Wild Party

The famous poem of the 1920s becomes an ambitious meeting of American International and Merchant-Ivory, who sink into a most un-Merchant-Ivory-like Hollywood orgy in this tale suggested by, but not actually dramatizing, the Fatty Arbuckle scandal that ruined his career. With a screenplay and songs by Broadway songwriter Walter Marks, it seems to lick its lips at all prospects for lasciviousness, reveling in the bare breasts and spent drunken bodies the morning after. The songs are OK, and James Coco's excellent, carefully indicating the conflicting warmth, selfishness, and desperation in Jolly Grimm. But Raquel Welch feels anachronistic, not convincingly of the Twenties, and her singing and dancing are at best proficient. It's a messy movie, the plot threads not really hanging together, and the trendy camera-work belongs to 1975 and 1975 only. Let's call it an interesting failure.

**SPOILERS** Surviving from what happened in the wild party of the night before at comedy legend Jolly Grimm ,James Coco, mansion writer Jimmy Morrison, David Dukes, is laid up in his hospital bed recovering from a bullet wound in his neck. Jimmy is doing what he does best writing a screenplay about the terrible events that put him in the hospital and ended up taking the lives of two people, one a major screen heart-throb, at the party.

It all started when comedian Jolly Grimm who hadn't made a movie in years invited all the Hollywood big shot producers and a number of actors actresses, and hangers on, to his place to view his new film "Brother Jasper" that he hoped will re-start his fledgling career. Having had an amazing 27 hits in a row Grimm is now considered a has-been by the studios and hasn't been giving any staring parts in any of their major motion pictures. Grimm decided to go over their heads and make a movie that he stares in and and directed himself. Grimm still needs the Hollywood honchos to distribute his movie for it to reach the public and it's at the party that Grimm is throwing that he hopes to impress them in just doing that.

Tense and nervous the day before the big party Grimm takes it out on his live-in girlfriend Queenie, Requal Welch, who put up with his manic-depressive actions for years but now it seems that even she reached her breaking point with Grimm unable, or not wanting, to control his violent outbursts anymore that she's at the receiving end.

Showing Jimmy the movie "Brother Jasper" to get his professional opinion Grimm's told that the movie needs a number of changes or cuts, like a comedic cannibal scene,in what's supposed to be a heart-wrenching and serious film, that has poor Jimmy almost thrown out of the Grimm Mansion. With all the Hollywood illuminates showing up to see what Grimm hoped to be his masterpiece and the movie that would catapult him back on top of the weekly theater ticket receipts, and on the silver screen, things don't go as well as Grimm hoped in fact the party turns out to be a total and deadly disaster for him.

Loosely based on an incident about actor Fatty Arbuckle back in the 1920's when he was arrested and put on trial for the rape and murder of a young starlet that he invited to a drunken party, and orgy, of his. Arbuckle was found innocent but his career was finished and he died a poor and broken man some ten years later.

James Coco is at his best as the tragic Jolly Grimm who ends up not only losing any chance of getting back in the Hollywood limelight but also looses Queenie first to movie matinée idol Dale Sword, Perry King, and then ends up losing her life due to his jealous and uncountable rage. Grimm is not at all that much of a villain in the film "The Wild Party" he's more a victim of his own spectacular success.

Sweet and loving at first when he took Queenie off the street and gave her a place to stay, in his, mansion and put her in a number of his movies as well, as taking care off all her needs Grimm also treated Queenie as an equal not as someone who's totally dependent on him. It was only when his career started to fall apart that Grimm became an abusive swine towards her as well as everyone else.

With the party degenerating into an orgy free for all and Queenie leaving Grimm, by going off with Dale Sword, all by himself that the drinks and suspicions that were overwhelming his already fragile mind took control and Grimm lost it as well as lost what life and freedom that he still had left.

The Wild Party is probably based on several wild parties and scandals which took place during Hollywood's silent era when movie stars could do almost anything they wanted behind closed doors without having to worry too much of exposure as there were no real tabloid magazines at the time. James Coco plays a washed-up, silent movie comic who throws a wild party at his home, thinking it will save his career but doesn't count on the extent of depravity of some of his guests. At times, the film is highly realistic and makes you wonder about current Hollywood parties and what really goes on between co-stars. The film has a great 1920's look and the music also adds to the feel. The film is hard to define. It's sort of a historical drama, crossed with black comedy but a pretty good one at that.

: It's 1929, and Hollywood is changing over to sound. Meanwhile, screen comic James Coco hasn't made a film in six years, but he's putting the finishing touches on his latest, to be followed by a party. Some major players show up, but it's mostly hangers-on, marginal players, and parasites who stay for the debauched and desperate aftermath.

This Merchant-Ivory film features a fine performance by James Ivory, a good one by Raquel Welch as his mistress, and a party that by 1970s standards would have been a slow night at Studio 54. Heck, exclude the gunfire, and I've been to wilder science-fiction club meetings. Still, although the pacing of the movie is stop-and-go, there are a few moments that visually capture the moment: a man dancing to "The Herbert Hoover Drag" that looks like a John Held Jr. Cartoon; a moving camera combined with editing montage to show the orgiastic aspects of the part; Coco and Miss Welch telling the story of how they met. These are all good moments, but the movie under-delivers on the title.

It's based on a poem by Joseph Moncure March who also wrote the poem that The Set-Up (1949) was based on. Most of the time he is better remembered as a playwright and screenplay writer.

I wish to dissent from the majority of my IMDB colleagues below and say that I found this bit of road not taken-ism quite interesting. Referring ,of course, to the fact that, based on this film, had James Ivory not chosen to become the American Alistair Cooke he could well have become the American Ken Russell. In other words, a nice dip into the Hollywood Babylon/Valentino pool with a fine performance by James Coco as a character based on the life of Fatty A (thankfully, sans coke bottle) and the best dramatic work Raquel W has ever done (KC Bomber fans'll disagree but they can go piss on a roller skate).' Coulda done without the unmemorable poetry and even more unmemorable songs but, all in all, I was affected by the pathetic fates of Jolly and Queenie. Give it a B.