Can we talk about how terrible 'Chitty Chitty Bang Bang' is

I thought "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" was the coolest book in the world when I was in the 5th grade (1966).

Even as a kid, I could still recognize what a “Mary Poppins” rip-off it was. However, that child catcher creep was TERRIFYING to me... kinda still is, to be honest.

It was like Mary Poppins except without the racist accent.

It's a weird movie. And Yes, the Childcatcher is terrifying.

It will always be better than the porn parody, "Shitty Shitty Gang Bang."

Fuck you, OP.

Anything to contribute that doesn’t riff off 50 year old culture?

I remember loving it as a kid for the crazy machines he built. It was made for kids and they liked it, so it doesn't really matter what adults think.

Robert Helpmann is The Pedo to End All Pedos!

Back in the 70s, I worked in a used bookstore that had a lot of erotica, and there was a copy of a book called TITTY TITTY GANG BANG.

Mary Poppins is just as long and boring. I've never been able to stay awake through either of those two movies.

I love it so very much.

I always liked the scene where they had to pretend to be life size mechanical wind up dolls.

I never realized it was a Mary Poppins rip off. Thanks for ruining it for me, dolls.

;-)

The choreography and singing when Truly and Caractacus are disguised as dolls is beautifully haunting.

I love it. OP is an idiot.

Scared the shit out of me.

Fun fact - Sir Robert Helpmann achieved the creepy-faced look of the Child-Catcher by taking out his dentures (he had no teeth at all).

It is too long, and the subplot of the spies is very tedious. Also, Van Dyke seems uncomfortable about having to do the whole thing in his native American accent because he had gotten so many brickbats for MARY POPPINS. But I think the score is very good if not quite on the level of MARY POPPINS. Sally Ann is perfectly fine as Truly, and you wouldn't find anything lacking in her performance if you didn't know it was meant to be Julie. Also Gert Frobe and Anna Quayle are pretty great as the Baron and Baroness.

DL Fave Robert Helpmann was camper than a row of tents in both THE RED SHOES and THE TALES OF HOFFMAN, the best of all ballet movies.

I loved it as a kid and still do. The Childcatcher wasn’t in the book but was added by Roald Dahl in the screenplay.

I think Michael Jackson intentionally modeled his face and life on The Childcatcher.

Another fun fact - Helpmann grew to hate his role as the Child Catcher because it made children - both in his ballet school and even his own relatives - afraid of him. There was an interview with him on Youtube, ages ago, where he said that as much as it was great fun to do, he wished he could go back in time and turn the role down. He seemed very sad about it.

I think the only ones who like this film are those who saw it as kids and have nostalgic memories of it. I've seen both CCBB and Mary Poppins when I was in my late teens and I hated both of them. I think I disliked MP even more, because at least the first one had some nice shots of the British and Bavarian countryside, while MP visually looked like shit, thanks to it being filmed indoors in its entirety. I can't stand studio-bound films!

That doesn't mean that I automatically hate all kiddie films I watch as an adult: I watched Disney's "Almost Angels" last weekend and I loved it - it was cute, short and had great music. Three things that can't be said for neither CCBB nor MP.

Doll on a Music Box sequence and Child Catcher's big scene are great. The rest of the film? Not so much. It's a big overblown mess.

I saw the movie as a kid during its first run at the Chinese in Hollywood. The kids hated it because we all loved the book. I especially hated the cliffhanger where the car is about to crash into sea. Curtain. Intermission. I also hated that the entire fucking thing was a story, sort of like The Wizard of Oz.

[quote]Helpmann grew to hate his role as the Child Catcher because it made children - both in his ballet school and even his own relatives - afraid of him. There was an interview with him on Youtube, ages ago, where he said that as much as it was great fun to do, he wished he could go back in time and turn the role down. He seemed very sad about it.

I'm sorry but also surprised to hear that, as I can't imagine he looked or sounded much like the child catcher in real life!

This movie was pretty creepy when I was a kid, but I think that's why I loved it. It wasn't as scary as The Witches (which honestly works as a straight forward horror film for adults as well), but it was definitely unnerving. I even remember the scene where Van Dyke burns off that guy's hair in one of his contraptions freaking me out. I haven't seen in decades, but I still remember the Toot Sweets musical number and "You're My Little Teddy Bear" number. Oh, and the music box bit. Wasn't there one with the grandpa and all those ghoulish looking guys singing about roses or something? Such a weird movie.

Now, I really want to see it again.

R25, I've had a look on Youtube but I can't find the interview. I would guess it was from around the late 70s, but it has been years since I saw it. Helpmann had quite a distinctive fine-featured face, and even with the prosthetics I think he might be recognisable to people who knew him. That, I guess, and the parents ushering children in to see their dance teacher in a new children's movie, closely followed by screaming.

I never saw the fillum, just read the book in the fifth grade.

I only watched the movie for Benny Hill.

Anna Quayle was a goddess.

There was a bunch of these dreary widescreen films of greatly forced family fun around the time. CCBB, the Great Race, Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines, Around the World in 80 Days.

Thank god altman Allen Scorsese Spielberg de Palma came along.

I loved it for its creepiness. Who wants to be practically perfect in every way?

I sort of liked the movie as a child, but then I liked almost any movie as a child. Movies were so much more fun than real life!

It was on local TV the other day, I hadn't seen it in decades, and holy shit it was awful. Was there ever a more in-your-face try-hard actor than Dick Van Dyke? Well yes, there was Mickey Rooney, but I don't think I've ever seen Van Dyke be quite as aggressively annoying as in this film! Yes, he can sing and dance, but musicals really brought out the worst in him.

[quote]r26 I still remember the Toot Sweets musical number and "You're My Little Teddy Bear" number. Oh, and the music box bit.

I remember as a child thinking the music box song was the prettiest song I'd ever heard.

It was replaced by others, but I think that's the first song I was kind of transfixed by.

A flying outhouse.

Singer Phil Collins was uncredited as a "Vulgarian child."

I played "parent" in 1995 to my ex-partner's then 5 year old. I have watched this 20 times . EEEEK!

R21 It's sort of a tribute to his performance, EVERYONE who's seen the film remembers the Childcatcher.

But yeah, as others have said here it's a bit of a dud, like Mary P.

Dick Van Dyke states in his book that he did not like the film.

NO, WE CANNOT, MOLDY POP-CULTURAL NAME-DROPPING TROLL!

You've all got me wanting to watch this again. I adored it as a kid, but never owned it on VHS for some reason. I'd just rent it all the time at the video store. Has it hit Blu-Ray yet? I bet it'd look stunning.

Product tie-in, the early years: Corgi Toys made a 5 inch model of CCBB, and I threatened to go blue in the face until I got it at Hamley's toy shop in London, 1967.

It's better that Dolittle.

Loved this film as a kid, especially the second half when the children are kidnapped.

Did “won’t somebody think of the children???” originate from this film? It sounds like something Sally Ann Howes’ character would say.

Did Truly Scrumptious change her name at the end to Truly Scrumptious-Potts?

Jemima In 2016.

Where are they now?

[quote]r45 Did Truly Scrumptious change her name at the end to Truly Scrumptious-Potts?

Truly Scrumptious deserved a bigger career! I didn't know she took over for Julie Andrews when she left MY FAIR LADY. But musicals were on the way out in the late 60s...and CCBB helped to sink that whole Good Ship Lollypop.

I think Henry Higgins is trying to teach her Eliza how to deepthroat in this scene.

Ture fact: producer Cubby Broccoli (of the early James Bond films) dropped acid before he got the idea to make this oddity.

Didn't Cubby Broccoli along with Wallace Beery beat some poor actor to death in the 30s? Not only was this film a piece of crap, it was produced by a murderer!

Wow, never heard that. Here's a long telling of that tale:

Loved it. You post? Not so much.

[quote]R50 Didn't Cubby Broccoli along with Wallace Beery beat some poor actor to death in the 30s? Not only was this film a piece of crap, it was produced by a murderer!

The face of a murderer:

Men are unfortunately so inherently violent [bold]: ( [/bold]

Mary Pickford, Gloria Swanson and ZaSu Pitts never jumped Lilian Gish in a parking lot and beat her to death.

The stuff of nightmares:

You're my little chu-chi face, OP

[quote] Mary Pickford, Gloria Swanson and ZaSu Pitts never jumped Lilian Gish in a parking lot and beat her to death.

Perhaps they didn't but they totally should have - Gish was a closet dyke and a fucking fascist. She even met Il Duce in person and was made an honorary member of his Blackshirts.

Just thinking that Julie Andrews could have been in this is making me retch a country mile.

I hated this movie when I was a kid. I'd get so fed up with it, Id leave the room. My brother loved it, and would request we watch it at least once a week.

Mattel's Truly Scrumptious doll was lovely, and there was a talking version!

We went to see this when me and my sisters were little kids. Dad would later start whistling the "Toot Sweet" song to taunt us, because we hated it! We'd run away joke-screaming.

OP You don't like it, don't watch it.

As kid in single channel land, we looked forward to it every Xmas. Good story, a chase, villains galore and a great theme song.

These days I watch it with my sibling's kids and they are as entranced, and scared by the Childcatcher. You also need to put it in context;- made in the 60s, 20 years after a war against the Germans, so why not parody the Krauts as the villains? It's called BRITISH HUMOUR. Deal with it. You're not in the rarefied air of MoMA, ya gobshite.

Dreadful film that doesn’t just lag in spots; it seems to strive for boring a child audience.

Save, of course, for the Child Catcher. Did they have any fucking idea how far they were going with that? I can barely watch that scene as an adult without feeling a shiver.

A little known fact R34....this scene was the origin of all future popping and "robot" dancing. Fans of the movie in Philly adapted these movements to combine them with a more urban vibe and the robot dancing sensation of the 80s was born.

DVD in his beach tank was a turn on...

I’m glad OP brought this movie up as it’s been years since I’ve seen it. I’m going to watch it over the Christmas break!

Saw a rerelease in a cinema around '78 and the audience of all children went fucking crazy. They were bored shitless and the cinema had to keep stopping the film to sit everyone down and try to stop them running around screaming. Is a great memory of an audience totally turning on a film, never had it before or since

I also thought it was dreadful but was taught to not scream 'When will the car fly' at a movie screen

Benny Fucking Hill.

Love.

Every city should have a fleet of child catchers!

R69 Amen to that, sistah. And a few pied pipers on top of that.

truly scrumptious

Read the book and loved it - hated the movie - when I read the book, I pictured a James Bondish bent (and rightly so) as opposed to the Sid and Marty Kroft type fantasy that is the movie.

Hmmm someone needs a trip to Hush-a-bye Mountain!

A latino boy in my class used to pronounce it "Shitty Shitty Bang Bang". Everyone's a critic.

OK, so "Days in the Sun" from the live-action "Beauty and the Beast" was stolen from the music box song. Even the subject matter is similar. They must have been going through all the songs from all the old children;s movies till they stumbled on that one.

Fraus made a list of everything in this film that might scare the little ones:

OP Come out, come out wherever you are.....

I found it boring as a child. It was on TCM a while back. I tried to watch the whole thing but It was just too long and boring and I turned it off.

Gee - I hope this thread runs for a while longer so we can get another 20 people to say how terrible it was