User reviews

So this movie is silly? It has plenty of charm and light heartedness! It's innocent and funny. It's really worth a look especially if you're a (female) Martin Milner fan! You can find this on video currently at www.thevideobeat.com It was worth the purchase because it had been so long since I had seen it and it was only more charming since I've become older. Mickey Rooney as the devil? Can you imagine Andy Hardy in a padded snake suit? I found that extremely hilarious, just that alone! I'm not really a fan of Mamie Van Doren, so her part is difficult to watch (though I'm sure she would be a sight for the male audience). All in all, the cast is excellent, the story is sweet. I honestly can't understand why the decency brigade tagged it...I know things were strict growing up, but there's really nothing dirty at all about it...unless you have a really filthy mind?

I saw this movie as a kid and I cannot remember much about it. But I do remember Mickey Rooney and I thought he was hilarious. I remember Milner playing Adam. I remembered him because he starred in TV series Route 66.

The movie caught my attention as a child because I went to church regular and I was very familiar with the Biblical Adam and Eve story.

Like I stated, I cannot remember much but I have always wanted to see the movie again. It was corny but fun.

I would love to buy a copy of it to see if the movie would be just as funny as it was years ago.

i saw this movie on late-night t.v. back in 1962. i had no idea what it was about, as i had never watched it anytime before. i was a teenager and really am a fan of teen oriented movies, and like Paul Anka and his singing, i decided to see the movie and observe where it was headed. i noticed it was in b&w and an obscure film. after seeing it, i looked for it to play maybe at a later time but years passed and it was never shown. this makes me realize the rarity and vintage appreciation of the film as i myself am a vintage-teen movie buff and i try to collect as many 40's-50's-and 60's movie that i can find .some are shown on pay-cable t.v., others on e-bay to purchase, most reproduced on to d.v.d. the private lives of Adam and eve, i feel, even though the story is weak, due to it's obscurity and the vintage of its production era, it's a collectors prize.

This is a VERY strange movie, co-directed by cult director Albert Zugsmith and actor Mickey Rooney, that was barely released back in the day and has never appeared on legitimate home video. The "frame" story involves a motley assortment of characters taking a bus trip to Reno, Nevada when they're cut off by a flash flood and have to take refuge in a church. The movie then slips (for no apparent reason) into a long "Wizard of Oz"-type dream sequence where two of the characters, conveniently named "Adam" () and "Eve" (Mamie Van Doren), re-live the Garden of Eden adventures of their namesakes, with two other passengers, a loud-mouth promoter (Mickey Rooney) and his sultry wife (Fay Spain), becoming, respectively, "Satan" and his consort "Lilith". (Va-va-voom actress/model June Wilkinson also appears as another female minion of Satan).

The Garden of Eden story is a lot more goofy than funny, the heights of the (mostly unintentional) hilarity reached when Rooney appears in a snake costume, which kind of looks like a bad papier-mache snake has unsuccessfully tried to swallow a chubby, washed-up child actor. What's particularly strange though is that the Garden of Eden sequence only utilizes four of the eight passengers on the bus. Paul Anka is apparently only there to warble a couple of lame songs. But "the Velvet Fog" himself, Mel Torme, is completely wasted both as an actor and a singer. You wouldn't think you'd really need a sixteen-year-old Tuesday Weld (playing a teen runaway) when you have Van Doren, Spain, and June Wilkinson in the cast, but even in an abortive role, the vixenish Weld manages to out-sexy--and definitely out-act--all of her older, more voluptuous co-stars (SHE should have played Eve). Then there's the elderly but lecherous bus driver who narrates everything (and says at one point of Weld's character, "They used to call her 'bobby socks', but now they call her 'baby sex'").

I didn't find this completely un-entertaining just because of the unusual cast and just because it's so damn weird. It's definitely a throw-back to a bye-gone era when the mostly male movie audience was an unapologetic mixture of chauvinists, big-breast fetishists, and dirty old men. Ah, the good old days!

One may say "The Private Lives of Adam and Eve" should be judged on its own terms, that of a low-budget drive-in entry without any aim other than being a mild amusement; that is to say, it doesn't aspire to be high art--but then, since it isn't amusing, it must be noted that the movie has questionable aspirations, without the proper handling to steer it in the right direction. A small busload of people en route to Reno, Nevada stop off in nearby Paradise, where the driver picks up a teenage hot-rodder and two married couples on the rocks; after their trip is sidelined by a storm, the passengers take refuge in a church, where one of the frightened couples share the same dream about the Garden of Eden. Co-directed by Albert Zugsmith and Mickey Rooney (who also stars), the film is a shambles on even the most basic cinematic level. In the crude but watchable black-and-white framing story, we at least have Cecil Kellaway as the Christian bus driver who suggests the group sings "Rock of Ages" when the flood waters come. This section also has Tuesday Weld as a possible runaway and Paul Anka as the crooning teen (he also sings the title song in the film's kickiest sequence). But the color dream sequence in Eden, with Martin Milner and Mamie Van Doren as Adam and Eve, is amateurish in the extreme, particularly with an excruciatingly hammy Rooney playing the Devil. Still, one can't dismiss the movie as camp quite so easily. There is quite a bit of serious talk early on about God and the Bible, and later Van Doren shouts and cries to the Heavens, asking God to speak to her. It's a mind-boggling venture that wants to be two different things: a quickie flick for sniggering teens and an earnest character portrait in the manner of John Steinbeck's "The Wayward Bus". But you don't have to see it to believe it, because the picture isn't worth seeing. * from ****

This movie is so wrong on so many levels: Paul Anka opens sitting on his $400 hot rod and steering with his feet, Martin Milner and Mamie Van Doren walk into the closing credits with all their marital problems solved on her announcement that she's pregnant, sanitized by her expressing a desire to eat pickles. In between lies a virtual encyclopedia of every snickering, simpering, leering last-gasp-of-the-fifties nudge-nudge battle-of-the-sexes cliche', somehow made all the worse by strictly G-rated language and less exposed flesh than an Iranian quilting bee.

Anyone ever caught expressing the slightest nostalgia for anything about the Fifties except beatniks and early rockers should be strapped down, Prisoner 655321 style, and forced to watch alternating showings of this excrescence and Sex Kittens Go to College.

This is one of the very strangest films I have ever seen. Several travelers are en route to Reno, when thunderstorm causes them to take refuge in an abandoned church. Falling asleep, the two leads dream they are Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden. The "Eden" sequence, up until the "expulsion" is in color. The first twenty minutes of the film are actually pretty decent, and seem to build up to something good, but the dream sequence in "Eden" is just too silly for words. The sight of Mickey Rooney playing the Devil in a padded snake suit is alone worth watching the film for. Paul Anka sings the theme song and has a rather minor role in the film. Also noteworthy is Tuesday Weld who does not appear in the dream sequence, but who sparkles during her screen time. The film ends with Eve requesting a pickle from Ad. A definite must-see!

The first portion of "The Private Lives of Adam and Eve" seems normal enough...and much like the film "The Wayward Bus" but with Mamie Van Doren instead of Jayne Mansfield. But midway through the movie it gets bad...really, really bad.

The story is set on a bus and a variety of folks are passengers, including some good looking women and an abrasive guy (Mickey Rooney). But their journey takes a detour when there's a storm...and at this point the movie goes off the rails. There's a weird fantasy-like portion where Martin Milner runs around like Adam from the Bible (but, oddly, he wears a bathing suit) and all sorts of other nonsense. It frankly seemed VERY heavy-handed and nonsensical...and the film just lost me completely. It's no so much because of the religious angle but because it was just stupid and seemingly pointless. A really weird movie...one that left me baffled.

I don't care what everyone else said but I liked this film.

Sure it's silly with the dream sequence in the middle and

alternates between black and white and color, but it's god a sense of fun about it. It's also got some really nice looking ladies and Eve manages to walk in a skirt that looks almost too tight to fit into. LOL.....

Sure the film didn't win or for that matter deserve to win awards for production or such but it's fun.... I had fun watching it and it just felt like there was a sense of fun in the story.





6/10

It's been years since I saw this movie, but I thought it was wonderful. It's about a group of travelers that get stranded in a storm and start talking about the creations with each traveler becoming a character in the creation. While there's some religious overtones this is a comedy and playing the devil is Mickey Rooney. The Devil (Rooney) trying to get Adam and Eve to take a bite of the apple. Dressed as the snake, his tail splashing in the water of a river and then dressed as an umpire. I can't remember what was said, I just remember I was laughing a lot and it was late at night. If you have the chance I suggest you watch this, it's worth your time. As it was said above this movie didn't win any awards, but I liked it and would buy it if they put it on DVD.

Very peculiar comedy is alternately clever and lame... but ultimately it succeeds in providing some mild amusement. It's hard to fathom why it was so soundly condemned in its day, perhaps making a surreal comic travesty out of part of the Bible was just too far ahead of its time. It is certainly far less irreverent than "The Life of Brian." Some sequences (such as the devil's playing piano and having a barbecue) may have provided the inspiration for such scenes as the Herod scene in "Jesus Christ, Superstar." Another thing that might have irritated the bluestockings is the fact that Adam, Eve, and Lillith are definitely hot, Milner looking better out of his clothes than he ever looked in them. It's kind of like a sexy, live action Flinstones, altogether harmless and amusing. Catch the cave scene where A&E quarrel over moving the boulders (furniture)and the one in which the devil convinces Eve to cut her long hair (strategically pasted to her breasts) only to reveal a leaf -pattern bra underneath! It's full of little comic gems and some funny dialog regarding the pair's living conditions and social standing. Eve: "If I had a mother, I'd go home to her!" Adam: "Don't be silly...I AM your mother!"

I saw this movie when I was 6 or 7 and it enchanted my young mind. In my polluted older age mind the enchantment remains. (I would love to see it again, but I can't find it anywhere.) I recall that several people are on a bus and have to stop and take refuge in a church on the side of the road because of a severe thunderstorm. They spend the night in the church and one of the people on the bus has a dream about the Garden of Eden. Some of the people on the bus are characters in the dream; Mickey Rooney, the bus driver, is the devil. If anyone who reads this knows how I can get a copy of it, please email me with the information - afainca75@hotmail.com.