It seems everything you didn't like about the movie are items that were changed from what your preferences were. Do you really think the film would have improved if they had given Lee better lines or even the lines from the 1931 version? I think people, myself included, would have attacked the film for trying to be that 1931 film. This film helped bring in eye candy and throwing out the brain candy.
It's funny this whole discussion broke out because yesterday I was walking around Borders looking for a book to take to work and read. While walking around I saw a copy of Dracula and carried it around for a while because I thought about reading it since so many fans get upset over all the movies not being faithful. I don't hear so many complaints about this in regards to Jekyll and Hyde or Frankenstein so I thought I'd give Dracula another read to see what everyone was so unhappy about. I've only read it once but I remember the book being rather boring and having many dry spots.
Souls for Sale (1923) 
Rupert Hughes
A young woman, Remember Steddon (Eleanor Boardman) is on a train, hours after her wedding to an evil man (Lew Cody) when she decides to jump overboard. She walks through the desert only to be rescued by a movie actor and his director (Richard Dix) who eventually falls for the woman and swears to make her a star. This Goldwyn Pictures release has become quite famous over the years due to several famous cameos that pop up throughout the running time. The most famous is a scene with Erich von Stroheim directing a scene from GREED and one of Chaplin directing A WOMAN IN PARIS. We also gets scenes from THE ETERNAL THREE and THE FAMOUS MRS. FAIR, which is important as both of these films are now lost so seeing the footage here is the only thing we have left. We also get cameos from various other famous faces but in the end, all this sidetrack really takes away from the actual story trying to be told. That story itself really isn't all that interesting or entertaining as it's quite bland and straight-forward even for 1923 standards. The entire subplot with the husband being a serial killer really seems out of place and leads to some rather silly drama. What does work are the performances with Boardman coming off extremely good here. She's very believable in the "ordinary" role and the young Dix is also quite good as the leading man. Mae Busch, Barbara La Marr and Frank Mayo are also nice in their roles. Cody is good as the serial killer even though his character wasn't needed. Back in the 20's and 30's Hollywood was great at making movies about itself. This one here isn't one of the best but there are enough curious aspect for film buffs to give it a shot.
Uncle Tom's Cabin (1927)
Harry A. Pollard
Universal dropped $2 million on this adaptation of Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel, which had been one of the best selling books other than the Bible. The film tells the story of slaves Eliza (Margarita Fischer) and George (Arthur Edmund Carewe) who, after being married, get sold off and spend the rest of the film trying to locate their kid. Also sold off and taken away from his family is Uncle Tom (James B. Lowe) whose prayers don't sit too well with his new master. One has to consider when this film was made and what people then actually thought about black people. This movie has its heart in the right place but I'm sure many would watch this film and find it nearly as racist as something like THE BIRTH OF A NATION. With this film, the blacks are shown to be human but we get the same stupid stereotypes that had hampered countless films before this one. We get blacks standing around with their eyes bugged out with large smiles on their face. We get the "so happy to be a slave" routine, which includes fun dancing and singing. It's always rather strange to see the slaves being shown as happy as their rich owners. The roles of Eliza and George were light-skinned characters in the book and they're played by white people here. That's somewhat to be expected as most black characters were played by whites in blackface but thankfully the director didn't do that here with Uncle Tom and many of the supporting characters. This film was groundbreaking in the use of black actors and on a historic level, this keeps the movie entertaining throughout. Lowe also gives the best performance in the film and delivers a character who will certainly touch the viewer in his strength. The actor does the role justice, which is all you can ask for. Virginia Grey made her film debut here and is quite charming. The rest of the cast members act as if they're doing a stage play but they're fairly good. The film does have a few interesting technical achievements with two coming during a death scene where we get a beautiful camera shot and then a nice special effect of a spirit going to Heaven. The ending is also quite powerful as Uncle Tom's master goes crazy and begins abusing various people.
Shack Out on 101 (1955)
Edward Dein
Insane cult movie starts off as some sort of bizarre comedy before turning into an over-dramatic, Red Scare film. Terry Moore plays a waitress at a rundown shack that seems to get the same customers night after night. Her boss and restaurant owner (Keenan Wynn) has a crush on her but she belongs to a Professor (Frank Lovejoy). The cook, Slob (Lee Marvin) has his own plans for the waitress and might be hiding a few more secrets. Okay, I had heard a lot of good things about this movie but you never know what you're going to get we you check into a cult film. I found there to be some rather funny stuff early on but I thought the second half really fell apart as we get into more drama. The drama never worked for me because it was rather confusing trying to figure out what the movie was trying to do. For the life of me I couldn't understand why the first half had so much trashy humor only for it to disappear and turn into a warning picture. I still can't figure out what the bad guys were trying to do to begin with. What works the best is all the insult humor and some of it is downright hilarious. The insults thrown at Marvin's Slob character gets the most laughs because he fits the part so well. Marvin clearly steals the film and his great performance is enough of a reason to watch the movie. Lovejoy is pretty bland in his role but Wynn is great and matches wits with Marvin quite well. Moore is easy on the eyes but delivers little else. Whit Bissell turns in a nice supporting performance. In the end, this remains a must see due to Marvin's performance but I wish they'd kept the entire film like the first half.
Royal Rodeo, The (1939)
George Amy
Silly and rather predictable Western/Musical from Warner has a young King (Scotty Beckett) looking up to cowboy star Bill Stevens (John Payne). The King eventually gets to meet his hero when the traveling rodeo comes to town and sure enough, the King is going to need to be saved from a bad assistant. This film has a few nice things going for it but not the items you might expect. Payne, before becoming a star, manages to be pretty good here even if his line reading is a tad bit hollow. The rodeo stuff is rather bland as we've seen the stunts done various times before and there's really nothing new added to them here. Where the film does succeed is with the music, which includes tracks such as 'Yankee Doodle', 'Oh! Susanna', 'The Good Old American Way' and a couple others. Another plus is the Technicolor, which really looks nice even if the print on Turner Classic Movies is somewhat faded in certain scenes.
America, Preferred (1941)
The U.S. Department of the Treaury, along with MGM, produced this 7-minute short, which asks Americans to buy U.S. Defense bonds and Saving bonds. We get a soldier addressing movie crowds and telling them how they can help the country win the war by not even leaving their homes. We then get the story of how bonds are going to save the country. History buffs will more than likely find this thing a lot more entertaining that just a film fan wanting entertainment. There's really nothing overly special here in terms of filmmaking but one can't deny the interesting aspect of the film because of the history behind it.
Speed Week (1957)
Howard Winner
Yet another entry in the hardly-ever interesting RKO/Sportscope series, which has been showing up on Turner Classic Movies the past several months. This time out we travel to Nassau, Bahamas where we see the famous "Speed Week" where various automobile races are held. Andre Baruch once again does the narration and once again nearly put me to sleep. The more I see from this series the more I'm starting to think its main goal was trying to have the same magic as MGM's Passing Parade or TravelTalks series. This series from RKO rarely comes close to either of those and this here is another example of a film that doesn't work. The narration always hits me as being a tad bit off from what we're actually seeing. When there's comedy on the screen the narration seems to be dry and dark. When there's something more dramatic on the screen then we get a light hearted narration of the events. The visuals here aren't too bad but in the end this short comes off pretty lifeless.
Striper Time (1956) **
Van Campen Heilner
RKO/Sportscope entry has Andre Baruch once again providing the narration. This time we're in Gayhead, MA as we see a couple fishermen getting ready to go after striped bass who are also known as striper. We see the two fishermen getting ready, preparing to go out and eventually catching the film. Pretty much every negative thing I've said about previous entries in this series still hold true here. We get the bland and boring narration and we also get told a bunch of stuff and none of it is very interesting. For starters, do we really need to hear about the "big wimpy pole"? I personally don't think so but it seems this series tells more worthless information and I'm not sure why. The actual fishing scenes are quite nice as is some other footage at the start of the film shot on the docks but this is pretty much it.
They're Always Caught (1938)
Harold S. Bucquet
Another nice entry in MGM's Crime Does Not Pay series. This time out a tough Mayor is trying to get all the corruption out of the city. He learns that the D.A. is working with a crime lord so he asks for his resignation. Later that night the D.A. plants a bomb in the Mayor's car, killing him and throwing blame on an innocent man. It seems like an easy case but the latest technologies make it far from being over. This short seemed to be made just to show criminals that there are new ways for them to get caught. The use of hair, fingernails and dust was something new back then and it was nice seeing the way the equipment was used to gather all the evidence. This film does a nice job at breaking everything down where people back then would be able to understand what was going on even though by doing this the actual story of the film takes a few hits. This film would later be remade as KID GLOVE KILLER but I've yet to see it to compare how close they are. Received an Oscar-nomination.
Glimpses of Florida (1941)
James A. FitzPatrick
One of the better entries in MGM's TravelTalks series takes a short trip to Florida where we get to see and learn a few interesting things. The short starts off telling us how palm trees came to be a staple in the state and then we get to see some of the extremely nice tourist locations. Swanee River is shown as are some Seminole Indians living along its shore. The most interesting sites are those of a reptile institute where we see turtles and alligators being caught by some workers as well as rattlesnakes being milked for their venom. The underwater photography looks incredibly well here and this is one reason why this short works so well. The stuff with the gators and turtle was a lot of fun and looks extremely well in the wonderful Technicolor. Fans of the series will certainly want to check this one out but so will those who usually turn the station when TCM airs on of these shorts.
Amalfi Way (1955)
A rather bland short from MGM takes us on a tour of the Amalfi coast in South Italy. We take a look at the coastline, which as the documentary tell us, has several Juliet's for the various Romeo's out there. We also see various famous churches and get an idea of what it would be like to visit them. This is a pretty boring short from start to finish and it doesn't help that narrator John Costello appears to be falling asleep while working. The camerawork isn't all that interesting and one has to wonder why MGM was trying to copy their own TravelTalks series, which ended a year earlier. It's clear they were going for the same effect but this thing here just comes off as a lazy copycat.
Optical Poem, An (1937)
Oskar Fischinger
This 6-minute animated short is considered by many to have been the inspiration for Disney's FANTASIA. This film contains various animated images being played to Franz Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 and makes for quite a ride. In his day, director Fischinger was pretty much overlooked and after during down a job offer from Disney, he would eventually be fired by both MGM and Paramount. His animation career never took off in the movies but years later his work began to be reevaluated and today's he's considered one of the best. This, considered his best film, is pretty strong in terms of its visual style even though it's rather simple. A blue background with various circles, squares and other images. The film moves along quite well, although the six-minutes do start to get a bit long towards the end.
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); anyway, my point is that you're taking the film to task for not being what it's expected to be (or should be). Is this the way we should be judging every film adaptation?
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