Blood Of The Vines - It's A Mad Mad Mad Mad... Housewife?

Pairing wine with movies!  See the trailers and hear the fascinating commentary for these movies and many more at Trailers From Hell.  If the pandemic has turned your household upside down and inside out, don't get mad.  Get mad, mad, mad, mad.  For the soul of the country, y'all.

Of course, it was possible for anxiety to back up on you even in 1970.  Diary of a Mad Housewife has Carrie Snodgress in the title role.  She can't get satisfaction in her marriage, in her affair or in her therapy group.  It sounds like a job for Calgon, but life has gotten so bad for her that even a long, hot soak won't fix it.

Surely a Mad Housewife wine will pair with this film like it was born to do so.  It is a "mommy wine" aimed at a broader spectrum of women who are in sore need of drinking alone, kids or no kids.

1963's It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World was Stanley Kramer's first attempt at directing a comedy, and it was a big success.  The movie was nominated for six Oscars, but only won the one for best sound editing.

The all-star cast chases after $350,000 in stolen cash.  These days you likely couldn't sell a story about a group of people getting excited about such a paltry sum.  You'd have to have at least a billion-dollar payoff to make it believable.  See Mike Myers' Dr. Evil for a quick lesson on how much to ask.

The movie should attract viewers still today, since it is basically a car chase involving the six passers-by who learned of the "fortune."  Car chases capture attention like little else these days, especially with a "breaking news" graphic on the screen.

Since the mad, mad, mad, mad caper ends up under a "big W," let's grab a wine from Oregon's Willamette Valley Vineyards for pairing purposes.  The region is known for its lush Pinor Noir, like this one that sells for $20.

If you’re going to be exploring a mad, mad, mad, mad world, you'll have to spend some time with a mad, mad, mad, mad doctor.  The one-sheet for Universal's 1942 flick, Mad Doctor of Market Street, asks, "Genius or fiend?"  I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess "fiend" just based on the way Lionel Atwill is depicted on the poster - that pencil-thin moustache, those shifty eyes - he's got fiend written all over him.  Most critics - then and now - feel that the writing on the one-sheet was better than that of the script.

Australia's Dr. Tom Cullity is known in wine circles as the Mad Doctor from Perth.  The moniker settled on him in the 1960s when he first started planting grape vines in the Margaret River region on the continent's west side.  People thought he was nuts, and maybe he was - but the vines grew anyway.  A Chardonnay or Cab from Voyager Estates would be a nice pairing for a movie which may be tough to get through without some help.

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