AniInterview Sorry, this movie sucks

Baseshment I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

Nessieldwi Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.

MusicChat It's complicated... I really like the directing, acting and writing but, there are issues with the way it's shot that I just can't deny. As much as I love the storytelling and the fantastic performance but, there are also certain scenes that didn't need to exist.

edwagreen Typical Red Skelton fanfare, this time it's 1865 and Red is a bell-hop at a local St. Louis hotel. He seems obsessed with tracking down spies and his opportunity comes when he accidentally captures one and assumes his identity.Skelton gets more than he bargained for when he does this. He is recruited by the Union Army to go behind southern lines to pass on certain information.He meets his southern spy in partnership played by a wonderful Arlene Dahl and the two fall for each other. Brian Donlevy, as the heavy, wants Skelton out of the way so that he can resume his relationship with the Dahl character.The film is fun to watch, but it's basically some basic civil war antics routinely observed.

fcasanova First saw this movie on late 1950's TV, about 10 years after it was made. As a kid, I thought it was hilarious. Just watched again in 2011 and wondered if I would perceive it to be as funny as I did 50 years ago. I still love it. Not as much as a 10 year old perhaps, but Skelton can hold his own in his comedic genius through the decades. Of course the writing team of Frank & Panama also later wrote Danny Kaye's "The Court Jester" where they use the same tongue-twister rhyming lines to make hilarious running gags... and the hero's continuous use of secret code questions...to all the wrong people. Makes me want to revisit all the old Red Skelton movies of the late 40's and early 50's.

charlytully If you watch this movie half asleep, it soon becomes nearly impossible to decipher which characters are Union, which are in Union uniforms who actually are Confederate spies, which are Confederate, which are in Confederate uniforms who actually are Union spies, which are civilians dressed up in one uniform or another, and which are totally incompetent at their jobs (which apparently includes the majority of the characters in this 1948 black and white film, which apparently was considered a comedy in its time).Similarly, nowadays if you watch the major cable news networks in the U.S. in the SLEEPING BEAUTY-like slumber spell that seems to have engulfed the majority of the citizenry, it is nearly impossible to tell who are Labor Party stalwarts, or which laborites actually are Greed Party sympathizers in Labor's clothing. While it is not THAT difficult to identify hard-core Greedsters, there apparently are a significant number that actually may be Labor at heart, but just toe the Greed Party line for the money. Most amazingly, half of the civilian laborers support the Greed Party, which shows what you can accomplish in the way of brain-washing with the current choke-hold the GP has on the mass media. Which is why A SOUTHERN YANKEE is a perfect mindless diversion from today's realities (such as the fact that every state of the Ol' Confederacy is now a TAKER--as in, they take more than their fair share of per capita national tax dollars, while every state that helped free the slaves 150 years ago is now a DONOR, as in their citizens let themselves be ripped off by the descendants of the treasonous losers).

timniles I remember Red mostly from TV in the 50s. To my knowledge I had not seen even one of his films until this one a few years ago.I found it amusing and well worth the viewing time.It's also in something of a counterpoint to most of his TV sketch comedy which was too broad and pointless to me even as a child.One of the interesting features of this film was that it was set in the American Civil War and was mostly a comedy. The film was produced in the late 40s (I think) in a period when most - if not all - Civil War films were completely dramatic ("Gone with the Wind" had a few pointedly amusing lines from Rhett Butler but was a serious film.) The Civil War by then was some 80 years in the past, but the South was still very much the South, so to lampoon the South in any way (even if also the Union received comic dusting) would seem to me as quite a stretch by the producers. Like they were willing to write the South off their distribution lists.Bottom line, Red was much better than I can ever remember seeing him and that alone was worth it.