Lang Jr

Out-of-balance no-budget teen film features terrific music set to threadbare non-plot. The movie is little more than a showcase for several early, obscure, but talented acts; all the numbers are above average and quite entertaining. Like Louie Prima's awful "The Continental Twist" which hit drive-in screens four years later, the story involves a group of mobsters who are trying to evict the local teens from a makeshift dance club. In this picture the hoodlums need a hangout to run the connection to the "Detroit Syndicate". Highlight of the action is when the boss makes Crackers Louie dance by the pool. Standout musical numbers include "Roogie Doogie" by Preacher Smith, and "Juanita" by the Five Stars. The cast is divided into "Wheels" and "Squares".

Mess of a film that's part comedy, part drama, but mostly mess. Roddy McDowell plays a brilliant but outcast high-school senior who re-enacts, via a verbal memoir, the peculiar circumstances that brought him to his current imprisonment. Roddy plays confidante / genie to fellow teenager and female lead Tuesday Weld, granting her impulsive wishes, and monitoring the peculiar after-effects. A lot of the time he quacks around like a duck, but the irritation doesn't blossom into anything; it just continues to grate on your nerves.

The film doesn't date well. During Weld's scenes hanging out with her father, I'm sure there was more laughing on the screen than in the audience. It seems very unfunny today. Was it ever funny? I'll admit, there are a few amusing sequences: the Hollywood producer standing in the unemployment line, estimating the millions he'll spend on his next picture, for example. But there's not much else. Harvey Korman as the High-school principal looks like he's auditioning for his role in Blazing Saddles.

Hard to believe that George Axelrod, responsible for this stinker, had written The Seven Year Itch and Bus Stop. Lord Love a Duck belongs to the "I think I'm doing something important" school of film-making, leaving it to the pseudo-intellectuals to comment on its symbolism and over-analyze its message. It is unique, I'll give it that. But that's all it is.