New on Blu-Ray | The Bank Dick, Bedlam, The Ghost Ship, Santa Fe Trail, Shadow of the Thin Man
THE BANK DICK (Edward F. Cline, 1940) - Kino Lorber W.C. Fields teamed up with frequent Buster Keaton collaborator Edward F. Cline to create this freewheeling, stream-of-consciousness comedy that somehow ended up on Stanley Kubrick's list of the 10 greatest films of all time. While I wouldn't go quite that far, it is an impressive piece of work, an almost avant-garde piece of anti-cinema masquerading as a lowbrow comedy, in which Fields stars as drunken, henpecked ne'er-do-well Egbert Sousé ("accent dram above the e") who accidentally helps apprehend a gang of bank robbers and finds himself with a new job protecting the local bank as a security guard. But when his daughter's boyfriend "borrows" $500 from the bank to buy an engagement ring on the day the bank inspector arrives for a surprise visit, Sousé must do all he can to distract the inspector while his future son-in-law tries to come up with $500 to pay his debt before anyone notices. What make
