Birds Do It

Soupy Sales plays a janitor at NASA who is, inexplicably, important to the space program. Much of what follows are little skits tossed together to make a story.

"Birds Do It" came out when I was only two years old, so there wasn't much chance of me going to see it in theaters...which is good, as the film would have no double made me stupider! And, if anyone had gone to see it, they really should have demanded their money back, as it was really THAT awful.

The film starts off with a HUGE problem...it has Soupy Sales in the lead and Mr. Sales simply didn't have the sorts of talents that would work in the lead. His comedy was extremely lowbrow, one-note and is the sort of thing that even Three Stooges or Pee Wee Herman fans might find beneath them! Add to that horrible writing, as the comedy in this film just never works. Painful, unfunny and a chore to finish!

By the way, I only watched the film to see Dean Martin and boy was I disappointed, as he is only VERY briefly in the film...playing a guy who is out golfing.

What a waste of a very good legendary comedian! The writing in this movie is so poor and weak that it is insipid instead of amusing. Soupy spends about a third of the movie flying around in the sky, actually more like floating up like a balloon and then having no control of how to go where he'd like to go. This gets very boring very quickly and he just alternately keeps trying to look either frightened when heading for danger or else he looks happy in spite of his inability to control where he's going. There are a group of bad guys who keep trying to kill him for some reason which is never really explained. Soupy is only supposed to be a mere janitor anyway, so why the fuss? Tab Hunter plays dual roles as both an army soldier and also one of the bad guys, who just happens to look exactly like somebody else on the NASA space ship base. What are the chances of that? Anyway, Tab does his best but nothing can save this turkey of a movie. I found a copy of this movie on eBay, but it isn't available otherwise. Probably the other copies of it were tossed into the garbage. I was really trying to enjoy this movie and hoping that it would get better, but it never did.

One of my sci-fi/horror/fantasy reviews written 50 years ago: Directed by Andrew Marton; Produced by Stanley Colbert for Ivan Tors Films, released by Columbia Pictures. Screenplay by Art Arthur and Arnie Kogen, from Leonard Kaufman's story; Photography by Howard Winner; Edited by Erwin Dumbrille; Music by Samuel Matlovsky. Starring Soupy Sales, Tab Hunter, Arthur O'Connell, Beverly Adams, Edward Andrews and guest star: Flipper!

Soup's only feature film is filled with fine slapstick comedy, but its overly silly mise-en-scene reduces it to a child's level. He is a janitor employed at a top-secret government installation, who is accidentally exposed to a secret radiation bombardment that renders him not only lighter than air but also irresistible to women. To Soupy's credit there are moments of inspired way-out gags, before the film finally deteriorates into a protracted running along the water reel.

Without a doubt the worst movie and biggest waste of time ever. Not even remotely funny, even in the campiest, most anti-comedic sense of the word. The gags and jokes are so poorly crafted that the simplest acting routines and attempts at humorous dialogue are as forced as the laughter on the Pat Robertson Show.

One thing that birds definitely wouldn't do is sit still for this nauseatingly boring crap. In fact, I met Soupy Sales(in fairness, quite a masterful comic and talented showman in his day) a few years ago and shared these very thoughts. He laughed heartily and said that he understood that several states were thinking of using the movie as a particularly excruciating form of capital punishment. After repeated forced viewings, drawing and quartering would start to sound good.

This Hilarious 1966 film starring Soupy Sales and co-starring Tab Hunter has unfortunately never been released on vhs/dvd.Hopefully,someday it will!!Soupy sales plays a Janitor for a nuclear missle site and accidently as a result of an experiment gains anti-gravity powers that permits him to fly and makes him irresistable to women!!Soupy Sales reminds me of another great Comic Genius from West Virginia "Don Knotts".Hopefully someday,"Birds Do it",will be shown on TV and even better vhs/dvd!!