5,000 fingers reviews

Due to Popular Demand, Here are Some of the Reviews, Good and Bad, I've Found on the Net

This is Dr. Seuss' only live-action movie--filmed with actors rather than animation, but his trademark combination of whimsy and dark themes is easily recognizable. The widowed mother of Bartholomew is determined her son must learn to play the piano. She engages Mr. Terwilliker to supervise endless practice. The waking-life Terwilliker is only mundanely authoritarian and insensitive, but Bartholomew goes to sleep and a dream encompasses most of the duration of the film. The dream Dr. T is a tyrant with allusions to the Nazis (the film was made right after WWII) but also more generally embodying the terrifying power an unjust adult may easily hold over a child. Sets enhance the effect with impossibly high Bauhaus buildings which Bartholomew must scale on a flimsy ladder to escape music prison. Seuss commented on his use of dreaming in a memo to the film's producer, Stanley Kramer, "The kid, psychologically, is in a box. The dream mechanism takes these elements that are thwarting him and blows them up to gigantic proportions." It's an interesting film and may appeal to older children; young ones could be frightened by much of the content.

The only live-action Dr. Seuss movie for nearly a half-century, this delightful musical comedy is a treat--something for kids who thought they have seen everything. Young Bart (Tommy Rettig of TV's Lassie) detests his piano lessons with the fanatical Dr. Terwilliker (Hans Conried). As with Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, Bart falls into a dream world in which the piano teacher--renamed Dr. T--is ruler and children are hunted down to have piano lessons. Worse yet, Dr. T has magical control over Bart's mom (Mary Healy). The Oscar-nominated songs are uneven but the art direction is superb, creating a truly magical world (and the world's longest piano). Dr. Seuss's love for language stays intact. Many kids of the 1950s might remember Bart's five-fingered beanie, which was a top seller. Great fun for the 5-10 age range and adults too.

--Doug Thomas

One of Hollywood's most bizarre creations from the 1950s was conceived by Dr. Seuss, who was relatively unknown at the time. The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T (1953) was no cartoon, but it does contain some seeds for the good doctor's later career in children's stories. An extended nightmare of a young boy tormented by his martinet piano teacher, Dr. T satirizes the evils of all totalitarian systems. In the child's frightening and funny dream, the maestro rules a sinister music academy with a police state regimen, where all individuality is forcibly subsumed by his vision. Dr. T also nails the perspective of kids on the incomprehensible weirdness of the adult world, and conveys the disjointed logic of dreams in its settings suggestive of the pre-surreal, early 20th-century painter Giorgio de Chirico. It is an underrated classic. (D.L.)

One of the most underrated of all children’s fantasies, and conceivably the most interesting movie Stanley Kramer ever produced. Dr. Seuss wrote the screenplay (with Alan Scott); his wartime buddy Carl Foreman was originally supposed to direct, but the Hollywood witch-hunts soon made this impossible, and Roy Rowland took Foreman’s place. The plot basically consists of the florid nightmare of a ten-year-old boy (Tommy Rettig) about his authoritarian and vaguely foreign piano teacher (Hans Conried): the piano teacher forces 500 boys to play his monotonous exercise on a continuous keyboard located in his gargantuan palace, while the boy’s mother is locked, hypnotized, in a gilded cage. Dr. Seuss originally wrote the part of an elderly plumber who befriends the boy for Karl Malden, but "commerce" intervened, and Kramer insisted on using radio star Peter Lind Hayes instead, with Hayes’s partner Mary Healy as the mother. Despite these and other problems—the film proved to be a financial disaster—this remains unique and truly imaginative, fascinating both ideologically as an expression of its period (1953) and aesthetically as a very inventive form of delirium. Cinematographer Franz Planer, production designer Rudolph Sternad, and choreographer Eugene Loring all made astonishing contributions—their dungeon ballet, with an assist from Dr. Seuss, is a particular high point—and Frederick Hollander furnished the score; the use of Technicolor is especially impressive. If you’ve never seen this, prepare to have your mind blown.

A review by Jonathan Rosenbaum in The Chicago Reader:

Bart (Tommy Rettig), a boy who has grown a bit tired of his piano lessons. Having dozed off at the instrument one afternoon, the lad enters a vivid dream where his instructor has created an evil plot to keep 500 boys playing a giant piano twenty-four hours a day for the rest of their lives..., and beyond! Yet, on the night before the arrival of the other 499 children, Bart attempts to put a stop to the diabolical plan, enlists a reluctant plumber, who in real life he wishes was his "pop," to give him a hand. Can the two rescue Bart's mom, who has been placed under a hypnotic spell by Dr. T? Will they manage to destroy the "Happy Fingers" Institute and thereby save 500 tykes from the torment of eternal piano lessons? A very clever film full of satire that can be enjoyed by both adults and children. The Seussian sets are fantastic; the music (this is a partial-musical) is, at the least, fun, includes a cute little song about life from a kid's perspective. Rettig, in case you didn't know, was Jeff Miller in the original "Lassie" television series; he is also an exceptional child actor, was about eleven or twelve when this was filmed. Lots of fun! Highly recommended.

This adaptation of Dr, Seuss is a must-see, an eerie nightmare about a nine-year-old (the grand Tommy Rettig, from Lassie) trapped by the megalomania of his sadistic piano teacher, Dr. Terwilliker (Hans Conreid). Dr. T plots to have 500 boys practice piano 24 hours a day, all tormented by his ruthless pedagogy. Meanwhile he jails musicians for daring to play any instrument other than the sacred piano. Among the fine song-and-dances: a musical parade of the incarcerated, including piccolo-playing prisoners!

Although this oddball offering is pretty spotty overall, The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T has plenty to recommend it. Scripted by Theodore Geisel (Dr. Seuss to you and me), the flick is an ornate fantasia in which an unwilling young pianist (Tommy Rettig) imagines a world ruled by Dr. Terwilliker (Hans Conreid), a zealot dedicated to ruining the lives of kids everywhere with practice, practice, practice. The plot moves in fits and starts and the songs aren't exactly memorable, but the bizarre costumes (particularly the five-fingered beanies) and the sprawling sets are something to behold. Prove it to yourself with this scene, in which the children sabotage the world's largest keyboard, much to the consternation of the evil Dr. T.

Bart Collins' dad is gone, and mom replaces him via lessons from the piano-obsessed Dr. Terwilliker. Bart hates lessons, and his occasional narcolepsy justifies the real plot of this gem, the dream world adventures designed by the good Doctor Seuss. Semi-evil Dr. T has built the world's largest piano, and is capturing 500 little boys to play it at the opening of his nefarious Terwilliker Institute. Forced to wear the stupidest beanie in the known universe, Bart battles to convince Mr. Zabladuski, Master Sink Installer, to rescue his zombie mom from the evil clutches of the over dressed doctor. Surrealism never had it so good.

From the sinister modern dance troupe chasing Bart to the dueling hypnotists, the good doctor rules the evil one in this little known classic. The apex of this diffracted world is the concerto in the Non-Piano Only dungeon by Dr. T's musician captives. The nearly atonal music LOOKS as if it should be played on these imaginary Seuss-a-phones, and danced by these Seussed-up refugees. Hans Conried as Dr. T rules his dream castle like a third world dictator, and makes a fine villain. In contrast, Bart's plumbing buddy (Peter Hayes) looks like he'd be doing anything other than lip synching this film, even miming a bass tournament.

No one could make this film today. It's not sappy, it's not silly, and it has a level of sophisticated humor now legally forbidden in children's film. It's not hard to entertain both child and parent, really, if you assume the child is a very small adult, and the parent is a very large child. Go find this movie. If you can't -- give up hope. Here and now.--Ed Speller

The 5.000 Fingers of Dr. T, starts with a dream in which the hero, 12 year old Tommy Rettig (later in "Lassie" and much later into drugs) is pursued by creatures with butterfly nets in a surreal landscape. These creatures look almost exactly like the Martians in Invaders from Mars. The dream ends when piano teacher Dr. Terwilliker (Hans Conried) wakens Rettig, but the main part of the film consists of yet another dream in which Terwilliker is transformed into a crazed and rather campy dictator who plans to imprison 500 boys which are to perform his masterpiece on a two-level giant piano for eternity.

5,000 Fingers of Dr. T offers vast sets, bizarre costumes and intentionally campy musical numbers, yet it never ceases to look small-scale. May it be that director Roy Rowland, a competent workman, did not possess the grandiose cartoon vision the film would have needed (but as it turned out, it seemed too bizarre for viewers even the way it came out). But more likely, the film's subject narrowed its viewpoint much like it did in Invaders from Mars. (This is no complaint at all; actually, it may be a virtue. Had 5.000 Fingers of Dr. T been made in the slick MGM style, it would most probably have lost its best features - the kinky and outrageous ones. Even Vincente Minelli's Yolanda and the Thief (1945) had only one memorable scene.) 5.000 Fingers of Dr. T has obvious science fiction influences: there's mind control like in Invaders from Mars, and the improvised weapon to defeat the villain is atomic (and so, naturally, explodes). A line of dialogue delivered by the hero's mother in Invaders from Mars, blaming it all on "these trashy science fiction novels" (a rare glimpse of an ironic line, considering the fact that the mother is, at this point of the story, controlled by alien remote control), could well come out of 5.000 Fingers of Dr. T, too. And as for mind control: the mother in 5.000 Fingers of Dr. T it not only hypnotized, but literally put into a cage in between her duties as secretary-cum-lover. 5.000 Fingers of Dr. T parallels reality and dream; real-life foil Dr. Terwilliker appears as an evil father figure; likewise, the loving father in Invaders from Mars is changed into a heartless monster. (And much the same happens in yet another 1953 film, Peter Pan - though the Disney version typically omits the novel's relationship between real-life father and Captain Hook. Other similarities include campy musical numbers ("What makes the Red Man Red?") - and Captain Hook, who is voiced by Hans Conried, Dr. Terwilliker himself!)

The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T sounds like a horror film, but is actually an oddball, live-action musical from the fertile mind of Theodore Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss. Don't be put off by finding this amongst the children's videos; there's plenty here to tickle adult sensibilities, as well. Tommy Rettig plays Bartholomew Collins (not Cubbins), a boy whose piano lessons, administered by Dr. Terwilliker (Hans Conried), are snooze-inducing. While asleep, he dreams he is held prisoner in the silly-sinister Terwilliker Institute, where he and 499 other boys will be forced to play a gigantic, double-decker piano for the tyrannical doctor. Plucky Bart must devise a way to escape, while rescuing his mother (Mary Healy), who is held in hypnotic, administrative thrall by Terwilliker. The boy is aided by a reluctant plumber played by Peter Lind Hayes. Even if you're not a fan of Dr. Seuss (!), you'll be captivated by the marvelous, amusing sets and costumes (look for the great leather-bound books on musical notes in Terwilliker's sleeping chamber), and by a show-stopping production number featuring musicians playing typically Seussian instruments. Some of the songs, alas, are almost as sleep-inducing as little Bart's piano lessons, but the movie overall has an eccentric, irresistible charm. Directed by Roy Rowland.

Hollywood films just don't get any weirder than this underappreciated 1950s classic. This surrealistic children's film (co written by Ted Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss), features Tommy Rettig of TV's "Lassie" as Bart Collins, a young boy who would rather play baseball than take piano lessons with the eccentric and tyrannical Dr. Terwilliker (Conried). Falling asleep at his piano, Bart dreams he's being chased by weird creatures with butterfly nets through a land of fog, cylinders, and odd-shaped mounds. Here he stumbles upon the castle of Dr. T, who runs a piano school for captive boys. The film's key image is the massive winding double-decker piano keyboard with 500 seats, one for each student. 500 boys, 5000 fingers--get it? Kept in the dungeon are pitiful creatures imprisoned as punishment for playing instruments other than the piano. The prisoners have built musical instruments out of odd materials and, in the film's most elaborate sequence, perform a strange ballet. Bart's widowed mom (Mary Healy) is second-in-command at this terrible school but she is hypnotized by Dr. T. Eventually Bart teams up with Mr. Zabladowski (Hayes), a resourceful plumber and reluctant surrogate father, to topple Dr. T's evil empire. THE 5,000 FINGERS OF DR T. is one of the best fantasy films ever produced by Hollywood. Adults will find it every bit as diverting and intriguing as children as it explicitly connects dreams, surrealism and psychoanalysis. The dreamy sets succeed in making this film look like a Dr. Seuss book brought to life. Rettig and Hayes are delightful and Healy's OK but Conried gives what may be the performance of his estimable career as the dastardly fop. Though at times deliriously perverse, particularly in the context of conformist 1950s filmmaking, the film is also quite moving. Essential viewing for any potentially cool kids.

This is a rare treat, the only Dr. Seuss concoction in live action! A young boy, weary of his tyrannical piano teacher, nightmares up a spectacular castle in which the evil Dr. Terwilliker keeps 500 boys as student-slaves to play an infinite string of piano keys! Mind-boggling imagery and whacked-out songs seem utterly amazing to have come out of a major studio at this time.



		Return to Home Page

	Due to Popular Demand, Here are Some of the Reviews, Good and Bad, I've Found on the Net This is Dr. Seuss' only live-action movie--filmed with actors rather than animation, but his trademark combination of whimsy and dark themes is easily recognizable. The widowed mother of Bartholomew is determined her son must learn to play the piano. She engages Mr. Terwilliker to supervise endless practice. The waking-life Terwilliker is only mundanely authoritarian and insensitive, but Bartholomew goes to sleep and a dream encompasses most of the duration of the film. The dream Dr. T is a tyrant with allusions to the Nazis (the film was made right after WWII) but also more generally embodying the terrifying power an unjust adult may easily hold over a child. Sets enhance the effect with impossibly high Bauhaus buildings which Bartholomew must scale on a flimsy ladder to escape music prison. Seuss commented on his use of dreaming in a memo to the film's producer, Stanley Kramer, "The kid, psychologically, is in a box. The dream mechanism takes these elements that are thwarting him and blows them up to gigantic proportions." It's an interesting film and may appeal to older children; young ones could be frightened by much of the content. The only live-action Dr. Seuss movie for nearly a half-century, this delightful musical comedy is a treat--something for kids who thought they have seen everything. Young Bart (Tommy Rettig of TV's Lassie) detests his piano lessons with the fanatical Dr. Terwilliker (Hans Conried). As with Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, Bart falls into a dream world in which the piano teacher--renamed Dr. T--is ruler and children are hunted down to have piano lessons. Worse yet, Dr. T has magical control over Bart's mom (Mary Healy). The Oscar-nominated songs are uneven but the art direction is superb, creating a truly magical world (and the world's longest piano). Dr. Seuss's love for language stays intact. Many kids of the 1950s might remember Bart's five-fingered beanie, which was a top seller. Great fun for the 5-10 age range and adults too. --Doug Thomas One of Hollywood's most bizarre creations from the 1950s was conceived by Dr. Seuss, who was relatively unknown at the time. The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T (1953) was no cartoon, but it does contain some seeds for the good doctor's later career in children's stories. An extended nightmare of a young boy tormented by his martinet piano teacher, Dr. T satirizes the evils of all totalitarian systems. In the child's frightening and funny dream, the maestro rules a sinister music academy with a police state regimen, where all individuality is forcibly subsumed by his vision. Dr. T also nails the perspective of kids on the incomprehensible weirdness of the adult world, and conveys the disjointed logic of dreams in its settings suggestive of the pre-surreal, early 20th-century painter Giorgio de Chirico. It is an underrated classic. (D.L.) One of the most underrated of all children’s fantasies, and conceivably the most interesting movie Stanley Kramer ever produced. Dr. Seuss wrote the screenplay (with Alan Scott); his wartime buddy Carl Foreman was originally supposed to direct, but the Hollywood witch-hunts soon made this impossible, and Roy Rowland took Foreman’s place. The plot basically consists of the florid nightmare of a ten-year-old boy (Tommy Rettig) about his authoritarian and vaguely foreign piano teacher (Hans Conried): the piano teacher forces 500 boys to play his monotonous exercise on a continuous keyboard located in his gargantuan palace, while the boy’s mother is locked, hypnotized, in a gilded cage. Dr. Seuss originally wrote the part of an elderly plumber who befriends the boy for Karl Malden, but "commerce" intervened, and Kramer insisted on using radio star Peter Lind Hayes instead, with Hayes’s partner Mary Healy as the mother. Despite these and other problems—the film proved to be a financial disaster—this remains unique and truly imaginative, fascinating both ideologically as an expression of its period (1953) and aesthetically as a very inventive form of delirium. Cinematographer Franz Planer, production designer Rudolph Sternad, and choreographer Eugene Loring all made astonishing contributions—their dungeon ballet, with an assist from Dr. Seuss, is a particular high point—and Frederick Hollander furnished the score; the use of Technicolor is especially impressive. If you’ve never seen this, prepare to have your mind blown. A review by Jonathan Rosenbaum in The Chicago Reader: Bart (Tommy Rettig), a boy who has grown a bit tired of his piano lessons. Having dozed off at the instrument one afternoon, the lad enters a vivid dream where his instructor has created an evil plot to keep 500 boys playing a giant piano twenty-four hours a day for the rest of their lives..., and beyond! Yet, on the night before the arrival of the other 499 children, Bart attempts to put a stop to the diabolical plan, enlists a reluctant plumber, who in real life he wishes was his "pop," to give him a hand. Can the two rescue Bart's mom, who has been placed under a hypnotic spell by Dr. T? Will they manage to destroy the "Happy Fingers" Institute and thereby save 500 tykes from the torment of eternal piano lessons? A very clever film full of satire that can be enjoyed by both adults and children. The Seussian sets are fantastic; the music (this is a partial-musical) is, at the least, fun, includes a cute little song about life from a kid's perspective. Rettig, in case you didn't know, was Jeff Miller in the original "Lassie" television series; he is also an exceptional child actor, was about eleven or twelve when this was filmed. Lots of fun! Highly recommended. This adaptation of Dr, Seuss is a must-see, an eerie nightmare about a nine-year-old (the grand Tommy Rettig, from Lassie) trapped by the megalomania of his sadistic piano teacher, Dr. Terwilliker (Hans Conreid). Dr. T plots to have 500 boys practice piano 24 hours a day, all tormented by his ruthless pedagogy. Meanwhile he jails musicians for daring to play any instrument other than the sacred piano. Among the fine song-and-dances: a musical parade of the incarcerated, including piccolo-playing prisoners! Although this oddball offering is pretty spotty overall, The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T has plenty to recommend it. Scripted by Theodore Geisel (Dr. Seuss to you and me), the flick is an ornate fantasia in which an unwilling young pianist (Tommy Rettig) imagines a world ruled by Dr. Terwilliker (Hans Conreid), a zealot dedicated to ruining the lives of kids everywhere with practice, practice, practice. The plot moves in fits and starts and the songs aren't exactly memorable, but the bizarre costumes (particularly the five-fingered beanies) and the sprawling sets are something to behold. Prove it to yourself with this scene, in which the children sabotage the world's largest keyboard, much to the consternation of the evil Dr. T. Bart Collins' dad is gone, and mom replaces him via lessons from the piano-obsessed Dr. Terwilliker. Bart hates lessons, and his occasional narcolepsy justifies the real plot of this gem, the dream world adventures designed by the good Doctor Seuss. Semi-evil Dr. T has built the world's largest piano, and is capturing 500 little boys to play it at the opening of his nefarious Terwilliker Institute. Forced to wear the stupidest beanie in the known universe, Bart battles to convince Mr. Zabladuski, Master Sink Installer, to rescue his zombie mom from the evil clutches of the over dressed doctor. Surrealism never had it so good. From the sinister modern dance troupe chasing Bart to the dueling hypnotists, the good doctor rules the evil one in this little known classic. The apex of this diffracted world is the concerto in the Non-Piano Only dungeon by Dr. T's musician captives. The nearly atonal music LOOKS as if it should be played on these imaginary Seuss-a-phones, and danced by these Seussed-up refugees. Hans Conried as Dr. T rules his dream castle like a third world dictator, and makes a fine villain. In contrast, Bart's plumbing buddy (Peter Hayes) looks like he'd be doing anything other than lip synching this film, even miming a bass tournament. No one could make this film today. It's not sappy, it's not silly, and it has a level of sophisticated humor now legally forbidden in children's film. It's not hard to entertain both child and parent, really, if you assume the child is a very small adult, and the parent is a very large child. Go find this movie. If you can't -- give up hope. Here and now.--Ed Speller The 5.000 Fingers of Dr. T, starts with a dream in which the hero, 12 year old Tommy Rettig (later in "Lassie" and much later into drugs) is pursued by creatures with butterfly nets in a surreal landscape. These creatures look almost exactly like the Martians in Invaders from Mars. The dream ends when piano teacher Dr. Terwilliker (Hans Conried) wakens Rettig, but the main part of the film consists of yet another dream in which Terwilliker is transformed into a crazed and rather campy dictator who plans to imprison 500 boys which are to perform his masterpiece on a two-level giant piano for eternity. 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T offers vast sets, bizarre costumes and intentionally campy musical numbers, yet it never ceases to look small-scale. May it be that director Roy Rowland, a competent workman, did not possess the grandiose cartoon vision the film would have needed (but as it turned out, it seemed too bizarre for viewers even the way it came out). But more likely, the film's subject narrowed its viewpoint much like it did in Invaders from Mars. (This is no complaint at all; actually, it may be a virtue. Had 5.000 Fingers of Dr. T been made in the slick MGM style, it would most probably have lost its best features - the kinky and outrageous ones. Even Vincente Minelli's Yolanda and the Thief (1945) had only one memorable scene.) 5.000 Fingers of Dr. T has obvious science fiction influences: there's mind control like in Invaders from Mars, and the improvised weapon to defeat the villain is atomic (and so, naturally, explodes). A line of dialogue delivered by the hero's mother in Invaders from Mars, blaming it all on "these trashy science fiction novels" (a rare glimpse of an ironic line, considering the fact that the mother is, at this point of the story, controlled by alien remote control), could well come out of 5.000 Fingers of Dr. T, too. And as for mind control: the mother in 5.000 Fingers of Dr. T it not only hypnotized, but literally put into a cage in between her duties as secretary-cum-lover. 5.000 Fingers of Dr. T parallels reality and dream; real-life foil Dr. Terwilliker appears as an evil father figure; likewise, the loving father in Invaders from Mars is changed into a heartless monster. (And much the same happens in yet another 1953 film, Peter Pan - though the Disney version typically omits the novel's relationship between real-life father and Captain Hook. Other similarities include campy musical numbers ("What makes the Red Man Red?") - and Captain Hook, who is voiced by Hans Conried, Dr. Terwilliker himself!) The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T sounds like a horror film, but is actually an oddball, live-action musical from the fertile mind of Theodore Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss. Don't be put off by finding this amongst the children's videos; there's plenty here to tickle adult sensibilities, as well. Tommy Rettig plays Bartholomew Collins (not Cubbins), a boy whose piano lessons, administered by Dr. Terwilliker (Hans Conried), are snooze-inducing. While asleep, he dreams he is held prisoner in the silly-sinister Terwilliker Institute, where he and 499 other boys will be forced to play a gigantic, double-decker piano for the tyrannical doctor. Plucky Bart must devise a way to escape, while rescuing his mother (Mary Healy), who is held in hypnotic, administrative thrall by Terwilliker. The boy is aided by a reluctant plumber played by Peter Lind Hayes. Even if you're not a fan of Dr. Seuss (!), you'll be captivated by the marvelous, amusing sets and costumes (look for the great leather-bound books on musical notes in Terwilliker's sleeping chamber), and by a show-stopping production number featuring musicians playing typically Seussian instruments. Some of the songs, alas, are almost as sleep-inducing as little Bart's piano lessons, but the movie overall has an eccentric, irresistible charm. Directed by Roy Rowland. Hollywood films just don't get any weirder than this underappreciated 1950s classic. This surrealistic children's film (co written by Ted Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss), features Tommy Rettig of TV's "Lassie" as Bart Collins, a young boy who would rather play baseball than take piano lessons with the eccentric and tyrannical Dr. Terwilliker (Conried). Falling asleep at his piano, Bart dreams he's being chased by weird creatures with butterfly nets through a land of fog, cylinders, and odd-shaped mounds. Here he stumbles upon the castle of Dr. T, who runs a piano school for captive boys. The film's key image is the massive winding double-decker piano keyboard with 500 seats, one for each student. 500 boys, 5000 fingers--get it? Kept in the dungeon are pitiful creatures imprisoned as punishment for playing instruments other than the piano. The prisoners have built musical instruments out of odd materials and, in the film's most elaborate sequence, perform a strange ballet. Bart's widowed mom (Mary Healy) is second-in-command at this terrible school but she is hypnotized by Dr. T. Eventually Bart teams up with Mr. Zabladowski (Hayes), a resourceful plumber and reluctant surrogate father, to topple Dr. T's evil empire. THE 5,000 FINGERS OF DR T. is one of the best fantasy films ever produced by Hollywood. Adults will find it every bit as diverting and intriguing as children as it explicitly connects dreams, surrealism and psychoanalysis. The dreamy sets succeed in making this film look like a Dr. Seuss book brought to life. Rettig and Hayes are delightful and Healy's OK but Conried gives what may be the performance of his estimable career as the dastardly fop. Though at times deliriously perverse, particularly in the context of conformist 1950s filmmaking, the film is also quite moving. Essential viewing for any potentially cool kids. This is a rare treat, the only Dr. Seuss concoction in live action! A young boy, weary of his tyrannical piano teacher, nightmares up a spectacular castle in which the evil Dr. Terwilliker keeps 500 boys as student-slaves to play an infinite string of piano keys! Mind-boggling imagery and whacked-out songs seem utterly amazing to have come out of a major studio at this time.