The Worst Film Ever

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

I recorded this, for some light-hearted relief as it was billed on ITV as a "romantic comedy classic". When I sat down to watch it, I was immediately drawn in by the narrative of the story and great acting from Gregory Peck. Eventually, Tony Curtis turns up and injects a modicum of humour, but it remained very far from comedy and even further from romance. Instead what I found was a poignant, sensitive, accurate portrayal of serious post-war mental illness that was handled delicately and realistically. For me, this was a positive as I'm fed up with the shock, horror, attention seeking treatment of modern Hollywood films. Indeed the whole film was a welcome change from the Too Fast Too Furious shovel-ware that constitutes modern entertainment. This had a story, a meaning and acting in spades, from all involved.If you're looking for romantic comedy, don't watch this! It's like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest on an airbase, without the laughs, so if you liked that you'll like this.

Gregory Peck can handle a good comedy, even one without covert dramatic intentions. He was fine in the frothy "Roman Holiday." And he was almost as good in "Designing Woman". This comedy in larded with serious incidents and ought to be well within his range. It is, but he and the rest of the cast are undone by a cornball script involving a paternalistic Peck as Captain Newman, in charge of an Air Force psychiatric ward in 1944, and Tony Curtis as the same kind of Jewish scrounger and manipulator that he'd been in "Operation Petticoat." The film begins with a naive conception of a military psychiatric ward. The patients are out of a comic book. The first one we meet is a jokester who plays around until somebody touches the sailor hat he insists on wearing. At that point, the patient snatches the hat away and shrieks that he shouldn't be in the Air Force; he should be in the Navy, protecting his brother. He breaks down and sobs. It's supposed to be a shocking scene. Zzzzz.Too many of the supposedly funny scenes are so corny they could have been dreamed up by a high school wit in some tiny rural town, the kind of kid whose Yearbook caption reads, "Yazoo City's Answer to Bob Hope". Curtis stands on a chair and gets the patients to sing "Old MacDonald". (Funny.) He steals a salami for them. He gives himself a surgical scrub before refilling a tubular container of little plastic cups. He steals part of the general's Christmas tree. I busted a gut laughing. Each of these scenes is treated by the director as if it's hilarious. Curtis is a fine comic actor, among the best in the business, but who could grapple with writing like this and come away the winner? There is one dramatic scene that clicks. It's less because of the way it's written than the juice Bobby Darin injects into it. I won't describe it, but I saw this film in New York when it was released and it's the only resonant scene that has stuck with me, partly because of all the energy. I won't describe it. I clearly remember only one other scene, in which Eddy Albert, as a mad and tormented Army colonel, refers to himself in the third person as "Mister Future" and, in a rare moment of lucidity, asks Peck, with a sideways stare, "Is he -- incurable?" The movie's overall level of sophistication is such that the question actually has meaning within its narrative frame. As if you were "sick" until you were "cured." Robert Duvall, another skilled actor, has a lesser role and gives a credible performance as a schizophrenic. In a catatonic state, a patient may sit for hours without moving. If the patient is moved into another position, he'll hold that one too, even if it's unusual. It's called waxy flexibility, cerea flexibilitas in the text books, and I assume that's what was being shown in the shot in which Nurse Angie Dickonson unfolds Duvall's fingers and places them in a more relaxed position.It just occurred to me that Peck and Duvall worked together in "To Kill a Mockingbird", and that Peck and Eddie Albert were pals in "Roman Holiday." Just had to throw that in. Well, while I'm dealing out trivia, more than one of the officers shown in the film are wearing the UN Korea campaign ribbon, not issued until 1950. Here's another glitch. (These non sequiturs are as easy to pitch as bocce balls.) Peck gets fourteen wounded Italian POWs and when he objects the general shouts that "we happen to be at war with Italy!" Of course, we weren't. Italy had overthrown Mussolini and dropped out of the war in 1943. But who cares about facts when you're desperate for comic situations? One of the comic situations has Curtis teaching the Italians an "ancient Indian song" to sing at the Christmas party -- "Hava Naghila." The movie has too many clichés to count and it's pitched at a low level, but it's not insulting to the viewer and it may be worth a watch.

This a serious and Harrowing tale of the psychological traumas suffered by American Servicemen .. and Gregory Peck as the struggling Doctor trying to mend damaged minds.. I find it difficult to understand why this Film has been categorised as 'Comedy' when clearly it isn't..!! Especially Bobby Darrin, delivers an outstanding performance as Corporal Jim Tompkins .. I would put this film up there with to 'To Kill a Mocking Bird ' -an outstanding performance from Gregory Peck .. There is NO comedy in this film .. the film deals direcly with the consequences of Horror in Warfare.. especially the Psychological trauma of the soldiers who survive, when they have witnessed the death of their buddies at first hand.. A film way before it's time .. -this is NOT a comedy.. but a deeply moving, serious film..

From humor to tears, drama to terror. Very few movies have had the lasting impact of Captain Newman, MD. Once you watch this movie, you will want to see it again and again. Gregory Peck is his faultless acting self. Bobby Darin puts on quite a show while on sodium-pentothal. Eddie Albert is about as creepy as possible. Larry Storch and Tony Curtis will have you cracking a rib laughing.The behind-the-lines wartime drama is probably the finest of any movie of its eraThis one easily rates 10 stars.Harv