Doctor, You've Got to Be Kidding!

Doctor, You've Got to Be Kidding!
May 10, 1967
MGM
Comedy, Romance, Musical
VHS
B+

Surprisingly funny (mostly intentionally) and surprisingly sweet story of how a "nice girl" winds up pregnant and unwed, despite not one but four suitors!  Meanwhile, her mother wants her to have a singing career.  Sandra Dee plays the girl, Celeste Holm is well cast as her mother, and George Hamilton, Bill Bixby (as "Dick Bender"), Dwayne Hickman, and the comparatively obscure Dick Kallman play the suitors.  Mort Sahl, then 40 and past his peak, but still hilarious, plays the soft-hearted but cynical and rock-hating club owner.  (I may be wrong, but I think he's the only surviving cast member.)

Besides the way the pregnancy is handled-- more obviously than in The Miracle of Morgan's Creek almost a quarter century earlier but still not too bluntly-- the film shows its era in a few ways.  Yes, the music-- with The Wild Affair as Dee's back-up band!-- and fashions, but also such touches as the coffeehouse Hickman likes to take Dee to (a bit more hippie and less beatnik than the one in Dee's Take Her, She's Mine four years earlier.)  Also, this is probably the first of my movies to have a few Negroes (as they would've been known at the time) in speaking roles, most memorably none other than Nichelle "Uhura" Nichols as Dee's fellow secretary.

I think one reason that this movie seems more intelligent than you'd expect is that it's based on the book of the same name.  It was adapted by Philip Shuken, who would go on to write Speedway, which also stars Bill Bixby.  Christopher Riordan, who's done several of my other teen and post-teen flicks (or as Sahl would say, "post-college, pre-life"), plays a nightclub patron.  Allison McKay, who plays the cigarette girl that Bixby makes out with, would be in the Pufnstuf movie.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=it3Ju9wX3F8

It's pretty clear who done it, what with the fireworks and all.

Ski Party

Ski Party
June (?) 30, 1965
AIP
Comedy, Musical
DVD
C

This may be the low for the AIP Beach Party and Spin-Offs series.  (It's been awhile since I've seen The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini, and there are the "racing" movies with Fabian coming up, so I'm not going to commit myself just yet.)  Alan Rafkin has mostly directed for TV, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but the script is by Robert Kaufman, who also wrote AIP's Dr. Goldfoot movies, which I've never cared for.  There are serious problems with this script, most notably the fact that Frankie*, and to some degree his sidekick Dwayne, won't take no for an answer when it comes to kissing+ (Yvonne's character laughs as she tells of Dwayne tying her up with hair ribbons on their first date!), dress in drag (in what Dwayne acknowledges onscreen is a Some Like It Hot rip-off) in order to spy on girls (oh, and to learn to ski on the bunny slope, not exactly on the level of having a Chicago mob chasing after you), and worst of all drive a mentally ill man further into insanity.  And then in the end, Deborah's character is the one who apologizes!  Deborah wonders what Yvonne did wrong and the future Batgirl replies, "Guilt by association."

There are really only two reasons to watch this movie, and they may not be enough for all but the completist.  One, there's more of the AIP fourth-wall-breaking than we usually get, by both Frankie and Dwayne.  (The latter had practice on Dobie Gillis.)  At one point, Frankie asks what the average age of the audience is, and Dwayne replies 15, so they have to leave the slumber party.  There's also one of the odder cameos at AIP, Annette Funicello playing a hot 35-year-old professor.  (A TILF?)  IMDB says this movie came out in June, but I'm not sure where it actually falls in the Series & Related chronology.  Since I'm reviewing Winter A-Go-Go later today, this seemed like the best place for it.  And, no, AIP never made Cruise Party, as the end credits promise/threaten.

The other good thing about this movie is the music, no, not those darn Hondells, who sing the forgettable title song, but Leslie Gore doing her hit "Sunshine, Lollipops, and Rainbows," and the fabulous James Brown and the Famous Flames.  The soul band shows up just before the hour-mark, Yvonne says she has all their albums (since she's cooler than the rest of the cast, I believe her), and then we get a poorly dubbed but wonderfully choreographed rendition of "I Got You (I Feel Good)."  Then they leave, unfortunately, taking most of the energy with them.  Even getting back to the beach at the end doesn't help.

The returning Beach Party crowd includes Patti Chandler, Jo Collins, Mickey Dora, Ed Garner, Mike Nader (given a couple lines), Luree Nicholson Holmes, Mary Hughes, Christopher Riordan, and Salli Sachse.  Bobbi Shaw is again Swedish but seems a bit more fluent than usual.  Aron Kincaid plays a blond stud like he did in Beach Ball, although he ends up falling for Dwayne's alter ego, "Nora."  (Since this is a feeble answer to Some LIH, he gives Nora his pin.  Dwayne/Nora seems to return his feelings, but later claims to have been kidding.  Uh huh.)  Mikki Jamison and Bill Sampson were in Beach Ball with Aron, as was Dick Miller, who this time plays the taxi driver.


*This time, none of the characters have the performers' names.  I just don't care enough to type them all out.  One girl is named "Indian" for inexplicable reasons.

How to Stuff a Wild Bikini

How to Stuff a Wild Bikini
July 14, 1965
AIP
Comedy, Musical, Fantasy
DVD
B-

While Frankie was trying to break into the mainstream with I'll Take Sweden, the Beach Party series soldiered on.  And so Frankie is again reduced to a cameo, if a bigger one than in Pajama Party.  Unfortunately, Dwayne Hickman (as "Rick") isn't as natural a replacement as Tommy Kirk was, and Annette being in the second trimester of her pregnancy didn't help matters.  It is fun to read a subtext into the movie, that Frankie knocked Dee Dee up before joining the Navy, and no one has noticed yet.  That makes about as much sense as what we see on the surface, that she decides to lose her virginity to Rick when she finds out that Frankie has a native girl (Irene Tsu) he's "making love with," as the (nameless) girl puts it.  In fact, both Rick and the native girl anticipate Stephen Stills by five years when they suggest "If you can't be with the boy/girl you love, love the one you're with."  Although Frankie returns in the end for a nice reunion with Dee Dee, it's kind of sad that the closest they get to a duet is a split-screen song they share with their new sweeties.  (And when Dwayne and Annette walk along the process-screen beach, it looks faker than ever.  You can see Dee Dee walking in place before Rick shows up!)

John Ashley is back as Johnny, but even with a guitar, he's not given much to do.  For a moment, it seems like Jody McCrea is going to repeat his Beach Blanket Bingo role of falling for a mythical creature (this time Beverly Adams as the conjured-up Cassandra, the stuffing of the title), but she instead clicks with Von Zipper.  And the Kingsmen, of "Louie Louie" infamy, continue the trend of making me miss Dick Dale and the Del-tones, with what must be one of the worst drummers of the '60s.

Still, if you're going to watch this movie, it's likely going to be for the music, because nearly everyone sings.  In Bingo, Von Zipper and his Rat Pack sang "Follow Your Leader," and here they get two songs: a revamped version of "Follow Your Leader" (when adman Mickey Rooney remakes Von Zipper into Brian Donlevy's image, don't ask) and "The Boy Next Door."  (Jerry Brutsche, Allen Fife, Bob Harvey, John Macchia, Alberta Nelson, Myrna Ross, and as always Andy "J.D." Romano are all back.)  The admen sing "Madison Avenue," one of the weak attempts at cutting satire.  (At least we're spared the psychiatrist singing.)  The beach girls sing "How About Us" and back up Annette on "The Perfect Boy" (the one that the Medveds found outrageous for lines about Euripides and Hercules, as if that's the strangest thing Guy Hemric has come up with).  The boys on the beach sing another of those AIP Songs Inspired by Unrelated Dialogue, this time "Healthy Girl."  And the whole beach crowd sings not only "After the Party," but the title tune.  (Not during the opening credits though.  That's when we get to see Art Clokey animation!)

OK, you might be watching for that animation.  Or you can watch the movie for some more weird subtext, like the moment when Mickey Rooney flicks a girl's breast on the way to chucking her under her chin.  (It's not even one of the tall girls!)  Or you can spot the three "gay" jokes: the bookworm who says he "thertainly" has not noticed Cassandra, the tiger "who only likes boys" (why didn't they just say it was man-eating? or would that be worse?), and a man calling his offscreen brother a sissy and making a Mr.-Roper-like limp wrist.  (Bingo did it better, with Paul Lynde telling Von Zipper to save him the next dance, and Von Zipper replying, "OK, but I lead.")

This is the last official movie in the series, although there are several borderline entries still to come, including the one promoted in the closing credits here, Sgt. Deadhead.  With Frankie trying to move on, and Annette starting a family, there would be no more of them as a beach couple, until the sort of sequel, Back to the Beach (1987).

The returning Beach Party crowd includes Ray Atkinson, Patti Chandler, Ron Dayton, Mickey Dora, Johnny Fain, Luree Nicholson Holmes, Mary Hughes, Mike Nader (not as big a role as in Bingo, but he does get to neck with two girls simultaneously), Stephanie Nader, Salli Sachse, and Ned Wynn.  Newcomers who would continue to or at least near the bitter end are Bruce Baker, Jo Collins, Janice Levinson, Rosemary Williams (English girl), Sue Williams (as 4'11" "Peanut," the girl Rooney tweaks), and Christopher Riordan, but Riordan was in I'll Take Sweden.  And Marianne Gordon, who uses her real Georgian accent as Chickie, would turn up as Mrs. Whitney in Little Darlings.  Composer Hemric, who usually is part of the BP crowd, here plays an adman.  Although Meredith MacRae is long gone from the studio, her mother Sheila again plays a secretary.

Buster Keaton this time is Polynesian, as "Bwana Chickie Baby," although he does talk about "firewater" and then remark, "And I ain't even an Indian."  Bobbi Shaw, as always his assistant, this time plays Khola Koku (a pun on Coca-Cola?) and has been given a dark wig and a sarong, but she still sounds Swedish with her "Yah, Yah."  In Bikini Beach, Asher's wife, Elizabeth Montgomery, voiced Lady Bug, while here she has a nonspeaking cameo at the end, as Bwana's daughter the witches' witch, ha ha.

Len Lesser plays South Dakota Slim's meaner brother, North Dakota Pete.  (Presumably, if the series had continued long enough, there would've been Michigan Mike or whatever, as the parody of Minnesota Fats got more and more strained.)  Lesser would have a small role in Fireball 500.

Sig Frohlich, who managed to be both a winged monkey in The Wizard of Oz and a callboy in Easter Parade, here plays an adman.  Shoeshine girl Victoria Carrol would appear in Elvis's Spinout, while Michele Carey, who plays "Michele," would have a much larger role as "Bernice" in Elvis's Live a Little, Love a Little.

Maybe they should've given Asher a rest and had Art Clokey direct the whole thing.