Cinéma Inhabituel for June 16-30

A Guide to the Rare and Unusual on TCM

By Ed Garea

STARS OF THE MONTH: PIN-UP GIRLS

June 16: A mixed evening begins at 8:00 pm with the tepid Cary Grant-Jayne Mansfield vehicle, Kiss Them For Me (Fox, 1957). Following at 10:00 pm is the celebrated Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (Fox, 1953), directed by Howard Hawks and starring Jane Russell and Marilyn Monroe at their gold-digging best. At 11:45, it’s Mamie Van Doren kicking loose in the psychotronic classic, Youth Runs Wild (WB, 1957). At 1:15 am, we find George Gobel co-starring with the beautiful Diana Dors in the failed I Married a Woman (Universal, 1958). At 2:45 am, it’s Bait from Columbia and anti-auteur Hugo Haas, starring Haas and Cleo Moore, in 1954 (See Below). Finally, at 4:15 am, it’s Brigitte Bardot in the role that made her famous, And God Created Woman (Cocinor, 1956).

June 24: We’re now into the ‘60s and ‘70s and begin at 8:00 pm with Raquel Welch in the caveman epic, One Million Years B.C. (Hammer, 1966). At 10:00 pm, Ursula Andress stars in the remake of H. Rider Haggard’s She (Hammer/MGM, 1965). At midnight, Farrah Fawcett has a supporting role in MGM’s disappointing 1975 sci-fi tale, Logan’s Run. Following at 2:15 am, it’s Jane Fonda in the sexy Barbarella (Paramount, 1968). And closing out the evening we find Bo Derek in 10 (Orion, 1979) as the girl of Dudley Moore’s dreams.

FRIDAY NIGHT SPOTLIGHT: SUMMER OF DARKNESS

June 19: Our evening of noir begins at 8:00 pm with Anthony Mann’s excellent Hollow Triumph (Eagle-Lion, 1948). Paul Henried shines as a crook on the run posing as a shrink. Joan Bennett co-stars. It’s followed at 9:45 by MGM’s police procedural Mystery Street (1950), starring Ricardo Montalban and Bruce Bennett. At 11:30 Montalban stars again, this time with George Murphy, in Anthony Mann’s harrowing Border Incident (MGM, 1949). At 1:15 am, it’s Spencer Tracy and Pat O’Brien in the disappointing The People Against O’Hara (MGM, 1951). And last, but certainly not least, it’s Michael Caine in the impressive Get Carter (MGM, 1971).

June 26: At 8:00 pm, it’s my pick of the night, The Mask of Dimitrios (WB, 1944). Peter Lorre is a mild-mannered writer after the facts on the life of notorious scoundrel Zachary Scott (in his film debut). Sydney Greenstreet is also on hand to spice things up. Following at 9:45, the interesting Berlin Express (RKO, 1948). Noted pacifist Paul Lukas is kidnapped in Germany by Nazi werewolves and secretary Merle Oberon raises an international team to rescue him. The next two films (11:30 and 1:15) were shown last month in TCM’s Friday Night salute to Orson Welles: The Stranger (RKO, 1946), and The Third Man (London Film, 1949). Closing out the evening is John Boorman’s gangster noir, Point Blank (MGM, 1967), starring Lee Marvin and Angie Dickinson, at 3:00 am.

ANTONIONI - June 21

Question: What happens when one tries to make art? Answer: He fails miserably. A case in point is director Michelangelo Antonioni’s The Red Desert (Rizzoli, 1964), a slow, meandering opus about the wife of a plant manager, played by his muse at the time, Monica Vitti, as she vacillates between sanity and madness. Critic Andrew Sarris referred to Antonioni as “Antoniennui,” “ennui” meaning boredom. The film does have its adherents and can been seen at 2:00 am.

The Antonioni fest continues at 4:00 am with L’Eclisse (Cineriz, 1962), also starring Vitti. She’s a translator, working in Rome, who has recently broken up with her boyfriend. Going downtown one day to see her mother, who is addicted to the stock market, she meets Pieto (Alain Delon), a broker, and they begin a relationship. However, she cannot abide his materialism. To say this is slow moving is an understatement. There are long stretches where no dialogue is passed, just Vitti and Delon looking at each other “meaningfully.” There are also many long scenes of Italian streets. It won’t take long to get the point that life is pretty much meaningless, that we are alienated and thus unable to communicate in a meaningful manner. All that in 126 minutes that only feels as if it’s 10 hours longer. It’s as arty-farty as arty-farty gets.

ANDERSON

Another hit or miss director with artistic pretensions is Lindsay Anderson. On June 23, TCM is showing his absurdist musical, O Lucky Man! (WB, 1973). The film is a musical allegory about the trap of capitalism and follows the adventures of a young, ambitious coffee salesman (Malcolm McDowell) assigned to Northern England when the previous salesman suddenly disappears. Supposedly it’s based on the real-life experiences of McDowell when he sold coffee for a living and he began working on the idea as a follow-up to his star-making turn in Anderson’s if…. (1968), which had won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. It opened to middling to negative reviews, as most critics agreed that its goal was beyond its reach. But in recent years it has become something of a cult item. Tune in and judge for yourself.

FRENCH NEW WAVE DOUBLE FEATURE - JUNE 28

Beginning at the usual time of 2:00 am, TCM is airing a double feature by two of the most renowned directors of the French New Wave: Jean-Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut with two of their best films.

Godard leads off with Band of Outsiders (Bande a part, Columbia Films, 1964). It’s a simple plot: Franz and Arthur (Sami Frey and Claude Brasseur), two petty crooks enamored with Hollywood B-crime flicks, meet naïve, young Odile (Anna Karina) in their English language class, to join them in a robbery. They are immediately taken with her and spend their time making passes when not amusing each other with impressions of movie bad guys. When she lets slip that she lives with benefactors in Joinville, and that one of them, a Mr. Stolz, keeps a pile of 10,000 francs unlocked in his room, they pressure her to assist them in a burglary. It’s a wonderfully disjointed film noted especially for its “Madison dance” number. While at a café, the trio suddenly breaks into an impromptu dance by the jukebox. It is an incredibly hypnotic scene and stands up well to repeated viewings; in fact most people I know who have seen it play the dance sequence more than once. Watch their initial joy turn to slight despair, and finally to a sort of alienation as the energy of the dance winds down. And, if it looks familiar, take into account that Quentin Tarantino copied the scene for his Pulp Fiction, as John Travolta and Uma Thurman do their own impromptu dance at a retro burger café to the music of Chuck Berry. But take it from me: Karina, Frey and Brasseur do it better ... much, much better. In a later interview, Godard said that the dance was rehearsed for two weeks, three times each week. As neither Sami nor Claude knew how to dance, they had to invent the steps. Godard said it was a dance with an open, line figure. It’s a parade for the camera, for the audience.

Amazingly, the film was a flop with both critics and public when released. Many accused Godard of selling out, which was sheer nonsense. They failed to realize that what Godard was doing was analogous to Camus taking an ordinary crime novel (it was based on the pulp crime novel Fools’ Gold by Dolores Hitchens) and recasting in his terms, spotlighting the beauty, absurdity, and romance that made his own novels so special. Godard is doing nothing less in this film than taking a noir and recreating it in his own terms, with his own associations and in his own world, turning it into a tragicomedy of sorts with its resultant charm.

Band of Outsiders was filmed in 25 days. Cinematographer Raoul Coutard made stunning use of the wintry, gray skies in the Parisian suburb of Bastille and at deserted points along the Marne River. The result is a bleak, pointless landscape broken only by the exuberance of the leads. It is my favorite Godard film, made back in the days when he was making coherent films and is a perfect stage for the heartbreaking beauty and vulnerability of Karina.

Immediately following at 3:45 am is Truffaut’s Jules and Jim (Cinedis, 1962). Based on the novel of the same name by Henri-Pierre Roche, it’s the story of two college friends (Oskar Warner and Henri Serre) and the beautiful, impulsive woman (Jeanne Moreau) who comes between them. It’s a beautifully told story of three people in love and how that love does not affect their friendship, and how the relationship of the three evolves over the years until its heartbreaking conclusion. My partner, David Skolnick, absolutely loves this movie, even to the point of having the movie’s poster in his office. So for further confirmation of why it is an Essential, look to David’s Best Bets for June 23-30. He’ll have it in there.

PSYCHOTRONICA AND THE B-HIVE

June 17: Hugo Haas finally comes to TCM! Hugo Haas was a successful director/writer with Prague’s National Theater and later in films. The German takeover of his beloved Czechoslovakia forced the Jewish Haas into exile and he landed in America, where he became a moderately successful character actor. Beginning in 1951 he wrote, directed and produced a series of films that can only described as unusual. With lurid titles like Pickup, Thy Neighbor’s Wife, Bait, and The Other Woman, his films tilted toward the sensational, but were ultimately done in by a combination of lousy acting, rotten directing and totally cheesy production values. Each of them can be said to be a riff on The Blue Angel; the typical Haas plot is that of an older, respectable and lonely man who is seduced and ultimately ruined by a much younger trollop. Time has not been kind to Haas. In this electronic age of VHS and DVD, while other anti-auteurs such as Ed Wood, Jr., Roger Corman, Jess Franco, Herschell G Lewis, Doris Wishman, and Al Adamson, Haas has been almost totally neglected. The only critic to cover him was Michael Weldon in The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film. Now we get a chance to see one of his works, with Bait airing at 2:45 am. An added incentive to watch is that the film also stars that noted thespian, John Agar. For me, Bait will bring back childhood memories, for my mother, sad to admit, was a fan of his films.

June 18: Bugging Out: It’s a night of B-movie monsters, in this case, insects, beginning at 8 pm with The Fly (Fox, 1958). The classic B-monster Mothra follows at 9:45, and then it’s the classic combination of Sci-Fi, noir and Red Scare known as Them! (WB, 1954). At 1:30 am, it’s Roger Corman’s The Wasp Woman (Allied Artists, 1959), the cheesy The Swarm (WB, 1978), and finally the low-budget The Cosmic Monsters (DCA, 1958).

June 20: Tune in for the rarely shown The Face Behind The Mask (Columbia, 1941), starring Peter Lorre as Janos Szabo, a Hungarian immigrant to dreams of a better life while working as a dishwasher until a fire in his rooming house disfigures him. Unable to find work, a chance meeting with criminal George E. Stone gives Lorre a new lease on life, and with the help of a life-like rubber mask, he becomes a master criminal. But his life changes once again when he meets the blind Evelyn Keyes and falls in love, marrying her. Even though it’s an extremely low-budget film, the direction by Robert Florey combined with one of Lorre’s best performances raise this from a mere programmer into a film to see.

June 28: A Godzilla double feature is on tap beginning at 8:00 pm with 1970’s Godzilla vs. Monster Zero. It seems that a new planet, dubbed Planet X, has been discovered in the orbit of Jupiter. Astronauts Nick Adams and Akira Takarada are sent to the planet to check it out. They meet up with the planet’s ruler, the Controller (Yoshio Tsuchiya in a performance for the ages – if you happen to like aged ham). The citizens of Planet X have to live underground because Big Old Nasty Ghidorah, known to the citizens as “Monster Zero” is terrorizing the surface. But if only Nick and Akira will lend the denizens Godzilla and Rodan so they can rid their planet of King Ghidorah, the Controller will eradicate all disease on Earth. And so the deal is made. Suckers! The Contoller’s real plan is to program the monsters to take over the Earth. BWA-HA-HA! And it’s Mothra to the rescue.

Godzilla, King of the Monsters, the 1956 Americanization of the original 1954 Gojira, follows at 10:00 pm. C'mon TCM, quit fooling around and give us the original. You’re done it before, and once one has seen the original, patience with the American adaptation quickly becomes strained. What’s the matter? Afraid we can’t read subtitles?

June 29: Zombies were always a hot item on the horror menu, so why not a zombie comedy? Failing to give us a decent film, RKO instead presented us with 1945’s Zombies on Broadway (12:30 pm), with the inept team of Wally Brown and Alan Carney. The boys are Broadway press agents ordered by their gangster boss (Sheldon Leonard) to produce a real zombie for the grand opening of his new nightclub, “The Zombie Hut.” They journey to the island of San Sebastian where they run into Bela Lugosi, who is just happening to be working on a formula to create – are you ready? – the perfect zombie. And so he does with the help of Alan Carney. If you’re a Lugosi completist, this is for you. If, on the other hand, you’re a Brown and Carney completist – then there is no hope for you.

BOMBA

June 20: In Bomba and the Jungle Girl (1952) we learn something about the origins of Bomba himself. As he searches for his parents he runs across Linda Ward and her father, who help him with the search. Eventually he finds the remains of his parents and learns who murdered them.

June 27: Bomba becomes involved with a group of moviemakers who have arrived in his neck of the woods to make a film about jungle wildlife in Safari Drums (1953), with lots and lots of stock footage.

NEW BATMAN SEQUEL

On June 20, the 1943 Batman serial ends with “Doom of the Rising Sun,” in which the evil Dr. Daka (J. Carroll Naish) gets his, sleeping with the crocodiles. Premiering on June 27 will be Columbia’s Batman and Robin (1949), in which the Dynamic Duo face off against the Wizard (Leonard Pewnn), a hooded villain with an electrical device which controls cars and a desire to set challenges for the duo. This time around it’s Robert Lowery as the Caped Crusader, with Johnny Duncan play the Boy Wonder. The supporting cast is also expanded, with Jane Adams (House of Dracula) as reporter Vicki Vale and the great Lyle Talbot as Commissioner Gordon. In fact, the serial is worth seeing for Talbot alone. As it was produced by “Jungle “Sam Katzman, don’t look for any added extras. In fact cheapo Sam didn’t even give them a Batmobile, they had to rely on a 1949 Mercury to get around.

TCM TiVo Alert for June 15-22

TCM TiVo ALERT

For 

June 15–June 22

DAVID’S BEST BETS:

HERE COMES MR. JORDAN (June 20, 8:00 pm): A very funny and clever film about a boxer/amateur pilot Joe Pendleton (played by the charming Robert Montgomery) who crashes his plane and is mistakenly taken to heaven by angel. He survives, but the angel doesn't want him to suffer. A check by the angel's boss, Mr. Jordan (played by the equally charming Claude Rains) show Pendleton is correct. But by the time they go to put him back in his body, it's too late. The body has been cremated. The angels have to find Pendleton another body – one that can be a champion boxer. They find a rich guy who is killed by his wife and his personal assistant who are lovers. This 1941 movie is a joy to watch. Warren Beatty uses the exact same story (except he's a quarterback for the then-Los Angeles Rams) with many of the same character names in the excellent Heaven Can Wait in 1978.

STEAMBOAT BILL, JR. (June 21, 8:00 pm): Buster Keaton's last independent silent film – and one of the last silent films he ever made – is the legendary actor at his best. The stunts are stunning, including one of the most memorable in cinematic history. The facade of a house falls forward with Keaton, who is in front of it, saved by perfectly hitting his mark standing where the empty third-story window lands. It is an insane stunt that could have easily killed Keaton. Don't try this at home, kids. It's a perfect example of Keaton's physical comedic style. Keaton is basically the entire movie as the plot is paper-thin. Keaton is the small college-graduate son of a riverboat captain, who's about to lose his broken-down paddle steamer and livelihood to a wealthy rival. Keaton's character is in love with the daughter of his father's rival. Besides the physical comedy, there's some other exceptionally funny moments in the film such as Keaton attempting to get his father out of jail by giving him a loaf of bread with tools obviously inside. It's a silent film classic.

ED’S BEST BETS:

MYSTERY STREET (June 19, 9:45 pm): This is a neat little B-thriller that stands out today as one of the first procedural police dramas from Hollywood. Starring Ricardo Montalban as a Cape Cod detective and Bruce Bennett as a Harvard professor, it follows the discovery of the remains of a murdered B-girl on a Cape Cod beach straight through to the arrest of her killer. It’s an early exercise in forensic science as they trace the clues step-by-step, interview witnesses, and even overcome class prejudice to finally lead them to the murderer. It’s intelligent, well written and expertly acted. Look for Elsa Lanchester as an eccentric landlady.

RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY (June 20, 6:00 pm): Randolph Scott, Joel McCrea and director Sam Peckinpah make for a winning combination in this Western about two ex-lawmen who have fallen on hard times and agree to accompany a gold shipment from a mine to the town below. The temptation to steal the hoard gets the better of one and leads to a deadly rift between the two former close friends. And if that weren’t enough, the situation is further complicated by the presence of a young woman named Elsa (Mariette Hartley), who married one of the miners but changed her mind and fled, joining up with Scott and McCrea. This enrages the miner she wed, and he and his brother head out to get her back, leading to a violent conclusion. Containing great dialogue, tense situations and a director who never lets up, this is one to see.

WE DISAGREE ON ... MEAN STREETS (June 20, 3:45 am)

ED: A-. This is the film that made critics sit up and take notice of young Martin Scorsese. It has all the hallmarks of a Scorsese film: expressionistic lighting, fluid camerawork, sudden outbursts of violence, and that wonderful eclectic soundtrack. Scorsese would refine these techniques over time, but Mean Streets contains that raw, passionate energy of youth. It’s also a claustrophobic film, set in the confined world of Little Italy, with its main character, Charlie (a superb performance by Harvey Keitel), a lower rank Mafioso who inhabits a dark world of pool halls, cinemas, and bars. We first see him coming out of confession, rather unhappy with his penance. But as we follow him into the bar, symbolically lit in red, and see his chaotic, violent friend, Johnny Boy (another winning performance from Robert DeNiro) stroll in with “Jumping Jack Flash” in the background, we immediately realize that Johnny Boy is the personification of Charlie’s penance. “You send me this, Lord,” Charlie says. Stay tuned for the argument between the two over Johnny Boy’s debts in the back room. Though more than a bit raw, it shows the Scorsese yet to come. Mean Streets is a wonderful character study of a man trapped in his environment with no way out, torn between the entreaties of his girlfriend to leave the life behind and move away with her, and his loyalty to his uncle. One also gets a distinct whiff of the personal in the film, which only adds to its charm. It’s a brilliant film, and though flawed, it’s still better than most directors in their prime.

DAVID: B-. My biggest issue with Mean Streets is I saw it for the first time about six months ago. Having heard glowing praise – it's on several lists of the greatest films of all-time – I expected to be blown away by this movie. It's good, even very good, but I can't consider it great. I'm sure it was ahead of its time when it was released in 1973, and the talents of director Martin Scorsese and actors Robert DeNiro and Harvey Keitel are obvious. But having seen so many other Scorsese-DeNiro films, this one just doesn't measure up to Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, The King of Comedy and Goodfellas, for examples. I'm not going to bother to mention other films directed by Scorsese and/or starring DeNiro and Keitel that are better than Mean Streets as I think you get my point. Ed's description of this film as "more than a bit raw" and "flawed" are accurate. It has moments of brilliance quickly followed by scenes that drag and seem pointless. It's unpolished, which isn't a bad thing, but it comes across at times as lacking focus. While the soundtrack is excellent, there's far too much music in the movie to the point of distraction. Overall, the film is compelling and interesting, the lead actors are fantastic and Scorsese does an admirable job directing just his third film. But, simply put, it could have been better.

For the complete list of films on the TCM TiVo Alert, click here.

Can't Stop the Music

Train Wreck Cinema

Can't Stand the Music

By David Skolnick

Can't Stop the Music (EMI Films, 1980) – Director: Nancy Walker. Writers: Allan Carr and Bronte Woodard. Stars: The Village People, Valerie Perrine, Steve Guttenberg, Bruce Jenner, Paul Sand, Tammy Grimes, & Marilyn Sokol. Color, 124 minutes.

While there are many contenders, for me Can't Stop the Music is the best worst film ever made. It features a bad storyline, bad directing, bad music, bad editing, and awful lead actors. Also, the film's timing couldn't have been worse. Yet many years after it was released and bombed at the box office, there is something endearing about the movie.

Supposedly it’s loosely based on how the Village People were formed. But it's about as historically accurate as 1979's The Muppet Movie is about the origins of Kermit the Frog and friends.

Filming on Can't Stop the Music (originally to be called Discoland – Where the Music Never Ends!) began in May 1979 as disco music was on the verge of taking a historic nosedive. In July of that year, the infamous “Disco Demolition Night” occurred. The event featured a large box of disco records blown up between games of a White Sox double-header at Comiskey Park in Chicago, leading to a riot.

Can't Stop the Music was released June 20, 1980. A day later, “Funkytown” by Lipps, Inc. would spend its last day as the nation's Number 1 single. It would be the last disco song to ever reach the top of the charts. Disco had a great run, dominating pop music from mid-1975 to the genre's dying days in mid-1980. Its fall was unpleasant for all involved. For example, the Bee Gees, one of music's greatest bands, rode the disco bandwagon mightier than any other established group. When disco died, the Bee Gees went from being the biggest band in the world to writing and producing for other musicians because no one wanted to hear them. They became music outcasts for about a decade despite their impressive catalog of songs before the disco craze. It was a classic case of those who live by the boogie, die by the boogie.

As this film wrapped up, Allan Carr, who produced and co-wrote Can't Stop the Music, saw the potential for a huge flop. He changed the name of the film and supposedly ordered that about $10 million be spent on promoting the movie that cost about $10 million to make. But it was a waste of money. Film critics hated it and disco fans – or anyone who went to the movies – stayed away. The movie – called “Can't Stand the Music” by some of its detractors – made $2 million at the box office. Along with Xanadu, it was the inspiration for the Golden Raspberry Awards, and was the deserving “winner” of the Raspberry's first Worst Picture award.

Work on the movie got off to a horrible start when Victor Willis, the cop, quit the Village People during pre-production. Willis was the band's lead singer and co-wrote most of their best-known songs. While he rarely complained about the band's gay image, Willis, who was married at the time to Phylicia Ayres-Allen – later Phylicia Rashad and best known as Bill Cosby's TV wife on The Cosby Show – wanted to make it clear he was straight. He pushed for his then wife to play his girlfriend in the movie. The rest of the band, except leatherman Glenn Hughes, was gay. When Willis quit the band and the film, his wife left the movie too. Ray Simpson, who was a backup singer for years for the Village People, was pushed to the forefront as the group's lead, and took Willis spot in the film. On his best day, Simpson couldn't match Willis' vocals and charisma, and couldn't write songs like the band's former frontman.

The movie opens with Jack Morell (Guttenberg) working as a record store clerk while on roller skates. His boss wants Jack to stay late for inventory, but he can't as his big break await him as the DJ of a discotheque that night. Jack has recorded a song. He wants to play it at the club and get discovered. His name is similar to Jacques Morali, who created the Village People and co-wrote most of their big songs with Willis.

Jack quits and roller-boogies his way out of the store and down the middle of the streets of Manhattan to the opening titles. He does a couple of spin moves and repeatedly raises his hands above his head for no apparent reason. Motorists honk their horns for this idiot to get out of the street, but none are kind enough to the viewing audience to run him over. Amazingly, this isn't even close to being the movie's worst scene. It's impossible to write everything wrong with this film, as I can't even do justice to everything wrong with the opening credits. Besides the silly dancing on skates and hand-raising, much of the opening credits are done using a cheap triple-screen camera trick.

For some unknown reason, Nancy Walker, Rhoda Morgenstern's mother on The Mary Tyler Moore Show and the Rhoda spinoff, was chosen to direct this movie. Walker had a few TV directing credits, largely for the two shows previously mentioned, before this. This would be the first and last movie she'd ever direct. The script was awful, but her inexperience with filmmaking and bad actors is on full display in this movie. Can you imagine going from working with Ed Asner, Ted Knight and Mary Tyler Moore to Guttenberg, a group of disco musicians and an Olympic gold medalist making his acting debut? Walker was definitely in over her head – though as she wasn't even five-feet tall that's not saying much. Supposedly she and Perrine had huge personality clashes and after a while, Walker stopped directing any scenes with the actress. With Perrine in nearly every scene, I wonder how much of this movie Walker actually directed.

After the credits are done, Jack goes back to his rather nice Manhattan apartment. He lives with Sam Simpson (Perrine), a recently retired supermodel. The two are friends, and she is very supportive of his music career, but is also concerned about his future. Jack's song, “Samantha,” goes over big at the club, called the Saddle Tramps. Felipe Rose (the Indian) lives near Sam and works at the club. We also get to see Randy Jones (the cowboy) and David Hodo (the construction worker) dance at the club. While they're gay, the three are portrayed as totally straight. There are several subtle and not-so-subtle gay moments in the film, but they don't involve any of the members of the group.

Sam loves Jack's song and has him make a demo tape so she can shop it around to her friends in the music business. While Jack is making the tape, and dancing like someone is squeezing his testicles with a pair of pliers, Sam gets a call from her close friend Lulu (Sokol), who works as the assistant to Sydney (Grimes), Sam's former agent.

Lulu is the spitting image of Tim Curry's Dr. Frank-N-Furter in The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Sydney wants Sam to come out of retirement to do a milk commercial. Sam says no because “the 70s are dead and gone. The 80s are going to be something wonderfully new and different, and so am I.” She's somewhat correct as the 80s saw the death of disco and her acting career.

Upon hearing Jack's demo, Sam likes the songs, but hates his voice. She works to recruit singers, quickly getting the Indian, the cowboy and the construction worker to agree to come to her house that night for dinner and to sing. One of the most bizarre scenes has the construction worker, who sings on TV commercials, daydreaming of being chased by sex-hungry women as he performs “I Love You to Death.”

Our first glimpse of Jenner happens almost 30 minutes into the movie. Had he never shown up, we'd have no objection. He plays Ron White, an uptight tax lawyer who moved to New York City from St. Louis. He's mugged by an armed elderly lady who takes his watch, class ring, wallet and Phi Beta Kappa key, but let's him keep a cake he has with him. The movie moves to Sam's house. The three singing recruits are there with Jack teaching them the words to “Magic Night,” with Lulu getting overheated by the Indian. He returns the flirtation probably thinking Lulu is a transvestite. Ron, angry about getting mugged, shows up at Sam's with the cake. See if this makes any sense: Ron personally delivers the cake to Sam as a present from her sister, his former neighbor in St. Louis. That means the cake traveled for hours if we assume Ron just got off a plane and headed to Sam's home. Talk about a desperate plot reach to get Sam and Ron together.

Accompanied by a friend of Sam is Simpson, the cop, who was found while he was giving singing parking tickets. Adding to the mayhem/mess is Jack's mother (played by June Havoc, whose older sister was Gypsy Rose Lee). After eating, the four singers somehow do a near-perfect first take of the song they learned a few minutes ago. They also do an awful lip synching job. It's typical of the poor editing throughout the film, particularly during the music numbers. Ron leaves in a huff, upset about the company Sam keeps. Is Ron a homophobe? That's impossible as no one is supposed to be gay.

The next day, Sam has no success selling the demo and decides she'll go to see Steve Waits (Sand), an ex-boyfriend and head of Marrakech Records. This is a play on Casablanca Records, the Village People's label and the leading record company of the disco era as well as the label for KISS. Sam wears a low-cut dress and while Steve is very pleased to see her, he can't get off the phone, which was the reason they broke up. Steve agrees to give Sam's band studio time, primarily because he wants to get busy with her. Sand isn't bad as the frenzied music executive, and is one of the very few bright spots among the actors in the movie.

Sam meets Ron again as he's one of Steve's tax attorneys. She's still bothered by Ron leaving the night before, but agrees to take him home as he has a nice body even though he's a total yutz. Ron fails to hail a cab, and you can see it coming a mile away – Sam shows some leg like Claudette Colbert did in It Happened One Night and a couple of taxis stop. Don't worry, we get to see a lot more than her leg later. While at Sam's place, Ron spills lasagna on his pants so off they go. After agreeing to let her use his law office the next day to find a couple of other singers to fill out the group, Ron and Sam end up in bed.

At the audition, Alex Briley (the soldier) is added with Hughes (leatherman) taking the final spot beating out a hatchet juggler, a guy on stilts and a flaming baton twirler. Hughes' story is one of the few true parts of the film. Like his character, Hughes was a tollbooth worker when he answered an ad seeking singers to join the Village People. He gets the job in the movie by singing “Danny Boy” on top of a piano. (See it here.) To see him with that mustache, the hairiest chest known to mankind and all that leather is such a funny sight.

Kicked out of the law office for disrupting work, Ron quits his job to become the Village People's lawyer. The group's got so many hangers-on and they haven't worked together even once. With nowhere to rehearse, Ron, who is in a cut-off shirt and short-shorts, takes Sam, Jack and the group to the YMCA. This is one of the movie's strangest scenes, which is saying a lot. Viewers get a lot out of this segment: a very bad rendition of “YMCA,” the only known Village People song they perform in the movie; some brief male full-frontal nudity; some not-so-brief male full-rear nudity; plenty of ridiculous near-naked homoerotic choreography of men diving, boxing, wrestling, and playing volleyball; a couple of brief topless moments of Perrine in a hot tub; Jenner doing athletic stuff in slow motion such as jumping hurdles and slam-dunking a basketball; and silly camera tricks including showing 24 mini-screens. A male friend of mine has a great story about this movie and specifically this scene. A teenager at the time, he saw the film on HBO. Before it began, he was pleased to see it featured nudity. While you see Perrine's boobs for a few seconds, the longer nudity parts are of guys during the “YMCA” number, much to his disappointment.

The group is next in the studio for the demo with Steve watching. Jack tells him, “This is the sound of the 80s.” Uhh, not even close. When Steve sees the band's outfits he delivers probably the best line in the film: “I hate Halloween.” The band underwhelms as the choreography is awful and the song, “Liberation,” is terrible. Steve says the band isn't good, but offers a contract for a small amount of money as he still has the hots for Sam, who doesn't feel the same and rejects the offer.

Jack and Ron decide the best way to get discovered is to hold a “pay party.” They want to rent a vacant building, charge people $20 each, and have a DJ and live music with the Village People as the main act. Not wanting to use her savings to fund the party, Sam agrees to do the milk commercial as long as the Village People are in it with her. And with that we get the funniest – I don't know if it's intentional or not – scene in the entire film. Dressed in white and silver, the Village People sing “Milkshake,” with Perrine and a bunch of others dancing in a 3½-minute commercial that pays tribute to, well, milkshakes. I can't properly do justice to this segment so watch it here.

The milk industry isn't too keen on the ad as it may be “too controversial for their American family image.” The money from the commercial is going to take a while to collect. No money means the pay-party idea is dead. While not addressed, how can anyone afford to have a 3½-minute commercial air on TV?

Ron's mother (Barbara Rush) saves the day. The rich socialite is putting on a charity event in San Francisco and offers to have the group perform. But there is trouble in paradise. Sam invites Steve to San Francisco under the guise of a romantic weekend, which upsets Ron, who breaks it off with her. Instead of Sam, Jack and his mom get on Steve's plane. Jack's mom signs a deal with Steve while plying him with kreplach. Not that this movie makes much sense, but Steve already saw the group bomb at the demo so why would he sign them to what ends up being a lucrative contract including merchandising rights in Japan?

Back in San Francisco, the band is waiting to make their big debut. The members are on edge with Hughes banging his head against the wall, repeatedly saying, “Leathermen don't get nervous.” They hit the stage and sing “Can't Stop the Music” to an appreciative audience. The credits begin to roll as we assume they become rich and famous. In reality, the film is a train wreck and a colossal failure, and the group's time in the spotlight is over.

Afterwords

The fallout from this film was epic.

Disco died around the time of this movie's release, and this film did nothing to revive it. While there's been nostalgia for it, disco never made a comeback.

With the death of disco, the Village People are strictly small-time performers. Willis returned to the group a couple of times after his failed solo career. Hughes died of lung cancer (he was a smoker) in 2001 at the age of 50. He was buried in his leatherman outfit.

Perrine, who was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar for her role in 1974's Lenny as Lenny Bruce's wife, saw her film career fizzle after Can't Stop the Music. She worked consistently, but not as a star and in nothing memorable.

This was Walker's only film credit as a director. She returned to acting though didn't do much after this film bombed. She made more Bounty paper towel commercials – “the quicker picker upper” – as Rosie the waitress. She was nominated for an Emmy for her guest appearance as Sophia's sister on The Golden Girls. She died in 1992 at the age of 69 of lung cancer, just like Hughes.

Sand worked regularly as a guest star on numerous TV shows, but never made it big as an actor.

This was the only film in which Jenner didn't play himself. The 1976 Olympic decathlon gold-medal winner did some TV shows. He gained notoriety as the stepfather to the Kardashians and more recently for his transition to a woman, Caitlyn.

Carr next film was another disaster, Grease 2. He had success on Broadway, winning a Tony for Best Musical for The Birdcage. He tried to top the colossal failure of Can't Stop the Music in 1989 as producer of the Academy Awards show. He had an actress dress as Snow White team up with Rob Lowe to sing a parody to the tune of “Proud Mary.” For that, Disney sued him. Carr died in 1999 of liver cancer at the age of 62.

Guttenberg was the only actor from Can't Stop the Music to move on to bigger, but not really better, things. He had a successful career in a series of awful movies including four Police Academy movies, two Cocoons, Three Men and a Baby and a sequel to that. His curious longevity in film with little talent was part of a 1995 episode of The Simpsons. The song of the Stonecutters, a secret fraternal organization of which Homer joins, includes the line, “Who makes Steve Guttenberg a star? We do. We do.”

As for the film itself, while Can't Stop the Music completely bombed at the box office and was the inspiration for the Golden Raspberry Awards given to the worst films and actors, it has become a cult favorite. The film is considered high camp and unintentionally hysterical. I've seen it at least a dozen times and am still amazed that something this bad was not only created but efforts were made to share it with the world. If you've got Netflix, you can watch it right now – and “do the milkshake!”

I'll See You in My Dreams

Dinner and a Movie

Good Night, Sweet Prince

By Steve Herte 

I began this vacation week with an idea of what I wanted to do and accomplish. Anyone who has an actual attic knows what can accumulate over time. My basement is the equivalent to an attic with 50 years of “stuff.” It was like a treasure hunt where I didn’t expect to find anything, but things my Dad thought were lost forever turned up and that made it all worthwhile. That, plus the fact space that was cleared up, making it safer to walk there, and the knowledge of everything still there will make further clearing out easier. It was a good first step.

As for playtime, I sang at karaoke in my usual haunt and joined some friends to sing at a private place two days later.

The week had a lot of enjoyable times despite the rainy weather. I didn’t get to the zoo, but I did find my old Odyssey game. I capped it all with a movie featuring actors I respect and depend on to give great performances and a restaurant that surprised as well as delighted. Enjoy!

I’ll See You in My Dreams (Bleecker Street Media, 2015) - Director: Brett Haley. Writers: Marc Basch, Brett Haley. Stars: Blythe Danner, Martin Starr, Sam Elliott, Rhea Perlman, Mary Kay Place, June Squibb, Mark Adair-Rios, Malin Akerman, Aarti Mann, and Patricia Belcher. Color, 92 minutes, PG-13.

Carol Petersen (Danner) lost her husband Bill in a plane crash 21 years ago and she has a routine. She wakes up, greets her now 14-year-old yellow lab Hazel, goes through her day, and plays bridge with girlfriends Sally (Perlman), Rona (Place) and Georgina (Squibb) at Royal Oaks Senior Residence. The girls are all concerned with Carol living alone in her house without a man and are always trying to hook her up. They even talk her into a “speed dating” session at the residence later on.

Then one morning everything’s different. Hazel is no longer at the foot of her bed and has to be taken to the veterinarian for the last time. Carol is devastated.

She then finds her pool-cleaning man replaced by the young, handsome, bearded Lloyd (Starr). This is distracting enough, but when a large, black rat makes its appearance in her home and she spends the night on her patio couch, Lloyd arrives the next morning thinking she passed away. This begins their friendship as she asks him to investigate her house to see if the rat is still prowling about. He finds nothing but she’s grateful he searched.

The exterminator (Adair-Rios) also finds nothing the next day and tells her that this species is native to this area of California and they sometimes are in trees (wouldn’t make me more confident – nor would I sleep outdoors with this knowledge). Still nervous, when Lloyd comes to clean her pool again, she asks him in for a drink and conversation. One drink leads to another and Lloyd falls asleep on her couch.

The next morning girlfriend Rona arrives delivering Royal Oaks brochures and sees Lloyd leaving Carol’s place. What else can she think? “You’re a cougar and I’m proud of you!” she tells the bewildered Carol. The next bridge game finds Carol quieter than usual and Rona grinning broadly.

Then one day at lunch with Sally, Carol notices an intriguing man at a nearby table with a full head of white hair and mustache to match, but with big black eyebrows (Hollywood!) and an unlit cigar clenched in his teeth. Sally wants to find out who he is after concluding that Carol is interested, but Carol reins her in. Later, in the parking lot Bill (Elliott) drives by and stops. Carol is dumbfounded but lets him talk her into giving him her phone number (totally memorized, not written down).

Carol needs to talk to Lloyd and agrees to go to a karaoke bar with him. He sings a passable version of Tiffany’s cover of “I Think We’re Alone Now” (originally by Tommy James and the Shondells), and she performs a sensitive and sweet “Cry Me A River,” which brings raves and applause. They learn more about each other and their friendship grows.

Carol’s daughter, Katherine “Kath” Petersen (Akerman), wants to pay Mom a visit and leaves her a message on her answering machine. Along with her message are two from Bill. She agrees to meet him and he takes her out on his boat – strangely named “So What?” The meeting becomes a day together and the relationship grows. Carol almost forgets about her daughter’s visit.

Carol’s second date with Bill ends with an intimate night (the first in a long time for both of them) and the two are having breakfast when who should comes to the door but Lloyd. An awkward scene occurs as Bill appears at the door and invites Lloyd in for breakfast, but Lloyd retreats. Kath arrives in the afternoon and they go to lunch. Kath senses that Mom is different and Carol confesses to dating Bill. Kath is overjoyed and wants to meet him. Carol knows that Bill feels the same.

Then comes the ominous phone call from Sally. Carol and Kath rush to the hospital but, because they’re not relatives, they are not allowed to see Bill. They leave Carol’s number with the receptionist and learn the grim news later on.

And what about Mr. Rat? He makes two more appearances, resulting in another patio-sleeping night for Carol and ultimately, his capture by Lloyd under a glass bowl. Lloyd empathizes with Carol’s situation and listens to her story. Having learned on their karaoke date that Carol was a part of a band in her younger days, Lloyd tells her he wrote a song. She finds a ukulele and he sings “I’ll See You in My Dreams” to her. Carol is comforted (and changed).

The next bridge game she agrees to spontaneously cruise to Iceland with Sally and soon after that she goes to the animal shelter and adopts 10-year old Beenie, a dog “nobody else wanted” per the keeper, played by Belcher (the Louisiana lawyer from Bones).

I’ll See You in My Dreams is a well-acted, well-cast, leisurely-paced movie about people dealing with long life, losing loved ones, and being tentative about new relationships, reticent to fall in love for fear of experiencing that loss again. It’s also about friendship and the need for friends’ and relatives’ encouragement to help accept change. Blythe Danner is exceptional as Carol – stead, cautious, doubtful and eventually freed from routine. Rhea Perlman is playing a friendlier version of her character Carla on Cheers and is totally lovable. Sam Elliott is sexy, confident and scarily believable. I wish he had a bigger part in the film. I would definitely like to have Martin Starr as a best friend. He’s a good listener, sincere in his reactions and a fun karaoke singer.

I mentioned that the movie is “leisurely-paced” but never is it “too long.” Director Brett Haley timed each scene to last only as long as is necessary to get the point across. He even shows up as one of the first singers in the karaoke bar. My only criticism, Brett, is next time, more Sam and more Rhea. Otherwise, great movie! My favorite scene: near the end, Carol dusts off the urn containing her husband’s remains, the smaller one containing Hazel, and the plastic-wrapped cigar, all on her mantel. Favorite line: Carol to Bill, “Are you ever going to light that thing?”

Rating: 4 out of 5 Martini glasses.

Little Prince

199 Prince Street (6 ^th Avenue) , New York

www.littleprincesoho.com

How French can you get? This cozy little boîte with wood-framed glass doors for front windows, pink and white potted petunias hanging above, and tasteful tables extending out onto the sidewalk walled in by boxes planted with begonias was a welcome sight both online and in actuality. The dozen or so tables have white cloths and butcher’s paper on top, keeping the bistro look of the place.

I arrived 15 minutes before my reservation, and though he was having a staff meeting, the manager welcomed me in for “Happy Hour,” which began at four o’clock. He led me to a perfect table by the window and I sat on the banquette side with a great view of the street. He took my water preference and presented me with the menu, wine and drink list. and happy hour bar specials list. I chose the French Intervention Cocktail – Tanteo jalapeno tequila, pineapple and cilantro – an interesting drink indeed. It was pale green, slightly spicy with that “green” taste of cilantro. Garnished with a wedge of pineapple, it was a charming way to begin my meal.

Having all the time in the world, I enjoyed my drink while the staff meeting continued two tables away. I didn’t even notice I had finished it when my server, Greg, came over and said, “Your drink?” “Is…Gone!” I said, “I must need another.” And Greg was off to procure the replacement.

When Greg returned, he asked if I had any questions about the menu. I told him I had a good appetite and was considering one “Snack,” two “Starters” (appetizers), a main course, a side, and a wine. He genuinely seemed to think that was a good idea. Between the two of us we constructed a lovely meal with a 2010 Rabasse Charavin Grenache/Syrah/Cinsault blend from Cairanne, Cotes de Rhone, as accompaniment. It was an absolutely beautiful red, powerful both in nose and first taste, and heavy with berry fruit flavors. Though no one in the restaurant even had a French accent, I felt I was being transported to Paris.

“Chicken liver mousse” – two words I would never have associated with the third, proved to be an attractively presented dish. The mousse made a crescent-moon shape on the plate, mixed with hazelnut, rhubarb, and sorrel, served with toasted brioche, and topped with thinly sliced red radishes and pink onions. As delightful as it was to the eye, it was amazing to the taste – light, sweet as well as musky, with the sharp accents from the toppings. I used the brioche carefully to make sure there was enough left to get every last bit of that mousse from the plate.

Being a loyal acolyte of Julia Child and also a lover of butter, those of you who know me know that I rarely order a dish called “healthy.” But since my first taste of quinoa (edible seeds, not an actual grain) I was hooked. Here, the quinoa salad is made with diced butternut squash and currents and garnished with crackly roasted kale. This salad is seriously as close to sinful as health food can get. It’s crunchy, nutty, sweet in places, and fun to eat – and all the girls passing in the street think you’re a responsible adult. Couldn’t be better. I got a smile out of one lovely.

Generally, I like my soups hot and usually avoid “chilled” soups, even on the hottest dog day of summer. But this one interested me. The “chilled pea soup” with pickled ramps and guanciale (an Italian cured meat made from pork jowl) was a beautiful shade of green and was artfully garnished with an arabesque of greens, white grains and lavender flowers. I didn’t want to disturb the attractive pattern. The soup had that fresh-from-the-garden pea flavor with occasional scallion or light accent from the other ingredients.

The first three dishes were not “excessive” in the amount of food and I understood why Greg nodded approval at my selections. The main course, roast duck with Swiss chard, duck confit, and rhubarb in a sauce bigarade (a sweet and sour sauce featuring the flavor of bitter oranges – and in this case, rhubarb as well) was only slightly larger and every bit as well presented. The crunchy but tender Swiss chard surrounded the crispy-skinned slices of tender duck meat on the plate while the sauce bigarade faded from burnt orange to pink, end to end. It was heavenly. Another server (who will be forever known as the bread man) noticed how I used the brioche and supplied me with a mini baguette and a sourdough roll with a ramekin of sweet butter with sea-salt sprinkled on top. Mercy! And Merci!

And if you’re having duck already, what better side dish than duck fat roasted Brussels sprouts – crunchy halves, white inside, bright green outside (except where roasted black and sweet) served in their own oblong iron skillet? Brussels sprouts have been competing with onions for the title of “My Favorite Vegetable” and this dish was a major case for sprouts.

How to describe the dessert? Think intense, hot PINK in color. Think strawberry sorbet, fresh-shaved off of a block of ice by a trusted street vendor. Then put your spoon in and discover the strawberry/rhubarb zabaglione underneath in a shade of bubblegum pink. You’re already in a rosy cloud when Greg brings over a glass of golden dessert wine to raise you to a higher plateau.

Yes, they also made a wonderful double espresso. No, they didn’t have Grand Marnier but the intense flavor of Frenet Branca substituted nicely.

If you have been following my reviews, you know I keep a database, and I like to go somewhere special when the number of the restaurant in my database is a round number. Well, number 2,670, Little Prince, was most definitely a very special place, one that I could recommend to any foodie or connoisseur. Will I return? Surely! I can’t wait to try their ratatouille. It’s on their list of Main Courses. Incroyable! 

For the Dinner and a Movie archive, click here.