The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones: Hollywood Follies (1994)

I admit that I only watched this film because it had Erich von Stroheim in it, and didn't even finish watching it, and know nothing about the Indiana Jones series, so maybe I'm missing something here, but so much about this movie was so terrible that it wasn't even funny.

It wasn't ALL bad -- actually, the sets and costuming were excellent (the 1920s - such an aesthetically pleasing time period!). And the bits of the actual movie "Foolish Wives" were good, because they had the authentic Erich in them. The most painful parts seemed to occur whenever the main characters had dialogue. Some of the lines exchanged between young Indiana Jones and the heroine made me want to retch. There are some actors whose delivery and skill can make a cheesy piece of dialogue work -- these two do not belong to this group. They were trying to be youthfully cutesy, and the results were not pretty. The heroine says things you'd never expect anyone to say in normal conversation, lines that sound clumsy and forced, especially out of her mouth -- she doesn't seem comfortable in her role.

And then there's Erich von Stroheim. True, the guy did seem to be having a lot of fun playing the role -- and the back of his head was identical to Stroheim's (you couldn't really expect much more; Stroheim was unique, no conventional Hollywood pretty-boy, and you'd be hard-pressed to find someone whose looks were remotely similar). Actually, the scenes with Stroheim would have been enjoyable IF he hadn't used that overdone corny fake German accent. Did he do any research at ALL? Did he bother to look at any of the talkies Stroheim was in? Erich von Stroheim was Austrian. Austrian! Austrian!! And there's a huge difference between an Austrian and a blatantly false German accent. It was embarrassing -- I might have been able to enjoy it and root for him if he had been a bit more convincing, but I couldn't get over the way he was mangling Stroheim's delicate growl, with that lilting Austrian twang, into the voice of a hysterical cartoon Nazi.

Whew, I needed to get that off my chest.