Bagarre à huit

What do you get if you have Bob Hope, Phyllis Diller and. Jonathan Winters all together - you have a very funny movie.

The movie is about a widower - Bob Hope, who has seven children and a dog; who works as an accountant at a local bank. One day he finds a lot of money. By coincidence, it is discovered that $50,000 has been.embezzled at the same bank that Hope works at. You guessed it, the bank believes that Hope has stolen the money.

Fearing that he will be arrested, he gathers up his seven children and the dog; and hits the road.

The movie is full of skits and site gags; featuring the very talented comedians of Hope, Diller and Winters. It reminded me of a Jerry Lewis movie.

Well worth watching.

By this time, in the late 60s, Hope was churning out absolute garbage films. This one is cheap, and stupid. He's something like 63 years old in this thing, and has a bunch of young children.

He never stopped milking the name. His family continued the practice till his death. I worked on one of his last TV specials, and it was extremely sad. He was barely lucid until the camera started, and then he was on auto-pilot.

"Eight on the Lam" is not a bad film at all. But one part of it made me laugh. Bob Hope plays a widower with seven children, lots of bills and a girlfriend played by Shirley Eaton...that's Shirley Eaton who was a Bond girl in "Goldfinger" (the one who got gilded, by the way)!! This sort of strange casting always makes me laugh. Now I am not saying that the guy Hope plays isn't a nice guy...he is...but with a gorgeous blonde like Eaton?!?!

When the story begins, you see Henry Dimsdale (Hope) leaving his job at the bank to pick up his kids. So, driving a tiny VW you see him pick up seven kids AND a dog!! Obviously, things are tight when you have that many mouths to feed. But Henry's luck changes when he finds a money clip with $10,000 in a parking lot. He's basically an honest guy and waits a couple weeks to see if anyone claims it...and they don't. So, he begins to spend the money...and the timing couldn't be worse. This is because a bank examiner has found $50,000 missing from Henry's books...and all these recent huge purchases sure make it look like he's been embezzling. Instead of staying and trying to clear himself, he follows a co-worker's advice and runs...with his kids in tow. What's next? See the film and find out for yourself.

Like several other films from this era, Phyllis Diller is in this one as well. However, instead of acting WITH Hope, she mostly is in a parallel story with her boyfriend (Jonathan Winters). I liked this, as the films where she and Hope traded barbs were pretty limp (such as the aptly named "Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number").

So is this any good? It's not bad...and that's something you can't say about many of Hope's later films. For the most part, they are an unfunny and sorry lot...with Hope delivering asides that aren't particularly funny and are mostly annoying. This one, in contrast, works better because most of it's not played for laughs and Hope's limp quips are at a minimum. Now I am not saying it's a great film, but it is pleasant and watchable...though towards the end they did try more comedy and it was the low point of the movie. An amiable time-passer and not much more.

By the way, this film also features another Bond girl, Jill St. John ("Diamonds Are Forever").

In a plot borrowed somewhat from Double Dynamite, bank teller Bob Hope finds $10,000.00 in thousand dollar Grover Cleveland notes in a parking lot. He's real happy until it's discovered at his bank that they're short $50,000.00 in their books. Who seems to have come into some money? Nobody but old ski nose so he has to take it on the lam.

That's not easy considering he's a widower with seven kids. Hope's also got a babysitter played by Phyllis Diller. He leaves her behind, but she proves to be quite an asset behind enemy lines so to speak, especially with her cop boyfriend, Jonathan Winters.

Bob Hope gets only about a third of the laughs with Diller and Winters nicely splitting the rest. Winters does a repeat of his role as the dim bulb truck driver from It's A Mad Mad Mad Mad World only here he's a dim bulb of a cop. If it isn't Hope, it's Diller constantly getting the better of him. Winters does a cameo appearance also as is own mother in that little old lady masquerade he was known for.

Of course the mystery is solved, in this case almost by sheer dumb luck and Hope winds up with school teacher Shirley Eaton and Diller with Winters despite all her obstruction of justice. It's how it is done that you have to see the film for.

Look also for a nice performance by Jill St. John as the gold digging femme fatale who inspires embezzlement. Eight on the Lam is nicely directed by comedy veteran George Marshall who's put Hope through all his paces before. It's a bit better than most of Hope's later work in the sixties.

This movie is a thinly disguised rejiggering of "Boy Did I Get a Wrong Number", which also featured Bob Hope and Phyllis Diller. An aged-appearing Bob Hope, the father of a brood of young children, is a bank teller accused of embezzlement. As in "Wrong Number", both Bob Hope and Phyllis Diller coast through the film popping off one-liners which must have been boffo in 1967. Bob Hope goes on the lam with his kids, setting up a series of unconvincing and improbable situations. While "Wrong Number" had Elke Sommer as a femme fatale (speaking in an accent somewhere between Zsa Zsa Gabor and a sassy French maid), this film has Jill St. John as a scheming golddigger who seems to be basing her performance on Betty Boop. The film, like "Wrong Number", ends with a tedious and overextended chase sequence featuring a hilariously unconvincing stunt double in a scary Phyllis Diller wig. This is one of those bad movies that for some reason is fun to watch. If anything, the film (like "Wrong Number", is a time capsule of hideous 1960's design and fashion.