Phileas Fogg makes a £20,000 wager with some members of his gentlemen’s club that he can circumnavigate the globe in eighty days, and he and his manservant Passepartout spend the rest of the film attempting to win the bet. But for those of you who may have missed this film, or the version with Jackie Chan, or one of the animated adaptations, or even Michael Palin’s hugely entertaining BBC series in which he tried to duplicate the feat using only the types of transportation available in 1872, here’s the plot in fifty words or fewer: In 1872, Mr. I can’t believe that anyone reading this blog could be totally unaware of the plot of today’s film under discussion, especially since the whole plot, really, is right there in the title. So I’m sticking with my Peter Lorre assertion, which would be a great name for a band-The Peter Lorre Assertion-don’t you think? But I digress. I guess that one could also make a case for its inclusion because the source novel was written by Jules Verne, but if that were the case, In Search of the Castaways, Michael Strogoff, and a few others would also be included in the book…but they’re not. ![]() As far as I can figure it, that’s why Around the World in Eighty Days is included in Weldon’s book. That’s certainly the case with today’s film, as it features a cameo by…Peter Lorre. ![]() If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you should know that when an entry sticks out from the usual exploitation fare and seems to be an oddball choice for discussion, it’s usually because there’s a star involved with it who’s known primarily for his or her work in genre films. Along with Casablanca, Around the World in Eighty Days is one of only two Oscar ®-winners for Best Picture to garner a write-up in the Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film.
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