Pinocchio in Outer Space

Pinocchio in Outer Space
December 22, 1965
Belvision/ Universal
Children's, Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Musical
VHS
C+

As the title suggests, this Belgian kiddie flick is an odd, very '60s blend of Collodi's antihero (whom the Blue Fairy has changed back to a wooden puppet after some misbehavior) and the space age.  This doesn't really explain why the Cat of the Fox and Cat pair has become a stuttering "catnik" named Mr. Groovy, but oh well.  The sci-fi element isn't bad, combining actual facts about the planets with genuinely scary creatures like Giant Radioactive Salivating Crabs from Mars.  However, the music is pretty awful, especially that "Goody Goody Morning" dreck.

The "star" of the movie is Arnold Stang as Nurtle the Twurtle, although I'll always prefer him costarring with another Arnold in Hercules in New York.  One of the other voices is Norman Rose's, and he'd be the voice of one of the title characters in Love and Death.  Writer Fred Laderman (later Fred Ladd) would write a couple of the Pippi movies.

Winter A-Go-Go

Winter A-Go-Go
October 28, 1965
Columbia
Comedy, Drama, Musical
VHS
C

I was thinking of giving this a C, like Ski Party, before we got to the character of the giggling Chinese cook.  And while the sexism isn't as hostile as in Ski P, the interview question of a girl's measurements has dated in a bad way.  But the movie was saved from a C- by an increase in funny drama.  You know the kind, where characters have lines like "You're a great girl and maybe someday you'll be the real you and get over whatever's hurting you inside."  Or this double-entendrous exchange (I'm paraphrasing since I don't take notes)--
VILLAIN: You can get hurt playing both sides of the fence.
REFORMED HENCHMAN: I like to go where the action is.
VILLAIN: Well, you're fooling around with the wrong guy.

It's pretty sad when the Nooney Rickett Four are your most famous musical act, other than the Hondells, who, yes, sing the theme song with it's oh so '60s title.  One of the dance numbers, however, looks like the grandmother of "Jingle Bell Rock" in Mean Girls, the costumes especially.  As for the comedy, well, when a joke about "CA" for "Cokes Anonymous" is only funny because this is 17 years before Cocaine Anonymous was founded, well, I start to get impatient for the next dramatic scene.
GIRL #1: (during one of the fight scenes) They'll kill each other!
GIRL #2: I can't watch this!

There are, not surprisingly, some crossovers in the casts of AIP movies and Elvis movies.  Beverly Adams ("Jo") was Cassandra in How to Stuff a Wild Bikini.  Carey Foster was in Pajama Party.  Linda Rogers ("Penny") was the auburn-haired Mouse in the earlier Beach Party movies.  Nancy Czar ("Jonesy") was in Girl Happy and would be in Spinout, costarring with Arlene Charles again.  Julie Parrish ("Dee Dee") would be in Fireball 500.

Ski Party

Ski Party
June (?) 30, 1965
AIP
Comedy, Musical
DVD
C

This may be the low for the AIP Beach Party and Spin-Offs series.  (It's been awhile since I've seen The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini, and there are the "racing" movies with Fabian coming up, so I'm not going to commit myself just yet.)  Alan Rafkin has mostly directed for TV, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but the script is by Robert Kaufman, who also wrote AIP's Dr. Goldfoot movies, which I've never cared for.  There are serious problems with this script, most notably the fact that Frankie*, and to some degree his sidekick Dwayne, won't take no for an answer when it comes to kissing+ (Yvonne's character laughs as she tells of Dwayne tying her up with hair ribbons on their first date!), dress in drag (in what Dwayne acknowledges onscreen is a Some Like It Hot rip-off) in order to spy on girls (oh, and to learn to ski on the bunny slope, not exactly on the level of having a Chicago mob chasing after you), and worst of all drive a mentally ill man further into insanity.  And then in the end, Deborah's character is the one who apologizes!  Deborah wonders what Yvonne did wrong and the future Batgirl replies, "Guilt by association."

There are really only two reasons to watch this movie, and they may not be enough for all but the completist.  One, there's more of the AIP fourth-wall-breaking than we usually get, by both Frankie and Dwayne.  (The latter had practice on Dobie Gillis.)  At one point, Frankie asks what the average age of the audience is, and Dwayne replies 15, so they have to leave the slumber party.  There's also one of the odder cameos at AIP, Annette Funicello playing a hot 35-year-old professor.  (A TILF?)  IMDB says this movie came out in June, but I'm not sure where it actually falls in the Series & Related chronology.  Since I'm reviewing Winter A-Go-Go later today, this seemed like the best place for it.  And, no, AIP never made Cruise Party, as the end credits promise/threaten.

The other good thing about this movie is the music, no, not those darn Hondells, who sing the forgettable title song, but Leslie Gore doing her hit "Sunshine, Lollipops, and Rainbows," and the fabulous James Brown and the Famous Flames.  The soul band shows up just before the hour-mark, Yvonne says she has all their albums (since she's cooler than the rest of the cast, I believe her), and then we get a poorly dubbed but wonderfully choreographed rendition of "I Got You (I Feel Good)."  Then they leave, unfortunately, taking most of the energy with them.  Even getting back to the beach at the end doesn't help.

The returning Beach Party crowd includes Patti Chandler, Jo Collins, Mickey Dora, Ed Garner, Mike Nader (given a couple lines), Luree Nicholson Holmes, Mary Hughes, Christopher Riordan, and Salli Sachse.  Bobbi Shaw is again Swedish but seems a bit more fluent than usual.  Aron Kincaid plays a blond stud like he did in Beach Ball, although he ends up falling for Dwayne's alter ego, "Nora."  (Since this is a feeble answer to Some LIH, he gives Nora his pin.  Dwayne/Nora seems to return his feelings, but later claims to have been kidding.  Uh huh.)  Mikki Jamison and Bill Sampson were in Beach Ball with Aron, as was Dick Miller, who this time plays the taxi driver.


*This time, none of the characters have the performers' names.  I just don't care enough to type them all out.  One girl is named "Indian" for inexplicable reasons.

Beach Ball

Beach Ball
September 29, 1965
Paramount
Comedy, Musical
VHS
C-

While no one is going to argue that the AIP Beach Party movies are brilliant, they are to one degree or another fun, and they shine in comparison to this knock-off.  The leads, especially Edd Byrnes (32 and doing a bad job of passing for 20), are unsympathetic, and there aren't any minor characters to hold my interest.  However, except for some moderate (for its time) sexism, the movie is pretty innocuous, and some of the music is good or at least interesting, as when the Supremes sing not one but two surf songs, including the title track.  To balance that, the Hondells are again forgettable, and the songs that Edd allegedly writes for his friends, The Wigglers, have some of the most pathetic rhymes in pop music.  (I swear one was "day" & "day"!)  Oh, and the guys dress in drag at the end, with some of the ugliest wigs in recorded history.

Don Edmonds, who plays Bob, was Larry Neal in Gidget Goes Hawaiian.  Chris Noel (Susan) and Gail Gilmore (Deborah) were both in Girl Happy.  Aron Kincaid (Jack), Mikki Jamison (Augusta), Dick Miller (Cop #1), and Bill Sampson (no relation to the All About Eve character) all appear in Ski Party as well.  Sid Haig, who is the drummer for the Righteous Brothers here, would have a scene-stealing role as Daddy (not Big or Little) in It's a Bikini World, while Jack Bernardi, who plays Mr. Wilk, would be in IaBW as Harvey Pulp.  Larry Billman would dance in Live a Little, Love a Little as well as here.

For some definitions of "hits."

Help!

Help!
August 25, 1965
United Artists
Comedy, Musical, Action
VHS
C

Although it's nice to see the Beatles in colour-- including in a prescient scene where they wear facial hair for disguises and look like their future selves (except Paul)-- there's no question that this isn't as good as A Hard Day's Night.  Instead of giving us a slightly surreal view of a day-in-the-life-of-the-band, we instead get a nonsensical yet boring plot involving two sets of bad guys-- worshipers of the goddess Kali, and a mad scientist and his idiot assistant-- all of whom are after a ring on Ringo's finger.  (George gets a later ironic line about not wanting to criticise anyone's religion.)  The music is good of course (including sitars that would influence George) but there's not much of it and it's not shot anywhere near as creatively as in HDN.  I also don't like how John and Paul want to cut off Ringo's finger when the ring won't come off.  There are some nice touches, like the design of the lads' house, but I'd rather watch an average episode of The Monkees than this.

A few of the Hard Day's Night cast show up: Bob Godfrey, who was Man in Park, is a priest/thug here; Jeremy Lloyd, who was Tall Dancer at the Disco, gets a couple lines as a restaurant patron; and of course Victor Spinetti, the TV director, becomes mad scientist Foot.  Roy Kinnear, who's Foot's assistant Algernon, would be Veruca Salt's dad in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory.

Sergeant Deadhead

Sergeant Deadhead
August 18, 1965
AIP
Comedy, Musical, Sci-Fi
VHS
B

The same day that you could first see Annette singing about her ambition to be a monkey's aunt, you could watch Frankie "being shot up with a monkey."  (In each case, it's actually a chimp.)  Outdoing his double role in Bikini Beach, Frankie plays the title character, who undergoes a personality change while up in space (with the "monkey"), but he also plays Sgt. Donovan, a patriotic lookalike.  Much of the usual AIP crowd is around (see below), but we also get officers played by Fred Clark, Reginald Gardiner, Gale Gordon, Cesar Romero, and best of all Eve Arden, who has perfect comic delivery and even gets to sing a very Ardenic song, "You Should've Seen the One That Got Away."  She's named Lt. Kinsey, and the movie has a lot of tasteless but amusing sex humor, much of it involving the Frankies and Deborah Walley (as Lucy) at her sexiest.  The movie succeeds at some of what John Goldfarb attempted, including political satire.  Not that this is sophisticated wit-- after all it's still AIP-- but it is very funny.  After I don't know how many viewings (although none in recent years), I still giggle helplessly whenever I listen to Pat Buttram as the irritable, Southern-accented President.  ("If I had my spurs on, I'd kick you in the shins!  I'll sic the dogs on ya!")  I'd go with a B+, like Pajama Party (also penned by Louis M. Heyward), but the first 15 or 20 minutes are a bit slow (Buster Keaton, in his last AIP appearance, is given some unfunny slapstick), and, alas, there's no title song.  On the other hand, I love the sheer goofiness of a military band that can only play "Jingle Bells."

John Ashley is cast against type as a nerd with sinus trouble, while Jody McCrea (who used to be known as Deadhead) is nowhere in sight.  Other beach folk who've joined up include Ray Atkinson, Bruce Baker, Patti Chandler,  Jo Collins, Sue Hamilton, Luree Nicholson Holmes, Mary Hughes, Janice Levinson, Stephanie Nader, and Salli Sachse.  This time Mike Nader is teamed up for comedic purposes with Norman Grabowski, as air policemen.

The recasting of the Ratz and Mice is less obvious: John Macchia and Andy Romano as Marine MPs, Alberta Nelson as a WAF, but also Jerry Brutsche as the newspaper vendor and Bob Harvey as the bellhop.  (Both Jeromey and Robert find Lucy "Va-va-va-voom!)  As for Harvey Lembeck, he's still inept and menacing, as the man who breaks out of the guardhouse using exploding fountain pens.

Bobbi Shaw is now American and named Gilda.  Donna Loren is another WAF and gets a torchy solo at the wedding reception.  Dwayne Hickman has a brief appearance but gets a special thank-you in the end credits. Romo Vincent, the tuba player, would be Jack Happy in The Swinger.  Newsman Ed Reimers plays himself here but would be an announcer in The Barefoot Executive, which, yes, also features a chimp.

The Monkey's Uncle

The Monkey's Uncle
August 18, 1965
Disney
Comedy, Sci-Fi
VHS
C+

The title and some early scenes suggest that this is going to be sort of a teen version of Bedtime for Bonzo, but Merlin's quasi-adoption of Stanley the chimp is less of the focus than various threats to football at Midvale College.  At least that title allows for one of the better title songs of the '60s, sung by Annette and the Beach Boys, with Sherman Brothers lyrics like this:

Annette: I'd live in a jungle gym in order to be with him.  I love the monkey's uncle, and I wish I were the monkey's aunt!
Beach Boys: Monkey's aunt!....

Annette: On the day he marries me
All: What a nutty family tree!
Mike: A bride!
Brian: A groom!
Beach Boys:  A chimpanzee!

That right there raises the movie from a C to a C+.  (This will be far from the last time that the Beach Boys will do a title song that's much better than the movie it's attached to.)

This time, Merlin's misadventures are slightly more realistic, although "man-powered flight" fueled by an adrenaline smoothie pushes this back into sci-fi.  The first half of the movie is about sleep-learning through LPs.  Questionable ethics again pop up, with the judge urging Merlin to find "an honest way to cheat" on exams, for football player Norm and another idiot jock.  Merlin gets some sexist dialogue about Jennifer being stupid and illogical, you know, feminine.  There's a sort of rival for Jennifer, but because this is Disney, we're cheated of a moment when the girl is supposed to come out of the shower, presumably in a towel.  (By the time of Enchanted, it would be a whole other world of course.)

You'll notice that Annette not only looks non-pregnant, but her hair still has red highlights.  This was actually filmed in '64 (I think shortly before or after Uncle Walt found out that Tommy Kirk was gay), but not released for awhile.

Arthur O'Connell, Darius Green III here, was a reporter in Citizen Kane, and more recently played Gidget's first film father.  Similarly, Frank Faylen, who's the anti-football Mr. Dearborne, was Ernie the cabdriver in It's a Wonderful Life, but he's probably better known as Dobie Gillis's TV dad.  Leon Ames is back as Judge Holmsby, with a much larger role than before.  Connie Gilchrist again plays Holmsby's housekeeper.