weezeralfalfa
Kim Novak plays the most popular commercial floozy in the small town of Climax, NV. She lives in a small trailer in back of the Bellybutton roadhouse, where she usually hangs out otherwise. She goes by the concocted name of Polly the Pistol. In her trailer, she keeps a talkative parrot who's hooked on shoot 'em up TV westerns, which Polly provides.. It continuously screeches "Bang, Bang" in imitation of the TV sound. Thus, the parrot could also reasonably be named Polly the Pistol, and I suspect Polly dubbed herself likewise. The "Bang, Bang", every time we get a peak in the trailer, serves as one of several running gags. Another involves Ray Walston, as Orville: the town piano teacher, and unknown composer of tunes. He's married to the prettiest girl in town(Felicia Farr, as Zelda), and is constantly obsessed by the suspicion that various men are having or trying to have an affair with her. Thus, because Zelda is going to the dentist every 3 months, he suspects the dentist. Because she leaves notes for the milkman, he's another suspect whom Orville berates. He even accuses his14y.o. piano student of trying to muscle in. Of course, when Zelda's favorite singer: womanizing Dino(Dean Martin), unexpectedly shows up in town, with a car problem engineered by Orville's songwriting buddy Barney, Orville's paranoia goes through the roof. On the other hand, they want Dino to stay in town long enough to hear several of their songs, which they hope he will promote. But how to entice him to stay at Orville's to hear the songs, yet keep him from bedding Zelda, in Orville's mind? Barney gets the brilliant idea of enticing Polly to stay overnight at Orville's, masquerading as Zelda, while they somehow get rid of Zelda, probably by making her upset, so she runs off to her parents for the night....Well, things don't quite work out as planned. I will let you see how things get snarled up, and Orville's worst nightmare happens. (You can see the movie at YouTube). At least, as a result of all the maneuvering, some of the pair's songs get published, Dino sings them on TV, and they make enough money to buy Polly a car, so she can take her trailer somewhere else, and start her life over......The whole screenplay comes across like a beefed up episode of "I Love Lucy", with it's contrived craziness......Dean was fine as an exaggerated version of his typical stage persona. At first, Polly was too defensive against Dino's advances. Polly often walked and danced with a Marilyn Monroe wiggle......I enjoyed Cliff Osmond's Barney, as Orville's goofy, but imaginative, friend, and sometimes go between. Ray Walston , as Orville, was fine, though perhaps he lacked the charisma factor that Jack Lemmon would have brought to the role.(Felicia was then married to Jack). Felicia succeeded in being desirable without being a siren. She had lost her unusual innocent-looking face and shy personality she exhibited 8 years earlier in 2 westerns("Jubal", and "The Last Wagon"),hence I didn't recognize her. Her acting career was mostly spent on TV rather than in Hollywood, where she was included in the occasional film. See this fun B&W film at YouTube.
beauzee
let me say at the outset: Dean (DINO) Martin fans will love it...DEan gets off a surprisingly nuanced and often very funny self-parody! he has a great line when an unsuccessful songwriting team fling their best tune at him > he has been forced by a detour into a small town, where he has been manipulated to stay the night: "just what I need...another Italian love song!".problem is that his self parody has a seriously "dark" side > he is not the wine-women-song man but a leering letch, anxious to jump on Ray Walston's wife (actually KIm Novak, the small town hottest barmaid, playing proxy - SEE THE MOVIE). what was needed was a lot of great one liners and ad-libs (it's been said Wilder was against that).I did not particularly enjoy Walston's performance...and the black and white lighting gives him a crazed, sinister look, at times. Felicia Farr does very well but the constraints of the storyline call for her to physically resemble her overnite replacement...it gets just a little weird.and so...here it comes...shoulda been Curtis as the Top 40 phenom, Lemmon as the totally paranoid, jealous hubby and Monroe as the outrageously sexy lust interest. okay, that means this film should have been made in 1960-61.some viewers may find some of the sexual stuff very disturbing..young viewers today, used to the oversexed sitcom, may find it amusing. at the time, it was considered a rather immoral exercise.
bobbysoxer97
From the time to film opens to the end credits; it oozes with the Wilder touch. The plot of this '60's picture was very edgy for it's time...and it turned out to be rather edgy for me too. It has a deeply cynical aspect to it; making it a little hard for me to take in. Dean Martin's performance was very Rat Pack-y and plays up the swinger image to quite an extreme; "...there couldn't be enough of you...baby." Novak, who was planning on a retirement, took a part in this picture for the sole purpose of being able to work with Wilder; I'm glad she did. Her character made me want to crawl up in a ball and cry my eyes out, all the while remaining delightfully funny. In a nutshell? It's really a rather vulgar film. It has moments of brilliance...yet, doesn't even start to compare with Wilder's own "The Apartment." Yes, it deals with basically the same subject matter, but the writing was more brilliant and much more subtle. I recommend only if you are a Wilder fanatic (like myself) or a Novak connoisseur. I enjoyed the film overall; I just felt that the writing was lacking.
kenjha
A famous singer is stranded in a small town and is hosted by an aspiring but jealous composer with a hot wife. Martin plays a crooner known as Dino. OK, so there's not a lot of acting going on here, but who better to play an alcoholic crooner named Dino that Martin? Walston is well cast as the schmuck who wants Dino to take his songs but not his wife (the lovely Farr). Osmond is funny as Walston's goofy sidekick. Novak, however, is all wrong as a waitress who Walson hires to pretend to be his wife. This was a part written for Marilyn Monroe, and Novak seems to be doing a very poor impression of her. The script is surprisingly risqué for its time. It's amusing but not one of Wilder's better efforts.
