The Busy Body

Since Sid Caesar died a few days ago, I decided to watch one of his movies. "The Busy Body" makes no pretense about being silly. The characters are pretty much what we expect: Caesar is the nervous everyman mixed up in a murder case, Robert Ryan is the slimy exec, Arlene Golonka is the cleavage-flaunting blonde bombshell, and Kay Medford is the overprotective mother. The movie features the first appearance of Richard Pryor but he doesn't have much to do. I figure that an old-school director like William Castle wasn't about to let Pryor play the kind of character for which he eventually became renowned. In the end it's not any kind of comedy classic but funny enough for the brief period that it runs.

Having spent the best part of the first 15 years of his directorial career at Columbia – mostly under the aegis of prolific but cheapjack producer Sam Katzman – William Castle defected to a smaller studio, Allied Artists, in order to make his mark on film history with the horror comic MACABRE (1958). When he improved his gimmicky formula with HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL at the same studio but with a bigger star (Vincent Price), his old employers Columbia invited him back into their stable where he spent another five years making some of his most popular and enduring work like THE TINGLER (1959; which reunited him with Price), HOMICIDAL (1961) and STRAIT-JACKET (1964; with Hollywood legend Joan Crawford). At this point, he made a three-movie detour to Universal (where he had work intermittently before in the late 1940s/early 1950s) which culminated in the black comedy LET'S KILL UNCLE (1966; with Nigel Green), by which time his tried-and-tested fusion of horror, comedy and showmanship had begun to wear thin. This signaled yet another (and, in retrospect, final) move on Castle's part resulting in a somewhat unproductive but eventually rewarding 10-year tenure at Paramount…

Although he had previously dwelt in outright comedy, even during his golden period, with his two resistible Tom Poston vehicles – ZOTZ! (1962) and his fairly disastrous colour remake of THE OLD DARK HOUSE (1963) – what came next was almost as significant a departure as MACABRE had been from his earlier work. Indeed, in THE BUSY BODY, Castle had at his disposal the best cast of his entire career – a sure sign for an iconoclastic producer-director that he had hit the mainstream. Ironically, the film's rare screening one Sunday evening many years ago on local TV proved to be my introduction to the director's work and it would be much later that I caught up with the aforementioned movies which had made his reputation as, to put it bluntly, the poor man's Alfred Hitchcock! Indeed, the film under review had the potential of becoming Castle's own THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY (1955; the "Master of Suspense"'s second favourite among his films) given the funereal aspects of the plot…but this being the "anything goes" Swinging Sixties, rather than the delightfully subtle black humour of the latter, it went for the broad and overdone farcical style of Stanley Kramer's IT'S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD (1963; with which it shared leading man Sid Casear, no less!) in its depiction of yet another multi-character chase after buried loot…

This is not to say that the resultant movie is unenjoyable – and my middlebrow rating attests to that – but perhaps one expected something more durable from the likes of tough guys Robert Ryan and Charles McGraw, Anne Baxter and Kay Medford, emerging comedians Richard Pryor (in his film debut), Godfrey Cambridge and Dom DeLuise, veteran comics Ben Blue (also returning from the Kramer opus) and George Jessel, etc. Caesar is the latest addition to the "board" of racketeer Ryan (having a great time lampooning his established image), chosen for his sartorial sense which the boss believes will lend a much-needed touch of class to the organization (including McGraw, whom Ryan berates for looking just like a hoodlum!). However, the protagonist is continuously checked on by mother Medford (perhaps the film's single funniest line has her tell Police Lieutenant Pryor: "What'd you think…that I'm one of those possessive mothers?!") and also becomes involved with two women – shady Baxter and ex-showgirl Arlene Golonka, actually the wife of a Caesar associate whose death during a barbecue and subsequent burial wearing the suit he normally carries a million dollars in for Ryan sets the whole plot in motion. Also on hand are a mortician and his sacked assistant (DeLuise), a beloved cop's funeral (at which Caesar ends up being among the pallbearers), an insurance fraud gone awry that leads to murder (again, Caesar becomes the unwitting patsy for these), Caesar's proverbial "taken for a ride" by Cambridge and partner which features a couple of dummies (one of which creates much consternation when propped on a park bench) and, of course, the multiple unearthing of the grave which invariably contains no body. No prizes for guessing the true villain's identity but, for the most part, the film makes for a pleasant if hefty 102 minutes – especially in the good-looking widescreen print I watched.

I was surprised to see that 'William Castle was the director for The Busy Body that Paramount used. Castle is best known for ow budget horror films with special effects and sometimes cheesy ones at that. This cast of name players was something wasn't used to.

I also note that sSd Caesar was the star. As this is a Paramount this film had the look and feel of a Jerry Lewis film. If Lewis had starred and maybe a Frank Tashlin directed The Busy Body might have been a classic.

Top crime boss Robert Ryan puts his gofer Sid Caesar on the syndicate board and tells him to retrieve a blue suit from a recently deceased board member. Instead Caesar has him buried in it. With a million dollar sewn in the lining of said suit.

One of the big problems is that Robert Ryan just doesn't do comedy. His part would have worked better with a Lionel Stander or a Sheldon Leonard in it.

In a large supporting cast of familiar faces standing out is Kay Medford as Sid's gangster widow mom.

Nice film, funny in spots, but could have been better.

Looks like I'm the only one here who really enjoys The Busy Body, a movie I've watched many times and love. Sid Caesar is really funny, prissy and nitpicky as an obsessive-compulsive, overly fastidious clothes horse (a parody of a GQ/Esquire reader) who is a deliveryman for the mob (like the boss's lunch). Sid's decision to play it straight, as opposed to a scaredy-cat type like Don Knotts, works. Robert Ryan's great, a tough as nails, quick igniting organized crime boss, a combination of Marine drill sergeant and hood. The interaction between these two makes BB the fun pic it is. I wish there had been more of it. The supporting cast is a true who's who of comedic geniuses, from Bill Dana and Dom DeLuise to Godfrey Cambridge and Marty Engels. An added bonus is a young Arlene Golonka in the prime of her stacked sexiness and sweet, ditzy personality. The Vic Mizzy soundtrack is a plus.

Busy Body, The (1967)

** (out of 4)

Pretty weak comedy about George Norton (Sid Caesar), a pushover member of the mob who accidentally buries a man in a suit, which just happens to have a million dollars that belongs to the mob. When he's forced to dig the body up it turns out to be missing so this leads to many misadventures as he tries to track down the body and the money. This later day Castle production is pretty much a miss from the first scene to the last but there's a fairly interesting cast that at least keeps you somewhat entertained even if we're not given many laughs. Caesar actually does a pretty good job in his role as his timing was on the mark throughout and I thought he was very believable as someone who would get pushed around and even have their mother constantly picking at them. The supporting cast includes Robert Ryan, Kay Medford, Jan Murray and Anne Baxter playing a woman named Margo Foster Kane. All of them are fairly good in their roles even if the screenplay doesn't do much for them. Richard Pryor appears in his first film role but sadly the director and screenplay doesn't use him too well. The screenplay is a pretty active one as we've got quite a bit more plot that you'd expect from a film like this but unfortunately there's not too much done with it. I'm thinking there's all of this extra plot because we're suppose to be interested in the mystery unfolding but I personally found it to be rather lame. I just didn't think there was enough energy to make one really care about the end results and I'd add that director Castle just didn't seem too interested in bringing any of it to life. I think another problem is that the director struggles with comedy and that trend continues here.