1967 horror comedy country western musical
Rating: 3/20
Plot: The titular hillbillys [sic] have car problems on the way to something called a jamboree and have to stay the night in the titular haunted house. Songs are performed. Spies and a gorilla harsh their mellow.
So in the first shot, they're traveling in Boss Hogg's car with slightly more ornamentation, and they're singing a song about being "on [our] way to Nashville, Tennessee." I should have taken it as a warning, ejected the dvd, and hurled it at a chicken. If you like bland old-timey country and western music, you're in for a treat. There's really about 30 minutes of movie here, and the rest of it consists of musical performances. In fact, the final 20 minutes of the movie is the jamboree, so it's just a series of songs that have nothing to do with the haunted house. You get to hear Ferlin Husky, the guy who plays Woody, sing "Livin' in a Trance," a song which sounds like it was recorded in a cave or something but is at least more awkward than it is terrible. Some random people then show up to tell the hillbillys [sic] that they never come near the house even though they are standing inside the house while saying that, and they perform a couple impromptu songs because the movie's plot wasn't quite ready to get started. They do "The Cat Came Back" which features two gitfiddles, a couple guys just standing around, invisible drums, and a guy hitting a small shovel with a brush before complying with the woman's request for a love song, a song that has her twitching in a way that made me wonder if she was reaching orgasm. That gal--Boots, played by a very fetching Joi Lansing--gets her own random song later during a fantasy dream sequence. "Gowns, Gowns, Beautiful Gowns" might be the most pointless things I've ever seen. Later, a character watches television, and Merle Haggard gets a song. There are probably over 15 songs in this motherfucker! And if you don't like country and western music or don't enjoy laughing at terrible film-making, there's nothing for you to see here. I've seen this on a couple "Worst Movie Ever" lists, and it probably deserves to be in consideration. It's very poorly written. I believe this chunk of dialogue is supposed to be humorous:
Woody: Where are we?
Gas station guy: Sleepy Junction.
Woody: Sleepy Junction.
Boots: Where are we?
Woody: Sleepy Junction.
Boots: Oh.
Jeepers: Hey, Woody, we're in Sleepy Junction.
Jeepers is an actual name of a hillbilly, and he's played by Don Bowman who was the host of some country music countdown show. His only other acting credit is the movie this is apparently a sequel for--The Las Vegas Hillbillys. He plays "Don Bowman" in that though, and not Jeepers. As Jeepers, he gives a performance that manages to still seem like one of the worst performances ever even though the movie is a complete disaster anyway. That first shot with the hillbillys [sic] singing in the car? He isn't singing, merely sitting in the back in what seems to be an illegal way. And he can't even get "just sitting there" right! He looks bored. That's actually the best he gets in this movie, too. Most of the time, he looks like he's got ADD or is some kind of tweaker. He spends most of the movie twitching and squinting, but he does get a moment to shine when he starts yelping about seeing a "weirdwolf" in the closet. Oh, and he does get his own song during the jamboree--"Wrong House Last Night" and it is a thing of beauty, one of those things that has to be heard to be believed. Bowman can't even sit still during a fifteen or so minute scene where he just needs to watch television. That, by the way, is one of those "What the hell?" moments as the country music he's watching is interrupted by the faces of Carradine, Chaney Jr., Rathbone, and Ho--the four bad guys. Why their faces start appearing on the television screen to stare at Jeepers is beyond me. Speaking of those guys. You would probably never expect Lon Chaney Jr. to be any good, and he isn't. Neither is Basil Rathbone, though he's the best of the bunch. John Carradine might be the worst of them all, but somebody named Linda Ho isn't far behind. Her acting consists of reading lines phonetically. I did like this conversation:
Woody: We're entertainers.
Ho: What kind of entertaining do you do?
Woody: I sing and pick a guitar.
Ho: How nice. (With this absolutely disgusted look on her face that I'm not sure was supposed to be there.)
The best performance is by George Barrows as Aniatole the monkey. John Carradine's character really hated that gorilla. It was never actually explained why these spies traveled with a gorilla, but I've never been a spy and don't know much about how these people operate. I guess having a gorilla around would make perfect sense. Anyway, George Barrows is the guy who plays one of my favorite movie monsters of all time--Ro-Man in The Robot Monster. Ro-Man is a gorilla suit from the next down and a deep sea diver's helmet for a head. Barrows has one of those acting careers I love looking at. He acted in 108 titles, and he played 16 gorillas. At least! Some of his roles were just names, and those might be gorillas, too. He also played Monstro in a movie and Slouchy McGoo in the Adventures of Superman television series. And he played "henchman" a lot. Barrows and his suit (I'm going to go ahead and assume he owned his own gorilla suit) are actually the best special effect in the movie. Some wobbling skeletons, bats on strings, and the "weirdwolf" mask are nothing short of embarrassing. There are also some lightning effects in a night sky when the action is clearly taking place in daylight and a couple visible boom mics, but if you have problems with that, you're nitpicking. I almost feel bad criticizing something that I'm sure was made by very nice people for very nice families to sit around and enjoy, but it's one of those works of art where everything just came together so imperfectly to make something so magical and deserves to be seen by connoisseurs of crappy movies, even those who don't like gorillas or country and western music.
I stumbled on this movie on a used VHS tape about 20 years ago, and found it to be a hoot -- in the "so bad it's funny" category. Of course Basil Rathbone, Lon Chaney, and John Carradine are played up in the box art and in the credits, but it's kinda sad to see these once great actors reduced caricatures of themselves in such a cheap, corny movie. The head of the spy ring, Linda Ho, is so wooden and stilted, I'd swear she was reading her lines off cue cards! A check of her credits surprisingly showed about 30, including most of the popular TV shows of the early/mid-1960s! "Who would have thunk it?". Also can't believe they managed to rope in some truly big names in country music, such as Merle Haggard, Sonny James, and Molly Bee.
ReplyDeleteOur "star trio" is played by country singer Ferlin Husky as Woody, Joi Lansing as Boots Malone, and Don Bowman as the perpetually scared, dumb-dumb Jeepers (Woody's manager). BTW, I found this was actually a sequel to "Las Vegas Hillbillies" (aka "Battle of the Boobs" cause it starred both Jayne Mansfield AND Mamie Van Doren!). Ferlin Husky was the "star" of that one, was well, with Don Bowman in "support". Joi Lansing took over the "Boots Malone" role from Mamie. Okay, maybe she doesn't have QUITE the "large assets" of Mamie Van Doren, but she's definitely got a better singing voice!
Not sure why Jeepers (Bowman) kept call it a "weirdwolf" either, when it was just a dummy with a werewolf mask in the closet... govt agent Richard Webb even tries it on just to try to put poor Jeepers' nerves to rest! Webb is best remembered as Capt. Kirk's nemesis, the crazy Lt. Ben Finney, in the "Courtmartial" episode of "Star Trek".
Sonny James and His Gentlemen are the "hillbillies" who live over the hill and just drop in to sing a couple of numbers to Woody, Boots and Jeepers. They're scared out of the house when the portrait of the previous owner, a Confederate general Beauregard, turns into a dancing skeleton! The general later appears as an actual ghost telling everyone to leave, which leads Basil Rathbone to exclaim: "You're not one of ours!"
Another "classic" scene is when our heroic trio are exploring the house, and come upon a room with various skeletons sitting around, and a huge phony bat flying thru the air! Later Woody and Jeepers are followed thru a cemetery by a dangling sheet that's supposed to be a ghost. Later, other sheet-ghosts fly around the hallway, then the living room. Oh, and while descending the stairs, a hairy arm comes out at Jeepers from behind a picture on the wall! Later you can see Jeepers giving that same picture a "wide berth"!
All the standard excuses are given for the various strange noises they hear in the haunted mansion... the wind, shutters banging, tree limbs rubbing up against the house, etc. But the funniest is when our trio is in a hallway, and hears the rattling of chains. Boots tries to say it's just "an owl", to which Jeepers exclaims, "An owl! What, bringing back a chain to his nest!?!" LOL
Nope, don't expect much great acting in this one, even from the the three masters of horror. But if you like cheezy haunted house pics, and old-time country & western music -- this pic is for you!