Showing posts with label richard deacon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label richard deacon. Show all posts

Friday, May 27, 2011

No, It's Not!




EVERYTHING'S DUCKY-1961-Two dumb sailors (Mickey Rooney and Buddy Hackett) who are stationed in the desert are assigned the task of freeing the former pet duck of a deceased scientist. It turns out the duck can talk so they try to find a way to make money off it but this only leads to trouble when the duck (named Scuttlebutt) gets drunk! Scuttlebutt might also hold the secret to the dead doctor's missile experiments. The Navy wants to remove the duck's brain and the two spend the rest of the movie protecting him.

It's all pretty silly and a romantic sub-plot really slows things down. Perhaps Columbia Pictures thought they were creating a new Abbott & Costello but we don't even get Brown & Carney. Speaking of A & C, Gordon Jones (Mike The Cop on their TV show) has a supporting role as a superior officer. Roland Winters is their captain and Jackie Cooper has one scene as a psychiatrist. Also with Richard Deacon, singer Joanie Sommers (whose voice seems to be dubbed...??), Elizabeth Macrae and Alvy Moore.

It was the first full length feature for director Don Taylor after a lot of TV shows. Hackett and Rooney were teamed a year later in IT'S A MAD MAD MAD MAD WORLD. Of course years later Hackett portrayed Lou Costello in the terrible TV movie BUD AND LOU...

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Sunday, September 21, 2008

Don't Worry You Won't Have To Watch It Now!

DON’T WORRY WE’LL THINK OF A TITLE-1966-By the title you know where this is going. Three co-stars of TV’s THE DICK VAN DYKE SHOW (in its last year in ‘66) star in this inane black and white comedy that seems more like a TV movie. Director Harmon Jones did do a lot of TV! In fact, it’s the only movie he directed in the ‘60’s.

Morey Amsterdam plays an inept short order cook at a diner owned by Richard Deacon. Rose Marie is a waitress. Another waitress named Magda (January Jones) inherits a bookstore from her uncle. This is the only scene worth watching as the lawyer is played by Moe Howard! After Deacon fires the dumb duo they go to work at the bookstore.

Meanwhile Amsterdam is mistaken for a Russian cosmonaut. Two KGB agents follow him around. From one stupid scene to the other. The script (co-written by Amsterdam) is filled with clichéd jokes and puns. The first part has numerous famous cameos (Steve Allen, Nick Adams, Charley Weaver, Milton Berle, Percy Helton, Irene Ryan, Danny Thomas, Forrest Tucker and another Van Dyke co-star Carl Reiner).

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