A 50's melodrama and superhero hodgepodge

RAT PFINK A BOO BOO (1966)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

In what is clearly an even funnier title than Ray Dennis Steckler's most infamous film, "The Incredible Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies," "Rat Pfink a Boo Boo" has got to be the most ridiculous piece of trash ever recorded on celluloid. It is so amateurishly and shoddily made that you would swear it was a parody, but the director has insisted that that was not the case from the get go.

The first few scenes have a 50's cheap melodrama vibe where we witness an anonymous woman being pursued by three thieves out for a thrill. One of the thieves carries a chain, another carries a hammer, and another gives a wicked, nonstop laugh. They kill the girl, take her purse, and that is about it. So far, it is silly but it has some measure of momentum (though the perky musical score doesn't help matters). Then we are shown what looks like documentary footage of a rock singer named Lonnie Lord's (Vin Saxon) who signs autographs and carries a guitar with him wherever he goes, in the hopes of playing for anybody, anywhere, at anytime. This includes barbecues where the chef wears an Oscar Myer apron! And on the beach where a full band seems to perform when he sings, yet nobody is around for the instrumentation we hear on the soundtrack (the whole film was post-dubbed and it shows).

Moving along to the bare minimum of a story, Lonnie's girlfriend CB Beaumont (Carolyn Brandt) is being harassed on the phone by someone who calls three times, asks for her name, and then hangs up. Who is it? It turns out it is one of those hooligans from the opening sequence who is looking for a thrill and searches her name randomly in a phone book! In the next scene, she is kidnapped by those hooligans! They hopefully had a stop in between at the Korova Milkbar.

Before things can get any worse, Lonnie and his girlfriend's gardener partner team up and dress up in costume as Rat Phink and Boo Boo, a carbon copy of Batman and Robin! I am serious! Apparently, director Steckler didn't like the first 40 minutes of footage he shot, which was supposed to be a gritty crime film, so he chose to make it into a superhero film! Ouch! And we also get a Harold Lloyd lookalike and a gorilla named Kogar played by Kogar! We also hear songs like "You Is a Rat Fink" (my favorite) "Runnin' Wild," "I Stand Alone," and "Go Go Party," which are the the only semi-dazzling highlights.

It isn't that the film is bad as much as it has nothing to offer. At least Steckler's first film, "The Incredible Strange Creatures, etc." had a nervous energy and real style. This film looks to have been made by eight-year-olds in their own backyard! Maybe that was the point but there are funnier bad movies than this one.

Random shootings in San Francisco

THE SNIPER (1952)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Aside from two murders committed by a mentally unbalanced man with a handy rifle, "The Sniper" is largely a white bread thriller - meaning that it is soft and fluffy and it tries to be a polemic but fails to ignite or cause much of a stir.

Eddie Miller (Arthur Franz) is a loner, living in a San Francisco boarding house and working as a cleaner delivery man. He is trying to work through his murderous impulses which includes unpacking an army rifle with a scope and aiming at pedestrians from his bedroom window. His homicidal urges are brought on by loose women who sing in bars or appear to be prostituting themselves, that is making themselves available to any man after being dumped. It is implied, through some ludicrously histrionic acting, that he rejects such women so he has to kill them (he turns away in disgust when seeing a kissing couple on a bench). Marie Windsor is a bar pianist who likes Miller because he delivers her clean dresses and will make last-minute deliveries for her - however, she has no romantic interest in him which obviously anger him.

50 percent of "The Sniper" centers on Miller rejected, bullied and scolded by society - he can't even make young kids playing ball happy when he tosses the ball back to them. This is a man who can't catch a break and can't make time with his vacationing therapist. Miller is a ball of fury and hate and takes it out on women, not men or children. One particularly effective scene has Miller throwing a baseball at a circus performer where she falls in a small pool if he hits his target - after he keeps hitting the target, he starts throwing the baseball at the net with such uncontrollable fury that you will recoil. If only the movie had more moments like that.

But the film veers off course to provide insight into why Miller kills - big mistake. "The Sniper" was released in 1952 and so we are still dealing with Hays Code implemented pictures where random acts of violence must be explicated by a serviceable police psychiatrist (Richard Kiley) and an older police detective, Lt. Kafka (Adolphe Menjou), who wants to solve this case or else he will be back on the beat. So much time is devoted to these characters that you feel you are watching a high-profile episode of "Dragnet."

After all is said and done, "The Sniper" lacks grit and purpose. Arthur Franz may overdo the psychotic trauma of this ex-soldier so much that you wonder why nobody suspects him from the start (his crying fits strike the wrong chord of sympathy). It is a pristine B picture, often well-mounted by director Edward Dmytryk ("The Caine Mutiny"), but the screenplay loses focus, aiming for preachiness rather than an amoral lurid melodrama that would have given it a pulpy punch. I wanted to learn more about Miller's impulses, his behavior towards women - in the end, we are told that the police thinks the sniper might be a registered sex offender. Seems like Miller has bigger issues beyond sex.

Groucho Marx reading from cue cards

SKIDOO (1968)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

When you have a top-notch director like Otto Preminger and a great, able comic cast that includes Jackie Gleason, Groucho Marx and Carol Channing, you should expect fireworks. You expect at least a good comedy with a few laughs. You don't expect a haphazard effrontery to the comedy genre like "Skidoo," which seems to be two different movies running at once. It is a train wreck, and just as unwatchable.

The movie begins with a shot of a TV set where two different channels being switched back and forth - one is some live courtroom trial and the other is some John Wayne movie. Jackie Gleason is a retired mobster (do they get to retire?) and Carol Channing is the peroxide, free-loving wife, and they keep switching channels with their remotes. And this scene goes on for an eternity. And there is the flower-child daughter who is dating a hippie. And we get a cliched body-painting scene (though it is far more egregious in "The Swinger"). Finally, we are back to the flimsy plot which has Gleason going to Alcatraz so he can bump off his best friend, also a mobster and a snitch (Mickey Rooney).

Added to this strange amalgam of genres is Groucho Marx as a mob boss named "God"; Frankie Avalon as a mobster who runs into these hippies; Frank Gorshin as some inmate at Alcatraz; a makeshift hot-air balloon; and nothing short of three psychedelic LSD montages (one in slow-motion), including the Green Bay Packers playing football with their bare asses showing!

"Skidoo" is so flatly directed and staged that it becomes unbearable to sit through, no matter how absurd is the notion of hippies and gangsters in the same movie. Still, even if it doesn't gel, the very absurdity of it all could have wrung some laughs. Aside from the opening title theme song sung by Channing at the end, there are no laughs and not one moment that made me remotely chuckle. The late director Preminger claimed that since he had done LSD, he could make the movie. Well, he made something that can be called anything but a movie. It is a monumental disaster. You know it is a bad movie when Groucho Marx seems to be reading from cue cards.