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The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again

Directed by Vincent McEveety

Written by Don Tait

Starring Don Knotts, Tim Conway, Tim Matheson, Elyssa Davalos

I feel like I’m going to turn into a broken record, writing these columns, before the podcast even gets to its 100th episode. I keep coming back to the notion of nostalgia, to whether there is a great amount of inherent value in appreciating something from the past, simply because you liked it in the past. It’s not that I don’t have nostalgia for things I cherished in my childhood, it’s that I don’t let that guide me. For example, though I won’t be writing an extended-thoughts column solely dedicated to it, I imagine the idea of nostalgia will be very strong in relation to the new Disney movie Wreck-It Ralph, which takes place in a fictional video-game arcade with some...

The Apple Dumpling Gang

Directed by Norman Tokar

Written by Don Tait

Starring Don Knotts, Tim Conway, Bill Bixby, Susan Clark

Oh, my stupid memory. While I hadn’t exactly built up, in my mind, The Apple Dumpling Gang as a true live-action classic from Walt Disney Pictures, I clearly fooled myself. As I mentioned on the show, I have vague memories of watching this film and its sequel, The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again. The more I ponder those memories, the more I realize that I don’t remember the movies themselves so much as the experience of having watched them, renting them on VHS from my local library. I had a glimmer of watching Don Knotts and Tim Conway play bumbling thieves in the Old West…and that’s it. I had hopes for watching the 1975 film, which is apparently Disney’s most successful live-action film of the 1970s (not too shabby,...

Herbie Goes Bananas

Written by Don Tait, based on the novel Car, Boy, Girl by Gordon Buford

Directed By Vincent McEveety

USA, 1980, imdb

Listen to our Mousterpiece Cinema Herbie Goes Bananas podcast or read Josh‘s extended thoughts about the film.

*****

Some films acquire a bad reputation that sticks like a bad smell, driving potential viewers away before they ever see it. Everyone knows that Alien³ and Alien Resurrection are terrible even especially those who have never seen the film. This fate happens particularly to notorious bombs – especially to films that (temporarily) kill off franchises. There is a perverse feedback loop in place, the film bombed because no one went to see it, and since the film bombed it must be terrible, so no one wants to watch it.

But this is confusing quality with popularity. They can be linked, but films bombing may result from any number of factors...

Herbie Goes Bananas

Directed by Vincent McEveety

Written by Gordon Buford and Don Tait

USA, 1980

I cannot believe that a movie as wrongheaded and idiotic as Herbie Goes Bananas exists. Herbie Goes Bananas is so bad, it makes Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo look like the combined 1940s output of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger (better known as The Archers), from The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp to The Small Back Room. In fact, I’m insulting The Archers’ films by even including them in the same sentence as anything pertaining to Herbie Goes Bananas. I could, frankly, spend this entire column cataloguing the many things in the world that are more enjoyable, funny, exciting, and lively than Herbie Goes Bananas. But while it’d be fun…well, I’m not sure how to finish that sentence. Let’s just assume the alternate-universe column where I tell you exactly...