Sextette

Sextette
March 3, 1978
Crown International Pictures
Comedy, Musical
VHS
B-

From the opening lyrics that proclaim that Marlo Manners is "the female answer to Apollo" (I guess they didn't want to do a rhyme for "Venus") onward, this movie will have you scratching your head, shaking your head, dropping your jaw, and/or laughing affectionately and/or scornfully.  Even by the standards of an octogenarian Mae West sex comedy/ slash vanity production (if you thought they overdid the soft-focus on Lucy in Mame, you ain't seen nothin' yet), the movie makes little sense.  But if you start asking yourself questions like, "Why can't Marlo remember all her marriages and divorces?  Liz Taylor always managed it," or "Exactly how is this nutty scheme going to achieve world peace?", you probably won't be able to let go enough to get into the movie.  As it is, I can't say it's an enjoyably bad enough movie to hold up to more than a dozen viewings, but I still got things out of it this time, including of course being amused at the cast.

Of those I've tagged, three of them are Marlo's six (ish) husbands: Tony Curtis as Russian diplomat Alexei (hubby #2 or 3), Ringo as Polish (I think) film director Laszlo (#4), and George Hamilton as gangster Vance (#5).  (One husband, seen only in newspaper clippings, was a count.)  Number 6 (or 7) is Sir Michael Barrington, who turns out to be a spy.  Marlo's manager (Dom DeLuise) declares Sir MB is "bigger than 007," which would be ironic a dozen years later when Timothy Dalton (33 in '78) became James Bond.

As for Ken Hughes, he directed Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, which is fortunate because this is a musical.  True, some people (like Dalton) seem to be reciting lyrics more than singing, but then there are others, like DeLuise, who are giving it their all.  Most of these songs are of '60s and '70s vintage, like DeLuise's "Honey Pie" and Dalton's "Love Will Keep Us Together." The script by Herbert Baker, who also wrote the screenplay for The Girl Can't Help It, is based on West's 1961 screenplay.  I have to say that, as high a tolerance as I have for double entrendres and innuendos, even such chestnuts as West delivers here (yes, even the "gun in your pocket" one), it does get to be a bit one-note after awhile, which is why I went with a B- rather than a B.

George Raft plays a gangster named "George."  Seventy-year-old Rollin Moriyama, who's the Japanese delegate here, would soon be a Japanese doctor in Rabbit Test, then get his most famous role, as a taxi passenger in Foul Play, before becoming Chinese for Americathon.  One of the athletes, Kal Szkalak, would also be in Americathon.  Keith Allison, who plays a waiter, was apparently a '60s teen idol and famous enough to be one of the "guests at Heartland" at the end of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.  Alice Cooper, who's almost unrecognizable here (he plays the glass piano and is greeted as Alice by DeLuise), would have a much more important role in Sgt. Pepper.  Ed Beheler seems to have made a bit of a career impersonating President Carter, but this is the only one of his six movies I own.  There are appearances by "journalists" Rona Barrett, Regis Philbin, and Gil Stratton playing themselves.  And the soon to be late Keith Moon plays a mad dress designer.