New York, 1929, a war rages between two rival gangsters, Fat Sam and Dandy Dan. Dan is in possession of a new and deadly weapon, the dreaded "splurge gun". As the custard pies fly, Bugsy Malone, an all-round nice guy, falls for Blousey Brown, a singer at Fat Sam's speakeasy. His designs on her are disrupted by the seductive songstress Tallulah who wants Bugsy for herself.
the cute gimmic of the movie, and one that makes it easy for realistic recreation in school theaters, are the ping pong ball guns. In the movie the resulot was a cream/pudding/cool whip "splatter"
The signature mess shot by the splurge guns is quoted in the DVD notes by Alan Parker, the director and writer, as being ‘doughnut cream’, with the production getting through 100 gallons of the stuff. This wasn’t actually fired by the guns as the early experiments proved them to be too dangerous, with Alan and other members of the production staff injuring themselves when experimenting. As a result, the guns fired ping-pong balls, with the cream thrown by hand from off camera, an effective solution with careful editing
The other lead actress, never had another role, and went into the Air Force after high school
The 1930s style pedal cars could run at a maximum speed of approximately 10mph and were both built by hand. They were initially only capable of being driven with the weight of one driver, so in a number of clips where there are passengers, often the cars were being pushed by strong men out of shot
you can see that there were very few of these pedal cars made for the movie: the above white and black ones, the below one with the copper grill
and this green cargo flat bed, seen above and below
and here you can see that the pedal cars are so heavy with a couple kids in them that they must be pushed in addition to being pedaled.
here you see the same copper grill car
and the copper flat bed cargo van again
and this is one other car they made, a convertible, only seen very briefly once prior in the movie when it wasn't marked as a cop car
Currently on Amazon video for only two more days. Hey, I only looked it up yesterday, I didn't think ANY streaming service would have it
I loved this film as a kid and its still one of my favourites. I really wanted one of those cars when I was growing up. Thanks for the tip that's its on Amazon at the moment, I hadn't spotted it on there.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad to find that at least one other person is excited to learn that this is available to watch, only in December, as they remove it in January. I had no idea that anyone would remember this at all, as it's likely that we only saw it on tv once, and never since it's only broadcast on ABC in 1976 or 77. I remember just how catchy the two songs were, and watching it last night was a real treat!
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