First-time mama Shala welcomed two sloth bear cubs in early December, and after several weeks bonding in their private den, the shaggy-haired sweethearts are making their debut. pic.twitter.com/1q3oSofOXF
First-time mama Shala welcomed two sloth bear cubs in early December, and after several weeks bonding in their private den, the shaggy-haired sweethearts are making their debut.
Sloth bears Melursus ursinus live in hot, dry grasslands and forests in Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal and Sri Lanka. They have distinctive chevron-shaped or U-shaped chest markings, a long muzzle (longer than that of other bears) with an elongated snout, lips that can form a tube shape, allowing them to feed by noisily suctioning ants and termites right out of their nest mounds, nostrils that they can close when feeding on termites and ants (to avoid inhaling dirt), and prominent ears covered in long hair.
Sloth bears’ upper incisor teeth are effectively missing, which helps them to more easily vacuum up insects. In the wild, most of a sloth bear’s diet consists of ants and termites, although they also eat fruit, vegetation, flowers, honey, sugarcane, and sometimes grubs, eggs, and carrion. In their native habitats, sloth bears play an important role in their environment, reseeding forests and grassland areas by distributing seeds they eat, in their scat.
The San Diego Zoo has a long history with sloth bears, first welcoming two Indian sloth bears in 1940, and later, in 1979, becoming the first Zoo in North America to exhibit Sri Lankan sloth bears. The first Sri Lankan sloth bear cub ever born and raised in the Western Hemisphere was born at the Zoo in 1985, and many other sloth bears have called the Zoo home in the more recent past, including a bear named Kenny, who could imitate one of the keepers making a “raspberry” sound as a greeting.
It will be interesting to see how people interpret today’s events in the oval office with Zelensky.
Overall, 30% of American adults say the U.S. is providing too much support to Ukraine in its war with Russia. That’s up slightly from 27% in November 2024, just after the U.S. presidential election. At the same time, the share of adults who believe the U.S. is not providing enough support to Ukraine has increased slightly: 22% say this, up from 18% in November. These shifts mean that U.S. opinion about support for Ukraine is now closer to preelection levels.
About one-in-five Americans (23%) say the level of U.S. support for Ukraine is about right, down slightly from 25% in November. Another 24% say they are not sure, down from 29% over the same period.
That was three weeks ago. I suspect that it won’t change substantially due to today’s events. My only hope is that the viral clip of Trump ranting incoherently about Hunter Biden’s bathroom breaks through the cacophony and brings a few of those people who weren’t sure over to the right side. Not that it matters. This country is now a Russian ally whether we like it or not.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth last week ordered U.S. Cyber Command to stand down from all planning against Russia, including offensive digital actions, according to three people familiar with the matter.
Hegseth gave the instruction to Cyber Command chief Gen. Timothy Haugh, who then informed the organization’s outgoing director of operations, Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Ryan Heritage, of the new guidance, according to these people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity.
The order does not apply to the National Security Agency, which Haugh also leads, or its signals intelligence work targeting Russia, the sources said.
U.S. negotiators pressing Kyiv for access to Ukraine’s critical minerals have raised the possibility of cutting the country’s access to Elon Musk’s vital Starlink satellite internet system, three sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.
Ukraine’s continued access to SpaceX-owned Starlink was brought up in discussions between U.S. and Ukrainian officials after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy turned down an initial proposal from U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, the sources said.
Starlink provides crucial internet connectivity to war-torn Ukraine and its military.
The issue was raised again on Thursday during meetings between Keith Kellogg, the U.S. special Ukraine envoy, and Zelenskiy, said one of the sources, who was briefed on the talks.
During the meeting, Ukraine was told it faced imminent shutoff of the service if it did not reach a deal on critical minerals, said the source, who requested anonymity to discuss closed negotiations.
“Ukraine runs on Starlink. They consider it their North Star,” said the source. “Losing Starlink … would be a massive blow.”
Foreign adversaries including Russia and China have recently directed their intelligence services to ramp up recruiting of US federal employees working in national security, targeting those who have been fired or feel they could be soon, according to four people familiar with recent US intelligence on the issue.
We are barely a month into the second presidential term of Donald Trump and he has made his top priorities clear: the destruction of America’s government and influence and the preservation of Russia’s.
Unleashing Elon Musk and his DOGE cadres on the federal government, menacing Canada and European allies, and embracing Vladimir Putin’s wish list for Ukraine and beyond are not unrelated. These moves are all strategic elements of a plan that is familiar to any student of the rise and fall of democracies, especially the “fall” part.
The sequence is painfully familiar to me personally, because I marched in the streets as it played out in Russia at the start of the 21st century. With ruthless consistency, and the tacit approval of Western leaders, Putin and his oligarch supporters used his fair-ishly elected power to make sure that elections in Russia would never matter again.
Of course, American institutions and traditions are far stronger than Russia’s fragile post-Soviet democracy was when Putin took over from Boris Yeltsin, who had already done his share of damage before anointing the former KGB lieutenant colonel to be his successor in 1999. But those who dismissed my warnings that yes, it can happen here at the start of Trump’s first term, in 2017, got quieter after the insurrection on January 6, 2021, and are almost silent now.
Trump’s personal affinity for dictators was apparent early on. His praise for Putin and other elected leaders turned strongmen, such as Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, was tinged with undisguised envy. No feisty parliament to wrangle. The free press turned into a propaganda machine for the administration. The justice system unleashed against the opposition. Elections staged only for show. What’s not to like?
We are now full-fledged Russian allies and they know it:
There was a massive blow up in the oval office today between Trump, Zelensky and JD Vance. The so-called “deal” for the minerals is off and Zelensky ended up leaving the White House. Trump says that he won’t be welcome until he wants peace. By that he means that he won’t be welcome until he’s willing to grovel before him. I don’t think that’s going to happen.
The blow up happened when Vance said Zelensky hasn’t thanked America.
"You've gotta be more thankful" — remarkable scenes out of the White House as Trump and JD Vance team up to do Putin's bidding and demean Zelenskyy pic.twitter.com/wjp8UfqN0G
Trump didn’t just yell at Zelensky and put on a big show of pretend dominance. It’s clear that he wants to abandon Ukraine, he hasn’t made a secret of it, and he made clear what side he is on today:
Trump to a reporter who asks him about Russia breaking a ceasefire: "What if a bomb drops on your head right now … Putin went through a hell of a lot with me. He went through a phony witch hunt." pic.twitter.com/7Z1IdNvMcr
It wasn’t about thanking America. It was about groveling before Dear Leader and licking his boots on national TV. It was a set-up — Vance was primed to make this demand and Trump was prepared to demean and humiliate Zelensky. Unfortunately for them, Zelensky didn’t play along the way they wanted him to.
Keep in mind that the mineral deal he was there to sign was an empty deal that meant nothing. There was no security guarantee and the minerals are worth very little. Zelensky was only going to get a tiny bit of daylight solely on the basis of how eagerly he sucked Trump’s… toes in front of the whole world. It was essentially meaningless.
As I wrote earlier this week, the post war world order is dead and NATO is almost certainly gone for all intents and purposes. . The European countries will now arm up to defend themselves and that may very well be nuclear. Great stuff.
He continues:
The US is now on the side of the big, autocratic, nationalist countries against the democracies. A world of transaction, drained of values, in which might makes right if you are big and the small are expected to capitulate.
This mirrors how Trump governs at home. If you believe in any values proposition, if you are vulnerable in any way, if you don’t serve a particular interest of his, you aren’t just disposable – you are the enemy.
Capitulation does not work against that mindset. You give a pound of flesh, he will try to take five. You have to know what you stand for and who stands with you. Ukraine and Europe need to determine how they can survive not only without the US, but with the US at best neutral at worst adversarial.
We have switched sides. It’s done. We have to adjust.
By the way, I happened to be doing my monthly hit on Majority Report when this came down today. Yikes:
“The chaos that is reigning right now is causing everyone to sit on their hands.”
That’s Citadel CEO Ken Griffin, ON Semiconductor CEO Hassane El-Khoury, Franklin Templeton CEO Jenny Johnson, and Nasdaq Private Market CEO Tom Callahan on the world of Donald Trump right now. Their comments over the past week capture a growing disquiet among business leaders, a month into a presidency that many of them had cheered.
“What decision do you make? Do you want to go left or right?” El-Khoury told Semafor in an interview this week. “Are we going to grow the business? Well, I don’t know. Are there tariffs or not?” (Since that interview, Trump threatened to double his own proposed 10% tariffs on China and put a 25% levy on European goods.)
CEO optimism is fading as Trump pushes ahead with trade restrictions, while business-friendly deregulation has yet to materialize. US consumer confidence in January recorded its biggest one-month decline since November 2023. The US stock market, long Trump’s preferred proxy for economic might, is lower than it was before his inauguration, trailing major indexes in Europe, China, Mexico, and Canada — all targets of the president’s planned tariffs.
Still, they aren’t exactly shouting it from the rooftops. Maybe when the tariffs hit and unemployment and inflation jump they’ll get a little bit more openly agitated? It won’t be long before we can see. They certainly are proving one thing — they don’t give a damn about the country.
A mystery disease in Congo has killed over 50 people—half within 48 hours of getting sick and it’s spreading rapidly.
We don’t need no stinking NIH or CDC or WHO. We’re done with all that. Don’t worry, Donald Trump and Bobby Jr will lead us through it. They’re geniuses. Eat some organic grapes and drink a Diet Coke. You’ll be fine.
A case in point, his continued insistence that tariffs are not paid for by a country’s own businesses and consumers.
Reporter: Americans who are concerned about higher prices believe, as most people do, that tariffs are paid by consumers and importers when they import things into this country.
Trump: ….It's a myth that's put out there by foreign countries that really don't like paying… pic.twitter.com/uWGK9QevWq
It’s a lot. One of the main questions I get about what’s going on is a simple, “why are they doing this?” It seems inexplicable that anyone would think such a chaotic, disorganized, slipshod assault on necessary government functions makes sense in a complex world in which millions of lives are dependent upon them working. There is nobody in America, even the most fervent Trump voters, who could have expected that he would essentially turn the government over to Elon Musk and allow him to take it apart with a chainsaw in the first months of his presidency. So why are they doing it?
Trump’s campaign was based upon restoration. He was going to finish the job he started before the Democrats rigged the election and stole the White House from him. His issues weren’t much different than the first time he ran. Immigration topped the list, tariffs were going to solve every economic problem, foreigners were going to pay up and he was going to end whatever the fever swamp culture war issue of the day happened to be, in this case “DEI” and transgender people. He said he’d bring costs down with “drill, baby, drill” and would initiate the usual GOP roll back of regulations and tax cuts. And he somehow convinced millions of Americans that they had been rich when he was president before and vowed to make them prosperous and happy once more.
Many of us were aware that there was another agenda, a very detailed one, called Project 2025, which Trump said he hadn’t read and disavowed. I think we knew that it was likely going to be at least attempted because many of the people involved were Trump insiders but it was unclear whether they’d be able to accomplish their goals especially since Trump didn’t seem particularly interested in massively cutting government. Whenever he was asked about the deficit or downsizing government services, with a few exceptions, he waved it away because he was going to bring in so much money with the tariffs a that it would all be taken care of. He believed that voters weren’t all that interested in details and he was right.
Yes, he originally wanted to become president again to stay out of jail but the Supreme Court took care of that last summer so it became a moot point. And of course he wants to accumulate as much money as possible and is quite successful at doing that as president. So far, he’s shown that he no longer cares at all about the appearance of corruption and is openly trading in Crypto schemes and foreign investment partnerships as president. So it’s not making money that’s making him do what he is doing and it certainly isn’t ideology because he has none. No, the motive that is driving him to do everything he’s doing is simple: vengeance.
That was the one issue that Trump never failed to bring up on the campaign trail and it’s the one, I believe, that motivates everything he is doing today. I’ve written about his philosophy of retribution extensively over the years because he’s never tried to hide it and it clearly is one of the single greatest clues to his character. But it’s now gone far beyond his desire to hurt individuals — he’s now intent upon seeking revenge against the country itself, maybe even the whole world.
Trump is seething with anger and resentment at having been officially exposed as a sexual predator, a fraud, a coup plotter and a thief. He’s still upset about the Russia Investigation, which he even brought up again on Thursday explaining that he and Vladimir Putin were bonded over it which is why he feels he can trust him. Imagine the fury and frustration he feels at people knowing, no matter how much he says otherwise, that he lost the 2020 election and couldn’t admit it. The damage to his fragile psyche is overwhelming and all he wants now is to wreak revenge on his enemies.
And this goes beyond his well-known desire to go after the Department of Justice and the FBI. This week he signed an executive order pulling security clearances from a private law firm that is representing former Special Prosecutor Jack Smith. He couldn’t be more clear about his motives. Note the steely ire in his voice as he talks about how he’s been “targeted.”
President Trump to a legacy media reporter on the order suspending security clearances for employees who engaged in lawfare with Jack Smith:
“I've been targeted for four years… I was the target of corrupt politicians for four years. Don't talk to me about targeting.” pic.twitter.com/Zzc6IfKTJG
For example, he’s angry at the leaders of the military for refusing to carry out his illegal and unprincipled orders so he installed a gadfly with no respect for them or military traditions as the Defense Secretary and he’s fired anyone who would attempt to thwart him in the future. He doesn’t like Canada Prime Minister Justin Trudeau because he’s young and good looking so he’s pushing the inane idea of annexing his country as the 51st state. He’s abandoning Ukraine, which he irrationally hates, probably because he associates it with his humiliating first impeachment.
Here he says that the EU was formed to screw the United States so he’s going to screw them back with huge tariffs. But in reality on some level he knows that he’s in over his head and that they know it too.
Even his allowing the violent, misogynist brothers, Andrew and Tristan Tate back into the country is a metaphorical slap in the face to all the women who spoke up about his assaults, Stormy Daniels and the enduring humiliation of being caught on that Access Hollywood tape as a predatory creep.
Finally, consider that Elon Musk’s wrecking crew is really a way of punishing America for failing to love him the way he believes he should be loved — unambiguously and unanimously. If his own MAGA supporters have to pay as well, that’s their own fault for not working harder on his behalf.
Donald Trump is 78 years old and he’s been frustrated his whole life that he couldn’t ever seem to get the respect he believed he deserved. Now, having been restored to this position of power with no one to stop him, he’s settling accounts.
Think you’ve seen everything? N.C. Republicans propose that future voter registration drives be conducted with sample forms — facsimiles, not official forms. The sample forms shall be “for informational purposes only and shall not provide spaces for an individual to fill in the individual’s personal information.” So, Republicans would like to see voter registration drives that don’t actually register voters, just provide information on how someone might register on their own.
Anyone who uses a genuine form in their voter registration drive shall be a Class 2 misdemeanor under proposed House Bill 127.
Of course, there is a lot of heat coming down over N.C. Court of Appeals Judge Jefferson Griffin’s Trumpish attempt to steal a state Supreme Court seat. (Did I mention that Griffin’s accomplices in this election-stealing are Troy Shelton, Craig Schauer & Mike Dowling of the Dowling Firm, and Phil Thomas of Chalmers, Adams, Backer & Kaufman?) So maybe Republicans in the legislature simply drafted HB 127 as an outrage-generating distraction.
Nah.
David Pepper calls states like North Carolina “Laboratories of Autocracy.” But I might argue that the Tar Heel State is not just “First in Flight” but “First in Autocracy.” It’s said that much of U.S. social and technological innovation starts in California and works its way east. Not when it comes to election fuckery.
Did I mention that Cleta Mitchell lives in North Carolina?
A grassroots movement is calling on all Americans to abstain from shopping with major retailers — including Amazon — tomorrow, February 28, as part of an “economic blackout.”
The purpose is to send a clear message: We have the power. We don’t have to accept corporate monopolies. We don’t have to live with corporate money corrupting our politics.
We don’t have to accept more tax cuts for billionaires. We don’t have to pay more of our hard-earned cash to Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos or Mark Zuckerberg or the other billionaire oligarchs.
We don’t have to reward corporations that have abandoned their DEI policies to align themselves with Trump’s racist, homophobic, misogynistic agenda.
We have choices.
I attended the local Indivisible’s “Here We Go!” 2025 Kickoff meeting last night. Had to park two blocks away. It looked like this. Standing room only and a wait to get in. May your local resistance efforts be as well-attended. Today’s blackout was on the agenda.
Oscar-winner Gene Hackman, his wife and one of their dogs were apparently dead for some time before a maintenance worker discovered their bodies at the couple’s Santa Fe home, investigators said.
Hackman, 95, was found dead Wednesday in a mudroom, and his 65-year-old wife, Betsy Arakawa, was found in a bathroom next to a space heater, Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office detectives wrote in a search warrant affidavit. There was an open prescription bottle and pills scattered on a countertop near Arakawa.
Denise Avila, a sheriff’s office spokesperson, said there was no indication they had been shot or had any wounds. […]
“He was loved and admired by millions around the world for his brilliant acting career, but to us he was always just Dad and Grandpa,” his daughters and granddaughter said in a statement Thursday. “We will miss him sorely and are devastated by the loss.”
Having grown up watching his movies (he appeared in over 70 feature films between 1961 and his 2004 retirement from acting), I will miss him sorely as well. As will many others:
Damn straight…you never caught him acting. Like all of the greatest actors, he knew how to listen. And how to react. Musician Billy Bragg commented on Bluesky that Hackman was “a fabulously flawed Everyman” onscreen. I concur. This morning, Digby and I were commiserating via text, and she described him as a “character actor leading man” (which I thought was a great way to put it), adding that his film technique was “so subtle and intimate”.
A good listener, a great re-actor, a fabulously flawed Everyman, subtle and intimate…all these attributes are reflected in 7 of my favorite Hackman performances (in alphabetical order).
All Night Long – This quirky, underrated romantic comedy from Belgian director Jean-Claude Tramont has been a personal favorite of mine since I first stumbled across it on late-night TV back in the mid-80s (with a million commercials).
Reminiscent of Michael Winner’s 1967 social satire I’ll Never Forget What’s ‘is Name, the film opens with a disenchanted executive (Gene Hackman) telling his boss to shove it, which sets the tone for the mid-life crisis that ensues.
Along the way, Hackman accepts a demotion offered by upper management in lieu of termination (night manager at one of the company’s drug stores), has an affair with his neighbor’s eccentric wife (an uncharacteristically low-key Barbra Streisand) who has been fooling around with his teenage son (Dennis Quaid), says yes to a divorce from his wife (Dianne Ladd) and decides to become an inventor (I told you it was quirky).
Marred slightly by some incongruous slapstick, but well-salvaged by W.D. Richter’s drolly amusing screenplay. Hackman is wonderful as always, and I think the scene where Streisand sings a song horrendously off-key (while accompanying herself on the organ) is the funniest thing she’s ever done in a film. Despite Hackman and Streisand’s star power, the movie was curiously ignored when it was initially released.
Bonnie and Clyde – The gangster movie meets the art house in this 1967 offering from director Arthur Penn. There is much more to this influential masterpiece than the oft-referenced operatic crescendo of violent death in the closing frames; particularly of note was the ingenious way its attractive antiheroes were posited to appeal to the counterculture zeitgeist of the 1960s, even though the film was ostensibly a period piece. The real Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were nowhere near as charismatic as Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty…but we don’t care, do we? The outstanding cast includes Hackman (memorable as Clyde’s brother Buck), Estelle Parsons, Michael J. Pollard, and Gene Wilder (his film debut).
The Conversation – Written and directed by Francis Ford Coppola, this 1974 thriller features Hackman leading a fine cast as a free-lance surveillance expert who begins to obsess that a conversation he captured between a man and a woman in San Francisco’s Union Square for one of his clients is going to directly lead to the untimely deaths of his subjects.
Although the story is essentially an intimate character study, set against a backdrop of corporate intrigue, the dark atmosphere of paranoia, mistrust and betrayal that permeates the film mirrors the political climate of the era (particularly in regards to its timely proximity to the breaking of the Watergate scandal).
24 years later Hackman played a similar character in Tony Scott’s 1998 political thriller Enemy of the State. Some have postulated “he” is the same character (you’ve gotta love the fact that there’s a conspiracy theory about a fictional character). I don’t see that myself; although there is obvious homage with a brief shot of a photograph of Hackman’s character in his younger days that is actually a production still from (wait for it) …The Conversation!
Downhill Racer – This underrated 1969 gem from director Michael Ritchie examines the tightly knit and highly competitive world of Olympic downhill skiing. Robert Redford is cast against type, and consequently delivers one of his more interesting performances as a talented but arrogant athlete who joins up with the U.S. Olympic ski team. Hackman is outstanding as the coach who finds himself at loggerheads with Redford’s contrariety. Ritchie’s debut film has a verite feel that lends the story a realistic edge. James Salter adapted the screenplay from Oakley Hall’s novel The Downhill Racers.
The French Connection – I have probably seen this film 25 times; if I happen to stumble across it while channel-surfing, I will inevitably get sucked in for a taste of William Friedkin’s masterful direction, Ernest Tidyman’s crackling dialog (adapted from Robin Moore’s book), Gene Hackman and Roy Scheider’s indelible performances, or a jolt of adrenaline:
Gerald B. Greenburg picked up a well-deserved Oscar for that brilliant editing. Statues were also handed out to Friedkin for Best Director, producer Philip D’Antoni for Best Picture, Hackman for Best Actor (Scheider was nominated, but did not win for Best Supporting Actor), and Tidyman for Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium.
It’s easy to see how Hackman’s work here put him on the map; his portrayal of “Popeye” Doyle is a wonder to behold. Talk about a “fabulously flawed Everyman” …he is slovenly and bereft of social skills, but on the job, a force to be reckoned with; driven, focused and relentless in his desire to catch the bad guys. Doyle’s obsession with his quarry “the Frenchman” (Fernando Rey) becomes his raison d’etre; all else falls by the wayside.
Hackman plays him as a working-class hero of a sort. The criminal he seeks to take down is living high off his ill-begotten gains; cleverly elusive, yet so confident in his abilities to cover his tracks he seems to take perverse pleasure in taunting his pursuer. This is film noir as class warfare. Or …this could just be a well-made cops and robbers flick with cool chase scenes.
Night Moves– Set in Los Angeles and the sultry Florida Keys, Arthur Penn’s 1975 sleeper stars Hackman as a world-weary private investigator with a failing marriage, who becomes enmeshed in a case involving battling ex-spouses, which soon slides into incest, smuggling and murder. As always, Hackman’s character work is top-notch. Also with Jennifer Warren (in a knockout, Oscar-worthy performance), Susan Clark, Edward Binns, Harris Yulin, James Woods and Melanie Griffith (her first credited role). Alan Sharp’s intelligent, multi-layered screenplay parallels the complexity of the P.I.’s case with ruminations on the equally byzantine mystery as to why human relationships, more often than not, almost seem engineered to fail.
Prime Cut – This spare and offbeat 1972 “heartland noir” from director Michael Ritchie (with a tight screenplay by Robert Dillon) features one of my favorite Lee Marvin performances. He’s a cleaner for an Irish mob out of Chicago who is sent to collect an overdue payment from a venal livestock rancher (Gene Hackman) with the unlikely moniker of “Mary Ann”.
In addition to overseeing his meat packing plant (where the odd debt collector ends up as sausage filler), Mary Ann maintains a (literal) stable of naked, heavily sedated young women for auction. He protects his spread with a small army of disturbingly uber-Aryan young men who look like they were cloned in a secret Nazi lab.
It gets weirder, yet the film is strangely endearing; perhaps due to its blend of pulpy thrills, dark comedy and ironic detachment. It’s fun watching Hackman and Marvin go mano a mano; and seeing Sissy Spacek in her film debut. Also with Gregory Walcott (a hoot as Mary Ann’s oafish, psychotic brother) and Angel Tompkins. Gene Polito’s cinematography is top-flight.
Young Frankenstein – Writer-director Mel Brooks’ 1974 film transgresses the limitations of the “spoof” genre to create something wholly original. Brooks goofs on elements from James Whale’s original 1931 version of Frankenstein, his 1935 sequel, Bride of Frankenstein, and Rowland V. Lee’s 1939 spinoff, Son of Frankenstein.
Gene Wilder heads a marvelous cast as Dr. Frederick Frankenstein, the grandson of the “infamous” mad scientist who liked to play around with dead things. Despite his propensity for distancing himself from that legacy, a notice of inheritance precipitates a visit to the family estate in Transylvania, where the discovery of his grandfather’s “secret” laboratory awakens his dark side.
Wilder is quite funny (as always), but he plays it relatively straight, making a perfect foil for the comedic juggernaut of Madeline Khan, Marty Feldman, Peter Boyle, Cloris Leachman (“Blucher!”), Terri Garr and Kenneth Mars, who are all at the top of their game. The scene featuring a non-billed Hackman (as an old blind hermit) is a classic (“My…you must have been the biggest one in your class!”).
This is also Brooks’ most technically accomplished film; the meticulous replication of Dr. Frankenstein’s laboratory (utilizing props from the 1931 original), Gerald Hirschfeld’s gorgeous B & W photography and Dale Hennesy’s production design all combine to create an effective (and affectionate) homage to the heyday of Universal monster movies.
