Skidoo

This late-60s artifact has to be seen to be believed. It was, sadly, Groucho Marx's final film, but he's still pretty good in it. I think this was a little bit unfairly maligned when it came out - perhaps audiences weren't ready for the craziness. In a nutshell, Jackie Gleason plays Tony Banks, a retired hitman. Tony is married to Flo (Carol Channing), and they have a blonde-bombshell daughter Darlene (Alexandra Hay). Tony is paid a visit by two messengers, a former coworker named Hechy (Cesar Romero) and his son Angie (Frankie Avalon), who have a job for Tony on the behalf of their employer, a mob boss named God (Marx). Seems there's a squealer sitting in the state pen, by the name of Blue Chips Packard (Mickey Rooney), and God wants him dead before he can spill the beans. While this offer is being made to Tony - can he refuse? - Darlene is falling in with a hippie named Stash (John Phillip Law), which of course the traditional-minded Tony isn't down with. He does take the job (without telling his wife and his daughter), which involves his being embedded in the prison and then "kissing" (killing!) the dirty rotten squealer. Things don't go as planned, as you might expect. And this being 1968, the spectre of LSD appears over all of the proceedings. If you ever wondered what it would be like for Ralph Kramden to take acid, wonder no more. He accidentally ingests it (licking an envelope!) and is coached through his trip by The Professor, played by Austin Pendleton. Meanwhile, God sits in his offshore yacht, afraid to even go above deck. There's plenty of singing and dancing, and the entire hippie experience is on full display. Among the rest of the cast are Frank Gorshin, Burgess Meredith, George Raft, Peter Lawford, Michael Constantine, Richard Kiel, and Slim Pickens! So me, I thoroughly enjoyed the movie, even though it's thought to be just abysmal. Skidoo is very dated, but it's a fun microcosm of life in '68.

Finally saw this thing in Washington DC at a special showing. What a mind blower! Director Preminger and company really took risks here; a counterculter comedy with an all star middle aged to senior citizen cast! The story has gangster Jackie Gleason being hired by Groucho Marx to kill Mickey Rooney in prison where Gleason takes LSD and his wife Carol Channing does a strip tease and sings the theme song.. it's enough to make your head spin! It must be said that this film made motion picture history: It's the only movie ever made where the end credits are actually SUNG, by the films composer Nilsson! Can't wait for this to be on DVD!

After watching Skidoo tonight all I can ask is what was Otto Preminger thinking when he did this film? Better yet what were all these talented people thinking when they signed on?

The plot has Jackie Gleason, once the mob's number one hit-man, but now retired and living with wife Carol Channing and daughter Alexandra Hay who has taken up with the hippie lifestyle and some hippies, much to the consternation of Gleason and Channing. Those two alone as parents might make anyone want to join a commune.

Cesar Romero and Frankie Avalon bring a message from God or at least that's what syndicate boss Groucho Marx. Groucho wants mob informer Mickey Rooney killed, but Mickey's in prison. Never mind the mob can do anything, bust Gleason into prison and bust him right out once the job is done. But Rooney won't let people near him, but since Gleason's an old friend he'll be vulnerable to him. Which is what Groucho is thinking.

Since Gleason balks, Groucho captures Alexandra Hay and brings her on his yacht from where he runs things. At that point with Marx having him by the short hairs, Gleason agrees to the contract.

The big idea is to get the entire prison tripping on LSD so no one will interfere. But of course things do go wrong as you'll see if you care to watch the film.

No matter how many big names were packed into Skidoo, nothing could get this picture off the ground. Otto Preminger packed the film with a whole lot of people he had used in previous films like Peter Lawford, Burgess Meredith, Slim Pickens, but all to no avail. The jokes fell flat as a punctured soufflé, the situations were just not funny, in fact even Groucho apparently wasn't in the mood to ad-lib any of his patented humor.

In fact Groucho playing a character called God WAS the funniest thing in the film. It has serious theological implications for those of us who thought George Burns or Morgan Freeman was God.

In its own way Skidoo was as big a disaster, even bigger than Plan Nine From Outer Space. And Preminger had a much bigger budget to work from.

I like a good bad movie. I can go on and on about how wonderful "The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies" is - and I have. And I don't need those MST3K idiots adding lame improv chatter to make a bad film more enjoyable! So I had been looking forward to "Skidoo" for years. I finally watched it last night, after procuring a copy on eBay (pretty much the only place where you can find this film, currently).

My reaction, in a nutshell: Blah. Yuck. Ho hum.

It's pointless to say more, especially when so many "Skidoo" fans have already weighed in - quite eloquently, I might add - within these comments pages. But I will say this: Usually on the IMDb, when you see so many well-written praises for a famous train wreck of a film, you get the feeling that this is something to see. Don't be snowed as I was! What most of these folks are not telling you is that "Skidoo" is meant to be a wacky comedy. But it's simply a deadening, painful-to-watch document of the twilight of many a great performer's career, where, before either dying or retreating to the safety of TV movies, the cast - some game, some barely even trying (I'm looking at you, Groucho Marx) - flounder in this pathetic attempt by the dinosaurs of 1950's Hollywood to try to stay relevant by making a "hippie movie."

This film is flat, boring, pretentious and hopelessly uncampy. It has the distinctively ugly look of late 60's studio cinema, and like many of those other strident, unfunny all-star comedies of the era ("The Great Race," "The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!" et al), it's just plain awful.

In a way this could also be titled "The Day the Mob Dropped Out." Anyway, a good roster of late-60s Hollywood appears at least briefly in this LSD-laced caper gone wrong. Retired hitman Tony Banks (Gleason) is approached by old pal Hechy (Romero) to do one last job--on his one-time best friend "Blue Chips" Packard (Rooney), who's turning state's evidence. Tony refuses, but is "pressured" into going along, and gets sent to a remote prison, where Packard is being held.

In the meantime Tony's wife Flo (Channing) seeks help from Hechy's protegé Angie (Avalon) in contacting crime-kingpin "God" (Marx, in his final film appearance), to persuade him to let Tony out of it. Angie refuses to take Flo to see "God"--but doesn't mind taking their teenaged daughter Darlene (Hay) and her hippie boyfriend Stash (Law) out to "God's" yacht. Flo follows them with a gang of Stash's friends.

Tony, after an accidental acid experience via his cellmate the Professor (Pendleton)'s stationery, plots with him to escape by tripping out all the guards and inmates. This done, they fly out of the compound in a makeshift balloon, which the hallucinating tower guards (Clark and singer-songwriter Harry Nilsson, who also composed the soundtrack) mistake for a flower. The balloon heads seaward, drifting toward "God's" hideaway. Channing sings the title song during the big finish.

Some good laughs and insights, and social commentary of the day, not to mention tons of cameos. Raises a few points about LSD's former psychiatric uses, and leaves you wondering if it wasn't all just a bad trip. --A late-70s issue of "High Times" claims Groucho 'dropped' as a way of preparing for his role, and had a pleasant experience. Nilsson said later in an interview he had never used LSD at the time of filming, and merely played drunk.