Wayne's World

Wayne's World
Feb. 14, 1992
Paramount
Comedy, Romance
VHS
B

It's very tempting to say, "Let the '90s begin!"  Although the influence of the '80s is still felt in this movie (from Bill & Ted to heavy metal), this has a very '90s sensibility.  It is also far better than you'd expect for a concept inspired by a running sketch on Saturday Night Live.  The funny, often sharp, fourth-wall-breaking script was cowritten by Wayne himself (Mike Myers) with wife-and-husband writing team Bonnie & Terry Turner, whose affection for '60s through '90s pop culture would also be seen a few years later in The Brady Bunch Movie.  From Grey Poupon commercials to Bugs Bunny's drag act, this movie references a lot of things that Gen-Xers in particular can appreciate.  And that fourth-wall-breaking is used to great effect, mostly by Wayne and best buddy Garth (Dana Carvey, acting like a shy, demented child), but sometimes "borrowed" by Ed O'Neill and others.

If I can't rate the film higher, it's that it's not non-stop hilarious, and there are times when Mike Myers gets on my nerves (although nowhere near what he does in his movies from this century).  Also, I can't say I was particularly invested in his romance with cover-singing Cassandra.  Still, there are few better examples of a '90s time-capsule movie, and if you want to hear "As if!" pre-Clueless, or see what sort of technology was then available to beam a live music act into someone's limo, look no further.

Brian Doyle-Murray appears as Noah Vanderhoff, the buffoon sponsor, while Lara Flynn Boyle is Wayne's obsessed ex Stacy.  Alice Cooper yet again plays himself, while Meat Loaf is "Tiny," ha ha.  Carmen Filpi, who plays Old Man Withers in the "Scooby Doo ending," would be Old Man in Bar in The Wedding Singer.

"Bohemian Rhapsody"

Roadie

Roadie
June 13, 1980
United Artists
Comedy, Romance, Musical
VHS
C-

The general idea for this movie isn't bad: Meat Loaf (as Travis W. Redfish) has inherited his father Art Carney's mechanical aptitude (the Redfish house is full of all kinds of gizmos, like a moving phone booth) and thus becomes, despite his reluctance, the greatest roadie in the world.  Unfortunately, the movie is too meandering and there's a very annoying leading lady, Kaki Hunter as Lola Bouillabase.  Also, the various musicians aren't given much to do other than show up, although Deborah Harry has a moment when she's eating with Mr. Loaf that shows what the movie would've been like if she'd been the love interest.  (She'd have a more interesting role in Hairspray, much later in the decade.)  Another performer who makes a slight impression is Soul Train's Don Cornelius, as concert-promoter Mohammed Johnson, who late in the movie decides to try to become the first black President.  It's a throw-away line, without follow-up, like much of the movie, except for Lola's tedious plans to lose her virginity to a seemingly indifferent Alice Cooper.  The only musicians who redeem themselves are Cheap Trick, twice singing the song with the Redfish motto, "Everything Works If You Let It."

Alice Cooper's wife Sheryl appears as herself, and she was in Sgt. Pepper as a dancer.  Hank Williams, Jr. also appeared in that movie.  Lenore Woodward would play a little old lady again, in Hamburger-- The Motion Picture.  Richard Portnow, who's First New York Wino, would be Sy in Radio Days.  This time Hamilton Camp plays Grady.

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
July 24, 1978
Universal
Musical, Fantasy
VHS
B+

This may well be the most enjoyably bad movie I own.  I'd seen it many times, although not recently, and I still found myself laughing out loud this time.  Much of it was at the rich, creamy WTFness of the plot.  I think if any one of us were given the task of writing a story inspired by the music of (mostly) the Sgt. Pepper album and Abbey Road, no one would come up with anything remotely resembling the screenplay by Henry Edwards.  At least half of us would think to set the story in England, given not only stars Peter Frampton and the Gibbs, but also the lyrics of "A Day in a Life."  But we don't have the pointlessly vivid imagination of Henry Edwards.

Here's the link to my review of Edwards's novel inspired by the film:  http://rereadingeverybookiown.blogspot.com/2012/11/sgt-peppers-lonely-hearts-club-band.html.  Yes, I gave it an F+, while this I'm ranking quite a bit higher.  There are a few reasons for that.  One, some of the flaws in writing didn't make it onscreen, like all the extraneous characters.  (There is, however, a dog that romps with Billy and Strawberry in flashbacks, although it's entirely absent from the rest of the film.)  The egregious sexism is milder.  And, yes, it really makes a difference when you can see and hear the performances.  (Also, my criteria on that blog was different, ranking quality rather than enjoyment.)

Now I suppose I may as well say right up front that I have no beef with disco, not even the process of disco-fying uber-classic rock like the Beatles.  Except for a few notes that are clunkers, and yes, that syllable elongation that the Bee Gees do, their renditions, with and without Frampton, are actually pretty good.  I think Earth Wind & Fire's "Got to Get You Into My Life" and Aerosmith's "Come Together," while different than the originals, are good matches.  Then there are the contributions from the leading ladies, the understandably obscure Sandy Farina and Dianne Steinberg, as respectively Strawberry Fields and Lucy.  They're good singers, but, as happens with a lot of the songs, no one has thought through the lyrics, so that we have Strawberry singing about going down to herself and Lucy telling us about being in the sky (well, against a billboard) with her band, the Diamonds.  The worse examples though of the lyrics having little or nothing to do with what's happening onscreen are the misapplied "She's Leaving Home," "Getting Better" (when did Billy beat "his woman" and keep her apart from the things that she loved?), and most of all "Get Back."  (Unless Billy is the "mama" in the high heels and the lowneck sweater.)

Some of the songs are just straight up badly sung.  As with Lucille Ball in Mame, George Burns (Mr. Kite) was never known for his singing, even before decades as a smoker.  (By the way, this movie earns Burns the Longevity Award, since it was made 45 years after International House.  Even Groucho didn't make movies for that long, although he came close.)  Frankie Howerd and Steve Martin are other comics not known for their music.  (And, yes, I like "King Tut," but not for the singing.)  Even Alice Cooper fails to acquit himself, but then "Because" was never meant to be used for brainwashing.  Worst of all are the "computerettes" (digitally altered versions of the Bee Gees) who ruin a song or three.

Watching the movie this time, I was struck by how much of what was associated with the various villains-- plastic surgery, punkers in a video arcade, greed, and, yes, computers-- would all be considered good in the following decade.  But Good in the sense of Heartland and "kindness," and disco and men with shoulder-length soft hair and unbuttoned soft shirts, of course must triumph in the end.  Except for poor Frampton, whose career this pretty much killed.  The acting, Burns's aside, ranges from forgettable to embarrassing to excruciating.  If Chase and Hawn were one of the all time cutest screen couples in Foul Play, Frampton and Farina deserve some sort of award as perhaps the most brain-dead couple.  When in doubt, which is often, he wears a goofy grin, while I MSTed Mr. Kite's line about the threat of Strawberry being turned into a "mindless groupie": "Well, she's halfway there."  The Bee Gees at least have moments, Maurice especially, when they seem to be in on the joke of what a travesty this movie is.  No wonder their careers survived relatively unscathed.

Of "Our Guests at Heartland" in the big finale, Keith Allison was a waiter in Sextette; Stephen Bishop would go on to write the Oscar-nominated "It Might Be You" for Tootsie; Rick Derringer's "Rock and Roll, Hoochie Koo" would pop up in The Spirit of '76; Randy Edelman would be the arranger for "Kumbaya" in Troop Beverly Hills; D.C. LaRue did a couple forgettable songs for Thank God It's Friday; Curtis Mayfield's "Mama Didn't Lie" would be one of the songs in the original Hairspray; Lee Oscar would contribute "Pass That Dutch" to Mean Girls; Frankie Valli had recently sung the theme to Grease, while Sha-Na-Na was the band at the big dance contest in that movie; Johnny Winter would contribute several songs to Roadie's soundtrack; and Gary Wright would appear on the soundtrack of Wayne's World ("Dream Weaver").  (And several of the guests ended up writing for the Mystery Science Theatre 3000 episode "Tormented.")

It's not entirely clear what Connie Stevens is doing there, to say nothing of Carol Channing, but at least they're known as singers as well as actresses.  The real question is how Barry "Dame Edna Everage" Humphries got in.

John Wheeler, who's Mr. Fields, was Judge Bregoff in Mame.  Ellen Travolta (John's sister) was a waitress in Grease, and though she's uncredited here, she's pretty recognizable in a couple scenes as some relative of the band.

Jeffrey Weissman was also in I Wanna Hold Your Hand and would be in Johnny Dangerously.  
Pat Crenshaw, looking older than his 59 years in the role of a Western Union delivery "boy," would be "Man Dying in Elevator" in The Gong Show Movie.  Stanley Coles, who's in Sgt. Pepper's band in the early scenes, would be a guard in Love at Stake.

You'd think Michael Schultz would never work again, but he directed, among many other things, Scavenger Hunt the next year.

It's sort of like the Pottersville sequence in "It's a Wonderful Life," only with extra cheese.

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.