Another Nice Mess

I first became aware of this movie back in 1971 when Rich Little plugged it on Dick Cavett's show. A clip showed 3 minutes worth of Nixon & Agnew doing Laurel & Hardy's dance steps from "Way Out West." Not only that, Rich Little as Nixon and Herb Voland as Agnew were dead-ringers. The uncanny part is the President and Vice-President spoke and even moved like Stan & Ollie. Sounds like a riot right? Well...if playing golf with Hitler, and getting duped into eating Alice B. Toklas brownies where they go into a "Blotto" laughing fit and hallucinate seeing white robed Ku Kluk Klan members playing hardball in slow motion, doesn't discount you, then this may be your movie of all time for political incorrectness. You won't find it in the credits but Steve Martin makes his feature film debut as a long haired hippie. Steve was writing for the Smothers Brothers back them. In short, the L&H stuff is fun. The padding, i.e. Secret Service (Bob Einsein) is painful. They'll never release this, but I hope they do.

..I just got the title wrong. Since it was based on Laurel & Hardy, I thought it was called "Another Fine Mess". For years, I've been trying to track this film down. Now I'm not alone in my memory of this movie. I was a teenager when it came out.

NIXON: "Tit for a tat."

AGNEW: "...And a sh*t to that."

Thanks, IMDB!

I'm amazed that this film finally showed up on IMDB. For year's I've called it the most obscure movie ever made, since not a single reference source - Maltin, Variety, Screen World - has ever listed it, despite the presence of familiar names like Smothers, Little and Einstein in the credits. Made during the brief spurt of anti-Nixon movies in the early 70s, it's a one-joke movie, and not a very good one. The premise is that Nixon and Agnew have the vocal patterns and mannerisms of Laurel and Hardy. The result is an all-too familiar collection of imitation L & H gags with hardly anything that could pass as political satire...

I saw this film the first week it was released. I'm glad I did, because it was also the only week it was released! It opened and closed in Los Angeles within five days. Then, it disappeared forever.

It was silly, politically incorrect, and, for me, very enjoyable. I don't believe that Nixon, if he saw it, was amused. At 60 minutes, it moved right along, much like the Laurel and Hardy features it emulated. Rich Little did a perfect Nixon as Oliver Hardy impression, and if you are a Laurel and Hardy fan, you would probably get a kick out of it.

I would buy it, if it came out on DVD, but I have a feeling that it will never see the light of day again.

1/18/16 All these years later, I found the full film on youtube. https://youtu.be/0sImm2R6amU Enjoy.

When i was a young "tween" back in the early 70's i remember seeing this movie on the marquee and seeing the poster for it at a local movie theatre... one of my friends who had just turned 13 told me he had gotten in to see it and was raving about the "fart" scene that took place in the limo... A few years ago i was trying to tell someone about this movie and got a really blank stare from them... Now I find it did exist! I would be one of those people who would love to see this thing resurface either on DVD or a cable network... I'm sure it's no worse than other "Golden Turkey Award" winning films that have resurface over the years... Maybe producer Tommy Smothers can get together with Jerry Lewis and screen this with "The Day The Clown Cried"...