The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T. (Stanley Kramer; Columbia) is a freshly told, more than slightly screwball little film fantasy which is likely to divide moviegoers into violently opposing camps.Small boys (and even girls) of all ages should find it exciting and rattling good fun. Mothers of small boys, piano teachers and grownups who prefer their movies to follow familiar grooves may be repelled or bored by it.
The story is basically as simple—and as wildly and lavishly dressed—as a small boy's own imagination. The boy of the story hates piano lessons but is kept at his practicing by his well-meaning mother and his music teacher, an evil, oily character named Dr. Terwilliker. Falling asleep at the keyboard, the boy is transported in a Technicolored dream to a fantastic castle in which Dr. Terwilliker keeps a mile-long two-decker piano. At this preposterous musical instrument the teacher plots and schemes to trap 500 boys ("Think of it! Five thousand fingers!") who have been dragged from their ballplaying. Happily, a likable plumber named Zabladowski comes to the rescue of the boy and his pretty mother (who was only under the unspeakable Terwilliker's hypnotic spell), and Dr. T., of course, gets his comeuppance.
Fantasy without coyness is rare, and fantasy about childhood without overdoses of syrup is even rarer. The 5,000 Fingers, even at its most fantastic, contrives to keep its brisk sense of humor and its matter-of-fact, child's-eye view. The villains employed by Dr. T. are a carefree mixture of pirates, heavies out of The Arabian Nights, dabblers in atomic science, and cheerleaders for a rival junior high football team (one of the best of the picture's ten songs is a close-harmony, walls-of-poison-ivy number, softly sung by a group of "us stinkers"—Dr. T.'s plug-ugly hirelings).
Derived from a story by oldtime Cartoonist Dr. Seuss ("Quick, Henry! The Flit!"), the movie wanders through mammoth sets that seem as boundless as a boy's dreams, recording, without undue surprise, the most surprising details. Dr. T.'s castle is equipped with topless sky ladders, sliding doors, subterranean passages, split staircases that lead nowhere, an outsize shovel for putting the doctor's ill-gotten greenbacks in the safe, and a pair of Siamese-twin flunkies, joined by one long white beard, who go about their chores on roller skates. Best of many good sequences: a bizarre ballet, staged by Choreographer Eugene (Billy the Kid) Loring, in which a dungeonful of non-piano-playing musicians writhe in expressionistic torment as they are punished by fanatical Pianoman Terwilliker.
Hans Conried makes a thoroughly mean Terwilliker. Peter Lind Hayes as the plumber and Mary Healy as the mother are ingratiating new screen personalities. As the boy, ten-year-old Tommy Rettig moves appealingly through all the excitement in striped polo shirt, blue jeans, and a blue beanie with a hand ("Happy Fingers") fixed on top.
Dr. Seuss (real name: Theodor Seuss Geisel) admits he had an ax to grind in 5,000 Fingers: as a child, he took piano lessons "from a man who rapped my knuckles with a pencil whenever I made a mistake ... I made up my mind I would finally get even with that man. It took me 43 years to catch up with him. He became the Terwilliker of the movie."