The Phynx (1970)

Before I get into this review, let me just say one thing about what I am about to describe: I’m not making any of this up. I’m well aware of how bizarre this is all going to sound, but I promise you, all of this actually does happen.

When several influential world figures such as Colonel Sanders, Butterfly McQueen, Dorothy Lamour, Xavier Cugat, Edgar Bergen (and Charlie McCarthy), and Johnny Weissmuller are kidnapped to Albania, a band of secret agents gets together to find a way to bring them back. This band of secret agents is led by some guy with a box on his head and the band of secret agents includes hookers, the KKK, some guys who work on Madison Avenue, and some boy scouts. One of the boy scouts suggest they ask a computer named MOTHA (Mechanical Oracle That Helps Americans) what she recommends. MOTHA comes up with the elegantly simple and failproof plan of manufacturing a rock band and have them become successful enough be invited to perform in Albania so they can free these world figures.

MOTHA also gives the names of the people she has chosen to be in this fake rock band, which she has decided will be named The Phynx. Once they’ve all been officially recruited, they start training to be rock stars. Naturally, they end up being a huge success in America and in the rest of the world. Meanwhile, other world figures like Joe Louis, Busby Berkeley (and the original Gold Diggers), Maureen O’Sullivan, Patty Andrews, and Pat O’Brien have also gone missing. Luckily, by then, the band has gotten successful enough for the Albanian Minister of Culture to want them to perform at their national flower day event.

Once in Albania, the band sneaks into a castle where an Albanian leader and his wife, played by Joan Blondell, are keeping all these world figures. They’re also treating Colonel Sanders like a servant. It turns out they kidnap these stars because Joan Blondell’s character is American and misses American culture, so they bring it to Albania. In addition to all the stars already mentioned, they’ve also kidnapped George Jessel, Leo Gorcey and Huntz Hall, Ruby Keeler, Cass Dailey, Rudy Vallee, the Lone Ranger and Tonto, just to name a few.

The Phynx decides to play a song for all the stars in hopes of inspiring all the stars to return to America. The plan is a success and the stars are moved by this song. First, George Jessel says they should leave and Butterfly McQueen seconds the idea. But how will they get out? Huntz Hall suggests they all sneak out by hiding in carts full of radishes and I guess nobody else had any other ideas, so they went with it, leading to a moment where Johnny Weissmuller and Maureen O’Sullivan reprise their famous “Me Tarzan, Me Jane” lines in a radish cart. The plan is a success and all these influential figures return to America!

…No, really, I did not make any of this up. This actually is what happens in The Phynx. I have absolutely no explanation as to why this movie was ever made. I have no idea why all these people agreed to be in this movie. (In addition to all the kidnapped stars, people like Richard Pryor, Dick Clark, and Ed Sullivan all make cameos. Why? I don’t know.) It’s one of the most completely incomprehensible movies I’ve ever seen, but the fact that it exists at all absolutely delights me.

The Phynx didn’t have much of a release back in 1970 (now that, I can understand) and was never officially released on home video until Warner Archive released it on DVD a few years back. It’s kind of dull in the beginning, but if you stick with it to the end, it goes completely and totally off the rails with this cavalcade of movie stars and other celebrities. Some of the stars make total sense to have together like Maureen O’Sullivan and Johnny Weissmuller; Pat O’Brien, Leo Gorcey, and Huntz Hall; and Busby Berkeley, Ruby Keeler, and Joan Blondell (alas, there were no scenes where Berkeley, Blondell, and Keeler actually interact with each other). But somehow, it all seems so incredibly thrown together and random. As a fan of so many of these stars, I loved getting to see them all together, even if it was in such a nonsense movie. If nothing else, I was excited to see that Ultra Violet makes an appearance in this because it means The Phynx is a movie that appeals to my interests in Busby Berkeley musicals and Andy Warhol’s factory scene. Because, really, how often do I get to combine those interests?

I’m just going to leave you with a few screencaps of my favorite moments from this movie, if for no other reason than to prove that these things actually happened. This is definitely a movie that needs to be seen to be believed.

The leader of the band of secret agents.

Joan Blondell with Colonel Sanders, which is my new favorite picture.

Joe Louis and Johnny Weissmuller looking serious with Colonel Sanders in the background.

Maureen O’Sullivan, George Jessel, and Edgar Bergen with Charlie McCarthy

Ruby Keeler and Busby Berkeley reunited

The Lone Ranger and Tonto

Maureen O’Sullivan and Johnny Weissmuller having a Tarzan reunion in a cart full of radishes.  (OK, this moment was cute.)

Leo Gorcey and Huntz Hall

Shout out to Danny from pre-code.com for bringing this movie to my attention and inspiring me to write my most baffling review ever.

Hearts of the West (1975)

More than anything else in life, Lewis Tater (Jeff Bridges) wants to be a writer of Western novels. When he sees an advertisement for the University of Titan, he decides to enroll in some correspondence writing classes. The University of Titan had a Nevada address, so despite the advice from his family, Lewis decides he’d rather take classes in person so he can enjoy the atmosphere of being out west.

After making the long trip out to Titan, Nevada, he shows up at the address only to find out the University of Titan doesn’t actually exist; the “school” is run by a couple of con artists operating out of a local hotel. As fate would have it, Lewis ends up staying in the same hotel as the con artists and gets into a fight with them. In the tussle, Lewis takes their car and drives out into the desert until it runs out of gas. Then he decides to get out and walk through the desert and happens to wander onto the set of a movie being filmed by Tumbleweed Studios, a studio that specializes in “B” Westerns.

The film crew helps him out and let him ride back into town with them. He has a crush on their production assistant Miss Trout (Blyth Danner) and makes friends with actor Howard Pike (Andy Griffith), who recommends he get a job at a local restaurant. At least this way he can spend time around cowboys and get some inspiration for his big novel. He also applies for a job at the studio and is hired by Bert Kessler (Alan Arkin). Lewis starts out doing stuntwork, but works his way up to featured roles and becomes a star. Meanwhile, he has to watch out for the con artists from the University of Titan, who are looking for him.

Not one of my favorite movies, but Hearts of the West is quite pleasant and good for some laughs. The cast is fantastic; it’s full of great stars who I never knew were in this movie, mostly because I’d never even heard of this movie until I saw it in today’s lineup on TCM. Jeff Bridges was perfectly cast as the youthful and naive Lewis and I really liked Alan Arkin as Bert Kessler. Andy Griffith was a pretty good fit for playing a cowboy film star. It’s a little too slowly paced for my liking, I found myself starting to tune out here and there. Not bad, but not that great, either.

Brannigan (1975)

Chicago police lieutenant Jim Brannigan (John Wayne) is assigned to go to London so he can collect gangster Ben Larkin (John Vernon), who is being extradited back to the United States. When Brannigan arrives, he meets with officer Jennifer Thatcher (Judy Geeson), who is supposed to help him with Larkin. But a man like Larkin is bound to have a few enemies and Brannigan arrives in London just in time to find out that Larkin has been kidnapped.

There’s some question whether or not he’s really been kidnapped, but eventually the authorities are convinced and Brannigan has to work with Jennifer, Larkin’s lawyer Mel (Mel Ferrer), and Commander Swann (Richard Attenborough), the British police commander who doesn’t fully grasp Brannigan’s style of police work, to find him. But Larkin knows Brannigan has come to town to pick him up and has ordered a hit on him, so in addition to trying to find Larkin, Brannigan has to avoid the person who’s out to get him.

I liked Brannigan a lot more than I expected to. In fact, I’d say it’s one of my favorite movie discoveries so far this month and since I’m not a big Western fan, I really didn’t think I’d end up saying that about John Wayne day. So I guess it’s a good thing I decided to check out one of his non-Western films. Brannigan is a lot of fun in the unique way that 1970s cop movies can be. With all the great action scenes, the musical score, the fashions, the cars, and lots of awesome tough-sounding dialogue, it’s hard not to be entertained by it. John Wayne was so perfect for roles like Brannigan because he was such a great tough guy, even late in his career. He got to do some great action-packed scenes, punch some people, and deliver some awesome lines. I couldn’t help but love the big brawl scene that had “Let the Sun Shine” playing in the background. Or the moment near the end where Brannigan comes bursting in to confront Larkin. Those moments embody pretty much everything that I like about 1970s cop movies. Not to mention that I totally love that poster.

In the grand scheme of his career, it may not be one of John Wayne’s best movies, but considering this came very late in his career, it’s nice to see that he was able to end his career on a better note than a lot of other actors did.

Pulp (1972)

Mickey King (Michael Caine) is an author who specializes in writing sleazy pulp novels under dirty pseudonyms. When meeting with his publisher one day, Mickey is given the chance to ghostwrite the memoir of a legendary Hollywood actor. The book would be a guaranteed best seller and Mickey would be quite handsomely for the job, so he accepts, despite the fact that he has no idea who the mystery celebrity is.

Before finding out who his employer is, Mickey has to travel to Malta and wait to be met by a contact. Along the way, he meets a man who he thinks is his contact, but Mickey finds the man dead in a hotel room, it isn’t long before Mickey begins to suspect someone might have been trying to kill him instead. Eventually, Mickey meets his contact and finds out he’ll be working on the memoir of Preston Gilbert (Mickey Rooney), a retired actor famous for playing tough gangsters on film and hanging around with them in real life.

Preston has recently been diagnosed with cancer and wants to be sure his wild life story will be immortalized. Preston is also a notorious prankster so when a person appears to shoot Preston during a party, his guests think it’s just another one of his jokes. But Preston really is dead and Mickey has reason to think he also may have been a target. After all, Preston was friends with many criminals who may not want Mickey to make their stories known to the public. But it’s up to Mickey to find out who might be trying to kill him.

When I started watching Pulp, it seemed like the type of movie that would be right up my alley. I have a bit of a dark sense of humor and Pulp has dark, offbeat humor in spades and Michael Caine was perfect at delivering those dry lines. The story sounds like a murder mystery, but Pulp is really more of a dark satire of detective films. Although I really appreciated the movie’s style of comedy and liked seeing all the beautiful scenery (the movie was filmed on location in Malta), but the pacing was a little slow for my liking. It felt like it was a longer movie than it really was and the dark humor wasn’t enough to keep me interested in it. Perhaps I’m biased because I was tired when I watched it; I might be willing to give it another shot just because I really want to like this movie.

Sextette (1978)

Marlo Manners (Mae West), world-renowned screen siren, has just married Sir Michael Barrington (Timothy Dalton), her sixth husband. The world adores Marlo and her marriage is making headlines all over the world. But when they check into the hotel for their honeymoon, they’re faced with endless intrusions from the media, Marlo’s manager Dan Turner (Dom DeLuise), dress fittings with her costume designer (played by Keith Moon), an entire team of athletes, and her former husbands Laslo (Ringo Starr) and Alexei (Tony Curtis). Meanwhile, Marlo has been working on her memoirs by recording scandalous tales of her many, many lovers on an audio cassette. She then tells her manager to destroy the tape, but it falls into the wrong hands and its contents could have major implications for a meeting of international delegates going on at the hotel.

Oh, Sextette. Where does one even begin with a movie that opens with the line, “Hello to you, this is Regis Philbin,” and (almost) ends with Alice Cooper singing a song at a piano while hotel maids and bellhops dance behind him? And in between, there’s a baffling list of guest stars, Dom DeLuise tap dancing on a piano (yes, there is Dom DeLuise tap dancing on a piano in this movie), and a whole lot of 80-something year old Mae West doing her typical Mae West schtick. Oh, and there’s also Timothy Dalton singing “Love Will Keep Us Together” along with Mae West.

It’s not a conventionally good movie by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, when I bought this DVD, the clerk looked at me and said, “You do realize this is not a good movie, right?” If you can appreciate really bad movies, then Sextette is the kind of movie you could definitely have some fun with. While it is definitely a “so bad it’s good” type of movie, I’m kind of obsessed with it just because of the sheer fact that this movie even exists. Because when it comes down to it, trying to describe Sextette is kind of like describing some bizarre, star-studded fever dream.  “…And Mae West was there…and Ringo…and George Raft…and then Keith Moon showed up playing a fashion designer…oh, and Tony Curtis talked with a bad Russian accent and threw a cake out the window!”

Absolutely everything about Sextette makes it sound like such an incredibly unlikely film that the fact that somehow all of these things came together to make this movie a reality absolutely delights me.  I mean, who would have thought that Mae West, Ringo Starr, Tony Curtis, Regis Philbin, Alice Cooper, George Raft, Keith Moon, and Timothy Dalton all appeared in the same movie together? That fact alone was enough to sell me on the movie. Then there’s other gloriously insane moments like Tony Curtis hamming it up so much you’ll be looking for a “Honeybaked” label on him and the fashion montage that consists of Mae West trying on dresses and saying her famous quips while Keith Moon, who plays her fashion designer, looks on. I mean, this movie just made it possible for me to write a sentence that mentions both a fashion montage and Keith Moon in the same sentence! It’s all just so incredibly unlikely that I can’t help but love it in a very odd way.

The Taking of the Pelham One Two Three (1974)

When a gang of four armed men in matching disguises — known only as Blue (Robert Shaw), Grey (Héctor Elizondo), Green (Martin Balsam), and Brown (Earl Hindman) — hijack a New York City subway train, they round up seventeen passengers and put them into one subway car before separating it from the rest of the train.  Blue gets in touch with Zachary Garber (Walter Matthau), a police Lieutenant with the transit authority, and demands a million dollar ransom to be paid within an hour.  If an hour passes and they don’t get their money, they will kill one passenger for each minute they are late with the money.

The mayor of New York is hesitant to pay the ransom at first, but eventually agrees.  While the money is being gathered, Garber and Lieutenant Rico Patrone (Jerry Stiller) work in the control room to keep the situation under control and try to figure out who the gunmen are.  Garber figures that since one of them clearly knows how to operate the subway train, at least one of them might be a disgruntled former transit employee so they get to work finding a list of dismissed transit employees.

Police officers manage to get the money delivered in time, but the ordeal is only just beginning for the hostages.  When the gunmen get the train moving again, they get off and leave the hostages trapped on a train barreling through the subway system at 70 miles per hour.  Tensions also start to get to the gunmen and when it’s all over, only one of them makes it out alive.

Simply put, The Taking of the Pelham One Two Three is a must-see movie for anyone who enjoys a good suspense film.  It easily ranks as one of the best thrillers I’ve ever seen.  From beginning to end, it’s filled with action and tension that leaves you on the edge of your seat.  The pacing is perfect; there isn’t a single dull moment to be seen here.  Everybody in it is perfectly cast.  It’s just marvelous.  Believe me, you do not want to miss The Taking of the Pelham One Two Three.  It does everything a good suspense film is supposed to do.

Fashion in Film: Saturday Night Fever

We’re already just two weeks away from the second (not quite annual) Fashion in Film Blogathon! If you would like to join in, just let me know. There’s still plenty of time to think of a topic if you haven’t already decided!

I thought it would be fun to start the festivities a little early by taking a look at one of the most stylish films ever made: Saturday Night Fever.

I think it goes without saying that Saturday Night Fever is one of the most iconic films to come out of the 1970s.  The opening credit sequence of Tony strutting through the streets of Brooklyn is one of the most famous opening credit sequences of all time.  You can’t talk about disco without talking about the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack.  And when it comes to 1970s fashion, the first thing many people think of is the image of John Travolta in that white suit.

Rock ‘n’ Roll High School (1979)

All the students at Vince Lombardi High love rock music, but none of them loves it more than Riff Randell (P.J. Soles) does.  Riff’s favorite band in the whole world is the Ramones.  She calls Joey Ramone the man of her dreams and her greatest ambition in life is to write songs for the Ramones.  With help from her bookish friend Kate Rambeau (Dey Young), Riff enjoys hijacking the school’s intercom system to play Ramones albums.  But when Miss Evelyn Togar (Mary Woronov) takes over as principal of Vince Lombardi High, the first thing she wants to do is rid the school of rock and roll.

Meanwhile, their classmate Tom Roberts (Vincent Van Patten) is looking to spice up his love life and sets his sights on Riff.  Tom asks Eaglebauer (Clint Howard) to set him up with Riff, but Eaglebauer thinks Tom would be a better match for Kate instead.  As luck would have it, Kate has a thing for Tom so when she asks Eaglebauer to set her up with Tom, he’s only too happy to help make it happen.

When the Ramones come to town for a show, Riff is determined to meet the band and give them some songs she’s written.  She skips school for three days so she can camp out for front row tickets, but when Miss Togar finds out, she confiscates Riff and Kate’s tickets.  That’s not about to stop Riff from seeing the Ramones, though.  She and Kate win tickets through a radio contest and sure enough, Riff makes it backstage and gives her songs to the Ramones.

Miss Togar uses Riff and Kate’s defiance to rally some parents for a record burning at school the next day.  As soon as Riff sees a flaming Ramones album, she leads the students in a revolt and they take over the school.  Just then, the Ramones drop by to tell Riff they love her songs and, naturally, they join the students in their mutiny.

Conventionally speaking, Rock ‘n’ Roll High School is kind of a mess.  The jokes are corny, the story is paper thin, and Dee Dee Ramone struggled to play himself convincingly.  But despite all that, I will proudly say that Rock ‘n’ Roll High School is one of my favorite movies of all time.  The only thing Rock ‘n’ Roll High School ever aspires to be is silly fun with a killer soundtrack and it totally succeeds at being just that. 

As hokey as the jokes are, they always make me laugh.  P.J. Soles and Mary Woronov play their parts to deliberately campy perfection and they are endlessly entertaining to watch.  And when they’re delivering lines like, “Do your parents know that you’re Ramones?” and “I’m Riff Randell, rock and roller.” in such an awesomely over the top way, that right there is why I have an undying love for this movie.  In fact, the whole cast completely nails being intentionally campy, but Don Steele as radio DJ Screamin’ Steve and Herbie Braha as the Ramones’ manager in particular are some awesome scene stealers.

I also totally love this drawing of a mouse that has been allowed to listen to rock music.

And then there’s the amazing soundtrack.  I’m a big Ramones fan, so obviously I love their performance scenes.  The concert scene is great and the “I Want You Around” scene is actually a really good fantasy scene.  But the soundtrack isn’t all about the Ramones, it also features some good songs by Paul McCartney, Alice Cooper, Fleetwood Mac, Nick Lowe, and Chuck Berry.

I just can’t help but love this movie. I’ve never watched it and not been in a good mood afterward.

All weekend long, bloggers are owning up to some of their guilty pleasure movies. Be sure to head on over to the Kitty Packard Pictorial to find out which movies other bloggers have lurking in the back of their DVD collections.

Rollerball (1975)

What do you get when you combine roller derby, motocross, and basketball?  You get rollerball, and in the year 2018, it’s all the rage.  What Babe Ruth was to baseball, Jonathan E. (James Cann) is to rollerball.  It’s a brutal, often deadly, game that Jonathan has managed to be on top of for the past ten years.  To honor Jonathan’s achievements, Bartholomew (John Houseman), head of  the corporation that controls the rollerball team he plays on, announces there will be a television special dedicated to his outstanding career.  There’s just one catch — Bartholomew wants Jonathan to use the special to announce his retirement.

Jonathan has absolutely no intention of retiring and he can’t find out why they want him to retire so badly.  In this society, the whole world is run by corporations and the corporations want to manipulate everybody.  What Jonathan doesn’t know is that rollerball was created by these corporations as a way to show how futile individuality is and Jonathan’s continued success at the game completely defeats its intended purpose.

When Jonathan refuses to announce his retirement on the TV special, the corporations start changing the game to make it more and more dangerous, hoping he will either step down or be killed.  No matter what the corporations throw at him, Jonathan still won’t back down, even when the game becomes extremely deadly.

I didn’t think I would like Rollerball very much, but I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it.  It’s an intelligent science fiction/action film, very heavily influenced by George Orwell and Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange.  The use of music is quite haunting and the action scenes are excellent; James Caan was best in the game scenes.  It could have stood being a little bit shorter, but I’m very glad I decided to check this one out.

TCM Day in Review: 2/9/10

When I started this blog, I had the intention of writing about movies one at a time.  But with 31 Days of Oscar going on, there are several days where I can see a bunch of fantastic movies in one day.  Yesterday was certainly one of those days: Alice Adams, Ninotchka, Stalag 17, and Network.  When I was trying to think of which of those movies I wanted to write about today, I figured that maybe I’d try something different and try writing several short reviews instead of one long review.