Skidoo (1968)

An Exercise In Nonsense

Absolutely Fantastic

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

I first viewed this movie about 25 years ago on TV. I was nicely buzzed and after the first few minutes my jaw dropped and stayed there. This is a movie chock full of major STARS and produced by Otto Preminger.....a supposed comedy, this film is Ottos take on LSD. This film is not funny...it is like watching a train wreck. Soundtrack by Harry Nielson. Big budget..Grocho Marx last film...the movie is just awful. Upon researching the film a lot of trivia and surprising facts come out. Like Premingers daughter having the film under lock and key until a few years ago.....This is Carol Channings low point.....And if you can watch it to the end......the song Skidoo will stick in your head......Skidoo, Skidoo, between the one and three there is a two. Oy.

One reviewer noted that 'some people reported that Preminger experimented with acid while making this movie.' That's historically imprecise: it was Preminger himself who said, in a number of interviews, that he was ON acid while making this film (meaning he took it through-out the production. At first he said this rather proudly, apparently hoping it would sell the film to the 'youth' market, but by the early '70s he was using this as an excuse for the films evident failure, artistic and financial. (His career never fully recovered.) In fact, the film did damage to the careers of almost everyone involved - Gleason, Marx, Lawford, Burgess, Channing - all suffered from the fiasco.I had the unpleasant experience seeing this when it first came out - my Mother wanted to see 'a Jackie Gleason movie,' and was too stubborn to walk out after she had paid for the tickets. Even in my immaturity I could see this was a MESS. The characters were unlikeable, the images were flat, the story meandering about unbelievably, and the jokes - the only way you could tell it was a comedy is because the actors were laughing. I hope I never see it again.Yet I do admit one thing, which is why I write this review so many years later. For some reason the design of the film is unforgettable, as is the casual hipsters' party attitude that permeates the script and the acting. And that's NOT a good thing.So, unless you want acid-flashbacks without ever dropping any cubes, avoid this movie like the plague, or it will infect your mind with horrible memories of bad cinema.

After watching Skidoo tonight all I can ask is what was Otto Preminger thinking when he did this film? Better yet what were all these talented people thinking when they signed on?The plot has Jackie Gleason, once the mob's number one hit-man, but now retired and living with wife Carol Channing and daughter Alexandra Hay who has taken up with the hippie lifestyle and some hippies, much to the consternation of Gleason and Channing. Those two alone as parents might make anyone want to join a commune.Cesar Romero and Frankie Avalon bring a message from God or at least that's what syndicate boss Groucho Marx. Groucho wants mob informer Mickey Rooney killed, but Mickey's in prison. Never mind the mob can do anything, bust Gleason into prison and bust him right out once the job is done. But Rooney won't let people near him, but since Gleason's an old friend he'll be vulnerable to him. Which is what Groucho is thinking.Since Gleason balks, Groucho captures Alexandra Hay and brings her on his yacht from where he runs things. At that point with Marx having him by the short hairs, Gleason agrees to the contract.The big idea is to get the entire prison tripping on LSD so no one will interfere. But of course things do go wrong as you'll see if you care to watch the film.No matter how many big names were packed into Skidoo, nothing could get this picture off the ground. Otto Preminger packed the film with a whole lot of people he had used in previous films like Peter Lawford, Burgess Meredith, Slim Pickens, but all to no avail. The jokes fell flat as a punctured soufflé, the situations were just not funny, in fact even Groucho apparently wasn't in the mood to ad-lib any of his patented humor.In fact Groucho playing a character called God WAS the funniest thing in the film. It has serious theological implications for those of us who thought George Burns or Morgan Freeman was God.In its own way Skidoo was as big a disaster, even bigger than Plan Nine From Outer Space. And Preminger had a much bigger budget to work from.

Jackie Gleason goes on an acid trip, Carol Channing does a strip tease, and Groucho Marx comes on to a teenager in "Skidoo", a movie that amazes by playing even worse than that reads.It's director Otto Preminger's attempt at a subversive comedy, celebrating the hippie lifestyle as a positive contrast to middle-class American morality. While Gleason's Tough Tony Banks is sent to prison by his former mob boss "God" (Groucho) to ice a stoolie, his wife Flo (Channing) welcomes some 40 hippies to their California mansion, it being a year before the Manson Family showed why this might not be a good idea. When Gleason decides to buck "God's" plan and not do the murder, Flo and the hippies must save the day."Who's your tailor, Sitting Bull?" Tony says when meeting head hippie Stash (John Phillip Law), establishing early on this is going to be another of those grouchy character roles for The Great One. That and the culture clash will be presented in the simple "Billy Jack" style of old squares objecting to the way kids wear their hair.I'm not a fan of Jackie Gleason's film work; his largeness in manner and rough tone tended to make him hard to laugh with on the big screen. Not surprisingly, his best known cinematic turns were in dramatic or serio-comic roles. Here, he is equipped with a Norton like sidekick who gets murdered 15 minutes in, as nothing says laughter like Arnold Stang dead in a car wash. Gleason isn't as obnoxious here as he was in "Don't Drink The Water" the following year, keeping his trademark mugging to a minimum. At least until he licks the wrong envelope and takes that LSD trip.Channing on the other hand mugs up a storm, really throwing herself into her role as she grooves out to a rock song and leads the hippies to save Tony dressed as George Washington but looking more like Captain Crunch. Every line is delivered with that trademark whine and Botox grin long emulated by female impersonators everywhere."Skidoo" doesn't really work the hippie angle and the mob angle so much as plop them next to each other, suggesting that all a gang of hardened criminals needs is a few merry vibes to be won over. As a comedy, the film's idea of laughs is a prison break where all the guards are dosed with acid, making them see naked football players and flop drunkenly to the floor. Or else Groucho as "God", living on a yacht in self-imposed quarantine, like Howard Hughes in fear of germs, trying to get Stash's help in a drug-distribution deal and being flummoxed when the kid tells him business bores him.About the only thing "Skidoo" has working for it, other than an inanely cheerful mood that lends it camp appeal, are some fine musical moments from Harry Nilsson, including singing the entire end credits right up to the copyright: "MCMLXVIII". His tuneful whimsy cuts through otherwise unendurable scenes; though even his title track can't be saved when performed by Channing in her cutsey "peekaboo" manner."You are going on a trip," Tony is told after taking LSD. "If you fight it, it can be a bad trip. If you ride with the waves, it will be a good trip." Fight it or not, there's no question what kind of trip "Skidoo" is.