I will say, having seen High School Confidential recently, that I’ve now seen MVD in three total movies and she is just not a good actor. Lots of people were pretty unconvincing in High School Confidential but she was probably the worst actor of the lot. Granted, there’s other obvious reasons she’s cast in movies, but I have seen comments out there from some wondering why she never got as famous as Marilyn Monroe! I wasn’t around back then, but I’d have to guess that, besides the fact that MM really does show up better on camera, she could also read lines and sound like a human being half the time.
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I like Van Doren as an actor, but as stated upthread: a dancer and singer she is not. The cringe of the closing number is really off the scale.
It’s also possible that a more high-end production would’ve done a better job with songs and choreography. It might not be all on her.
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That’s a good point. Weak directors don’t help actors give good performances, and most of what we see on MST3k didn’t exactly come from top directors.
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Yeah. Avalanche is a prime example. I’ve seen Farrow and Hudson give good performances because they had directors who actually cared about something other than constant bean-counting and clock-watching.
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I should mention that I watched this via a YouTube channel where somebody has provided captions, both for the movie’s dialogue and the riffs. This is extremely helpful, so I don’t miss anything. (I love DVDs with captions anyway, and always use them if they are available.)
Here’s the channel. There aren’t very many episodes captioned (17, I believe), but what there is delights me.
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