TrueJoshNight Truly Dreadful Film

CommentsXp Best movie ever!

Fairaher The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Bluebell Alcock Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

utgard14 I can't believe Anthony Mann directed this. A director known for tense, psychological, character-driven stories. There's not an authentic character in the movie. They're all ridiculous stereotypes and caricatures. Not that they aren't enjoyable on some unintentionally funny camp level. Robert Ryan plays his role in such a way I can't tell if he's being serious (and acting badly) or intentionally hamming it up (and doing quite well). Tina Louse is extremely sexy and the highlight of the movie is her character constantly flaunting her heaving cleavage. Aldo Ray thinks he's in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof." Michael Landon is unrecognizable but amusing as Dave the albino.The film's plot is about a farmer who keeps digging up his land looking for his grandfather's buried gold. All the while his daughters and daughter-in-law are in a perpetual state of heat. There's also a silly Marxist subplot about mill workers revolting and taking back a closed mill.Those who view this as a camp film and enjoyable on that level, I sort of see their point. I mean, I didn't like it that much even for camp value. But I can see where some might. However, those reviewers here who seem to think this film is legitimately good perplex me. God's Little Acre is completely over the top, with no subtlety or intelligence about it. However, I will give it a passable score of 5 due to the camp and corn value some will get from it.

audiemurph "God's Little Acre" surprisingly defied the expectations I had after seeing the credits. I expected Robert Ryan to be corrupt and lascivious, but he instead plays the most optimistic and happy character of his career - even if he is not the brightest bulb on the tree. Actually, he is the brightest bulb on the tree - not one character (other, perhaps, than the black sharecropper played by Rex Ingram) has much brains at all. And Buddy Hackett was not the complete comic foil of the film either: he is one of the love interests, and, although ostensibly played for laughs, his love is a little too earnest for it to be a complete joke. Very interesting of Director Thomas Mann to let the actors mix it up a bit.And people always mention how Michael Landon once played the Teenage Werewolf: but this is definitely a weirder role, that of the confused and scorned albino.Anthony Mann had already made his incredible series of intense Westerns with Jimmy Stewart by this time, and so it is not surprising that "God's Little Acre"'s many tense scenes of lust and violence (and near violence) are handled so deftly and with such ease and skill by Mann.But much more interesting, I think, is Mann's decision to include in so many of his highly tense scenes other characters, who sit passively and quietly while the main protagonists battle for 5 or more minutes at a time. Watch Buddy Hackett and Fay Spain sit at a table barely moving while Tina Louise and Helen Westcott (as Rosamind) desperately try to keep a drunk Aldo Ray from going to the cotton mill to turn on the power; note Tina Louise sitting and staring, immobile, while Robert Ryan berates his spoiled rich son Jim Leslie (played by Lance Fuller) while begging him for money. The spectator-characters seem so weirdly detached in these scenes - or are they just being polite, emotionally withdrawing so as not to embarrass the speakers? Very interesting indeed.Yes, the weather in the movie is hot and steamy; and the two girls played by Fay Spain and Tina Louise are also hot and steamy; no doubt there must have been a lot of panting on the set of this film. Poor Tina can barely make it through the door with her oft-viewed bosom in the way. When did Hollywood decide to turn the South from a proud but defeated post-Confederate Lost-Cause Society into such a sleazy and seedy land full of lazy leering men and women (calling Tennessee Williams)? A great movie full of highly unusual dialogue and characters. Highly recommended.

kenjha The Caldwell bestseller about a dysfunctional Southern family becomes an entertaining potboiler. The familiar cast features at least three actors who would go on to star in popular TV series (Louise, Lord, and Landon, the last playing an albino!). Ryan has a field day as the patriarch of the family, obsessed with finding gold on his land. Louise makes a lusty film debut as Lord's unfaithful wife. Her ample bosom gets so much screen time that it should have received no lower than third billing. Using gritty black and white, widescreen cinematography, Mann does an effective job of conveying the passion and the greed of these low-life characters.

Lee Eisenberg Apparently, when "God's Little Acre" first came out, much of it was cut for the theatrical release. Watching the unedited version, one can see why (needless to say, it's all pretty tame to us in the 21st century). Part of it is Tina Louise's very presence - I mean, what man wouldn't want to be stranded on an island with Ginger Grant? - but there's also a scene where Buddy Hackett works a pump for a woman in a bathtub (if that scene isn't a double entendre, then I don't know what is!).As for the movie itself, this story of a Georgia farmer (Robert Ryan) getting convinced that thar's gold in them thar holes in his garden does quite well. The idea of him tearing up his garden is an effective parallel for how the family gets torn up in the process. As for his friendship with the African-American guy, it's probably debatable whether they were sugar-coating race relations, or if they were encouraging tolerance. There could even be debates about how the movie portrays the South in general (the characters do come across as hicks).But overall, I recommend this flick. Usually, it would sort of weaken the movie to know that some of the cast members later became famous on TV shows - especially since one was known for seducing romantically incompetent men on a certain island - but they all do very well here. This is certainly a movie worth seeing. And the theme song will probably get stuck in your head. Also starring Aldo Ray, Jack Lord, Fay Spain, Vic Morrow and Michael Landon.