"Stop da music, stop da music!" as Jimmy Durante used to shout, for we have some absolute News You Can Use regarding a matter of timely importance. TCM is showing the rare and strange cinematic oddity The Phynx (1970) today at 6:15pm (EST). For some of us, The Phynx is a movie worth owning; for many more, it's a movie worth seeing at least once; and for many more than that...it's probably not going to be your cup of tea.
There are 100 reasons to watch it, and we'll get to them, but first some brief orientation as to the KIND of thing it is. I would place The Phynx in a cinematic subcategory of really weird movies from the late '60s and early '70s, that attempt to satirize the changing American culture (i.e., the way out lifestyles of the counterculture) from the point of view of the SQUARES. It's full of sixties weirdness, but with a tin ear for the actual times. If you were to make a festival out of it, some of the other movies might include Skidoo (1968), Wild in the Streets (1968), Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1972), and several other ones I mentioned in this post. The premise is that American celebrities are being kidnapped by the communist government of Albania (ha!) and the CIA response is to form an undercover rock band that will get itself kidnapped and crack the operation from the inside. Thus, it also has some aspects of the Beatles' movies, and The Monkees, and the spoof comedy subgenre that was so popular at the time, conjuring everything from James Bond and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. to Get Smart, Matt Helm, and Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine. The plot also seems very likely to have been at least a partial inspiration for ZAZ's Top Secret (1984).
If the movie had been built as a vehicle for a real band it might have been stronger, but instead the filmmakers went the route of total parody, its fictional band portrayed by unknowns A. Michael Miller, Ray Chippeway, Dennis Larden, and Lonny Stevens. (Thus the combo's Mad Magazine like name). The tunes were written by the great team of Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller, in their career trough between their long string of mega-hits of the '50s and '60s with such acts as Elvis Presley, the Coasters, and The Monkees...and thier 1973 mega-hit single as producers "Stuck in the Middle with You", played by Stealers Wheel. The movies was written and produced by Bob Booker and others (Booker was best known for producing the comedy record The First Family starring Vaughn Meader in 1962). Director Lee H. Katzin came fresh from the horror classic Whatever Happened to Aunt Alice? (1969) and would later direct such things as the pilot episode of Space: 1999. The boys' handler is playing by Lou Antonio (the film's real lead) who was in such movies as Cool Hand Luke, and perhaps most memorably the famous half-black, half-white episode of Star Trek with his antagonist Frank Gorshin.
Warner Brothers bankrolled this movie, which explains how the film somehow managed to pull together one of the most astoundingly star studded casts of all time, and this is the principal reason most movie buffs watch or even know about this movie today. Most of them are cameos or walk-ons of course, but some of the stars in the film went back to the 1930s. Consequently, this is the final movie for many actors, or at least one of their last performances. The main supporting cast includes Joan Blondell, Martha Raye, Michael Ansara, George Tobias (from Bewitched), Pat McCormick, Warhol Superstar Ultra Violet, Rich Little (as the voice of Richard Nixon on the telephone), and a pre-All in the Family Sally Struthers.
The cameos include Leo Gorcey and Huntz Hall of the Bowery Boys, Georgie Jessel, Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy, Rudy Vallee, Hope and Crosby leading lady Dorothy Lamour as well as Hope's frequent leading lady Marilyn Maxwell, Ruby Keeler, Patsy Kelly, Johnny Weissmuller and Maureen O'Sullivan (Tarzan and Jane), John Hart and Jay Silverheels (Lone Ranger and Tonto), Patty Andrews of the Andrew Sisters, Cass Daley, Pat O'Brien, boxer Joe Louis, Butterfly McQueen, Fritz Feld (and, yes, he does his "popping" bit), gossip columnist Rona Barrett, choreographer Busby Berkley, the actual Colonel Sanders, the actual Ed Sullivan, early career Richard Pryor, Clint Walker of Cheyenne, bandleader Guy Lombardo, singer Trini Lopez, and from the (then) contemporary music business, Dick Clark and James Brown.
Much like the producers of this movie, you may be asking yourself "How could it fail?" Well, it was never really given a chance. The Phynx didn't quite make the "quality control" cut, and was scarcely released in its day, although it was later put out on home video and has gotten some television airings. Obviously the cast is a selling point, and most of them seem to be gamely having a good time in the movie. It's not incompetently directed. But...the writing is painfully bad. And I'm sure this is why no one had the confidence to get this movie into theatres. It's just way behind the curve. At this stage, the "four mod mop-tops" thing was no longer where it was at with young people. The youth audience had split up into factions, whose avatars ranging wildly between different constituencies...Sly and the Family Stone vs. Led Zeppelin vs. The Banana Splits, something like that. So this movie would be of no interest to kids. And grown-ups would have even less use for it, even if it did contain some of their favorite stars (for a second or two). When I think of a movie for old people from that era, I always think of Ice Station Zebra (1968).
So the real audience for The Phynx is...US! That's right -- US! It is your patriotic duty to watch this movie. Like many such tasks for the nation, it may be unsavory at times. It may cause pain and stress, and perhaps even lasting harm. But it MUST be done. For the good of the nation. And the strongest among you? May wish to record it so you can later watch it on a double bill with Won Ton Ton, the Dog Who Saved Hollywood (1976).
For more on show biz history, please see No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, and for more on classic comedy read Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube.
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