Romeo and Juliet – High Anxiety – 22 Sept 2007

The first recording today starts with the end of the Flight of the Conchords episode of One Night Stand.

There’s a trail for Radio Week.

Then, Romeo and Juliet, a film of a Royal Ballet production of the ballet, with music by Prokofiev. You’ll know the famous bit, as it’s the theme from the Apprentice. There’s a lot of swordfighting in this, and I spent most of the time worried that someone might lose an eye. But these are highly trained professionals.

Juliet is danced by Margot Fonteyn.

Romeo is danced by Rudolf Nureyev.

Spoilers: They all die in the end.

Media Centre Description: The Royal Ballet, Fonteyn and Nureyev perform Shakespeare’s famous tragedy of star-crossed lovers. Nureyev is seen here at the peak of his physical prowess, a courageous Romeo to Fonteyn’s poetic Juliet, their innocence dooms them to the tragic end of a lovers’ embrace enjoyed only at the point of death.

Recorded from BBC FOUR on Saturday 22nd September 2007 22:58

BBC Genome: BBC FOUR Saturday 22nd September 2007 23:00

After this, there’s a trail for Flight of the Conchords. Then the recording ends with the start of The Secret Life of the Motorway. The BBC Four ident is interrupted by Charlie Brooker advertising Screenwipe.

The next recording is High Anxiety. This is on one of my tapes, but it was early on in the blog and I didn’t write much about it.

This recording, though is very glitchy. There are some scenes that are completely unwatchable. I was watching this with my daughter (who’s a Hitchcock fan) and in the end I had to dig out my old recording from the tape to watch half of it.

It’s maybe not the best Mel Brooks, but this is fun, with a lot of very silly gags. Like while driving from the airport, After the limo driver says “If you ask me, I think Dr. Ashley was a victim of foul play” very dramatic music starts playing (John Morris writes a very creditable Bernard Herrmann pastiche score) and Brooks starts looking around, only to see a coach passing with the Los Angeles Symphony Orchestra playing.

Brooks plays Dr Richard Thorndyke, who’s arriving at the Psycho-Neurotic Institute for the Very, Very Nervous where he’s the new head of the institute, replacing Dr Ashley, who died under mysterious circumstances.

Harvey Korman plays Dr Charles Montague, who isn’t pleased to see him.

Cloris Leachman plays the terrifying Nurse Diesel.

Thorndyke suffers from High Anxiety, a crippling fear of heights. And a pretty clear Vertigo reference.

It’s clear that Montague and Diesel are keeping the rich patients there rather than discharging them. Thorndyke interviews one of them, and Montague starts making him think he’s seeing werewolves – one of his symptoms.

Thorndyke keeps seeing light being reflected into his office from one of the buildings. He’s told it’s the room of Arthur Brisbane, an industrialist. He asks to see him, and Montague seems shifty. When he visits, the man he sees thinks he’s a cocker spaniel.

Thorndyke goes to San Francisco to speak at a conference. They put him on the top floor despite his fears. Inevitably, there’s a shower scene. I don’t think it’s shot for shot.

 

it ends with a crazed bellboy coming in to give Thorndyke the newspaper he had been insisting on getting, so instead of a shot of blood going down the drain, there’s printer’s ink.

He speaks at the conference, and there’s a funny sequence where he’s trying to discuss sexual matters with someone in the audience, but another attendee arrives with his two young daughters, so he has to use euphemisms.

At the conference he meets Victoria Brisbane, played by Madeleine Khan, who’s the daughter of the patient Arthur Brisbane.

He sings the theme tune to Miss Brisbane. Then he sees a photo she has of her father, and realises that the man he saw in the institute wasn’t Arthur Brisbane.

Diesel and Montague have a man following Thorndyke, so they know he’s found out their subterfuge, so she arranges for Thorndyke to be wanted by the police.

Sure enough, in the middle of the hotel lobby, Thorndyke shoots a man dead. But it’s the killer who’s been following him wearing a mask, and he meets the real Thorndyke coming out of the lift, and hands him the gun.

Thorndyke escapes. There’s a parody of The Birds.

Richard and Victoria get through airport security by dressing as an old couple and being very loud and annoying.

The film ends in a tall tower a la Vertigo, but the whole end of the recording is unwatchable. Sorry.

Media Centre Description: Spoof thriller about a psychiatrist with a fear of heights who takes a new post at the Institute for the Very Very Nervous, only to find that his colleagues are involved in some extremely shady dealings. The film lampoons Hitchcock classics including ‘Psycho’, ‘The Birds’ and ‘Vertigo’.

Recorded from Film4 on Sunday 23rd September 2007 02:13