C.H.O.M.P.S.

C.H.O.M.P.S.
December 21, 1979
Hanna-Barbera/American International
Children's, Comedy, Sci-Fi, Action
VHS
B-

I'm closing out the 1970s with two very '70s movies.  (I'll get to Scavenger Hunt in a few days, but I'll mention now that it came out on the same day as this one.)  This is also, probably because of the Hanna-Barbera production, a very televisiony movie, with writing, music, and sound effects straight out of any of their cartoons.  (The frequently recurring theme combines "charge," disco, and action music, while being very bouncy.)  Also, look at this cast: 28-year-old Wesley Land of the Lost Eure and 19-year-old Valerie One Day at a Time Bertinelli play an inventor and his girlfriend, while her father and his employer is Conrad Diff'rent Strokes Bain, and Jim Backus is the head of a rival security company.  Furthermore, the two bumbling crooks are played by Red Buttons and Chuck McCann.  The only signs of AIP-casting are Hermione Baddeley (who was one of the servants in Mary Poppins) as the dotty neighbor Mrs. Flower (a role not unlike Elsa Lanchester's Aunt Wendy in Pajama Party), and, as Merkle, Robert Q. Lewis, who was Mr. Pevney, the poor man that Frankie Avalon and Dwayne Hickman drive insane in Ski Party.  

There are not really any of the odd, subversive touches of AIP movies of the '60s (and '50s), no breaking fourth walls, and every cliche is played straight.  The movie is entertaining enough, but not quite cheesy enough to be memorable.  I will note that the whole concept of the Canine HOMe Protection System doesn't seem so amazing, thirty-five years later, but the film might be worth a look for how it presents two elements that would become more significant in the '80s: technology, and fear of crime.

This time, Regis Toomey (then 81, but living on till 1991) plays the chief of police.  African-American actor James Reynolds, who plays a reporter here, was Officer Wilson in The Magic of Lassie.*  Engineer William Flatley was a truck driver in that movie, and Don Chaffey was the director.  Phil Adams, who's one of the "hoods" here, was Tarzan in Thank God It's Friday.


*There are a relatively high number of black men in the movie, with three in one scene.  I know that doesn't sound like a lot, but it is compared to some of my other movies, even from the '70s.  To balance that, I couldn't decide if the mean, swearing dog Monster being black was significant (he does say "turkey" at one point), but I think it's just an example of the two-dimensionality of the script.  All of the criminals are white.

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!

Where Were You When the Lights Went Out?

Where Were You When the Lights Went Out?
June 19, 1968
MGM
Comedy
VHS
B-

Yes, this is another of those '60s movies with long, unwieldy titles that are nonetheless sung, in this case by the Lettermen.  That, the occasional funny line, and good performances by the four leads make this movie, which Day considered her worst, entertaining to me, despite an admittedly tasteless premise.  The title refers to the New York blackout of '65, although the movie is partially based on an older French play.  There's a hippie character who gives Doris a lift on his motorcycle and, with his peace symbol necklace and some of his slang, he feels more '68 than '65, but I suppose the makers of this film didn't think we'd mind.

It's the French-farce side of the movie that's tasteless, not the blackout.  Day is a Broadway actress starring in The Constant Virgin, but she wants to quit show biz and start a family.  Day's husband Patrick O'Neal almost cheats on her, but she comes home early because of the blackout.  She flees to their Connecticut house, where a sleeping tonic knocks out not only her but a visiting embezzler played by Robert Morse, apparently having found other ways to succeed in business without really trying.  They literally sleep together, and O'Neal thinks they, you know, slept together.  Her supposedly Hungarian producer Terry-Thomas manipulates the situation so Day will leave her husband rather than show biz.  In the end, someone else runs off with the $2 million, and O'Neal finds out that Day is faithful, although he doesn't tell her, even when she gives birth "nine months to the day" of the blackout.  And, yes, this is all playing off of Day's usual onscreen image, the constant virgin.

We can see how much and how little things have changed over the course of the '60s, comparing this to Please Don't Eat the Daisies.  (Which now that I think of it is sort of a sentence-long title.)  There, Day's husband didn't get any closer to adultery than a few drinks and dinners with a brassy blonde.  But of course, Day herself has to stay pure.  Terry-Thomas has a great line about admiring chastity, as he kisses her on the neck!  But my favorite line of his is where he asks his psychologist if hating both men and women makes him bisexual.  My favorite Robert Morse moment is when he points out that he and T-T both have gap teeth.

Besides the main characters, there are some other folks to keep an eye out for.  This time Jim Backus is a car salesman.  Earl Wilson as always plays himself.  Pat Paulsen, Steve Allen, and Lola Albright also have supporting roles.  (Morgan Freeman, then about 30, apparently shows up as a commuter.)

Larry J. Blake was in Sunset Blvd. and The Swinger.  Ben Frommer was in Plan Nine from Outer Space.  Harry Hickox was the cook in Speedway and is a detective captain here.  Angelique Pettyjohn was in Clambake and would be in The Love God?  Robert Emhardt, who plays Otis J. Hendershot, Sr., would be the banker in Change of Habit.  

John Goldfarb, Please Come Home!

John Goldfarb, Please Come Home!
March 24, 1965
Fox
Comedy
VHS
C-

While I can't recommend this movie, even as a so-bad-it's-goodie, I suppose some might want to see it to just to say they've seen it.  (Or they have seen it, and can't believe what they saw.)  Briefly, Shirley MacLaine (much much shriekier than in The Apartment, including on the title song*) plays a frigid journalist at Strife Magazine (hardy har) whose editor Charles Lane assigns her to write a story on a harem.  Meanwhile, the title character, played by Richard Crenna, is a sort of combination of pilots Douglas Corrigan and Francis Gary Powers, with the nickname "Wrong Way," and he accidentally lands in the Arabian country of Fawzia while trying to reach Russia.  The King of Fawzia, played by Peter Ustinov, starts a football team for his son, who's been kicked off the Notre Dame team for not being Irish.  (Wouldn't they have noticed right off?)  Oh, and there are various government officials who are trying to spin the situation.

That last aspect was what I liked best, particularly since it involves the sitcom vets Jim Backus as Miles Whitepaper, Fred Clark as Heinous Overreach, Richard Deacon as Charles Maginot, and Harry Morgan as Deems Sarajevo.  Morgan gets the most memorable lines, like the one about the Russians having a case of the cutes, and his reply to Dick "Please don't squeeze the Charmin" Wilson's announcement, "Either Fawz U beats Notre Dame or John Goldfarb goes to Moscow": "Is that an ultimatum or a musical comedy title?"  I'm not saying this stuff is Dr. Strangelove level satire, but it did make me chuckle.  And it's much more palatable than the shrew-taming we get of MacLaine's character, including the "ha ha, the king wants to rape her" subplot.

The script (based on his own book), by none other than William Peter Blatty, later of The Exorcist, is remarkably sexist and anti-Arab, even for its time.  This is not just 21st-century political correctness; contemporary critics hated the movie.  Notre Dame even sued over it!  I realize that I may've made you more interested in seeing the film, so I may as well go on to list some more of its unique cast.

The harem girls include Teri Garr (I don't know under what name); Gari Hardy, who would be "Dumb Blonde" in Speedway; Paula Lane, who was in Dear Brigitte, here playing Polly Benson; Irene Tsu, who was Miss Wu in Take Her, She's Mine and would shortly be a native girl in How to Stuff a Wild Bikini; and Jane Wald, of Take Her and Dear Brigitte.  "Specialty dancer" Nai Bonet would have a more prominent role as a king's belly-dancer in the softcore Fairy Tales (1978).  The football players include James Brolin (as a quarterback); Kent McCord (later of Adam-12), who would do Girl Happy; and Red West, who was in Palm Springs Weekend and would soon be in Girl Happy.

Billy Curtis, who was a Munchkin in The Wizard of Oz, is "Little Football Player."  Chick Collins, who was a fencer in Singin' in the Rain, plays a Bedouin here.  Fred Catania, who was Wheeler's bodyguard in The Girl Can't Help It and a used car salesman in Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter, has a minor role here.  Jim Shane, who was Dave in Palm Springs Weekend, is Chiang here.

Jackie Coogan (yes, Uncle Fester, here playing Father Ryan); Bedouin Jim Dawson; Milton Frome, here an Air Force general; and Olan Soule, who plays the second editor, would shortly do Girl Happy.  Telly Savalas (yes, Kojak) is Macmuid, the harem recruiter, and would be El Sleezo Tough in The Muppet Movie.  

Patrick Adiarte, who plays Prince Ammud, isn't in any of my of my other movies, but I have to note that he was both David in the Hawaiian episodes of The Brady Bunch and Ho-Jon on M*A*S*H.


*The theme pops up repeatedly in the movie, especially during the big football game at the end.  John Williams, yes, that John Williams, was the conductor.