Catalina Caper

Tommy Kirk was signed to a four-picture deal with Executive Pictures Corporation and "Catalina Caper" was the first picture of that deal. Kirk subsequently did not make any further films with Executive Pictures, which should be an indication as to the quality and financial success of "Catalina Caper." A group of teens, led by Kirk, find themselves sucked into international intrigue over a forged and stolen scroll. The film is a bizarre hybrid of a Beach Party and Flint comic spy picture, but lacks the fun of either of those films. The Beach Party films were not exactly big budget musicals, but those films look like lavish MGM musical productions in comparison to the bottom of the barrel production values of "Catalina Caper." Outside of a few catchy musical numbers from surf bands you've never heard of, there's nothing to make this film worth watching. It wasn't even all that enjoyable on a camp level. Go ahead and skip this one.

This movie has very little going for it besides the performance of Tommy Kirk, the funny hat that chubby comedy-relief guy wears, and the cinematography of Ted V. Mikels. But it does has an ace up its sleeve - Robert Donner!

Yes, Robert Donner, that renowned character actor justly beloved for his roles as Yancey Tucker on "The Waltons" and Exidor on "Mork and Mindy". However, the movie's makers, apparently afraid that Mr. Donner, with his overwhelmingly dignified presence, would steal the show from the "stars", forced him to make a series of embarrassing and incredibly forced pratfalls. Oh, the ignominy of it all!

You'd have to be out of your mind or detached from all common sense to find some redeeming value in this clunker. The plot seems to concern guys, girls, sand, a scroll and Mork & Mindy's Exidor doing pratfalls. Oh, and there are musical numbers, many musical numbers. These elements are strung together very loosely to form some sort of plot, but what's there on screen will make you scratch your head. Little Richard pops up and sings a catchy little dittie and shows everyone else involved what talent is. Best part of the film is when all the girls slap all of the guys and storm off. The next scene is a musical number and then everything is forgotten! Oh to be young and foolish and working on a beach picture. Mary Wells sings the title song "Never Steal Anything Wet."

Catalina Caper is relatively painful. The plot, if you can call it that, involves a group of kids hanging around the beach for some summer fun. A piece of artwork (aka "the scroll") is stolen by this guy who looks like Drew Carey for his boss Duval, who talks like Al Capone. He tries to keep said scroll from this other crime boss Lakapolous. The kids get involved in the case, so that's where all the exciting action takes place. Don Pringle is the main hero of the story. He spends most of his time chasing after this weird dark haired girl. Oh and then there's this other guy in a suit running around trying to expose Duval and he gets into all these slapstick situations that are really, really dumb.

In between the little tidbits of story, you get little music breaks. This includes an appearance by Little Richard! You also get to see some...guys sitting around singing and then this other chick singing a song called "Book of Love". Yeah...not much else to say about that. Not only to you get to hear their great songs, you get to watch all the kids dance too! The way they move looks really painful at times. Makes you just want to jump right into the movie and dislocate a hip with them! They danced like fools in the 60's. Mindless zombie beach goers.

This movie is best viewed in the MST3K version, lots of great jokes there. Joel & the 'bots do a beautiful job of tearing this one apart. See it for a lot of good laughs. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a rockin' scuba party to get to. I feel a dance number comin' on!

For starters, I usually don't watch Tommy Kirk movies. Most of us who have seen this piece of celluloid dung saw it on MST3K. When Volume 1 came out and included the films without the running commentary, I decided to see how bad some of these things actually are. My God what a fool I was.

The "plot" here is that some thieves decided to pull a bait and switch using a stolen scroll on some rich guy. The scroll gets lost due to incompetence while they're showing the goods to the rich guy's lackey. This could be a poor plot (not good, but would suffice to make a B movie) except for the fact that they decided to throw in a bunch of kids who get mixed up in the whole thing. Between the lousy music (Little Richard did OK, but the others were terrible), dancing, scuba footage, and attempts to develop love interests there should be something holding this together besides bad jokes and a loose caper "plot." On top of all of this, the "talent" seemed to not really care what was going on, so the results are predictably crappy.

For God's sake, don't watch without MST3K.