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.

My Little Chickadee

My Little Chickadee
March 15, 1940
Universal
Comedy, Western
DVD
C+

This doesn't live up to its potential, considering that W. C. Fields and Mae West not only co-star but co-wrote.  Also, it has Margaret Hamilton as a busybody, but a more prudish one than The Wizard of Oz's Miss Gulch.  There are some funny lines, but the movie never clicks, and there are some serious moral problems.  Yes, partly to do with sex, but not how you might expect.  West gets meek-looking Donald Meek (soon to be in Turnabout) to perform a fake wedding ceremony.  She has tricked herself into thinking Fields has money.  She keeps the "marriage" from being consummated, partly by putting a goat in her bed!  Later, Fields masquerades as the masked bandit she's in love with (although she's never seen the bandit's face), so he's not any better than she is.  (The identity of the bandit seemed painfully obvious to me, partly because he didn't disguise his voice much.  She figures it out from a kiss.)

While on the one hand, it's cool to see West fight off a train robbery almost single-handedly (although Fields is the one who brags about it later), I didn't like the way she joked about shooting the attackers, who are Indians.  And she attempts to rob Fields later, although since he's a dishonest gambler, I can't feel too sorry for him.  West was then 48 and looked it, but she's presented as young, and of course all the men, and a classroom full of teenaged boys, have to swoon at her feet.  Of course, this is nothing compared to the suspension of disbelief in Sextette (1978), but I find that awful movie a lot of fun, and her character much more sympathetic there.  Watch this one just to say that you've seen it, and don't expect much.  (The ending exchange is good however, although it shows some of their offscreen dislike.)

Morgan Wallace was in It's a Gift.  Otto Hoffman was in You Can't Cheat an Honest Man.  Lita Chevret was in The Women.  Delmar Watson, thirteen at the time of this movie, had appeared in You Can't Cheat an Honest Man and His Girl Friday.  Si Jenks was in some of my other movies, including A Day at the Races.  Jan Duggan has a much less memorable role here than in The Old Fashioned Way and You Can't Cheat an Honest Man, but she would appear in The Bank Dick, as would Fay Adler, Harlan Briggs, Charles Hart, George Moran, Dorothy Vernon, and Bill Wolfe.