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.

How Sweet It Is!

How Sweet It Is!
August 21, 1968
Cherokee Productions
Comedy
VHS
C+

Speaking of big-screen sitcoms....Well, OK, this Jerry-Paris-directed movie is less like a '60s sitcom than Did You Hear the One...? was, and more like a very extended episode of Love American Style (which would premiere the next year).  It's a little surprising to find that the book it's based on, The Girl in the Turquoise Bikini, came out as far back as '61, but that may explain the title change, since by '68 movie titles with the word "bikini" in them sounded a bit dated.  (Even It's a Bikini World was pushing it in '67, and that was made in '65.)  Debbie Reynolds is the title character, and looks quite fetching in the bikini, but she is 36 at this point and playing a woman of her own age, with a 15-year-old son.  Her husband, played by James Garner, thinks she looks indecently exposed, especially when she wears the bikini in a pool with a seductive Frenchman.  Meanwhile, a pretty tour guide is flirting with Garner, although he doesn't fall for her as Moondoggie did in Gidget Goes to Rome.  Also meanwhile, their son (who wears a peace necklace and has hair scandalously down to his chin) has his own love troubles.  This leads to the whole family winding up in the middle of a whorehouse brawl.

The movie is another example of the mainstream trying to cope with changing times, so it isn't particularly sweet.  You might hope for camp, and there is a bit, but the energy is off.  There are lots of jokes that misfire, like one that I think is about a lesbian having a riding crop.  I don't like that we're supposed to admire hot-tempered Garner, who threatens people, including his wife, with violence, and think that his sensitive son, who believes in not only peace but honesty and freedom in relationships, needs to grow up and "become a man."  The main enjoyment I got out of the movie was the music, including the Mamas & Papas-like title song, and the supporting cast, including of course many TV faces.

This was co-written by Garry Marshall, who does a voiceover as a belching young man and then later appears in the brothel in a baseball uniform.  Yes, that's Garry kid sister Penny, then 24 but passing for 16, as one of the girls on the tour.  And, yes, the little girl who answers the pay phone in the park is 7-year-old Erin Moran, the future Joanie Cunningham.

Paul Lynde steals a few scenes as the purse-lipped purser, while Terry-Thomas steals $1000 of Reynolds's savings and then of course disappears from the movie.  This time Vito Scotti plays the cook who kisses Reynolds on the stomach when she flashes her bikini.  Myrna Ross, formerly one of Von Zipper's Mice in the Beach Party movies, shows up as an "Agatzi girl" (working for Gino Conforti, later of Three's Company).  Another hooker, Eve Bruce, was a harem girl in John Goldfarb.  Walter Brooke, who plays Garner's henpecked boss, is better known for advising on plastics in The Graduate.

Alexandra Hay, who plays the "Are you sure you're 16?"-year-old Gloria would have a more prominent role as Darlene Banks, the hippie daughter of Jackie Gleason and Carol Channing, in Skidoo.  Johnny Silver, who plays "zipper man," would be Dr. Blinky and Ludicrous Lion in both the Pufnstuf show and film.

It is a turquoise bikini in the movie.  And, no, I don't know why they changed Garner's reaction.