JUST IMAGINE-1930-This whacked out musical-comedy-fantasy is set in the far flung future of 1980 where everyone has numbers instead of names. Part of the plot involves a man (comedian El Brendel, who speaks with a phony Swedish accent) from 1930 being revived in the future. The other part has a guy J-21(John Garrick) who's in love with a married women LN-18 (Maureen O'Sullivan in her third movie). The musical numbers are pretty hokey and quite bizarre in some cases. The art deco sets and special effects are great though.
For years this movie was unseen (I think it might have been considered a "lost film") but in the '60's the horror magazine "Famous Monsters Of Filmland" occasionally ran stills from JI and editor Forrest J Ackerman touted it as one of the greatest films ever made. I wonder if he ever saw it?!
Anyway, a scientist convinces the J-21 to take a spaceship to Mars with his best friend RT-42 and Brendel, who's character chooses the name Single 0. The inhabitants are very strange and the men appear to be gay ("She's not the queen, he is")!
JUST IMAGINE was written by the songwriting team of DeSylva, Henderson and Brown (they wrote a huge amount of famous songs but none from this movie) and directed by David Miller who made many movies in the '30's & '40's including directing Karloff, Lugosi and Lorre in the Big Band comedy-mystery YOU'LL FIND OUT. In the late '50's he turned to TV.
Thanks for reading!
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