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DVD Review The Lieutenant Wore Skirts DVD Review (1 Viewer)

Matt Hough

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The Lieutenant Wore Skirts DVD Review

After scoring a hit recreating his Tony-winning Broadway role in the movie version of The Seven-Year Itch (though its popularity was probably more ascribed to its top-billed star Marilyn Monroe), Tom Ewell next went into another even more deliberate domestic farce, this time with one of Fox’s Marilyn Monroe substitutes Sheree North The Lieutenant Wore Skirts. Broadly written and directed and with gender roles and character behaviors based on the times that seem obnoxiously dated and insulting now, The Lieutenant Wore Skirts doesn’t show anyone in his or her best light though there are admittedly a few amusing moments.

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Studio: Fox

Distributed By: N/A

Video Resolution and Encode: 480P/MPEG-2

Aspect Ratio: 2.55:1

Audio: English 2.0 DD

Subtitles: None

Rating: Not Rated

Run Time: 1 Hr. 38 Min.

Package Includes: DVD

Amaray case

Disc Type: DVD-R

Region: 1

Release Date: 09/26/2014

MSRP: $19.98




The Production Rating: 2.5/5

Former Air Force major and now television writer Gregory Whitcomb (Tom Ewell) is called back to active duty from the reserves, but he’s so blissfully happy in his three-year marriage to the younger Katy (Sheree North) that he’s not anxious to upset his happy home. Katy is so perturbed that she reenlists to reclaim her former rank of lieutenant so her husband can choose her to go with him as a part of his staff. But, he fails his physical after it’s too late to prevent Katy being sent to Hawaii on a two-year stretch, so he makes it his mission to follow her to Hawaii and get her discharged any way he can.Director Frank Tashlin also co-wrote the script with Albert Beich, and it fairly reeks of the era’s typical ideas about gender roles and mistrust of one’s mate in marriage (e.g. it’s the woman of the family who washes clothes and dishes, cleans, cooks, and markets; all older men with younger wives must be constantly on the lookout for wolves out to steal their women; men and women can never under any circumstances be merely friends without ulterior motives). In addition to those tropes which simply don’t register as funny any more (if they ever did), Ewell’s Gregory decides eventually that the best way to get his wife drummed out of the service is by a Section Eight (mental disturbance), but the tricks he plays on her to make her crack up seem cruel now rather than funny, and one isn’t surprised when she decides to leave him rather than endure any more of his crackpot schemes. (There never seems to be a moment where the couple sits down and rationally discusses their situation and their options; instead, everything is done in wild-eyed, irrational spur of the moment decisions that are supposed to be funny but which make the characters seem simple-minded and silly.) Tashlin at one point seems so desperate to generate some laughs that he stages a Seven-Year Itch scene between Ewell and Rita Moreno doing her best Marilyn Monroe imitation (they even use the Alfred Newman Itch background music for this sequence). Only the capper by Ewell earns any laughs at all. But the tiresome jealousies between the Air Force servicemen thinking Ewell is making time with their wives while they have to be at work is so wearying, and everyone in the cast is pressing way too hard to make what’s feeble seem funny.Pushing the hardest to squeeze laughs out of the material is top-billed Tom Ewell, but seeing him so inept with housework (vacuuming up overflowing soapsuds from the sink) and doing manipulations which any fool would see would alienate a wife rather than captivate her just makes him wear out his welcome long before the film is over. Sheree North looks great and has lots of opportunities to be outraged over her husband’s antics, but she doesn’t get to be as funny as she could be with better material. Les Tremayne as Gregory’s bachelor agent has an appealing laid back quality and gets some entertainingly wry lines to speak. Rita Moreno also looks stunning (even without the forced Marilyn Monroe impersonation in that notorious sequence) and seems geared for action every time she hits the spotlight. Rick Jason as the lothario pilot plays his one-note character acceptably, but better work is turned in by Alice Reinheart as Katy’s superior officer, Edward Platt as a wily psychiatrist, and Gregory Walcott as the most outraged of the husbands whose mistrust of his wife and Gregory proves so dated. Look fast for a young Leslie Parrish as a drunken guest at the anniversary party near the film’s beginning.


Video Rating: 4.5/5 3D Rating: NA

For a change, Fox Cinema Archives has put its best foot forward with one of its Cinemascope transfers. This 2.55:1 anamorphically enhanced widescreen transfer is terrific with good (if not always great) color and sharpness that is as good as the Bausch and Lomb lenses used at the time can generate. Apart from a stray dust speck or two and one moment where stability with the image goes wonky, this is a bright, appealing picture (one wishes we could have this kind of quality for Good Morning Miss Dove or 23 Paces to Baker Street). The film has been divided into chapters every ten minutes so there are 10 chapters present.



Audio Rating: 4/5

The Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo sound mix offers the directionalized dialogue popular at the time, always well recorded and always easily discernible. Cyril J. Mockridge’s background score also comes off nicely (along with a host of Fox movie themes like "Love Is a Many Splendored Thing" and "Something's Gotta Give" woven into the score), and the sound effects likewise have been mixed with the other elements with aplomb. As with most of the Cinema Archive releases, the volume level is too high, and one will need to make a manual volume adjustment to prevent distortion.


Special Features Rating: 1/5

Theatrical Trailer (2:31)


Overall Rating: 2.5/5

An only average follow-up to The Seven-Year Itch (the trailer makes it clear the film was meant to be that even though they have only Tom Ewell in common), one’s mileage with this film may vary from mine if the tired 1950s sitcom-style attitudes about marriage and gender roles don’t get you down. The Cinema Archive release certainly does all it can to make the film as appealing as possible.


Reviewed By: Matt Hough


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JoHud

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This is one of those I'm only really in for the Tashlin gags, though It probably does stand poorly as a "sequel" to the first movie. Probably would have been better if it was fully scripted by Tashlin as his script contribution to this most likely was limited to peppering it with a few gags.

Tashlin directed movies also tend to work best when not saddled with a standard domestic plot, but rather more elastic ones that give in to unbridled slapstick. However, this sort of material is hardly new material for him. Again, I suspect Albert Beich's script to be at the heart of the problem on this one. Even Blake Edwards can't save substandard material.

Lastly, Tashlin has always been on the burlesque side of things, so dated gender roles come as absolutely no surprise. I imagine his now infamous leg fetish is apparent throughout the film.
 

Matt Hough

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JoHud said:
This is one of those I'm only really in for the Tashlin gags, though It probably does stand poorly as a "sequel" to the first movie. Probably would have been better if it was fully scripted by Tashlin as his script contribution to this most likely was limited to peppering it with a few gags.

Tashlin directed movies also tend to work best when not saddled with a standard domestic plot, but rather more elastic ones that give in to unbridled slapstick. However, this sort of material is hardly new material for him. Again, I suspect Albert Beich's script to be at the heart of the problem on this one. Even Blake Edwards can't save substandard material.

Lastly, Tashlin has always been on the burlesque side of things, so dated gender roles come as absolutely no surprise. I imagine his now infamous leg fetish is apparent throughout the film.
Oh, yes. Leg fetish in full flower.

And I fully acknowledge that it's not fair to judge it by 21st century standards when it was trading on the expectations of the era in which it was made, but for me, I just couldn't get into the spirit of it when so many things going on bothered me so much.
 

Robin9

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As the picture quality of this disc is so good, I'm going to buy it, especially as I'm a Sheree North fan. I'm not sure I'm a fetishist concerning her legs but I certainly admire them! Going from memory, Rita Moreno also has good legs.
 

Adam Gregorich

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PC or not we have a few copies to give away. To enter list your favorite "fish out of water" comedy from any studio. Usual rules apply, must be 18 or over, current HTF member and have a shipping address in the US or Canada. Contest ends Monday November 3rd at 8PM PT.
 

JohnS

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I'm gonna go with a choice that I was surprised by.
Legally Blonde (2001) MGM
 

Adam Gregorich

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Sorry for the delay in closing this one out, but we have 4 winners chosen at random:

LWS.PNG

Congratulations to:
ScottGros117
bujaki
Virgoan
Charles Ellis

Please PM me your address and I will get them sent out. If I don't hear from a winner by Tuesday AM (11/11 at 11:11AM PT) I will pick a different winner.
 

Robin9

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I watched the DVD-R of The Lieutenant Wore Skirts last night. I was very pleased with the disc; good picture quality and directional dialogue. If only Fox would give us missing-in-action Fox titles in the same quality: films like The Revolt Of Mamie Stover, Bernadine and A Certain Smile.

I enjoyed The Lieutenant Wore Skirts a lot. Maybe I was just in the right mood and maybe the whisky I was drinking made me a sucker for dim-witted comedy, but I liked the film. It was good to see a young Sheree North get a true star role. Did I see Dale Robertson in a bit part? I think I did.
 

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