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

I don't think I'll ever understand the 60's? What a wacky time! Somewhere between civil rights marches, Vietnam, moon landings, LSD, and the myriad of other things that came put of that time, also came some of the oddest movies ever. Major studio's seemed to be dumping large sums of money into strange films some that come to mind, Otto Preminger Skidoo, The Beatles Magical Mystery Tour, and the film I'm about to review, OH DAD, POOR DAD, MAMMA'S HUNG YOU IN THE CLOSET AND I'M FEELING SO SAD.

The film based on the stage play by Arthur L. Kopit (The Stage Musical PHANTOM, not to be confused with Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical.) and stars veteran character actor Rosalind Russell (His Girl Friday) as Madame Rosepettle. Madame Rosepettle is an eccentric overbearing women. She's the kind of women who sucks the air out of any room she's enters. She has many strange quirks like that fact that she has two Venus flytraps she loves to take care of and a tank full of Piranhas that eat Siamese cats. Oh yeah and when her husband died she had him stuffed and she keeps him in a closet.

Her son Johnathan (Robert Morse, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying) is 24 years old and act like he's five. His mother keeps him indoors at all time, keeping him busy with stamp collections, edited books, and a telescope.

As the film begins we watch as Madame Rosepettle and her son land in Jamaica. They are staying at a first class resort for the summer. There they meet the beautiful Rosalie (Barbara Harris, Gorse Pointe Blank), the resorts baby sitter whom falls for Johnathan and Commodore Roseabove (Hugh Griffith, Start the Revolution Without Me) a crazy ship captain who pines for Madam Rosepettle. All these characters meet up and well, all hell breaks loose.

Did I forget to mention Johnathan Winters receives top billing in this film as Dad the Narrator?

This film is bad, but it has too much spunk to be unwatchable. It is vibrant; the story has life, and the actors all do a great job of creating these lively and humorous and malajusted characters. What weighs the film down into mediocrity is Johnathan Winters. He does narrate this film. But not the story, he narrates the action, and every time he does we see this small freeze frame of his face pop up on screen. A gimmick that stops the film cold dead in its tracks, I'll bet some Paramount bigwig said this movie makes no sense, we have one of the biggest comedians of the day why waste him in such a small role. There are perfect comedic and dramatic beats in this film destroyed by Winters banal comments.

The single greatest sequence in the film is a short silent movie narrated by Madame Rosepettle. It's so perfect, it so crazy, and it is flawless in delivery. It in of itself would make a fascinating short.

Honestly, this film is the comedic answer to Psycho. It's about a boy's relationship to his crazy mother. It's kinda funny, but Robert Morse also has a stunning resemblance to Anthony Perkins. It's not Psycho, it isn't anywhere close, but it's a lot of campy fun and in the same vein. If you like great bad movies, I'd try to track down a copy of this film.

If you're a fan of camp, if you want to wallow in the bad seek out OH DAD, POOR DAD, MAMMA'S HUNG YOU IN THE CLOSET AND I'M FEELING SO SAD.

Eccentric, maniacal widow and her child-like grown son travel with her husband--dead for years in his coffin, and stuffed!--to a Jamaican resort; she has also brought along hungry piranha, the son's stamp collection, rare coins and ("not smart") Venus Flytraps. Director Richard Quine and producer Ray Stark were probably hoping for another outrageous, morbid comedy along the lines of "The Loved One", but this dire adaptation of Arthur L. Kopit's darkly-comic play is so far-out that it isn't funny--it's mostly off-putting. Paramount Pictures shelved the final results for nearly two years before finally releasing it with a Jonathan Winters prologue (he also speaks for the deceased husband, chiming in often with snarky, mordant comments). The picture is full of top talents, not the least of which is Rosalind Russell as the bewigged Madame Rosepettle (who approaches her role as if Auntie Mame had become a drill sergeant). There was probably no way to make Kopit's material work on film without rethinking it completely. When Barbara Harris can't even get a laugh, you know something's off. Biggest asset: Neal Hefti's bouncy score. *1/2 from ****

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!

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.

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