|
#1009: Hamlet
|
 |
| 
Leave it to Germany to turn a bleak brooding play into an even bleaker,
broodinger movie-of-the-week for German Television. This thing, made in the early
sixties, has "we're still really sorry for the war and feel terrible" all over it.
We all know the story of Hamlet. Hamlet, normal healthy young man home from college
avenges his father's death by coming onto his mom, killing his buddy's dad, driving his
girlfriend to suicide and ultimately getting suckered into a rigged duel which ends in the
death of everyone in Denmark who is inbred and has any money.
Maximillian Schell, who captured all our hearts in Disney's The Black Hole plays the
annoyingly existential Prince of Denmark with the kind of skill and range we've come to
expect from the actor Sting. King Claudius dresses like M.C. Three Hundred Pound
Oliver Reed and seems to have been dubbed by Ricardo Montalban. Polonius, on the
other hand, sounds like John Banner, TV's funny Nazi butcher Sergeant Schultz. Add to
this a cast of equally brooding actors, a set made of nothing but blocks of old unpainted
stucco, a musical score reminiscent both of Brecht plays and cabbage farts, and you have
perfect cannon fodder for a boy and his puppets.
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
| 
Prologue:
Servo insists that everyone call him "Sirveaux" from now on. Spelled
different, sounds the same. Oh, and he now spells his first name "Htom." Crow suggests
that perhaps Htom could hlick him.
Segment One:
Pearl has come up with a horrible world-killing mutant virus. Mike
couldn't give a rat's ass; he wants to play three-card monte for the choice of today's
movie. Mike wins and picks as his movie Hamlet. Pearl pulls a SWITCHAROO on
Mike and sends him the above described German turd.
Segment Two:
Crow and Servo dress up as Mike's dead dad to scare him and
perhaps have a good chuckle. Turns out that Mike's dad isn't dead, nor are any of his
relatives that they can name. Ultimately Crow and Servo yell at each other and fall over
in a snappy bit of physical, um, comedy.
Segment Three:
Crow and Servo rehearse their own unorthodox staging of Hamlet.
After having tried an all-SCUBA diving version, a bucket head version and an all-
furniture version, they decide on an all-percussion version. In this way we stick it to all
those pretentious bastards who want to do something different with this classic tragedy.
Segment Four:
Mike dresses in full Elizabethan drag for a "nutty" game show
parody called "Alas Poor WHO???" in which Tom and Mike, who play small robots
who live with Mike, try to guess which celebrity an old bone comes from. Surprisingly,
there isn't a trace of irony in this funny yet series-canceling sketch.
Segment Five:
The bots, as they usually do when they like a character, have made an
action figure of Hamlet. It talks and has a string you pull. A really long string. I mean a
REALLLLLY long string, because it talks a lot. In the castle, Pearl and Co. are visited
by Fortinbras, a character from the end of Hamlet, who is outraged that he was excluded
from this version of Hamlet. Pearl calmly pours poison in his ear and kills him.
Ultimately, Mike lets go of the very long string from the Hamlet doll, and we hear the
entire "to be or not to be" soliloquy.
|
|
|
|
|
