Everytime I watch this movie, I continue to be astounded at the casting of the weak-voiced Ted Neely as Jesus.
Especially given the spot-on casting of Carl Anderson as Judas, and Yvonne Elliman as Mary Magdalene, whose voices each superbly carried their roles, and the generally good casting of the spot players.
Neely’s voice is good in about half the movie. Among places where it’s not good, Jesus cleansing the Temple jars me immensely. Jesus was angry; Neely was petulant.
I don’t know if it was a failure in Neely’s range, or a desire of the director, but an otherwise astounding movie is destroyed by it.
I wouldn’t say it’s destroyed by it, but, yeah, I’ve never been impressed by Neely’s performance. (Not a huge fan of Josh Mostel as Herod, either.) He managed to get some emotion in the Last Supper scene when he and Judas were going at each other, but…
Neely understudied the part of Jesus in the original New York production, then played the lead in the Los Angeles production, which led him to be cast in the movie. All I can conclude is that either a) he couldn’t act on film or b) he suffered from terrible direction.
Having seen the movie numerous times, I’m tempted to think it was more B than A.
Probably my least favorite Jesus ever in a movie with a large budget. Even more incredible was that many years later when he was in his 50s and 60s Ted Neeley starred in revivals and road shows of the musical; he Jesus as recently as 2009 in a one-off JCS: The Concert. Don’t understand it.
The 2000 video version was much better casting and in fact the only thing I didn’t prefer about it to the original was the absence of the Israeli landscape. Greatest highlight: Rik Mayall’s Herod Antipas (I loathed everything about Josh Mostel’s version, though I don’t blame him for it- it was the choreography and the directing and the fact he was fitfully miscast).
Weird trivia about the 2000 video: Glenn Carter, the actor who played Jesus, is, weirdly, a member of a UFO cult in real life.)
This appears to be a universal feeling: when we were kids in the UK me and my friends were huge fans of the movie and watched it on VHS all the time*.
We also thought Neeley let an otherwise great film down. He was either profoundly miscast, or nobody told him to find the power that the part demanded. Wimp Christ was one of our kinder epithets. Frankly I thought he stank up every scene he was in, and wondered why the hell they didn’t use Ian Gillan.
We did, however, worship Carl Anderson - figuratively speaking.
I wonder if 1973, still being within the hippy era, meant that David Van Driessen-style mannerisms to be seen as a Good Thing and Kinda Groovy. What did contemporary reviews think?
*Even at my friend’s wedding two years ago we all gathered round the piano while she played the JCSS score and the wedding party sang the entire thing. How twee is that?
I think his Jesus is fabulous, and his voice is just right… very wail-y and blues-y. I’ve watched the movie and listened to the album a zillion times. Just saw Ted a couple of years ago in the part. Yeah, he’s aged-- so have I (we’re the same age).
I thought the stagey look of the 2000 version was one of the best choices, personally. It occasionally made things confusing (‘is this taking place in the same space as that?’), but not enough to be a major issue. And I agree with you, I prefer the 2000 in pretty much every respect.
Carter was awesome as Jesus, getting a delightful combination of confusion, ego, righteousness, and rage, as necessary.
Jérôme Pradon, despite being, by his own admission, in completely the wrong vocal range, nailed the character of Judas (just musically, he doesn’t do as well as Carl Anderson, but as an ACTOR he kills it).
Tony Vincent (who interestingly played Judas in the stage production by the same director which she adapted for this version) really takes Simon to another level, during Simon Zealotes.
Renée Castle’s Mary Magdalene doesn’t stand out as much (I’ve never seen Mary done except very well, even by amateurs), but she has every quality Mary should have.
Mayall over Mostel, definitely. He is actually terrifying by the time the song is over…the venom he puts into ‘King of the Jews’…neither Mostel, nor Mike D’abo (who played Herod on the original album) comes close.
All of the priests sound much more natural, and Annas doesn’t make me want to tear my ears off…
I thought it was too ‘latter day flower child’ dated and too… what’s the word? Gay. Herod Antipas’s most famous scene in the Bible is lusting for his niece/stepdaughter/etc. Salome so much he has a holy man killed in exchange for her dancing; if Mostel’s character has traded head for lapdance before it involved a poolboy rather than a jailbait niece, not to say one is worse than the other but it’s mutually exclusive.
True enough, but if you’re missing the gay camp in the link you posted (which I quite liked), you’re not looking hard enough. It’s just different, and 27 years apart, that’s all. I’ve always enjoyed Herod in the 1973 version, and I guess I now need to look to watch the 2000 version, as the Herod in it has caught my attention.
Not only that, but it seems the casting directory’s mission was on a mission to find the greasiest-looking Jesus possible.
I am likewise disappointed with Neely, and wish they could have found some way to get Ian Gillan back in the role. Carl Anderson was serviceable, but Murray Head and Ian Gillan were just perfect, both together and individually.
See, I wonder if the 1973 film has to have been a person’s initial introduction to JCS in order to have any affection for it whatsoever.
I was introduce to JCS via the original concept album when I was a freshman in high school. A year later there was a local, but very much a professional, production in Philadelphia (1990-sh)- and it was amazing. The cast was brilliant. They dropped the lame-o idea of handheld mics. They had period inspired costumes and sets (though tastefully stylized). Most importantly, the director disciplined the actors into remembering to act- too often with JCS the actors all seem to tap into the buried adolescent dream to be a rock star rather than a musical theater performer, they get cast in JCS and ham the crap out of it waiting for panties to be thrown onstage and forgetting to act.
A couple years later, the huge touring cast production with Neely and Anderson started up. My friends and I were so excited to see another professional production, having wished the run of the production we had seen could have lasted forever. At this point, I still hadn’t seen the movie but I knew who Neely and Anderson were (the production, after all, was promoted on their names). Oh my God, we HATED this production! the horrible “modern” stage design and costumes, the stupid handheld mics, the way Neely and Anderson both performed as if they were singers at a rock concert instead of actors in a play.
Sometime after, I had a chance to watch the movie. I thought it would be flawed, but I still loved JCS so much that I thought even a flawed film version would still be worth it. I don’t know how far I got into it, but it wasn’t very far. I disliked so much about it that I really couldn’t tell you how much of my dislike was based on Neely’s performance. I think I still to this day haven’t seen the whole thing. When I introduce younger people to JCS, I tell them there is a movie but they should skip it and stick with the album version.
I haven’t seen the 2000 version. Maybe I’ll check it out. Is it properly a movie, or is it a filmed stage production like the home video releases of the Broadway productions of Into the Woods and Pippin and others like those?
It’s definitely a stage, but they take advantage of the fact that the audience (that is to say the camera) doesn’t have to be stationary, and thus the blocking gets a lot more interesting, and there’s some interesting camera work.
Not in my case. I was introduced to the concept album and the film more or less simultaneously, since we studied them in our eighth-grade music class. My recollection was that almost everyone vastly preferred the music from the concept album. One thing I do like better about the film is Caiaphas and Annas; there’s a much greater separation of the vocal ranges and styles of the singers, which infuses the roles with more personality and gives their relationship more dynamic. In the concept album the two priests are more socially equal, whereas in the concept album Annas’s subservience is much more apparent. Movie Caiaphas has this tremendously low, booming voice, whereas Annas’s is high-pitched and tweety.
It certainly has the look of a filmed stage production (though without the audience). It’s all shot on a stage with minimal scenery. I wasn’t particularly impressed; I preferred the location shoots of the 1973 version.
Certainly not in my case. My first intro was in the West End stage production, then the cast album, and then the movie.
See, I think the power of the opening Heaven on Their Minds and the hippie exuberance of Simon Zealotes go go a long way to making up for Neely’s patheticness (which is alas visible at the end of that second clip). I really do enjoy the movie despite it.
True enough, but if you’re missing the gay camp in the link you posted (which I quite liked), you’re not looking hard enough. It’s just different, and 27 years apart, that’s all. I’ve always enjoyed Herod in the 1973 version, and I guess I now need to look to watch the 2000 version, as the Herod in it has caught my attention.