Fairy Tales

Fairy Tales
August 1978
Charles Band Productions
Porn, Musical, Comedy, Fantasy
DVD
B

It's a sad day when a very low-budget soft-core porno has better music than a movie written by the Sherman brothers, but such is the case here.  Not only do you have Martha Reeves (yes, that Martha Reeves) singing the disco-licious "You'll Feel the Magic in Me," but the songs by the various fairy tale/ nursery rhyme characters range from cute to hilarious, with the unquestionable winner being Bo Peep's lament about life as a shepherdess:  "Welllll, it's not as I planned/ But throughout Fairyland/ I'm known as Little Bo Peep/ And alack or alas/ I am up to my ass/ In smelly old sheep/ And when first I found out/ What my job was about/ And what I really am/ I just didn't suspect/ How much dough I'd collect/ From the guy on the lam(b)...."  Angela Aames sings it with great gusto, and the deliberately phony tap-dancing further sells it.

The plot, such as it is, involves Prince Don Sparks (not particularly handsome, as he looks like he had a bad case of acne when younger, but likable enough) having to get an erection/have an orgasm/lose his virginity/sire an heir or lose his kingdom.  (It's not exactly clear.)  But only the mysterious and missing Princess Beauty makes him horny.  Still, he visits Fairyland on the advice of his advisors, including Prof. Irwin Corey (as incoherent as ever, but much smuttier).  Nai Bonet plays a role similar to that of the belly-dancer in John Goldfarb.  Angelo Rossito, who plays the midget Otto, was in The Perils of Pauline and Pufnstuf.  Robert Staats has probably the best lines (including a bit about aluminum siding), in the role of doorman Tommy Tucker at the "Old Lady's Shoe of Pleasure."

There's also a jive-talking black pimp, Snow White and her Dwarves, Andrews-Sisters-like dominatrices, a Frog Prince (played by the lyricist), and so on.  The movie loses some energy around the time the Italian vice inspector shows up (ironic since he was one of the screenwriters), but there is of course a happy ending.  The whole thing is only 76 minutes and is worth a look for the humor and music, although it's only sexy in comparison to The Erotic Adventures of Pinocchio.  As for succeeding as a fantasy, well, other than a cauldron and an off-camera transformation, the budget really limits that genre.

How to Commit Marriage

How to Commit Marriage
July 7, 1969
Naho Productions
Comedy, Musical
VHS
C+

While this has the potential to be as entertainingly bad as Gleason's Skidoo, although a more mainstream take on hippie culture, it never quite gets there.  I'm just guessing, but director Norman Panama probably didn't drop acid for research purposes, as Preminger did.  Not that this movie makes much more sense than Skidoo.  

As briefly as can I put it:  Bob Hope and Jane Wyman are going to tell their Berkeley-freshman-but-wholesome daughter played by the future TV Isis that they're getting a divorce, when she announces that she's engaged to Berkeley-senior-but-wholesome Tim Matheson (then spelling his last name Matthieson).  Like Frankie Avalon in I'll Take Sweden, he's an unemployed musician, but he composes classical.  Tim's father, Jackie Gleason, produces rock groups like the Comfortable Chair (as themselves) and is cynical about marriage and everything else.  The young folks' call off their wedding when Gleason reveals the truth about Isis's parents' marriage.  They decide to live together out of marriage, which leads to them joining the Comfortable Chair and becoming unwed parents.  Gleason bribes Prof. Irwin Corey, as a guru, to tell them to give up their baby for adoption.  Gleason's assistant, Paul Stewart (Raymond in Citizen Kane), is tricked by Hope and Wyman into thinking they're strangers, and Scottish, so they adopt the baby with seemingly no red tape.  Gleason gets suspicious, so he makes a chimp beat the golf pants off Hope.  Hope and Wyman meanwhile dress mod, bicker, and date Maureen Arthur and Leslie Nielsen respectively, but end up getting remarried in the end.  Isis and Tim get married, too, as do Gleason and Tina Louise.  Gleason and Hope, who've spent most of the movie exchanging unfunny insults, get caught in a mudslide a year later.  THE END.  No, there is no title song.

This is the last of my movies with Kenner G. Kemp, who was in Singin' the Rain among others; here he plays a race track extra.  Don Brodie, who plays Pevney, would be a gasoline attendant in Escape to Witch Mountain.