It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963) on Netflix
Approved19633h 12mActionAdventureComedy
Smiler Grogan, a convict dying after a crash, tells the strangers who stop to help him that $350,000 is buried in Santa Rosita State Park. Four carloads set out to find it.
- Netflix3.6/5
- IMDb7.4/1051,703 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes69%
Trailer
Plot summary
Dying after his car leaves a California highway, the convict Smiler Grogan tells the motorists who stop that $350,000 in stolen cash lies buried in Santa Rosita State Park, 200 miles away, beneath a big W. Melville Crump, a dentist honeymooning a second time with his wife Monica, and the friends Ding Bell and Benjy Benjamin each want a share, but nobody can agree on how to divide it. Lennie Pike, who drives a furniture truck, hits the convertible of the businessman J. Russell Finch; Finch's wife Emmeline and her mother, Mrs. Marcus, are with him. Otto Meyer hears the story from Pike and decides to hunt alone. The four cars race for the park while Captain T. G. Culpeper hopes to close the case before retiring.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- A communications mix-up left the sign stunt pilot Frank Tallman flew through covered in linen rather than paper, and the impact smashed the wings back to their spars; Tallman called it the closest he ever came to dying on film. He and his business partner Paul Mantz both later died in separate air crashes.
- Stan Laurel was offered a cameo but declined, saying he did not want to be seen on screen in his old age, having retired after his comedy partner Oliver Hardy died in 1957. A body double had already been filmed in his old convertible before the cameo went to Jack Benny, who wore Laurel's signature bowler.
- Against director Stanley Kramer's wishes, distributor United Artists cut the film to 163 minutes for its general release. In 2014 the Criterion Collection issued a restored version closer to the original 202-minute cut Kramer envisioned.
- In June 2024, Eddie Murphy told Entertainment Tonight that Jez Butterworth had completed a script for a remake which, like the original, would feature comedians from the past 30 years, including Murphy himself and Martin Lawrence.
- The film was promoted as the first made in "one-projector" Cinerama. The original Cinerama process had required three separate cameras, with the three processed reels thrown onto a huge curved screen by three electronically synchronized projectors.
- The first of the credited cast to die was ZaSu Pitts, who died on June 7, 1963, five months to the day before the film's release.
