To celebrate the birthday of Denholm Elliott, here is video of the late, great British actor pointing a peeing dog at Dudley Moore

On this date in 1922, Denholm Elliott was born in Ealing, Middlesex, England. The great British actor — who passed away in 1992 — distinguished himself in many movies, most notably Station Six Sahara, King Rat, Alfie (as the seedy abortionist hired by Michael Caine’s irresponsible womanizer), Too Late the Hero, The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, A Doll’s House, Robin and Marian, Raiders of the Lost Ark and Trading Places.

But I must confess: Whenever I hear or read Elliott’s name, the first movie that pops into my head is The Hound of the Baskervilles, a spoofy 1978 take on the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle story directed by Andy Warhol protégé Paul Morrissey, starring Peter Cook and Dudley Moore as, respectively, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. Although it went unreleased in the United States until after Moore had scored box-office hits with Ten (1979) and Arthur (1981), my wife and I saw it during a day trip to London, Ontario while attending the 1978 Stratford Shakespeare Festival (where, by the way, we saw Maggie Smith in Macbeth and Private Lives, so feel free to turn green with envy). 

Critics have never been kind to this film, but I count it among my most treasured guilty pleasures. And the first time I saw Elliott aiming a urinating canine at Moore — well, it’s the closest I’ve ever come to literally falling onto the floor laughing since I first saw the killer rabbit scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

P.S. The one time I ever got to do a telephone interview with Denholm Elliott, during my 1982-95 run as film critic for The Houston Post,  I figured it would be a good idea to wait until the very end of the conversation to mention how much I was amused by this scene. And I can’t tell you how relieved I was to hear that he, too, thought it was pretty damn hilarious.  

First thoughts on Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

The immensely entertaining Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull gives you the same sort of pleasurable rush – a potent mix of nostalgia-fueled glee and in-the-moment excitement -- that you can get from a really great concert by a favorite band that first started charting in the 1980s. That is, provided it’s a concert where (a) the original players are obviously and unashamedly older, but still at the top of the their form, (b) they play both the oldies and the new stuff with the same full-out, rock-the-house energy, (c) the new members of the group fit in seamlessly because they’ve got the same beat, and (d) a bandmate who left the group a few albums back makes a welcome return midway through the performance.

Here’s a tip of the fedora to Steven Spielberg for offering no fewer than three sly tributes to the late, great Denholm Elliott, the actor who played Indy’s friend and colleague in Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. And another hat-tip to Cate Blanchett, who isn’t content merely to be a good sport while playing the villain of the piece. Instead, she insists on being a good actor – and makes Irina Spalko, a Cold War-era Soviet femme fatale, an altogether worthy opponent for the whip-cracking, wisecracking hero. Take my advice: Go. Now. Enjoy.