Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mamma's Hung You in the Closet and I'm Feelin' So Sad

In fact, I saw first the play in the 70's, in my city, Barcelona, in a very good performance, and the public was very delightful. As a curiosity: the role of the Mother was played... by a man! That gave a satirical and extravagant turn to the show. Unfortunately, the film of Quine is, sadly, a disaster: a comedy without grace, very boring and it is a pity that such a talented director fall so low in this movie: it is very difficult to complete the vision of this film. The impression of the play was that it is a experimental comedy. But the impression of the film is that it is a very nonsense history with characters very ridiculous.

Rosalind Russell never gave a bad performance, and I don't know if it's just me, but I prefer her older, like she was in this movie! Not everyone can say that they got better with age, that they got more beautiful with age, but she did! Age just suited her unique level of sophistication and style.

And I know this movie is considered horrible, but it had me a fan from the opening credits onward! I just loved, absolutely loved the theme song! I'm still singing it off and on now, and I've been done watching the movie for a couple of hours!

I will admit that the title of the film put me off for a long time, because I couldn't help but imagine someone skinned, and hung in the closet that way. You know, the way some dogs or cats are skinned after they pass away, and then their owners get to keep the skin. That's what I thought of with this title. And the film is grotesque, but it's special brand of kooky charm that the late 1960s was so good at makes it not so bad after all.

This movie reminds me of a Carol Channing film called Skidoo, made in the same year I believe. So, anyone that likes the groovy kookiness of this film should really check that one out as well. And while I haven't seen it yet, it also brings to mind a Phyllis Diller movie called "did you hear the one about the traveling sales lady?" from 1968.

The people who gave this a low rating, I guess they just didn't like the title song, because if you like the opening credits and title song, you're going to enjoy the film overall, as it pretty much set the tone.

My only real complaints are how weird the young son looked in this movie, with his skin, seeming to be painted white a lot of times. And Jonathan Winters was included in the film in a very strange way, like a cartoon pop-up bubble every once in a while. But his mouth wouldn't be moving. What can I say, I guess it goes with the weird vibe of the film! But overall, this movie was very enjoyable!

This would make a great double feature with "Where angels go, trouble follows" from 1968, also starring the great Rosalind Russell!

I've seen the film AND read the play, which I think makes me unique. It also makes me queasy. The word `queasy' is not a staple of my vocabulary, for some reason, but it leapt readily to mind as a precise description of how this miserable, grotty-looking, dull, funny-as-chloroform movie made me feel, and will make you feel, too, if you're not careful. The play was little more than a foray into a now extinct breed of artiness. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that it has never been produced anywhere in the world since 1970 - and hopefully, the sun will grow cold before it is produced anywhere ever again. The film is a botched version of the play, AND a foray into extinct artiness in its own right. Moreover I think something was wrong with the film stock. The very colours upset my stomach.

Here is what remains of the plot synopsis, excluding that which has been so wittily summed up by the title: a widow has had her dead husband stuffed; she lugs his preserved corpse around wherever she travels; she has an idiot son who is sort of undergoing a sexual awakening (DON'T expect anything salacious); and that's about it. Every so often the dead father will appear in a little bubble in the top right-hand corner of the screen and comment on what, if anything, is going on. Sometimes he'll talk to his son. Sometimes he'll address the audience, with lines like, `Not much will happen in the next few minutes.' If he'd been honest, he would have added, `And not much will happen after that, either, so if you're thinking of walking out, cut your losses and do so NOW.'

Don't get me wrong - the 1960s was the tail end of Hollywood's golden age, producing delightful throw-backs like **** and stunning new masterpieces like ****. (I'm sorry - I simply couldn't bear to see the names of two of my favourite films associated in any way with this one.) But it was also the Decade of Floundering. If you want to see just how badly Hollywood was floundering in the 'sixties, by all means watch this movie - but you'll probably decide that you didn't really want to know, after all.

The title, probably one of the longest in film history, is far more inspired than the rest of this misfired black-oedipal comedy. Rosalind Russell, Robert Morse and Hugh Griffith all give high-pitched, one-note performances (this is not one of the films that Rosalind Russell should be remembered for). Jonathan Winters' little asides to the audience, apparently (according to IMDb trivia) inserted after the film was completed, are rarely very funny, either. A young and shockingly sexy Barbara Harris is the sole bright spot....well, her and some nice Jamaican scenery (in Montego Bay). ** out of 4.

Okay, so the sixties was the decade when lots of rules were broken and new frontiers were forged. Unfortunately, alot of this rule-breaking looks self-indulgent and stupid now. Take the case of OH DAD ..., which is based on a George(or is it William?)Kopit play. Not quite absurdist but definitely absurd, the story involves a woman who lugs her dead husband's corpse with her and her adult virgin son as they traverse various resorts. Rosalind Russell is the white-clad, pastel-wigged mother, Robert Morse the wimpy man-child, and Jonathan Winters is Poor Dad in the closet(also the narrator). Also on hand is Barbara Harris as a young nymphet--one of the few reasons to see the movie. I happen to like Harris, and her film roles are few and far between(FREAKY FRIDAY and FAMILY PLOT are probably her most readily available films), so I grabbed POOR DAD at a small independent video shop several years ago. Harris is a great comic actress, and although she is one of the good things about POOR DAD, it's not one of her better efforts.

Winter's character narrates and points out the plot points of this film as it goes along, almost to cue the audience how to react to the next scene. It's interesting to note that, despite all the big names, this movie tanked. Probably because nobody knew what the hell this movie was--Winters' wacky narration and the goofy flashbacks detailing his courtship and marriage of Russell (who parodies her Auntie Mame persona) stab at being comic in that manic 1960s way (think of the way the old Monkees TV show was shot), or some kind of weird symbolic representation of the spiritual bankruptcy of the collective American soul (nobody has a corpse in a closet strickly for shtick purposes). And THAT TITLE . . . a sure sign the film is a bomb. If you're a student of film and feel the need to survey the various kinds of films that were perpetrated during the sixties, you might want to give this one a try. Or maybe not