The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T.

One of my favorite movies.

My brother and I LOVE this movie and I was so excited when it finally came out on DVD!If you're a Dr. Seuss fan, or love vintage movies, give this one a chance! It stars the impeccable Hans Conried (Disney's Peter Pan as the voice of Captain Hook) in Dr. Seuss's one and ONLY live action original film.A young boy in the 1950s loathes his piano lessons AND his piano teacher, Dr. Terwilliker. He can't understand why his widowed mother insists he keep taking them, and is convinced she is under the spell of the frightening "Dr. T". What ensues is the hilarious and dark daydreams of the very imaginative young lad, and a fun, musical filled adventure as only Dr. Seuss could create!Featuring brilliant songs such as "The Dressing Song (Do Mi Do Duds)", "Ten Happy Fingers", "Dream Stuff", "The Kids Song" and "Get Together Weather", written by Frederick Hollander and Dr. Seuss, it was nominated for Best Scoring of a Musical Picture.Sadly, this delightfully weird jewel never was a success at the box office, even after two attempts to release it in theatres. Audiences at the time weren't prepared for the colorful, seussical fantasy, and it was, at the time, a flop. Hans Conried had said, "The picture was badly cut in fear of the reappraisal after it was made, even if it was evident to those knowledgeable but inartistic heads of studio that it might have been an artistic triumph rather than a financial one. But in an attempt to make it one, they cut over 11 musical numbers and re-shot for one whole week. I had never had any such part before, never have since and probably never will again." Happily, however, it has since gained the love of the artistic masses! With ratings on Rotten Tomatoes of around 80%, the fans keep coming!I hope, you'll be the next one to enjoy the genius of "The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T", Dr. Seuss' forgotten masterpiece.

"Dr T" has traditionally been released in terrible transfers from poor prints. The LaserDisc was abominable, so dark and muddy as to be nearly unwatchable. The transfers have gotten better, the DVD in a Stanley Kramer collection being a big improvement. This Blu-ray is the best by far."Vibrant" is the word. The colors pop off the screen, especially the bright blue of the Happy Fingers hat, and Mary Healy's beautiful gowns. And then there are Dr T's costumes, especially (but not limited to) the "Doh Me Doh" outfit.Except for grain in large areas of the same color, the razor-sharp and detailed image is exactly what you'd expect from three-strip Technicolor, Even image density "breathing" in Technicolor prints is present.The film remains an appalling and ill-considered mess. No one bothered to explain to Ted Geisel that "less is more". Dialog is often unfocused and rambling. Too many scenes run on endlessly, to no particular point. On the positive side, it appears Danny Kaye turned down the role of Dr Terwilliker. This provides the delicious pleasure of watching Dr T played by the actor who was less than a decade away from voicing Snidely Whiplash. You can't get better casting than that. Tommy Rettig is, of course, the first actor to play Lassie's master on TV.As for the film, the old crack about Wagner applies: "There are moments, but oh, those half hours...". The moments include disturbingly erotic scenes of Dr T's torture chambers (including Henry Kulky's flat top & hairy chest), and (the film's high point). Dr T's "Doh Me Doh" song with its marvelous nonsense lyrics. Not far behind is the Terwilliker Institute "fight song" in which his minions proclaim just how evil and villainous they are.It's unlikely you'll ever watch all the way through more than once. But the best moments are worth sharing with friends. Amazon's budget asking price is more than reasonable. If you enjoy the odd and off-kilter, you will not be disappointed.

I love this movie, and saw it once when I was much younger, but much of it stuck with me. It is very underrated and hardly seen any more and it shouldn't be as it was the only live action picture featuring the work of Doctor Seuss. A young boy Bart Collins, is forced by his mother to take up the piano and it is easy to see that he has no interest in it at all. His piano tutor is none other than the mercurial Dr.Terwilliker who is constantly berating him for his inattention and the fact that he doesn't seem to get any better in his lessons. It is during one of these lessons that he falls asleep and enters a nightmare world where Dr. Terwilliker is a musical despot who has captured and hypnotized his mother into doing his bidding. It is Terwilliker's plan to build an institution that houses an enormous piano and recruit 500 boys and enslave them to play his greatest concert ever.As he tries to free his mother and somehow thwart Dr. T's plans, he finds an unlikely and reluctant ally in Mr. Zabladowski, a plumber hired by Terwilliker to put in sinks. Hans Conried is delightful as the nefarious mercurial Dr. Terwilliker, Peter Lynd Hayes and Mary Healy round out some of the cast and Tommy Rettig is Bart, who gives the audience a tour through a crazy dream landscape and into the dungeons where we see even the prisoners are odd as can be as they play a symphonic piece on the strangest instruments imaginable. The dungeon master even has a creepy song as he announces the floors on the elevator. Some of the other denizens of this dream world are equally strange, such a the Twins, a pair of roller skaters attached to each other by their beards, a man locked inside a drum and the very guards who sing the praises of the Terwilliker institute, with "poison Ivy covered walls." All in all, a fun film well worth seeing.