Saturday, April 17, 2010

The Maltese Bippy



We all know what happens when the hot TV stars dujour rush to make a film during hiatus set in a haunted house...well, it aint so good. (Unless it's THE GHOST & MR. CHICKEN starring Don Knotts).

The Maltese Bippy (1969) starred Laugh-In's hosts Dan Rowan and Dick Martin.
Here is the trailer.

The NY TIMES review said:

Television, the great leveler, has produced the ultimate comedy team, a pair of personalities of similar sex, height, weight and wit, which, I suppose, is the direction in which we've been heading ever since Martin and Lewis convinced us that comedy teams need not be physically grotesque—maybe one man should be slightly Italian and one man slightly Jewish, but not grotesque.

On the other hand, "The Maltese Bippy," is a movie that cheapens everything it touches, including a few visual nonsequiturs from "Laugh-In," actors (Fritz Weaver, Dana Elcar, Mildred Natwick, and even Carol Lynley and Julie Newmar) and the comedy-mystery genre that once had a kind of slapdash charm in "The Cat and the Canary."

For the record, the movie was directed by Norman Panama ("Road to Utopia") and concerns two aging roués who make poor exploitation films and live in a haunted house in Flushing. Some attempts at humor are made by using words like "do-do," "dum-dum" and "bippy" (in the title only). The words sound like euphemisms that mothers use when training small children.

-----

Sadly, the film had no scenes like this:

3 comments:

Mavis Martini said...

What the world needs now is Bippy, sweet Bippy! My taste level is so low, I'd probably watch this!

Unknown said...

I can still do a depressingly good Gladys Ormphby imitation . . .

Prof. Grewbeard said...

i still want to see it,good taste(& sense)be damned!...