REVENGE OF THE TRAILER - EPISODE 2

It's been called a "joyless experience", but I beg to differ.   In this latest installment of Revenge Of The Trailer, Shock Cinema magazine contributor and the host of The Mondo Film Podcast, Justin Bozung, talks about the 1969 "comedy" The Maltese Bippy starring Dan Rowan & Dick Martin.

So when Bippy came out in 1969, it was destroyed by the critics, and it literally drove it's audience out of the theaters.  Of course, when you have two comics, who at the end of the '60s had the absolute hippest and politically poignant comedy series on television there's not much else you can do but give them a movie.  Bippy has a Skidoo (1968) feeling to it, and I think you'll feel the same way, in that you too will be wondering exactly how did something like this even get made in the first place?

It makes complete sense that a studio should give Rowan & Martin a G-rated vehicle in which they star as fast-talking porno film producers who get evicted from their NYC studio and have to relocate to a Collinwood type mansion to solve a who-dun-it in upstate N.Y....Flushing to be exact.  What we have here is an farcical and loving homage to the Abbott & Costello formulation.  Personally, I find The Maltese Bippy to be very funny. There are some wonderful bits sprinkled throughout the film which include a breaking of the fourth wall opening sequence, a weird Dick Martin as werewolf riding a bicycle through town that's reminiscent of Paul Newman and Robert Redford in Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid, some weird animation, and a very humorous Laugh-In style ending -- trap door and all, and it has a big cast that will make you beg for more.  Check it Out.

 MVT:  The bookends of the film, in particular the opening sequence of the film, the first of three endings we are treated to,  as well as the wonderful banter between Dick Martin and the other members of the cast.  On Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, Martin was notorious for playing the dope and the trouble-maker of the comedy team, and Dan Rowan -- the nice guy alpha.  The roles are reversed here in The Maltese Bippy, and critics ultimately had a major problem with that aspect of this film.  Bippy is very funny... However strange it is.

Make Or Break:  The film is a bit windy overall. But at times, moves so fast it's a bit of a struggle to stay on top of the story line.  We go from a porno movie shoot (titles of films produced by the duo include Jungle Lust and Lunar Lust) to upstate New York to a werewolf in a business suit riding a bicycle around town (puts the werewolf character in Turkey Shoot to shame), and then back into a back-stabbing hunt for the sword Excalibur with some eastern Europeans, a pair of bungling local cops and Dracula.  I know...I know...

REVENGE OF THE TRAILER - EPISODE 1

NEW FEATURE ON THE GGTMC BLOG - REVENGE OF THE TRAILER.  In this first video episode, Shock Cinema magazine contributor and the host of The Mondo Film Podcast, Justin Bozung provides a quick commentary insight into the production of the inventive 1961 comedy co-written, directed and starring Jerry Lewis, The Ladies Man.

The Ladies Man, as one of the greatest comedies of the 1960's, would provide big inspiration for the likes of Wes Anderson, in particular on The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004) and on Francis Ford Coppola's One From The Heart (1982).

A surreal fantasy filled to the brim with episodic slapstick, The Ladies Man is a comedy masterpiece. The film is unlike any other comedy produced in the era.  Lewis ambitiously gives us an incredible open faced doll house set (the most expensive set constructed in the era), and with his continual breaking of the fourth wall aesthetic, he manages to transcend the definition of audience and their relationship with film. 

While many associate the name, Jerry Lewis solely with his charity work for the Muscular Dystrophy Association, Lewis is one of the greatest filmmakers of his generation. Lewis invented the now industry standard video asst. in 1956, he was the first to introduce the Nagra sound recorder to the United States film industry and his genius and truly inventive work is the final footprint on film of the almost now forgotten comic tradition of Laurel & Hardy, Charlie Chaplin, Harry Langdon and Buster Keaton.

MVT:  The last minute fantasy dance sequence with now legendary Hollywood choreographer Sylvia Lewis set to the big band sound of Harry James and his orchestra. True to form, this sequence is definitive of Lewis, and is the highlight of the film.  His directorial output from 1960-1965 features lush and unforgettable colors, brilliant cinematography, and the pathos, honesty and sincerity as pattern contained in the work makes his films stand out from everything produced in the Hollywood studio system in the era.

Make Or Break:  The script.   Lewis and his co-screenwriter, Bill Richmond would be the last great comedy writing team in film history, and the visual gags in this film are completely genius and surreal.  Richmond would move on, post Lewis to be the featured or head writer for such incredible television series as The Carol Burnett Show, Welcome Back Kotter, and Three's Company.  You can see the similarity between characters Jack Tripper on Three's Company and Herbert H. Heebert in The Ladies Man or in the character Lewis plays, Stanley Belt, in the 1964 film, The Patsy.  It's all in the writing, and the film's Lewis made without Richmond behind the typewriter certainly suffer.