Midnight Madness (1980)

MIDNIGHT MADNESS (1980) 1/2*
Midnight Madness is a teenybopper It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and I wrote of the latter picture ‘I laughed more during Inherit the Wind,’ ‘Because of its length, It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb title) earns my vote for worst comedy ever made,’ and ‘I did not laugh once for more than three hours. That’s a record.’

Had I seen it at the time of the original review, I would have stated ‘I laughed more during Judgement at Nuremberg.’

I, however, did not laugh more during Midnight Madness, which I thought I would rate higher than It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (much prefer James Brown’s It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World) because it’s shorter by a hour but Midnight Madness got so incredibly dumb in the final act that I could not in clear conscience give it any more than half a star.

Letterboxd plot summary for It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World: ‘A group of strangers come across a man dying after a car crash who proceeds to tell them about the $350,000 he buried in California. What follows is the madcap adventures of those strangers as each attempts to claim the prize for himself.’

Letterboxd plot summary for Midnight Madness: ‘A genius grad student organizes an all-night treasure hunt in which five rival teams composed of colorful oddballs furiously match wits with one another while trying to locate and decipher various cryptic clues planted ingeniously around Los Angeles.’

Laugh summary for a disgruntled viewer in the middle of nowhere, er, middle America: None.

Basically, I just do not like this comedic style, where a bunch of rumbling bumbling stumbling fumbling idiots fall all over themselves for two (or three) hours in the broadest possible acting imaginable (mugging) and this is supposed to be funny, entertaining, satirical.

Midnight Madness also belongs in this bizarre cinematic nether region between a G-rated Disney live-action movie and an R-rated National Lampoon’s Animal House.

Walt Disney Productions released Midnight Madness and it’s quite obvious, despite the studio not appearing in the credits and despite no Dean Jones, no Tim Conway, no Don Knotts, no Sandy Duncan, no Bette Davis, no Ray Milland, and no Keenan Wynn in the cast.

It has enough, more than enough, zany slapstick action for 10 Disney live-action pictures.

We get five different teams of colorful oddballs or rather, 21 young professional actors mugging through stereotypes like the fat twins, the beer-loving jocks, the debate nerds, the feminists, the Latino who never speaks, the older and younger brother, etc. There’s even a character named ‘Barf,’ preceding Spaceballs and Pizza the Hutt’s infamous line Barf … Puke … Whatever! Stephen Furst plays Harold – Blue Team Leader in a way that amplifies his Flounder from Animal House and crosses him with Mark Metcalf’s detestable Douglas C. Neidermeyer.

Midnight Madness certainly delivers the fat jokes at rapid intervals.

Anyway, well before the end of this dreary mess of a motion picture, all the characters are reduced to becoming overacting jerks like they’re all descended from Dick Shawn’s Sylvester.

The plot summary mentioned something or other about matching wits.

That’s more like half-wits, if you ask the spirit of Moe, Larry, and Curly.

Speaking of them, I’ll stick with Men in Black, Punch Drunks, and Hoi Polloi.

The Lonely Lady

THE LONELY LADY (1983) 1/2*
The Lonely Lady is one of the all-time great stinker movies, 91 minutes of unpleasant characters in unsavory relationships with unbelievably bad actors speaking dialogue that should have never been uttered or ever written in the first place.

Like the (believe it or not) even more awful, killer Santa picture Silent Night, Deadly Night, The Lonely Lady potentially takes the heat off viewers by undercutting a procession of controversial scenes with unintentional humor. I could see hooting and howling in derisive laughter at the performances and the dialogue throughout Silent Night, Deadly Night and The Lonely Lady.

I found myself appalled more than anything else throughout The Lonely Lady, so I was basically too appalled to laugh.

The Lonely Lady especially lays it on thick whenever the title character — aspiring young screenwriter Jerilee Randall, played by the immortal Pia Zadora, though she’s never lonely — expresses her outrage at her perpetual exploitation by Hollywood writers, directors, actors, and producers, every one of them sexist pigs who just nonstop use and abuse her.

At the same time, however, the camera lingers on this exploitation from the rape by garden hose early on in the picture to some of the least sexy movie sex ever captured on celluloid.

On top of all that, Zadora’s real-life husband, Israeli multimillionaire industrialist Meshulam Riklis, funded Butterfly and The Lonely Lady with both pictures starring none other than Zadora. Legend has it that Riklis bought a Golden Globe award for his wife and her performance in Butterfly.

Zadora beat out Elizabeth McGovern and Howard E. Rollins Jr. in Ragtime, Kathleen Turner in Body Heat, Rachel Ward in Sharky’s Machine, and Craig Wasson in Four Friends, all five better-received performances in better-received films.

It remains inconceivable that Zadora — who made her motion picture debut in the 1964 cult film Santa Claus Conquers the Martians — won that award on her own merits.

Riklis was more than 30 years older than Zadora, and that’s not any different than the age gap between Jerilee and her much older husband, veteran Hollywood hack screenwriter Walter Thornton (Lloyd Bochner), in The Lonely Lady.

All those factors combine to make Jerilee’s speech at the Academy Awards — highlighted by that risible line I don’t suppose I’m the only one who’s had to fuck her way to the top! — the absolute worst scene in a movie populated by predominantly bad scenes.

Most of them involve Jerilee sleeping her way through some of the ugliest men imaginable.

Let’s take a look at one more scene that epitomizes The Lonely Lady.

Jerilee and Walter argue outside their Beverly Hills home, near the swimming pool seen first in one of the film’s most appalling scenes.

Jerilee: Walter? Walter, come to bed.
Walter: Haven’t you had enough wine? Go sleep it off.
J: If you’ll come with me.
[W turns away.]
J: I’m trying to say sorry.
W: With a head full of drink!
J: We don’t have to make love.
W: Thank you.
J: We could talk. We need to talk.
W: Why didn’t you go off with Dacosta? He would’ve enjoyed it.
[W picks up the garden hose that raped J earlier in the film.]
W: Or is this more your kick?

That’s even worse than the argument between Kathryn Harrold and Luciano Pavarotti in Yes, Giorgio that culminated in the infamous line I don’t want to be watered on by Fini.

That garden hose, in fact, might have once belonged to Fini.

The Lonely Lady flopped so badly that, thankfully, Hollywood never adapted one of Harold Robbins’ trashy novels again.

Now, I call that a happy ending.

Auto Pilot Cinema: The Airport Movies

AUTO PILOT CINEMA: THE AIRPORT MOVIES
When thinking of the worst series in movie history, I am tempted to start with Saw and Fast and the Furious then move back through time with The Omen and Amityville Horror and finally go way way way back to the Dead End Kids, er, Bowery Boys.

In piecing through all this cinematic carnage, I should not leave behind the four Airport movies that were churned out by Universal Pictures from 1970 to 1979. Maybe I should leave them behind.

Airport, based on Arthur Hailey’s 1968 novel of the same name, made a killing at the box office upon its late May release in 1970 and it even received 10, yes, believe it or not, 10 Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, and 70-year-old Helen Hayes won Best Supporting Actress.

The three subsequent films — helpfully labeled 1975, ’77, and ’79 — got worse and worse, naturally, and the last film in the series, The Concorde … Airport ’79, is so bad (and so aggressively stupid) in fact that it could kill off any series. That’s despite the fact that it reportedly made $65 million, a much better take than, for example, Irwin Allen productions The Swarm ($7.7 million), Beyond the Poseidon Adventure ($2.1 million), and When Time Ran Out ($3.8 million). Regardless, Universal stopped making Airport movies after The Concorde and I’m almost dumbfounded why there’s not been a remake or a reboot loaded with today’s stars.

Hey, wait, did somebody mention stars? Yes, stars, that’s what these Airport movies were about — speculating which ones would emerge at the end of the picture relatively intact and which ones would die spectacularly. Grand Hotel in the sky, not exactly, since none of the careers in the Airport movies were at their peak like the ones in Grand Hotel, but the idea of stuffing the screen with stars in every scene applies just the same.

Airport: Burt Lancaster, Dean Martin, Jean Seberg, Jacqueline Bisset, George Kennedy, Hayes, Van Heflin, Maureen Stapleton, Barry Nelson, Dana Wynter, Lloyd Nolan.

Airport 1975: Charlton Heston, Karen Black, Kennedy, Efrem Zimbalist Jr., Susan Clark, Helen Reddy, Linda Blair, Dana Andrews, Roy Thinnes, Sid Caesar, Myrna Loy, Gloria Swanson.

Airport ’77: Jack Lemmon, Lee Grant, Branda Vaccaro, Joseph Cotten, Olivia de Havilland, Darren McGavin, Christopher Lee, Robert Foxworth, Kathleen Quinlan, James Stewart.

Airport ’79: Alain Delon, Susan Blakely, Robert Wagner, Sylvia Kristel, Kennedy, Eddie Albert, Bibi Andersson, Charo, John Davidson, Andrea Marcovicci, Martha Raye, Cicely Tyson, Jimmie Walker, David Warner, Mercedes McCambridge.

More like Hollywood Squares in the Sky? Yeah, believe so, especially since Davidson hosted a Hollywood Squares revival in the late ’80s.

Beside Airport in the titles, Kennedy (1925-2016) proved to be the connective tissue between all four pictures, meaning he’s the inverse of the Brody boys (Jaws) and the Griswold children (Vacation). Kennedy played Joe Patroni — first as mechanic, then as vice president of operations (1975), a consultant (’77), and finally an experienced pilot (’79). Regardless of position or rank, the character got worse and worse over the course of the films, not that he or the films started out all that hot. I found even his cigar was guilty of overacting in the original film and Patroni was so odiously obnoxious in the fourth film, especially after he utters the line that articulates the sexism of the entire series, They don’t call it the cockpit for nothing, honey. George Kennedy as sex symbol? Sure, I’ll believe anything, nearly anything except for, oh, the entire plot of The Concorde.

I’ll talk more about The Concorde and the original because they’re fresher in my memory. To be honest, though, I probably won’t even feel like discussing the original because …

Movies rarely come any dumber than The Concorde: Let’s see, this is going to be fun, not really, anyway TV reporter Susan Blakely comes across some highly incriminating evidence against defense contractor (and covert arms dealer) Robert Wagner. Wagner decides that he’s going to attempt to blow up real good the plane she’s on en route from Washington to Paris. Okay, okay, his plot to blow up the Concorde real good fails and they have dinner together in Paris during the middle section of the movie, because, you know, they have a history together and they still love each other. She still has this incriminating evidence, naturally, she’s going to eventually go public with it, of course, and what does he do? Kill her? He lets her walk away safe and unharmed, so he’ll have to go after the plane again. That’s right, she gets back on the Concorde for the final leg of the flight from Paris to Moscow. Guilt stricken, Wagner commits suicide very late in the picture and I believe it’s not because his secret’s been discovered and will be exposed regardless of whether he’s alive or not, but more that he’s one of the worst villains in cinematic history.

The Concorde is so laughable in so many ways, as if that whole plot discussed in the last paragraph wasn’t enough. The Concorde stops over in Paris for a night, and every single passenger gets back on the plane the next morning. They all seem way too calm and collected after the events of the first half of the movie. I would love to have just heard one character say ‘Hell no, I’m not getting back on that damn plane!’ They all deserved to die, but we know that’s not happening.

At one critical point during the first attack on the Concorde, the Übermensch George Kennedy proves that he’s truly The Übermensch by sticking his hand out the window of the Concorde and throwing a flare. Unbelievable, utterly unbelievable even in this preposterous movie. If only the first Airport had been the in-flight movie on The Concorde, especially that scene where Patroni discusses the effects of a bomb on a 707 and concludes, When I was a mechanic in the Air Force, I was being transferred on a MATS plane. At 20,000 feet, one of the windows shattered. The guy sitting next to it was about 170 pounds. He went through that little space like a hunk of hamburger going down a disposal, and right after him coats, pillows, blankets, cups, saucers. That was just a MATS plane, not the fastest plane in the universe.

I’m done, I can’t take it anymore, and I’m bailing out on the Airport movies.

Airport (1970) **; Airport 1975 (1974) **1/2; Airport ’77 (1977) *; The Concorde: Airport ’79 (1979) 1/2*

Calling All Cars, We Have a 412! Calling All Cars!

CALLING ALL CARS, WE HAVE A 412! CALLING ALL CARS!
I watched Chu Chu and the Philly Flash on March 7 and 18 days later, I can still hear it, that’s for sure, especially co-stars Alan Arkin and Carol Burnett and supporting player Danny Aiello.

Burnett plays Chu Chu, or Emily as only her dearest friends know her, who performs this Carmen Miranda routine out in the streets. Her performance gives one all the maracas needed for at least one year, perhaps even one lifetime. Emily used to be a successful entertainer, before the booze got to her. We all know the story by now.

Arkin, meanwhile, plays the Philly Flash, given that name not because of his ability to shed his raincoat but his former ability turning double plays at second base for the Philadelphia Phillies. Was he named the Philly Flash just because the real-life Phillies won the World Series in 1980? Anyway, just like Emily, booze got to Flash, not Grandmaster Flash (think I’d rather watch The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel than Chu Chu and the Philly Flash) or Flash Gordon (who just had a movie, a much better one believe it or not, come out in 1980) or The Flash. No, the Philly Flash’s power, like Chu Chu’s, seems to be that he can scream and carry on a whole lot. In fact, that’s about both all they ever do in Chu Chu and the Philly Flash.

Not sure that it even matters or not if Burnett played the Philly Flash and Arkin drew Chu Chu. They could have made him a former professional golfer and her a former burlesque entertainer or something. Yeah, like Bill Murray said in Meatballs, it doesn’t even matter.

Government secrets fall, yes, literally fall into the hands of Philly Flash and Chu Chu. Well, technically, not right into their hands, I mean they did have to walk over and pick up the briefcase. By the way, the briefcase gives the best performance in Chu Chu and the Philly Flash, since even the maracas overact.

Rating: One-half star.

— Earlier in the same day I watched Chu Chu and the Philly Flash, I endured Goldengirl about basically a genetically engineered super female runner and it co-stars James Coburn, Robert Culp, Curt Jurgens, Leslie Caron, Jessica Walter, Michael Lerner, and Harry Guardino.

They’re all fine and dandy, more or less, but it’s star Susan Anton who ruins Goldengirl every single time she expresses any emotion. Guess they can’t genetically engineer the ability to act and the ability to not wreck an entire movie, because Anton can’t act and she absolutely obliterates Goldengirl every single time I wanted to give it another chance.

Give her one thing, though, because just like Donny and Marie Osmond in their motion picture debut and finale Goin’ Coconuts, Anton does have a great set of teeth. Outside her canines, incisors, premolars, and molars, though, Anton sucks in Goldengirl and despite the speeded up and slowed down footage, she’s not the least bit convincing as this incredible champion runner.

Anton and Coburn do have one of the great dialogue exchanges in motion picture history, one that could be played right alongside Fini can water you from Yes, Giorgio. She just set a new Olympic record and doesn’t she even deserve a kiss? Coburn works his way toward her magical lips and Anton moves the goalposts. She insists that he kisses her feet, then laughs maniacally, while Coburn, well, maybe he’s wishing that he could get hit upside the head by his old friend Bruce Lee’s one-hit punch again. Lee died in 1973 and Coburn was one of the pallbearers at Lee’s funeral.

The IMDb trivia entry starts out promisingly for Goldengirl, “Produced and theatrically released in 1979 prior to the 1980 Olympics boycott, this film depicts American athletes competing at the Moscow games. In reality, the boycott meant that the USA did not perform there, making the picture post-release anachronistic and historically inaccurate.”

Blame the boycott on Goldengirl.

Rating: One star.

— I watched Under the Rainbow between opener Goldengirl and closer Chu Chu and the Philly Flash.

That’s right, one of the worst movie-watching nights of a lifetime.

Under the Rainbow, like Goldengirl, has at least a far more interesting plot summary than anything else associated with the finished product.

Okay, to be honest, only the part about the 150 little people descending upon Hollywood for a part in The Wizard of Oz (and a wild and crazy party) sounds interesting, then it gets all mucked up when federal agents, fat cats, and Nazi and Japanese spies enter the picture. Anyway, doesn’t 1938 seem too early for Nazi and Japanese spies? I mean, the Nazis didn’t invade Poland until Sept. 1939 and the United States officially remained neutral until late 1941.

Regardless of social class and nationality and historical accuracy, though, all the characters get run through the cinematic claptrap blender at maximum speed with broad, inane slapstick and would-be wacky hijinks the settings. Despite the maximum speed, Under the Rainbow still feels like it takes forever to be done and over. That’s because it’s all played as loudly as possible, of course, with so much mugging on display that it’s another one of those movies where you feel the back of your head for lumps and bruises and then check for your wallet after watching it.

Chevy Chase and Carrie Fisher are the nominal stars, but they’re lost in the crowd because they play it too cool for school. Meanwhile, Billy Barty acts like he’s in three movies simultaneously and Japanese-American actor Mako settles for only two, and their terminal mugging calls to mind the 1942 propaganda comedy short The Devil with Hitler. The Devil with Hitler is better than Under the Rainbow, and I should just leave it at that statement, though I want to end this review with one last cheap shot at three lousy pictures that I wish I would have left buried inside their time capsules.

Stan Freberg would have charged the casts of Chu Chu and the Philly Flash, Goldengirl, and Under the Rainbow with one heinous crime against humanity: a 412. What’s a 412? Over-acting.

Rating: One star.

Bomb, Bomb, Bomb: Partners, Charlie Chan and the Curse of the Dragon Queen, When Time Ran Out

BOMB, BOMB, BOMB: PARTNERS, CHARLIE CHAN AND THE CURSE OF THE DRAGON QUEEN, WHEN TIME RAN OUT

I could only make it through about 30 minutes of Partners and that’s more than enough for at least about 10 lifetimes, I’d say. I gave up on the picture for good around the fourth time star Ryan O’Neal uttered the epithet faggot. Yeah, Partners basically plays Cruising for laughs. Ha-ha, funny … about as funny as punching somebody’s mother in the face.

I consider Partners the absolute worst film from 1982, at least among the 70 or so films that I have seen thus far in my 42 years on this planet. It supplanted Amityville II: The Possession, a lovely little number incorporating blood, vomit, incest, matricide and patricide, fratricide and sororicide, and demonic possession. Never mind Inchon, a $46 million Korean War epic that bombed mightily at the box office with only a $5.2 million return. Never mind Halloween III: Season of the Witch, which features one of the least likable lead characters (Dr. Dan Challis) and lead performances (Tom Atkins) in recent memory. Believe it or not, Partners beats those other films in sheer unpleasantness.

Did longtime TV director James Burrows use Partners for his audition for Will and Grace? I seriously doubt it, because Partners is one of the nastiest pieces of work I have ever seen. Burrows has directed more than 1,000 TV episodes, including 237 Cheers and 75 Taxi and 32 Frasier. Thankfully, Burrows stuck with television after Partners.

Early in the picture, O’Neal asks his boss how he got stuck partnering up (literally) with gay records clerk Kerwin (John Hurt) to infiltrate and investigate a series of murders in the Los Angeles gay community. Anyway, Chief Wilkins (Kenneth McMillan) tells our matinee idol, “Because you’re a good cop, a real good cop. And because of your cute ass.” Maybe that’s how O’Neal himself got the gig. O’Neal certainly dressed up for the part, wearing a ridiculous tank top and then a leather garb in just the portion I watched before saying Roberto Duran on Partners.

— As I sit here before this keyboard and ponder my next direction, I consider how I endured all 95 minutes or so of Charlie Chan and the Curse of the Dragon Queen, another great big smelly turd from the early ’80s like the ones mentioned about three paragraphs up.

When folks express this incredible nostalgia for the ’80s, undoubtedly it’s not Charlie Chan or Partners or Inchon, for that matter, they’re nostalgic about, because they SUCK in the immortal words of Al from Caddyshack. Then again, if I have learned anything over the years writing about movies or music online, it’s that somewhere in this great big world there’s a cult following Howard the Duck or Halloween III, for example, and they just might flame you for not cherishing their cult object in the same way they do.

Charlie Chan asks us to believe Peter Ustinov (1921-2004), Richard Hatch (1945-2017), and Angie Dickerson as characters of Asian descent. Sure, I believe the Englishman Ustinov as fictional Belgian detective Hercule Poirot (a character he played six times, including features Death on the Nile, Evil Under the Sun, and Appointment with Death) and Roman emperor Nero in Quo Vadis, but I call it more of a stretch to consider him as Chan in 2020, nearly 40 years after the film was made. It’s even worse for both Hatch and Dickerson.

Charlie Chan features plenty of the broadest comedy and frenzied overacting by a rather distinguished cast that also includes Lee Grant, Brian Keith, Roddy McDowall, Rachel Roberts, and Michelle Pfeiffer early in her career. Hatch plays Chan’s fumbling bumbling stumbling grandson Lee Chan Jr. and I’ve watched so many films lately with fumbling stumbling bumbling would-be detectives that I now grumble and rumble when I see them on the screen. I’m thankful my Grandma never behaved like the one played by Grant in Charlie Chan. Keith’s police chief says ‘Goddamn’ about 50 times. McDowall and Roberts play Grant’s domestic helpers, Gillespie and Mrs. Dangers respectively, but they both provide little help to Charlie Chan since they are both in the grand tradition of melodramatic domestic help in the movies; Mrs. Dangers calls to mind Patsy Kelly’s frantic maid in The Gorilla. Pfeiffer could have dialed the perkiness down a notch or few and still have saved enough for the rest of her career. Nearly all of these characters are cringeworthy.

— When Time Ran Out came out Mar. 28, 1980 and it eventually fell about $16 million short of making its $20 million production budget back at the American box office.

Later that year, on July 2, Airplane parodied Airport specifically and disaster movies in general, and became one of the biggest hits of the summer and the entire calendar year.

The failure of When Time Ran Out and the success of Airplane signaled the end of the disaster movie, at least in the form that dominated the first half of the seventies with The Poseidon Adventure, Earthquake, and Towering Inferno and then dribbled out pure unadulterated dreck the final half of that decade like The Swarm, Beyond the Poseidon Adventure, and Meteor. Since I mentioned Meteor, I also have to mention Avalanche, which provided disaster footage recycled in Meteor as if being in one disaster of a disaster movie just simply was not enough.

Master of disaster Irwin Allen (1916-91) produced at least half the films mentioned in the paragraph right above this one and he even stepped in the director’s chair for the turkey bombs The Swarm and Beyond the Poseidon Adventure. Allen called on Rollercoaster director James Goldstone for When Time Ran Out, which features the required number of old time movie stars, hot commodities, and fledgling character actors. When Time Ran Out should have been called Take the Money and Run, though Woody Allen and Steve Miller already used it for a comedy (1969) and a hit song (1976).

We have William Holden (1918-81), Paul Newman (1925-2008), Jacqueline Bisset, Ernest Borgnine (1917-2012), James Franciscus (1934-91), Burgess Meredith (1907-97), Red Buttons (1919-2006), Barbara Carrera, Pat Morita (1932-2005), Veronica Hamel, Edward Albert (1951-2006), and Alex Karras (1935-2012), as well as a volcano, a tidal wave, etc.

Seemingly half of the cast takes part in a glorified soap opera before the molten lava really begins to flow and they have to repeat business from Beyond the Poseidon and seemingly every other disaster movie of the era. Here’s that glorified soap opera: Holden proposes to Bisset very early in the movie and she turns him down because she’s in love with Newman, who’s not the marrying kind and anyway he does not seem to much care for Bisset but maybe he’s just masking his true feelings toward her with standard male bluster. Franciscus is married to Hamel but he’s fooling around with half-brother Albert’s significant other Carrera. Just wait, it gets better, Albert does not know that he’s Franciscus’ half-brother … and Holden and Hamel are sleeping together. I think I just about nailed it down and you’re right if you’re thinking all that seems like too much plot for such a dimwitted movie.

You’re also right that I hated these characters and their miserable lives, and rooted for the volcano to wipe them all out.

Especially Franciscus, who takes chronic disbelief in the face of impending disaster to new lows in When Time Ran Out. Unfortunately, an incredibly shoddy special effect leads to an incredibly unsatisfying death for Franciscus’ character. We crave to see him bite the dust or eat molten lava in spectacular fashion, and what we get is just plain laughable.

Of course, just plain laughable describes about 99 percent of When Time Ran Out.

Believe it or not, costume designer Paul Zastupnevich earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Costume Design and went against winner Tess, The Elephant Man, My Brilliant Career, and Somewhere in Time, all of them period films where the look of the film itself becomes another important character.

Yeah, I hope the 1981 Oscar broadcast used a shot of Newman in his utterly ridiculous Urban Cowboy garb.

Zastupnevich received a nomination for the same award two years before for his edgy, state-of-the-art costume work on The Swarm, beekeeper outfits. The Agatha Christie Hercule Poirot period murder mystery Death on the Nile won the prize.

I hate to say it, but time ran out on this review because I don’t want to consider When Time Ran Out any longer than I already have.

Partners No stars; Charlie Chan and the Curse of the Dragon Queen 1/2*; When Time Ran Out *

It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963)

MAD MAD MAD MAD WORLD

IT’S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD (1963) 1/2*

Let’s start this review with a bold statement and prediction: IT’S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD is the worst comedy I have ever seen and it will remain that way for all my life, even if I would be blessed to reach 100 years old.

Fact: I did not laugh once during the 3-hour, 19-minute duration of IT’S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD.

I consider it a lock on being the worst comedy I will ever see because of that length. Sure, I can go 90 or 95 or even 100 minutes not laughing at some dumb or aggressively stupid comedy, no problem, but 189 minutes proved to be a new personal record for remaining in a state of stone cold silence during a comedy. I only broke that silence to express disbelief with a grunt or a sigh. To be honest these intermittent sighs were deep enough to fill the Grand Canyon.

Yes, I almost forgot LEONARD PART 6 (believe me, how I tried forgetting), which I gave no stars and called “the worst movie ever made.” That’s right, it passes comedy straight into being bad enough to encompass all genres.

Why the half-star for a repetitive, repetitive, repetitive, repetitive comedy? Because I liked looking at the cast members during any fleeting moments when they were quiet. Once they resumed talking, well, shit, IT’S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD turned back into unfunny shit on a stick. Yeah, I felt like IT’S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD beat me over the head with unfunny shit on a stick for roughly a quarter of a quarantine day. I will do my best to utilize past tense during this review because I have no intent to ever watch IT’S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD ever, ever, ever, ever again.

I should rephrase one portion of the paragraph immediately above. Very, very, very, very rarely do any of the characters merely talk during IT’S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD. Just imagine a crowded room populated by people who feel compelled to compete with each other for who can be the loudest (and most obnoxious) person in the world, forget the room. And then being trapped inside that room for over three hours describes this movie in a nutshell. Perhaps it would be too much to add real cars to the room. Nah, instead, we’ll have a movie theater size TV in the room playing a loop of car chases at full volume intensity.

Here’s a main character who speaks in a voice resembling that of a normal person: Emeline-Marcus Finch (Dorothy Provine), whose character seems like the movie loaned her from a library amidst the chaos in this loud, loud, loud, loud movie. They no doubt used the Frances Howard Goldwyn – Hollywood Regional Branch Library, only a three-minute walk from the Walk of Fame.

The film establishes a basic tone early on, when five of the characters stand around and squabble over their potential take of the stolen $350,000 hidden under the ‘Big W’ in the Santa Rosita State Park. Yes, IT’S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD is basically one long argument over money interrupted by chases, overacting, mugging, pitfalls and pratfalls, dancing, overacting, cameo appearances, police chatter, overacting, an intermission, pitfalls and pratfalls, plane crashes, explosions, and (for old times’ sake) overacting.

Just take a look at some of the cast: Spencer Tracy, Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Buddy Hackett, Ethel Merman, Mickey Rooney, Dick Shawn, Phil Silvers, Terry-Thomas, Jonathan Winters, Jim Backus, William Demarest, Jimmy Durante, Peter Falk, Jack Benny, Joe E. Brown, Norman Fell, Stan Freberg, Leo Gorcey, Edward Everett Horton, Buster Keaton, Don Knotts, Jerry Lewis, ZaSu Pitts, Carl Reiner, Arnold Stang, and the Three Stooges, with more than half of them in minute roles. What a sad, sad, sad, sad waste of talent!

Among the main characters, it’s easy to pick my least favorite: Mrs. Marcus, played by Merman. She’s awful from the start and remains awful for the entire length of the picture. IT’S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD partisans argue that she’s a character that people love to hate. I, however, am not one of those people, because I only hate this character. Thankfully, Merman closed out her career with a hilarious cameo in AIRPLANE!

Gordon Gekko told us “Greed is good” during WALL STREET. Meanwhile, nearly 25 years earlier, IT’S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD told us “Greed is bad, mkay?”

One more zinger before closing time: I laughed more during Stanley Kramer’s INHERIT THE WIND than I did IT’S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD. (If I ever watch Kramer’s JUDGMENT AT NUREMBERG, I’ll be sure to revise this final paragraph and gag.)

Goin’ Coconuts (1978)

GOIN’ COCONUTS (1978) 1/2*

In the distant future, one of the great mysteries of human behavior will be why there were so many teen idols after, oh, let’s say, 1955. Imagine trying to explain Tiger Beat, Joey Lawrence, Jonathan Taylor Thomas, NSYNC and the Backstreet Boys, and Justin Bieber to future generations.

I can only hope that future rational beings will reach the conclusion that many people (mostly girls, but also boys with such beacons of humanity as Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, Kim Kardashian, et cetera ) in the late 20th and early 21st centuries obsessed about the shallow and the superficial and the stupid and such attributes as perfect hair, perfect teeth, and dimples. “He / She has got such a perfect body. He’s so cute. She’s so hot.” All that jive can just go fuck off.

I thought about this “teen idol” angle during and after GOIN’ COCONUTS, the motion picture debut and finale of former teen idols Donny and Marie Osmond. Since I watched it after SLITHIS, I just might have survived the worst two movies I have ever seen back-to-back; I am blanking on whether or not I ever watched BATTLEFIELD EARTH after LEONARD PART 6 or vice versa.

Anyway, I hated just about every second of GOIN’ COCONUTS. Hated every musical number. Hated every bit of perfunctory dialogue. Hated every single attempt at humor. Hated the jewelry caper story and every single plot development that we have seen before from a million different movies and TV shows. Hated seeing legendary movie villains being reduced to buffoons for comedic purposes that miserably failed. Hated it the longer it went on. I rejoiced at the first sight of the end credits and turned off the movie. I didn’t even care all that much about the Hawaiian scenery, just because we had to watch this stupid movie take place within it.

I felt especially bad for actors like Kenneth Mars, Ted Cassidy, Khigh Dhiegh, and Harold Sakata. But, hey, not that bad, since they got paid and had the opportunity to make a movie in Hawaii. That sounds great right about now. I could go for that, even a movie as shitty as GOIN’ COCONUTS.

The reason I felt bad for them was they had to play cosmically inept. Like, for example, Sakata’s Ito could not take out Donny Osmond, for crying out loud. The filmmakers made the dread mistake of costuming Sakata (1920-82) in the same hat that he wore in GOLDFINGER as super henchman Oddjob. Sure we all remember what Oddjob did with his hat in GOLDFINGER; let’s just say that he wears the hat throughout GOIN’ COCONUTS and that’s that. It’s so insulting to see a World War II veteran and an Olympic silver medalist in weightlifting (Sakata represented the United States in the 1948 Summer Olympics in London) reduced to playing the fool, thwarted at every churn of the plot by a couple teen idols and their perfect teeth.

Dhiegh (1910-91) played a key role in THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE as brainwashing expert Dr. Yen. Yes, THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE, one of the most intelligent movies ever made. Then, 16 years later, Dhiegh appeared in GOIN’ COCONUTS, which should have borrowed from THE WIZARD OF OZ its musical theme … “If I Only Had a Brain.” Again, it simply defies all credibility that Dhiegh’s character would be outsmarted by a pair of coconuts.

In GOIN’ COCONUTS, Mars (1935-2011) more or less gives us a variation on his characters from the Mel Brooks comedies THE PRODUCERS and YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN, only without the laughs.

Cassidy (1932-79) played Lurch on “The Addams Family” and would it have been too much to ask director Howard Morris (who played Ernest T. Bass on “The Andy Griffith Show”) and screenwriters William Marc Daniels and Raymond Harvey to include a gag where Cassidy’s Mickey answers the phone with “You rang.” Yes, of course, it would have been too much to ask. That’s silly to ask if you’ve survived GOIN’ COCONUTS.

It was a pathetic sight every time watching these villains shoot their guns at Donny and Marie. They should have been sent back to marksmanship class or had their diabolical henchmen licenses revoked.

Aside from the end credits, there was something else great about GOIN’ COCONUTS. Since it failed at the box office, Donny and Marie made only this one movie rather than a series of Donny and Marie spectaculars. They returned to their variety show where they belonged with their aw shucks gee whiz nature and perfect teeth intact.

Slithis (1978)

SLITHIS (1978) 1/2*

SLITHIS is one of the worst movies ever made, I feel safe in saying that, and it did for radioactive mutant monsters what A*P*E did for giant apes.

Maybe I would feel a little better after watching it had I received a “Slithis Survival Kit” like viewers did back in 1978 when this cinematic plague called SLITHIS was unleashed on theaters and drive-ins.

I read about this survival kit in Roger Ebert’s review and I found images of the four-page document through the magic of the Internets.

WARNING!

SLITHIS A CREATURE SPAWNED FROM THE WASTE OF A NUCLEAR ENERGY PLANT … WANTS YOU TO SURVIVE.

FOLLOW THESE INSTRUCTIONS!

REMOVE PICTURE OF SLITHIS BY CUTTING ALONG THE DOTTED LINE.
KEEP PICTURE OF SLITHIS ON YOUR PERSON AT ALL TIMES.
AT NIGHT, WHEN SLEEPING, PLACE PICTURE OF SLITHIS UNDER PILLOW.
JOIN THE SLITHIS FAN CLUB … HE WILL REMEMBER YOU WHEN HE STALKS YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD.

SLITHIS FAN CLUB

FOR MY PERSONAL SAFETY AND SURVIVAL PLEASE SIGN ME UP FOR THE SLITHIS FAN CLUB … I SOLEMNLY SWEAR TO UPHOLD THE FOLLOWING RULES AND REGULATIONS.

TO HELP ESTABLISH THAT SLITHIS IS A VICTIM OF OUR SOCIETY.
TO PROMOTE A BETTER UNDERSTANDING OF THE SLITHIS AND THE ENVIRONMENTAL CONDITIONS THAT CREATED IT.
TO ASSURE OTHERS THAT WITH THE SURVIVAL KIT THEY NEED NOT FEAR THE SLITHIS.

NAME

ADDRESS

CITY STATE ZIP

PLEASE SEND ME MY FREE PHOTO OF THE SLITHIS AND MY OFFICIAL MEMBERSHIP CARD.

(SEE BACK OF CARD FOR FURTHER INFORMATION)

NOTICE

PLEASE DEPOSIT THIS PORTION OF THE OFFICIAL SURVIVAL KIT IN MEMBERSHIP BOX LOCATED IN THE LOBBY OR CONCESSION STAND OF THIS THEATRE … YOU MAY PICK UP YOUR FREE PHOTO AND MEMBERSHIP CARD 3 WEEKS FROM NOW AT THIS THEATRE … or enclose 25¢ FOR POSTAGE & HANDLING AND MAIL TO

SLITHIS FAN CLUB

SUITE 200

1024 WALNUT ST.

DES MOINES, IOWA 50309

That’s absolutely patently ridiculous and far better than the movie itself. I wish I had thought about the Slithis Fan Club when our family vacation stopped in Des Moines.

I am being perfectly blunt with you when I warn you that coffee or any strong stimulant (s) would be a better survival kit for SLITHIS. How about taking a drink every time a character says “Slithis”? No, wait, never mind, alcohol’s a depressant and SLITHIS has been known to create depression within its viewers for at least a few hours. Viewers in 1978 were reportedly incredibly slow in returning home, since they just sat inside their cars unable to move and they were even unable to speak for hours. Hundreds even thousands of people sat in their cars in silence. It took a long time to process SLITHIS.

Because SLITHIS is deadly dull. Deadly dull. It is quite possible that SLITHIS wiped out an entire population of drive-in denizens through its sheer dullness.

After all, dullness is one of the worst possible sins that a monster movie can commit and SLITHIS commits that sin in spades. Its 85 minutes surpass watching GONE WITH THE WIND or the final act of RETURN OF THE KING.

The dialogue is banal, no, wait, it is so beyond banal that we need to invent a new word for the dialogue in SLITHIS.

I know that Warner Bros. plans to unleash GODZILLA VS. KONG on the world at some point during 2020, but I hope that some quick-buck smooth operator can beat that release into theaters with SLITHIS VS. A*P*E. Given the beating that humanity’s taken so far in the first three months of the 20th year of the 21st Century, SLITHIS VS. A*P*E seems only fitting.

The Swarm (1978)

THE SWARM

THE SWARM (1978) One-half star

Many comedies wish they could make me laugh as hard as I do at the ridiculous disclaimer at the end of the 1978 Irwin Allen film THE SWARM: “The African killer bee portrayed in this film bears absolutely no relationship to the industrious hard-working American honey bee to which we are indebted for pollinating vital crops that feed our nation.”

Were the folks at Warner Bros. seriously afraid of alienating the American honey bee?

I’ve read that the American Bee Association considered suing Allen for defaming the honey bee … and that must be why we ended up with that jive disclaimer right before the end credits. But, honestly, why stop there? The director, writer, and actor guilds should have sued Allen for defaming their respective trades, because this has to be the worst use ever of a $21 million production budget (reports vary on the $), seven Academy Award winning actors (Michael Caine, Olivia de Havilland, Ben Johnson, Jose Ferrer, Patty Duke, Lee Grant, and Henry Fonda, but none of them earned for this movie), and 800,000 bees with their stingers removed.

I’ll never forget THE SWARM because it’s not easy forgetting one of the worst movies ever made. I caught it (not all of it, though) for the first time in either late 1997 or early 1998, home alone late afternoon during my freshman year of college. I returned from class and found this disaster pic flipping channels. It was somewhere in the middle and I watched the rest. The lousy special effects, the cornball everything (premise, plot, dialogue, acting, title), and that darn disclaimer stuck with me. …

I’ve caught up with THE SWARM a couple more times or I’ve watched it at an interval of once every 10 years. It still rates about the exact same as the first time watching it, though, but I guess I have watched it a couple more times after the first as a honest reminder of what a bad movie’s truly like.

Guess we should give a lot of blame for THE SWARM to Allen (1916-91). The Master of Disaster produced THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE, THE TOWERING INFERNO, THE SWARM, BEYOND THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE, and WHEN TIME RAN OUT, the last three of which helped kill off the disaster films that were so popular in the 1970s. THE SWARM earned $7.7 million, BEYOND THE POSEIDON $2.1 million, and WHEN TIME RAN OUT $3.8 million.

Allen also directed THE SWARM and BEYOND THE POSEIDON. In THE SWARM, he kills two genres in one movie, combining disaster with the killer animal genre that became a dominant exploitation staple after the incredible success of Steven Spielberg’s JAWS in 1975.

It was David Hannum, not P.T. Barnum, who came up with the legendary quote, “There’s a sucker born every minute.” Should have been Irwin Allen, though, because his films really take us for suckers one and all. Fortunately, we are better (smarter) than that.

Stirling Silliphant (1918-96) wrote the screenplay for THE SWARM and he wrote both of Allen’s biggest hits, THE POSEIDON and TOWERING INFERNO. He also won an Academy Award for his screenplay for Best Picture winner IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT. (Silliphant’s erratic credits include VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED, SHAFT IN AFRICA, and OVER THE TOP.)

Unfortunately, his work on THE SWARM will go down in infamy.

Helicopter pilot: “Oh my God! Bees! Bees! Millions of bees … (later on) Bees! Millions of bees!” Of course, it does not help matters that the bees sometimes look more like painted-on black dots.

There’s some dynamite exchanges in THE SWARM. I’ll highlight just one.

Dr. Crane (Caine): Are you endowing these bees with human motives? Like saving their fellow bees from captivity, or seeking revenge on Mankind?

General Slater (Richard Widmark): I always credit my enemy, no matter what he may be, with equal intelligence.

“No matter what he may bee,” maybe they should have stripped Silliphant of his Academy Award for writing that one.

There’s more howlers in THE SWARM: “Houston on fire. Will history blame me, or the bees?”; “I know people look at me and think that I’m just the man behind the aspirin counter, but inside I love you”; “They’re more virulent than the Australian Brown-Box Jellyfish”; “By tomorrow there will be no more Africans … at least not in the Houston sector.” This dialogue indicts inself.

THE SWARM is one time where calling a film a train wreck is literal.

A train wreck, by the way, that kills Olivia de Havilland, Ben Johnson, and Fred MacMurray, two of the film’s seven Academy Award winning actors. Johnson (1918-96) fared better later as the conductor in the horror film TERROR TRAIN. I really did not want to mention that de Havilland, Johnson, and MacMurray form a romantic triangle in THE SWARM. Let’s just get past that and move on immediately, unlike the movie.

Having such an all-star cast, by the way, backfires miserably for THE SWARM, because I start thinking about movies like ZULU (Caine), THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD (de Havilland), THE LAST PICTURE SHOW (Johnson), DOUBLE INDEMNITY (MacMurray), THE MIRACLE WORKER (Duke), and ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST (Fonda), for example, rather than what I am supposed to be watching.

Some of the stars have smaller roles than others. Yeah, and I almost forgot about Richard Widmark, Richard Chamberlain, and Slim Pickens, though I mentioned the always skeptical, always boneheaded General Slater played by Widmark. How could I forget though about Mr. Pickens? According to Cinemorgue Wiki, Pickens died cinematic deaths in THE LAST COMMAND, A THUNDER OF DRUMS, DR. STRANGELOVE, MAJOR DUNDEE, ROUGH NIGHT IN JERICHO, PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID, BEYOND THE POSEIDON, THE BLACK HOLE, and THE HOWLING. They missed an opportunity in not killing Pickens in THE SWARM. I mean, his death scenes in DR. STRANGELOVE and PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID are legendary.

I am rambling, just like THE SWARM itself.

When you watch THE SWARM, please try and keep in mind that Paul Zastupnevich received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Costume Design. Unbelievable, just unbelievable, like THE SWARM.

APE (1976)

A*P*E (1976) One-half star

Finally, now I can mark this one off the bucket list.

I have wanted to watch A*P*E ever since I bought an used copy of John Wilson’s “The Official Razzie Movie Guide” more than 12 years ago. The infamous shot of the man-in-a-suit ape flying the middle finger graces the front cover of the book and of course, I surrendered the hardly-earned on that beautiful book. Wilson wrote of the ape suit, “(It) looks more like your grandmother’s lamb’s wool coat collar than an actual simian.”

On December 2, 2019, a date that will live in Internet infamy, I watched A*P*E and it was even worse than I thought possible, believe it or not. Not sure why it even received a half-star.

This joint South Korean and American production cost an incredible $23,000, including a reported $1,200 for miniatures, and they filmed this 87-minute craptacular in a mere 14 days. Please keep in mind that Robert Rodriguez made EL MARIACHI for $7,000, so I am not knocking A*P*E because of its budget.

It was a quickie exploitation picture designed to cash in on the much hyped KING KONG released in late 1976. A*P*E originally announced itself as THE NEW KING KONG, but RKO filed a $1.5 million suit against Kukje Movies, the Lee Ming Film Co., and Worldwide Entertainment, the producers of A*P*E. They changed the title to APE (we are no longer stylizing a title of a movie with very, very, very little style) and added the tag “Not to be confused with KING KONG.”

APE (a.k.a. “Attacking Primate monstEr”) is so bad that it makes KING KONG ‘76 look much, much, much better.

Let’s start taking down APE flaw by flaw.

Prerequisite screen ingenue Marilyn Baker (Joanna Kerns) and reporter Tom Rose (Rod Arrants) suck face through a lot of APE. I mean, get a room, for crying out loud. When they’re not sucking face, their mouths are utilized for uttering mushy-mouthed dialogue so bad that we prefer them sucking face.

There’s a scene where Miss Baker screams for what feels like an eternity. She probably screams more during this scene than Fay Wray, Jessica Lange, and Naomi Watts did in all their scenes combined in their respective KONG movies.

Between Miss Baker’s screams and two Korean children laughing for another eternity, I was blessed to not have a pencil nearby, because it’s quite possible that I would have grabbed it and jabbed both my eardrums until I could no longer hear.

I love how when they’re evacuating South Korean cities, the voice over the loud speakers speaks English. Guess that’s how imperialism works and this cheap KING KONG rip-off was the cinematic wing.

I shall regroup here and move away from imperialism. They filmed APE in 3-D and even if we did not know that coming in, we could figure it out for ourselves very quickly considering all the objects coming at us, including arrows, boulders, and that infamous middle finger.

The title character not only looks like a shoddy rug, but it is very distracting when he changes in size from scene-to-scene. He’s supposed to be 36 feet tall, but we don’t believe it for a single fleeting second.

In an early scene, the ape kills a shark, just another jab at JAWS. APE joins a club that includes GIANT SPIDER INVASION, THE HILLS HAVE EYES, and ORCA THE KILLER WHALE.

APE arrived in theaters in October ‘76, beating KING KONG by two months. That’s the only thing APE had on KING KONG.