Freaky Friday

Freaky Friday
January 21, 1977
Disney
Children's, Comedy, Fantasy
DVD
B

Please start with my review of the book, http://rereadingeverybookiown.blogspot.com/2012/08/freaky-friday.html, because I'm going to build on that....

Back?  OK, I think the film is about equal to the book, but, despite the Rodgers script, it's a very different creature, because, well, it's a movie, not just a filmed book.  This is seen in everything from the hokey green-screen to the cast that is heavy on the sitcom actors (Happy Days contributes both Al Delvecchio and Mickey Malph), but also includes such Hollywood vets as Iris Adrian (this time playing a bus passenger) and Patsy Kelly, not to mention Karen Smith from The Erotic Adventures of Pinocchio, Ruth Buzzi, Charlene Tilton, Dick Van Patten, etc., etc.!

Most prominent in that etc. is of course John "Gomez Addams" Astin, here playing the "oink oink" male chauvinist pig father and husband Bill Andrews perfectly, so that you can see why the transformed Annabel thinks he's a great dad and a lousy husband.  I love his slack-jawed reactions to the stunt water-skiing his wife does.

She's played by Barbara Harris, who maybe is a bit too immature when trying to seem 13 (although those were different times of course), but has a warmth and dippiness about her that totally sells her scenes.  Jodie Foster, already an acting veteran at 13, has to act prim and refined, which is in some ways tougher, but less of a show-stopping performance.  Sparky Marcus (9 playing 6) isn't much of a better actor than Shane Sinutko, but Ape-Face has always been one of my favorite kid-brother characters because he's so sweet but he also looks like he's having the time of his life, especially during this movie's version of the Obligatory Disney Chase Scene.

And, to use the vernacular, man!  Wow!  It doesn't get any more '70s than the ODCS in this one!  No less than half a dozen police cars are destroyed as the kids ride to the rescue in a red VW Bug.   It doesn't fit the timeframe of the story (unless Ellen Andrews is floating around a lot longer than it seems), and it doesn't really contribute anything, but it's fun nonetheless, in the way that the Typing class scene is fun.  They don't make them like this anymore.

No, I still haven't seen the '95 TV-movie, but I do want to note some things about the '03 version, on the assumption that I won't get a copy of it.  Ape-Face is much brattier there, and yes, the switching device is actually hokier than the green-screen wish.  Also, it is impossible to imagine in this film an awful line like Jamie Lee Curtis's about looking like The Crypt Keeper.  Annabel thinks her mom looks great, and she's right.

And, yes, the weird sexual subtext of the book is here in the '70s screen version, with Bill liking it when Ellen calls him Daddy, although Boris's crush on Mrs. Andrews is scaled back.  (He doesn't confess his love, like book-Boris does.)  Bill gets a sexy secretary in the movie, whom Ellen is suspicious of.  Mrs. Schmauss's remarks on Annabel's probable drug and alcohol use are kept intact from the book.  It's still G-rated Disney fun, but, as in The Shaggy D.A., things are not as squeaky clean at the Mouse House as they were in Walt's time.

I also must note that, while not a musical, there are three memorable aspects to the music: "I'd Like to Be You for a Day" over the opening credits captures the sweet, wistful side of the movie (under all the slapstick and farce); Annabel in Ellen's body likes to listen to the lamest "rock music" I've heard in a movie since, oh, Palm Springs Weekend; and the ODCS background music of course has a funky beat.

Marie Windsor, who plays Mrs. Murphy, was a nightclub patron about 35 years earlier in Playmates.  Dick Winslow, who's the man in the pool, was a photographer in The Swinger.  Dermott Downs, whose red hair looks even wilder here than it did a year or so earlier in Escape to Witch Mountain, is the guy who teases Annabel about her name.  Robert Karvelas, who's the silent diner customer that Annabel complains to, would resume his TV role as Larrabee for the big-screen version of Get Smart.  Ceil Cabot, who's Miss McGuirk, would also be in The Nude Bomb.  

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.

Please Don't Eat the Daisies

Please Don't Eat the Daisies
March 31, 1960
MGM
Comedy, Drama
VHS
C+

Welcome to the 1960s!  OK, it's very early in the '60s, so early that when there's a reference to "an ex-president," it can only be Hoover or Truman.  Still, you can see the cultural shift beginning, particularly with male-female relationships.  There are moments, like when Spring Byington (well cast as Doris Day's mother) gives advice, or when Day uses her "feminine wiles" on husband Niven, that you're not sure where things are going to land.  Is Niven's character right that he's always right?  Is Day really selfish?  Or is it the reverse?  And what's going on with the half-serious seductive actress?  Not to mention the butch doctor who answers a little boy's question of whether she's a man or a woman with "I'm a veterinarian.  That's in between."  Another sign of the times is that I noticed more black extras than in my earlier films (with the exception of It's a Wonderful Life), particularly in the scenes set at Macy's.

The movie is very, very loosely based on Jean Kerr's book, which I reviewed here: http://rereadingeverybookiown.blogspot.com/2012/06/please-dont-eat-daisies.html.   This has little wit in comparison, except for the semi-in-joke about Rock Hudson.  Day sings three songs, including the title song and her trademark "Que Sera Sera," but the only one that really works is her duet (with a heavyset woman) on "Any Way the Wind Blows."  There are four bratty kids, each with a different hair color (although two of them are supposed to be twins), and a big sheepdog, but they don't contribute much to the entertainment.  Patsy Kelly is welcome as always, although she's not playing to her strengths.

Charles Walters also directed Easter Parade.  Marina Koshetz was in Little Women.  Kenner G. Kemp was in Singin' in the Rain and some of my other movies.  Harold Miller was in Auntie Mame.  Hal Taggart might've been in one of my earlier movies, and he would definitely be in Mary Poppins.  Peter Leeds would appear in I'll Take Sweden.  Jack Chefe, who plays the Sardi's headwaiter, would be in Take Her, She's Mine.  Len Lesser, who plays another Sardi's waiter, would be in How to Stuff a Wild Bikini, which would also feature Marianne Gaba as Animal.  Milton Frome would do John Goldfarb, Please Come Home!  Frank Delfino would be in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory and Americathon, but his best known role is probably as a Kaplutian on The Brady Bunch.  Irene Tedrow would be in Foul Play.

We're supposed to feel sorry for them that they bought this house?

Playmates

Playmates
December 26, 1941
RKO
Comedy, Musical
VHS
B

I won't argue that this is a good movie, but I do find it a very entertaining one, especially the music.  Kay Kyser and his band sort of play themselves, as does John Barrymore in his last film.  Throw in Patsy Kelly as one of the fast-talking agents (the other is Peter Lind Hayes, who I only I know of because he apparently was on the first TV sitcom to feature a baby), mix in Lupe Velez (best known for the Mexican Spitfire series),and give M.A. Bogue, AKA Ish Kabibble, lots to do, so even the non-musical scenes are fun.  (Check out, to take just one example, Patsy as Lulu saying that the A Vitamins "taste like 'ell to me," a great sneak past the censor.)

But, oh, that music!  The "best" (well, funniest) numbers are first and last.  "Thank Your Lucky Stars and Stripes" (in this movie released shortly after Pearl Harbor) has to be one of the most ridiculous "patriotic" songs ever.  Lines like, "If you can sing and believe in anything," "If you have shoes and can say the things you choose," and "If you can joke and enjoy an artichoke," along with stuff about traffic cops and sweater girls and ham & eggs, belted out in enthusiastic big-band style, convince me.  "Romeo Smith and Juliet Jones" with its happy ending and slang like "hepcat" and "thirty grand" is of course a big hit with the posh Long Island audience onscreen.  Even the lesser songs, like "Humpty Dumpty Heart" and "Que Chica," couldn't possibly be taken seriously, at least not nowadays.

Surprisingly, in the midst of the in(s)anity, Barrymore, who's been chewing whatever of the scenery he can wrestle away from everyone else, gives a fine, understated rendition of Hamlet's soliloquy.  It doesn't blot out the later image of Kyser having a dream where he fights a bull with Barrymore's face (only to wake up kissing Hayes, thinking it's Velez), but it is a touching moment.  The movie's title by the way (which decades later would suggest Playboy bunnies) is a pun on "play" in the theatrical sense.

Marshall Ruth was in Turnabout.  Fred Trowbridge was in Citizen Kane.  Jack Gargan was in The Bank Dick and Citizen Kane.  Barry Norton would go on to Casablanca, Bill Cartledge to The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (as the short soldier).  Leon Belasco, who plays Prince Maharoohu, would appear in Road to Morocco (and a 1972 TV-movie called Playmates).