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.

Sabrina

Sabrina
October 1954
Paramount
Romance
VHS
B-

It took me awhile to sort out how I felt about this movie on my second viewing.  (My first was just a few months ago, when I bought the tape for a dollar.)  I think the problem is that while it's clearly in the romance genre-- it has moments of comedy and drama but it is primarily about who Sabrina will end up with and how-- the title question of the recurring song "Isn't It Romantic?" turns out to not be rhetorical.  To begin with, the three leads are all miscast to one degree or another, and the script (cowritten by director Wilder but based on an apparently very different stageplay) undermines them at every turn.

I know, you're going to say, "What, Audrey Hepburn miscast as the awkward girl turned glamour queen?"  The thing is, she's not actually much more glamorous after two years in Paris than she is before she leaves.*   She has a better wardrobe, a fluency in French, and a poodle.  There's a moment when she shows up at a party and the male guests have exaggerated jaw-dropped reactions that wouldn't look out of place in The Girl Can't Help It.  (No milk bottles overflow though.)  Now, I know tastes change, especially after sixty years, but the truth is to my modern eyes, Hepburn is a pretty girl yet one with fairy-like looks that would not be ogled at a distance of several yards.  Beyond that, there's an unpleasant undertone to her character, as if she's a less honest (including to herself) version of Monroe's gold-digger in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.  She pines for (almost stalks) David Larrabee for years, including when he's engaged (and possibly married, see below).  She almost commits suicide over him.  And then there's an implication that she becomes an elderly baron's mistress while in France.  True, she refuses bribes to give David up, but there's no question that part of her infatuation is with the Larrabee lifestyle.  Although I haven't seen a lot of Hepburn movies (I think this is the only one I own), usually (except in Breakfast at Tiffany's) her character doesn't have such an innocent surface with so much rot underneath.

Hepburn was 25 playing a girl of 20 and then 22, so at least she was well-cast by her age.  But then we have 36-year-old William Holden as David.  He was not too old for Hepburn, as they fell in love while making this picture.  His character, on the other hand, is presumably not past his mid-20s, as David kissed Sabrina when she was 9 and it would be creepy if he were then more than 11 or 12.  Yet he's somehow had the time by 1954 (his parents have been married 48 years, since 1906, so the movie is mostly set in the then-present) to attend several colleges and get married and divorced three times.  In fact, his second wife wore an Adlai Stevenson button to the wedding, so that must've been in 1952, when Sabrina was in or on her way to Paris, although no mention is made of this.  His third marriage would definitely have been while she was away, yet the household servants (including Nancy Culp, the future Miss Hathaway of The Beverly Hillbillies) keep shipping Sabrina/David.  See what I mean about an unpleasant undertone?  Also, he's a lazy playboy, and he's got the baggage of the unscrupulousness of Holden's characters in Sunset Blvd. and to a lesser degree The Moon Is Blue.

Then there is of course the colossal miscasting of Humphrey Bogart, as Bogie would be the first to agree.  He was 54 and had always looked old for his age, plus he was a few years away from dying of cancer.  In a different way than in The Band Wagon, I don't buy the older-man/younger-woman romance, because Hepburn is not the right sort of younger woman for Bogart.  (Lauren Bacall had a surface toughness and an underlying romantic side, which is sort of the inverse of Hepburn's steel pixie.)  His character of Linus Larrabee is at least old enough to have gone to college in the '20s (he has a phonograph with "Yes, We Have No Bananas," which was a hit in 1923), but there's never any explanation of why there's such a big age gap between him and his brother David.  (In the family painting, they look like they were children at the same time, with no more than maybe a five years' difference.)  Also, Bogart has his own screen baggage, as a tough guy, and while I could buy him as a self-made businessman, I can't believe him as a rich man's son.  (IMDB says Bogart's father was "moderately wealthy," but that's not his film persona.)  In great contrast to Holden and Hepburn, he and Hepburn don't have chemistry together.  The only reason why we're meant to root for him is because he's hard-working and wants to bring capitalism to developing countries so that they can have straight teeth and movies on Saturdays.

Say what?  This is where I remind you of who the writer-director is: Billy Wilder, a deeply cynical man, who not only gave us an obsessive romance in Sunset Blvd., but in Some Like It Hot would include a marriage-merger, like the one Linus is trying to orchestrate for David, until the chauffeur's daughter throws a monkey wrench into the business.  In Some Like, a made-up merger is Joe's excuse to get out of his lying affair with Sugar, and it's the antithesis of romance.  Here, Linus has a plan for David to marry the lovely Martha Hyer (not as sensible as in Abbott and Costello Go to Mars but again playing a girl whose engagement is threatened through no fault of her own).  This marriage will help Larrabee Industries (or one of their subsidiaries) produce a miracle plastic.  (And somewhere Mr. McGuire of The Graduate is taking notes.)  Hyer's character seems a bit shallow, but so is David, and it's not like he couldn't just divorce her quickly like usual.  (After all the paperwork is finalized of course.)  He does marry her in the end and Linus goes off to Paris with Sabrina, after trying to trick her into going there with David but then revealing his scheme because he's fallen in love with her himself.  This isn't Casablanca and the problems of three little people-- played by three big stars-- apparently do amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.

Or do they?  I'll note that the other recurring song in the movie is "La Vie en Rose," which Sabrina explains means looking at life through rose-colored glasses.  But the main glasses in the movie are the champagne glasses David sits on, getting a literal pain in the ass.  He wants to write a love poem to Sabrina and asks Linus what rhymes with "glass."  Linus suggests "alas."

"Surprise!  There is no movie called Duck Soup!"-- Joe Adamson, Groucho, Harpo, Chico, and Sometimes Zeppo (1973)

Billy Wilder has taken many disparate elements, some of which he couldn't have planned on, and subversively made them into one of the most unromantic romances ever.  For that alone, and because he's given me so much to think about, I'm giving the movie a B-.

Walter Hampden, who plays Oliver Larrabee, was the Aged Actor in All About Eve.  I couldn't spot Gregory Ratoff this time.  (Or Marion Ross for that matter!)  But, yes, that's Ma and Pa's Billy Reed, Emory Parnell, as Charles the Butler.  Sam Harris was in Citizen Kane and at least one other of my movies.  Ellen Corby, who's Miss McCardle here, was Miss Davis in It's a Wonderful Life.  (But she's best known as Grandma Walton.)  Marcel Dalio, who at 54 plays the 74-year-old Baron, was the magistrate in Gentlemen Prefer.

Chuck Hamilton was in Ma and Pa Kettle on Vacation and would be in There's No Business Like Show Business, which would also feature Ralph Brooks, again as a party guest.  John Williams, who's actually quite good (and well cast) as Sabrina's father, would go on to Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?  (I'm numbering him, to distinguish him from the composer and any other John Williamses we run into.)  Rand Harper would be in Auntie Mame.  Marjorie Bennett, who plays the cook and was the corset saleslady in MaPK at Home, would appear in Mary Poppins.  Francis X. Bushman, who portrays Mr. Tyson, was a silent-film star, so it's surprising he didn't appear in Sunset Blvd., but I do have his very last film appearance, in The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini of all things.


*We see much less of Paris than we did in Ma and Pa on Vacation or Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, just the Eiffel Tower out a window.  Bogart's character says that Paris is for lovers and that's why he stayed only 35 minutes.  Consider this a hint.

"Bogie, hold her like you've just met and wish you hadn't."

Abbott and Costello Go to Mars

Abbott and Costello Go to Mars
April 6, 1953
Universal
Comedy, Sci-Fi
VHS
C+

First of all, they never go to Mars.  They go to New York (twice), New Orleans during Mardi Gras, and Venus, which is-- you're not going to believe this-- populated only by women!  Pretty cutting edge, eh? The Venusians include a lot of beauty queens and Anita Ekberg.  The script is nonsensical, and Ma and Pa Kettle director Charles Lamont does his best with it, but it never gets silly enough, or achieves dream-logic.  (You may scoff that the scientists back home watch the flight of the spaceship on their monitor, but even that gets old.)  Mainly worth watching for the almost funny antics of Bud and Lou, the now lame special effects, and the blink-and-you'll-miss-it debut of nine-year-old Harry Shearer.  (He's the brunet boy in the opening scene.)  Martha Hyer, as she does in the more enjoyably bad Bikini Beach, provides the voice of reason when possible.

Brick Sullivan was in It's a Wonderful Life and Singin' in the Rain.  Mari Blanchard (Queen Allura) was a Copa girl in Copacabana.  Juanita Close, Lester Dorr, Frank Marlowe, Syd Saylor, and Harold DeGarro were in Ma and Pa Kettle at the Fair. (DeGarro was the scarecrow on stilts, while here he's a policeman on stilts.)  Jack Kruschen, Russ Conway and Gloria Pall were in MaPK on Vacation.  Rex Lease, who plays the police sergeant, is the sheriff in the MaPK series.  James Flavin would be in MaPK at Home, Harold Goodwin and Sally Yarnell in MaPK at Waikiki.  Jack Tesler would appear in The Band Wagon, Ed Fury in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and Carl Sklover in Some Like It Hot.