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.

Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy (1955)

ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET THE MUMMY (1955) Two stars
Bud Abbott (1897-1974) and Lou Costello (1906-59) enjoyed a phenomenal run for Universal Studios from 1941’s Buck Privates through 1955’s Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy.

They made lots of pictures that made lots and lots of money and they met lots and lots of interesting people (and monsters) in their pictures.

Their career meeting people for Universal took off with the 1948 hit Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, a title which sells Larry Talbot / The Wolf Man (Lon Chaney Jr.), Dracula (Bela Lugosi), and even for one gag the Invisible Man (Vincent Price) short. After that, let’s see, Abbott and Costello meet the Killer, Boris Karloff (not the killer), the Invisible Man (not Vincent Price), Captain Kidd, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the Keystone Kops, and the Mummy. We should pause right here and mention Abbott and Costello visited Jack and his beanstalk, Africa, Mexico, and Mars.

I wanted to like Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy.

I wanted to laugh at Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy.

I had a mixed reaction instead.

I liked it without laughing at it once.

Since it’s a comedy and I didn’t laugh even once, I guess I don’t really like it.

I call it a forced smile picture more than anything else, where I see the joke, understand the joke, and finally smile with a sense of resignation.

Maybe I have seen too many Abbott and Costello films in close proximity during quarantine, not to mention imitation Abbott and Costello Don Knotts and Tim Conway in The Private Eyes, but I failed to laugh at humor frequently predicated on Costello fumbling bumbling stumbling into or through someone or something, being terrified beyond the capacity for rational thought or a coherent sentence, and then most often failing to make the skeptical Abbott believe him. I swear, Abbott and Costello must play their favorite routine about 100 times during Meet the Mummy.

Abbott and Costello only call each other by name throughout Meet the Mummy. During the final credits, they’re listed playing Pete Patterson and Freddie Franklin, respectively. That’s about the high point of the humor in Meet the Mummy.

Of all the Universal classic monsters, I must admit that I like the Mummy series the least, namely the four pictures Universal rattled off like machine gun fire in the 1940s — The Mummy’s Hand, The Mummy’s Tomb, The Mummy’s Ghost, and The Mummy’s Curse. I like Hand alright, find Tomb elevated by Lon Chaney Jr.’s debut as Kharis, and Ghost and Curse have already blended into monotonous goo in my brain after seeing them back-to-back recently. Don’t even get me started on the Indiana Jones wannabe Brendan Fraser CGI monstrosities and I blissfully missed Tom Cruise’s so-called abomination completely.

Chaney Jr. proved to be the most menacing Mummy on screen, and he’s not in Meet the Mummy. It could be any other guy wrapped in gauze and affecting a lumbering pace. Yeah, it’s a guy named Eddie Parker. Oh, sure, probably a nice guy, but still no Chaney Jr. They call the Mummy ‘Claris’ — not Kharis — anyway in Meet the Mummy.

Meet Frankenstein and Meet the Invisible Man worked because the actors portraying the monsters played it straight rather than knowing they were in a comedy. It’s similar to the acting in Airplane, Top Secret, and The Naked Gun, in that it never received the credit it deserved.

As for Abbott and Costello, there’s always Hold That Ghost, Meet Frankenstein, Meet the Invisible Man, and “Who’s on First.”

The Private Eyes (1980)

THE PRIVATE EYES (1980) *1/2
Eighty years of nostalgia account for the appeal of the comedy mystery THE PRIVATE EYES.

THE PRIVATE EYES spoofs Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, who first appeared in the 1887 Arthur Conan Doyle novel “A Study in Scarlet” and made a comeback in the ’70s through such films as THE PRIVATE LIFE OF SHERLOCK HOLMES, THE ADVENTURE OF SHERLOCK HOLMES’ SMARTER BROTHER, THE SEVEN-PER-CENT SOLUTION, and MURDER BY DECREE, and it takes on a comedic style made famous by Abbott and Costello in such ’40s films as HOLD THAT GHOST and ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN.

Meanwhile, here we are more than 40 years out from the release of THE PRIVATE EYES, possibly feeling nostalgic for the comedic duo Don Knotts (1924-2006) and Tim Conway (1933-2019), who appeared together in a trifecta of Disney live-action pictures before THE PRIZE FIGHTER and THE PRIVATE EYES, both major successes for Roger Corman’s New World Productions. They last appeared together in a cameo for the bomb turkey CANNONBALL RUN II.

Knotts definitely carries more nostalgic heft than Conway, since I remember him from ‘The Andy Griffith Show,’ ‘Three’s Company,’ PLEASANTVILLE (playing a TV repairman, of course), and even a play in Kansas City when I was in college. Knotts’ Bernard ‘Barney’ Fife worked up my Grandma like no other fictional character and she reveled in his regularly scheduled comeuppance. I fondly remember giving her a hard time about it, saying that Knotts’ Fife made the show and that it went downhill after his departure. Strangely enough, I remember most fondly a TV spot pairing Fife’s antics with Right Said Fred’s ‘I’m Too Sexy.’ Wish that I could find that spot and crack up once again.

So, needless to say, I entered THE PRIVATE EYES with a generosity of good spirit and desire to laugh. I left 90 minutes later defeated by a really, really, really dumb, dumb, dumb mystery comedy and I have no real motivation to seek out the other Knotts and Conway cinematic pairings.

Knotts and Conway portray Inspector Winship and Dr. Tart, two bumbling fumbling stumbling American detectives who have somehow found themselves working for ‘The Yard.’ They bumble fumble stumble from their very first scene together all the way to the end and if you find that bumble fumble stumble worth a funny rumble the first time, you just might find it funny a hundred times. However, I did not find it funny the first or the last time or any darn time in-between.

THE PRIVATE EYES more accurately recalls a Scooby Doo episode. Hey, wouldn’t you know that Knotts appeared in cartoon form in the episodes ‘Guess Who’s Knott Coming to Dinner’ and ‘The Spooky Fog of Juneberry’ and Conway took on the Spirit of Fireball McPhan in ‘The Spirit Spooked Sports Show.’ I vaguely remember watching all three from childhood, but I still have no doubt they are each better than THE PRIVATE EYES.

Ironically, THE PRIVATE EYES has way too much plot for a dumb comedy.

HOLD THAT GHOST works much better than THE PRIVATE EYES because it has flights of fancy that deviate from its mystery plot like Costello’s dance scene with Joan Davis. Since they were all under the imperial offices of Universal Pictures, HOLD THAT GHOST makes room for musical numbers by Ted Lewis and His Orchestra and the Andrews Sisters. THE PRIVATE EYES, meanwhile, offers scenes like a gas station destroyed by Winship and Tart in a way that recalls IT’S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD, a very, very, very, very unfunny comedy. Let’s face it, Hollywood made less dumb comedies in 1941 than both 1963 and 1980.

Knotts and Conway remain likable throughout THE PRIVATE EYES, despite very rarely ever being funny. That said, Australian singer and actress Trisha Noble virtually steals the show out from underneath Knotts and Conway every time she appears as the alluring heiress Phyllis Morley. She’s very, ahem, ‘Oh LàLà,’ like a model for that magazine favored by 1955 Biff Tannen. I can honestly say that she alone boosts the overall rating for THE PRIVATE EYES by at least half a star.

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.)