Skidoo

Skidoo
December 19, 1968
Sigma/Paramount
Comedy, Musical
DVD
B-

This is odd even for a bad '60s movie, and perhaps the oddest thing about it is that, other than the funny opening with the commercial parodies, it gets exponentially more unbelievable as it goes along.  Since I rate movies on their entertainment value (setting aside "good" and "bad" as such), I would give the first half probably a C.  Then Groucho shows up as a mobster named God, and Jackie Gleason accidentally drops acid, upping things to a C+.  By the last twenty minutes, it's suddenly turned into a whacked-out musical, with not only a song & dance number with trash cans but Carol Channing singing the title song (while dressed as either a pirate or George Washington), capped by Nilsson singing the closing credits, down to the Roman numerals in the copyright date!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4IMX26xF9Q 

As you can see, I mean hear, it's a very electic cast.*  I just wish they were given more to do.  This was Groucho's last movie (at age 78) and he looks bored, even when he's undressing 21-year-old Alexandra Hay.  Basically, you've got the mobsters (including Frankie Avalon) and the prisoners and the hippies (nowhere near as cleancut as the ones in How Sweet It Is!, which sounds like it should've starred Gleason), but all of these groups overlap.  It's pointless to talk about the plot, because there really isn't much of one and it's the least interesting aspect of the movie.  In fact, this is a difficult film to discuss because even if you've heard it described, nothing captures its mix of ennui and trippiness, like the way it's never explained why everyone (including a peace poster) uses the word "kiss" for "kill."  So I'll just add is that it is entertaining if you stay with it, but I can definitely understand someone giving up after ten minutes.

*Since my tags are limited and you might not have clicked on the link, I'll add that Arnold Stang gets killed off early on, although he does show up in Gleason's acid trip.  Peter Lawford plays a senator, I guess sort of a reference to him being a Kennedy in-law.  (There's a photo of Governor Reagan in one scene.)  Batman villains Burgess Meredith and Cesar Romero show up as respectively the warden and Hechy.  And the lyrics don't mention that Kirk Douglas and John Wayne appear in footage from Preminger's In Harm's Way.