After watching Skidoo tonight all I can ask is what was Otto Preminger thinking when he did this film? Better yet what were all these talented people thinking when they signed on?
The plot has Jackie Gleason, once the mob's number one hit-man, but now retired and living with wife Carol Channing and daughter Alexandra Hay who has taken up with the hippie lifestyle and some hippies, much to the consternation of Gleason and Channing. Those two alone as parents might make anyone want to join a commune.
Cesar Romero and Frankie Avalon bring a message from God or at least that's what syndicate boss Groucho Marx. Groucho wants mob informer Mickey Rooney killed, but Mickey's in prison. Never mind the mob can do anything, bust Gleason into prison and bust him right out once the job is done. But Rooney won't let people near him, but since Gleason's an old friend he'll be vulnerable to him. Which is what Groucho is thinking.
Since Gleason balks, Groucho captures Alexandra Hay and brings her on his yacht from where he runs things. At that point with Marx having him by the short hairs, Gleason agrees to the contract.
The big idea is to get the entire prison tripping on LSD so no one will interfere. But of course things do go wrong as you'll see if you care to watch the film.
No matter how many big names were packed into Skidoo, nothing could get this picture off the ground. Otto Preminger packed the film with a whole lot of people he had used in previous films like Peter Lawford, Burgess Meredith, Slim Pickens, but all to no avail. The jokes fell flat as a punctured soufflé, the situations were just not funny, in fact even Groucho apparently wasn't in the mood to ad-lib any of his patented humor.
In fact Groucho playing a character called God WAS the funniest thing in the film. It has serious theological implications for those of us who thought George Burns or Morgan Freeman was God.
In its own way Skidoo was as big a disaster, even bigger than Plan Nine From Outer Space. And Preminger had a much bigger budget to work from.
