Wicked, Wicked

"Wicked, Wicked" was a film that I waited with such anticipation to see at the age of 12 - after seeing the promo trailer on television and the poster in the theater my curiosity was aroused.

I loved films as a child - any film. As long as it seemed like an event. I was not big on classics at the time so my catalog was being developed. I don't think that at the time it was supposed to be a great film.

It was fun however. And later in 1976 - when my parents owned a theater I persuaded my father to get "Wicked, Wicked" as a second feature for "Demon Seed" - it is a fun film and only for the excitement as "Earthquake" has Sensurround as a gimmick - "DUO-VISION" was the gimmick.

See it for the excitement - not for the logging into your classic diary. It does make you laugh and wonder about the time period. Not much different from today - I have walked out on several of todays movie, while sitting through all of "Wicked, Wicked" as a child.

It is fun!!!

Movie takes place at a huge seaside hotel in California. In it handyman Jason (Randolph Roberts) attacks and kills blonde women. He then hides the bodies so they just go missing. The hotel has a security man searching for the people and beautiful Lisa James (Tiffany Bolling) is hired to sing there. She has black hair...but decides to wear a blonde wig which has Jason after her.

This was the first (and last) film shot in "Duo Vision"--basically a split screen used in 99.9% of the film (there are a few shots in the film not using it). It actually works pretty good sometimes. You see a person on one side of the screen and see what he's thinking of on the other. Still, it's just basically a gimmick to sell the film (it didn't work). The story itself is familiar and the killings are pretty non-bloody (this has a PG rating), but the acting itself is actually not half bad and the film kept my interest. Not a camp classic by any means but an OK film with a well-used split screen process. I give this a 7.

The movie serves the gimmick of two screen viewing, but it's more annoying and pointless than anything. Lots of the time one side is just someone doing something mundane like examining wallpaper or sleeping while the other side has the important stuff. There was no real need to do an entire movie like this, it was just an interesting idea to try... unfortunately in practice, it kind of sucks. It's a standard slasher movie with bad acting so you're not missing much if you never see this. Needed a better plot and more thought out use of the duo-vision to be of any worth.

Filmed, using the modern miracle that is "Duo-Vision" (aka: split screen), WICKED, WICKED is about an enormous hotel, and the psychopathic killer that lurks there. Though it's obvious who the murderer is from the beginning, this movie is quite entertaining and even boasts a nice "shock" finale.

Rick Stewart is serviceable as the womanizing sleuth on the case, while Randolph Roberts is perfectly cast as the bug-eyed maniac. There's also a cavalcade of oddball characters and the hyper-intense Scott Brady in another hard-nosed, barking cop role. Watch for Roger Bowen as the sniveling, reputation-obsessed hotel manager.

Is this a classic film? Well, no, but it is a lot of fun to watch. However, you might have to watch it twice in order to avoid eyeball whiplash...

This movie has several strikes against it from the outset. First off, is the split-screen ("duo-vision") gimmick, which is effective when used sparingly by filmmakers like Brian DePalma (or going WAY back silent French filmmaker Abel Gance), but is pretty annoying when used extensively (check out the ill-advised sequel "More American Graffitti"), and likely to give many viewers a splitting headache. Then there is the killer who is stalking a seaside hotel. The movie not only makes no attempt to hide his identity from the start, but the clues he leaves along the way are so incredibly obvious that you want to scream at the protagonist (a dimwitted, womanizing security guard)for not being able to figure out who he is. Finally there's the wretched theme song ("Wicked, wicked, that's the ticket. . .") that was apparently actually sung by actress Tiffany Bolling, who should have stuck to stripping off in bad movies like this (and speaking a stripping off, Bolling takes her usual gratuitous shower in this movie behind a particularly opaque shower curtain, just to add insult to injury).

Despite all this though, I kind of enjoyed this movie. It has an enjoyably nasty sense of humor, and only in the 1970's could anyone possibly get away with making a wrongheaded experiment in cinematic ineptitude like this and still have it backed by a major studio (MGM). As for those who find this misogynistic or offensive, check out a couple other Tiffany Bolling vehicles/feminist treatises "The Candy Snatchers" and "Centerfold Girls" sometime!