Music To My Fears

In searching relentlessly through the trash can of film history, I tracked down three music-related films that were so cracked I needed to write about them:

 

Young Toscanini is a 1988 film by Franco Zeffirelli starring C. Thomas Howell as the youthful maestro and Elizabeth Taylor as a famous Russian opera diva. The movie played a few festivals and died abroad, but I’ve been curious about it for years and finally tracked down a copy on eBay. Anyone who’s been to the Met and has seen a Zeffirelli production knows that this queen can mount an opera. But his film-making skills leave much to be desired. When I managed a movie theater in Provincetown I made it a policy to take the night off every time Zeffirelli’s Brother Sun, Sister Moon played because I hated it so much.

C.Thomas Howell is in his cute post-The Hitcher stage (which is probably why Zeffirelli cast him), but he is so sweaty, earnest, idealistic and boring in the film you want to scream. In the beginning, Toscanini is just a member of the orchestra. But when they perform in Brazil, he is forced to work with the difficult diva (Taylor) to get her ready for a production of Aida.

Taylor is a hoot as Nadina Bulichoff, the bejeweled mistress of the Brazilian president, and has a scene at the end where she is onstage and stops the show to give an impassioned cry for the end of slavery in her country. In blackface! I had to rewind the movie a dozen times, I was laughing so hard. It’s a little like seeing Al Jolson do the “I Have a Dream” speech.

To think that Zeffirelli had the nerve to withdraw Young Toscanini from the Venice film festival because Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation Of Christ was screening, a film he described as “truly horrible and completely deranged.” That’s the pot calling the kettle blackface.

The Phynx is even wilder and weirder. A 1970 rock-comedy-spy spoof that was so bad that Warner Brothers, who made the film, abandoned it. Now out on their great Warner Archive DVDs-on-demand, when I finally watched the film my jaw became unhinged. Directed by Lee H. Katzin, who, besides directing Whatever Happened To Aunt Alice?, was mostly known for his work on TV shows like The Mod Squad, Mission Impossible and The Rat Patrol. The Phynx is about a dastardly dictator in Albania who has kidnapped several American celebrities. Secret agents (who enter the headquarters through a hidden door behind a bathroom stall in the men’s room of the International House Of Pancakes) consult the top computer, which is called MOTHA and is shaped like a woman- I kid you not. MOTHA suggests they create a four-member rock band called the Phynx. The computer indicates that the band will become so popular that they will be asked to play Albania- where they can then free the stars.

So government agents kidnap a college boy, a Native American, a weightlifter, and an African-American and whisk them to a remote Army base in the desert. They are trained by Master Sergeant Clint Walker, Harold “Odd Job” Sakata, Richard Pyror (who teaches them soul), Trini Lopez and given the final thumbs up by Dick Clark.

After a successful gig on the Ed Sullivan Show their record takes off. President Nixon signs a proclamation changing Thanksgiving into Phynxgiving. The U.S. Mint issues three-dollar bills with the band members faces on them. And James Brown awards the band a gold record.

They finally make it to Albania and, in another loony segment, all the kidnaped celebrities appear from behind a curtain- Pat O’Brien, Colonel Sanders, Tarzan (Johnny Weissmuller) and Jane (Maureen O’Sullivan), Dorothy Lamour, Xavier Cugat, Edgar Bergan and puppet Charlie McCarthy, Busby Berkeley, Ruby Keeler, George Jessel, Andy Devine, Guy Lombardo, Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, Butterfly McQueen, Marilyn Maxwell, Cass Daley (mugging shamelessly for the camera), Rudy Vallee, boxer Joe Louis, even the Lone Ranger (John Hart) and Tonto (Jay Silverheels). I mean this would be fine for a salute on an Academy Awards show but in a counterculture rock movie? Why not mix Geritol with your L.S.D.? Eventually the rock band sneaks the stars out hidden in wagons of radishes (the national flower of Albania)! Oh, and did I forget to mention some of the others who pop up in the movie- like Martha Raye, Rona Barrett and Ultra Violet?

As for the tunes the group sings: What’s Your Sign? and Nearly Blew My Mind– they were written by the famous team of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, but you’d be better off jamming pencils in your eardrums. Don’t get me wrong- The Phynx stinks, but the movie is so deranged you need to see it today.

The Cool Ones (1967) This was made when studios desperately tried to cash in on the youth market and made movies about teenagers and the music industry that had little to do with life on the planet earth. Kids dance in garish, brightly-colored clothes and groove to tunes that no young person in their right mind would shake a tail feather to in 1967.

Roddy McDowall (obviously riffing on Phil Spector) plays Tony Krum, a crackpot record producer who worships Napoleon, wears lots of ludicrous outfits and has to be fed baby bottles of warm milk at night. Gil Peterson, who looks frighteningly like a Ken Doll, plays Cliff Donner, disillusioned by his waning rock career.

Debbie Watson, in a role originally slated for Nancy Sinatra, plays Hallie, an ambitious singer dancing on a Hullabaloo-like TV show, who hogs the camera from Glen Campbell during a live show and her frenetic gyrations cause her to become an instant star. Cliff and Hallie join up and their song “The Tantrum” becomes a sensation. Scenes with dancing teenagers acting out tantrums in nightclubs has to be seen to be believed. Tony Krum gets the brainstorm to orchestrate the romance of Cliff & Hallie for the public. The costumes are pure Carnaby Street swinging London with riotous, bright, pop, eye-melting colors. Roddy McDowall’s outfits are the most egregiously flamboyant. Even his private convertible is painted purple. There’s also a hilarious scene around a ski lift where the members of the band start dancing like crazy that could only have been topped if police had suddenly showed up and opened fire on them. Directed by Gene Nelson, who was better known for TV shows like I Dream Of Jeannie and The Mod Squad. Lee Hazlewood (These Boots Are Made For Walkin’) wrote the songs and some of the bands in the movie include The Bantams, The Leaves and T.J. and the Fourmations. I dare you to tell me you have their albums.

The best is saved for last, when the wardrobe mistress (played by tone-deaf “Downtown” singer Mrs. Miller) is thrust on stage and her off-key rendition of “It’s Magic” becomes a big hit with the teens in the studio audience. Bosley Crowther, in his NY Times review said: “I venture to guess this will disgust even the kids.” It’s also available on Warner Archive DVD and I urge you to revel in its awfulness.