MovieChat Forums > Ruby Gentry (1953) Discussion > Oh Lawd, the melodrama!

Oh Lawd, the melodrama!

posted 12 years ago by thepixinator
5 replies | jump to latest

This has to be one of the worst movies of all time. Charlton Heston's ridiculous voice is impossible to get past. It's like he specifically tried to create the lounge singer version of spoken dialogue. It was hilarious!

I could swear there was the sound effect of monkeys in the background of the North Carolina swamp. Now, I may have been born and raised in Western NC, but I can pretty much tell you the swamps of Eastern NC don't have any monkeys.

Jennifer Jones clearly needed to stick with playing more subdued highbrow characters, because her overacting of the low-class, overly expressive female lead was so over the top as to be unbelievable.

Carl Malden performed as well as could be expected, but what did he have to work with? What a weird and creepy character. Ick.

Filmmakers try emulate great Southern gothic stories by making up for the lack of a good story with a lot of sex. They ended up with a steamy and silly emotional swamp. I can see myself watching this again with childhood friends for laughs.

[–] atasusan 12 years ago

I totally agree! First (and only) time I saw the movie was when it came out in '52 and I was in high school. We laughed at the melodrama then, especially the final scene of crawling through the swamp. My husband wondered why I was watching the silly thing last night, but I had to go back to my teen-aged years and see how super-bad this movie was.

[–] James_Byrne 12 years ago

Super-bad!!!
You wouldn't know a cult classic if it hit you in the face, woman!

http://www.secretoftheincas.co.ukhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhSPcAyCgwE

[–] MystMoonstruck 11 years ago

I'm watching that scene now. The sounds aren't from a monkey/ape. That's the call of a kookaburra, which is found in Australia~meaning it's still goofy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qix6oUxim3Q

There's scarcely a jungle picture that doesn't have a few of these cries as sound effects. I suppose they figure that they're unidentifiable to most people.

Here's another effect used many times:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qY8-HooF9I

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKx58Tftl0Y

*** The trouble with reality is there is no background music. ***

[–] thepixinator 11 years ago

@MystMoonstruck:

Very interesting with the sound effects. My Mom grew up in Eastern North Carolina. I should ask her how overrun they were with pea fowl and Kookaburra . LOL.

A life lived in fear is a life half-lived

... Strictly Ballroom

[–] MystMoonstruck 11 years ago

It just tickles me when the "laughing" bird shows up so often in movies, from U.S. forests/woods to the Amazon jungle=} I wonder how the sound effect is labeled that it ends up being used so often and incorrectly.

I hear peacocks in many movies with no rhyme or reason. I'm familiar with their call because, when we lived in Florida for about a year back in the Fifties, we heard their calls every day from a nearby zoo. BTW: When I would visit Rockome Gardens north of here, I always had chats with the peacocks. It's hilarious how they would at first cock their heads looking for this other bird then give up and start answering~just in case.

*** The trouble with reality is there is no background music. ***