Michael Goldfarb, who’s been a close friend since we were in third grade (we graduated Harriton together in 1968), posted one of those “top ten” challenges on his Facebook page.
He wrote, “Let’s play National Film Theatre of the mind. Imagine the NFT has invited you to program a series of films. Your choice of program is thematic, or by decade, gender, country … whatevs.”
So my thematic program is Guilty Pleasure Movies. And here they are, more or less in the (descending) order of my guilt.
10. Nothing But Trouble
A 1991 comedy with Chevy Chase, Demi Moore, John Candy and Dan Akroyd – what could be bad? I’ll tell you what could be bad, this movie – for most people that is.
But I’m with the 13% of the critics and 47% of the audience on Rotten Tomatoes who recognized a tour de force of bad taste and juvenile humor when they saw it.
Chase, Moore and the Brazilian minstrel-show double-act they’re traveling with are stopped for speeding in a seemingly sleepy small town ruled with an iron fist by Dan Aykroyd’s grotesque judge, a deranged old coot old enough to be Mr. Burns’ great, great grandfather. Aykroyd presides over a towering haunted house/courtroom decorated with rotting debris “borrowed” from meddlesome out-of-towners whose corpses litter the many trap doors and secret chambers throughout Aykroyd’s elaborate amusement-park-style torture chamber. Chase soon finds himself warding off the unwanted advances of Aykroyd’s mute daughter, played by John Candy in drag, while Moore searches for a way out. AVClub
9. Get To Know Your Rabbit
A 1973 Un-classic comedy, starring Orson Welles, Tommy Smothers and John Astin – directed by Friends Central graduate, Brian De Palma.
Critics didn’t even rate this one on Rotten Tomatoes, but 43% of audience reviews were positive. The movie was actually made in 1970, but didn’t find its way into distribution until 1973.
Smothers plays Donald Beeman, a burned out Los Angeles market analyst. Donald quits his job after taking lessons from Mr. Delasandro (Orson Welles), learning how to be a tap dancing magician. After graduating from Delasandro’s course (Magna Cum Laude), Donald takes his act on the road, to one seedy and hilarious venue after the next.
Vincenty Camby wrote about “Get to Know Your Rabbit,” “Movies that promote the importance of non-conformity are almost always fraudulent, or what’s worse, their sentimental. ‘A thousand Clowns’ is a case in point. ‘Get To Know Your Rabbit’ largely avoids those pitfalls, and with a great deal of comic exhuberance.”
Watch the whole movie here.
8. The Last Hurrah
Political Junkies, especially those whose jones is for the for the local variety, will savor this John Ford adaptation of Edwin O’Connor’s 1956 novel, “The Last Hurrah.” It takes us inside Frank Skeffington’s (Spencer Tracy) swansong campaign.
Often shrugged off as a Ford failure, but it improves with acquaintance. Sentimental, certainly, and featuring a perilously protracted death-bed scene, but with Ford superbly at ease on his Irish-American home ground in an elegiac account of the last, doomed campaign of a New England political boss (based by way of Edwin O’Connor’s novel on Boston’s Mayor Curley), defeated by time and new-fangled media image-making. Sidestep-ping the corruption inseparable from this sort of old-style politicking, Ford prints the legend with a warm, rueful (almost testamentary) sense of recollection. Outstanding camera-work by Charles Lawton, and a rich gallery of performances in which Hollywood veterans and Ford’s stock company are well to the fore. Timeout
7. Back to School
Thornton Melon (Rodney Dangerfield) is concerned that his son Jason (Keith Gordon) is unsure whether to go to college, so the uneducated self-made millionaire encourages him by signing up as a student as well. As Jason tries to establish himself among his peers and make the diving team, Thornton falls for a pretty professor (Sally Kellerman) and gets others do his schoolwork for him. When the suspicious dean (Paxton Whitehead) finds out, Thornton needs to show he can get by on his own. Rotten Tomatoes
One of the most memorable comedic cameos in movie history. The late, great Sam Kinison doing what only Sam Kinison could pull off. This is the only moment in one of my all-time favorite comedies where Rodney Dangerfield isn’t the funniest person on the screen. Barstoolsports.com
6. Tommy Boy
Only 42% of the Critics on Rotten Tomatoes gave this 1995 Buddy Picture/Comedy a positive review, but its audience score was 90%!
After his beloved father (Brian Dennehy) dies, dimwitted Tommy Callahan (Chris Farley) inherits a near-bankrupt automobile parts factory in Sandusky, Ohio. His brand new stepmother, Beverly (Bo Derek), wants to cash out and close, but Tommy’s sentimental attachment to his father’s employees spurs him to make one last-ditch effort to find someone who will buy their products. With his father’s tightly wound assistant, Richard (David Spade), in tow, Tommy hits the road to scare up some new clients. Rotten Tomatoes
For the most part, Spade settles for being Farley’s straight man. But occasionally he manages to earn a few guffaws on his own with his snarky side comments.
“You know a lot of people go to college for seven years” – “I know. They’re called doctors.”
5. A Guide for the Married Man
Gene Kelly (yup, that Gene Kelly) directed this 1967 comedy, starring Walter Matthau and Robert Morse.
Paul Manning realizes to his dismay that after 12 happy years of marriage he is becoming increasingly distracted by other women. He is particularly attracted to his neighbor, Irma Johnson. To make matters worse, his philandering friend, Ed Stander, claims that to preserve a marriage, the husband should secretly indulge in a little extramarital activity. As a gesture of true camaraderie, Ed volunteers to teach Paul the finer points of wife-cheating and illustrates his lectures with stories of friends who have had successful or unsuccessful affairs. TCM.com
In this movie-stealing two-minute segment, a naughty husband (Joey Bishop) gets caught in flagrante delicto by his wife (Imogene Coca).
4. Little Shop of Horrors (Original Version)
Roger Corman’s 1960 Black and White Camp Classic became Broadway hit musical in the early 80s, and was made into a Film Musical in 1986.
Jack Nicholson (age 23) plays the masochist in the sadistic dentist office
This creation is a type of Venus Fly Trap. Everyone knows that these types of plants love to eat insects and bugs, and will snap on your fingers if they come in contact, but when Audrey won’t grow, it is discovered the only thing standing between Seymour and his dreams is a little blood, sweat, and tears. That’s right, Audrey is a full on thirsty vampire of a flower and will only thrive when feasting on the blood of humans. What’s a boy to do?
What ensues is both comedic—and, when you really think about it—kind of scary. Scenes involve a masochistic dentist, a sadistic client, and a bizarre but genius scene involving a stop light. A Little Shop of Horrors was written by Charles B. Griffith (Not of this Earth 1957) and directed by Roger Corman (The Terror 1963). The film is believed to be inspired by an H.G. Wells story, titled “The Flowering of the Strange Orchid,” written in 1905. Pophorror.com
3.Greetings
This is an even earlier Brian De Palma comedy (1968), featuring an unknown, 25-year old Robert DeNiro. “Greetings” has the sloppy, grainy feel of a college film. It’s basically a series of sketch comedies, one funnier than the next.
In 1969, Roger Ebert wrote about “Greetings” –
He [De Palma] gives us some characters who have no justification at all, except their existence, which we accept because we have to. There’s the hero who’s trying to avoid the draft, and his friends, and some other guys who are investigating the assassination of President Kennedy. And there’s this guy who peddles dirty movies. And three girls who are computer dates. And somebody who says he’s Lee Harvey Oswald’s landlady’s nephew and will be killed some day… Other scenes are also small gems of comedy: when the smut-peddler approaches his victim; when the hero confronts his computer date, a Bronx secretary; when the hero’s friend talks a girl into posing for a stag film on the grounds of scientific investigation.
2. Blazing Saddles
If Pauline Kael was alive today, she and I would have to agree to disagree about this movie. She wrote,”The story is about a black hipster (Cleavon Little) who becomes sheriff in a Western town in the 1860s; Gene Wilder and Madeleine Kahn manage to redeem some of the film, but most of the cast (including Brooks himself) mug and smirk and shout insults at each other. Brooks celebrated spontaneous wit isn’t in in evidence: the old gags here never were very funny; rehashed they just seem desperate.”
On the other hand, I think it’s just as hysterical as when I first saw it in 1974.
1. Manhattan
It’s about a middle-aged guy sleeping with a 17-year-old girl, and it’s made by a middle-aged guy who took up with the adopted daughter of the woman he was living with. And according to Mariel Hemingway, who got an Oscar Nomination for playing the 17-year-old girl in the movie – the guy who made the movie propositioned her. But other than a that, this is a pretty good movie.
If the 2017 4K release of this film happens to come to a theater near you, even if you’re totally put off by the above, you might want to just grit your teeth and see it anyway. It’s gorgeous.
Oh shoot, I forgot to mention that the guy who made the movie was also accused by the woman he used to live with, of sexually molesting another one of her adopted daughters. But the guy who made the movie denies it.