Comedy – The Magnificent 60s

Digger (2026) * – Seen at the Cinema

This year’s Anora. Makes a heavy-handed Trump-sized point. Then makes it again. And again. And again. Until we’re reeling from a mega-budgeted bout of virtue signalling. Vanity project thy name is Digger. A couple of cinematic body swerves halfway in and, more potently, at the end can’t save this. And neither will streaming which occasionally digs a calamity out of its financial hole. Small-screen audiences are going to switch off in droves just as cinemagoers avoided it like the plague (I was the only person in my early evening screening on Monday).

We’re in standard disaster movie territory without any of the special effects, tidal waves, tsunamis etc which would normally account for the budget. Instead, it’s gone the other way, and more or less stuck us in endless rooms with the kind of politicians and money men scientists try to avoid like the plague.

It plays more like a bedroom farce without the sex, doors constantly opening and closing, people tripping over props (in this case a shovel) until you realize in what the director clearly thinks is a coup de theatre that it actually is a play, which partly explains the ultra-hammy performances, as if only the only idiots in power are shouty-shouty bombastic ones. So this is a play, that in itself given the staging and the huge cast, must have cost millions to put on, that concerns what happened years ago when billionaire oil magnate Digger (Tom Cruise) dug so deep into the Arctic ice shelf that he loosened an iceberg big enough to drift down into the North Sea and swamp most of Europe with, as we discover at the very end, global cataclysm.

In the “reality” part he’s obsessed with his cat, his oil, his billions and not taking the rap for exploitative exploration. In the play, Rockwell (Tom Cruise) playing Digger is obsessed with his daughter who has gone missing and with his understandable actor’s insecurity, constantly at war with the director. The ending, which is the best part, and not because this long trudge of a heavy-handed never-ending saga, is over has the audience don gas marks and emerge from the theater into a swamped city.

Tom Cruise has been here before, when he wanted to prove he was an “actor” and not just an action hero. Remember Lions for Lambs (2007), his first independent production, which targeted the U.S. Government’s involvement in Middle East wars and despite Cruise, Robert Redford and Meryl Streep sank like a stone because, guess what, audience don’t like to be lectured.

Guess what, audiences don’t like to be lectured to any more now. The interesting aspect is that audiences sniffed the wind well before this movie opened. Even suggestions in the media that Cruise was odds-on for an Oscar couldn’t tempt them in over the opening weekend. Had Warner Bros not already been taken over by Paramount Skydance, this is the kind of box office opening that could have sunk it, much as Michael Cimino’s misjudged western Heaven’s Gate (1980) did to United Artists.

So, yes, I can see this is making a point about eco threat and a plea not to allow the greed of nations and individuals to create catastrophe, but it’s not as if this is anything new. When Dr Strangelove (1964) warned about the dangers of nuclear warheads it had a lot more laffs. This might have passed muster had it been populated with great jokes and laugh-out-loud lines but the jokes you can coming a mile off and the stagey playing kills off any chance the lines have of creating a laugh.

I’m not even sure why Tom Cruise had to put on a fat suit to play Digger, as if all rich megalomaniacs are fat. Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, paper thin the pair of them. Perhaps Cruise wanted to disguise the fact that he is, in fact, an old man. He’s 64 for goodness sake. The hairpiece and the kooky clothing would have done it.

So, sorry, this didn’t do it for me. I already knew this stuff and didn’t need someone spending $160 million to tell me.

The Nutty Professor (1963) ****

Not many, outside of France, fell in with the notion that Jerry Lewis was some kind of cinematic genius. But this was the era of the auteur and the French revered the idea of a creative being in complete control and of placing a distinct imprint on their work. Given Jerry Lewis (The Bellboy, 1960) was not only star, but director, producer and co-writer you could see how neatly he ticked this box.

There are precious few actors turning to direction show any great aptitude for that particular skill. And while Lewis isn’t waiting days for the perfect ray of sunshine or tormenting his actors by insisting on endless takes, Lewis the director does know what makes Lewis the actor work. And it shows.

While this depends largely on sight gags, some quite brilliant, what really makes it tick are the twists, the kind of plot devices that so shift audience perception that they wouldn’t be out of place in a thriller. The concept certainly plays around the with audience, taking it on quite a wild ride.

White, initially, it looks like it’s going to be a weak parody of the awkward nerd, in this case Professor Kelp (Jerry Lewis), getting the sweet-natured girl, in this case student Stella (Stella Stevens), it quickly switches into a more contemporary issue, the question of identity, and deeper still, in an era these days of too much self-reflection being bad for you, of learning to like yourself.

When Kelp is humiliated by a football jock in his own class, he determines to get revenge. When the obvious course of action of body-building doesn’t work, the scientist resorts to science, devising a concoction that will change his personally. The first twist is you are left thinking he’s going to turn into a werewolf. So when he turns up, instead, as an arrogant punk-cum-pop-star with girls swooning all around him, and the kind of tough guy patter that James Cagney would envy, all bets are off.

The entrance of the new-look Kelp is brilliantly done, firstly the camera doing a POV number and registering public reaction to the new Kelp, who we are led to believe, is the said werewolf. So when he saunters into a nightclub dressed to the nines, a smoke in his hands, you can ee why he has attracted such a reaction.

Stella is the kind of sweet girl who is attracted to a tough-talking punk very much against her wishes. Kelp is born again as Buddy Love with plenty lip to exert his authority as the alpha male and a swagger that gets him out of any situation, even one where, a la Cinderella, the potion wears off and he has to abandon Stella in the middle of the night just as romance beckoned.

As if Lewis has seen too many Dr Jekyll pictures, he doesn’t take the visual approach to show the spell is wearing off. Instead, it’s verbal. Kelp’s tough-guy voice reverts to the timid professor’s original whine. Of course, you know the brew is going to wear off from the changes in his voice. And you know crisis is coming. But instead of resorting to slapstick to make the most of the situation, Love/Kelp turns philosopher, owning up to his scam, explaining that he wanted to be someone other than a weak nerd. And while confession is always in movie terms a good way to get a flawed hero out of a jam, this takes a more interesting route, expounding on the need to be true to your own personality, learning to like yourself and not get lost in a mess of self-inflicted anxiety.

There’s a lot less slapstick than I expected, much more in the way of visual gags: Kelp almost disappearing into a lounge seat, the unexpected knock coming from the floor where Kelp has been buried under a door, the squeak that still occurs when the squeaky shoes have been removed, laden down with an armful of books Kelp dumps them into a car loaded with books. It’s as though director Lewis is one step ahead of the audience.

You think Stella Stevens (The Mad Room, 1969) is just there as eye candy until she’s called upon to act with her eyes, bringing emotion to the screen.

Jerry Lewis at the top of his game. I caught this on Amazon Prime.

The Shakiest Gun in the West (1968) ***

Don Knotts (The Incredible Mr Limpet, 1964) was an acquired taste, relying overmuch on permafrozen goggle eyes and physical comedy. Despite the best efforts of The Great Race (1965) and It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963) and the reissues of Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin and Laurel and Hardy classics – perhaps because of this surfeit of slapstick – it would take a very special comedian to make as big an impression.

Bob Hope had gone down the cowardly cowboy route before in The Paleface (1948) and Son of Paleface (1952) and in fact this is pretty much a remake of The Paleface, substituting newcomer Barbara Rhoades (Don’t Just Stand There, 1968) in her sophomore outing as “Bad Penny” Penelope instead of Jane Russell as the more famous Calamity Jane. So it’s not a comparison a comedian would generally welcome – to be matched up against Bob Hope.

What distinguished Hope’s coward was that he always believed he was catnip to the ladies. Don Knotts was under no such illusions.

The story just reruns The Paleface – mild-mannered dentist Jesse Heywood (Don Knotts) is teamed up with sharpshooting criminal Penelope (Barbara Rhoades) to winkle out villains smuggling guns to Native Americans. The twist is that as part of the woman’s cover she’s been married off to the hapless dentist – for the simple reason that wagons trains won’t accept single women. Needless to say, their expectations of marriage differ.

While she manages to avoid intimacy, Jesse becomes acclaimed as a hero during a Native American attack, oblivious to the fact that it’s his wife who’s been doing all the shooting. That singles out Jesse as the undercover agent but he’s again saved by Penelope.

Eventually, he learns the truth but not in time to save Penelope who’s been kidnapped by the Rev Zachary Gant (Don “Red” Barry) and his sidekick Matthew Basch (Jackie Coogan) who have been smuggling weapons inside boxes of Bibles. When Jesse goes to the rescue it’s on the assumption Penelope’s marksmanship will save the day. However, she’s whisked out of the way and Jesse is forced to do his own gunfighting.

Even so, it’s not his skills with a gun that retrieve the situation, rather his dentistry, as he fixes the teeth of the Native American chief.

This relies far more on set pieces than the Bob Hope effort. Hope was able to draw the cinema audience towards him, a skill which Knotts lacks, so the humor results from the more obvious. However, there are a few scenes that don’t rely on Knotts. In one it’s the background character of a railway porter laden down with bags who snags the laffs.

Fear is a Knotts trope. During a stagecoach robbery he literally goes stiff with fear and has to be carried stiff as a piece of wood back into the stagecoach. Absent-minded, goofy, way out of his depth and not just with women, is the comedian’s schtick. Even when he develops a swagger following his deluded belief that he’s a six-gun ace, it’s the dumbest swagger ever.

Luckily, nobody’s trying to steal the scenes. The rest of the cast is drawn from more serious timber. You might be more pleased to see veteran Jackie Coogan (A Fine Madness, 1966), one-time child star, and B-western icon Don “Red” Barry (Alvarez Kelly, 1966) in more than their usual bit parts and to catch Pat Morita (The Karate Kid, 1984) in his sophomore venture.

Unfortunately, neither Knotts not Barbara Rhoades can come close to their predecessors.

Directed by Alan Rafkin – who had directed Knotts in The Ghost and Mr Chicken (1965) – from a screenplay by the team of Jim Fritzell and Everett Greenbaum (The Ghost and Mr Chicken) based on The Paleface written by Frank Tashlin (Caprice, 1967) and Edward Hartmann (The Sword of Ali Baba, 1965).

I’d been very much aware of Don Knotts as I moseyed around 1960s cinema but, fearing disappointment, had steered clear. This will suffice, I think.

Easy on the eye as long as you keep your comparisons to yourself.

Heavens Above! (1963) ***

Surprisingly topical – food banks a key element – social satire. And a surprising box office smash – among the top 12 films of the year – in Britain, although the Boulting Brothers (I’m Alright Jack, 1959), often viewed as inheriting the Ealing mantle, had both commercial and critical form.

In a case of mistaken identity, simplistic prison chaplain Rev Smallwood (Peter Sellers) is sent to rich parish Orbiston Parva, virtually endowed by the Delpard family, owners of the Tranquillax business nearby. Smallwood, an advocate of the meek inheriting the earth and making it his mission to ensure the rich can enter the kingdom of Heaven other than through a needle, convinces Lady Delpard (Isabel Jeans) to spread her wealth. This takes the form of the Good Neighbour Fellowship, whereby she sets up a food bank whose popularity soon endangers the town’s retailers and merchants, the public, naturally enough, preferring to do their shopping at the free church outlet than spend money on a butcher or baker (possibly candlestick makers escaped the impact).

Meanwhile, to show he is up to scratch in the poverty ranks, Smallwood invites into his palatial manse the Smith family who are being evicted from their plot of ground to make way for an expansion of the Tranquillax factory. Despite ruffling feathers in the ministry, Smallwood can’t be turfed out, since religious law dictates he effectively owns the manse. However, once shops have to close for lack of trade and factories, for lack of goods being sold, make thousands redundant, Smallwood’s do-gooding backfires.

While Harry Smith (Eric Sykes) is an archetypal welfare swindler (taking home £90 a week) and inclined to siphon off items from the food bank for his own entrepreneurial purposes as well as stealing lead from the church roof, the rest of his enormous brood, led by the redoubtable Rene (Irene Handl) are converted to the joys of Christianity, enough so much so that baptism and marriage (between the couple) beckon.

Most of the humour is gentle, the biggest laughs – Smallwood inadvertently eating dog biscuits, a dog peeing on his leg, choirboy reading a dirty book, the butler initiating a miraculous intervention – are straight out of the Charlie Chaplin joke book. And the timing for many lines appears out of kilter, as though the laughs were not intended.

*British films around this time often received rave reviews from U.S. critics which ensured reasonable business at the arthouses while not striking a box office chord with the general public. there.*

Apart from Smallwood, his assistant Matthew (Brock Peters) and the converted Lady Despard you are hard put to find any Chistians. As one character observes “not enough decent Christians to feed one lion.” And the townspeople are generally shown as scroungers of one kind of another with the Smiths typical sex-obsessed chip-guzzling working class. The business owners, bishops, aristocrats and assorted politicians are similarly pilloried for greed and inefficiency so you could say the Boultings are being fair straight down the line.

The best scene, and the one that makes the most out of a comic situation, is when the real Rev Smallwood (Ian Camrichael) turns up, is treated as an imposter and locked up for displaying psychotic tendencies. And there’s a clever, even more topical ending, involving space exploration, which equally cleverly mimics an earlier scene. Actually, there are two scenes that echo earlier activities, and both are intelligently used.

The satire retains some of its bite. There are even more rich people around now who hold onto their wealth and there are more poor people in clear need of help, assistance that would extend far beyond food banks, a relatively recent phenomenon. You can be sure selfish big business will be as self-interested.

Peter Sellers, complete with regional accent, in pre-Pink Panther mode shows dramatic skills that he would rarely be allowed to exhibit until much later in his career and although I think he should have been permitted more leeway in his lines he doesn’t deliver them as though he is milking a joke which means dramatic intent is not diluted. He is perfectly believable as the quietly-spoken forgiving vicar surrounded by more grasping colleagues who appear to have forgotten the basics of Christianity, his immediate boss, for example, on holiday in Monte Carlo.

British television comedian Eric Sykes (The Liquidator, 1965), barely recognisable after abandoning his trademark stance and voice, is the standout as the conniver-in-chief. Brock Peters (The Pawnbroker, 1964) is effective as the bin lorry driving protégé and Isabel Jeans (A Breath of Scandal, 1960) a delight as Smallwood’s slightly dotty benefactor – her look as she realizes he has scoffed the dog biscuits worth a couple of laughs. The others, good as they are, are called upon to play little more than stock characters: Cecil Parker (The Comedy Man, 1964), Ian Carmichael (The Amorous Mr Prawn, 1962) and Irene Handl (The Wrong Box, 1966). Look out for Roy Kinnear (Lock Up Your Daughters!, 1969), the first Doctor Who William Hartnell and the future Miss Marple Joan Hickson.

Ably directed by Roy and John Boulting who easily hit all their targets, the screenplay is by Frank Harvey (I’m Alright, Jack), John Boulting and critic Malcolm Muggeridge.

Hotel Paradiso (1966) ****

Few stars made such a deft job of switching their screen persona. If, in the 1960s (or later) you associated Alec Guinness with dramas such as Lawrence of Arabia (1962) or Doctor Zhivago (1965) and were very familiar with that droll drawl of a voice, you would be astonished the discover that he could wear a comedy hat – minus the droll drawl – to similar effect. My first surprise here was that this Alec Guinness was vocally unrecognizable. Not only was he charming but had a romantic streak.

Then you’ve got Gina Lollobrigida who could also mix drama (Woman of Straw, 1964) with comedy (Come September, 1961) but who could also hold back her screen persona, limiting the zest and eliminating the coquettishness.

And for good measure, what’s director Peter Glenville doing here? Seven out of the eight movies he helmed were dramas and heavyweight ones at that in the vein of Becket (1964) and The Comedians (1967), top-heavy with stars of the caliber of Peter O’Toole, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. You wouldn’t have him down for a comedy, let alone a French farce. But Glenville had translated the 1894 Georges Feydeau farce for the London West End stage in 1956 – it also reached Broadway – and the production he directed starred Guinness (Bert Lahr on Broadway).

I’m generally immune to farce. Either the characters are idiots or the action is idiotic. Here the two main characters, Marcele (Gina Lollobrigida) and Benedict (Alec Guinness), in the same predicament, attract audience sympathy. Both are married to domineering partners and would just like a bit of fun, so ;plan to spend time in the titular hotel where rooms are rented by the hour. But they are equals, it’s not like Benedict is a fawning numbskull being run rings round by a haughty Marcele.

In the hands of a master farceur like Feydeau the plot, such as it is, works like a dream. The plot of course is to get a number of people into the same building and find reasons for them to want to avoid each other. Usually, such avoidance is triggered by sexual malfeasance.

So the last people the tentative lovers expect to run into (and have to avoid) is Marcele’s husband Henri (Robert Morley) – there on business, he’s a drain specialist – or Benedict’s friend Martin (Douglas Byng) with four daughters in tow, or, for that matter, Marcele’s forward maid Victoire (Ann Beach) there for an assignation with Henri’s nephew Maxime (Derek Fowlds), who, of course, equally fear discovery.

Adding to the ensuring chaos are an incompetent bellboy and an unwelcome police inspector (Leonard Rossiter). One of the joys of this piece is the polish of the plotting. It’s not dependent so much on the obvious avoidance techniques, but on other more tangible elements such as hot water bottles, chairs, tea, hats, and ghosts (the hotel is believed to be haunted). Many of the best laffs are based purely on character. Henri is so arrogant that, ending up in the wrong room, he assumes it’s the result of a thief that his usual items have gone missing and that the thief is so dumb that he’s left his hair on a hairbrush. There’s an in-joke in just watching the usually immoveable object that constitutes Robert Morley being forced to run at a pace.

There’s even a contemporary element – someone present commenting on proceedings – who turns out to be Georges Feydeau himself whose observations of the human frailties on show provide him with the makings of a hit play.

Stepping outside their usual screen personas, Guinness and Lollobrigida spark so well off each other it’s a surprise no one thought to team them again. Robert Morley (Topkapi, 1964) is, as always, pure comedy gold.

It’s a wonder, too, that Peter Glenville didn’t follow up with another movie comedy. There’s more inventiveness and visual dexterity here than in anything else he directed. You always had the impression in his dramas that he was desperate to “make a point” while here, relieved of such a necessity, he can indulge in frivolity. Jean-Claude Carriere (La Piscine/ The Swimming Pool, 1969) lent a hand to the screenplay.

An unexpected delight.

The World of Henry Orient (1964) ***

This is what happens when you have a Hayley Mills comedy without Hayley Mills – where she’s stuck between the mischievousness of a child and on the cusp of growing up – and a Peter Sellers comedy which doesn’t contain much Peter Sellers. And while what’s left is on the whole endearing in that innocent fashion you could still easily achieve in this Hollywood era, it still comes over, to a contemporary audience, as though there’s something missing and the usual Sellers antics are not sufficient to fill in the gaps.

For the record, Henry Orient (Peter Sellers) is a pompous self-absorbed concert pianist carrying on an affair with married woman Stella (Paula Prentiss), who’s so new to the adultery business it makes her skittish, only meeting up with her lover in Central Park in case, perchance, a suspicious husband is scoping out Orient’s apartment.

He believes a pair of pubescent teenage girls, the more outgoing Val (Tippy Walker), old enough to be seeing a psychiatrist on a daily basis, and the more reticent Gil (Merrie Spaeth), are spying on him because, well, they are, or at least they did, once, by chance when they were galloping around Central Park. So when they turn up in the audience at one of his concerts and bump into him, literally, in the street, paranoia gets the better of him.

While it’s true that Val has developed a crush on the pianist, the real extent of the girls’ growing up involves little more than romantic fantasies majoring on unlikely adventure and conversations about shaving their legs. We’re not talking about slapping on the make-up and wearing daring attire. Primarily, Orient appears as the adjunct to the lives of a pair of girls who have parental issues, Gil minus a divorced father (her fantasies mostly revolve around her dad coming back) and Val minus both parents, who though still married, have abandoned her while they travel around the world.

Most of the time we’re with the girls being kids, leaping over rocks and fire hydrants and the occasional small child on a tricycle, or duping grown-ups into thinking they have taken desperately ill in the street.

Unfortunately, all that drives the story is over-plotting. Orient and Val’s mum Isabel (Angela Lansbury), also of the adulterous persuasion, fall for each other only for the girls to uncover the affair, sending Orient fleeing the country, and triggering various kinds of parental-child reconciliation, before the girls get on with the proper business of growing up and boys and fashion.

Peter Sellers does his best, but this isn’t Pink Panther territory and he’s forgotten the rule about working with animals and children and there’s little any comedian has in his locker that can compete with cuteness. Tippy Walker made only two more movies though one was the lead in counter-culture drama Jennifer (1971). Merrie Spaeth dumped Hollywood and went into politics. Neither of the girls was a particularly good actress and the movie just relies on their personalities. You might be more inclined to wonder why Paula Prentiss (Man’s Favorite Sport, 1964) and Angela Lansbury (The Manchurian Candidate, 1962) were wasted in small parts.

Possibly the most interesting name here is director George Roy Hill (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, 1969) making his movie debut. Written by Nunnally Johnson (The Dirty Dozen, 1967) and his daughter Nora, based on her novel.

An oddity, and harmless enough, but not one you’re going to be demanding needs reassessment.

The Ravishing Idiot / Agent 38-22-36 (1964) ****

Hadn’t been aware that Brigitte Bardot (Viva Maria!, 1966) had made a spy picture. The original English title doesn’t indicate that. Given co-star Anthony Perkins (Psycho, 1960) had previously shown no predilection for comedy and that this was shaping up to be an espionage spoof, my heart sank.

Except for Jacques Tati – and he was only welcome in the arthouse – French comedies of this period did not translate, the antics of a Bourvil or Louis De Funes limited in their attraction. Spy spoofs suffered from over-playing or gormless characters.

So it is with some astonishment that I can report this French-made English-set number is an utter delight, full of terrific sight gags, buckets of charm and a storyline so daft it turns out to be seamless. There’s not one but two ravishing idiots – if you accept how the female gaze might look upon Anthony Perkins – and several other idiots who might not fall into the ravishing department.

Harry Compton (Anthony Perkins) is so smitten with seamstress-cum-model Penelope Lightfeather (Brigitte Bardot) that he over-runs his lunch break to catch a glimpse of her in a restaurant. Consequently, he is sacked from his job at a bank. Penelope is demoted to seamstress for being too truthful when modelling a dress for wealthy client Lady Barbara Dumfrey (Denise Provence).

Meanwhile, Barbara’s husband, Sir Reginald (Andre Luguet), a first-class upper-class dolt, is being set up as bait to catch the head of the Russian spy network in London. He has been entrusted with a fake report which MI5 hopes will lead them to the top Russian spy whose code name could be Aunt Fanny.

Meanwhile meanwhile, Harry turns out to be a Russian spy. He is given the job of stealing the fake plans. After Penelope reveals she is a member of the Communist Party, he enrols her in his scheming. Unfortunately, she will have to be denounced afterwards. Meanwhile meanwhile meanwhile, Barbara, believing the plans are some kind of birthday gift, has opened the safe to all her friends to show where they are hidden, not imagining that her household may contain a traitor. Indiscreet that she is, she’s even told Penelope the code to the safe.

It only remains for all the incompetents to express their idiocy in the widest possible manner. Naturally, misconceptions abound. An assassin is drugged by his elderly victim because she thinks he’s crazy. Penelope accuses the assassin, a cop, of being as useless a cop as Harry is of being a spy.

The visual gags are inspired, beginning with a credit sequence of bowler hats. The meet cute is under a table. Chaos ensues when a dog steals Penelope’s shoes. Getting a table in a restaurant is a version of musical chairs. When the door to the secret safe swings open Harry shuts it. A hovercraft version of a vacuum cleaner goes haywire. Bowties fall in ice buckets, dresses to the floor. Duffer Dumfrey leaves the spies alone in the room with the safe.

But there’s no wink to the audience. Nobody is playing it for laughs and therefore they come easily. Two twists at the end make sense of the title.

Brigitte Bardot displays a fine knack for comedy. Anthony Perkins makes the jump from awkward maladroit to charming.

Directed by Edourd Molinari (La Cage aux Folles, 1978) with a screenplay by Francois Billetdoux (La Gamberge, 1962) and Andre and Georges Tabet (Don’t Look Now..We’re Being Shot At, 1966) from the novel by Charles Exbrayat.

An effortless confection.

How to Save a Marriage…And Ruin Your Life (1968) ****

Eight years before Michelle Triola struck a legal blow for women’s rights in her ground-breaking “palimony” case against Lee Marvin, this highly under-rated comedy – with none of the highbrow or earnest pontificating usually associated with issue movies – points the world in that direction. This was high concept before the word was invented. Would have made a perfect bittersweet Doris Day-Rock Hudson concoction especially as mistaken identity is at the heart of the matter. And the final half-hour where feminist revenge kicks in achieves more in the male-comeuppance-game than either the meretricious Three in the Attic (1968) or the more high falutin’ Carnal Knowledge (1971).

On top of that it’s hilarious. It’s packed with one-liners, zingers and brilliant repartee and the second section where revenge unwinds is an absolute hoot. Given, star Dean Martin (5 Card Stud, 1968) could have worked a tad harder on his comic timing, While he leans away from the tough guy of his recent spate of westerns maybe he leans too far into his Rat Pack-style persona. But Eli Wallach (The Magnificent Seven, 1960) and Stella Stevens (Sol Madrid/ The Heroin Gang, 1968), scarcely known for their comedic chops, more than make up, with Stevens especially good at channelling her interior Doris Day when that star screwed up her eyes and started given the male what-for.

There’s a brilliant sub-plot revolving around a grave that is a delight all on its own. Screenwriter Stanley Shapiro was the genius behind Pillow Talk (1959), Lover Come Back (1961) and That Touch of Mink (1962) and he knew when to play it subtle, embrace slapstick or go straight for the jugular.

Call it “mistress-alimony” or “mistress pension” or just the unfairness of the male gaze when it decides that the recipient of its gaze now lacks the physical attributes which attracted the gaze in the first place. Swollen ankles, a thickening of the waist – and a decade of service as a mistress is over and the lady in question, a decade older, physical attributes diminished, comes away from the relationship with virtually nothing, certainly nothing like security or the alimony to which a divorced wife would be entitled.

How we get to this point is mistaken identity. Playboy commitment-phobe David Sloane (Dean Martin) tries to help resolve the marital problems of buddy Harry Hunter (Eli Wallach) by taking out of temptation’s way Harry’s mistress. Unfortunately he mixes up Harry’s real mistress Muriel Laszlo (Anne Jackson) with one of Harry’s very attractive employees Carol Corman (Stella Stevens), a woman of principle who refuses promotion when it means sleeping with her supervisor.

Unfortunately, Carol falls in love with David, especially after he spins her a line that he can’t marry again for fear of betraying his wife Edna, who died the day after they married. Equally unfortunately, Harry decides to make up with wife Mary (Katharine Bard) and take her on a second honeymoon. To ensure no backsliding, David helps Harry draft a nasty legal letter telling Muriel to quit the apartment.

Just about at the same time as David realizes he’s made a mistake over the mistress, Carol discovers that “Edna” is not David’s wife. Egged on by a disconsolate Muriel, who is being turfed out after years of adoring service, Carol takes revenge in hilarious fashion. She pretends to be the easily-seduced woman that David has convinced Harry she is, resulting in her pretending to sleep with David’s business partner and two of his chums, resulting in David, taking physical offence at such perceived betrayal, being jailed and locked up in a sanatorium. Then she launches a one-woman picket line outside his office, standing up for deserted mistresses everywhere.

Meanwhile, Harry’s second honeymoon lasts only a few hours and he tries to get Muriel back, whereupon the women are inspired to force him to sign a mistresses’ charter whereby they are compensated for loss of mistress-hood and heavily rewarded for remaining in the relationship.

The stars have a great time. Director Fielder Cook (Prudence and the Pill, 1968) can’t believe his luck in landing such a sassy script, co-written by Nate Monaster (That Touch of Mink).

Too funny to be tabbed a message picture but it certainly makes its points in style.

Wake Me When It’s Over (1960) ***

You could scarcely find a better example of the pleasant undemanding fare that constituted Hollywood’s bread-and-butter than this mild comedy. It takes 20 minutes to even get to first base, setting our hero on his journey to a distant land, and another 20 minutes before the narrative sets out a purpose, from which various romantic and dramatic complications can arise. It doesn’t boast any stars.

If top-billed Ernie Kovacs (North to Alaska, 1960), in his third movie (and first as the headline act) had any marquee attraction it was to a television audience following his output in various comedy shows, but those would carry no weight abroad. The second-billed Dick Shawn (A Very Special Favor, 1965) carried even less appeal. He was best known as a guest star liable to pop up on television shows. Both comics were an acquired taste, belonging to the avant-garde, so their styles were not guaranteed to necessarily go down well. Not like, for example, more established comedians such as Bob Hope or Jerry Lewis.

The public was even less familiar with female lead Margo Moore (The George Raft Story, 1961). She only made three movies in total, this being the middle one.

This probably was greenlit thanks to director Mervyn Leroy who had helmed two very successful service comedies, Mister Roberts (1955), replacing John Ford, and No Time for Sergeants (1958), both based on hit Broadway plays.

Through a bureaucratic error, unassuming Gus Brubaker (Dick Shawn) is re-drafted into the U.S. military and dispatched to a remote island near Japan where, this being in the aftermath of the Korean War, there is nothing for the soldiers to do except laze around. Capt Stark (Ernie Kovacs), the unit commander, is as intent on doing nothing as anyone else.

Brubaker hits on the idea of utilizing the natural hot springs of the area to build a hotel using materials acquired very cheaply in order to capitalize on this wonder, offering hot spa treatments to visitors and recuperating soldiers.

The soldiers, including resident medic Capt Farrington (Jack Warden), sign on, seeing it as a business opportunity, involvement in which, somehow, does not run contrary to military regulations. Just when you’re waiting for the picture to develop some snap – it’s not going to be romance between Brubaker and Ume (Nobu McCarthy), daughter of the local mayor, because he’s already happily married to Marge (Noreen Nash) – up pops Lt Nora McKay (Margo Moore), bringing a female sensibility to the project and in charge of hiring the 40 local women to staff Hotel Shima.

With Brubaker off limits, it’s up to Stark and McKay to make romantic hay, though that ultimately encounters complication. Building the hotel would be the modern equivalent of a corporate team building operation because the solders soon revert to proper military ways and bond.

But word misleadingly gets out that far from being known for its healing properties, the hotel is actually a front for sexual encounters and Brubaker is court-martialed, leading to all sorts of shenanigans. After being found guilty, he is let off the hook due to the original bureaucratic error that led him to be re-drafted in the first place.

Once it gets going – and that’s quite a long time – it turns into harmless enjoyment and the two stars have ample opportunity to show they are not run-of-the-mill comedians. There are some good visual jokes, The cans of beer Brubaker has dropped in a pool to cool explode to demonstrate the water is actually a hot spring, the MacGuffin of the piece. On finding himself on the island, Brubaker plans to immediately submit a request to leave. The filing cabinet for a simple request is half-full, the one seeking a transfer full and the one demanding he be viewed as a special case overflowing.

Charming in its own way. Didn’t turn anyone into a star but proved that Hollywood could make this kind of small picture – what we’d call a “sleeper” – with enough going on to maintain interest.

Three in the Attic (1968) *

Wish I’d never watched Two Gentlemen Sharing on Amazon Prime if this is the kind of “recommendation” its algorithms throw up. It would be easy enough to dismiss it as the kind of rubbish that American International was famed for – it turned into their biggest hit in a decade – except I’ve a sneaky feeling that it’s the kind of rubbish that could get greenlit these days and sold as a feminist revenge drama.

The fact that it is just so badly made doesn’t help even with a leavening of decent middle-range stars like Christopher Jones (Privilege, 1967) and Yvette Mimieux (Dark of the Sun / The Mercenaries, 1968). It is full of montages, jump cuts, voice overs, slow-mo and any other technical experimentation that might liven up the dross rather than going to the effort of writing scenes that explore character.

The stars might well have carried it except the plot defies belief. College lothario Paxton Quigley (Christopher Jones) has three girls on the leash – middle class Tobey (Yvette Mimieux), teacher Eulice (Judy Pace) who yearns to be a chic biker chick, and way out artist Janet (Maggie Thrett). Paxton has sex with each of them twice a week on rotation and spends his spare time boasting to his pal Jake (John Beck).

The girls find out about his triple dealing and decide to take their revenge. How? By throwing all his clothes out into the street? Smashing up his Yamaha? Mixing him up a concoction that’s going to put him in bed for a week? Taking a sledgehammer to his private parts?

Nope. They reckon the best revenge is to “give him a taste of his own medicine.” Which is to lock him up in an attic and force on him non-stop sex?

So, setting aside the element of kidnapping, coercion and female rape, wearing a guy out by subjecting him to what he loves doing seems bizarre in the extreme. This could only be the kind of notion dreamed up by a guy (step forward screenwriter Stephen Yafa, whose screenplay had won a competition). It’s like one of those old-fashioned parental discipline notions where your old man makes you smoke a cigar till you’re sick after he’s caught you taking a puff of a cigarette as a teenager.

It’s just too coarse for words. Sure, Paxton initially has commitment issues, Tobey trying to hustle him too quickly into an apartment-share.

Honestly, I’ve no idea how anybody got talked into making this. Directed by Richard Wilson (Invitation to a Gunfighter, 1964). There’s a Tarantino connection if you’re interested.

Hellish.