The 5,000 Fingers
of Dr. T
(aka CRAZY MUSIC)
With: Peter Lind Hayes (August Zabladowski), Mary Healy (Eloise Collins), Tommy Rettig (Bart), Hans Conreid (Dr. Terwilliker), John Heasley (Uncle Whitney), Robert Heasley (Uncle Judson), Noel Cravat (Sgt. Lunk)
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Plot Outline (IMDb): Bart has only one enemy in the world, his piano teacher Dr. Terwilliker. Dr. T has a mad plan to force 500 young boys to practice at his magnificent piano 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Bart is the only hope to save these boys from enslavery. Fantastic sets, screen- play, and even song lyrics were provided by Dr. Suess. Includes the only piano academy known to ever be equipped with cells and surrounded by an electric fence.
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America's own pop-culture surrealist, Dr. Suess (aka Theodor S. Geisel) penned this wigged-out, ultra-stylized, dreamy/cartoony fantasy/nightmare, which features parallels to everything from THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI (1919), to William Camerom Menzies' INVADERS FROM MARS (1953).
With its gorgeous, expressionist sets and incredible, choreographed Technicolor hallucinations, 5,000 FINGERS... is one of the wildest departures, and bravest cinematic experiments of the 1950's.
Child star Tommy Rettig is great as Bart, aka "Everyboy U.S.A.," burdened with the middle-class hell of having to learn the piano in order to "make something of himself". The extraordinary Hans Conreid is quite uncanny as the effeminate and lunatic Dr. Terwilliker, a pseudo-intellectual and socialist monster, a hypocritical enigma with obvious shades of Communist wackos.
Bart shares with the audience his distaste for grownups, their arbitrary rulings and overt hypocrisy, as well as the curiously ubiquitous hell of being force-fed a labor as difficult and abstract as "musical appreciation".
The curvy, modular architecture in Bart's film-long fever-dream (stunningly designed by Rudolph Sternad, Cary Odell and William Kiernan) cleverly mimics the sensual design lines of atomic-age "streamlining", as an observant, but not uncritical, child might interpret it.
Bart's nightmare is more drug-dream than OZ-ian fantasy, and a significant, if unwitting bridge between pre-war "art deco" and post-war "pop art".
In a loving homage to George Orwell's incendiary tract "Nineteen Eighty-Four", huge sinister telescreens spit out nasty fascist propaganda. As an independent spirit in a police state, Bart is finally confined to a cell.
Finally, 5,000 FINGERS is a singular masterwork in visually conveying the dark postwar forces of primal paranoia and personal dissolution, a sinister yet seductive land where great beauty and devastating terror cohabitate. As such, it serves as stunning and right-on metaphor for Eisenhower's Amerika of the 1950's, an odd and obtuse amalgam of wonderland and holocaust.
One of the most shocking revelations here involves Bart finding out that his dear, sweet mother is the head flunkie in Dr. T's evil laboratory!
As in INVADERS FROM MARS, a bright young rascal is caught in a nightmare filled with predatory grownups who will not rest until he is assimilated or annihilated. Both films effectively depict the inherent fear of every child that his primary caretakers are in fact also his mortal enemies! Does this remind anyone of their terrific/horrific childhood in Amerika... ?
Some fairly predictable song material detracts a bit from the overall
greatness of this amazing color-soaked paradise of horrors, but not much. We love this great and shocking fantasy masterpiece, and as witness the links below, so do alot of other people. In fact, so popular is the appeal of this most unique film, that it warranted a 1983 theatrical rerelease! What's worse, there is a pending Broadway musical remake! We say "leave well enough alone"!
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from Kevin S. Butler: Peter Lind Hayes and his wife, Mary Healy, were performers in vaudeville, nightclubs, movies, radio and TV for many years. Mr.& Mrs. Hayes also hosted many talk/variety shows on radio and TV during the 1950's and 1960's. Their last regular TV series was "All About TV" for PBS in the 1970's. Sadly, we lost Hayes not too long ago. At that time, the Hayes' were writing their memiors. No word as yet when or if the Hayes' autobiography will be published. Mrs. Hayes made her last TV appearance on the PBS show "Over Easy" with the show's original host, Hugh Downs, in the 1970's or 80's. Tommy Rettig (Bart) went on to play "Jeff Miller" on CBS TV's "Lassie" the same year that THE 5,000 FINGERS OF DR. T was released.
Video/DVD availability: VHS/DVD (Columbia/TriStar Home Video)
Links of related interest:
"BILL'S TRIBUTE TO THE 5,000 FINGERS OF DR. T"
(1953, U.S.) color 89 minutes
Columbia Pictures Corporation / The Stanley Kramer Company
Story by Dr. Suess
Screenplay by Dr. Seuss, Alan Scott
Music by Frederick Hollander, Hans J. Salter
Cinematography: Franz Planer
Produced by Stanley Kramer
Directed by Roy Rowland
A TOMMY RETTIG FAN PAGE
black and white photos courtesy of Mark R. Hill
