The Phynx

Hoo boy -- the only thing worse than a bad comedy is a bad comedy from the Vietnam era, especially one that was clearly made by old people who distrusted and feared the youth movement.

So on the shelf with "Skidoo" and "Smashing Time," try and stock a copy of "The Phynx," a ridiculous spy spoof featuring some very forgettable Leiber/Stoller songs (the band-in-the-movie's big hit is "What Is Your Sign?") and a whole lot of over-the-hill Hollywood notables (and Colonel Sanders!).

This movie is pretty hard to find, and it's probably just as well -- the only thing interesting about it is how obscure it is.

Hollywood tried so hard to assimilate the new hippie movement in their TV shows and movies and usually got it way wrong. so many films failed to do the "mix", SKIDOO, I LOVE YOU ALICE B. TOKLAS, etc.

The Phynx boasts a huge cast of Hollywood idols and can actually stand alone on that basis! Old stars, solo, or with their partners, are "relocated" to a huge estate, held hostage by the supposed "new" generation of entertainer...and indeed, when James Brown and 1969-70 entourage arrive, as ambassadors of the new music industry, we are impressed.

Songwriters Leiber and Stoller wrote the songs for this bizarre experiment and none are any good. That's why James Brown should have done a song or two from his own catalogue. OK, OK...................

Getting' back to those "old" stars: there are many here which justify the proverbial price of admission. I bought the DVD for the 1970 version of Gorcey and Hall. No laffs. But a gas to behold, so many years later!

This horrible, unfunny spy yarn trots out a gigantic assortment of celebrities in a vain attempt to add something to fill its vacuum of story and film-making. Its supposed plot concerns Michael Ansara playing a mad military general of Albania who kidnaps celebrities to give the essentially imprisoned Albanian President (George Tobias) and wife (Joan Blondell) some famous company to keep them busy. The General continually foils the efforts of a U.S. secret agency's attempts to sneak into Albania, so the agency goes to its super-computer (named M.O.T.H.A.) for guidance and is told the best means of breaking in is by recruiting a 4 man rock band, call it The Phynx, and make it so famous that the General will allow the band in to add to the celebrity load. Then the band/spy team is supposed to break those celebrities out. That's the gist of it, but there is so much more nonsense going on within this flimsy plot, yet not worth repeating since it is mostly idiotic. This film has the feel of a late 60's TV variety show skit gone horribly wrong and long. It's a lead-footed attempt at frantic satire along the lines of The Monkees, but it has almost no laughs. The four actors playing the band members are unmemorable and, indeed, remain unknown to this day. And the celebrity cast, impressive in sheer volume, gets little to do. Richard Pryor has a small bit as a cook; Dick Clark plays himself in another short bit; Clint Walker has a tiny part as a Drill Sergeant; Harold "Oddjob" Sakata does his Goldfinger bit; Ed Sullivan does one intro; Fritz Feld does his mouth-popping waiter bit; Patsy Kelly serves a donut; Colonel Sanders serves chicken (yep, they even dragged him into this fiasco); and Huntz Hall delivers one line---but it IS the key line that helps get the celebrities out of Albania. Only Martha Raye, as a doomed double-agent, shows any spark in her very short scene. In the big finale we are given an awards-show-like display of old Hollywood with the famous fossils striding into the Albanian Presidential Palace in twos and threes, announced with fanfare. Then they are seated and forced to listen to the pathetic rock n' roll banalities of the The Phynx band. A lamentable thing to behold---all those fossils trying to act entertained by such juvenile electric guitar-laden ramblings when you know they want to hear Benny Goodman, or hell, even Liberace. And the songs by famed tunesmiths Leiber and Stoller are junk, although they at least didn't attempt any psychedelic rock. Well, all I can say is that having all those celebs in one room must have led to one hell of a fun lunch for them.... but the film is no fun for any viewer. And Warner Bros. barely released it back in 1969, for good reason, and it has since vanished without a trace, also for good reason.

I finally bought a copy of this film on DVD from an online seller, and it is truly dreadful. It has a running time of 81 minutes but it felt like 4 hours. I only bought it to see the many cameo appearances of stars young and old, but some of them are so brief that you have to watch every second of the film to catch them. Richard Pryor introduces himself and then he's gone! The best part of the film is at the end when Pat O'Brien is reunited with former Dead End Kids Leo Gorcey and Huntz Hall. Leo looks positively ancient, even though he was only 51 at the time. He died of liver failure shortly after shooting his scenes. His heavy drinking really took its toll. The writing on this film is horrendous, and the acting is worse than any Ed Wood film. I completely agree with Warner Brothers' decision to shelve this film and never release it, even though they probably spent a good deal of money to make it. It's an embarrassment and painful to watch. I hope to someday see Jerry Lewis' never-released "The Day the Clown Cried," another legendary bad film, so I can compare it to "The Phynx."

Odds are you have never seen The Phynx and for good reason. This is the deformed beast of a child that Hollywood wants to keep locked up in the attic. Its the hell-spawn of the youth movement and the old embalmed generation coming together to make ... something.

The basic plot concerns the SSA (Super Secret Agency) attempting to rescue the icons of American culture that have been kidnapped and brought to Albania. Who are the great icons? George Jessel, Rudy Vallee, Edgar Bergan, Huntz Hall, Leo Gorcey, Joe Louis, Col. Sanders, Xavier Cugat and probably a dozen others (all I can say is I hope they were paid a lot). SSA decides that the best way to get them out is top form a rock band (think Monkees and Beatles singing songs by Lieber and Stoller) and have them invited into the country. They then kidnap Two white guys an Indian and a black guy and force them to be spies and a rock group thus allowing for some surreal bits as other stars show up to train the band (Richard Pryor, Dick Clark, James Brown among others).

My jaw dropped and stayed down for a good portion of the films running time.

I'm not sure how to rate this film. Its occasionally funny, has some good songs and proves that not everyone needs drugs to have their brain smashed like an egg.

This is a clear warning about who and who should not be mating. Clearly its a movie that wants to appeal to the youth market while at the same time doing everything it can to attack and make fun of the same market. Its as if your stuffed shirt of an uncle made your choices in current popular culture, clearly you wouldn't want to see his choices. At the same time the film is clearly about youth and what was then current culture so it wouldn't appeal to the old folks. Its a movie that will appeal to no one.

Actually not no one, bad movie lovers, fans of surrealism, those who must see every movie made by their favorite star, masochists, mental patients and those who want a unique (but not necessarily good) viewing experience will want to check the film out.

I've given it a 5 out of 10 because there is some good and some bad mixed in with the "I don't believe this" material so its the fairest rating I could come up with. Your reaction will be your own and with a movie like this I don't even want to guess what that is going to be. Take this review as either and invitation or a warning, its your choice.