Meatballs Part II

Meatballs Part II
July 27, 1984
TriStar Pictures
Comedy, Sci-Fi
VHS
C-

What can I say?  I saw this on an early date with my then-new-boyfriend-and-future-ex-husband.  We were 16 and 17 and we knew the movie was crap, but the alien plotline was sort of funny.  (There's also a Belmont Steaks pun that I got this time.)  This is only vaguely a sequel to the Bill Murray movie of five years earlier, although it is about two rival camps and their leaders: Richard Mulligan as Coach Giddy of Camp Sasquatch, and the aptly named Hamilton Camp, who has probably his biggest role in my movies, as Col. Bat Jack Hershey of Camp Patton.  The movie is only very marginally recommended if a) you want a better sense of what Wet Hot American Summer (2001) would go on to parody (the song played over both opening and closing credits manages to cram in every "summer" cliche it can), and/or b) you want to see the random cast.

Nine years and a Hello, Larry after Escape to Witch Mountain, 19-year-old Kim Richards does what she can with the role of virginal Cheryl, who has a Little Darlings lite plot of having to see a "pinky" by the end of the summer.  Rising slightly above the material are 36-year-old John Larroquette, right before he became a star on Night Court, and 31-year-old Paul Reubens, a year before Pee-Wee's Big Adventure (which I've seen but don't own), playing respectively a very stereotypical homosexual and a geek like you've never quite seen before.

This movie is sort of a reunion for Scavenger Hunters Mulligan and David Hollander, who was 14 at this point but lumped in with 12-year-old Jason Hervey and 10-year-old Scott Nemes, later of The Wonder Years and It's Garry Shandling's Show respectively.

Archie Hahn plays both horny counselor Jamie and the voice of Meathead the Alien.  Felix Silla (best known as Cousin Itt, but also appearing in Pufnstuf among other things) is the one in the alien costume.  Vic Dunlop tries to convince us he's a French chef; he was Ralph in Lunch Wagon.  Donald Gibb, who plays Mad Dog, would be Wolfman in Transylvania 6-5000.  Thirty-one-year-old Elayne Boosler, who's thanked in the credits, definitely does not look old enough to be playing the mother of a teenager, but she does have some almost-funny lines.

The Friday the 13th reference made by the Jive-Talking Black Girl Tula Washington (played by an actress who has absolutely no other credits) is an in-joke, as co-writers Martin Kitrosser and Carol Watson also did a couple movies in that series.

Don't let the poster fool you.

Scavenger Hunt

Scavenger Hunt
December 21, 1979
Fox
Comedy
VHS
D+

Wow.  I never considered this a good movie of course-- it has the same director, Michael Schultz, as Sgt. Pepper-- but I had remembered it as at least silly fun.  This time it was painfully unfunny.  Well, there's one sort of funny part, when Richard Mulligan is disguised as a mummy in order to steal a suit of armor, and he's doing his Burt Campbell mannerisms, and he wouldn't scare a mouse, while everyone runs screeching from him, acting like they're refugees from Attack of the Killer Tomatoes!  (Which is entirely possible, since both movies were filmed in San Diego.)  There's gratuitous sexism, particularly with the Babbette [sic] character.  The gratuitous racism shows not so much with Cleavon Little's character-- he always carries himself with grace and style (this is after all the man who got away with the line "Where the white women at?" in Blazing Saddles)-- as in the characters of the Japanese gardener (who for some reason doesn't make it onto the servants' team) and of the elderly Indian whose dentures get stolen.

You see, there is, as the title suggests, a scavenger hunt (with what must be the easiest clues ever), the winners of which will inherit a $200 million fortune.  Vincent Price, as Milton Parker (see, he's a game inventor) dies in the first scene, lucky him.  A dizzying cast (why this is a D+ rather than a D) participates in the hunt.  I'd better just list them:

• Team A:  The servants are Cleavon L. as the American chauffeur, Roddy McDowall as the English butler, James Coco as the French chef, and Stephanie Faracy as the French maid.  (Little and Faracy would play a married couple on the early '90s Fox sitcom True Colors, which I've always had a soft spot for.)
• Team B:  Cloris Leachman is Parker's bitchy sister, Richard Masur (of the early days of One Day at a Time) is her overage bratty son, and Richard Benjamin is their shady lawyer.
• Team C: Leachman rejects her stepdaughter Lisa (Maureen Teefy), but Lisa is invited to join the Stevens brothers, Parker's nephews, played by Dirk Benedict and Willie Aames (in his film debut, although he was already on Eight Is Enough).
• Team D:  Tony Randall plays Parker's widowed son-in-law, whose four children include Shane Sinutko (not given much to do, so I can't say if he's improved as an actor since The Shaggy D.A.), shark-jumping David Hollander ("Little Earl" on What's Happening!!), Julie Anne Haddock (tomboy Cindy on the first season of The Facts of Life), and some little girl I don't recognize.
• Team E:  Mulligan, as taxi driver Marvin Dummitz (a Melvin Dummar parody I believe), works alone until he recruits Scatman Crothers, who gets kidnapped by Team B while unconscious in the suit of armor, leading to the happy ending.
• Various cameos, from Carol Wayne as Parker's nurse to go-to fat guys Stuart Pankin and Stephen Furst.  (If you've ever wanted to see a movie where Dirk Benedict and Willie Aames try to abduct Stuart Pankin into their van, this is the one.)  In amazingly creative casting, Arnold Schwarzenegger plays a fitness instructor, Meat Loaf the leader of a biker gang, and Ruth Gordon a nutsy, gutsy old lady.  Pat McCormick works at the carnival, while Avery Schreiber is a lisping ostrich-keeper at the zoo.
• The only performer I don't feel sorry for is Robert Morley, because he just does his Robert Morley eccentric-but-reasonable-sounding-English-chap thing and spends most of his scenes sitting in the shade and calmly watching the chaos around him.  He's accompanied by the scorekeeper, Hal Landon, Jr., who would be Ted's father in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure.

Jerado Decordovier (who was Samoan) plays the Indian here and was a waiter in Gidget Goes Hawaiian.  Janine King was a crying baby in Tony Randall's Hello Down There and is a carnival patron here.  Alan Scharf, who's a clerk here, was Roberts in Attack of the Killer Tomatoes!, while Art Koustik was the FIA director there and is the zoo director here.  Henry Polic II (probably best known for his role on the sitcom Webster) plays the "naked" policeman here (he's stripped down to his underwear when his uniform is on the list), and he was Tito in Rabbit Test.

Adam Anderson, who was Sobbing Sailor in Rabbit Test, is Policeman #2 here and would be a pilot in The Nude Bomb.  Marji Martin, who plays fat lady Kay here, would be "Sister" in Going Ape!

Note that both Aames and Crothers sing on the forgettable soundtrack.  There is no title song.

Some of the subtle humor that has made this the cult classic that it is.

The Big Bus

The Big Bus
June 23, 1976
Paramount
Comedy, Action
VHS
A-

This note-perfect parody of '70s disaster movies is not only in my opinion much more enjoyable than the more famous and successful Airplane (1980), but it's the most fun I've had with any of my movies since Some Like It Hot.  It's partly that I'm a '70s kid and I love the bright colors and tackiness of this Ford-era movie, especially on the title vehicle, including the Bicentennial dining room.  But it really is dead on, from its David Shire score (as overwrought as anything in the Airport movies, but with whimsical touches like a sample from "Home Sweet Home" when the "flags of all nations" are raised to slow down the bus), to the dialogue, with such quotable lines as Joseph Bologna defensively exclaiming "You eat one lousy foot-- they call you a cannibal!", and a pre-Benson Rene Auberjonois as a doubting priest taunting Ruth Gordon, "Where's your god now, old woman?"  I also love all the exchanges between a pre-Soap Richard Mulligan and a post-MASH Sally Kellerman as a soon to be divorced couple, as well as Richard B. Shull (around the time of Holmes and Yo-Yo) hitting all the cliches in his "I wanna live" speech when Lynn Redgrave seduces him in a tub.

It's a very big bus, with a swimming pool, a bowling alley, and a piano bar where Murphy Dunne (who wrote his own material) anticipates Bill Murray's lounge singer by a year or so.  The bus is nuclear-powered and on a non-stop trip from New York to Denver, although the scenery is very obviously Californian, from the street with the Thrifty's to the mountains.  And, yes, very '70s, with the sodas that poor Stockard Channing almost drowns in including Fanta and Fresca.

She's wonderful, the whole cast is wonderful!  I haven't even mentioned Larry Hagman as the doctor who insists that Harold Gould (wounded by a St. Christopher's medal) can't be moved, or Ned Beatty and Howard Hesseman as the bickering technicians, or Jose Ferrer and Stuart Margolin as villainous brothers (despite being born almost 30 years apart), or Vic Tayback in a tiny plum of a role as a bus driver who gets in a broken milk carton vs. broken candle bar fight.

I spent most of the time grinning, when I wasn't giggling.  This viewing, I was struck by the fact that it actually works on a story level.  I mean it's not just gags, there's actually a plot that's somewhat resolved.  (After a literal cliffhanger, the bus faces another disaster as the credits start rolling.)  And I don't think you have to have seen Earthquake, Towering Inferno, Poseidon Adventure, Airport, or Airport '75 (they still hadn't released '77 or Concorde at that point) to enjoy it, although it probably helps if you're a movie buff and can appreciate all the tropes.  Even on this viewing, I found new things to appreciate, like the Edith Head glasses on Redgrave's designer character.  Judging from the IMDB reviews and comments, as well as other online reviews, this movie doesn't do it for everyone, but I think if you like it, you'll like it a lot.

This time Vito Scotti plays a barber.  Harry Holcolmbe, who plays the older priest, was Capt. Malone in Escape to Witch Mountain.  Of the unnamed bus passengers, a few would go on to other cult/obscure movies I own: Selma Archerd to Americathon and Can't Stop the Music, Nick Pellegrino to I Wanna Hold Your Hand, Cynthia Szigeti to both The Gong Show Movie and Johnny Dangerously, and Andrew Winner to Valley Girl.

And James Frawley would go on to direct The Muppet Movie.