[00:00:00] I mean a computer's gonna be very unhappy to hear that. Computer? Yeah, that note is way overdue. And it says a sizable amount. Well, it was five, five thousand dollars last time I looked. You haven't looked in a long time, Duke. And you know those computers? Clickety-click, clickety-click. Interest charges, carrying charges, interest on carrying charges, clickety-click, clickety-click. How much has it clickety-clicked up to?
[00:00:27] Hey, what's going on everybody? The Buena Vista Boys. We're back in the theater this week to tackle the classic No Deposit, No Return. Now, this goes squarely into the category of one of the movies I've never heard of before. And it was actually slightly enjoyable, which I appreciate. Alright.
[00:00:53] It's a good choice. But there's some weird, there's some weird opportunities in here for us to talk, you know, at length as we move through the show. But for the most part, I thought it was a pretty cute movie. It got on my nerves, but I think a lot of things do just in general, but especially movies from the 70s. They just get, I don't know, for some reason, a lot of movies in the 70s just get, I don't know, they're too long.
[00:01:17] It's almost like an experimental time in Hollywood where like, how long can this car chase scene be and how long can we get away with it? Yeah, I don't disagree. There's a lot of shenanigans that go into these late 70s movies. It's just like, they're hard to... Can we slip in a four minute pie fight? I know, dude. Just over and over. And I wonder if it's because it's like, alright, look, we're paying for it.
[00:01:45] Okay, we are going to use every inch of this footage in the final cut. Nothing is being left because we paid for it. We paid for a million pies. We paid for 7,500 gallons of gas for this car chasing it by gum. We're using every drop. Right? You're going to see it, man. But yeah, it's a cute movie. Why don't we get into it, Matt? Why don't... Actually, you know what? First, here's what I want to ask you. Are you watching any World Cup? This is every four years. We've got to talk about it real fast.
[00:02:14] No, I'm not watching. No, I... So this is what happened today. I told my kids, I go, I don't know who the hell Messi is. I don't know who this Messi person is. And they're like, this is a six and a nine-year-old. And they go, you don't know Messi? Well, you don't know anything about Messi? And then they start doing like these Messi impressions. I'm like, you don't know who Messi is. What's a Messi impression? They're like, uh, the...
[00:02:43] Was he speaking Spanish? It's just... I don't know what the hell they were doing. But no, the closest I got to World Cup is that they're giving out these plushies at McDonald's that have... They're like little characters with jerseys on. And that's it. I'm not the biggest soccer fan. You know what's funny is you kind of look like Messi. You kind of look... You kind of look like a chubbier Messi. You know what I mean? The fate's a little bit... If Messi was truly a mess.
[00:03:13] Yeah, exactly. You kind of have the same beard, the same thing. All right, so you don't know anything about soccer, but that's too bad. And here's the funny thing is like, I'm at an age... So I just watched The Sandlot, Rookie of the Year, and Big, like right in a row. And so it's like, I'm sitting here, my 45, 46-year-old self, and I'm like, I remember when this country cared about baseball. Everyone's kicking soccer balls around. I remember when somebody knew Don Mattingly.
[00:03:42] Yeah, exactly. That's how I'm living my life today. Hang on a second. Hey, Alex! Come here! They just came back from Toy Story 5. Oh, nice. Hot off the press action here real fast. What's up, brother? How was the movie? It was so... It was? It was all about Jesse? Gross. That's too bad. Were there funny parts in it? You were too into it to laugh. All right, the joke.
[00:04:11] You're like, okay, joke, joke, not joke, joke. You're just clocking it all. All right, cool. All right, go away. All right, well, that's too bad, man. I feel like you're missing out. It's once every four years. I feel like you could humble yourself to watch a little soccer. Maybe the final. Because it's exciting, you know? I used to think soccer was really boring because it was low scoring. But most of the games are just... It's a defensive battle. I feel like if you like baseball, you should like soccer. Yeah. Well, I like the kicking. The kick... Man, they kicked that ball far. I like the kicking.
[00:04:41] I like the kicking part. Yeah, for sure. But it's funny because it has become so ubiquitous. Like, even my wife was scratching her head. She's like, when did we give such a crap about soccer? And I was like, well, World Cup is going on. And she's like, oh, okay. Well, that makes more sense. And like, dude, we were out to dinner yesterday, which like never happens. And this table behind us, that's all they were talking about. All they were talking about was soccer. Yeah, it's a big... It's a worldwide event.
[00:05:08] It's the one time every four years besides the Olympics where the world can come together to talk about the beautiful game, you know? It's amazing. And we're hosting it, you know? So what are you going to do? You know, you got to talk a little bit about it. I've seen a bunch of videos of people from other countries, like in... Because is it in Dallas? Where is it? Yeah, there's one in Dallas. There's one out here. There's one in Boston. There's one in Vancouver. There's one in Seattle. Man, they would love in Texas.
[00:05:37] Like, there's so much space. There's so much to do out here. I saw a video of a Japanese soccer fan, you know, supporting, obviously, the Japanese national team out in Texas having a Texas barbecue for the first time. I saw that. And his eyes were just... His face was like a light bulb, man. You could literally read by it. He was so like, I love it! It was amazing. Because it was the one where the rib that he was eating off of looked like the one they
[00:06:05] gave to Fred Flintstone that flipped his car. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, dude. It was awesome. All right, well, let's get into the movie here a little bit. Oh, sure, sure. Matt, why don't you start us off? Give us a little insight into the movie, maybe a little background before we dig into it. What do you think? I would love to do that. All right. That's perfect. I'm glad. No deposit, no return means that an item, usually a singular use container, has no initial
[00:06:32] container deposit, which means you don't pay anything up front, and you cannot return it to the store for a refund, which is good because I paid nothing to watch this on my computer, and so I don't have to give it back to anyone. But it's interesting. I bring that up because I'm watching this movie, and I'm like, how is this connecting to deposits and return? Like, I kind of get it. It's cute, but it doesn't really have a lot of sinew there.
[00:07:01] But no deposit, no return. Kidnap theaters, February 11th, 1976. This movie sees Norman Tokar back in the director's chair. He's a big television director known best for Leave it to Beaver, and he's a major Buena Vista Boys alumni. He directed A Tiger Walks, The Ugly Dash Hound, Follow Me Boys. And before this movie, Tokar had seen financial and critical success directing The Apple Dumpling
[00:07:29] Gang in 1975, which was, I don't know if I mentioned it later, but it was a major contender that year. It was a good moneymaker for 1975. And it had a lot of competition. So just keep that under your hat. And then Joe Joseph L. McVitie from the Medfield College Trilogy and Hot, Leading, Cold Feet. You're going to hear that word a lot. That sentence. Yeah. Wrote the story.
[00:08:00] And we need to do a spinoff of the podcast called The McVitie Boys. Because we talk about them so much. So he came up with the story, and we'll kind of go into detail later in trivia about where the story actually came from. He pulled it from a couple of short stories. And he came up with the storyline, and then he gave it to these two writers who kind of had become like a pass it writing team.
[00:08:26] Like, I don't know if they're official, but it's Arthur Alsberg and Don Nelson in the IMDB for both of them. These two first worked together on the TV series The Good Guys, writing one episode titled Weiner, Diner, and Mover in 1969. And then after that, they collaborated on multiple television and movie scripts. Like, their IMDB is almost beat for beat together after that initial television show.
[00:08:53] They wrote for the show The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, Nanny and the Professor. They wrote Disney's Gus, which had come out right after this. Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo, Hot Lead, Cold Feet, and the best crossover ever in 1987, The Jetsons Meet the Flintstones. I love that movie. I would love to have that on my writing credit. Like, what a weird... It's almost like... You're hearing that, The Jetsons Meet the Flintstones. Yeah.
[00:09:22] It almost seems like just nobody writes that. Like, it was never written. It just existed. It just birthed out of the world. I refuse to believe that people sat down and wrote that. I don't know why. Cartoons feel like they're not written, especially back then. No, I can understand that. It's like, cartoons are just putting a camera in another world. Like, nobody's writing dialogue for George Jets' robot. It's weird. You know? Yeah.
[00:09:51] But, no, what I think is interesting, though, is Don Nelson is the younger brother of famous radio, movie, and TV star Ozzy Nelson, making him the uncle of Ricky Nelson. Who's Ricky Nelson? Who's Ricky Nelson? Yeah. He was like a famous singer, like a famous crooner. He did like a duet with, what is it, Annette Funicello for a Disney movie a while back.
[00:10:20] Like, you know, in the 60s. The only Ricky I know is Martin and Henderson, and that's about it. Oh, my God. So, you don't know who Ozzy Nelson is? No. Are you razzing me right now? No. Are you missing me right now? No, man. No. No, Ozzy Nelson? No. I know Ozzy Nelson. Ozzy Harriet. Yeah, that's it. Ozzy Nelson from Ozzy and Harriet. That's who it is. Oh, okay. Oh, it's Ozzy and Harriet. It's not Ozzy Harriet? No. All right. What do I know, man? Oh, God. My, my, I'm going to pass out.
[00:10:50] Yeah, you should. Yeah, so they had two sons on their show. It would probably, you know, make the show more enjoyable for you if you just passed out. Got it. You wake up and it's done. You're like, all right. Thank you. It's, oh, this is over. But, yeah, so they had a son, Ricky Nelson, and when he was little, he was just like an actor on their show. But then when he got older, he kind of became a pretty notable, like, kind of teen crooner. All right.
[00:11:13] And so Don, Don Nelson, ever the good brother, he wrote 379 episodes of Ozzy and Harriet from 1952 to 1966. What a guy. Yeah. All for free, I imagine. I'm sure. Just a favor. No, no, it's fine. It's family. Every Christmas, he would deliver a stack of, like, like a hundred scripts. This is what you get. Here you go. Oh, thanks, man.
[00:11:38] A lot of familiar faces show up in this movie if you've been following along with us. So this is like those, like, I've seen this person before. Yeah. You know, there's it's a mix of that. So obviously people you've seen before, Kim Richards, who audiences would have seen one year earlier as Tia in Escape to Witch Mountain. Kim was almost mauled by a bear during the production of that movie. I think producers thought the insurance they took out on her would have paid bigger than
[00:12:08] the movie itself. Yeah. But if you want to listen to more of that, then go to Buena Vista Boys season two, episode eight. We cover Escape from Witch Mountain. Iris Adrian. She plays a lady who we'll talk about a little bit later. She hits Don Knotts in the face with a powder puff. And that same actress was the cranky car hop waitress from The Love Bug. Oh, nice. Yeah. OK. It's hard to tell because I honestly didn't know if it was her, but I thought it was.
[00:12:38] And I was correct. Nice. If you guys remember Mansfield, played by John Williams. No, not that John Williams. The lackluster manservant to Jasper Bloodshy and hot lead and cold feet. First cut his teeth in this film as Jameson, the lackluster manservant of J.W. Osborne. He's good, too. I love Mansfield and Jameson. I feel like every British person.
[00:13:08] Yeah, I don't care if you have any sort of acting credibility or any acting background at all. If you're British, you can play a butler. I think you have to have at some point you have to go through your butler. Yeah, it's like being conscripted into the military where like at some point, if you want to be taken seriously in British society, you have to have played a butler at one point. Either on stage, screen or radio. Yeah. These are some other actors that you may know a little bit about, but you may not.
[00:13:37] And they're people who are just like that. I've seen this guy in a show before. So Barbara Felden is Agent 99 from Get Smart. She's in this movie for a brief period of time at the end, just just in time to get into a really fun car chase. Yeah. But if you don't go back and watch her from her episodes of Laugh-In from the 60s, then do you even like TV, bro? True.
[00:14:02] Sergeant Benson, and I recognized him right away, is the actor's name's Barney Phillips. And he was in four episodes of The Twilight Zone, but his most iconic role was playing the three-eyed diner clerk in season two, episode 28, Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up? Ooh, nice. You can tell that I'm like, I'm writing these notes for people like older than myself. I'm not throwing this out here for no young 25-year-old.
[00:14:30] No, I'm sure that's our target demographic too, you know? And then Peter, this one's a real crime. So the guy who plays Peter, who honestly, I had no idea who this actor was. I had to watch the movie twice to even know who Peter was because they mentioned him multiple times. But Peter, who's J.W. Osborne's chauffeur and now apparently full-time lookout, was played by Bob Hastings. And he is painfully underutilized in this movie.
[00:14:59] He has acting credits of like 182 films, television, voiceover work. Right? He played the voice of the crow from the cuckoo clock in The Munsters. He was Lieutenant Elroy Carpenter in 129 episodes of McHale's Navy. You can see him in I Dream of Jeannie, Hogan's Heroes. He was an uncredited motorist in Disney's Moon Pilot. Okay. Yeah.
[00:15:29] And ultimately, he became the voice of Commissioner Gordon on Batman the Animated Series. Okay. And the biggest treat of all is seeing James Hong, who plays the character Min Lo in this movie. So I don't know if there's anything that this guy has not done. A lot of people might remember him as the character Lo Pan from Big Trouble in Little China. And also the maitre d' from the episode of Seinfeld that completely takes place in the Chinese restaurant. Oh, nice. Seinfeld heads.
[00:15:58] Yeah, I know you're talking about it. Yeah. That's cool. Right? Dude, this guy's been on Starsky and Hutch, Taxi, Charlie's Angels, Wonder Woman, Different Strokes, Heart to Heart, The A-Team, the list goes on and on. I think what's funny is he went to college to be a civil engineer at the University of Minnesota. He graduated and even practiced as a road engineer for like a year and a half in the county of Los Angeles.
[00:16:25] But much like every other person who lives in Los Angeles, he fancied himself an actor and just gave up on civil engineering. And he's had, I think he has 400 something acting credits to his name now. He's been in everything. Nice. Like he's the, he's the master in Kung Fu Panda. Okay. He's a little, he's, I don't know if what, he's a rat or something. I don't know what he is. Yeah, I can't remember. But yeah, he's in all the Kung Fu Panda movies.
[00:16:54] He's in everything. Sick. Okay. So again, before we get started to give a little context to the movie and where this movie is in the, in, in the history of where Disney is. If you walked into the Disney lot in 1975, when no deposit, no return was being filmed, you'd find a studio that was successful enough to survive, but was also a little lost.
[00:17:23] Walt had been gone almost a decade and the company was struggling with question. The question nobody fully wanted to answer. Like what is Disney without Walt? Yeah. And financially Disney wasn't in danger of collapse. It wasn't the powerhouse people think of today. The company was being carried by three major assets, Disneyland, which saw its 20 year anniversary, which is crazy.
[00:17:50] Cause I just went to the 70th, the 20 year anniversary. Are you nuts? Yeah. Um, Walt Disney world, which had opened in 1971 and was having its best fiscal year to date. Also the third pillar was their steady stream of modest family movie. Those were the three things keeping Disney afloat at the moment. Take a moment to imagine Disneyland in 1976.
[00:18:15] You have a country bear jamboree mine train through nature's wonderland skyway buckets, Captain Hook restaurant, the people mover adventure through inner space. The park still worked on a ticket system and space mountain wouldn't open for another year. And it would be seven years before Epcot open. So that's the world we're living in of the, that's the Disney world. There you go. Yeah. I am testing Jason's patience so much right now.
[00:18:43] The theme parks were increasingly becoming the engine of the company and the movie studio was profitable, but it wasn't setting Hollywood on fire. In fact, many critics in the mid 1970s viewed Disney as old fashioned while the rest of Hollywood was entering the gritty new Hollywood era with filmmakers like Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola and Robert Altman.
[00:19:06] Jaws was the number one movie in 1975, essentially creating the summer blockbuster 1975. You also saw films like one flew over the cuckoo's nest, Rocky Horror Picture Show, Dog Day Afternoon, Monty Python's Holy Grail. Disney was coming out with a re-release of Swiss Family Robinson. They came out with the strongest man in the world, escape to which mountain, a re-release of Bambi. They re-release Cinderella.
[00:19:35] They re-release Snow White. They re-release Treasure Island and gave it a G rating. Some of their originals were the apple dumpling gang ride a pony. Anybody heard of that one? No, right. They came out with obviously no deposit, no return. And then later followed by a live action movie called Gus, which is Don Knotts and Tim Conway in a movie about a mule capable of kicking a football 100 yards with deadly accuracy.
[00:20:04] It's too family oriented for that time, you know? Yeah. Yeah, and then right after that, our BBB favorite, Treasure of Matakumbe, which is a little bit nicer, a little bit edgier to a certain degree. Like, I mean, but not, I mean, we're not talking Dog Day Afternoon here. But so that's the situation that we're in with Disney is that this is what they're putting out against these other movies. Like, this illustrates it perfectly.
[00:20:34] No deposit, no return came out against Taxi Driver. Taxi Driver came out two days before no deposit, no return. Nice. Yes. The studio still had goodwill with parents, but it wasn't considered artistically important enough. What's fascinating is that within the next decade, that would start to change. Under Ron Miller and later Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg, Disney would slowly reinvent itself.
[00:21:01] The creation of labels like Touchstone Pictures in the 1980s happened partially because executives realized Disney couldn't survive forever, making only the kinds of movies represented by no deposit, no return. So when you are watching this movie, remember, it's one of the last examples of classic post-Walt Disney.
[00:21:22] It's from a period where the studio was financially stable, loved by families, but increasingly disconnected from the creative revolution happening elsewhere in Hollywood. Just something to let you know where this movie is couched in and what the culture was like when it came out. Absolutely. All right. Well, let's get into it. Let's do it. What do we do, Duke? We get ourselves out of this caper and we ship those kids back to their grandfather.
[00:21:51] That's what we do. Ship them back? You mean give up the money entirely? Money? What money? Oh, don't you think he'll come up with something to get them back? Would you? So far, all we've gotten out of this kidnapping is an IOU and a genuine leather briefcase. But what about Big Joe? If we don't come up with what we owe him, he's liable to go from clickety-click to bangety-bang. Live and direct, I'm back on set action. Create the way we can. So like Matt mentioned, the people you need to know and their characters for this.
[00:22:21] David Nevin as J.W. Osborne, who I just called Grandpa in this because in the credits it just said J.W. Osborne. I was like, I don't know who that is. So now he's Grandpa. Like no one ever really calls him J.W. Osborne. They just call him Mr. Osborne. But anyway, whatever. Kim Richards, the aforementioned Kim Richards as Tracy. The fabulous Darren McGavin as Duke. Don Knotts as Bert. And Barbara Felden as Carolyn.
[00:22:48] Who is the mom of Kim Richards and the boy who I didn't write down because I didn't know who he was. He is boy. There you go. He's boy, yeah. But before we get started, do you think skunks are cute, Matt? Just a yes or no. Skunks cute. Yes, no. What's your take? Big yes. Big yes on skunk cuteness. No. And the reason I ask is because skunks are a through line in this. It's a Disney movie. So there's an animal involved.
[00:23:16] And poor Kim Richards, you know, she just got off of almost dying from a bear attack from her last film. Then she comes into this film and now there's a skunk. So the gag is that the brother, Tracy's brother, Jay. Wait, is that J.W. Osborne or is he the grandpa? See, I don't even know. No, David Nevin is the grandpa. Yeah. So Jay and Tracy are the boy and the girl. Jay has a pet skunk. Named Duster. Named Duster. Yeah.
[00:23:46] And at one point, if you forgot his name, well, you heard it for about 15 minutes of a child shrilling. Duster. All the time. It's annoying. But he carries around a skunk. And I don't know why there's no explanation for it. Where he got it? Just nothing. Just nothing, man. So whatever. Anyway, that's happening. The opening is very Strongest Man in the World Coded. A black and white cartoon playing through the credit sequence.
[00:24:16] But it has amazing intro music as well, too. So I want to play a little bit of the intro music. I really like his little jazzy, hot number. I don't know if this one's Buddy Baker, but Buddy Baker did the music for this.
[00:25:02] So you got a little hot jazz changes in there. Do a little tempo changes. And, you know, it's pretty good, man. I like it. You know what I miss? I miss the stop motion opening credit scenes that Disney used to do. Like the Shaggy Dog, Parent Trap. Oh, yeah. I like those ones. We open on a sign for the Marion Hadley School, which looks like a boarding school of some type. And the kids are being dismissed for Easter break.
[00:25:28] Tracy and her brother Jay are being picked up by Miss Murdoch instead of their mother, which seems to disappoint the children and also be an expected event. So I don't know. You're like, oh, it's Miss Murdoch. But of course it is, you know, kind of a thing. Their mom let them down again, you know. Yeah. The weird bit here is that Jay, like I said, has a pet skunk. And we get introduced to it by chasing a pack of dogs around because I don't know why. Because why not? It's everyone. Even dogs are afraid of skunks, I guess.
[00:25:58] On the way to the airport, Miss Murdoch tells the children that their mother is held up in Hong Kong for another two weeks and will not be coming home in time for Easter. And since it's also her vacation, she's going to Bermuda while the kids are being shipped off to their grandfather's joint in L.A. Now, this is a fact that they don't seem too thrilled about. And in the next scene, we find out that the grandpa feels the same way that the kids do. He does not want these children anywhere near him.
[00:26:30] Bermuda, you wouldn't like to exchange tickets, would you, Miss Murdoch? Ah, nonsense. I'll bet by the time you get to Los Angeles, you'll be as glad to see your grandfather as he is to see you. Traps, Jameson, like a rat in a cage. It's only for Easter vacation, Miss Garthman. And it is an emergency. An emergency. An emergency is an earthquake or a tornado. My daughter-in-law's children are a science fiction nightmare. Oh, please, please be very, very careful. It's worth a fortune.
[00:26:58] You'll perhaps save mature a bit since their last visit, sir. Jameson, when it comes to Tracy and Jay... There, there, someone sit. There, there. I intend to leave no piece of crystal in sight. No Dresden, China unprotected. Up you go. But the chandelier... If I may, sir, how could a little fellow possibly reach the chandelier? The same way he reached it last year, with a rocket ship. Okay, whatever. So yeah, the kids sound like little nightmares.
[00:27:27] Grandpa Osborne is child-proofing his mansion, or rather, he's having his help do it. You know, his maid and his butler. No. These kids sound like real troublemakers. And one thing I do want to point out about this house, the inside. When you watch this house, or when you watch this movie, the house is, it's like full of all of those stupid knickknacks that you would go to like a consignment store in Danville to, to find, because it's like, everything's made of cherry wood and these carvings and everything. It's nothing's really congruent with one another.
[00:27:57] It just, it looks like an antique store. Yeah. And I don't know what it is about rich people's houses. I don't know if I've ever been in a rich person's house like this, like, like old money rich. I'm not talking like, oh, I was an early investor in Yahoo. You know what I mean? Like, it's rich people, you know? Their home, the inside just looks boring. You know, the chairs don't seem comfortable. Nothing is for comfort. It's just for looks.
[00:28:24] And there's a couple scenes in there where he has like a mantelpiece and these two sculpted statues are holding up the mantle. And it's like, that looks, it looks terrible. Everything just looks gaudy and awful. Yeah. It's all very uncomfortable. Like you said, it's like, it's like, where do you sit in this house and like have nachos? You don't. Yeah. On the patio, you take your nachos on the patio. Where is the enjoyable place in this home?
[00:28:52] I, and I don't think that rich people have enjoyment because in one scene he's out on the patio eating breakfast. So it's the morning he has his pinky ring on his little signet or whatever. And it's like, so he put his jewelry on and his ascot on to go out alone and take his breakfast while reading the paper on the patio. Like you get dressed up. Nobody can see you dressed down. Not even the help. It's very wild.
[00:29:17] No, he was quite appointed to read the paper to no one in, in the middle of nowhere. Yeah. Right. And speaking of troublemakers, Tracy pitches Jay an idea. What if they got off the plane in LA, then hopped a plane to Honolulu and then went off to Hong Kong to hang out with their mom? Jay is in for the plan, but the only problem is they don't know how they're going to come up with the extra $1,200 for the tickets.
[00:29:45] Meanwhile, it's time for another movie about a VW bug, or at least one that has one in it, driven by Don Knotts. He and who plays Bert, he and Darren McGavin arrive at the office of the treasurer at an airport to rob a safe. And as you can probably guess, Don Knotts playing Bert is going to have a lot of things go wrong. The two men get their tools ready at the safe and they talk about their shared past together.
[00:30:13] Two pieces, eight inches long. Last time out, you cracked one of these in less than seven minutes, remember, Duke? Gotta get a little rusty after five years. Not you, Duke. You are the best. Also the unluckiest. One thing, though, we never got caught. We also never got anything.
[00:30:39] Every safe we opened up either contained non-negotiable bonds, last year's lottery tickets, or the mousetrap. Remember the mousetrap? It was either a case of going straight or going broke. Don't think about it now, Duke. Just concentrate on why we're going crooked again. So there you have it. So Duke and Bert are not very good bank robbers, or not bank robbers, safe crackers, thieves, right? So even though Duke is great at cracking safes, they've never stolen anything.
[00:31:09] The only thing from this scene that I wanted to know a little bit more about was why are they picking this safe? Why are they going to an airport where there's thousands upon thousands of people to rob a safe when they could go to maybe a bank where there's no one at night, classically? I don't know if they ever specify, right? No, they don't specify. They just pulled up.
[00:31:35] They pulled up to the airport, put on maintenance overalls, and headed to the office of the treasurer at the airport. Because they wrote, how are we getting these two guys near these kids in this movie? Exactly. So back to the kids as they begin to gather their things to deboard the plane. Jay realizes that Duster, his skunk, is missing, and that causes a stampede throughout the airport, which allows the kids to run off and not be seen by their grandfather's butler,
[00:32:05] who was sent to go in and pick them up at the luggage cart. I realize that that's a weird sentence, but I promise you it's accurate to what happens to the movie. One of the security guards pulls the alarm for some reason, like a fire alarm. So what happens? The kids are on the plane. Duster gets out the plane, scatters everybody through the airport. A security guard goes over and pulls a fire alarm. And Bert and Duke think that it's the alarm for them, for the safe or someone. Somehow they're on to them, right? They know that they're robbing the joint.
[00:32:35] So they take off without the money. They try to get the money, but Bert, you know, with his big old ass, I guess, or whatever, accidentally closes the safe with his butt and they don't have time to crack it again. So they're out. You know, they just leave. The kids we find writing down the luggage conveyor, you know, because they're weird kids, I guess. And everyone waiting for their bag absolutely flips out at the sight of Jay holding Duster, the skunk.
[00:33:01] But honestly, this whole movie from the time the kids are on the plane until they exit the airport here kind of reminds me of that movie Airplane. Yeah. From the shots of the crowd running to the reactions of everybody to even the angles of the two kids in the seats on the airplane. And I actually had to look it up to see if it wasn't the same like child actors over.
[00:33:25] But those the scene where, you know, they're like drinking coffee and like the two little kids are like interacting. It reminds me of scraps scraps. Yeah, dude. Yeah. Right. Duster. Yeah. I would bet that some of the because the airplane came out after this. I would bet that there's some sort of like, you know, play on that. I don't know. Very well could be. Yeah.
[00:33:50] Grandpa Osborne is on the lookout and he sees his grandkids run out of the airport and across the street and yet doesn't go get them or even call out for them. And as we already heard in the previous clip, like he's not really thrilled that they're coming over. Like he childproofed his entire mansion for these kids. Right. But they're still your grandkids. So if you see them running across a busy street, you're just watching them. You're just seeing what happens, man. Wait, whatever happens, happens, man. He's like, you know, one good hit.
[00:34:20] That's all I need. I could get out of all this. Yeah. So instead of calling out for them, he watches them run into traffic, cross the street and climb into a waiting cab. And it's the same cab that Bert and Duke climb into from the opposite side. So two groups of people, same cab, two different doors. Despite the confusion, the cab pulls away and Grandpa Osborne tells his driver to follow it.
[00:34:47] We have Bert and Duke, Jay and Tracy in the cab being followed by Grandpa. Great crossover. Yeah. The cab takes our party to Bert and Duke's hideout. A smart thing to do when you're fleeing the police at the scene of an attempted crime is to tell the taxi driver to go to just take me right home. Yes. The men try to keep the kids out of their place, but Tracy hits them with the old I have asthma when it's cold routine.
[00:35:11] And Duke caves in, allowing them to stay just one night. Down the street, Grandpa sees all of this go down, but he does nothing about it whatsoever. Yeah. Again, actually. He makes Peter sit outside and just watch them. Shall I retrieve them, son? There might be one alternative. But on the other hand, would you say the children are in any imminent danger?
[00:35:41] No, son. And might not a look on the seemier side of life help them to show more respect for the finer things? Oh, I believe it would, son. And if we leave Peter behind to keep an eye on them, might not this be just the tonic to straighten those children up, make them into better citizens? Indeed it might, son. That's very astute of you, Jameson. You can expect a little bonus along with your raise. So he's going to teach the kids a lesson because apparently they're just spoiled. That's all their problem is. They're just spoiled.
[00:36:11] They need a little dose of reality and seeing what's going on here at the kidnapper's hideout. Yeah. No, just one nice walk down, you know, see all the drug smokers and the winos. That'll snap them. Yeah, the crazies. Yeah, they'll snap them right up. As they enter the room of Bert and Duke, Bert and Duke and the kids meet Big Joe, a gangster who's there to collect the money the two men owe someone called the computer.
[00:36:40] After some mild begging, Big Joe gives the guys 72 hours to come up with the money, $9,000 or else. Tracy and Jay overhear the shakedown and she comes up with a plan for both sets of dorks to get the money that they need. And with a sneaky nod of her head, we push into the next scene where we find out that her great plan was to mail a ransom note to Grandpa telling him to leave $100,000 under a tree in the park for them.
[00:37:08] Jay and Tracy basically bully Duke into going along with this new plan, telling him all they need is $1,200 for the plane tickets. And he and Bert can have the rest because Grandpa's super rich. He has like millions and billions of dollars. Jay puts his hand on Duke's shoulder and hits him with the old be a good guy and kidnap us. We're not going to go into how Tracy got a stamp or an envelope or how long it took the mail to get from wherever they are to wherever Grandpa lives.
[00:37:36] But I will tell you that $100,000 in 1976 is roughly $585,000 bucks today. I'll hit you back with $5,000 that they owed the computer. Yeah. At the time would have been $29,263 in today money. There you go. So do we do we figure out in this movie is the computer? Is it a person named the computer?
[00:38:02] I think it's a person named the computer instead of actually a computer because he goes, you know, these computers, you know, they got this fee and that fee. And it's like he was talking like it was a actual computer. Yeah. But also, like, I think, you know, sometimes in these older, you know, quote, gangster movies. Yeah. People just had that and anthropomorphized. I don't know. It's like, you know, he would have called him the accountant, the club or I. Yeah. But I mean, but it's the computer. Wait.
[00:38:31] Hey, you know, Joey beans. He's smart. Let's call him the computer because he's really smart. You know, that's what I feel like it is. He was like the club because he has a club foot or something like that. You know what? I don't know. Yeah. The day I was in the shower and I was thinking to myself, like, OK, what if this is the original computer that A.J. Arno had? See what it feels like. Like, yes. You know what I mean? What if what if this is like a string off of A.J. Arno's gang? A side story.
[00:38:59] This is this is the computer. He's like, we got the computer in the basement. It's going click, click, click. Hey, I would love that. This movie or also dark universe. This is actually what happened to what's his name from computer war tennis shoes. He was so smart. Right. And he'd become a computer mind. And he's like, the best thing to do is to go into, you know, the underworld of organized crime. I'm a computer.
[00:39:29] He's plugged in, man. Right. So the the ransom letter was delivered the same day. Special delivery. So, again, I don't know how Tracy got to the post office to do the special delivery with the postage, but it was a different time back then. Maybe Duke and Bert had a bunch of stamps laying around. I don't know. Whatever. And we find Grandpa opening the note up. We are reminded that Grandpa had left Peter, his driver, outside of Burton Duke's place to keep an eye out on the kids.
[00:39:58] So as Grandpa is opening this ransom note, Peter calls him up to tell him that not much has happened except that Tracy went to the mailbox to drop something off. And then as Grandpa reads the note, he figures out what the game here actually is. Osborne residence. Oh, yes, Peter. Just a moment. It's Peter, sir. Morning, Peter. Hmm?
[00:40:28] She went to the went to the mailbox. I can't imagine. On the other hand, maybe I can. I'll be right back to you, Peter. Very interesting development here. We have a ransom note. Ransom note? Yes. Have children. Leave $100,000. Briefcase. Under umbrella tree, Williams Gardens, four o'clock. We mean business. $100,000. Good heavens, sir.
[00:40:58] Shall I ring up the bank? You missed the point. Our little Tracy concocted this nonsense, and somehow she's conned these poor benighted gentlemen into going along with her idiot plan. I beg your pardon? Oh, excuse me, sir. If I may, sir, what is our next move? Next move? Well, as the children appear to be in no danger whatever, I shall first finish my breakfast. No. Then we will take additional supplies over to Peter for his prolonged vigil, after which I will have a nice round of golf. Oh, that sounds delightful, sir.
[00:41:26] Also, I'll have bacon and sausage with my eggs. Ah. Your appetites return, sir. Quite. Like how Jameson goes, $100,000? And then apparently that's breaking protocol because Osborne's like, what did you say? He's like, oh, God, I'm so sorry. I'm embarrassed that I actually had a genuine human reaction. I'm a butler, you know. Yeah. So there's no danger at all, apparently. They're just assuming that Tracy made all of this up.
[00:41:56] For all Grandpa knows, Bert is now currently wearing Jay's skunk as a hat and dancing in the moonlight while Duke does something weird to everybody else. Like who you don't actually know. You're just guessing. But maybe that's what these kids would do. They could have forced her to put that note in the mailbox, right? Yeah. Like her brother is currently swinging in a noose on his tiptoes. If she doesn't get back in time, they're kicking the chair out. Yeah.
[00:42:23] Bert and Duke are flipping a knife, you know, trying to catch the handle or just, you know, whatever. Well, after a harrowing chase scene where Bert tries to get Jay off the side of a building because Duster got out, and then Bert ends up at a construction site where he almost falls to his death a few times, it's finally 4 p.m. and time to get the briefcase. And by the way, I just saved you like 15 minutes of screen time because that's basically what happened. Yeah.
[00:42:50] Instead of 100 grand inside the briefcase, there's just a note saying that Grandpa's having a hard time getting the money, and he probably won't have it until after Easter break. So very convenient. That's Grandpa's little way of like playing the game, you know. Several scenes go by in which Big Joe returns to up the amount the boys owe to $11,000, and Bert and Duke send off another ransom note reducing the asking price for the kids down to 75 grand.
[00:43:18] And the cops that we met at the airport, the ones that have been tracking Duke and Bert on their spree five years ago, which I didn't mention before, are now pulled off of the safe cracking case and put onto the kidnapping case, obviously not knowing they're essentially the same case. Somehow we get two ransom notes mailed out, dropping the price to $50,000, and then back down again to $30,000. So that is what? Four ransom notes in two days, I guess. I don't know what it is. Maybe.
[00:43:47] But the mail system apparently used to just fly. You know what I mean? When it's from sunset to wherever, you can do that. That's a day. I guess. Yeah, I guess. Our two cops stop by grandpa's to get the latest ransom note, and Longnecker, the junior cop, puts two and two together in this scene. And, you know, I had to look it up because Longnecker sounds like an inappropriate name to be calling.
[00:44:15] It sounds like a slur, and I don't like it. And every time the cop goes, Longnecker, I can't. I cringe because I'm like, I feel like I need to be personally offended, but I, you know. I'm surprised they didn't do the gimmick where instead of calling him Longnecker every time, he calls him like, Buchenbecker. Slop and slugger. You're right. Gets his name wrong. Yeah. In the hands of kidnappers, the old man sleeps till noon. He's a strange one, Longnecker. Strange?
[00:44:43] A distraught grandfather pacing the floor half the night, finally falling, exhausted, into a fitful slumber at dawn? He has to sleep until noon. Longnecker. Courage of the man. Just you wait, Sergeant. I'll bet the old guy comes in smiling and cheerful, covering up like there was nothing on his mind. Well, well, well, and the top of the morning to both of you. And what brings you two good gentlemen around so early? The ransom note. The ransom note? The ransom note. I gave it you yesterday. The new one. Your man called us about it over an hour ago. Oh, forgive me. I've had so many lately, I get muddled.
[00:45:11] We're losing over 20,000 cells a day, you know. What does it say? Oh, we'll find out when we get it open, won't we? Now, if I was a betting man, I wouldn't mind risking a 10 spot, but they've come down to 35,000 by now. Uh-oh. Missed it by five. They're down to 30. I must say, your do-nothing plan is working just beautifully, Sergeant. Uh, mind if I take that note, Mr. Osborne?
[00:45:40] By all means, anything I can to help. Keep up the good work. I want you to know, sir, that you have an admirer here. Lawmaker? Just, like, not a care in the world, because he knows everything's fine, but to go in, I feel like if this is a cop drama now, he would be suspect number one, you know. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Things start to pick up a bit now, as the two detectives seem to be spreading the word about the two missing children.
[00:46:10] I have no idea how much time has passed since the last scene, but it's enough for the two cops to have wired the police in Hong Kong and have them get word to Caroline, the mom, and have her take a flight all the way to L.A., connecting in Honolulu, of course, as has already been laid out by the kids on more than one occasion. Mom insists on meeting the kidnappers to deliver the money, so Grandpa has no choice but to pay the money, because he can't let her know that he's kind of in on the whole scheme.
[00:46:39] He knows what's going on, but he's not doing anything about it. As he pulls the money from his giant safe hidden behind a wall panel, he leaves the door slightly open, and the camera pans down a bit before jumping into the next scene, so you know this is going to be a nice little plot point coming up. And the very next scene shows Jay and Tracy on the front page of the newspaper, with Big Joe reading it.
[00:47:04] With a printed ransom listing at $100,000, Big Joe plans to take the kids himself, because he knows how much money Grandpa really has. Conflict is what I wrote in my notes after that, because that's exactly what's going on. And again, you know, the original deadline was 72 hours, wasn't it, or was it 48? I forget now. Yeah, so... 72 hours.
[00:47:26] So in three days, you have front page news, you have four ransom notes, you have a flight from Hong Kong back to L.A. Right. And then via Hawaii, by the way, that takes 18 to 20 hours. Yeah. So it's already basically a day gone. How long does it take? I don't even know how long it would take to get, what, a telegram, what she said she got? But it said they wired, so I don't know what that means necessarily.
[00:47:55] It might be like teletype, you know? Yeah, she gets that wired to her, then she's got to find a flight, she's got to get on the flight, and then, holy crap, that's a tight timeline, buddy. Yeah, for sure. Burton and Duke arrive at the docks for the exchange, but while the detectives are setting up the trap, Mom and Grandpa screw it all up, and our heroes drive off. But as they do, Caroline jumps into the back of their little red convertible car. Yes, which was borrowed. Borrowed. Which was borrowed. Yeah, exactly.
[00:48:25] It was borrowed by the guy who actually wanted to pay them money to fix his car. That's right. So that's what was happening. So in one of those ransom notes, it's, you know, hey, we're going to meet at the docks. Yeah. And so there's a whole scene with the cops. They have like a silicone mask on, and it's a whole gag. And it works. It actually is pretty funny. Nightmare fuel, though. Definitely check it out. Yes, absolutely nightmare fuel. And they do a good job. And they do a good job with it. I'll just say that.
[00:48:54] So right now, we have our heroes in the red little sports car convertible. It's beat to hell. Speeding around the docks. Caroline is in the back of the car. And Duke is giving her the business. Who are you? What are you doing here? You've got my kids. That's what I'm doing here. Your kids? You're welcome. No, no, no. That's her. All right. She and her kids have both got away at climbing into other people's cars. Please, where are my children? Your children are safe, Mrs. Osborne, which is more than I can say for us right now.
[00:49:24] If it's the money you'll get, it will pay the ransom. Your money, huh? Money. Well, that's terrific. Except money doesn't seem to be all that important right now. What do you mean? Are you the kidnappers or aren't you? Well, sort of. Sort of, dude. And you know how I have my list of sounds, Matt, that should be banned from TV and movies? You know, it's like a dog barking, whatever. Babies crying alarms.
[00:49:50] Long form car chases with sirens absolutely need to be on there. This car chase, by the way, is a 10 minute car chase. I tracked that myself. Yes. It got so long. I had to check. Yeah. Most of it with the siren. So you have about six or seven, six, seven, you have six or seven minutes of just the siren going.
[00:50:17] And then there's more to the speech that Duke gives Caroline. Right. But basically he's like, you know what? You're kind of a terrible mom because you're just never around for your kids. And so when that's happening, when they're talking, there's no siren. And then it cuts back to Longnecker and the sergeant. And it's just super loud. So it's back and forth. It's terrible. It's a terrible scene for audio wise. And it's entirely too long. But the also, the other thing that I really enjoy. See, you gotta, you gotta sandwich it. Right.
[00:50:45] The thing I enjoy about movies like this is that the, the skidding, the tires skidding and squealing sound effects on dirt roads. There's a lot of that happening in this scene. So, uh, you know, it's a little fun, a little fun for me. You like the inaccuracy of that. I do. It's so much fun. Cause it's like, okay, well, you know, I can imagine like in the script, like the, the, the sound effects editors get the, the, you know, the list of what they need to pull a car chase arts. We're going to need the squealing and we're going to need the screeching. And like, no one's like thinking about it, you know what I mean? Yeah.
[00:51:15] So anyway, that's, I want this toaster to sound like a shotgun when it pops. Yeah. Kind of like that. Um, so yeah, during the car chase, Duke and Caroline go back and forth. Duke basically going after her for not ever being around for her kids for, you know, she's too busy at work. Right. After an entire 10 minute car chase where I got entirely way too bored, our heroes escape by jumping their car off of a dock and onto like a garbage bar, like a trash barge or something like that, that happened to be right next to a dock.
[00:51:44] And that's not to say the chase didn't have some neat gags in it, but man, it was way too long. At least the police siren is only seven minutes of it instead of the full 10. So there is that, you know, it's too long when they start doing the, the, uh, scooby doo, like I go this way, you go that way. Now I'm here and now I'm there with cars. I can't believe that it was painful. Absolutely. Meanwhile, big Joe and his sidekick, Freddie, who almost always happened to, to be wearing
[00:52:13] a suit that they plaid suit that like matched the upholstery of some chair and birds in Duke's place. Did you notice that? Yeah. So a big Joe and Freddie are at the spot with the kids making them write a better and a more real ransom note. These are two other kidnappers. Yeah. These are not the same. After some home alone shenanigans, the two thugs end up hanging upside down from the rafters. Really honestly, don't ask. Tracy and Jay then hitch a ride and make it to grandpa's house.
[00:52:43] Sneaking in, they try to quote, borrow enough money to get to Hong Kong. I guess forgetting about the two guys who have kept them safe for a week or it feels like a week, but it's only been two days or three days. Three days. You know what I mean? So like they, they, they didn't want to do it in the first place. They got drug along. They fed you. They clothed you. Duke bought you a dress, but don't worry about it. There's all the money in the world to these kids here, but they only need $12,000. They're $1,200. They're not worried about Duke and Bert. Yeah. So they ended up going into the safe as a walk-in safe.
[00:53:13] That's how big the safe is folks. And then they ended up getting locked inside. But just then Caroline, Bert and Duke arrive at grandpa's followed closely by the sergeant who's going to like check up on them. Right? He doesn't know that Bert and Duke are there. The adults figure out the kids are locked in the safe upstairs, but grandpa is the only one who has the combo, but he's not there.
[00:53:37] Luckily enough, Duke is there to create tension and to crack the safe, despite him knowing that the sergeant that is in the same room has been chasing him for years, even though the sergeant doesn't know that Duke is the one. And somehow being able to crack a safe means you are exactly the person I've been chasing. Yeah, dude. Yeah. In a valiant act of self-sacrifice, Duke manages to blow his cover in front of his pursuer, and he opens the safe to free the children.
[00:54:06] Hooray and huzzah. And see, I thought about that too, because Duke is like, oh yeah, I used to work for a safe company or whatever. But the only way he can crack the safe is by doing the same thing that caught him in the first place, is taking those two eight-inch long pieces of tape and putting the stethoscope right at the same time. And it's like the way he did it. Did he do it though? Did he put the tape on? I don't remember them having the tape. Did he use the tape? He used the tape, yeah. Yeah, because there's a whole thing, there's a whole plot point where the kids took the
[00:54:36] safe-cracking tools from Bert and Duke's place to bring to grandpa's to break into his safe. No, and I do remember that. I just don't remember Duke using the signature tape that the, you know, the, what is it, the sergeant or whatever the detective was always rambling on about. Yeah. Okay. So the sergeant then approaches Duke after the kids are freed and whatever to have a
[00:55:05] chat about what just happened. Sergeant. Yeah. I want to compliment you on your skill. You know, I said there was only one man I could think of who could open that safe. Yep. Apparently I was wrong. There are two. Anyway, I understand the other gentleman is retired. Yes. Yes. As a matter of fact, if it's the same man I'm thinking of, yes, he has retired permanently.
[00:55:48] So that is, so at the end of the scene, uh, they shake hands, Bert or Duke and the, uh, the sergeant shake hands. And there's this like, you know, tacit, uh, you know, understanding that I know that you guys are the people I've been chasing, but you did a good thing and you're retired and therefore don't do it again. That's, and that's what happens. So sometime later, again, don't know, Bert and Duke are chilling at grandpa's with Tracy serving them cookies.
[00:56:18] And Caroline is on the phone telling her boss that she's moving to LA after this. I don't, I forget what timeline it was, but then she's going to be soon moving to LA to be with her kids. So she's a reformed parent. She wants to be a parent again. She realizes that she kind of sucks and she's going to come chill with the kids, which is honestly great. Duke has a wild outfit on. It's a long sleeve button up shirt, right? Tucked into well-worn jeans, like the seventies, well-worn jeans, right?
[00:56:44] They're like light blue at this point, but a blue cardigan over his long sleeve shirt. But the cardigan is only buttoned at the very bottom button only. So it's just like, you know, open, but just, just secured at the bottom. Yes. The button up shirt top three or maybe even four buttons wide open. And it's his Duke shirt. This is Duke shirt. It's his garage shirt. Yeah. So it's wide open. Hairiest chest in the universe. Just chilling.
[00:57:14] So it's like, are you hot? Are you cold? It's one of those things where like in scenes that some, I love pointing this out all the time where it's like, uh, you know, the scene of like four or five people, one guy will be in shorts and a tank top. One guy will be in jeans and three jackets. One lady will have a scarf on and it's like, is it hot or is it cold where you are? I can't figure out. So, you know, like, uh, Bert has a jacket on and, and, but then this guy has a sweater with a long sleeve shirt and it just, it's half open. What are you doing?
[00:57:44] What are you doing? But I guess we figured out what he is doing because we learned that the kids and grandpa are getting along now with grandpa finally being the fun one. Duke and Carolyn are making eyes at one another. So I feel like that's Duke going, Oh, Carolyn's coming. I'm going to drop my button a couple of buttons and see what happens. And so they kind of like make a date or whatever. And we see grandpa kick Jay's butt in judo.
[00:58:10] And it's a whole wacky, like tacky thing. But basically grandpa jumps into the big fountain in front of his house and laughs and nobody else laughs. It's really uncomfortable. The end. Then the movie ends and we are finally, uh, we are finally done. We're out. Freed. We are freed from this movie. So let's take a fast break. We're going to come back and, uh, Matt's going to dig into a little bit of the history and do his little fast facts and whatever. And, uh, we're going to split. So hang on everyone. Oh yeah. Buena Vista boys.
[00:58:40] We'll be right back. No sign of mother yet, Tracy? She'll be here, Mrs. Hadley. Good. Good. I wouldn't want Easter to be as disappointing for you as Christmas. That wasn't mother's fault, Mrs. Hadley. She was working in Paris when they ran into complications. So I remember. When a person's a complete hint of a magazine, a person just can't ignore complications. Of course. Oh, speaking of complications, where's your brother?
[00:59:11] He's at half mast. I see. He's where? I see. I see. All right. Thanks for hanging around, everybody. I see. We are back and I'm going to pass it over to Matt here. And he's going to tell us a little bit more about the details of no deposit, no return.
[00:59:38] I wish that I could deposit and return this movie to Disney. Here you go. That's what I'll say. Um, cause I think you and I, this is a weird change-a-roo. You like this movie. And I had been wanting to watch this movie for a long time. There are multiple episodes where I'm like, I can't wait till we watch no deposit, no return. Yeah. Because it had been put together by different people that we had seen in other movies.
[01:00:06] And so I really thought this was going to be a culmination of a lot of talent, like writing talent and directing talent. Yeah. And I just, I just didn't see it. It didn't have the, uh, the power and the sparkle. I wouldn't say I liked it. I would say that it was, it was a fine, friendly, family, friendly movie. Yeah. I, I think it had a little more guts to it, a little more teeth than some of the other films that we've seen, like Herbie apparently too. Well, Herbie was okay.
[01:00:37] But, um, some of the other ones we've seen, especially this season are kind of like, I don't know how to even deal with this man. Yeah. But this movie, you know, I could, I could picture watching again with my kid, but I don't think she would really be into it either. See, and it's like, it's funny because this movie, like it's okay. But like, then when you look at something like hot, lead, cold, hot, lead and cold feet, like, yeah, I like that. That movie's leaps and bounds better than this movie. Uh, yeah.
[01:01:06] Same group. And it came later. And so I just don't know what happened, but I, I did not love this movie. I was really hoping to, and like the skunk gimmick. I think that's what it was for me. It was the whole skunk routine and the long car chase. If you kind of cut those things down, uh, I mean, because, okay, the, now we can, we already talked about the movie. The skunk is there basically as a device to get Jameson, the butler or not Jameson,
[01:01:34] the, the fam, Caroline and everybody to know that the kids are in grandpa's house upstairs. So the skunk basically leads them upstairs and they go, Oh my God, that's it. The only, that's the only reason anything else is just weird. So he sprays the dog, the duster sprays, the dog, the dog comes downstairs. They're like, Oh, you stink. Like skunk. And they're like, Oh skunk. It's duster. Yeah. Which is honestly clever. And there were some cool, you know, clever parts in this, like the car chase scene and some of the other stuff. There were some good, good gags.
[01:02:04] Yeah. Oh no, I'm not saying there were, there were pieces and parts that were fun and I'm not saying I didn't have any fun. There were, I there, the exchange that they have on the plane and I won't get too far field on this, but there's a moment on when they're on the plane and it's, um, Tracy and Jay and they're talking about something that happened to grandpa's and then grandpa cut to him telling, talking about the same story and then grandpa starts a story and then
[01:02:32] it cuts back to Tracy and Jay finishing the story. Very cool writing. Yeah. That was good editing in there. Yeah. Kind of intercutting it. Yeah. I really liked that. Yeah. Anyway, we will get into some of the fun stuff, um, about this movie that, you know, it was pretty interesting. Actually, um, there's not a ton about the production of this movie. This movie that I could find. I tried to find a little documentary or like a, like an article that Disney had put out. Um, and there, there wasn't a lot that I could find in the period of time that I was looking,
[01:03:01] but there's a few good little pieces. Like the script for this movie was, like I said, inspired by two short stories written by O. Henry. And this is, I think in 1903 and 1907 respectively. Oh, Henry's real name is William Sidney Porter. And he wrote the ransom of red chief, which is a short story about two bumbling kidnappers,
[01:03:25] Sam and bill who abduct a wealthy man's mischievous 10 year old son, John Dorsett for ransom, only to find the boy as a terror who torments them relentlessly, forcing them to pay the wealthy man to take the kid back. That's funny. And then it's also an amalgamation of another story called a retrieved reformation.
[01:03:51] And which is about a safe cracker named Jimmy Valentine, who is released from prison and immediately returns to crime, but changes his ways after falling in love with Annabelle Adams, a banker's daughter. Oh, that must've been tough. A banker's daughter. He's got a lot of safes to rob. Yep. And started a new life as a respectable shoemaker named Ralph Spencer. His past catches up with him when he must use his safe cracking skills to save Annabelle's
[01:04:18] niece from a locked vault, forcing him to reveal his identity to the detective who has been hunting him, who ultimately lets him go after seeing his changed ways. That is literally the ending of this movie. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's just boom blended them together. Let's talk about Don Knotts for a second. Okay. Cause I feel like we can't not talk about Don Knotts. He's the powerhouse of this movie guy. He's just really hamming it up for the screen. It's thrown into a bathtub. Poor dude.
[01:04:48] So Jesse Donald Knotts was born July 21st, 1924 in Morgantown, West Virginia. While in high school, Don Knotts picked up ventriloquism. Apparently he wasn't too bad at it either actually. And began practicing as a comedian. He continued his act during his time in the army. And he toured the Western Pacific islands with a group called stars and gripes. Jeez. Dude, come on now.
[01:05:14] So this, and this is in context, this is a kind of maybe a USO style group. So he was still enlisted. He was an enlisted man going around. He wasn't like, he didn't get out of the army and then he was traveling. So he is, he is still an enlisted person when he's doing this.
[01:05:31] And then after the war, Don Knotts attended the, uh, West Virginia university performing standup at local clubs and appearing as a guest character on a radio Western called Bobby Benson and the B Barbie writers. You know, right? Y'all put your hands up. Yeah. I wonder what standup comedy in 1945 was, you know, I mean, come on.
[01:05:58] I guarantee he did a lot of like, I had an ex girlfriend who used to, you know, do a lot of. Yeah. We were in the war and yeah, she made waffles, but she used my hand. Just, just weird stuff like that. Kind of like the, what he talked about when he was talking about his ex wife in the movie. Oh yeah. Um, so first appearing on a soap opera called search for tomorrow between 1953 and 1955.
[01:06:22] And then on the Steve Allen variety show in 1956, which I believe he was just called the nervous man. Makes sense. It's accurate. Yes. Knotts got his big break when he joined the cast of the Andy Griffith show in 1960. And then, um, he stayed on through five seasons. So 1965.
[01:06:45] And then after season five, Knotts didn't think that Andy Griffith would continue the show. So he signed a five year contract with universal and starred in the feature film, the ghost and Mr. Chicken. And then the show, uh, the Andy Griffith show would continue on without him for three more seasons. And I read a couple of different accounts of this, which is interesting.
[01:07:09] Like it basically was a misunderstanding on his part, which is weird because like, who is he not talking to? Is everything going through agents? No one's talking to each other. He didn't think the show would continue. He did think it was going to end. And so he's like, well, I need to move on. Need to do some other stuff. And so he moved on. The show would continue going. I mean, I want, yeah, it almost feels like it was going to end. He didn't know Andy Griffith. They didn't know what he was going to do.
[01:07:37] And so Donald's like, oh yeah, he's not going to do it. He probably hates it or whatever. Yeah. That's crazy. I know. So, but it's wild. So I wonder if it's a, I wonder if that was a good move or not because the ghost of Mr. Game comes up. So I wonder if it was ultimately the better move for him to just leave then and do and get into the movies. I think it was because after it goes to Mr. Chicken, right?
[01:08:05] You know, he, he ended up doing multiple other things. He was like doing the love God and, and, you know, Mr. Limpet, which we'll talk about. And so I think ultimately it was a good move on his part because then he didn't lock in for three more years of being typecast as just Barney Fife. Yeah. The character, by the way, I didn't even mention the name of his character on the show. Character's named Barney Fife.
[01:08:34] He only got one bullet for his gun. It was a great gag. But Knott's would work with Disney for many years after the success of Apple Dumpling Gang. So Apple Dumpling Gang comes out right before this. I believe it's the first live action movie he's done with the company at the time. And because of his popularity from that movie, they rushed No Deposit, No Return into production to capitalize on Knott's reignited fame. Hmm.
[01:09:03] Maybe that's why the movie doesn't seem super polished. When I had read that, I totally believed it. You know, they just grabbed who they could and like, let's get something out there. Yeah. Well, especially because like Don Knott's does have, I guess what I would call extended screen time in this where it's almost like he has freedom to kind of do his his shtick that it doesn't need. Mm hmm. Yeah. So I wonder if that's why. Right.
[01:09:32] Because, OK, well, he's the hot he's the hot commodity right now. Let's give him let's give him some more screen time than we would normally give anybody. It feels like when they let Jack Black go on too long in a movie, like when he's in the Minecraft movie and he's just doing too much, you know, and it felt like a lot of that. He's just like going on about, well, you know, my mother, you know, she will. She passed on. It's like, yeah. OK, come on. Let's get to the end of it. Let's go. Exactly. Yeah.
[01:10:02] So, yeah, his writing should have been a little tighter. But then after No Deposit, No Return, he would come back for four other live action Walt Disney and Buena Vista movies, even reappearing with Darren McGavin in Hot Lead and Cold Feet. See Buena Vista Boys season one, episode two, which I had forgotten Darren. That was so long ago. I'd forgotten Darren McGavin was in that movie, too, as the mayor. I'd forgotten that. Yeah, me too.
[01:10:28] Sad but interesting fact, Don Knotts and Darren McGavin passed away within a day of each other. February 24th and February 25th, 2006, respectively. Man. It very well could have been hours, depending on what time it was. I mean, I guess it literally was hours. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, 24. Yeah. At least 24, man. At least 24. 24.
[01:10:57] So a statue honoring Knott's was unveiled July 23rd, 2016 in front of the Metropolitan Theater on High Street in his hometown, Morgantown, West Virginia. Morgantowners, they know their boy. They love him. They're proud of him. Yeah. I want to say this. Anybody who didn't know this, I feel like the 1964 movie, The Incredible Mr. Limpet, is
[01:11:23] an honorary Disney film because Mr. Limpet shows up among the fish at the end of the Under the Sea song in the 1989 Little Mermaid, right? Mm-hmm. And then he can also be found hiding amongst a big blade of grass in the Little Mermaid ride at DCA. So during the Under the Sea sequence, instead of looking over at Ariel, look to your right, somewhat behind you.
[01:11:51] And if you're keen-eyed, you'll see a bespeckled fish smiling and staring out at the commotion. I wonder why. I wonder why that is. That's something for a later date to discuss, but I don't know if it's like a nod to some of the people who worked on Mr. Limpet are ex-Disney people, right? Yeah. Or the other way around.
[01:12:21] I'm not sure. It feels like they're honoring something. Okay. But I thought that was fascinating. Like, this movie that's not a Disney movie at all, you know, this character ends up in two Disney properties. Right. It's amazing. There's a moment in this movie when Jay is on top of this roof of the hideout looking for Duster, and Don Knotts goes up and tries to find him.
[01:12:47] And the scene goes on way too long, but they're on this green screen clearly, but there's footage in the green screen of the neighborhood where you can see the Hollywood sign and like the surrounding neighborhood and everything. There's a point where Jay is hanging off a crane and you look down and you're looking down at Sunset Boulevard and Argyle Avenue right next to the Hollywood Palladium.
[01:13:15] Like it's, it's undeniable that they're in that spot. Yeah. And so that's where the hideout is. That's cool. Even though it right now, it's like a giant, uh, like apartment building. I don't know what was there before. Nothing in that area is the same. There was a cool in the movie. You see, there's like a cool Hollywood bowling alley behind it with that rad neon sign and everything and all that's gone. Ducks. I was looking this up.
[01:13:41] I thought this was really interesting in California in 1976 kidnapping for ransom extortion or reward carried a penalty. Maybe still does of life in prison. If the victim suffered serious bodily harm or was placed in a substantial risk of death, the penalty was mandatory life without the possibility of parole.
[01:14:10] Now, I don't know if that works here. Right? Because it wasn't ransomed, but they were never. Yeah. Yeah. Well, let's, but from the police's point of view, even like. Right. They were ransomed, but they weren't in any eminent danger. There was no major threat. Even if they were arrested, they could prove, Hey, you know, we weren't in any trouble. Like, so simple kidnapping, by the way, it was punishable by a standard three to five or eight years, but kidnapping a child under 14.
[01:14:40] If the victim was a minor child, the term was enhanced to five, eight or 11 years in state prison. So either way they're meeting AJR now. Oh, absolutely. The grandpa mentioned when he tripped on Jay's skateboard, because there's a scene where Jay says, Hey, I didn't want grandpa to trip on my skateboard. So I put it in the closet. I didn't know that was the stairs of the wine cellar.
[01:15:06] And then they, they went on about how grandpa was like, Oh, it went like a rocket right into this case of Muto Rosteo. That's what it sounded like. He said, right. Yeah. It's like, yeah, I decimated a whole case of Muto Rosteo. 1908. Yes. And likely he was actually talking about Chateau Moumont Rothschild, 1908. I think I said that right. I don't know French. Probably.
[01:15:36] And it's a Bordeaux wine, very highly sought after by collectors. Current price for a bottle is around $5,000 each. And in 1976, it would have been between 50 to a hundred dollars, which would translate into about 300 to $600 now. So not nothing. Yeah. Not nothing, man. No. Okay. So that's 12, right? So 600 times 12 is money.
[01:16:06] Was grandpa ever going to drink it though? It was just sitting down there. No. Right. Yeah. I mean, that's all I'm saying is like, it was just, just like with all the other crap in his house, it's just sitting around to be broken. You know, he's entertaining, you know, high society there because there's no grandma. Yeah. So, you know, he has ladies over and that's probably when the Muto Roste pops out, you know, comes out. Yeah. I get it.
[01:16:33] So there's a scene where Bert is chasing Jay on the ledge of the building. There's like I said, when the duster gets away and he's crawling though, they crawl out onto this ledge. Of course they do the ledge gag as they're getting up onto the roof. And so they're crawling along and there's an open window with Iris Ardren in there and she is powdering her face. And when Don Knotts looks into her window, she smacks Don Knotts and calls him a masher.
[01:17:02] And this is the second Disney film we've covered where that term comes out. It was first covered in a million dollar duck. And it basically just means pervert. You're just a pervert. You're just a window peeper. Masher. I love it. I heard it. I was like, wait a minute. That's a familiar word. And the mansion used as grandpa's house was located at 160 South San Rafael Avenue in Pasadena.
[01:17:30] Sadly, it burnt down in a fire in 2017. God, that hurts. Yeah. But it had a grand cinematic history. It was used as Wayne Manor in the good Batman movie with Michael Keaton and actually is down the street from the home used as Wayne Manor in Batman, the TV show. It also appeared in Rocky four. No, it was Rocky. Sorry. That's Rocky five. Yeah. Rocky V. Rocky V is Rocky five.
[01:18:00] Yeah. Which makes sense because that's when he got like rich and soft. Yeah. You got the robot. And so I think it's like, you know, he's outside with a robot dancing around. Yeah. Three men and a little lady clue, which is awesome. That makes a lot of sense now. Yeah. Stand by me to name a few. The home was rented out by the original owner in the 1930s to film crews and he would use the money to pay to help out local soup kitchens during the depression.
[01:18:28] Man, what a, what a, what a guy. What a man. Yeah. What a history of that, of that house too. And I've actually read a little bit about it and the person who owned it during the fire had just bought it and they had been renovating it for years and it was 90% done when it burned to the ground and it was like a $15 million loss. Oh, just tragic. But like, I don't know. I thought that's, that's neat.
[01:18:57] It's a neat, that's a neat thing. Or it's like from its inception, it was making money in movies. Yeah. With going to a good cause. God, that, that sucks. It really does. Yeah. I mean, can you imagine spending all that much money on a house and renovating it? You're almost done. And the neighbors are like, oh, it was going to look good too. Cause it was kind of run down and they kind of let it go. And, you know, that's why he bought it. And people were like, the neighborhood was excited to have it back and just done.
[01:19:26] Everyone, Jason is focusing on the money that was lost in this situation. And I'm focusing on the history, the wonderful film history that we have lost. I'm broke. So, okay. Give me some, give me some time to enjoy other people's money for a second. All right. So this, this is what I want to close out with. It honestly has nothing to do with the movie, but it's something that was bucking me.
[01:19:49] Cause in the movie, the kids get out and they get, um, not arrested, but like picked up by the police. And the reason is because they have a skunk and they, they bring Bert and Duke down to the, uh, to the police station. And you think it's because, Hey, they've, they've been caught and it's, it's because they don't have a skunk license. Yeah. They don't have a pet license for a skunk. Yeah.
[01:20:18] And, and what I can't remember, it's like, did they think that the skunk, did the police think that the skunk was a cat or did they, did they actually like address it as a skunk? I, you know what? I don't know. I can't imagine that anybody, even cops would be that stupid to like, think that that's just a cat or whatever. So that's cause Tony kept going. Hey, what way he goes? Hey, putty tat or whatever. Like, yeah. But I see. Okay. So yeah.
[01:20:46] Big, big Joe, big thumb, whatever his name was. Yeah. Um, yeah. He was like, how's the putty tat? And I, I feel like it was just more of like a sarcastic, uh, be talking to a kid, like threatening manner. Like, Oh, it's just a putty tat or whatever. I don't know. I didn't, I didn't, I didn't, I didn't think of it as, as him not understanding what it is. Interesting. Okay.
[01:21:08] Well, so in the movie though, this is what I wanted to say is that they had to pay $2 for a license to own their skunk. Yeah. And just in case you want to own a skunk in the state of California, um, the state prohibits the ownership, uh, importation or transportation of skunks without a special restricted species permit. This is in the law.
[01:21:37] This is not me that I'm not making this up. They, someone had to write this into law for a reason. There was a reason someone that like, okay, you know, this is like with stuff like this, that should be the, the clause should be named after the person who committed the violation to get it written in anything. That was traffic law, OSHA law. You know what I mean? It's like, this is Joe's clause.
[01:22:02] You need to have at least 15% of guardrails at a certain height because this idiot fell one day. Stinky Jeff's law. Yeah, exactly. For the skunk. Uh, we find you in violation of the van, the van smelly clause. But what's funny is I would have, I got caught up with restricted species permit and I was like, okay, well then you can still get a permit.
[01:22:28] Well, turns out these specific permits are only issued to bonafide scientific or public health research facilities, uh, accredited zoos and licensed wildlife rehabilitators. They are not granted to private citizens. So sorry. You know what? Here's the thing. If I want a skunk, I'm going to, I'm going to find a skunk. I'm going to take a skunk out of the wild and I'm going to raise a skunk. I'm going to domesticate it at home. Yeah. Absolutely.
[01:22:57] So this is the only, this is what I want to, speaking of skunks, I'm going to leave everyone with this. I want to leave you with a gift. Okay. The only proven method that is backed by science on how to get skunk smell out of your dog or your clothes or anything like that is to mix one quart of 3% hydrogen peroxide, one quarter cup of baking soda and a teaspoon of liquid dish soap. Use it right away. Scrub your item down and let it stand for five minutes.
[01:23:27] This mixture will neutralize the oily sulfur based compound of skunk spray. Huh? There you go. Hopefully I'll never have to figure that out. Yeah. Right or not. And that's no deposit, no return folks. Which is a wacky name. I mean, honestly, cause it is like they're trying to give the kids back, but the grandpa's like, I'm not going to pay you. It almost betrays the premise of the movie, but I don't know. It's like, I didn't pay for them.
[01:23:57] I don't want them back. Yeah. It's a gag. That's like 90% there, but it just needs a little bit. Uh, it's a catchy title, but it doesn't really, it doesn't really fit necessarily. Not like hot lead, cold feet. That made sense. This doesn't necessarily make sense. But yeah, overall cute movie and Darren McGavin, you know, we, and we talked, uh, probably talked about him in hot lead, cold feet, but you know, he more famously plays the dad in a Christmas story. Yeah. So I can't, and I, we watched that movie all the time.
[01:24:27] Well, and Kolchak, the night stalker. So he has a big TV background too. Yeah. But like for, with a lot of his like reaction, you know, monologues and takes, it just reminded me so much of his, of his role as the dad in a Christmas story. It's the same, like, you know, kind of like the stutter. I liked it. I don't know how I felt inside is how he looked through this entire movie. Just put out, didn't want to, didn't want to be there haggard.
[01:24:57] Yeah. Well, it was interesting because, you know, they, uh, they, they needed a bunch of money and, you know, Darren McGavin was out mailing, you know, one of the million ransom notes. And then he stops at a store and buys a dress for Tracy because they're, because these kids, they're, they're, they're off of school. They're, they're coming off of school. They don't have any luggage per se. And so they're in the same school uniform. They've been for three days, two days, whatever it's been. Right. So they gotta be kind of, you know, whiffy.
[01:25:24] So he buys her address, but the Jay gets nothing. Jay's carrying a skunk around for this whole movie. He gets no new clothes, but he puts his tie on every morning. He puts his stupid school tie. You have to understand that. It's like, but I did like that. I did like that bit with Darren McGavin, like, like there is something about Darren McGavin where it's like he's born to play a dad because he has that great voice where you can go. Ah, yeah.
[01:25:54] So mom's not around too much. Very fatherly. Yeah. Especially. Yeah. And it's just, again, reminiscent of that final scene in, uh, in a Christmas story, you know, where he's like, oh, Santa didn't bring you the, oh, what's, what's that back there? It's careful. They'll go all over. Careful. Yeah. He taps into it really well. He's so good. Uh, all right. I think that's it, man. Right? Yeah. No, I think we covered more than enough. Yeah. All right. Well, thanks for hanging out with us for no deposit, no return.
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[01:27:18] And until next time, we'll see you later. Bye. Clickety click.