In Praise of Foley

Glaring sound effects are just too difficult to squeeze into such a quiet film. The restorers can make the drop of a hat sound like a gunshot, but they can't quite bring themselves to make it sound like the THX-style gunshots which, alas, only occur in the opening scene. Though the dubbing of bird twitters is wrong-headed, it's hardly wrong-headed enough to add noticeably to the camp value, which has always been the film's most obvious entertainment value.

Patching such works is a waste of time: best to leave them to the appreciation of the humorless few.


Copyright 1998 Ray Davis