This Film Has Been Rated Ecch: THE CANE MUTINY

Wednesday, March 17, 2021

THE CANE MUTINY

THE CAINE MUTINY (1954)
dir: Edward Dmytryk

THE CANE MUTINY
MAD #19, January 1955
w: Harvey Kurtzman
a: Wallace Wood

”How's your Mom, Ed?” was a non-sequitur they used frequently in the Kurtzman era.

Willie (Robert Francis)'s first day in the navy and he reports for duty on what turns out to be the wrong ship. His is a run down minesweeper.

Lt. Keefer (Fred Mac Murray) introduces himself and then to Captain DeVries (Tom Tully).

It's DeVries' last day and he's replaced with Capt. Queeg (Humphrey Bogart) who's much more strict and orderly and keeps telling his men to tuck in their shirttails. He has a pair of marbles he's always fidgeting with throughout the movie.

Kweeg's behavior keeps getting more erratic and paranoid. He calls the whole crew in for a meeting about missing strawberry ice cream.

The officers below Kweeg question his sanity because of incidents like his obsession with shirttails, his refusal to let them watch movies, the strawberry incident from before, and his insistence that a key has been stolen. During a storm, they find him unfit to run things and the second in command takes over.

There is a long courtroom scene where the officers and the captain are on trial for the mutiny. Kweeg is declared unfit.

The character's name is Maryk, but is called Van because the actor's name is Van Johnson. They did this with him probably so they could do the “moving van” joke. There are a few romantic scenes between Willie and his fiancee (May Wynn) which don't even take place with him in uniform or on the ship, though that's how they're portrayed in this.

Later they have a victory party and the lawyer Greenwald (Jose Ferrer) shows up drunk and tells that even though he had to declare Queeg guilty by law, he's upset that a good man had to go down and throws a drink in Kiefer's face. After it's all over, Willie reports to his assignment on a new ship. It's not a good sign because it's the Bounty.