Monday, December 31, 2007

What To Do? Why Not Skidoo?

Mark Evanier has been talking about the upcoming Turner Classic Movies showing of Otto Preminger's bizarre movie Skiddo for some time, but there's no reason for me to think that all of you read his blog. (I mean, I think you should, since he's thoughtful and interesting, particularly about Hollywood, animation, the WGA strike, and various permutations thereof. But that doesn't mean you will.)

So here's the link to his most recent post, and his banner to remind you.

For myself -- since I am one of the other people in North America (Ghu knows how many of us there are) who have seen Skidoo -- let me just say that this is a movie that you don't want to miss. It's not good, no. Not in any sense of the word. It's a gangster movie about LSD, made in 1968 when the studios were clearly in an absolute panic about what "the kids" wanted to see. It's a musical,too. It's bizarre and weird and hasn't been available officially for nearly forty years. And it has Groucho Marx playing a mobster named God. The end credits are all sung by Harry Nilsson. Really, it's a movie that you need to see for yourself, just so you can be the one telling your friends how weird it is.

And, I mean, if you can't get interested in a movie by a major director like Preminger, starring Carol Channing, Jackie Gleason, and Frankie Avalon, and with probably a dozen other name actors in it, that has never been available on video, there's really something wrong with you. (And it's something different than what's wrong with Skidoo.)

2 comments:

Sean O'Hara said...

Skidoo has a special place in geek trivia -- it stars Frank Gorshin (the Riddler), Cesar Romero (the Joker), Burgess Meredith (the Penguin) and was directed by Otto Preminger (Mr. Freeze). (Preminger directed Meredith in several movies, and also Vincent Price (Egghead) in Laura, making him the champ of Batman Villains Who Directed Other Batman Villains in Movies, edging out Nicholson, who directed Danny DeVito (Penguin) in Goin' South and Eli Wallach (Mr. Freeze) in The Two Jakes. This concludes my useless trivia for the day.)

Unknown said...

Evanier keeps talking about this movie, and I realllly show find a way to see it sometime.

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