DATELINE DIAMONDS (1966). There are but four Small Faces, and they get precious little face time in this b&w U.K. flick (though considerably more than the Zombies got in Bunny Lake Is Missing (see SCREEN). They do perform “I Got Mine” onstage at a teen hop, but “Come on, Children,” “Don’t Stop What You’re Doing” and “It’s Too Late” play under scenes, as does some above-average crime jazz. But Dateline Diamonds is a pleasant time-passer, full of period charm and scenery, including off-shore pirate radio stations. The basic riff: The Faces’ ex-con manager, “Benson” (played by Kenneth Cope), is blackmailed into passing hot ice, usually inside demo-tape boxes, to fences who move it to Amsterdam. Heist-master/blackmailer Colonel Fairclough (William Lucas) is a hep villain, a war hero gone wrong who looks like a sullen Dr. Phil and, at the film’s finale, almost eludes CID agents in his purloined E-type convertible.

Benson also handles a very young Kiki Dee, who auditions, with a Marriott style hairdo, with the pop-soul “Small Town,” and gal trio the Chantelles, who cozy up to DJ Kenny Everett while singing “I Think of You.” Rey Anton & the madras-clad Pro Forma (rockin’ Ray resembles a not-so-distant cousin of Reg Presley) contribute the wimpy “First Taste of Love.” All told, a slim but enjoyable film whose pop overtones are definitely worth a view or two. Screenwriter Tudor Gates also penned Barbarella.

Special features on the DVD include a gallery of Small Faces pix and sleeves, and a dozen or so Radio London jingles. –S.Z.

MARCH OF THE PENGUINS (2005). Although storks had a good club going and are still ace in delivering babies, penguins will always be the coolest birds alive. Top hats and tails in hand, they're always dressed for the occasion. Plus they live in the coolest continent on earth, where the average temperature is a balmy 50 below. These critters also bettered the existence of humankind by their image; witness Burgess Meredith as the Penguin, who waddled menacingly around the cardboard studio sets of Batman before he became a punchy self-parody in the Rocky series. And where did the Penguins, who warbled the doowop classic “Earth Angel,” get their tag? (According to the Da Capo Book of American Singing Groups, "While pondering a name that teens thought would be cool, they noticed [their lead singer's] pack of Kool cigarettes adorned with the likeness of Willie the Penguin on the front.”) Like shivering.

To further solidify the great bird's rep, a group of French persons led by Luc Jacquet migrated to the South Pole to document the trials and tribulations of these dapper fellows as they cross 70 miles of ice to do the Ross Ice Shelf Rumba. You think I'm kidding: What's so cool about this? They can't even fly. Silence, krill-breath, and dig, for watching this frosty flick is more ennobling an act than developing acid reflex from bad family-reality shows like The Osbournes.

Believe me, this flick has it all: comedy (wearing tuxedos while sliding across the ice on their bellies? They have to be joking), tenderness (Al Green's “Let's Stay Together” came to mind during the mating rituals), camaraderie (patriarch penguins look like a herd of fathers pacing around in the maternity waiting-room with an egg on their toes) and, finally, pathos (a grieving mother actually tries to steal another's chick if when her own dies). Morgan Freeman's warm narration helps us through the tougher moments. Do yourself a favor; take mommy, daddy, children or mating partner to see this one before Steve Crocodile Hunter Irwin converts you over to duck hunting. -C.S.

ONCE A THIEF (1965). A perfectly respectable and suspenseful policer (in b&w), this baby’s good on many counts, very cool on a couple and highly recommended. Alain Delon is a young ex-con hubby/dad trying to go legit but dogged by the Javert-like Detective Vido (Van Heflin) in pre-hippie San Francisco. After Vido gets him tossed from yet another job, Delon ("Eddie") reluctantly agrees to one last heist with his brother, played by Jack Palance (they’re Italians, so happy Jack’s dental-grit overbiting includes him yelling things like "Basta! Basta!"), and his gang. The gang includes a gunsel, a Chinese funeral-home owner and the coldest heavy, John Chandler (see SCREEN for Mad Dog Coll and TUBE for "The Fine Art of TV Villainy").

Action, violence, sex (Eddie’s wife is Ann-Margret) and sharp camera angles make Once a Thief watchable and (mostly) coherent, but it’s the dialogue department that shoves this one off the high-dive of coolness. Chandler is at perhaps his bad-guy best here, an androgynous, prematurely white-haired hood in tiny-circle sunglasses (at all hours), causing him to resemble an albino Dr. Strangelove. A mumbling hipster drawl, definitely Brando-built, adds ultra-camp tonnage to his unsimpatico pronouncements. Having kidnaped Eddie’s daughter and killed his brother, Chandler hands Eddie the morning Chronicle: "You seen the paper? Your brother’s wanted for snuffing the gook." When Eddie leads him and the gang’s other surviving member to the heist stash (in exchange for getting his daughter back), Chandler lets his pard examine the goods. As the guy exults, "A million bucks! We can have all the things we want! All the women!," Chandler deadpans "I don’t dig women" and blasts the guy to bits.

Sleeper sell: Non-essential to the play but so wild in the fray is Luke (Zekial Marko, the film’s screenwriter), an affable pothead booked at the same time as Eddie. Engaging in a little jail-house small-talk, heavy lidded Luke volunteers, "They burned me for my Zig Zags at the gate. Ain’t that a wiggy charge?" Later, when Vido accuses him of being a hype, Luke demurs, "No. Check my eyes, man. Just boo, grass and juice." Sent to his cell, he sings the chorus of "We Shall Overcome" and makes reference to Cali’s then-imminent death-penalty moratorium ("They had it on Jack Paar"). No-flesh fantasy: To make ends meet, luscious Ann Marg-rock works briefly as a B-girl at Big Al’s North Beach topless dive but is only fleetingly shown on duty. Good crime-jazz score. Director Ralph Nelson also did the off-kilter Soldier in the Rain (see SCREEN). -H.D.

It takes a search: Sadly, Once a Thief is presently out-of-print.

Off-screen post-script: Writer Marko relentlessly bugged Nelson for the part of Luke. When the director complained that Marko was such a flake he’d never show up for shooting, Marko swore up and down he’d make the next bright’s 6 am call. Nelson reluctantly agreed. In the morning, with lights and camera ready to roll inside L.A. County Jail, Marko was MIA. Mightily pissed, Nelson immediately ordered an assistant to call casting and find a replacement actor to play Delon’s woozy cellmate. The assistant frantically sprinted through the facility to find a pay phone. Suddenly, he heard his name shouted from one of the holding tanks he’d passed. It was Zekial Marko, locked up in a weed bust the previous pm. The assistant got Marko temporarily released, Marko did his scene and was then marched back to his cell to await arraignment.

HEY BOY, HEY GIRL (1959). Maybe the notion of mugging goombah Prima playing church charity dances sounds a bit off, but that’s the premise of this innocuous, kind of sweet Louie and Keely flick from the end of the ’50s. She fares better than he on the thespo-meter, but the real reason to catch the film is the performance footage.

On that front, husband and wife wail the jumpin’ title song (twice), Keely solos on "Dearest One," and Sam Butera cooks a stompin’ "Fever." On the deadpan-to-manic "Autumn Leaves," L&K prove conclusively that they’re the lost link between Spike Jones and Sonny & Cher. The Primas, Butera and his Witnesses tootle through the stage-side crowd of nuns and schoolkids, playing "When the Saints Go Marching In," and rock "Up a Lazy River" as a lead-in to the picking of the big night’s winning raffle ticket (Louie’s manager wins the prize – a new Edsel – then donates it to the parish’s needy summer-camp kids).

Early on, beside a soda-fountain set at the St. James bazaar, the Chief croons a lascivious "Banana Split for My Baby (and a Glass of Cold Water for Me)" to Keely. Sadly, the film contains no performance of "Civilization (Bongo Bongo Bongo I Don’t Want to Leave the Congo)," but you can cop that one in audio on Louis Prima & His New Orleans Gang's Greatest Hits.

As of this writing, Hey Boy, Hey Girl is unavailable on DVD. Check www.louisprima.com for updates, as there’ve been rumors about the film’s imminent reissue. –P.L.

DADDY-O (1959). Catalog of Cool contributor Ronn Spencer defines squares as folks who "get it late and get it wrong." That could include public-radio types picking up on Sandy Shaw only after she’d guested with the Smiths, deciding some great zoned-out jazz player was hep because his music made it into a Jarmusch movie. Or, in its classically purest sense, it could mean late-’50s flicks like this one, from the era when studio bosses were leaping over each other to catch (but not grip too tightly) the new youthcoaster roll.

It’s chiefly, if barely, memorable for its auto-eroticism (mid-’50s Fords, including a beautiful Victoria, and delicious late-’50s Caddies) and apprentice hipster dialogue. Former accordion superstar Dick Contino, who also appeared in The Beat Generation (see our SCREEN chapter), stars as Phil Sandifer, who sings with a roadhouse trio (one faux-rocker is "Rock Candy Baby"), delivers dope for post-Geenstreet hood Bruno VeSota (you dug him in Female Jungle and Invasion of the Star Creatures) and hands out lines like "Don’t expect the hearts-and-flowers bit from me, baby." Love object Jana’s (Sandra Giles) retort: "Get lost, daddy-o!"

Dragging for pizza, Nike-tip brassieres and great b&w ’50s L.A. scenery (car-hop drive-ins, the Tail o’ the Pup hotdog stand) round out this quaint but not charmless square-biz relic. – H. DeRobertis

Available only on VHS: Daddy-O

GIRLS ON THE BEACH (1965). Clearly not the equal of its stronger sibling Beach Ball, there’s some genuine coolnessand some silly-cool to this story of sorority sisters in need of dough to make that final balloon payment on their S-house. They do what anyone in such straits would: sell tickets to a Beatles concert they hope to present. The g-cool is the Beach Boys--performing the title track at the start, “Lonely Sea” around a campfire (Brian recites the mid-song soliloquy) and “Little Honda” in powder-blue shirt-jacs at the sorority house. (After digging the [uncredited] Boys’ sand-strewn “Sea,” one sister asks her date, “Wasn’t that group nutty?”) The silly stuff is the sorority gals, once they realize the Fabs aren’t going to show, performing, in wigs and Knack suits, “We Wanna Marry a Beatle.” Lesley Gore sings two Mark “Pretty Flamingo” Barkan songs, “It’s Gotta Be You” and the always boss “I Don’t Wanna Be a Loser.” OOP. -S.Z.

BELL, BOOK AND CANDLE. Those wishing to round out their beatnik files might want to spend some idle time with this 1958 romantic comedy. Kim Novak stars as ultra-sultry Gillian, coolest witch of a wacky Manhattan coven, who carries on her shoulder a Siamese cat. Since weird-beards and boho birds were the talk of the time, it seemed sensible to the film's creators to conflate beatniks and sorcery into a single eightball. Which is how you get warlock Nicky (Jack Lemmon) beating the skins in a subterranean dive (the Zodiac club; a Zoroastrian doorman requires patrons to give their signs before gaining admittance) and Gillian lamenting to dotty Elsa Lanchester, "Auntie, don't you wish we could spend Christmas Eve in a little church somewhere, listening to carols instead of bongos?" Ernie Kovacs, then at his peak, plays Sidney Redlitch, pickled author of books on magic and witchery, while Jimmy Stewart is Gillian's hapless prey, publisher Shep Henderson. Bonus-burger: Shep's assistant is played by Floyd the Barber (Howard McNear). -S.Z.

On DVD: Bell, Book and Candle.
Further study: See New Digs INK for a review of the Beatsville! compendium.

EDWARD ANDREWS. Lord knows we've sounded off here before about classic villains ­ the gleeful psychos and camped-out creeps ­ from film and TV. Most were from the pre-Hannibal era, when metaphoric moustache-twirling was enough to throw fear and catch viewers' attention and the thesps' enthusiasm was unconcealed. When Richard Widmark, '60s crime-shows' "windbreaker hoods" (Steve Inhat) or country-thick pork dukes like Albert Salmi did their thing, the relish came with the ham.

Today's topic was a paragon of sleaze and sweaty guilt whose soft moral center permeated dozens of memorable roles from the '50s (Phenix City Story) through the '80s (Gremlins ). In most, Edward Andrews was sneaky, crafty and invariably caught when his thin shell of respectability cracked and the turpitude oozed out. Looking around furtively after poisoning his wife/ pilfering the company treasury/ running over a kid and fleeing (the famous Twilight Zone episode "You Drive"), Andrews' face seemed to register culpability for decades of deeds most foul. And he wasn't even Catholic.

The son of a Georgia preacher man, owl-faced Andrews in his black horn-rims also played pompous bureaucrats (the Secretary of Defense in Son of Flubber ), smarmy executives (Good Neighbor Sam ) and uptight social guardians (the kind of part that's lately marked the sad career trajectory of SCTV genius Eugene Levy).

Andrews' critical recognition started with 1955's Phenix City Story and 1960's Elmer Gantry, where he played, respectively, a conniving local pol and mythic hypocrite George Babbitt. But his wildest wingding was likely 1956's Unguarded Moment. His son, teenaged John Saxon, stalks high-school teach Esther Williams­ namely because sexophobic Andrews ("Mr. Bennett)" won't allow him to date. Eddy's main move is covering up for his son's hormonal hoodwinks, which naturally leads him to try to sully Esther's rep. He breaks into her house, hides in a closet when she returns home, watching bug-eyed and perspiring as she undresses for bed. When
she spies him and runs, Andrews bolts way over the top, first trying to mug-push her ("I've never been in the dark with a woman as beautiful as you"), then, when she repels him, going for the choke ("You women are all alike: You're dirty, you lie! You should be wiped off the face of the earth, every one of you!"). Once EW escapes, Ed makes for his pad, climbing a trellis to sneak into a second-floor window (the cops're watching the house). His weight breaks the trellis, and EA goes DOA.

More genteel but just as tasty is Andrews' TV work. In "You Drive," self-satisfied businessman Oliver Polk accidentally plows down a bicycle-riding kid on a rain-slicked street. In fitting Andrews fashion, Olly looks down at the inert kid, casts around to see if there are any witnesses, gets in his Ford and flies off. He spends the rest of the episode fretting, sweating out his crime (the kid, he reads in the paper, has died) and being driven berserk by his car, which unaccountably blares its horn and pumps
its lights in the middle of the night, then chases him out of his garage and down the street. Andrews' facial contortions and increasing irritability quotient are a marvel to behold.

He's killer in Thriller too. In "Cousin Tundifer," Andrews' Miles Tundifer travels back to the 1890s to murder his uncle inside a Victorian mansion. Gobs of guilt roll off Miles as his crime is gradually uncovered, and he winds up trapped in the 19th century, hauled off in a horse-drawn paddy wagon.

Perhaps Andrews' coolest TV shot is in the Thriller episode "A Third for Pinochle," an Arsenic & Old Lace rip that finds our man playing hen-pecked hubby Maynard Thispin. Enraptured by a blonde sexpot ("Hello, Babs? This is Maynard Thispin. I met you at the dog show yesterday. I was with my wife, that old battle-axe..."), our man plots to kills his spouse. Most priceless are his basement practice sessions, sweaty Eddy daintily draping a rope over a dummy's head but constantly being spooked when Mrs. Thispin shouts at him from upstairs. Once he accomplishes his task, Andrews manages a display of surface calm and swirling inner guilt that is rich and riotous. Payback comes in the form of Maynard's nosy neighbors, spinster sisters Melba and Diedre Pennaroyd (Doro Merande, June Walker), whom he intends to use as his alibi but who, natch, wind up doing him in.

Andrews died in 1985. For extensive info on his roles, check http://www.allmovieguide.com or http://www.tvtome.com ­P.L.

THE LOVED ONE (1965, out of print). What a difference a year makes! Following 1964's justly acclaimed (and ineffably cool) Dr. Strangelove, Terry Southern scribed this mad mess-terpiece. A structurally unsound adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's short-story satire of the funeral biz and South California (a four-star perf by the region, in all its mid-century googie car-zoom glory), the film is a series of outlandishly performed set pieces.

Like Peter Sellers in Strangelove, Jonathan Winters plays multiple roles with loony relish. Milton Berle is a not-so-bereft dog lover haggling with a pet cemetery over Fido's disposal and Paul Williams the pre-teen rocket scientist who helps Winters launch corpses into space to alleviate a land shortage. Best of all, there's mortician Liberace, showing Robert Morse how he'll dress Morse's deceased uncle: "Now, the shoes... designed to fit the foot at rest. The foot curls a bit, you know, as rig-mo sets in." Inspired casting: Rod Steiger as prissy, golden-curled Mr. Joyboy, whose relationship with his food-aholic mom seems to prefigure that of Gator and Aunt Ida in John Waters' Female Trouble.

Later for the pretense and faux surrealism of Six Feet Under. This is the premier dirt-nap comedy. -G.S.

Further study: Paper view: The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh

See elsewhere in our INK chapter for Richard Blackburn's "Ten Minutes With Terry Southern."

Also recommended: Terry Southern's Red-Dirt Marijuana and Other Tastes and Flash and Filigree.

"I'll get even with that hillbilly couple if it's the last thing I do."

PIRANHA (1978). Joe Dante was 25 years ahead of his time in the genetic-modification-is-the-root-of-all-evil riff, where cute, carnivorous fish out-jaw Jaws via unadulterated, Rodger Corman-produced stupidity. The Piranha plot swims into view when two hormone-high teenagers go skinny-dipping by the moonlight at an old army base, to be skeletonized in what amounts to a guppy bowl from Hell. It's brutal. After playing a video game (of Jaws no less), detective Maggie McKeown (Heather " Sound Of Music " Menzies) starts tracking them down. She teams up with professional slobbering drunk Paul Groben (Bradford " The Atomic Brain " Dillman), and the duo starts poking around in what looks like Ray Harryhausen's special-effects lab. I'm positive that's the Ymir of 20 Million Miles from Earth running around the test tubes ! Thinking that the kids are at the bottom of the pool, Heather makes a logical decision: She drains said pond, starving piranhas and all, to find out. Might've been wise to ask permission since her action pisses off Dr. Robert Hulk, who operates the lab. After a tussle Doc manages to escape in a jeep, driving with a full-blown concussion, and eventually crashes (apparently they don't have Driving While Unconscious laws in Texas).

Shoot over to Lost River Lake, where we find the indomitable Paul Bartel (from before his days of wielding skillets to turn people into puppy chow; see our SCREEN chapter for Eating Raoul), torturing kids as a summer-camp counselor. Paul is the living embodiment of anal retention - blasting whistles to claxon volume, confiscating kids' comic books, patrolling the lake in the middle of the night for skinny-dippers, ripping pictures of himself off dartboards and terrorizing kids into water-sports appreciation. Tender scene: Approaching Paul Groben's hysterical, teary-eyed daughter, Bartel softly intones, "Groben, I have one word: GUTS."

Back to Groben's cabin with Groben and McKeown, where Doc regains consciousness and begins croaking about his research in Operation Razor Teeth: the military's plan to infest North Vietnam's river system with genetically altered piranhas, bred for intelligence, endurance and the ability to survive salt water. What was ORT's objective - to interfere with the annual Ho Chi Minh Commemorative Fly Casting Tournament? How could a scientist get involved with such a heinous project? "Pure research...," babbles Doc, "All the money was there...the government gave me everything I wanted." Heck, what biology undergrad can't relate to that?

Anyway, there are fish to stop. Taking a raft downstream to warn folks (might have been safer to walk), our heroes find things getting complicated. For one, the government finds out about the fish-pond breach, and Groben and Maggie are taken into custody. Secondly, people don't have a tendency to listen to slobbering drunks like Groben prattling on about schools of man-eating piranhas gathering for a convention north of the Rio Grande. Soon everyone realizes they're pawns of a huge military-entertainment-complex conspiracy, since downstream is a lake partly owned by the army. But who or what will stop these Piscean panzers, bred to survive pollution, salt water and bad acting, who're about to make a bee line to Lost River Lake? What slimeball could actually ignore such warnings of immanent disaster just to make a dollar?

Not just any slimeball, but the immortal Dick Miller. Yes, after years of selling vacuum cleaners door-to-door, human splatter-painting and eating gardenias, the Amazing One finally retired from ludicrous business, honed the phoniest, corn-pone accent west of the Duke Boys and purchased some acreage on Lost River Lake to develop as an amusement park. Did someone say "impending doom"?

So will Groben and Maggie escape to get word out in time to stop the fishy munch-a-thon? Will Groben drink something besides embalming fluid? Will Dick Miller stop beating up camera-workers? Will whistle-reliant Paul Bartel serve blackened piranha at his bistro? Quit bugging me and watch the movie.

Titanic sequel: James Cameron's Piranha 2 , where evil doctors hybridize piranhas with flying fish. Science has gone too far. --C.S.

BATMAN: THE MOVIE (1966). The zeitgeist of camp, cartoon-cinematic stoopidity. Like the Tao, Batman the TV series was given a brief nod in the first Catalog of Cool (see our TUBE section). We omitted the feature-length film because one could scribe a whole tome about its lame-coolness and barely scratch the surface. It's all here. Want some richly cured ham acting -- enough for it to get banned in Israel? Slinky Lee Meriwether oozes with wanton carnality while vamping in a black-leather cat-outfit. Cesar Romero's Joker screams and prances so hyper kinetically (he's like Bozo the Clown at the end of his rope) he could be the role model for the Ritalin generation. Frank Gorshin's spasmodic Riddler races around in a green jump suit, a speed-freak aerobics instructor, while Burgess Meredith almost steals the show by waddling over the sets like a penguin with a pant-load. He can't, though, for ubermensch Adam West's uncontrollably restrained portrayal of the caped crusader is so two-dimensional that Ronald Reagan would possess a depth of character in comparison. Burt Ward's thespian abilities could reduce a redwood tree to a two-by-four. Plus the gags, which pretty much sums up the plot of this movie. What you get: exploding sharks, navy admirals selling diesel subs to civilians using P.O. boxes for mailing addresses, and the Penguin refurbishing one sub with beaked periscope and web feet for propulsion. Along with Commodore Shmidlapp (where the heck did they locate Reginald Denny alive after all those years?), scientific proof is presented that bashing bad guys reconstituted with heavy water will zap them into the next universe. Who said learning wasn't fun? There's so much more: the inevitable, redundant POW! sound balloons right after Robin smashes a goon's head in, utility belts that would make Bob Vila pee in his pants (it's accessory overkill: Why only six cans of shark repellent on the Batcopter?), knock-out gas that Stanley "John Ford of LSD" Owsley would've killed for. That and the whole wall-climbing routine, monitors inside the bat cave with their respective Bat-placards attached (wouldn't the only three people who know of the Batcave's existence remember where they situated the hardware?), candy-colored cardboard sets, and Batman's uncle-to-nephew lectures, including this homily: Robin: "Batman, why did you risk your life for those riff-raff?" Batman: "Well Robin, they were human beings..." Of course I could go on, so just take my word: Score film, invite like-minded friends in and throw an all-night Batparty. Batman: The Movie will put Val Kilmer back into flight school and make George Clooney re-enter residency. Say what you will, but I found it a life-changing event to watch grown men running around Times Square in capes and satin tights. SOCK! -C.S.

Peripheral coolness: Brit thesp David Healy, who resembles Jackie Gleason, does a semi-credible (and semi-silly) American accent as promoter Hilton Bloom, and a poster backstage at the talent show announces a concert starring P.J. Proby and the Pretty Things. Actress Joyce Blair (as untrustworthy thrush Wanda) enjoys a “Hair by Vidal Sassoon” credit, and the film’s climactic plot point involves the fixing of an audience-applause Clap-o-Meter. All right then. -G.S.

FROGS (1972.) Mom Nature throws the ultimate shit-fit in the Florida bayous when wheelchair-bound wheeze-bag patriarch Ray Milland & co. defile aquifers, pollute environments and spout godawful Kentucky-fried accents on their private island. Retaliation comes in cool, green packages when an armada of frogs, toads, spiders and a really big snapping turtle crashes their Fourth of July shindig.

As Frogs makes abundantly clear, the first thing a person should do when defending one’s luau against amphibious assault is run, and run Ray’s gang does. After using endangered apple-snail kites for skeet shooting, Nicholas Cortland runs face-first into a funnel-weaving spider convention, where he is duly wrapped into a silk cocoon. George Skaff makes the sapient move of diving into an alligator-infested lake (he apparently didn’t want to take his chances with the toads). Meanwhile, butterfly-collecting ditz Lynn Borden, pursued by a giant green boa for 20 minutes, falls into an inch-deep puddle of mud, only to be devoured by leeches.

Joan Van Ark at least manages to escape becoming turtle chow and eventually limps to Dallas, where she marries Gary Ewing and takes up on the Knots Landing cul de sac. Young eco-photographer Sam Elliot went on to become, among other things, a Union Army colonel in Gettysburg, while Larry the leopard frog spawned an aquarium exhibit in Newark. -C.S.

Rockin’ reptilicus cousin: Sssssss!, a 1973 item in which the marvelous Strother Martin (as “Dr. Stoner”) experiments to turn a man into a giant cobra. Director Bernard Kowalski also swung with Hot Car Girl, Attack of the Giant Leeches and, scariest of all, episodes of Airwolf.)

THE KILLER SHREWS (1959). It was inevitable: With giant radioactive ants, Gila monsters and Mamie Van Doren roaming the theatres of ’50s America, Hollywood decided to perpetrate the ultimate mammal-biology in-joke by having oversized insectivores terrorize humanity. On a remote, tropical island off eastern Texas, Thorne Sherman –- the tongue-tripping “Roscoe P. Coltrane” of The Dukes of Hazzard (see our TUBE chapter) -– makes some startling discoveries. Namely, that 300-pound Judge Henry Dupree should not climb saplings to escape vicious animals, that a tall blonde with a Swedish accent can be fathered by a Mexican, and, finally, that the island is populated by researchers who sole purpose in life is to waste moviegoers’ time by giving inane high-school genetics lectures.

Along the way, German shepherds with felt taped to their backs run amok, posing as giant, poisonous shrews. Apparently, Dr. Jerry Farrell -– Ken Curtis of Gunsmoke (Miss Kitty must have booted him out of the
whorehouse early that night) –- got drunk and ran some tests without Knudt Schmidt-Neilsen’s supervision. Mistakes happen, but in this case, the timing is very bad: A Category 5 hurricane is brewing, and the adobe laboratory where the medicos are holing up will soon turn into a mud puddle. So it’s up to Roscoe & co. to help everyone dodge the ’cane and the giant, bloodthirsty shrews. But how? By the only means
possible, a method so ingenious in its stupidity it would have made Adam West walk off the set. They weld oilcans together and crawl underneath them for five miles, until they reach the safety of the water. (Holy crap: producer Ray Kellogg achieved further greatness by working on the original 1966 Batman movie). Enjoy.-Christopher E. Schneider

WICKED WOMAN (1954). Filmcrits might dismiss it as a flawed noir. It may be, but regular visitors to this site who savor character cats winging it at their wildest should get with this one. Best remembered as a diminutive, hoarse-voiced camp-follower on the Superman TV series who incessantly pestered the Man of Steel (“Supahman! Supahman!”), Percy Helton here plays a central role. When blonde bad girl Billie Nash (Beverly Michaels) arrives in town, she immediately sets to conning all the locals with her guile ’n’ gams. Percy’s first up; she flounces by his ground-floor tailor shop like a Joe Turner song, and he creeps out, lured, snagged and ready for gutting, to watch Billie ascend the stairs to her new rooming-house crib. Since they’re across-the-hall neighbors, she entices a gleeful, palm-sweating Percy (“Y-y-you mean you’ll go out with me ?”) with plans for a dinner date once she gets a gig – then promptly asks for a pair of sawbucks.

Billie finds work as a cocktail waitress and quickly entangles bar-owner Richard Egan in a scheme to defraud his co-owner wife, sell the place and spend the proceeds having big fun in Acapulco. Her cart is upset when perky Perce, routinely rescheduled for his big date (“I’d never go out with an impossible runt!” she barks at him at one point), overhears Billie and big Dick plotting. The film’s climax finds the canary-consuming Helton Skelton informing Billie that he’s hip, gloating (“You don’t think I’m such a little runt now, do you? You should be nice to me… real nice”), then running at her like some dwarf lineman, making the tackle and obsessively bussing every available skin surface. Just then, Egan busts in, hot to tell Billie he’s got the green and the sunscreen. Spying the minx and the midget rocking on the roll-away, he freaks (“Dirty rotten tramp!”), flees, and everyone’s geese spin madly on the rotisserie.

Helton’s perf, like those of the great Edward Andrews (see our TUBE chapter), is wonderfully desperate, craven, guilt-filled and unhinged – all the things you want in a cool-and-crazy B player and more. –G.S.

Sadly, Wicked Woman is OOP, though recently bootleg DVDs of it have begun to surface.

ADDENDUM: Except for a short scene with his cat midway through The Crooked Way, Percy doesn’t appear again until near the climax doing his scratchy- voiced, albino moleman bit in an abandoned war-surplus warehouse. Good perfs by John Payne as the stoic amnesiac trying to uncover his shady past , Ellen Drew the femme who’s not so fatale and Sonny Tufts as a manicure-obsessed baddie. However, the main reason to lamp this 1949 noir is John Alton’s fevered chiaroscuro L.A. location lensing, spiky silhouettes, jagged shadows and deep focus reaching their cockeyed crescendo in the finale. Although this time out he’s mostly able to keep the gibbering hysteria in check, there’s still no mercy for Mr. Percy. –D.B.

Pete Barbuti

LOST VEGAS: THE LOUNGE ERA (2005). Yukmeister nirvana in this new doc detailing the life and showbusy times of second bananas who worked LV small rooms from the early ’50s to the mid-’70s – many of ‘em paisanos from South Philly inspired by the mighty King Guido, Louie P. Fueled by booze and unbelievable stamina, they did six 45/15s a night for decades – 45 minutes on and 15 off. The grind was sometimes relieved by sex, steam baths (as part of Sinatra’s entourage) and digging the early A-bomb testings some 65 miles away. "We useta go out the back of the clubs," says one of the crew, "watch the blast, go back inside, have a coupla blasts of our own and then do the act."

Such names as Freddy Bell, Sonny King, Babe Piers, Peter Anthony, Pete Barbuti and Faye McKay (whose main bit, dug deeply by Vegas supernova Liberace, was a besotted rendition of "12 Days of Xmas") may not be remembered today, but these were the party-time rounders the headliners used to catch after doing their own more sedate acts. The flick alternates from subjects today in their desert homes to archival footage/stills to some newly filmed old shtick. Ring-a-ding lids reverently doffed to first-time director Tim Onosko (editor of the OOP early-’80s softcover Wasn’t the Future Wonderful? – a mind-rearranging assortment of mad ’30s inventions from the brittle pages of Popular Mechanics and Popular Science – check the Internet for copies). Just caught this boffo doc at Cinevegas 2005. It needs distribution immediately. -Dick Blackburn

BABY FACE NELSON (1957). Not as baroque as Mad Dog Coll or as exceptional as The Lineup (see our SCREEN chapter), this fast-paced Don Siegel bio pic on Dillinger gang member Nelson (born Lester Gillis) is worth a look if you find it. Mickey Rooney stars, and Carolyn Jones as his moll Sue, a smoldering tight-lipped Keely Smith type, bests him in most scenes. The flick has something for the whole family: bank heists, tommy-gun battles, noir violence (the Baby-man slugs another gunsel for just talking to Sue) and vengeance killings, even a sleazy doctor who tends to the underworld wounded.

And the boiling is hard. At the doc's recuperation pad after their respective surgeries, a hood with his face almost totally bandaged (he looks like a mummy in a double-breasted suit) feels compelled to explain his unusual visage to the Mick. “I was camping, and a gasoline stove blew up in my face.” “Did I ask you?” spits the understanding Mick. Sue steps in: “My husband's rabbit gun was loaded.” Cold-water cats, these. Out of print, outa sight. -S.Z.

REFORM SCHOOL GIRLS (1986). Intense fictionalized documentary of life in Pridemore Reformatory, as seen by 17-year-old Jenny (late twenty-something Linda Carol), who, after a robbery that went wrong, is sentenced to bad food, bad acting and bad '80s hair. All the depredations are laid bare in this expose; cons are forced to wear thongs and teddies at night, take showers in front of movie cameras about 12 times a day and listen to the voice of God over the PA system at night (was the phrase "worthless scumbags" really mentioned in the Bible?). Memorable casting: forty-something Plasmatician Wendy O. Williams as the juvenile bull dyke Charlie, and the Teutonic queen-of-the-B's Sybil Danning as the spike-heeled, riding-crop-wielding Warden Sutter. Memorable moment: the hilarious conversation between loose screw Sherri Stoner, who explains to prison psychiatrist Dr. Norton (a totally histrionic Charlotte McGinnis, one of the greatest awful actors in the last 20 years) why she needs her stuffed rabbit. The film is worth its purchase price alone for watching Andy Warhol's Heat alumni Pat Ast as the slave-driving prison matron Edna, who tumbles to her death in flames during the prison riot (why only six guards to watch 700 inmates?) after going postal with a 12-gauge on top of a burning public-address tower. Shot by Tom DeSimone, whose previous contribution to the humanities was the film Sons of Satan, about gay vampires. The only thing missing in his heart-felt docudrama is narration by Paul “Big House”Sorvino. -- Chris Schneider

Make a break for the DVD: Reform School Girls

"The remaining three members of the Mumbles Quartette talk -- and talk plenty!"

THE BEAST OF YUCCA FLATS. Bizarre art film by Coleman Francis (of Skydivers Red Zone Cuba fame) featuring 400-pound pro wrestler / method actor Tor Johnson as a radiation-damaged hulk roaming the wastelands of Arizona for 54 minutes, in search of voluptuous women and a plot. Surrealistic opening scene: an (unaccredited) bare-chested, pixie-cut cutie walking out of a steamy shower, totally dry, wearing jeans and sneakers. Highlight: a 10-minute car chase more repetitive than a Philip Glass concerto. Intriguing: filmed without audio, the sound effects, incidental dialogue and narration were added later to the movie, making it a post-neo silent film. Like minimalism, man. – Chris Schneider

Beastly DVD: The Beast of Yucca Flats

 

THE BRAIN THAT WOULDN’T DIE (1959). Oversexed evil scientist Dr. Cortner (an overly smug Bill Jones, who also excelled as a sullen kleptomaniac in Everything That Ain't Nailed Down), commits the ultimate prenuptial faux pas by resuscitating his fiancee’s recently decapitated head by using his EXPERIMENTAL SERUM (Bosco?) in a lab sparser than high-school chemistry class. Problem is (a) the serum works for only 36 hours, and (b) a talking head might be great for a conversation piece on the coffee table but there are issues of sexual fulfillment… Realizing this, Dr. Cortner cruises seedy bars, crashes beauty contests, instigates catfights among strippers etc., looking for a torso to screw his gal’s head onto (of course, he could just date again, but we have a movie to watch). Overly cool: the MONSTER BEHIND THE LOCKED DOOR looks like a cross between James Arness’ The Thing and Zippy the Pin Head. – Chris Schneider

Eternally yours: The Brain That Wouldn't Die

"Hypo and Dahlia are hustled off to jail -- FOR A LONG STAY!"

 

FLIP SIDE (1963). A truly inspired mating of subject and signifier, this one, a half-hour one-act (made for Canadian TV) starring cool icon John Cassavetes as "J.J. the DJ." Jerry Janus, as you might suspect, wears two faces -- spieling hustler and desperate husband -- who spends most of his graveyard air-shift on the phone to his wife trying to persuade her not to leave him, while he smokes, spins hits, jams cartridges and ticks off insomniac callers. All this is done to the nonstop accompaniment of denture commercials, pompous public-service announcements affirming the station’s commitment to fighting international communism, and records by Annette, Paul Anka, the Rooftop Singers and Chuck Jackson (doing Tony Bruno’s "Tell Her I’m Not Home").

Cass did his homework. Throughout the film, he gestures like -- and at times physically resembles -- Murray the K, just then nearing the apogee of his Young Vulgarian reign on New York radio. Did the two greats ever meet? (See our TUBE chapter for the word on Cassavetes’ work in Johnny Staccato.) – G.S.

See Flip Side at the New York and Los Angeles Museum of Television & Radio, if it’s still on loan.

MAD DOG COLL (1961). It seems as if every crime bio-pic of the late ’50s/early ’60s could be counted on to deliver two things: a teaspoonful of psychoanalysis (to explain the lead hood’s misbehavior) and buckets of bloodshed. In 1959's vaguely Untouchables-derived Al Capone and Mad Dog Coll (OOP), both the brain and bodily-fluid floorshows come with a side of method-acting ham. In Capone it’s champion chewer Rod Steiger as Big Al. In Mad Dog Coll, it’s baby-faced psycho John Chandler. (See our TUBE chapter piece "The Fine Art of TV Villainy" for an appreciation of Chandler’s work in theteen-terror flick The Young Savages.)

The action gets under way in the opening credits. Chandler strolls through a fog-wrapped graveyard cradling a tommy-gun, finds his father’s headstone and strafes it into gravel while deadpanning, "Hello, pop." From there we learn of Coll’s battered childhood (his father deliberately trips him when he interrupts big daddy’s card game, and later calls Coll a sissy when he returns home with his first shiner).

Coll quickly morphs into a major JD (shades of The Young Savages), spraying his malt-shop pards with seltzer and ripping off a pal’s shirt when the kid won’t cough up a quarter. The full crazy canine emerges, and Chandler turns up the method flame as Coll goes from boosting sewing machines (for which he’s busted by sympathetic police lieutenant Telly Savalas) to gleefully ordering his rivals whacked with the cool aplomb of a customer at BK’s drive-up window.
Chandler does it all with gusto. At the film’s end, after Telly has regretfully piped him in a fantabulous pharmacy firefight, he slithers out the door over shards of mortar & pestle onto the sidewalk, in a protracted death scene to die for. These cats earned their coin.

Chandler’s hi-watt hammage, though, would be nothing without the script. Cool lines litter the film like gold dust, as when the Dog declares war on local boss Dutch Schultz (Vincent Gardenia). "I’m gonna open this town up like an oyster," grins Chandler,"and I’m comin’ up with all the pearls!" – H. De Robertis

Distant cousin: John Entwhistle’s should-have-been theme, "Mad Dog," available on So Who's the Bass Player?

DON’T MAKE WAVES (1967). Where to begin? This pre-hippie satire on Southern California just about has it all. Tourist Tony Curtis ("Carlo Colfield"), a dead ringer for Tom Hanks from certain angles, is victimized in a series of Out of Towner mishaps, all triggered, Rube Goldberg-style, by Eye-talian eyeful Claudia Cardinale ("Laura Califatti"). But Carlo quickly finds his footing, carving a ruthless career arc reminiscent of Curtis’ role in Sweet Smell of Success (see our SCREEN chapter).

He hustles himself into a sales gig for Seaspray Swimming Pools, where he works to con fat cats like Jim Backus (playing himself and doing Magoo impressions) and Sam Lingonberry (Mort Sahl in shorts and a cowboy hat) into buying expensive cement ponds. (Lingonberry’s pool site is a half-built fallout shelter, which he ultimately suckers Carlo into buying – as part of a hype swap involving a beach house and a Bentley.)

Want more? Try vent-act granddaddy Edgar Bergen as astrologer "Madame Livinia," who orders a pool in the shape of the Great Bear constellation ("with pulsing lights at the bottom"). How about Sharon Tate’s screen debut– as beach bun "Malibu" who gives Carlo mouth-to-mouth and skydives into Lingonberry’s pool as part of a publicity stunt. And the Byrds doing the minute-and-a-half theme. Plus gals go-go’ing to an unidentified folk-rock combo at the PR event and Carlo’s bach pad sluicing down onto Pacific Coast Hwy in a very credible approximation of a Cali mudslide. In his pad, Carlo unwinds with gin and Monte Cristo panatellas, reading Esquire and grooving to exotica on his reel-to-reel.

Cheater meter: While not as shades-strewn as some (see SCREEN for "The Most Sunglasses Worn in a Single Movie"), DMW offers a boss glass gallery. Cardinale sports wild square-frames, and beach groupie Millie checks in with a frantic white pair. -S.Z.

Video only: Don't Make Waves.
Byrds flight: "Don’t Make Waves" appears on Younger Than Yesterday.

THE WHEELER DEALERS (1963). My aesthetic preferences oblige me to follow certain dictums. One is that any excuse to watch Louie Nye in a movie or TV show is valid. Nye’s Steve Allen Show shtik as Mad Ave. swinger Gordon Hathaway was only the beginning of a career that found him consistently in deep with out-there characters (see his “Haywire Hall of Fame” entry [“Teenage Beatnik”] in our Sounds chapter).  Here, in a satire about James Garner and his Texas-tea pals doing an early Enron, Nye is Stanislas, a buck-chasing Abstract Expressionist who pours paint onto the tires of his trike, then rides it over his canvas to make masterpieces (“Look, man,” he tells a vising critic, “if you’re gonna walk on my canvas, the least you could do is put a little crimson on your sole!”).

As usual, Lou’s too too much, van-dyke-bearded, bopping around in snap-button Western shirts and Tyrolean hat (with feather). When Garner attends one of his shows, Nye identifies a guy standing before one of his paintings and sobbing uncontrollably as “a paid weeper” who fakes emotional overload to influence potential buyers.

Wheeler Dealer has other charms, as well. Allen Show alums Joey Forman and Pat Harrington Jr. sizzle as New York flacks Garner hires to hype his widget investment; in a courtroom scene, juicy John Astin flies over the moon as a federal prosecutor trying to catch Garner; and Chill Wills, Phil Harris and Charles Watts play Midland fat-cats Ray Jay, Jay Ray and J.R. (two decades before Dallas’ Hagman). Garner’s TX accent comes and goes, and his square visage resembles a more humane Hank Rollins.  -G.S.

Video only: The Wheeler Dealers

"Hmmm. So he keeps an extra turban, eh?"

 

WHAT’S NEW PUSSYCAT? (1965). This is a tasty little sucker. Forget about the plot and you’ll do very well: What counts here are the parts, not the whole. For starters, how about Peter O’Toole as a lecherous fashion-mag editor (he calls his many dames--including luscious Romy Schneider and Paula Prentiss-- “pussycat”)? His watusi’ing a-go-go here may be the apogee of his career. Then there’s O’Toole’s tantrum-prone shrink, an even bigger ass-bandit, Dr. Fritz Fassbender, played by Pete Sellers in a black hippie wig and horn rims, a dead ringer for early Cub Koda (if you don’t know, find out: www.cubkoda.com). The action, scripted by Woody Allen (who plays shag-crazy shlump Victor Shakapopulis), gets almost too frantic. But who’s complaining when it’s scored by Bacharach (Tom Jones’ title song, the Manfreds’ “My Little Red Book,” Dionne Warwick’s “Here I Am”) and features beatnik stripper Prentiss reading O’Toole her poems “Who Killed Charlie Parker?” and “Ode to a Perfect Junkie”? Then there’s O’Toole’s “pussycat from the sky,” who parachutes into his sprightly convertible: Ursula Andress. It’s all so ’65. –Perry Lane

Purrfect pic: What’s New Pussycat? DVD

EXPRESSO BONGO (1959, UK).

"It was still a different Soho in the early '60s: the hookers kept their shrines on the second floor, not on the pavement and in your face, and the streets were reserved for characters, cappuccino action, nerve, real verve and chat, most of it about music...Walking the streets of Expresso Bongo, my heart went boom when I crossed that room." ­ Andrew Loog Oldham, Stoned.

It's a gas, gas, gas, pre-Beatles Britain's first flick of teenbeat revolt and heroes of the hustle. Laurence Harvey portrays Johnny Jackson, young pop svengali on the make, the movie's motor, mouth and jukebox soul. Rolling Stones manager Oldham took most of his real-life cues from Harvey's fictive Jackson (and Tony Curtis in The Sweet Smell of Success and was wise to do so. Expresso Bongo is a head-spinning, driven vehicle that's cool at any speed. -G.S.

Expresso check-out: On DVD.
Domestic partnership: Roddy McDowall in The Cool Ones (1967, out-of-print)

 

THE LINEUP (1958). A sadismo dope smuggler (Eli Wallach in a rare hood role) shoves an old man in his wheelchair off a balcony onto the floor of a kids' skating rink. Wallach and his creep pard (Robert Keith, sporting John Waters' moustache) drag a hysterical mom and daughter with them on a French Connection car chase through '50s Frisco. No campy Quent T trip, this is non-ironic noir, taut, scary crime-drama stuff, by Don Siegel, 13 years before he directed Dirty Harry. Super-cool dialogue from Stirling Silliphant (see TUBE for Naked City and Route 66). And don't think DeNiro didn't study Wallachs' "Dancer" for his Jimmy Burke role in Goodfellas. Absolutely Dylan: When wheel-man Richard Jaeckel asks Keith why they had to murder a seaman who double-crossed them, Keith answers, "When you live outside the law, you have to eliminate dishonesty." Sadly, out of print. -G.S.

Hard-boiled Siegel on VHS: Madigan and Coogan's Bluff (see SCREEN).

 

LOOK IN ANY WINDOW (1961). OOP. A mere year after making "Puppy Love" a top-five hit, Paul Anka turns up as the troubled-teen peeping tom in this suburban cross between Peyton Place and Rebel Without A Cause. SoCal '61 is depicted as a fetid flowerhouse of adulterous wives and lovers, including Anka's mom, the dark beauty Ruth Roman, who's no match for the come-hither come-on's of neighborhood cad Jack Cassidy. Years before his tasty Columbo televillainy, dimpled, ascot-clad Cass just wails, swilling 100-proof ("Why don't you save some vodka for the guests, lover-boy?" snaps his wife) and roaring up to Roman in his sportscar to invite her on a Vegas getaway. Watering her lawn in high heels and party dress, she throws down her hose and hops in. Swing, swang, swung. -Perry Lane

Jack Cass on Columbo: "Murder By The Book" episode (VHS)

Dig suburban goons? See "The Fine Art of TV Villainy."

ANNA LUCASTA (1958, out of print).
"You'd go crazy in a week, without the lights and the swingin,' a guy who didn't get you in the groove, and that's what I'm here for!" So sayeth Sammy D Jr. To strumpet Anna L (Eartha Kitt), when he learns she's gotten hitched to earnest hick Rudolph Slocum ("You married a guy named Rudolph? That's not a name, baby, that's a cigar!"). The Candy Man's first featured role is a big hunk of moves and manic dialogue. Sort of a Sweet Smell of Success with an all-black cast.

Eartha's Anna is devastatingly real, Elmer Bernstein's score wails (bongos, brushes-on-snare crime jazz), and director Arnold Laven's credits include Clambake and Slaughter on Tenth Avenue. But it's really Sam's show. With his brilliantined hair and custom tailoring (who could look this sharp in sailor togs or a cabbie's cap?), he's one hip toothpick: Dionysian, dangerous. This one's worth digging for.