Sextette

Sextette
March 3, 1978
Crown International Pictures
Comedy, Musical
VHS
B-

From the opening lyrics that proclaim that Marlo Manners is "the female answer to Apollo" (I guess they didn't want to do a rhyme for "Venus") onward, this movie will have you scratching your head, shaking your head, dropping your jaw, and/or laughing affectionately and/or scornfully.  Even by the standards of an octogenarian Mae West sex comedy/ slash vanity production (if you thought they overdid the soft-focus on Lucy in Mame, you ain't seen nothin' yet), the movie makes little sense.  But if you start asking yourself questions like, "Why can't Marlo remember all her marriages and divorces?  Liz Taylor always managed it," or "Exactly how is this nutty scheme going to achieve world peace?", you probably won't be able to let go enough to get into the movie.  As it is, I can't say it's an enjoyably bad enough movie to hold up to more than a dozen viewings, but I still got things out of it this time, including of course being amused at the cast.

Of those I've tagged, three of them are Marlo's six (ish) husbands: Tony Curtis as Russian diplomat Alexei (hubby #2 or 3), Ringo as Polish (I think) film director Laszlo (#4), and George Hamilton as gangster Vance (#5).  (One husband, seen only in newspaper clippings, was a count.)  Number 6 (or 7) is Sir Michael Barrington, who turns out to be a spy.  Marlo's manager (Dom DeLuise) declares Sir MB is "bigger than 007," which would be ironic a dozen years later when Timothy Dalton (33 in '78) became James Bond.

As for Ken Hughes, he directed Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, which is fortunate because this is a musical.  True, some people (like Dalton) seem to be reciting lyrics more than singing, but then there are others, like DeLuise, who are giving it their all.  Most of these songs are of '60s and '70s vintage, like DeLuise's "Honey Pie" and Dalton's "Love Will Keep Us Together." The script by Herbert Baker, who also wrote the screenplay for The Girl Can't Help It, is based on West's 1961 screenplay.  I have to say that, as high a tolerance as I have for double entrendres and innuendos, even such chestnuts as West delivers here (yes, even the "gun in your pocket" one), it does get to be a bit one-note after awhile, which is why I went with a B- rather than a B.

George Raft plays a gangster named "George."  Seventy-year-old Rollin Moriyama, who's the Japanese delegate here, would soon be a Japanese doctor in Rabbit Test, then get his most famous role, as a taxi passenger in Foul Play, before becoming Chinese for Americathon.  One of the athletes, Kal Szkalak, would also be in Americathon.  Keith Allison, who plays a waiter, was apparently a '60s teen idol and famous enough to be one of the "guests at Heartland" at the end of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.  Alice Cooper, who's almost unrecognizable here (he plays the glass piano and is greeted as Alice by DeLuise), would have a much more important role in Sgt. Pepper.  Ed Beheler seems to have made a bit of a career impersonating President Carter, but this is the only one of his six movies I own.  There are appearances by "journalists" Rona Barrett, Regis Philbin, and Gil Stratton playing themselves.  And the soon to be late Keith Moon plays a mad dress designer.

Pippi on the Run

Pippi on the Run
1977 (exact American release date unknown)
Nord Art/ G. G. Communications Inc.
Children's, Comedy, Fantasy, Musical
DVD
B

I think this is maybe a shade not as good as the other Inger Nilsson Pippi movie made specifically for the big screen, Pippi in the South Seas.  Run lacks the plot and action of its immediate predecessor.  To balance that, as the children and the movie meander, most of the scenes are set outdoors-- in woods, along a river, at a farm-- and this means nature shots, with lots of animals, from cows and a bull to badgers to owls to rabbits and a kitten.  This is the movie where Pippi is not simply strong but supernatural, able to turn a broken-down heap into her own version of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang by just flapping her arms and putting super glue in the tank.  She can also fly on a broomstick.

Tommy and Annika are as always along for the journey, and in fact goody-goody Annika's sudden preteen rebellion against her mother inspires the running away that takes up most of the movie.  Understandably, we see her and Tommy's parents (played as always by Fredrik Ohlsson and Öllegård Wellton) only at the beginning and end, and there are none of the usual villagers.  Instead, we get Conrad the inventor/peddler and the farm family, who provide much of the humor of the film in the way they interact with the trio, as during the dancing on the ceiling and the swearing contest.

I'm using a "musical" tag this time because the kids sing a lot, to raise their spirits and/or to raise money.  (Pippi leaves her gold pieces and Mr. Nilsson at home.  The horse ditches her for about an hour of the running time.)  It'd been awhile since I watched this movie (much longer than since watching the others), but having grown up with it, all the lyrics came back to me, like the ones about the "poor Turkish children who haven't any clothes."  I should note that even in the '70s, but especially now, I was struck by the cultural differences between the US and Sweden in regards to partial nudity of children.  There's nothing "inappropriate," but 9- or 10-year-old Annika would've been wearing an undershirt in the swimming scene if this were made in America.

Annie Hall

Annie Hall
April 20, 1977
United Artists
Comedy, Romance
VHS
B+

This is probably my favorite Woody Allen movie, but not because I saw it at the time.  I mean, I was 9, so I didn't get very many of the jokes then and most remembered it for the Snow White parody.  I started to appreciate it as a teenager, although I obviously get different things out of it now in middle age, having gone through the good and bad of so many romantic relationships.  It's easy to see why Annie Hall and Alvy Singer are drawn together and why they can't last, and it's interesting that this was made after Keaton and Allen broke up.

The script by Allen and Brickman is strong, with many quotable lines.  And the direction by Allen is equally good, with even the more unbelievable characters, like the one played by Shelley Duvall, believable within the world of the movie.  Although the movie is about Alvy & Annie, it also is about New York vs. California and a lot of other things.  I like that, like novelist George Meredith, Allen is able (at least at this point in his career and life) to include himself in his laundry list of what to mock.  Diane Keaton is absolutely lovable and charming here, but Annie has flaws of her own.

The supporting cast, only some of whom I've tagged, hold their own, including Goldblum with his one scene-stealing line.  Tony Roberts is much more relaxed here than he was in Star-Spangled Girl six years earlier, probably because the dialogue is so much better.  Carol Kane gives a fine early performance, as one of the women that illustrate Alvy's quote of the Groucho line about not wanting to belong to a club that would have him as a member.  Marshall McLuhan shows up as himself-- "If life were only like this!"-- and delivers a line that still cracks me up because it makes no sense yet is meant to be a put-down of a pseudo-intellectual: "You know nothing of my work!  You mean my whole fallacy is wrong."

There's a lot of fourth-wall-breaking, especially but not exclusively by Alvy.  One of the old ladies giving him advice on the street is seventy-six-year-old Paula Trueman, who would be Stick-Up Lady in Can't Stop the Music, as well as Woman on Telephone in Zelig, while another, sixty-nine-year-old Loretta Tupper, would be the music store owner in The Purple Rose of Cairo.  Another "street stranger" is Lou Picetti, who was the beauty pageant MC in Sleeper.  

One Lacey party guest, William Callaway, would be an intern in Rabbit Test.  Gary Muledeer, who's a man at the health food restaurant, would be Gary in The Gong Show Movie.  The two men who bother Alvy outside the theatre are Bob Maroff, who'd be a bartender in I Wanna Hold Your Hand, and Rick Petrucelli, who'd be a penny pitcher in Purple Rose.  "Coke fiend" John Doumanian would be a Greek waiter in Zelig and a Thanksgiving guest in Hannah and Her Sisters.  Hy Ansel, who's Joey Nichols, would play Mr. Waldbaum in Radio Days, which would feature Martin Rosenblatt, who's Alvy's uncle here, as Mr. Needleman.  One of the schoolteachers, Gary Allen, would be a board member in The Hudsucker Proxy.

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 Shaggy D.A.

The Shaggy D.A.
December 17, 1976
Disney
Children's, Comedy, Fantasy
DVD
B-

Although this doesn't hold up as well as some of the other Disney live-action movies of the '70s, it's somewhat fun if you can get past the incredible-- even by the standards of kid flicks-- implausibility and silliness.  I mean, there's a scene where someone in an obvious dog costume is dressed as a roller derby girl and driving an ice cream truck!  And there's a pie fight just because there has to be pie fight, and vehicles crashing into police cars because that's what happens in Disney live-action movies of the '70s.  The special effects seem weaker than in Escape to Witch Mountain, but I think this is partly because the movie overall is extra unreal.  (Even the ice cream syrup looks off, like it's paint.)  Some of the silliness is interesting, like the celebrity-inspired voices (Bogie, Mae West, etc.) for the dogs in the pound, and there does seem to be a slightly dark edge to the movie under the froth-- with the title character's life in danger, and a link between politics and crime.  This film came out shortly after Carter was elected partly on the basis that he was an outsider untouched by Watergate and other corruption, and Wilby Daniels is planning to "clean up" the corruption in Medfield.  (I'm not an expert on Disney, but I think their backlot small towns of the '50s through '70s tended to have bland M-names like that.  I think it was Midvale in the Merlin Jones movies.)

This is of course a sequel to The Shaggy Dog, which, although based on Felix Salten's The Hound of Florence, was sort of Disney's answer to I Was a Teenage Werewolf, with Tommy Kirk rather than Michael Landon.  Dean Jones replaces Kirk here, now that Wilby is all grown-up, with a law career, a hot wife (the incomparable Suzanne Pleshette, unfortunately not given much to do), and a slightly bratty son.  (Shane Sinutko was in things like The ABC After-School Special, so I recognized him right away, but I've got to say he's not one of the better kid actors, particularly at Disney in the '70s.  His intonation here is frequently wrong and he has none of the naturalism and likability of Ike Eisenmann or Kim Richards, to say nothing of the star quality of Jodie Foster.)

Wilby, with the help of his family and an ice cream man named Tim (Tim Conway), must face Keenan Wynn and Vic Tayback as the villains, but I thought the real scene stealer was Wynn's yes-man Dick Van Patten, who has a sycophantic laugh that would make Ed McMahon jealous.  Jo Anne Worley appears as Tim's ice-cream-worker-by-day/ roller-derby-queen-by-night love interest.  Hans Conreid, with that marvelous voice, is well cast as a museum curator.  Pleshette has a telephone conversation with one of her then TV-husband's patients, John Fiedler as the pound manager.

This time Herb Vigran plays a bar patron, but he doesn't have any lines, while Iris Adrian is the "manageress" at the pie factory.  Warren Berlinger is Dip.  Roller rink announcer Dick Lane was the racetrack announcer in Dear Brigitte.  Benny Rubin, who's a waiter here, was Chicken Feather in The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini.  Milton Frome, who plays the auctioneer, was Ann-Margret's father in The Swinger.  Peter Renoudet, who's the roller derby ticket-taker, was a policeman in The Barefoot Executive.  Paul Sorensen played a policeman in Escape to WM as well, while policeman Hank Jones was Stan in Barefoot Exec.

Danny Wells, who plays a police official, would be Al in Goin' Coconuts.  Pat McCormick, who's Harry the bartender here, would be the carnival barker in Scavenger Hunt, which would feature Sinutko as Scott Motley.  This was Robert Stevenson's last big-screen directing job.

Hey, this was hilarious when I was 8!

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.

Infra-Man

Infra-Man
1975 (exact date unknown)
Sci-Fi, Action
Shaw Brothers
VHS
C+

I wanted to go with a higher grade on this, considering that there are times that it looks like the Krofft Brothers remaking Phantom Empire for a heavy-metal album cover.  But it's just not my genre and I got bored with all the fight scenes.