Good start, but then it gets ruined

Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

In 1938 Los Angeles, the manager of the Culver Hotel leaves his nephew in charge for a weekend. The nephew changes the name to the Hotel Rainbow and overbooks with royalty, assassins, secret agents, Japanese tourists, and munchkins from the cast of 'Wizard of Oz'. Secret Service agent Bruce Thorpe and casting director Annie Clark find romance amidst the intrigue and confusion........So,e films can be very hard to find because the makers of the film had a little disagreement with the studio, so it can be very hard to get a proper release, so it just pops up on TV every now and again (think Michael Mann's The Keep).Others just remain hidden because they are so bad, that everybody involved wants to forget that it ever existed.And this has to be the prime example of such a film.What Chase and Fisher are doing in this film is anyone's guess, maybe the studio had something on them, photographic evidence of some sort of major crime, because they do nothing, absolutely nothing, to add a little depth to the proceedings.But then they must have seen the dailies and realised that whatever they would try, would not add any coherence to the film.Because the film is just an exercise in the offensive, being abhorrent to almost every single character on screen. So the last two acts consist of dog murders, vertically challenged people really showing themselves up, and the entire Asian cast getting murdered for some strange reason.But regarding the dwarf element of the chaos, surely they must have realised that they were having so many liberties taken from them, and their disability. Shouldn't have there have been a spokesperson or something to observe the atrocities that were being committed on screen.It's a woefully unfunny, offensive film, that should have never seen the light of day.Don't search for it, it's not available for a reason.

The Singer Midgets return to Hollywood and face the many legends which have filled movie books for years. Of course, they don't mention Nazi agents on the set and a fancy royal couple with a pooch named Strudel. Chevy Chase is a government agent guarding the Duke and Duchess and Carrie Fisher guarding the residents of Munchkinland and the winged monkeys. This leads to chases all over the Rainbow Hotel and MGM studios, visiting the "Gone With the Wind" set, pretty remarkable considering it was filmed at Selznick. The actual surviving "Wizard of Oz" munchkins appear as themselves, many ageless considering that Oz was made 40 years before.Sounds promising, yes? NO! This is one of the great comic disasters over the past 40 years, a film so unfunny that I wanted the witch to swoop down and cover them with the poison from her hourglass. Eve Arden tries very hard with a Eastern European accent to be amusing but is defeated by tasteless material concerning her beloved pup whom she fails to recognize with changing looks. Joseph Maher also tries as the Duke with similar results. Billy Barty gets a few good pratfalls as the German spy who starts his mission by hailing Hitler right in the no-nads. With its Mel Brooks style humor, you think there would be some humor but all it ends up being is a Bugs Bunny cartoon where all the gags land with a thud. And oh, those songs, which sound like the original munchkin songs sped up to make the voices even higher.

To first hear of UNDER THE RAINBOW is to disbelieve. No, a big studio wouldn't be dumb enough to fund a spy comedy caper set against the backdrop of the filming of THE WIZARD OF OZ with 150 drunken midgets. You're pulling my leg, right? Wrong! It is real and it is terrible. It feels like every exec's 70s drug binge induced dreams were all wrapped up tightly into one project and spat out at audiences in the early 80s.In 1938, Adolf Hitler (yes, that Adolf Hitler) sends his top spy (Billy Barty!) to the US to meet up with Japan's no. 1 spy (Mako!) to deliver a map of American military targets to get the US into WWII. Unbeknownst to Barty, his rendezvous is a hotel (run by Adam Arkin) across the street from a movie lot where 150 Munchkin extras are staying. Also at the hotel are a Duke and Dutchess (Joseph Maher and Eve Arden) who are being guarded by Secret Service man Bruce Thorpe (Chevy Chase) who also has his eye on OZ midget wrangler Annie Clark (Carrie Fisher). You still with me? You shouldn't be.So how bad is this flick? Well, the opening ten minutes have Billy Barty saluting Hitler and hitting him in the crotch. Nothing like Nazi humor in 1981. Perhaps the filmmakers were influenced by the "success" of Spielberg's 1941? And who exactly is this made for? The reliance on slapstick, dogs and midgets would suggest kids. But the midgets are all boozing it up and there is a brief sojourn through a woman's locker room. There are also some weak attempts at humor involving the Japanese. Get this...the Japanese take lots of pictures and mispronounce things! Amazingly, it took 5 writers to make a movie this unfunny (proving that DATE MOVIE isn't just an age thing). Perhaps the film's biggest copout is that, in the end, it is all just a dream of a guy who got knocked on the head a la THE WIZARD OF OZ. To the film's credit, there is one funny gag involving Tony Cox, who has since gone on to become Hollywood's leading little funnyman. Also featuring Zelda Rubenstein and Phil Fondacaro alongside his brother Sal Fondacaro (who is also a little person despite them being born years apart).

I recently left a message for MGM, regarding a release of "Under The Rainbow" on DVD, & sent them a link to the IMDb comments about this movie.If you would like your comments heard, please visit the following MGM web page, http://www.mgm.com/help.do, and instantly let your request be known.With any luck, our comments will be forwarded to the appropriate department, & they will finally get the ball rolling on a DVD release of this cult classic.Thanks! ...Randy G. :)