after the UK went through years of poverty paying their massive war debt to the United States.

With Peter Sellers playing multiple roles and Jean Seberg just one year before Breathless.  

Filmed in Britain. 

When Harry Met Sally... (1989)

It must have been December 15th. I went with my sister and her husband to a local production of Oklahoma! A friend's son was in it. We stopped and ate on the way home and somehow got on the subject of the films of Rob Reiner. I didn't care for them. I couldn't stand Tom Cruise in A Few Good Men, I thought The American President was a morbid romantic fantasy about Bill Clinton dating again after Hillary dies; Spinal Tap just didn't interest me. I know he made others. 

They told me I should watch When Harry Met Sally. They were sure I'd like it.

We went home and were in the living room. I opened my laptop and looked at the news. Two people were found dead in Rob Reiner's home. The police wouldn't say who they were, but they did tell their ages which were the same as Rob Reiner and his wife. Variety was the first site I saw that stated that Rob and Michele Reiner had died.

My brother-in-law asked if I wanted to retract what I said about Reiner's movies. I didn't. It was unrelated. I sometimes separate the art from the artist. 

So, after all this time, I finally watched When Harry Met Sally..., about two terribly unlikable people who start dating. It wasn't his fault, but Billy Crystal was not romantic leading man material. 

When it came out, it was compared to the films of Woody Allen, but Woody Allen's characters generally had careers and families, parents, friends---they didn't just walk about talking and talking about how men were from Mars and women were from Venus. 

The big gag in it, where Sally makes a spectacle of herself in a crowded restaurant, didn't really make sense. No one would do that. Earlier in the movie, Harry and Sally were in another restaurant and she was humiliated when she blurted out something about her sex life attracting the attention of other diners. Maybe it showed her character arc, how much she had grown and changed.

I feel a little hurt that my sister thought I would like this thing. 

Written by Nora Ephron. Free on a streaming channel called Cineplex. 

Hothead (1963)

Frank (John Delgar) is a hothead. He's very unpleasant, a terrible jerk. He's angry about his father having abandoned him and his mother, leaving her to work her way into an early grave. Frank had to go to work himself when he was twelve. Now he lived his aunt, his father's sister. 

Frank has the day free after he's fired from his job. He drives around in his big old car. He and his friends, Tom and Iris (Robert Glenn and Barnara Joyce) spend most of the movie dressed in swimwear. They pick up a pleasant, well-dressed middle-aged hobo (Steve Talbot) and take him to the beach. He calls the kids to hang around in a beach house he just broke into. They have liquor. With Tom passed out. the hobo tries to sexually assault Iris who runs drunkenly from the house and finds Frank who's sitting on the beach losing his mind. He thinks the hobo is his father.

Frank is completely unsympathetic. He probably didn't need to be. He could have been a nice guy who came to believe a hitchhiker was his father who deserved to die. 

The movie was the only credit for the director and most of the cast. One actor, Robert Pearson, appeared in 2001 a Space Odyssey as an actor in the inflight movie. Barbara Joyce was a regular on The Ken Berry Show and appeared in a TV series, Legends of the Superheroes (1979). Robert Glenn was in The Last Picture Show and Larry Buchanan's A Bullet for Pretty Boy.

It's free on Tubi and available on DVD.  Still available after all these years. That says something for it.