Flashback Movies:"Who framed Roger Rabbit?"(1988)

Eddie & Roger

DVD cover

Last week the 1988 animated and live action movie "Who framed Roger Rabbit?" came on one of the cable channels and my little girl goes"Mama,theres real people in a cartoon!!!!"That is part of what propelled this movie to the number 2 spot on the top movies of 1988,just below "Rain Man".It combined animation and live action in a whodunit style plot that featured "cameos" from dozens of current and past characters from Disney,MGM,Warner Brothers and Paramount.

In the film,which takes place in "Toon Town",Marvin Acme,the owner of Acme Company(where Wile Coyote gets all his rockets!)and owner of Toon Town,is murdered and Roger Rabbit,a character for "Maroon Studios" is framed for the crime.His wife is the sexy Jessica Rabbit.He,along with washed up human detective Eddie Valiant(Bob Hoskins) ,must find a way to clear his name and stop Toon Town from being taken over and torn down.

Numerous injoke references to other cartoons appear in this movie and there are alot of rumors swirling around supposed"hidden messages" in this movie,as well as a crotch-shot by Jessica Rabbit.Allegedly if viewing on laser disc or DVD,you can see the phone number of Disneys Michael Eisner onscreen.The alleged crotch-shot is semi-truth.In an earlier edition of the laser disc and VHS,when Jessica tumbles out of the wrecked cab,she appears to have no undies on and Disney attributed this to a "badly painted animation cel",Subsequent editions are altered,with the 1999 release cels showing her wearing white panties and the 2002 DVD releases edited to keep her skirt discreetly covering her undies.Try it out and see for yourself-the Tv version always has the undies!

Also,Just before Eddie falls off the building, the words "For Good Times, call Allyson 'Wonderland'" can be seen on the wall behind him.
A brief scene consisting of the toon Baby Herman passing by a female (human) extra on the set of the opening cartoon and sticking his middle finger up her dress, and then coming back from under the dress with a drool of spit on his lip. This was edited out of the first DVD edition of the movie, though it can be found on editions of the VHS and laserdisc.Pretty funny,eh?

Some even swear that Daffy Duck utters the "N" word in this movie but he does not-with closed captioning you can clearly see what he is saying and it is NOT "N".

However if you look close during a scene where Eddie is falling from the sky with Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny,you can clearly see Bugs flipping off Mickey with a one-finger salute!I am not lying,its there if you look!

While there were plans to do a second film,which would be a prequel set in 1940 and with a Nazi plot,as of 2007 it is not in development,mostly due to high production costs but Frank Marshall has expressed interest on producing it.

The movie also spawned toys,comic books and other collectibles-McDonalds partnered with Disney to distribute dolls from the movie-which have become bona fide Disney Collectibles.

All in all,it is a one of a kind movie and it was quite different from what we were used to in 1988.Disney gambled with it,and it was a success.If you have never seen it,I recommend it-its appropriate for kids as well as adults.

80's Flashback TV

One of my favorite shows to come from the 80's was "Unsolved Mysteries" which premiered 20 years ago on NBC,and went to the CBS network in 1997,where actress Virginia Madsen cohosted.It was cancelled in 1999 and resurrected again by Lifetime in 2001 for one more year.It featured re-enactments of mysteries ranging from ghost stories to reunited family members to crimes and appealed to the public for any tips on the cases.Quite a few old cases were solved after being rerun many years later on Lifetime and when that happened,Lifetime would add an update to the end credits.The spooky theme music and Stacks voice was enough to give you the willies before you even watched the show.They did alot of UFO related stories if I recall.

If you were home alone,the scary re-enactments were just too much to take lol but you still watched anyway.I really miss this show,so I was psyched to learn that both HBO and Spike TV have expressed interest in a revamped version of "Unsolved Mysteries" and rumors are flying that James Earl Jones will lend his talents to the HBO show.Great choice,but he is no Robert Stack!

I remember they had one mystery on the show that was local-a man in Sussex County came home to find his mother dead late one night at the hands of a hitchhiker he left on the road earlier after a scuffle.He had picked the guy up at an Arbys in Harrington and if I am not mistaken,there was new info in that case not too long ago.It was a great show and I would love to see it brought back-it has value,just like "Americas Most Wanted" does.Most of the episodes are available on DVD in volumes 1 thru 6,each volume with approximately 30 episodes each and organized by genre-UFO's,ghosts,miracles,etc.