I have always been a fan, a connoisseur if you will, of all things that are awful. Don’t get me wrong , I love the truly great also, be it The Velvet Underground, The Beatles, films by Martin Scorsese, you name it. But many years ago when I was in high school, I came acrossa book by the Medved brothers called “The Golden Turkey Awards”. In it they listed some of the worst films ever made, such as “Plan 9 from Outer Space” and “Robot Monster”. Films that were so ridicuously bad that you couldn’t believe actual people wrote, directed and acted in such abominations. I was hooked and had to make it a quest to see each of these awful films. Some were hilarious in their ineptitude and some were so boring that you had to struggle just to stay awake. Through the years I sat through some real stinkers (“Lara Croft” “Lost in Translation”) and recently I saw a Coen Brothers movie, “A Serious Man”, that outraged me in that I lost two hours of my life I will never get back. You see, the sign of a good or bad movie is one that arouses passion and the sign of a really bad movie is one that arouses boredom and bile.
So it was with quest in mind that I sought out a film written and produced by the late, great Morey Amsterdam of “The Dick Van Dyke Show”. This film was soley the brainchild of Morey, who I understand also put up most of the money along with some hapless investors. The film centers on a bumbling short order cook named Charlie who works at a diner with his friend, waitress (Rosemarie) and run by his boss (Richard Deacon) , both from the Dick Van Dyke show as well. The film is notable for it’s star-studded cameos (Danny Thomas, comedian Joey Adams and Moe Howard of the 3 Stooges in an unusually serious role). The film is so badly acted and the jokes are so lame, you sit there in disbelief in its sheer awfulness that you can’t believe the movie could get any worse. But it does. The jokes are so lousy and delivered with all the conviction of a second grade school play or a drunk shriners convention. Case in point:
Customer: Hello, Girlie?
Waitress: Did you call me, Sir?
Customer: No, I called you Girlie!
The actors play it up as if expecting to hear yuks coming from the audience, who are not there. The whole film falls flat from the cheap sets to the terrible espionage subplot. Henry Corden, a character actor who played in hundreds of films and sitcoms, from playing the landlord on “The Monkees” to the voice of Fred Flintstone, plays a spy and you have to wonder what he must have made of all this. I interviewed Henry a few years ago before he passed away and I wish I had known about this movie then. I would have loved to have asked him what the hell everyone was thinking during the production of it. The worst part is saved for the ending, a payoff so unbelievable that you have to wonder if riots broke out in the small handful of theaters that showed this messterpiece. Clearly, Morey had lost his marbles making this disaster. Needless to say, there would be no more directorial delights from him. He and Rosemarie would forever be banished to the land of Hollywood Squares and Match Game 74.
It took me years to track this film and find a bootleg copy. Imagine my surprise when it showed up on the Netflix on Demand system. Watch at your own peril but don’t say I didn’t warn ya!
