Scavenger Hunt

Scavenger Hunt
December 21, 1979
Fox
Comedy
VHS
D+

Wow.  I never considered this a good movie of course-- it has the same director, Michael Schultz, as Sgt. Pepper-- but I had remembered it as at least silly fun.  This time it was painfully unfunny.  Well, there's one sort of funny part, when Richard Mulligan is disguised as a mummy in order to steal a suit of armor, and he's doing his Burt Campbell mannerisms, and he wouldn't scare a mouse, while everyone runs screeching from him, acting like they're refugees from Attack of the Killer Tomatoes!  (Which is entirely possible, since both movies were filmed in San Diego.)  There's gratuitous sexism, particularly with the Babbette [sic] character.  The gratuitous racism shows not so much with Cleavon Little's character-- he always carries himself with grace and style (this is after all the man who got away with the line "Where the white women at?" in Blazing Saddles)-- as in the characters of the Japanese gardener (who for some reason doesn't make it onto the servants' team) and of the elderly Indian whose dentures get stolen.

You see, there is, as the title suggests, a scavenger hunt (with what must be the easiest clues ever), the winners of which will inherit a $200 million fortune.  Vincent Price, as Milton Parker (see, he's a game inventor) dies in the first scene, lucky him.  A dizzying cast (why this is a D+ rather than a D) participates in the hunt.  I'd better just list them:

• Team A:  The servants are Cleavon L. as the American chauffeur, Roddy McDowall as the English butler, James Coco as the French chef, and Stephanie Faracy as the French maid.  (Little and Faracy would play a married couple on the early '90s Fox sitcom True Colors, which I've always had a soft spot for.)
• Team B:  Cloris Leachman is Parker's bitchy sister, Richard Masur (of the early days of One Day at a Time) is her overage bratty son, and Richard Benjamin is their shady lawyer.
• Team C: Leachman rejects her stepdaughter Lisa (Maureen Teefy), but Lisa is invited to join the Stevens brothers, Parker's nephews, played by Dirk Benedict and Willie Aames (in his film debut, although he was already on Eight Is Enough).
• Team D:  Tony Randall plays Parker's widowed son-in-law, whose four children include Shane Sinutko (not given much to do, so I can't say if he's improved as an actor since The Shaggy D.A.), shark-jumping David Hollander ("Little Earl" on What's Happening!!), Julie Anne Haddock (tomboy Cindy on the first season of The Facts of Life), and some little girl I don't recognize.
• Team E:  Mulligan, as taxi driver Marvin Dummitz (a Melvin Dummar parody I believe), works alone until he recruits Scatman Crothers, who gets kidnapped by Team B while unconscious in the suit of armor, leading to the happy ending.
• Various cameos, from Carol Wayne as Parker's nurse to go-to fat guys Stuart Pankin and Stephen Furst.  (If you've ever wanted to see a movie where Dirk Benedict and Willie Aames try to abduct Stuart Pankin into their van, this is the one.)  In amazingly creative casting, Arnold Schwarzenegger plays a fitness instructor, Meat Loaf the leader of a biker gang, and Ruth Gordon a nutsy, gutsy old lady.  Pat McCormick works at the carnival, while Avery Schreiber is a lisping ostrich-keeper at the zoo.
• The only performer I don't feel sorry for is Robert Morley, because he just does his Robert Morley eccentric-but-reasonable-sounding-English-chap thing and spends most of his scenes sitting in the shade and calmly watching the chaos around him.  He's accompanied by the scorekeeper, Hal Landon, Jr., who would be Ted's father in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure.

Jerado Decordovier (who was Samoan) plays the Indian here and was a waiter in Gidget Goes Hawaiian.  Janine King was a crying baby in Tony Randall's Hello Down There and is a carnival patron here.  Alan Scharf, who's a clerk here, was Roberts in Attack of the Killer Tomatoes!, while Art Koustik was the FIA director there and is the zoo director here.  Henry Polic II (probably best known for his role on the sitcom Webster) plays the "naked" policeman here (he's stripped down to his underwear when his uniform is on the list), and he was Tito in Rabbit Test.

Adam Anderson, who was Sobbing Sailor in Rabbit Test, is Policeman #2 here and would be a pilot in The Nude Bomb.  Marji Martin, who plays fat lady Kay here, would be "Sister" in Going Ape!

Note that both Aames and Crothers sing on the forgettable soundtrack.  There is no title song.

Some of the subtle humor that has made this the cult classic that it is.

C.H.O.M.P.S.

C.H.O.M.P.S.
December 21, 1979
Hanna-Barbera/American International
Children's, Comedy, Sci-Fi, Action
VHS
B-

I'm closing out the 1970s with two very '70s movies.  (I'll get to Scavenger Hunt in a few days, but I'll mention now that it came out on the same day as this one.)  This is also, probably because of the Hanna-Barbera production, a very televisiony movie, with writing, music, and sound effects straight out of any of their cartoons.  (The frequently recurring theme combines "charge," disco, and action music, while being very bouncy.)  Also, look at this cast: 28-year-old Wesley Land of the Lost Eure and 19-year-old Valerie One Day at a Time Bertinelli play an inventor and his girlfriend, while her father and his employer is Conrad Diff'rent Strokes Bain, and Jim Backus is the head of a rival security company.  Furthermore, the two bumbling crooks are played by Red Buttons and Chuck McCann.  The only signs of AIP-casting are Hermione Baddeley (who was one of the servants in Mary Poppins) as the dotty neighbor Mrs. Flower (a role not unlike Elsa Lanchester's Aunt Wendy in Pajama Party), and, as Merkle, Robert Q. Lewis, who was Mr. Pevney, the poor man that Frankie Avalon and Dwayne Hickman drive insane in Ski Party.  

There are not really any of the odd, subversive touches of AIP movies of the '60s (and '50s), no breaking fourth walls, and every cliche is played straight.  The movie is entertaining enough, but not quite cheesy enough to be memorable.  I will note that the whole concept of the Canine HOMe Protection System doesn't seem so amazing, thirty-five years later, but the film might be worth a look for how it presents two elements that would become more significant in the '80s: technology, and fear of crime.

This time, Regis Toomey (then 81, but living on till 1991) plays the chief of police.  African-American actor James Reynolds, who plays a reporter here, was Officer Wilson in The Magic of Lassie.*  Engineer William Flatley was a truck driver in that movie, and Don Chaffey was the director.  Phil Adams, who's one of the "hoods" here, was Tarzan in Thank God It's Friday.


*There are a relatively high number of black men in the movie, with three in one scene.  I know that doesn't sound like a lot, but it is compared to some of my other movies, even from the '70s.  To balance that, I couldn't decide if the mean, swearing dog Monster being black was significant (he does say "turkey" at one point), but I think it's just an example of the two-dimensionality of the script.  All of the criminals are white.