Let me explain something first.
(Picture from here.)
When I was a kid, I lived in Southern California. For reasons I’m not clear on, the TV stations in our area didn’t put on modern cartoons or made for TV movies. Instead, it was films made in the thirties and similarly dated cartoons. I was essentially weaned on WC Fields, Buster Keaton, Fleischer Superman and Popeye, and like material.
It warped me.
I loved movies.
When I was living in Thousand Oaks, there was a theater that offered on Saturdays free admission to any kid with six Pepsi-Cola bottle caps. Double features. Between the movies, there were auctions where kids with garbage bags of bottle caps bid against one another for prizes.
Anyway, these are three films I saw after that when I (one would hope) was a more mature film viewer. I liked them at the time.
They have not aged well. Note: there are spoilers.
It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World
1963. Spencer Tracy and about a million top drawer comics.
This film was released on November 7, 1963. A little over two weeks later, John F. Kennedy was assassinated. I did see it prior to the assassination. But I cannot separate this film from that event. The two are too close. So, I cannot vouch for my original feelings about that film. I don’t remember being much impressed with it.
I do remember being excited to see it because it had a lot of the comedic figures I’d grown up with: Buster Keaton, Joe E. Brown, Jimmy Durante, and, of course, the Three Stooges. I was less interested in the more modern comedians since the one I liked—Red Skelton—wasn’t in it.
Essentially, a collection of characters are driving along a dangerous mountain road. A car wildly passes them by, drives off the cliff, and tumbles to the bottom. These characters go down to help and find fatally injured Smiler Grogan (Jimmy Durante.) Grogan dies but before he kicks the bucket (literally) he reveals he had hidden $350,000 in Santa Rosita State Park. The characters leave, each trying to be first to find the money. The rest of the film follows what happens to them. In addition, Santa Rosita Police Captain T. G. Culpeper is following the characters trying to close the case as his wife, career, and retirement are falling apart. Eventually, Culpeper decides to take the money himself and almost succeeds but he, and all of the other characters except the women, get injured in a big climactic scene. Finally, in the hospital, the only thing left for him is to find something to laugh about. Mrs. Marcus (Ethel Merman) who has been an overbearing pain throughout the film, comes into berate them and slips on a banana peel, injuring herself and is taken out on a gurney. The injured pursuers find this riotously funny and the film comes to an end.
I rewatched it earlier this year. It’s not dreadful. It does have a continuing throughline that women are either superfluous or unpleasant—note Mrs. Marcus above.
Mostly, it’s just not that funny.
The cast really does have some of the most talented comedians of the time. And the cameo cast supporting them is equally stellar. But it is mostly slapstick and, in my opinion, not well realized slapstick.
The problem I had with it by the end is I really wanted someone to get away with it. I realized that IAMMMMW was about status quo. The money was escape to all of the characters pursuing it. They all wanted out of their current lives. And they were all punished for it. At its heart, it’s a funny morality play.
What’s So Bad About Feeling Good
1968. George Peppard and Mary Tyler Moore.
I saw this one when I was old enough to more or less understand it. It was released May 24, 1968. Bad timing again. Bobby Kennedy was killed less than two weeks later. A few months after that, the 1968 Democratic Convention happened in Chicago where network newsmen were assaulted by Chicago police for being a reporter and Abraham Ribicoff castigated Mayor Richard Daley for using Gestapo tactics at the convention.
That said, I liked the film even though it was a bit tone deaf to what was happening everywhere. Essentially, in New York City everybody is angry and unhappy. Artists have embraced nihilism as the only valid response. In comes a toucan with a virus that generates euphoria and a sense of well-being. It has no apparent side effects other than a strong sense of optimism.
The virus infects New York with a corresponding decline in cigarettes, drinking, and car accidents. (There’s a hint that there’s a similar disinclination towards voting, which gives the mayor heartburn.) Because of the obvious problem that people are feeling good, the US Government sends its top man to stop this scourge.
There’s a romantic couple in the middle of this—Peppard and Moore—who are doing their best to spread the disease.
The disease is defeated. New York returns to being angry and unhappy. The couple breaks up.
We can’t leave it like that so there’s an epilogue where the couple gets back together.
I saw this recently and I couldn’t help thinking this is the same as Mad, Mad World. When people get happy, they go back to work. Status quo is misery. The virus represents escape. And that escape is thwarted and they return to misery. They’re not punished, as in Mad, Mad World. But the misery they return to is Hell enough.
I found this film funnier than IAMMMMW. For one thing, the humor was based in the absurdity of the situation. To me, the problem was the film didn’t go far enough. One of the interesting things about Ghostbuster was that once the ghosts were released, the effects were immediate and fun. I wanted that for this film. I wanted the “dogs and cats living together.” I wanted that absurdity to be specific and right in front of me, not discussed abstractly.
At least, there wasn’t the whole women are superfluous or destructive. I suppose I can think Moore for that.
1967. James Coburn. Carroll O’Connor. Margaret Blye.
Now, we come to Waterhole #3.
I have to admit I liked this film in 1967. I’m not proud of that. Let me describe the plot and you’ll probably get what my issues are.
A shipment of Army bullion is hijacked by three men: Doc Quinlen, Hilb, and the inside man, Sergeant Henry Foggers. Quinlen takes the gold and promises to meet the other two in Durango in a couple of weeks after he’s hidden the gold. (Oh, yeah, they take a shoemaker as a hostage and the person to blame if things go south.) Quinlen meets Lewton Cole, a professional gambler and con man. Cole discovers Quinlen’s map to the gold. Quinlen, a fast draw artist, challenges Cole to a duel to make sure to keep the map secret. Cole pulls out his rifle and shoots Quinlen dead, takes the map and rides off. He is accused of murder.
Meanwhile, the Army searches for the gold.
Cole ends up in the town of Integrity (as mentioned on the map) needing a horse. The Sheriff recognizes Cole as wanted for murder. Cole imprisons the Sheriff in his own jail and takes the Sheriff’s clothes. “A naked sheriff makes a slow posse.” Cole steals the Sheriff’s horse and rapes the Sheriff’s daughter, Billie, (which she enjoys) before taking off to find the gold. The Sheriff escapes and goes to get his horse. His daughter tells the Sheriff what has happened but the Sheriff is much more concerned about the theft of his horse and takes out after Cole. Billie follows them.
Cole finds the gold. The Sheriff finds Cole and the gold. Hilb and Foggers (the actual thieves) find Cole and the Sheriff, tie them up, and take the gold. Billie finds Cole and the Sheriff and frees them and the three of them return to Integrity where Fogger and Hilb are enjoying the fruits of their labor. Big shootout where the shoemaker (Remember the shoemaker? The hostage and alibi?) gets the gold. Hilb disappears for plot reasons. Cole, the Sheriff, and Fogger follow the shoemaker and all four of them run into the Army. The shoemaker is accused of the theft but it turns out he does not have the gold. The Army, Sheriff, and Fogger try to retrace the shoemaker’s steps to find where he lost it.
Billie swoops in and follows the now escaped shoemaker. Cole follows Billie. Billie finds the gold. Billie proposes a “partnership” which includes both her and the gold. Cole agrees provided she take him “the way I am” and they consummate the agreement with sex.
Afterwards, Cole gets up, dresses, and gets on his horse. Billie says what are you doing? Cole says, “that’s just they way I am,” and leaves with the gold.
He takes off for Mexico with the Army, shoemaker, Sheriff, and Fogger after him. Billie does not pursue him.
So I’m watching this, appalled. I had remembered something sketchy about the sex but there’s nothing implied here at all. It is explicitly shown as rape. It is called rape. And the rape is trivialized just the way I described it. No amount of Coburn charm (and he is quite charming in this film like he is in most of his films) can cover this over. And, in point of fact, there is not even an attempt to cover this over. There’s even a ballad sung over the scenes: “Now, raping and killing are both pretty bad/But it was the theft of old Blue that made Sheriff John mad.”
Remember, I’d watched all three of these films in a fairly short time. In the first two, the problem was the failure to escape the spiritual death of the status quo. Here, Cole gets away with it. Status quo escaped. Evil wins. Isn’t that what I wanted?
No. I wanted a scoundrel to win. Or at least escape a horrible life. But not a rapist.
Like I always do, I rewrite some of this in my head. It would have been so easy, too. Don’t use rape. Use some kind of animal magnetism. James Bond does it all the time. But, no, rape it is in the movie and rape it is in my head. Inescapable.
I’m not sure what I’m saying with all of this. Sixties comedies range from bad to horrifying? Thank God that’s over? Then, I see what’s going on now and I’m thinking: have we really progressed at all?
I have some other comedies queued up to watch and now I’m nervous.
And, in case you were wondering if RFJ Jr is really as bad I think he is, check here and here.
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