Did You Hear the One About the Traveling Saleslady?

Did You Hear the One About the Traveling Saleslady?
July 14, 1968
Universal
Comedy, Historical
VHS
B-

I would recommend this movie to either people over 40 who have a soft spot for silly '60s sitcoms, since it's basically a big-screen equivalent of what was playing on TV that decade, or to little kids, since there's a lot of slapstick, and the suggestive humor looks pretty mild these days.  (In fact the movie is, despite its title, rated G.)  Not only does it star Phyllis Diller at her zaniest, wearing several stunning outfits designed by Omar of Omaha, and a post-Gilligan Bob Denver, but it's full of once familiar TV faces, including future Good Morning, America host David Hartman as the constable (and the only one even attempting a rural Missouri accent).  Also, the background music is by Vic Mizzy at his mizziest.  (Sorry, no title song this time.)  The movie is set in 1910, but it doesn't particularly resemble Mary Poppins, other than it has a woman from out of town dropping in (by train rather than umbrella) and turning everyone's life upside-down.  The humor is hokey but sometimes funny, and it's not too surprising that director Don Weis helmed Pajama Party and The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini over at AIP.

Kent McCord again has a small role, as he did in John Goldfarb and Girl Happy.  Herb Vigran, who was one of the men on the train with Fred Astaire in Band Wagon, is the baggage man here and would do Lurvy's voice in Charlotte's Web.  Dal McKennon was the bearded gas station attendant in Clambake, is the Civil War veteran here, and would be a bird caller in The Love God? Bob Hastings, who's Denver's rival Lyle Chatterton here, would also be in The Love God?, as Shrader.  Jane Dulo is mostly known for her TV appearances (99's mother on Get Smart, the grandmother on Gimme a Break!, etc.), yet she not only plays Clara Buxton here but would be Miss Flick in the Pufnstuf movie, which was cowritten by one of this movie's cowriters, John Fenton Murray.  George N. Neise is Ben Milford here and would be a network exec in The Barefoot Executive.  Joe Flynn (best known for McHale's Navy) would be just as irritable in Barefoot as he is here playing banker Hubert Shelton.  Speaking of irritable men, this time Charles Lane plays Diller's boss at the player-piano company.

Lloyd Kino, who plays the Chinese laundryman that keeps flinging his laundry basket in the air whenever chaos ensues in "downtown Primrose," was then about 50 but would play "Asian Tourist Husband" almost 40 years later in Miss Congeniality 2.  (He was actually Japanese-American, born in Seattle.)

The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini

The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini
April 6, 1966
AIP
Comedy, Horror, Musical
VHS
C

Although this has the director, Don Weis, of Pajama Party, and the writer, Louis M. Heyward, of Pajama Party and Sgt. Deadhead, it never reaches the delightful outrageousness of either movie.  It's not for lack of throwing a very eclectic cast and plot elements together, since we get:

• As primary heroes Tommy Kirk, Deborah Walley, and Patsy Kelly
• As secondary heroes, what's passing for the teen crowd these days, headed by a no longer studly but now scaredy-cat Aron Kincaid and a supposed to be mousy Nancy Sinatra, who gets only one song
• A musical number, with dancing on beds and bad rhymes, by petite Italian singer Piccola Pupa sort of as herself
• As primary villains, Basil Rathbone, his sexy but nearsighted daughter named Sinistra, a now bitchy and American Bobbi Shaw in a harem outfit, an Indian named Chicken Feather, Jesse White again as J. Sinister Hulk, and of course Mr. Robot Monster himself, George Barrows, as Monstro the gorilla  (I used to own Robot Monster, but lost it long ago and never got around to replacing it.)
• As secondary villains (and the only carryovers from Beach Party, which now seems a long three years ago), Von Zipper and his gang, who spend most of the movie hardly interacting with the rest of the cast
• Boris Karloff, in a somewhat larger role than his cameo in Bikini Beach, as The Corpse, whose will and hidden fortune bring everyone to his decrepit but stately mansion
• The thirty-years-dead title character, played by Susan Hart in an unflattering blonde wig and a non-'30s-compliant bikini (not invisible in any suggestive way), and given annoying mannerisms and unexplained changes in size (the special effects are unimpressive)
• The Bobby Fuller Four performing "Swing A-Ma Thing" in what looks like a Wham-O commercial
• A torture chamber populated by robots
• A muddied theology, where if you're bad you go to Heaven as an angel, while if you're bad but reform you become a child

I can't decide which is more or less appealing, the sloppiness of this movie or the relative slickness of Ski Party.  Both movies come across as misogynist, especially towards poor Deborah Walley, who in this one is repeatedly dragged to and from a buzz saw while tied to a log and wearing a skimpy nightie.  It's not funny and is at best irritating, since no one bothers to untie her for several minutes.  (At least Puss 'n' Boots rescued Sugar Kane when they had the chance, and they didn't even like her.)  Deborah is sort of paired up with Tommy, but they're much more fun, separately and together, in It's a Bikini World.  I guess if you're an AIP Beach Party completist, you may as well watch this, at least to see how much damage adding horror (rather than just cameos by horror stars) to the mix and taking out Frankie and Annette can do.  Not that F & A are any guarantee of entertainment, but I'll get to Fireball 500 tomorrow....

The surviving Beach Party crowd include Frank Alesia, Patti Chandler, Ed Garner, Luree Nicholson Holmes, Mary Hughes, and Salli Sachse, as well as relative newcomers Christopher Riordan and Sue Hamilton Williams.  They're given very little to do, other than dance by the pool that the D but S mansion has.  Besides Von Zipper, all the Ratz & Mice return:  Brutsche, Fife, Harvey, Macchia, Nelson, Romano, and Ross.  The part of the gardener was the last role for silent star Francis X. Bushman.  Benny Rubin, the forgettable Buster Keaton substitute, would play a waiter in The Shaggy D.A.

Pajama Party

Pajama Party

November 11, 1964
AIP
Comedy, Musical, Sci-Fi
VHS
B+

The first question is, is this a Beach Party movie?  The answer is yes and no.  On the yes side:

• It's from AIP.
• It shares much of its cast with performers who are in unquestionable BP movies.
• One of the portraits from Bikini Beach (I think of H. H. Honeywagon II) is on the wall.
• One of the guest stars, Elsa Lanchester, is a horror veteran (the Bride of Frankenstein herself).

But then consider this:

• Some of the recognizable cast who are named are not playing the characters they usually do-- notably Annette as "Connie," Jody McCrea as "Big Lunk," and Donna Loren as "Vikki."
• The relationships are not what they usually are, with Connie dating Big Lunk, who used to date Vikki.
• And what of Frankie?  Well, he's playing a Martian named Socum.  Wait, it gets weirder.
• Since Big Lunk cares about volleyball more than romance, Connie falls for Gogo/George, who's played by Annette's Disney pal Tommy Kirk.  He's a Martian, too.
• Oh, and there's no John Ashley.

Most importantly, the movie has a very different feel from its three predecessors.  This is not just due to the introduction of the sci-fi element but also to greater naughtiness than usual.  Not only do we hear a toilet flush, but when a motorcycle crashes, cartoony objects fly by, including a toilet seat!  And instead of Candy's relatively wholesome shimmying, we've got the slow undulations of a new character Jilda (who wears fringe on her bathing suit bottom, while Candy was formerly fringed all over).  When Jilda dances, flowers wilt, candles melt, punch bubbles, marshmallows burst into flame, volcanoes explode, and Dr. Pepper bottles lose their caps.  (I'm sure Donna Loren's sponsors were thrilled.)  You might think that Frank Tashlin had taken over, but actually the director is Don Weis, who would be back for the even more not-in-the-official-series The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini, while writer Louis M. Heyward would do the equally offbeat Sergeant Dead Head.

The other thing about this movie is, well, it's crazy.  Not just because there are Martians-- Don Rickles plays one, too, with the sarcasm more natural to him than his Jack Fanny/ Big Drag wimps-- but because, well, it makes no sense and lots of random things happen in it.

• Socum (which is pronounced "Sucum," making it "mucus" backwards) and Big Bang (Rickles) send Gogo to Earth because he's too stupid to be threatening.
• So the first thing Gogo does when he meets an Earthling, Aunt Wendy (Lanchester), is tell her he's a Martian.  (Shades of Chicolini blithely announcing he's a spy in Fredonia.)
• She, and later Connie, have to be told this repeatedly though, because they're skeptical and/or poor listeners.
• Gogo's "raygun" looks more like a wand but is able to freeze/stun people, yet when it's time to confront the bad guys (not the Martians, there are three sets of bad guys), he leaves it behind and instead uses a sword, which gets stuck in the floor.
• He has a transporting device that conveniently attaches to a freestanding wardrobe (ironically not unlike the one Mork slept in before moving up to the attic), so when things need to disappear, he closes the door and presto!
• One of the Earth greats Gogo has studied is Frankie Avalon.
• When Gogo first arrives he's dressed as a movie usher, yet later he wears Big Lunk's clothes "from last year" (ascot and everything, perfect fit).  
• He borrows Big Lunk's "goofy broad-billed red baseball cap," which leads to farce and makeouts for him, Big Lunk, and Eric Von Zipper.
• Oh yeah, the Ratz & Mice are back (I just had to narrow down my tags, so I couldn't tag Lembeck this time), and they resent this beach crowd as much as Frankie's bunch, for putting footprints all over the beach, "except where they've been sitting."  Late in the movie, they pass as "typical cleancut American youts" (influencing My Cousin Vinny?), and go to a pajama party in red p.j.s.
• A more definite Duck Soup reference, Von Zipper, instead of having his own "sickle," now rides in a sidecar, which of course gets left behind.
• The other set of bad guys (besides the Martians and the Rat Pack) are made up of Jesse "Maytag" White, his idiotic sidekick Ben Lessy, Buster Keaton as a cowardly "Red Indian" who says "cowabunga" a lot (sort of an in-joke, for anyone who remembered Howdy Doody, which in '64 would've been a lot of people, especially the target audience of Baby Boomers), and what I still remember the 1964 or '65 Esquire article (which I read in college more than 20 years later) described as "a bosomy blonde Swedish girl who doesn't speak any English."  She's played by Bobbi Shaw, who would become such a fixture in the second half of the series that she would write a fan letter to MAD Magazine when they satirized the films.  
• White, as J. Sinister Hulk, is supposed to be the king of the conmen, and he's trying to steal from Aunt Wendy by the following schemes:
• Getting Helga to seduce Wendy's nephew Big Lunk into telling her where his aunt hides her money;
• Throwing a pajama party with Wendy as chaperone, to get everyone out of her house.
• Wendy owns a very expensive dress shop for teens but is losing $2500/month.  (Too expensive? high overhead?  After all, does it really need a volcano?)  She keeps her money in a wall safe with a very elaborate code.
• The dress shop is run by Dorothy Lamour, who sings as her models, including Toni "Oh, Mickey" Basil and Teri Hope (later Garr), twist, frug, swim, etc.  Her song is "Where Did I Go Wrong?", another of those AIP songs inspired by dialogue.
• Annette serenades a winking stuffed animal.
• After the Rat Pack ends up in the pool and then Wendy throws a potted plant at Von Zipper's head (no "the Finger" this time), Gogo senses that Helga wants to tell him something through mental telepathy, i.e. Sinister's sinister scheme.
• Did I mention that Gogo chooses Connie's love over the conquest of the Earth?
• Sinister, Lessy, and Chief Rotten Eagle (but not Helga, who's reformed through love of Big Lunk) get teleported to Mars, much to Big Bang's annoyance.
• All the Mars scenes are shot with a red filter.
• Frankie's face isn't shown till the end, when he wonders where he went wrong.
• He and Rickles are "special guest stars" who would soon be in Beach Blanket Bingo, which would be relatively sane.  Oh, except for the mermaid falling in love with Deadhead.
• Uncredited is Dorothy Kilgallen, the What's My Line panelist who would die mysteriously a year later.  She was the mother of Kerry Kollmar, the little boy who shows up everywhere (even in the dress shop) to protest all the "mush."  Dorothy (playing "Dorothy") has a brief ride on a motorcycle.

Luree Nicholson Holmes is featured prominently this time, as the perfume girl, and her three-year-old daughter Joi is the "Topless Baby Model."  If that isn't enough nepotism, James H. Nicholson's new wife Susan Hart plays the sultry Jilda.

Members of the Beach Party crowd include Frank Alesia, Roger Bacon, Linda Benson, Patti Chandler, Ronnie Dayton, Johnny Fain, Ed Garner, Guy Hemric, Mary Hughes, Mike Nader (not given much to do this time), Laura Nicholson, Linda Opie, Salli Sachse, and Ned Wynn.  And there are a few new "teens" on the beach: Ray Atkinson; Carey Foster, who'd appear in Winter A-Go-Go; and Ronnie Rondell, Jr., who was Dannie/Donnie Kettle in a few of the Ma and Pa movies.  (He was 27 at this point.)

This time, besides Von Zipper of course, some of the Ratz & Mice are addressed by name, mostly their real-life names: Bob Harvey, the slightly craggy-faced one, here called Robert; Jerry Brutsche (the young blond who has Von Zipper's sidecar), referred to as both Jeromey and Jerome; and Alberta (Nelson of course).  Allen Fife, Linda Rogers, and as always Andy Romano (still called J.D.) also return.

Renie Riano, here a maid, dances with Candy Johnson a bit, though not in the credits as they did in Bikini Beach.  (The credit-dancers are Hart, Keaton, and Lanchester, to an instrumental version of Donna/Vikki's "Among the Young.")  This was Candy's last appearance, in any movie, AIP or not, although she'd live till 2012.  The Nooney Rickett 4, who must be one of the more obscure bands in these movies, somehow manage to show up in both Beach Ball and  Winter A-Go-Go.

"This is a pajama party?"