Mule Feathers (1977)

A ghastly attempt at post-Blazing Saddles frontier hilarity, Mule Feathers compounds incoherence with insanity. The incoherence stems from the main storyline, which concerns a Wild West con man (Rory Calhoun) drifting into a gold-crazed town while dressed as a preacher. One suspects the picture was filmed hastily and slapped together carelessly, because the narrative is virtually incomprehensible, the protagonist disappears for long stretches of screen time, transitions are almost nonexistent, and the weak visuals are juiced with stupid audio flourishes (cartoony FX, overwrought music, sloppy dubbing, etc.). The filmmakers can’t decide whether they’re making a squeaky-clean family farce or a raunchy oater for the Mel Brooks crowd (note the jokes about a whore who “can’t even give it away”). Either way, everything looks cheap, from the drab sets to the terrible fake beards to the ugly cinematography. And now we reach the insane aspect of Mule Feathers. The picture opens with an animated vignette of a jackass, voiced by Don Knotts, roaming through the desert. Afterward, the film segues to a live-action scene in which Knotts’ voice emanates from the protagonist’s donkey companion. The animal’s lips don’t move, and nobody else can hear the creature talk, so is Calhoun’s character deranged? Even more disturbing questions are raised when Knotts says things like, “Oh, the tenderness that a man and his mule can feel for each other.” And when Calhoun’s character meets a woman, the donkey whines, “She can never be what I’ve been to you!” Yikes. Fair warning to curious Knotts fans: He never appears on camera, and his voice is featured in perhaps 20 of the movie’s 79 atrocious minutes.

Mule Feathers: SQUARE

1980 Week: The Private Eyes

For all their achievements in other contexts, Tim Conway and Don Knotts delivered consistently disappointing results in the films they made together, combining dimwitted physical comedy, insipid verbal gags, and truly stupid characterizations into tiresome cinematic experiences. Sure, the Apple Dumpling Gang flicks have a certain goofball charm, but Conway and Knotts are confined to supporting roles. The duo’s final major collaboration, The Private Eyes, reveals why putting Conway and Knotts front and center was unwise. Both actors tend toward bug-eyed reaction shots, overly long pauses (designed, one fears, for anticipated waves of laughter), and voluminous amounts of bumbling. If watching desperate comics pretend to be idiots is your idea of a good time, The Private Eyes might amuse you. If not, it’s more likely to sap your will to live. Something of a riff on Sherlock Holmes, the picture is set in England, with Conway and Knotts playing American investigators who work for Scotland Yard. When a woman is killed at a private estate, the investigators snoop around the mansion, encountering cobwebs and secret passageways and the like, while trying to determine which of the victims' avaricious enemies was responsible for the murder. A typically moronic running joke involves the investigators using carrier pigeons to send messages, throwing the pigeons through windows amid much crashing of glass. There's also juvenile gross-out dialogue, on the order of, “That buzzard pus is backing up on me!” and “You ever have pudding with cat hair in it?” Some young viewers bonded with this movie at the right age, so it’s not as if The Private Eyes lacks advocates. Moreover, the old-fashioned production values recall Universal’s horror movies of the ’30s and ’40s, which is moderately appealing. But if the best one can say about a comedy is that it has a enjoyably musty look, that tells you what you need to know.

The Private Eyes: LAME

Gus (1976)

Live-action Disney movies from the ’70s often courted abject stupidity but remained watchable thanks to charming acting and energetic physical comedy. Alas, some of the studio’s pictures from this era were so moronic that even the valiant efforts of skilled comic performers were insufficient to maintain interest. For example, Gus is about a Yugoslavian mule named Gus that becomes an NFL field-goal kicker. The folks at Disney loved telling stories about animals becoming involved in human endeavors, with the innate cuteness of, say, chimpanzees or dogs providing much of the appeal. Yet calling a mule “cute” is a stretch—even when the filmmakers dress the titular animal in a custom-built football helmet and jersey. Plus, the mildly amusing image of Gus kicking field goals loses its novelty quickly. The movie’s insipid plot revolves around a dismal NFL team that enlists the mule out of desperation, thereby attracting the attention of nefarious types who don’t want the scheme to succeed. Struggling to make all of this bearable is a solid cast of Disney regulars and familiar actors from the worlds of film and television. Gary Grimes, the earnest young star of ’70s films including Summer of ’42 (1971), concluded his brief feature career by starring as Andy Petrovic, Gus’ handler. Grimes shares most of his scenes with Ed Asner, who plays a team owner; Don Knotts, who plays a coach; and real-life former NFL player Dick Butkus, who plays Gus’ gridiron rival. (Forgettable starlet Louise Williams portrays Andy’s love interest.) Other pros appearing in Gus include Bob Crane, Harold Gould, and Dick Van Patten, with Happy Days guy Tom Bosley and slapstick favorite Tim Conway forming a comic team as crooks hired to menace the mule. Suffice to say that the “highlight” of the movie is the interminable climax during which Bosley and Conway chase Gus through a grocery store, causing lots of property damage in the process. Like many of Disney’s lesser offerings, Gus is harmless and might amuse very small children, but it’s a grim 95 minutes for grown-up viewers.

Gus: LAME

How To Frame a Figg (1971)

From the ’50s to the ’70s, the Walt Disney Company perfected such a surefire formula for live-action family comedies that it was inevitable other studios would try to copy Disney’s style. Hence pictures like How to Frame a Figg, a Don Knotts vehicle featuring broad slapstick, campy acting, spoon-fed storytelling, and the kind of super-obvious music cues one usually encounters in cartoons. Unfortunately, Universal Studios—the entity responsible for this dud—failed to include a kid-friendly story. Rather, How to Frame a Figg is like a watered-down version of a Preston Sturges farce, with a small-town stooge getting turned into a patsy by corrupt local officials until he turns the tables on them. To get a sense of how poorly the storyline of How to Frame a Figg meshes with the juvenile presentation, consider the supporting character of Glorianna Hastings (played by Yvonne Craig, better known as “Batgirl” from the ’60s TV series Batman). She’s a seductress hired to dupe hapless hero Hollis Alexander Figg (Knotts). How does a harlot with a closet full of fur coats she’s gotten from “doting uncles” belong in a kiddie flick? Disney’s live-action pictures of the same era featured such kid-friendly contrivances as teenagers with superpowers. Simply presenting any old narrative information in a childlike manner isn’t nearly enough to mimic Disney’s magic. Furthermore, the jokes in How to Frame a Figg are so old-fashioned that the movie feels like it was made in the ’50s, not the ’70s. The movie’s main location, City Hall, has an “amusingly” malfunctioning elevator that sputters during every ride; the main bad guy is a geezer who keeps falling asleep during meetings; and so on. How to Frame a Figg is so enervated that at least three big jokes involve people getting things spilled on them in the local diner, and costar Frank Welker—who later became a prolific voice actor in cartoons—plays the hero’s idiot sidekick with a kind of gee-whiz credulity that makes him seem lobotomized. Adding the final insult, Knotts performs a long scene in drag—although, by that point, the dark veil he wears is a relief because it obscures the ridiculous open-mouthed expression he employs about a zillion times in How to Frame a Figg.

How To Frame a Figg: LAME

Hot Lead & Cold Feet (1978)

          Generic family entertainment from Walt Disney Productions at the nadir of the company’s live-action cycle, Hot Lead & Cold Feet is a farcical Western featuring the unremarkable British comedian/singer Jim Dale in three roles. And while Disney’s concerted effort to transform Dale into a U.S. star was admirable (he was featured in three of the company’s movies from 1977 to 1979), Dale lacks the easy charisma of a genuine box-office attraction, so a triple serving of Dale in Hot Lead & Cold Feet represents too much of a not-so-good thing. In fact, even with his multiple roles, Dale is less interesting than veteran actors Jack Elam, Don Knotts, and Darren McGavin, who play silly supporting characters. The story begins with crusty old varmint Jasper Bloodshy (Dale) announcing that he’s leaving his entire estate—which includes the crime-riddled frontier town that bears his name—to his twin sons. After a fashion, that is. One of the sons is Billy (Dale), a rootin’-tootin’ outlaw who menaces the good (and not-so-good) townsfolk of Bloodshy. The other son is Eli (Dale), a preacher-in-training raised by his mother in England. Billy’s the “hot lead” of the title, and Eli’s the “cold feet.”

          As a means of bringing his sons together, Jasper stipulates that his boys must race each other through the wilderness surrounding the town of Bloodshy, with the winner claiming the family wealth. Billy tries to rig the contest, abetted by the town’s corrupt mayor (McGavin), while Eli simply wants to provide for the pair of orphaned children who are in his care. (Because it wouldn’t be a Disney flick without orphans.) Knotts plays the town’s bumbling sheriff, the so-called “Denver Kid,” and Elam plays his arch-enemy, a crook named “Rattlesnake.” The running gag of these two men trying to stage a gun duel despite constant interruptions is about as close to real humor as this movie gets. Most of the running time comprises goofy Disney slapstick and overly exuberant racing scenes, with a spoonful of saccharine thanks to Eli’s relationships with the kids and with a pretty schoolteacher (Karen Valentine). There’s not a hint of originality or wit anywhere in Hot Lead & Cold Feet, but it’s a harmless enough distraction, with okay production values and energetic acting. Even Dale, who isn’t up to the task of carrying a picture, deserves credit for his hard work—he tries every trick imaginable to entertain viewers, so it’s a shame he can’t conjure screen presence by force of will.

Hot Lead & Cold Feet: FUNKY

The Prize Fighter (1979)

After achieving considerable fame separately, funnymen Tim Conway and Don Knotts made several films together, mostly in the ’70s, that became popular among children but didn’t curry much favor from grown-ups. For instance, The Prize Fighter—a PG-rated flick, as opposed to the duo’s usual G-rated fare—gets mired in so many numbingly predictable plot twists that it’s too tedious for very young kids to enjoy, even as the picture’s reliance on lame physical-comedy shtick ensures the film is too stupid for sensible adults to tolerate. Set in the Depression, The Prize Fighter follows dim-witted losers Bags (Conway), a former boxer, and Shake (Knotts), a former boxing manager. Through incredibly convoluted circumstances, these two get involved with a brutal mobster named Mike (Robin Clarke). It seems Mike wants to use Bags and Shake to swindle Pop Morgan (David Wayne), the owner of a boxing gym that Mike wants to raze for development purposes. Mike arranges for Bags to re-enter the boxing ring as a contender for the world championship, and Mike fixes all of Bags’ fights except the last one—while also tricking Pop Morgan into betting his gym on Bags’ victory. The storyline in The Prize Fighter never quite gels, since it’s predicated on every character except the villain being a complete idiot, and it’s hard to care much what happens to Bags, who is portrayed as a brainless man-child, or Shake, who is portrayed as a whiny sycophant happy to let Bags do all the dirty work. And when trite devices like training montages and a weepie storyline about an orphaned kid are thrown into the mix, The Prize Fighter becomes a chore to watch, no matter how innocent its intentions. Conway must shoulder much of the blame for this lifeless movie, since he co-wrote the script in addition to starring, and TV-hack director Michael Preece does Conway no favors with colorless direction that’s way too obviously patterned after the style George Roy Hill used for another comedy set in the Depression, The Sting (1973).

The Prize Fighter: LAME

No Deposit, No Return (1976)

Although it’s basically harmless, No Deposit, No Return is hard to praise for many reasons. Firstly, the movie represents the Walt Disney Productions style of inoffensive storytelling run amok—the movie contorts itself to ensure that every character is likeable except for one minor villain, thus eradicating narrative conflict. Worse, these plot contrivances cause the movie to sprawl over 112 meandering minutes, and the film’s premise is far too thin to support the running time. So, even though the picture’s performances are generally fine and the production values are respectable, No Deposit, No Return is tiresome. When the movie begins, spunky young siblings Tracy (Kim Richards) and Jay (Brad Savage) learn their mother, a magazine editor, won’t be joining them as expected for vacation during the kids’ break from boarding school. Instead, the children are being sent to stay with their super-rich grandfather, J.W. Osborne (David Niven), who detests their company. Since the feeling is mutual, the kids run away, ending up in a cab with inept robbers Bert (Don Knotts) and Duke (Darren McGavin). The enterprising urchins blackmail the crooks into “kidnapping” them—in exchange for part of the ransom the kids plan to demand from J.W., the crooks agree to hide the kids in their lair for a period of time. Meanwhile, J.W. is aware of everything that’s happening, so he lets the kids stay “kidnapped” rather than intervening. Slapstick ensues, with a side of gooey sentiment. When listing this movie’s plot problems, it’s hard to know where to begin. Bert and Duke are master criminals whom the police desperately want to catch, and yet they’re also boobs who never actually steal anything? The kids found the only two criminals in the world who like babysitting? J.W. would rather let his grandchildren stay with strangers than tolerate their company? You get the idea. Knotts, McGavin, and Niven do their best, given the shoddy material, while Richards and Savage are palatable as Disney kids go, but the movie is so absurdly contrived that it ends up feeling more like a Disney knockoff than actual Mouse House product.

No Deposit, No Return: LAME

Herbie Rides Again (1974) & Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo (1977)

          It doesn’t speak well of American culture that the biggest domestic box-office hit of 1969 wasn’t Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid or Midnight Cowboy or Romeo and Juliet. No, the top grosser was Disney’s The Love Bug, a ridiculous special-effects comedy about an anthropomorphized Volkswagen Beetle that plays matchmaker for two unsuspecting humans. Starring the amiable Dean Jones and the grating Buddy Hackett, The Love Bug makes almost every other live-action Disney flick seem sophisticated by comparison. Given this success, it’s odd the Love Bug back didn’t hit the road again until 1974, when Herbie Rides Again was released.

          The second time around, the hero is not Jones’ racecar-driver character, but instead Willoughby Whitfield (Ken Berry), the nebbishy nephew of cutthroat real-estate developer Alonzo Hawk (Keenan Wynn). Hawk wants to demolish an old firehouse occupied by widow Mrs. Steinmetz (Helen Hayes), so he sends Willoughby to sweet-talk the old lady. This puts Willoughby at odds with the widow’s spunky granddaughter, Nicole (Stefanie Powers), and the widow’s even spunkier VW, Herbie. (Mrs. Steinmetz is the mother of Hackett’s character from the original movie.) Herbie Rides Again is laborious and tiresome, with idiotic scenes like Herbie driving up the rails of the Golden Gate Bridge while an oblivious Mrs. Steinmetz sits behind the wheel, focused on her grocery list. The only memorable sequence is Hawk’s trippy nightmare vision of armies of Herbies attacking him, some flashing gaping “mouths” lined with sharp teeth, others dressed like Indians and tossing Tomahawks that scalp poor Alonzo. Berry, Hayes, and Powers are likeable, and Wynn is appropriately cartoonish, but the stupidity factor is almost unbearable.

          Things don’t get much better in Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo, for which Jones resumes leading-man duties. The filmmakers overlook the fact that Jones got married at the end of the first picture, since he’s inexplicably single, and they never explain why he’s got a new best friend/mechanic, Wheely Applegate (Don Knotts). Nonetheless, he heads to Europe for a racetrack comeback in the cute little VW with the “53” on the side. The plot thickens when jewel thieves hide a stolen diamond inside Herbie’s gas tank and when Herbie falls in love with a sexy Italian sportscar. Veteran British thesps Bernard Fox and Roy Kinnear try valiantly to make their slapstick scenes as the bumbling crooks work, but the lifeless script renders their efforts futile. Worse, the long scenes of Herbie courting the sportscar seem creepy after a while, since the vehicles do everything short of consummating their attraction. The moronic plot also calls far too much attention to the imponderables of just how self-aware Herbie really is; since the car drives itself for most of the movie, what purpose, exactly, does Jones’ character serve during the big race?

          Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo did well enough to justify a final sequel in the franchise’s original run, 1980’s Herbie Goes Bananas (without Jones), plus a short-lived TV series in 1982 (with Jones). The spirited VW returned yet again in 2005, when Lindsay Lohan starred in Herbie: Fully Loaded.

Herbie Rides Again: LAME

Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo: LAME

The Apple Dumpling Gang (1975) & The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again (1979)

          Standard Disney live-action fare about cute youngsters getting into mischief, The Apple Dumpling Gang features skillful support from grown-up players Bill Bixby, Tim Conway, Don Knotts, Harry Morgan, and Slim Pickens. The Old West story concerns three young orphans whose varmint uncle dumps them into the care of an irresponsible gambler (Bill Bixby), who in turn tries to dump the kids onto someone else until the moppets discover gold in a mine belonging to their family. When assorted disreputable types try to rip off the gold, seeing the children endangered causes Bixby to grow a conscience. Television icons Conway and Knotts are the main attraction, working as a comedy duo for the first time, and they’re comfortably amusing even though their slapstick antics as a pair of inept outlaws are contrived and silly (typical bit: trying to steal a ladder from a firehouse and slamming the ladder into everything in sight). Earnest, old-fashioned, and beyond predictable, The Apple Dumpling Gang moves along at a pleasant clip, despite cloying music and rickety process shots, so the movie is innocuous entertainment for very young viewers; grown-ups should be able to swallow everything except perhaps the requisite warm fuzzies at the end and the cutesy theme song.
          Bixby and the kids were jettisoned for the sequel, The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again, in which Conway and Knotts try to go straight but end up running afoul of the army, a crazed sheriff, and a criminal gang, causing destructive mayhem along the way. The sequel’s storyline is a patchwork of Western clichés—the climax is a train robbery—so neither Conway’s deadpan delivery nor Knotts’ bug-eyed crankiness is enough to liven up the proceedings. And the less said about the scene they play in drag, the better. Harry Morgan returns in a different role than he played in the first movie, while Tim Matheson, Jack Elam, and Kenneth Mars add color to the cast. The overstuffed plot and the depiction of the “heroes” as complete morons makes the sequel far less palatable than its predecessor, but as a small mercy for those who take the plunge, The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again runs its forgettable course in a mere 88 minutes.

The Apple Dumpling Gang: FUNKY

The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again: LAME