Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Movies: Casino Royale (1967) and Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine

One was way better than I had even hoped and the other was way worse than I could have even imagined, but all in all, it was a good night for fit birds (or hott chix in the USA), the parade led, of course, by the stunning (despite her veritably painted-on cheekbones) Ursula Andress (whose transparent dresses sans underthings never fail to please a Film Forum audience of lonely popcorn-munching men). The greatness of the "original" Casino Royale (very much removed from Fleming's novel and last year's Daniel Craig version of the film) fills me with even more venom against the 2006 version. Why (and this applies to Woody Allen's Matchpoint, too--not even he, "star" villain (ha!) of CR67, can do no wrong) the industry remakes great movies into ugly stepchildren is beyond me.

Moving on. Peter Sellers is more brilliant than ever before. Or after. Even more brilliant than in What's New Pussycat?, his other (soak your seat silly) duet with Woody, believe it or not. His Indian accent (East, not American, although there are some of those in the movie, too) is so good that he repeats it (he knows it's so good). To be truthful, the beginning of the film, in which leaders of the world's spy industry ask the "original" James Bond to come out of retirement, is a bit protracted (probably because David Niven has absolutely no charisma), as are other scenes that he dominates (although I love the army of hot French spy girls posing as a clan of Scottish sisters who are set the task to seduce Niven's Bond). The ultimate reason CR67 is so good is that it knows precisely what the best thing is about Bond flicks—the Bond girl—and so it gives us hundreds of them, instead of Fleming's stingy one or two or three. Also, we can all thank screenwriter Wolf Mankowitz for taking that dreadfully tedious poker game and shortening it to three or four hands of Baccarat (a game that appears to take even less time per hand than Blackjack). Woot.

Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine is, indeed, as dreadful a film as it sounds. Every character is hackneyed, from Frankie Avalon as the bright-eyed, bushy-tailed naivete, to the evil doctor who is building sexy automatic females (think FemBot) in gold-lame bikinis to seduce and lure into asset-usurping marriages the top executives of the world, to the doctor's screwball sidekick who suffers from kicked-puppy syndrome and never does anything right. Despite all this, there is a fantastic scene in which about ten seconds of music play in the laboratory and all the gold bikini girls come out and dance in that ever-so-particular 1960s way. It's also always fascinating to note the difference between 1960s hot bodies and 2000s hot bodies. Not a one of these girls could even get cast on Girls Gone Wild. Of course, the high-hipped, saggy bikini bottoms don't help.

You probably can't rent Dr. G and the BM, even on NetFlix, but that's okay because it's ultimately pretty cheesy at best (annoying at worse), but you definitely can get CR67, and if you don't, you're just a stick in the mud. Kind of like my friends who hate my blog. Witness Speaker A, who says "I'm not reading your blog anymore," and Speaker B, who points out, "Hell has frozen over; [Speaker A] and I agree!" although admitting that, since her initial complaints, things seem to have improved. You see? Squeaky wheels get entries about nose-picking.

No comments: