The Gong Show Movie

The Gong Show Movie
May 23, 1980
Universal
Comedy, Musical
VHS
C+

This is sort of what it says on the package, a behind-the-scenes look at the odd '70s "talent" show that I watched regularly and even saw in person.*  But it's also a cynical look at show business, co-written by Robert Downey, Sr.  It doesn't really work, especially with Chuck Barris playing himself as worn out and mumbling.  (It was the year for that, as we'll see with Paul Simon in One-Trick Pony.)  But the movie is marginally entertaining, especially the songs.  My favorite is the group song, "Don't Get Up for Me," even though no one except Mabel King, as Mabel, can sing.  (She's not quite playing herself, but Chuck does greet her with "What's happening?")  Barris's then real-life wife Robin plays his girlfriend Red, with many people, from Tony Randall and 17-year-old daughter Della Barris to of course The Unknown Comic and Gene Gene the Dancing Machine, appearing as themselves.

Milton Delugg is best known for the Gong Show, and for the music in Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.  Tourist lady Nora "Dodo" Denney is best known as Mrs. Teevee in Willy Wonka.  Gary Mule Deer, who plays Gary, was a man at the health food restaurant in Annie Hall.  Pat Cranshaw, the old man who dies in the elevator (as Chuck and Red are oblivious), was the Western Union messenger in Sgt. Pepper.

Stand-up comic Taylor Negron is "Blond-Haired Man Auditioning," and he'd turn up as a delivery man in Johnny Dangerously.  Cynthia Szigeti, Diner Doll Sophie here, would also be in Dangerously, as Mrs. Capone, and she was a passenger in The Big Bus.

Betsy Lynn and Carol Gwynn Thompson of the Siamese Connection would be in The Fab 400 in Hamburger-- The Motion Picture.  (They were also responsible for my best friend Carla laughing incredibly hard at the trailer for Midnight Madness, which was 1980's answer to Scavenger Hunt.  I never saw the movie but I still remember the fat disco-dancing twins.)

Band member Dana Glover would contribute "The Way" to the Two Weeks Notice soundtrack.  Danny DeVito allegedly is a performer here, although I didn't spot him.


*Growing up in Southern California, I got to be part of a lot of live studio audiences, and I was there for the misery of the all-"Feelings" episode in '76.  On the bright side, at the end of the day, Arte Johnson gave me one of the balloons that came down from the ceiling.

Hello Down There

Hello Down There
June 25, 1969
Paramount
Comedy, Musical, Sci-Fi, Action
VHS
B+

No, I didn't grow up with this one, but I wish I had.  Even discovering it in my early 20s, I couldn't believe what I was seeing and hearing, and I still don't.  It's not exactly a kids' movie, too much drug humor and sex humor, although pretty mild by post-1972 standards.  And, yet, just like Did You Hear the One About the Traveling Saleslady?, it could pass for a '60s sitcom pilot if you squint a bit.  I mean, look at this cast!  Tony Randall, Ken Berry (as Randall's rival), Arnold Stang (as Berry's stupider [!] assistant, and like in Skidoo he dies, or at least his character is left for dead and forgotten), Jim Backus (Howelling up a storm as Randall's boss), Backus's wife as a concerned parent,  Charlotte Rae (as a wacky maid, there's a stretch), Harvey Lembeck (as a radar technician), Merv Griffin as himself, Janet Leigh, Richard Dreyfuss-- wait a minute.  Janet Leigh and Richard Dreyfuss?  What are they doing here?  Well, like everyone else, they are both embarrassing themselves and playing to their strengths, respectively screaming and being sarcastic.

This was an Ivan Tors production, so we get a lot of shots of dolphins and other sea critters frolicking around the underwater home that Randall, wife Leigh, forgettable blond kids, and the kids' friends (Dreyfuss and the comic relief one named Marvin) live in for somewhere between two weeks and thirty days.  (The movie ends in media res, with Navy parachutists attacking.)  The house is called the Green Onion, even though it's white, so the band that the teens are in is renamed from Harold and His Hang-Ups to, yes, the Green Onion.  There's also an orange submarine that becomes yellow.  Continuity is not this movie's strong point, as seen in the fact that Leigh's character is established as a writer (of Forty Nights in a Harem), and then this is forgotten for over an hour.

The script is co-written by Tors, Art Arthur (who also co-wrote Birds Do It), and a couple other people.  The director is Jack Arnold, who did a lot of TV, including Gilligan's Island.  Obviously, this adds to the TV feel.  But in an attempt to be more contemporary than television, we get McDowall sort of reprising his Tony Krum character in The Cool Ones, this time as "boy millionaire" record producer Nate Ashbury.  (I never said this movie was subtle.)  As in The Cool Ones, there's a computer that determines the potential success of a rock band, this time one that's operated by Catwoman: Lee Meriwether as a miniskirted computer scientist.  The songs are, well, wonderful, in an absolutely cheesy way.  Not only are they worthy of the Archies, but they're quite obviously lip-synced (except for Randall's serenade of Leigh).  No wonder Rae, who drinks tonic that she worries is spiked with LSD, can't resist shaking her groove thang.

I'm still marveling over the cast.  I mean, there's a moment where Merv Griffin translates McDowall's hip slang for Backus, and they're not even the ones stealing the scene.  A couple less familiar faces:  Jay Laskay, Philo here, was Willie in Birds Do It; Janine King, age unknown, plays a crying baby and would turn up as a carnival patron in Scavenger Hunt.

This is, incidentally, the 100th comedy I've reviewed, although I'll admit my genre tags are somewhat arbitrary.  Clearly, this one isn't just a comedy, but, man, is it hilarious!

Fireball 500

Fireball 500
June 7, 1966
AIP
Drama, Musical
DVD
C-

When this movie started, I got my hopes up for a moment that Art Clokey had directed it, as I joked on my How to Stuff a Wild Bikini post.  Alas, it's just a bit of Claymation in a humorous opening that fails to set the tone for what is essentially a drama with some wisecracks and songs in it.  If Sgt. Deadhead and The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini are sort of cousins to the basic Beach Party series, this is a more distant relation, despite the cast and a script by director Asher and his frequent BP cowriter Leo Townsend.  I find racing boring, so it was guaranteed I wasn't going to like this.  Also Frankie flirts unsuccessfully with Annette, and they're mostly paired with much less attractive (personalities as well as physically) people: he with Julie Parrish, who was Dee Dee in Winter a-Go-Go, although I don't think she was wearing the unflattering blonde wig there; Annette with a very wooden Fabian, who once again doesn't sing.  Annette and particularly Frankie do, and he gets a surprisingly good, sort of Elvisy song, "My Way."  The movie is set in the South, with not only the Californian scenery unconvincingly trying to pass, but also people like the formerly Brooklynese Harvey Lembeck.

The movie has more "adult" content than the Beach Party series, with not only drinking and moonshining, but Frankie and Julie spending time together in a motel, he without his shirt, as she grabs his butt.  There's belly-dancing, with costumes that look suspiciously like Bobbi Shaw's circus outfit in Invisible Bikini.  Also, the fist fights aren't played for laughs, and Mike Nader's character dies.  (You will see it coming as soon as he has a brief bonding moment with Frankie.)  I vaguely remember trying to watch either this movie or its successor, Thunder Alley, on TV years ago but getting bored and giving up.  They're both on my DVD collection of "Frankie & Annette" movies, although this barely qualifies as an F & A movie and I think Thunder doesn't even have Frankie.  Bottom line, if you like racing or are a hardcore AIP completist, watch this with lowered standards.  All others, beware.

Besides Nader, some of the Beach Party crowd shows up, although not given much more to do than in Invisible Bikini.  Ed Garner (presumably aged up) plays the farmer, Sue Hamilton his daughter.  Beach girls turned race fans, including Fabian's "eager beavers," are Linda Opie Bent, Patti Chandler, Jo Collins, Mary Hughes, Luree Nicholson Holmes, and Salli Sachse.

Chill Wills, who plays Annette's uncle, was in It's a Gift more than thirty years earlier.  Renee Riano was the maid in Bikini Beach.  Len Lesser, who was North Dakota Pete in How to Stuff, is a man in the garage here.  Announcer Sandy Reed and Baynes Barron, Agent Bronson here, would also appear in Thunder Alley.

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.

Sergeant Deadhead

Sergeant Deadhead
August 18, 1965
AIP
Comedy, Musical, Sci-Fi
VHS
B

The same day that you could first see Annette singing about her ambition to be a monkey's aunt, you could watch Frankie "being shot up with a monkey."  (In each case, it's actually a chimp.)  Outdoing his double role in Bikini Beach, Frankie plays the title character, who undergoes a personality change while up in space (with the "monkey"), but he also plays Sgt. Donovan, a patriotic lookalike.  Much of the usual AIP crowd is around (see below), but we also get officers played by Fred Clark, Reginald Gardiner, Gale Gordon, Cesar Romero, and best of all Eve Arden, who has perfect comic delivery and even gets to sing a very Ardenic song, "You Should've Seen the One That Got Away."  She's named Lt. Kinsey, and the movie has a lot of tasteless but amusing sex humor, much of it involving the Frankies and Deborah Walley (as Lucy) at her sexiest.  The movie succeeds at some of what John Goldfarb attempted, including political satire.  Not that this is sophisticated wit-- after all it's still AIP-- but it is very funny.  After I don't know how many viewings (although none in recent years), I still giggle helplessly whenever I listen to Pat Buttram as the irritable, Southern-accented President.  ("If I had my spurs on, I'd kick you in the shins!  I'll sic the dogs on ya!")  I'd go with a B+, like Pajama Party (also penned by Louis M. Heyward), but the first 15 or 20 minutes are a bit slow (Buster Keaton, in his last AIP appearance, is given some unfunny slapstick), and, alas, there's no title song.  On the other hand, I love the sheer goofiness of a military band that can only play "Jingle Bells."

John Ashley is cast against type as a nerd with sinus trouble, while Jody McCrea (who used to be known as Deadhead) is nowhere in sight.  Other beach folk who've joined up include Ray Atkinson, Bruce Baker, Patti Chandler,  Jo Collins, Sue Hamilton, Luree Nicholson Holmes, Mary Hughes, Janice Levinson, Stephanie Nader, and Salli Sachse.  This time Mike Nader is teamed up for comedic purposes with Norman Grabowski, as air policemen.

The recasting of the Ratz and Mice is less obvious: John Macchia and Andy Romano as Marine MPs, Alberta Nelson as a WAF, but also Jerry Brutsche as the newspaper vendor and Bob Harvey as the bellhop.  (Both Jeromey and Robert find Lucy "Va-va-va-voom!)  As for Harvey Lembeck, he's still inept and menacing, as the man who breaks out of the guardhouse using exploding fountain pens.

Bobbi Shaw is now American and named Gilda.  Donna Loren is another WAF and gets a torchy solo at the wedding reception.  Dwayne Hickman has a brief appearance but gets a special thank-you in the end credits. Romo Vincent, the tuba player, would be Jack Happy in The Swinger.  Newsman Ed Reimers plays himself here but would be an announcer in The Barefoot Executive, which, yes, also features a chimp.

Bikini Beach

Bikini Beach
July 22, 1964
AIP
Comedy, Musical
DVD
B

This is one of the most enjoyable of the Beach Party movies, even if there's a bit too much drag-racing, and the older couple of Martha Hyer as pro-teen teacher Miss Clements and Keenan Wynn as publisher (of The Bikini Bugle) H. H. Honeywagon III don't have plausible chemistry in the way that Cummings and Malone did in Beach Party.  (A "honeywagon" is a mobile toilet unit near a film set.)  The music is generally better, not just Little Stevie Wonder making a brief return, but also the Pyramids, probably the only bald interracial band of the mid-'60s.  Donna Loren sings "Love's a Secret Weapon," which is the first of several songs in the series that seem inspired by dialogue in previous movies.  Frankie and Annette get their first romantic duet, "Because You're You," and it's very sweet.  Most memorably, Frankie, in his role as the British pop star the Potato Bug, a weak but likable Beatles parody, sings a couple songs, with "yeah, yeahs" and McCartneyesque oos.

Instead of Frankie trying to make Dee Dee jealous, Annette casually makes him jealous with, yes, the Potato Bug.  Partly for this reason, and partly for her relatively revealing and polka-dotted wardrobe, she seems to be having more fun than in previous entries, where she too often sat sulking at a table at the teen hangout as Frankie frolicked with other girls.  This time the hangout is Big Drag's Pit Stop, with Don Rickles as Big Drag.  ("I used to be in the fanny business, but that's all behind me now.")  He paints Jackson-Pollock-ish modern art, which catches the eye of an art dealer, played by this film's horror vet guest star, Boris Karloff.

This movie marks the return of Von Zipper and his gang, and we see that a year later (this is set in the summer, while Muscle BP was set over Easter vacation), he's still affected by the "Himalayan suspenders trick," able to accidentally give himself "the finger."  Frankie remarks that Von Zipper is stoned again, I think in the earlier sense of "drunk" or maybe "unconscious," although you can't be sure with these movies.  There are also cops (played by actors who've done a ton of TV although probably not any other of my movies) who are suspected of drinking on the job.  And there's the sound of a toilet flushing.  (Pajama Party would outdo this though.)  Also, there seem to be more shots than usual of the California coast, as well as a not too convincing small town that the chase scene goes through.  (One street is full of New-York-like brownstones.)

With a talking bird, a surfing "chimp" (Janos Prohaska in a costume, as he'd appear on Gilligan's Island, among other TV shows), and a "teenage werewolf monster," the movie verges on sci-fi/fantasy, but doesn't clearly cross over as later entries would.  Asher again cowrote the script with Robert Dillon, so I'm guessing that it's the addition of Leo Townsend that made the overall difference.  (Asher and Townsend would team up for Beach Blanket Bingo, without Dillon.)

Frank Alesia, Patti Chandler (the girl who keeps walking by the camera in a bikini and heels), and Keenan's 23-year-old son Ned join the Beach Party crowd, while John Ashley, Jody McCrea, Linda Benson, Roger Christian, Mickey Dora, Johnny Fain, Ed Garner, Guy Hemric, Luree Holmes, Mary Hughes, Duane King, Darlene Lucht, Meredith MacRae (as the new "Animal," and getting to utter one of the first onscreen uses of the word "groovy" since the '30s), Linda Opie, Salli Sachse, Gary Usher, Dolores Wells (still "Sniffles"), and of course Mike Nader return.  (Here, Nader really establishes his role as the guy who has mishaps happen to him.  You just know that he'll be the one whose chair is yanked right out from under him when he's smooching a girl, and it's of course his surfboard that Clyde borrows.)

Allen Fife joins the Rat Pack of Andy "J.D." Romano (who we learn has to read to Von Zipper, who never went past the 3rd grade), Jerry Brutsche, Bob Harvey, John Macchia, Alberta Nelson, and Linda Rogers.  Ronnie Dayton, who plays the Potato in the shots he shares with Frankie, would become one the Beach Party crowd in subsequent films (and had done stunts in the earlier two entries).

Old Lady #2 Renie Riano would play a maid in Pajama Party.  Timothy Carey would reprise his role as South Dakota Slim in Beach Blanket Bingo.  Meredith MacRae's mother Sheila plays a secretary here, as she would in How to Stuff a Wild Bikini.  Elizabeth Montgomery, whose Bewitched would premiere that fall, was Asher's new wife and she does the French-accented voice for the Lady Bug.  She would have a cameo in a later entry.

Beach Party

Beach Party
August 7, 1963
American International Pictures
Comedy, Musical
DVD
B-

Not bad start to the most famous teen-movie series since Andy Hardy, this is meant to be taken a bit less seriously than the Gidget movies, if not so absurd as the later BP movies would get.  This one has Frankie talking to the audience, Annette (as auburn-haired Dolores) singing advice to herself, and a not fully worked out scheme of love and jealousy.  Is Dolores really just after Professor Bob Cummings to make Frankie jealous, or is she genuinely attracted?  Why does Frankie find it hard to tell Dee Dee (and no, I don't know why it's not Do Do with that spelling) he loves her but he can absent-mindedly say it to Ava (Eva Six)?  Why don't we get any duets with Frankie & Dee Dee, other than the title tune?  And who's the girl with the sexy eyes that has all that chemistry with Frankie in his "Don't Stop Now" number?

Meanwhile, Cummings and the witty Dorothy Malone play an appealing middle-aged couple.  Morey Amsterdam is the sort-of-beatnik running the local hangout, here called Big Daddy's, after the mysterious figure who's revealed to be Vincent Price, there to plug his AIP horror movies.  And of course there's Harvey Lembeck as a brainless Brando (a not so wild one), Eric Von Zipper.  Other than Andy Romano, who plays sidekick J.D., his motorcycle gang of Ratz & Mice are, in alphabetical order, Jerry Brutsche, Bob Harvey, John Macchia, Alberta Nelson (blonde Mouse), and Linda Rogers (auburn-haired Mouse).

John Ashley plays Ken here.  Jody McCrea, who plays Deadhead, is the son of actor Joel McCrea.  (Confusingly, Meredith MacRae is the daughter of Gordon and Sheila MacRae.  She's probably best known for the sitcom Petticoat Junction.)  Valora Noland, who plays Rhonda here (although I'm sure Annette calls her Wanda at first) would in Muscle Beach Party become the first of several actresses to play "Animal" in the series.  Candy Johnson is the fringe-wearing dancer Candy.  Dick Dale (of the Del Tones) plays Dick, and even has his name called out at the beginning of the fight scene (see below), so he can play bongo accompaniment.

Some of the rest of the "Beach Party crowd" in this movie includes musicians Roger Christian and Gary Usher, as well as, in alphabetical order, Duane Ament, Pam Colbert, Mickey Dora, John Fain, Ed Garner, Ashlyn Martin, Laura and Luree Nicholson (yes, the daughters of AIP co-producer James H. Nicholson), Bobby Payne (who would go on to The Muppet Movie, as Robert Payne), Lorie Summers, and Delores Wells.    My personal favorite is Mike Nader, not so much for this movie as his later appearances, especially in Beach Blanket Bingo.  Here he's the tall, thin brunet in a gray sweater in the first Big Daddy's scene.  Brunette yoga girl Sharon Garrett would be a go-go girl in Speedway.

William Asher would go on to direct the rest of the basic series of five.  (I'll discuss the matter of what counts and doesn't, as we go along.)  This first entry not only builds on what the Gidget movies brought to the table, but introduces what would soon be its own traditions, including the big silly fight at the end (this time with a seemingly endless supply of cream pies).  Later entries would get more sci-fi/fantasy, while this one has a moment or two of surprising early '60s realism.  (What kind of cigarette are Frankie and his besties Ken and Deadhead passing back and forth?)  I didn't like the sort of rape joke-- Dee Dee is calling for help from Von Zipper, so Rhonda says, "It's just Dee Dee and that man"-- but otherwise the movie is pretty inoffensive.

"As for their sex life...."  Nonexistent?  Limited to horizontal necking?  We'll never know for sure.