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Released by: Mill Creek Entertainment
Released on: June 7th, 2016.
Director: Roy Rowland
Cast: Tommy Rettig, Mary Healy, Hans Conried, Peter Lind Hayes, Jack Heasley
Year: 1953
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The Movie:
Teenaged Bart Collins (Tommy Rettig) leads a pretty mundane life, or so he thinks. Making matters worse, on top of the typical adolescent grumpiness he contends with day in and day out, he's forced to take piano lessons from the stern Dr. Terwilliker (Hans Conried). To say he's not fond of Terwilliker would be an understatement. He's also none too fond of the way that Terwilliker interacts with his widowed mother, Heloise Collins (Mary Healy) - he seems to have an unusual sway over her. Of course, the fact that Bart's mind tends to drift during his lessons does him no favors. This doesn't go unnoticed by the disciplinarian in charge of his musical education. The only one Bart feels comfortable turning to is August Zabladowski (Peter Lind Hayes), the kindly plumber who has been working on the house a lot lately.
One such daydream finds Bart in a strange predicament as he imagines himself as a prisoner in the bizarre Terwilliker Institute before the teacher opens the otherworldly facility to the masses. His plan? To force five hundred boys to play a giant piano non-stop! Here, Bart sees his mother serving as Terwilliker's assistant, but he knows there's more to this than that - the sinister doctor has hypnotized the poor woman into doing his bidding. With no one else to turn to, Bart enlists the aid of Zabladowski, who is in the facility to - you guessed it - work on the pipes, to help him escape with his mother in tow.
The only live action film that had the involvement of the late Dr. Seuss, The 5,000 Fingers Of Dr. T, which was produced by Stanley Kramer and directed by Roy Rowland, is a wild exercise in kid-friendly cinematic insanity. It is as absurd and surreal as you'd expect, if you're familiar with Suess' output, but at the same time, it speaks to Bart's problems. Given that his father has passed away and his mother is on her own, it makes sense that he'd see the kindly Zabladowski as a father figure of sorts and that, in turn, explains why he's one of the heroes in the fantasy Bart experiences. Seeing his mother under the control of Terwilliker is also a manifestation of how Bart clearly feels about his mother's relationship with the piano teacher. The fantasy mixes up both Bart's general malaise with his piano lessons with the type of emotion and feeling that anyone his age might feel in his home life - but the emphasis here is on the fantastic, much more so than the familiar. There's a bit of character development in this regard, but it's not particularly deep.
Performances are fun. Tommy Rettig is likeable enough in the lead, which is clearly an important factor in making this work. His character is a bit underwritten but he does just fine in the part, even if not nearly as much is asked of him as there could have been. Mary Healy is fine as his mother, more interesting as the hypnotized version of herself than the 'real world' variation but good enough in the part. Peter Lind Hayes is fine as the noble and good intentioned August Zabladowski, but the best performance definitely comes from Hans Conried who makes heretofore unseen levels of pompousness and arrogance seem effortless. He steals pretty much every scene that he's in, and thankfully he's in quite a few of them.
The real star of the film, however, is the sets and the production design. The Terwilliker Institute is a series of impossibly skewed sets, all clearly built by hand in an era long before CGI backgrounds were even a thought. Add to this loads of bizarrely colored backdrops and completely bizarre looking costumes for the various denizens of the Institute and, well, maybe it's style over substance but if nothing else, it's a trip!
Video/Audio/Extras:
The 5,000 Fingers Of Dr. T arrives on Blu-ray in a very nice AVC encoded 1080p high definition transfer framed at 1.33.1. The 25GB disc has plenty of breathing room given that this is a barebones release with lossy audio, so there are no obvious compression issues. Typically detail looks quite strong, texture is also impressive. Very minor print damage shows up here but if you're not looking for it you probably won't even really notice it, it really is pretty miniscule. Grain is present, as you'd hope, but never overpowering - this is quite film-like. Colors look excellent and are reproduced very nicely here, while black levels are strong and solid. There's good depth throughout the image - this looks really nice.
Audio chores are handled by a Dolby Digital Mono track, there's no lossless option here, and it sounds fine. It doesn't sound amazing, mind you, but it's workable if a bit flat and occasionally a little muddy. A lossless option is always ideal on Blu-ray and this hardly takes full advantage of the format but it works. There are no alternate language or subtitle options provided.
There are no extras, just a static menu offering chapter selection.
The Final Word:
The 5,000 Fingers Of Dr. T is pretty nutty stuff, a wildly imaginative kids film that really stands out and makes you pay attention! Mill Creek's Blu-ray is barebones and uses lossy audio but it looks really nice and it's priced right. Recommended!
Click on the images below for full sized Blu-ray screen caps!
