Overrated and overhyped

i must have seen a different film!!

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

I first viewed this movie about 25 years ago on TV. I was nicely buzzed and after the first few minutes my jaw dropped and stayed there. This is a movie chock full of major STARS and produced by Otto Preminger.....a supposed comedy, this film is Ottos take on LSD. This film is not funny...it is like watching a train wreck. Soundtrack by Harry Nielson. Big budget..Grocho Marx last film...the movie is just awful. Upon researching the film a lot of trivia and surprising facts come out. Like Premingers daughter having the film under lock and key until a few years ago.....This is Carol Channings low point.....And if you can watch it to the end......the song Skidoo will stick in your head......Skidoo, Skidoo, between the one and three there is a two. Oy.

Otto Preminger, that classic director of such classics as "Laura" and "Anatomy of a Murder", adds another masterpiece to his resume. Oh, wait a minute, that's "Advise and Consent" and "The Cardinal", not this marijuana induced nightmare of a comedy. If anybody ever questions your claim that Carol Channing and Jackie Gleason played a married couple, tell them about this film, a disaster that Ms. Channing has refused to acknowledge. Smart lady. Looking like Big Bird in a yellow dress with matching boots and feathered hat, Channing is the wife of a retired mobster who is forced out of retirement at the insistence of "God" (Groucho Marxx!) to do one last job for him-in prison. A bunch of hippies and Hollywood veterans spend pretty much the entire film getting stoned. If seeing Gleason spacing out on hallucinogenic drugs isn't weird enough for you, try Slim Pickens, Burgess Meredith and Peter Lawford.This is a mess of a film that has to be seen to be believed. In addition to the cast of veterans (which also includes Mickey Rooney, Cesar Romero and George Raft), add on Frank Gorshin (who talks entirely through closed teeth) and Frankie Avalon (minus Annette), plus Doro Merande, a name you may not know but whose face you probably might recognize. She plays a square mayor as a combination of both Margaret Hamilton (looks) and Billie Burke (bird brain) that would make the Wizard of Oz fly the coop long before Dorothy ever arrived. When a film is this bad, it is unnecessary to repeat the plot, what little there is of it, because there is simply so much to laugh at. This is an incomprehensible mess with a horrible title song that comes out of nowhere to be sung by Ms. Channing in pirate get-up, as well as a song simply devoted to trash cans (minus Oscar the Grouch). Crazy sets and costumes (including a bed that descends into the floor in Avalon's pad) seem as if they were designed while on LSD. The opening is a battle of remote controls between Gleason and Channing, while the closing credits are sung in a way so ghastly you want to hold your nose over the invisible stench of the film.The late 60's had a ton of films so bad that they defy description, and this is at the top of the list. Preminger made some strange choices in the later part of his career, but this one is the most puzzling. It ranks two stars instead of one because I had to acknowledge the fact that I had fun laughing at it while making notes for this review.

One reviewer noted that 'some people reported that Preminger experimented with acid while making this movie.' That's historically imprecise: it was Preminger himself who said, in a number of interviews, that he was ON acid while making this film (meaning he took it through-out the production. At first he said this rather proudly, apparently hoping it would sell the film to the 'youth' market, but by the early '70s he was using this as an excuse for the films evident failure, artistic and financial. (His career never fully recovered.) In fact, the film did damage to the careers of almost everyone involved - Gleason, Marx, Lawford, Burgess, Channing - all suffered from the fiasco.I had the unpleasant experience seeing this when it first came out - my Mother wanted to see 'a Jackie Gleason movie,' and was too stubborn to walk out after she had paid for the tickets. Even in my immaturity I could see this was a MESS. The characters were unlikeable, the images were flat, the story meandering about unbelievably, and the jokes - the only way you could tell it was a comedy is because the actors were laughing. I hope I never see it again.Yet I do admit one thing, which is why I write this review so many years later. For some reason the design of the film is unforgettable, as is the casual hipsters' party attitude that permeates the script and the acting. And that's NOT a good thing.So, unless you want acid-flashbacks without ever dropping any cubes, avoid this movie like the plague, or it will infect your mind with horrible memories of bad cinema.

Skidoo (1968) ** (out of 4) Extremely bizarre comedy has gangster battling hippies in the lovin' 60's. A retired gangster (Jackie Gleason) is asked by the top gangster, God (Groucho Marx) to break into prison and kill a rat (Mickey Rooney). On the outside Gleason's daughter has started dating a hippie and its up to them to try and save her dad. This was a notorious flop when originally released but it has gained a cult following over the years and in the end the film really isn't all that bad. I think the biggest problem is that Preminger simply wasn't the right guy to direct the material. He's got some great comic actors yet he gets very little from them. Most of the comedy comes from politically incorrect stuff or things that weren't meant to be funny but they come off that way. The highlight of the film is when Gleason is in prison and accidentally takes some LSD and has a wild trip afterwards. Marx also smokes some pot, which is somewhat funny but Rooney comes off rather lame. The supporting cast includes Carol Channing, Frankie Avalon, Peter Lawford, Burgess Meredith, George Raft and Cesar Romero. The film eventually runs out of steam in the final act, which again deals with an LSD trip but the jokes plays itself out way before the end.