Skidoo (1968)

Starring: Jackie Gleason, Groucho Marx, Carol Channing, Frankie Avalon, Peter Lawford, Burgess Meredith, George Raft, Cesar Romero, Mickey Rooney, Austin Pendelton, Richard Kiel, Frank Gorshin, Luna, and Slim Pickens
Grade: D

This is Groucho Marx’s last movie? That’s depressing.

Summary

Retired mob hitman Tony Banks (Gleason) and his wife Flo (Channing) argue over what channel to watch on their television set. They both flip back and forth between channels because they both have separate remote controls. Flo wants to watch some trial that Senator Hummel (Lawford) is heading up, as he tries to convict some known gangsters. Unfortunately, the trial becomes a mockery because of everyone’s refusal to answer any questions. One of the men being questioned is a former lover of Flo’s, and Tony wants no part of it. He acts like he doesn’t want to know by saying it doesn’t matter to him since he already married Flo when she was three months pregnant, but it clearly bothers him. Tony’s friend Harry (Arnold Stang) is also with them, but he doesn’t take a side. He just follows Tony into the kitchen to tell him to be thankful he’s married. Following this, Harry notices that a 1937 Rolls Royce has just pulled into the driveway, a car owned by the infamous gangsters, the Malla Brothers. Despite being in Puerto Rico for the last twenty years, they may be after Tony. Tony and Harry go and get guns and head outside, only to find that his daughter Darlene (Alexandra Hay) is in the car with her worthless hippie boyfriend Stash (John Phillip Law) instead. After hearing Stash speak some pretentious nonsense, Tony knocks the dude out and yells at Darlene for being with him. Flo and Darlene help Stash inside while Tony gets in his face for an argument.

Just then, gangsters Hechy (Romero) and Angie (Avalon) show up at the Banks residence, and Harry lets them in.

Under “The Tree” (the underground criminal business all these gangsters are tied up in), Angie runs Oregon and Idaho. Next year, he’ll be running the whole Northwest.

Hechy tells Tony that God (Marx), the head of “The Tree” and the one behind the entirety of the criminal underworld, is demanding Tony do a job for him, despite Tony retiring from the “business” seventeen years ago when he married Flo. Hechy reminds him how no one is ever truly out of God’s grasps. On top of that, they need him. George “Blue Chips” Packard (Rooney), Tony’s best friend and Darlene’s godfather, is going to testify before the US Senate’s Crime Commission, and he can hurt the “business” badly if he gets there. They’re asking Tony to go to the federal penitentiary he’s in, find Packard in maximum security, and kill him since he’s the only person Packard wouldn’t suspect. After all, Tony was the best “torpedo” (hitman) in the business. Hechy tells him they can get him in the prison and out quickly, but Tony refuses because he’s done with that life. He has Hechy and Angie leave, with Hechy telling him they will be at Pier 17 if he changes his mind. As they leave, all four men see Darlene making out with Stash outside the house, with Tony telling her to go inside. Harry leaves, and Stash goes and sits on the Rolls with a blanket.

In the middle of the night, Tony gets a call that someone left the machines on at his car wash business. He drives over, only to find Harry dead inside of his car. A frustrated Tony drives the car to Pier 17. With Angie ditching the car, Tony goes with Hechy on his boat. The job is reluctantly on. The next day, Darlene hangs with Stash, and they go to one of the spots in town where all the hippies hang out. They go to some bus his friends turned into a living room, and they all hang out and smoke. Darlene’s body is also painted by Stash’s friends in numerous flower designs and colors. Soon after, cops storm the bus and arrest everyone for having weed on them. They are sent straight to a courtroom with the mayor. Flo is there too because she’s a part of some committee or something. She notices her daughter among the crowd of hippies, as the mayor bars them all from her town. Flo wants Darlene to come with her, but she refuses. Instead, Flo offers to take the entirety of Stash’s hippie commune back to their house, and they happily accept. Naturally, she’s worried about what Tony would have to say about this, but Darlene says she will go by the office with Stash to tell him directly. Little does she know, Tony starts his job today and has been brought into the prison, meeting his habitual criminal and rapist bunkmate Leech (Michael Constantine) who’s in on the job. They are joined by Fred the Professor (Pendelton) who’s been put there for burning his draft card. He’s also a technological genius and has been enlisted for this job to help Tony get to Packard.

Back at home, Darlene tells Flo that no one knows where Tony or Harry is. Now, Flo begins a manhunt for her husband, and she knows it has something to do with God.

My Thoughts:

Despite having such an incredible ensemble cast on paper, Skidoo is a disappointing comedy that elicits very few legitimate laughs. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine a movie this unfunny with Groucho Marx, Jackie Gleason, and Mickey Rooney in it?

Skidoo is all over the place. Though it does have a fun vibe and an interesting plot, I still don’t know what this movie was trying to be. It builds and builds, but none of the payoffs for the intersecting story lines or character arcs were remotely satisfying. Let’s start with the most obvious gripe, shall we? If you have Jackie Gleason playing the hero and Groucho Marx playing the villain, you have to have them face off at least once in the movie. It’s what the fans came to see! It doesn’t necessarily have to be a fight, even though it should be considering the circumstances, but there should be a verbal joust at the minimum. I would’ve settled for them arguing and getting each other mad with insults to the point where Gleason knocks out Groucho to end the movie, but they never even share the same room! Can you believe that? How do you allude to a fight between two comedy icons like this for the ENTIRE movie and never let it happen? You could’ve built this whole film around the fact that we’re having a war between two different eras of comedy and their influence on the genre, but not only is the film nowhere near as funny as it should be considering the talent, but we never get a payoff! What’s even more devasting is that we’ll never get this opportunity again! They squandered a showdown of mythic proportions because of historically bad writing, a director that didn’t know what the hell he was doing, and actors that didn’t understand the story they were trying to tell.

How is there not one scene where the two main characters see each other, despite the fact that the entire driving force behind the story is that Tony accepts and then refuses to do God’s dirty work and wants revenge?

They had the perfect chance to do it in the climax when Tony finds God’s ship and God hides in a closet after the place is stormed, but Tony stops once Flo takes him to a bedroom and they kiss. Then (SPOILERS, SPOILERS, SPOILERS), God hangs out with Fred on a boat and smokes weed to end the movie. Why does he get a happy ending where he escapes? He’s not written to have any redeeming factors at all. Why is he afforded this whimsical finale? The only thing this villain has going for him is that he’s played by Groucho Marx. Speaking of which, Groucho was given zero good lines or memorable moments, despite being one of the greatest comic performers in the history of cinema. If that doesn’t tell you how horrid this screenplay is, I don’t know what does. As a result, he churns in a disgustingly average performance. It’s such a shame too. If you get two massive superstars such as Groucho and Gleason in an LSD-inspired movie, something that doesn’t fit either of their comedic styles, you have to give them some good material to work with. Clearly, they were game for a project like this, but they needed something to chew on to get acclimated to such a production to feel out their characters. Groucho specifically looked like he had the energy to give us something good even with his advanced age, but he wasn’t given anything remotely entertaining to do. He got away purely because of his star persona, accepting the fact that the material was terrible and phoning in his performance as a result.

Also, why name the character “God”? Was it just because characters asking things like, “Where is God?” was funny to the writers because it sounds like the characters are asking existential questions? Admittedly, the character does seem all-knowing and the organization he runs covers a lot of ground, but again, you would think he would have more to do to assert dominance and importance over the story to show how big of a villain he is. Unfortunately, we never got a single sequence to show us why the world is afraid of this guy. If he has that much influence over everyday life, why don’t the characters fear him when they are in his presence? It’s like everyone in the movie knows it’s Groucho Marx which shouldn’t be the case. He should’ve been similar to Rufus T. Firefly but with villainous tendencies. Remember how mad he got when Ambassador Trentino called him an “upstart” in Duck Soup? That is the level of chaotic energy he should’ve had for this role. This is how the character should’ve been written. Seeing him sitting in a chair with a switchboard, communicating with people on his television screen doesn’t work. Groucho needs someone to play off of in person. This is where he’s at his best. Did they even watch a Marx Brothers movie before casting him? On a side note, seeing him trying to undress Darlene while talking to her was unsettling to say the least. It may have been funny if he was thirty years younger and had that Groucho flair to it while saying some innuendo-laden jokes, but it just looked creepy here. No wonder he didn’t give her eye contact throughout the entirety of his lines in the scene.

The concept of “The Tree” was interesting. It’s explained that this criminal organization keeps total chaos from happening because it’s this nationwide protection racket. Without them, everyone would be on edge because anyone could get robbed or killed at any given moment. This is a very interesting plot device, but not much is said or revealed about its dealings afterwards which becomes increasingly frustrating.

Jackie Gleason put together a decent performance as the former mob guy. Even though the movie doesn’t deserve it, Gleason’s Tony is a very serious character, with some surprisingly emotional moments vital to the movie. One of these moments is when Tony tries to send a letter. After licking the envelope, he’s told by Fred that his stationery is soaked in LSD. Why? I’m not sure, but he goes through a dark trip that is so well done, it almost feels like it doesn’t belong in the movie. His emotional response to it doesn’t fit the tone of Skidoo whatsoever. Gleason plays it well, but these random dark moments that involve his character stand out in odd fashion. It’s not a bad thing, but it just goes back to my initial questions with the movie. What was Otto Preminger trying to do with Skidoo? What was the goal? What was he getting out of this bullet hole-filled screenplay? This weird sequence wouldn’t have been that big of a deal if it didn’t last long, but it went on for a solid five minutes, completely throwing me off. It changed the entire film, leaving me dumbfounded afterwards.

Weirder decisions continued to prevail within this screenplay. Why do they refer to killing a target as “kissing” them? How come when Tony, Fred, and Leech escape the prison, Leech isn’t allowed to go with them in the made-up hot air balloon because he’s “too heavy”, according to Tony? How does Jackie Gleason’s big ass have the audacity to say this line? The man is an easy 300+ pounds. (*SPOILERS*) Why does Angie marry God’s mistress (Luna) when they were clearly alluding to him getting with Darlene? On top of that, why didn’t Stash marry God’s mistress after what happened? It’s pretty obvious Stash and Darlene don’t make any sense together based off the narrative these intoxicated screenwriters wrote! These were just problems regarding the third act too. Believe me, this movie is FILLED with problems. However, there were so many things wrong with these last few minutes of the movie, I just sat there in silence, with a face as straight as one of those gigantic head statues on Easter Island. Trust me when I say there wasn’t a single character arc completed the correct way. The writers had to have been on LSD. This is my only explanation for the amount of stupidity going on here.

There was also this horrible fake laugh they (CLEARLY) added in post-production for God’s mistress when she was chasing Stash around. It was just the same laugh recording over and over again, and it was very noticeable.

With everything being said, I will give credit to the soundtrack. The “Skidoo” song in the climax is simple enough to stay in your head for at least a month, and the song and dance with the trash cans during the LSD sequence was very well-written and catchy. The end credits were also sung to the viewer like a song, including everything from the cast to even the copyright stuff. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that in a film, so they get points for ingenuity. Honestly, that song was pretty good too. I sat through the whole thing and marveled at how well-done it was. Basically, special credit goes to Harry Nilsson for the music of Skidoo, one of the only saving graces of this bizarre film. If one thing was done right, it was the trippy and fun score encompassing this somewhat disastrous comedy.

Skidoo has everything going for it. It has an all-star cast led by two comedic legends, an interesting plot, and great music. The problem is that it absolutely sucks.