Everything you've heard about this notoriously awful big-budget all-star Paramount counterculture comedy is true. Long reviled as one of the worst and most wrongheaded movies ever made, SKIDOO remains somewhat watchable in a train-wreck sort of way--but only once. I don't think my retinas could take a return trip.

However, if you think you're brave enough to endure it, Turner Classic Movies is airing SKIDOO early on Saturday morning, January 5, 2008. That should give you plenty of time to work out and prepare by enduring marathon viewings of MYRA BRECKINRIDGE, ARMAGEDDON, DUNE and BATTLEFIELD EARTH. I don't believe SKIDOO has ever received a U.S. home video release, and who knows when the last time (or if) it was shown on television.

TCM in January

That January line-up looks pretty interesting. GREEN FIRE and PARK ROW jump out among movies I've been wanting to see, and if you look at the programming for the 30th you get HORROR CASTLE and CASTLE OF THE LIVING DEAD - both letterboxed - back to back. I love TCM!

My first exposure to SKIDOO was on an American Movie Classics broadcast in the late '80's, back when they actually aired American movie classics.

I should be fair and add that SKIDOO has one of the most entertaining title sequences I've ever seen. The bad news is that it comes at the end of the movie.

I saw this in early 1969 on a double bill with UP TIGHT, a serious black-cast remake of THE INFORMER, directed by expatriate/former blacklistee Jules Dassin, the film that actually drew us to the theater. (I can imagine what Dassin's reaction was to Paramount's packaging his film with SKIDOO. No wonder he went back to Europe.) I was with my older brother and he called SKIDOO the worst film he had ever seen. I was just fascinated by the cast, a once-in-a-lifetime gathering that is probably even more exciting today. Here's how the lineup looked back then:

Jackie Gleason - back when he was still basking in the glow of "The Honeymooners" and the Saturday night "Jackie Gleason Show"; he played a harder-edged character here than we were used to and there was some novelty value in that (I hadn't seen THE HUSTLER yet at this point, still Gleason's finest achievement outside "The Honeymooners" if you ask me)
Carol Channing - when "Hello Dolly" was still fresh in our memories
Frankie Avalon - fresh off the BEACH PARTY series, only without Annette :(
John Phillip Law - fresh off BARBARELLA and playing a hippie
Alexandra Hay - new to us but very hot indeed
Frank Gorshin, Cesar Romero and Burgess Meredith, fresh off their combined villainy in BATMAN (too bad they weren't reprising those roles--it might have perked up the film a little)
George Raft - whom I'd already seen in CASINO ROYALE
Groucho Marx - a legendary comic performer whom I'd heard of, of course, but hadn't yet seen in anything except maybe a rerun of "You Bet Your Life" when I was a little kid
Peter Lawford - one of the Rat Pack and a Kennedy husband, no little cachet in those days
Mickey Rooney - 'nuff said
Arnold Stang - whom I knew from IT'S A MAD (4) WORLD and various TV commercials
Doro Merande - from THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING
Austin Pendleton - new to us but he had a fresh comic style and made a great impression (he was probably the funniest one in the movie)
Richard Kiel

The movie was astoundingly unfunny, but it was a one-of-a-kind spectacle and symptomatic of the studio system's rapid fall from grace at the time. Just as MYRA BRECKENRIDGE might look better today than it did in 1970 (I have the DVD but haven't re-watched it yet), SKIDOO just might, at the very least, offer a riveting time capsule. Granted, I haven't seen it since then so I don't know what a re-viewing would be like, but I'm curious.

I have not seen it since Cinemax ran it in the early 80's....I am kinda looking forward to seeing again after all these years. Something tells me Alexandra Hay will be the redeaming feature.

No, it doesn't! Brian, remember THE PHYNX? Now, imagine a bigger-budget comedy with even fewer laughs and more embarassment.

For anyone who's interested, there's an interview with Austim Pendleton in the latest issue of SHOCK CINEMA where he discusses the movie,the hassles in making it, and the horrible reception the film got at the time of its release.

He also tells a funny story of how while getting a role the film CATCH-22, he turned down another possible role in another film by an upcoming director because he wasn't interested in doing yet another war flick. The director he blew off (in his own words) turned out to be none other than Robert Altman, and the film ws M.A.S.H. (which I just recently saw for the first time in years, unedited & uncensored--I'd seen it on T.V. at least once, but rarely all the way through.) I still love its unconventional,freewheeling documentary approach, even though I had problems with how main female character was treated---I thought it was downright sexist, to say the least---luckily,it didn't completely detract from the rest of the movie, which seems in general to have been eclisped by the even more successful T.V. show, which I loved.)

There's a new Preminger bio out, OTTO PREMINGER: THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING (better title for a Huston book, no?), by Foster Hirsch. Film Forum in NY is running a retrospective tied in with the book in early Jan, around the time SKIDOO is airing on TCM. (I saw SKIDOO at FF 10 years ago, a memorable afternoon, but it's not part of the lineup there. Good to see that Pendleton, a really nice guy, continues to dine out on it. )

PARK ROW, eh? Great news. But as I recall from the last time they aired (probably two or more years ago now) one or both of the CASTLEs had a futzed-up aspect ratio.

I saw this when it came out at the Jewel Theater on Main Street in Humble, Texas. I was about 8 and having my annual summer three-day sleepover with my grandmom, and part of the ritual was a night at the movies on Main Street (previous movie nights had showcased THE ALAMO and THE GNOME MOBILE).

I remember nothing about the movie except that it was in color, had Jackie Gleason, that objects moved on the screen, and that my grandmother hated it. When I say nothing, I mean I remember nothing at all, and by this time in my life I was remembering whole passages from movies shot for shot after only one viewing. I have always been fascinated to return to this movie and see just what I missed and why it was so alien to my experience of moviegoing.

Oh, and the poster was really suggestive, with a pair of leather pants on a woman unzipping in closeup. I *definitely* remember being disappointed that this image (and those that might follow) appeared nowhere in the film.

You were a precocious lad.

You can buy the SKIDOO 1-sheet if you like.

4 words:

"JACKIE GLEASON DOES ACID"

'Nuff said!

I could watch this again and again. It's awesomely, awe-fully awful, Otto P.'s acid trip as well as Jackie G.'s, LSD trip as the maalox moment and pickles and icecream nightmare of the entire super-annuated Hollywood entertainment industry recoiling from youth culture even while trying to embrace it. Can Charles Manson be far behind?

I do love -without a touch of irony or perversity- Harry Nilsson's sung credits at the end.

Check it out, it's a technicolor, high cholesterol, demented disaster which Joan Didion should have dedicated that book to which became The White Album; much more relevant and close to home as pop reference point.

Now that I've got that off my chest...I recall another film that somewhat resembled this one in its curdled hipness, THE HAPPENING, you know, the one with the Supremes on the soundtrack celebrating the youth revolution. Anybody seen it lately enough to evaluate?

You flatter me, Marty. My presence in the theater was solely the result of the cultural disconnection of my late beloved Granny Pearl, to whom, may she rest in peace, the words superannuated, high-cholesterol, maalox moment, and pickles and ice cream already applied in 1969.

And thanks for the poster link. So the gal's pants were corduroy, not leather after all. Wonder what that says about my putative precosity or perversity. . .

Five more words:

"CAROL CHANNING IN HER UNDERWEAR!"

I consider myself warned.

I've wanted to see this movie since college days in the 70s.

Of course, I wanted to see Myra Breckenridge, too. Well, I've inflicted THAT harm on myself, what's one more?....

More to the point, it's Carol Channing in a see-through bra. (!)

while trying to impress Frankie Avalon (playing a phony, insincere Hollywood 'golden boy' nogoodnik)!

Scenes like this are why I prefer SKIDOO to the Monkees' (and Rafaelson-Jack Nicholson's) cult-fave HEAD, same vintage, same bad Hollywood trip that must have confounded viewers of all ages expecting a continuation of a bubblegum pseudo anarchic TV series on the one hand, or the HONEYMOONERS as directed by the maker of THE CARDINAL, ANATOMY OF A MURDER, and EXODUS, on the other.

HEAD is the hipper of the two, much less embarrassing; plastic pop stars with real songs they're dying to sing but aren't allowed to by the sponsors and agents and promoters; in fellow-anarchy with New Hollywood Leaning Monkees-Meister and network TV wage slave Rafaelson (with fellow sidelined irreverent genius Jack), breaking their shackles, deconstructing Monkeedom and its Discontents, making discordant 1968 Reality jangle the opiate-of-the-people TV version, and letting the sun shine in. The film seeks to redeem the promise of Mickey Dolenz's soulfully sung TV-series ending-credits cry: "We've got to be free!"

It sounds like a radicalization deal worthy of reverence, but it's really just another 1968 Hollywood youth movie, a calculated, if somewhat desperate, bid to keep the Monkees up-to-date for the aging teeny-bopper core audience who were Harris-polled to be recently questioning received Media Reality due to a sudden demographic-infusion of pharmaceuticals and other heavy trips, but nonetheless a continuation of the same affably rebellious franchise (along the usual Richard Lesterish Beatles Movie lines) as it always was, just encompassing new groovy-consciousness concerns like dolphins, the ecology, and Monkees as evolved into Crosby-Stills-Nash style charismatic new-youth leaders.

This is a Coca-Cola 'real thing' pop vision, and a Frankie Avalon would enter into it (perhaps did; was he among the cameo co-stars?) only to reassure the hipsters that he's sending up his image as a plastic demigod. Calculated hipness.

SKIDOO's version is much weirder and more perverse, and totally baffling, and thus much more true...at least to the wandering uber-brain of Otto Preminger who appears to be having a genuine Psychotic Reaction!

Go See SKIDOO

"It's Better Than HEAD!" - James Chaney


;)

Here's a nice additional come-on for SKIDOO by "googlemorf" at imdb:

There's an illuminating chapter about SKIDOO in Foster Hirsch's excellent new Preminger bio, which is subtitled THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING (a better title for a Huston bio, no?). Wanting to make a hipper, more with-it film, Preminger tried adapting a serious John Hersey novel about LSD use, and even tried LSD himself, under the auspices of Dr. Timothy Leary. (He had visions of little people scurrying around.) But no writer could crack it, so one of them, Doran Bill Cannon (who also wrote the more successfully filmed BREWSTER McCLOUD) suggested Preminger film his trunk script SKIDOO. The rest is history.

It's his weirdest film for sure, but Hirsch makes a game case for it as a film about male menopause, filtered through a typically non-judgmental portrait of hippie life in the late 60s. The author thinks Preminger's rock-bottom nadir was his next one, 1970's sentimental Liza Minnelli picture TELL ME THAT YOU LOVE ME, JUNIE MOON, which I caught once on a primetime network telecast. Like SKIDOO and SUCH GOOD FRIENDS, his other Paramount flops (Robert Evans cancelled his long-term commitment to the studio after the last one), it's virtually vanished. But FRIENDS and his 1967 Fox flop HURRY SUNDOWN do very occasionally air on cable.

According to a post on the Home Theater Forum, Hope Preminger, Otto's widow (a NY resident), is blocking NY screenings of SKIDOO, and wishes that the last surviving print that is in circulation would just go away.

Well, I think to be precise, the Film Forum is mounting a Preminger retrospective, but in order to play the films owned by his estate (ADVISE AND CONSENT, SAINT JOAN, THE MOON IS BLUE), which would be administered by his widow, they had to agree not to show SKIDOO. Any other NY theatre that wants to thumb their nose at the family I suppose can do so.

No SKIDOO?! I'm boycotting this one. :angry:

(What an opportunity for a rival programmer to book SKIDOO and tout it as an unsung cult classic with a once-in-a-lifetime cast and the film the Preminger family tried to suppress. "Gleason! Channing! Groucho! Avalon! The Joker! The Riddler! The Penguin! All in one movie!)

Mr. Freeze directs them all!

I'm tempted to call Richard Kelly's SOUTHLAND TALES the iPod generation equivalent to SKIDOO, but that might dissuade the curious from seeing it (maybe it would attract them, too). Its furious ambition is almost completely muffled by the cutesy casting of B-listers, TV stars, and "personalities," and as in Preminger's film the humor falls completely flat as we try to sort out what's going on while Moby puts the soundtrack on shuffle; Justin Timberlake's relentless voiceover narration isn't much of an aid. (It all reminded me of the WILD PALMS TV miniseries.) But somewhere there is a pulse, one that beats for concern about America in the post 9/11 near future, and its use of an airship took me all the way back to DeMille and MADAM SATAN (1930). And we have The Rock married to Mandy Moore, whose harpy Republican mother is Miranda Richardson. That is something.

I must be trippin'

According to the January issue of Satellite Direct Magazine, SKIDOO will air on TCM on January 4th, at 11 PM EST. Check your local listings, and see if this long-suppressed turkey will be allowed to trot.

And, if not - it's still downloadable from Google...

Cool! It's now listed on the schedule as being captioned! :)

You can turn on the captions if you want, but that won't make it any more coherent. :)

Also, on my TiVo it's listed as letterboxed. This could be the TCM screening of the year.

Argh. It was not letterboxed. It looked and sounded better than what I had, though, so I guess I can consider it an upgrade.

Likewise - I just watched the first few minutes of the tape, but it did look better than the crappy DVD-R I'd previously seen. I'd briefly considered running a tape at SP speed for better quality since I thought it was going to be letterboxed, but finally decided to go with EP instead because I also wanted to tape THE LOVE-INS right after SKIDOO, and wasn't going to stay awake long enough to swap tapes.

Apparently the reason TCM opted for a P&S print was financial, although the only thing I can think of as to why an LBX print would cost more is that there wasn't already an existing video transfer of it suitable for airing:

SKIDOO on TCM Underground

So the quest for SKIDOO in its proper aspect ratio continues...

I like what I saw of SKIDOO. Someone already mentioned that it is a mid-life crisis movie and boy is it ever. With Grouch Marx and TV cast of thousands it was clearly aiming for those weaned on a glass tit. It was more fun than ROSEBUD and even THE MOON IS BLUE. Alas I fell asleep midway so I'll have to conclude it some other time.

Just finished watching it as I burned it to a DVD-R. At least the end-credits were letterboxed ... but why that and not the split-screen flashback early in the film (which looks terrible in pan&scan) doesn't make much sense. Ah, well, at least I got my captioning. Now I'll always be able to know the words to Carol's "Skidoo" song at the end.

Okay, maybe that's not a good thing.

This was my first time of being able to watch this from beginning to end, as the only previous chance I had to see it was when I was a kid and then only the last 30 min. off of a snowy showing on (slightly unscrambled) Cinemax. I know some Marx fans considering Groucho's appearance to be an embarrassment, but in a film full of such, Groucho comes off better than most.

Fitting for this film however that they get a comedic actor that was always best when he could interact with others ... and then stick him in a room by himself for most of the movie. He only truly comes to life in the scene with the daughter and that's somewhat deflated by not giving him the reactions shots that would have pushed his lines over from mild chuckling to laugh-out-loud funny.

I have to say that at least everyone here seems to be giving it their all. It may be a mess but at least it's an earnest mess. But it really does look like it would have been more fun being on the set than watching it, doesn't it?

Well, I taped SKIDOO and just watched it. It is just as much an oddity today as it was back in early 1969, when it played on the bottom of a double bill with Jules Dassin’s UP TIGHT (a black-cast remake of THE INFORMER), the film we actually went to see. I’m not sure how I processed SKIDOO as a film buff of 15. The novelty of that great cast clashing with the basic ineptitude of the film. I certainly didn’t remember a lot of it. The best parts on re-viewing were Gleason’s acid trip and the larger, prisonwide acid trip, scenes I had absolutely no memory of. I think the shock value of seeing Gleason doing acid must have been like seeing my father doing acid, which would have been pretty revolting back then. So I probably subconsciously blocked it out after seeing it. (The members of THE WILD BUNCH, also my father’s generation, sitting around drinking whiskey and grousing about the old days and changing times was much closer to my actual experience of my father, to cite a movie seen a few months after SKIDOO.) I called my older brother to ask him about SKIDOO and he didn’t remember it at all, despite declaring at the time that it was the worst film he’d ever seen.

There was also a certain amount of shock value in Gleason's line, "What is he, a faggot?" a line I'd also forgotten, but hearing it again reminded me of my reaction.

The hippie stuff in it was pretty tiresome and I imagine I found it just as tiresome back in ’69. (In real life, hippies were a pretty tiresome lot.) I LOVE YOU ALICE B. TOKLAS, seen a year or so earlier, was much better on that score. I found Carol Channing pretty grotesque back then and I still do. Groucho has a much bigger part than I remember, although no one thought to write him any funny lines. Austin Pendleton stood out from the pack back in '69 and he still does.

The basic plot is actually kind of interesting and could have been a moderately funny movie, had it been directed by someone not as heavy-handed as Otto, someone with a more playful, freer touch, who could have employed some real visual imagination. I’m thinking Frank Tashlin, although I doubt he would have done it if asked (although it couldn’t have been any worse than THE PRIVATE NAVY OF SGT. O’FARRELL, a Bob Hope/Phyllis Diller vehicle Tashlin directed that year, his last Hollywood movie). But there weren’t many comedy directors back then who were doing assignments, just the old hands on their last legs, like George Marshall and Norman Taurog, making Elvis and Jerry Lewis movies. All the other comic talents bursting out then were making their own projects, e.g. Richard Lester, Paul Mazursky, Woody Allen, Mel Brooks, etc. Hmmm...maybe the Bob Rafelson who directed HEAD?

I thought it was amusing that Preminger’s IN HARM’S WAY is the film showing on TV in the opening scene. Burgess Meredith is in that film as well. (Slim Pickens is also in both IN HARM’S WAY and SKIDOO.)

So I satisfied my curiosity about this film. Don’t know that I’d recommend it to anyone. Not even as a time capsule of the era (which it ain’t).

"There was also a certain amount of shock value in Gleason's line, "What is he, a faggot?" a line I'd also forgotten, but hearing it again reminded me of my reaction."

I was taken aback by that as well. It was almost on par with "bitch" from THE WILD BUNCH.

I too thought about Rafelson and HEAD. I know that was due to the opening television clicking that was similar in some ways to that used in HEAD.

BTW, I could help seeing Tony the mobster here and think about "The Sopranos." Ah, if only the ending of that had been like SKIDOO! :lol:

Nilsson's sung ending credits are great and Living in a Garbage Can(very Beckettish), I Will Take You There and skidoo are wonderful songs.

Here's a picture of the album cover to the soundtrack and the second link contains the liner notes by Laugh In's Gary Owens.

http://www.317x.com/albums/s/skidoo/enlargement.html

http://www.317x.com/albums/s/skidoo/card.html