Küss mich, Dummkopf

Dino (Dean Martin) , the good looking and lecherous Las Vegas singer, stops for gas on his way to Hollywood in Climax, Nevada. The oily gas station attendant is Barney Millsap (Cliff Osmond) , a would-be lyricist who writes pop songs with Orville Spooner, the local piano teacher. By disabling Dino's car, Barney contrives a scheme to have charming Dino sing one of their songs on an upcoming TV special. Possessively jealous piano teacher Orville Spooner (Ray Walston) , a local songwriter, wants Dino to hear his tunes but knows the cad will seduce his pretty wife, so he hires a floozy (Kim Novak) to pose as the tempting spouse. Meanwhile, Barney sends his beautiful wife (Felicia Farr) , Zelda, away for the night while he tries to sell a song to famous nightclub singer Dino, who is stranded in town. There Was This Girl in Climax, Nevada!. It happened in Climax, Nevada !. Dino...he came to dinner...Polly the Pistol - she stayed for breakfast...Beethoven - he cooked up the whole mess...This picture is for adults only !.

An enjoyable film with funny, amusing script by the compelling tandem LAL Diamond and Billy Wilder. A roguish, vulgar and thorny issue at the time by passing off a local prostitute as the complacent wife of one of them. Chance and infidelities mix in this uninhibited sitcom, one of the director's best. The attack on 'good customs' and the dominant puritanism in broad sectors of North American society complicated the dissemination of the film at the time. It gets better as it goes along, but the whole thing suffers from staginess, being an adaptation of an Italian play ¨L'ora della fantasia¨by Anna Bonacci. However, one condemned as smut, this lesser Wilder effort now seems no worse than a TV sitcom. Rightly agreeable with plenty of sly bits of business and fun-filled , milestone comedy which neatly combines humor , mirth , entertaining situations , a feeling romance and bitterness . Notable direction render this stunning story more funny than usual. Giving a jaundiced vision leavened by a tender sympathy for the frailty of human motives. Dean Martin basically plays himself as a horny Vegas crooner stranded in the boondocks. Drawing heavily on Martin's offscreen persona, this sees him as a sex-crazed, arrogant crooner stranded in a remote Californian town and feigning interest in a songs composer -nicely played by Ray Walston who steals the show- in return for the sexual favours of the latter's wife -attractively played by Felicia Farr.

The motion picture was well directed by Billy Wilder who includes several punchlines . Being one of Wilder's most inventive and furious screen adaptations .Billy was one of the best directors of history . In 1939 started the partnership with Charles Bracket on such movies as ¨Ninotchka¨ , ¨Ball of fire¨ , making their film debut as such with ¨Major and the minor¨ . ¨Sunset Boulevard¨ was their last picture together before they split up . Later on , Billy collaborated with another excellent screenwriter IAL Diamond . Both of them won an Academy Award for ¨Stalag 17¨ dealing with a POW camp starred by William Holden . After that , they wrote/produced/directed such classics as ¨Ace in the hole¨ , the touching romantic comedy ¨Sabrina¨ , the Hickcoktian courtroom puzzle game ¨Witness for the prosecution¨ and two movies with the great star Marilyn Monroe , the warmth ¨Seven year itch¨ and this ¨Some like hot¨. All of them include screenplays that sizzle with wit . But their biggest success and highpoint resulted to be the sour and fun ¨The apartment¨. Subsequently in the 60s and 70s , the duo fell headlong into the pit , they realized nice though unsuccessful movies as ¨Buddy buddy¨ ,¨Fedora¨ , ¨Front page¨ and ¨Secret life of Sherlock Holmes¨, though the agreeable ¨Avanti¨ slowed the decline . The team , Wilder-Diamond , had almost disappeared beneath a wave of bad reviews and failures . Rating : 6.5/10 . Above average , essential and indispensable watching ; extremely funny and riveting film and completely entertaining .It's the kind of movie where you know what's coming but , because the treatment , enjoy it all the same .

Some people still consider this movie a flop. Having just re-watched this movie for the first time in years, I can't see why. Perhaps Walston is a bit weak in a leading role (Sellers would have been fantastic), but the script is first rate, both funny and touching.

Dean Martin and Kim Novak are seriously under-rated actors in my opinion; here Dean sends himself up as 'Dino' and is not afraid to play himself as un-likable. Novak is, as always, wonderful. Sadly Kim never seems to get the appreciation she deserves, her performances in such movies as 'Vertigo' and 'Bell, Book & Candle' are never less than first class. While the lesser-known Felicia Farr comes across very well (she was also the wife of Wilder's frequent star, Jack Lemmon, I wonder how this film would have worked with Lemmon in the Walston role?)

This is a gem of a movie and one of Wilder's best.

Billy Wilder could well have entitled his best known comedy "Nobody's Perfect" after its unforgettable last line. Instead he saved this ploy for a a later work that I admire almost as much, "Kiss Me, Stupid". Two things have always puzzled me about this film, one, that a work so innocently harmless unleashed such a furore of moral indignation on its first appearance and two, that it has never become one of the most revered of the Wilder canon. Comedies that retain a freshness long after one knows all the jokes are rare, but, for me, "Kiss Me, Stupid" is one of the chosen few. Like all the best comedies it builds on a situation that gets more and more out of hand. A pair of frustratedly unrecognised songwriters, a small town piano teacher (Ray Walston) and his garage mechanic friend (Cliff Osmond) sense a golden opportunity to become known when a famous pop-singer and stand up comic (Dean Martin) needs to stop off in their town for petrol. It's really a single gag film dealing with the pair's machinations to prevent the singer from continuing his journey before they have played him their songs. Their scheming includes getting the piano teacher's wife out of the way and hiring a substitute in the form of a sexy floozy (Kim Novak) who is one of the attractions of the town's recently opened nightclub. To say more would be to spoil the fun. Suffice to say that all the main protagonists are perfectly cast. It has often been remarked that Ray Walston is no match for Peter Sellers who was originally due to play the role. I cannot but disagree fearing that Sellers might have invested the jealousy obsessed piano teacher with that element of caricature that the role does not quite need. All it requires are a few quirky props such as the Beethoven tee-shirt and the buttermilk deposited in the piano and the rather less than over the top quality of Walston's performance is able to convey the humour and fun of the situation without smothering them . There is one superbly funny cameo by Doro Merande (the waitress in "The Seven Year Itch")as his tetchy mother-in-law. Add to this some stalwart work by the great production designer, Alexander Trauner in recreating the atmosphere of small town Nevada and a sparklingly inventive score by Andre Previn and the result is an extremely enjoyable piece of movie escapism.

When writer-director Billy Wilder made `Kiss Me, Stupid' in 1964, he was riding high: His comedy-drama `The Apartment' had won the Oscar as best picture in 1960 and Wilder's `Irma La Douce,' released in 1963, had been a smash. `Stupid,' however, would not receive critical raves or a warm reception at the box office. Instead it would be condemned by the Catholic Legion of Decency, banned in several cities and dropped by its original distributor United Artists, which gave `Stupid' a limited and unsuccessful release through its art-film branch Lopert Films. Seen today, it's laughable to think that this innuendo-laden but mostly innocuous comedy created such a furor. Admittedly, Wilder pushed the boundaries of good taste with some of the dialogue and imagery. Even so the movie is far more nutty than smutty. Set in the Nevada hamlet of Climax, `Stupid' tells the story of church organist and piano teacher Orville J. Spooner (Ray Walston), who is insanely overprotective of his adoring and adorable wife Zelda (Felicia Farr, who was married to Jack Lemmon offscreen). Orville and buddy Barney (Cliff Osmond) write songs in their spare time – one is called `I'm Taking Mom to the Junior Prom ‘Cuz She's a Better Twister Than My Sister,' and another begins, `I'm a poached egg without a piece of toast/Yorkshire Pudding without a beef to roast' – and they're excited when singing sensation Dino (Dean Martin as the same kind of leering lush he usually played in his nightclub act and on TV) is stranded in town. Orville thinks he can sell some material to Dino, but the aspiring tunesmith is alarmed by Dino's reputation as a great seducer and fears Zelda, a Dino fan, will end up in the star's clutches. So Orville hires Polly (Kim Novak), a trampy type with teased platinum hair who works at the local dive known as The Belly Button, to pretend to be his wife while he entertains Dino for an evening. Thanks to a series of surprises, it becomes a night to remember for all concerned, including Zelda, who wasn't even supposed to be a part of it in the first place. As the somewhat similar `Indecent Proposal' would do almost 30 years later, `Stupid' ultimately states that the best way to test a relationship is to walk away from it for a while and see what happens. What separates `Stupid' from so many of the so-called `sex comedies' of the period is its combination of cynicism and directness. Beneath the teasing and the titillation there are some genuinely provocative themes about human nature and the sacrifices we're willing to make to catch a break. Although the movie has what might be termed a happy ending, it's a conclusion with more than a few dark clouds hanging over it. Wilder and Diamond must have somehow known that the second half of the 1960s would be fraught with social changes and the re-evaluation of old standards. What looked like trash in 1964 seems pretty prescient when screened today.

Jealous piano teacher Orville Spooner (Ray Walston) sends his beautiful wife, Zelda (Felicia Farr), away for the night while he tries to sell a song to a famous nightclub singer Dino (Dean Martin), who is stranded in town.

The Catholic Legion of Decency strongly objected to the completed film and it was condemned, the second film to get such an honor -- the first being "Baby Doll" in 1956. One can easily see why, as while there is no nudity, there is plenty of humor revolving around prostitution, adultery and and Dean Martin being a "sex maniac".

A. H. Weiler of the New York Times called the film "pitifully unfunny" and "obvious, plodding, short on laughs and performances and long on vulgarity." This seems unfair. While it is not among Billy Wilder's best work, even Wilder's average films are better than many other people's greatest attempts. I can only say now (roughly fifty years after the film debuted) that while it was not perfect, it had its moments and was quite bold in its own way.