Skidoo

Director: Otto Preminger Otto Preminger

Overview

Made on a lavish budget by Otto Preminger and featuring an all-star cast that includes Groucho Marx in his last screen appearance -- and a comic tale that blends gangster melodrama with the 1960s' psychedelia -- Skidoo had promise on paper, but ultimately proved itself a box-office bomb. Tony Banks is a reformed mob hit man who runs an honest car wash with his wife Flo. The first of their many troubles begins when their daughter gets involved with a hippie. Next, his ex-mob boss God calls up and says that he wants Tony to ice "Blue Chips" Packard before he testifies in court. The trouble is that Packard is in prison. At first Tony refuses, but when God orders Tony's best friend shot, he changes his mind and is sent to prison where he is to cozy up to Packard and kill him. But all bets are off after Tony accidentally ingests LSD and goes on a hallucinatory head trip that results in his decision not to kill Packard. Instead, he plans an elaborate escape that lands them into even bigger, more crazy trouble.

Product Details

Release Date:	07/19/2011
UPC:	0887090026604
Original Release:	1968
Rating:	R
Source:	Olive
Region Code:	1
Sound:	[Dolby Digital Stereo]
Language:	English
Time:	1:38:00
Sales rank:	21,725

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Jackie Gleason	Tony Banks
Carol Channing	Flo Banks
Frankie Avalon	Angie
Groucho Marx	"God"
Fred Clark	Tower Guard
Michael Constantine	Leech
Frank Gorshin	Man
John Phillip Law	Stash,Geronimo
Peter Lawford	Senator
Burgess Meredith	Warden
George Raft	Capt. Garbaldo
Cesar Romero	Hechy
Mickey Rooney	`Blue Chips' Packard
Austin Pendleton	Fred the Professor
Alexandra Hay	Darlene Banks
Luna	`God's' Mistress
Arnold Stang	Harry
Doro Merande	Mayor
Phil Arnold	Mayor's Husband
Slim Pickens	Switchboard Operator
Robert Donner	Switchboard Operator
Richard Kiel	Beany
Jaik Rosenstein	`Eggs' Benedict
Stacy King	The Amazon
Renny Roker	Prison Guard
Roman Gabriel	Prison Guard
Harry Nilsson	Tower Guard
William Cannon	Convict
Stone Country	Themselves

Technical Credits

Stanley Ralph Ross

Doran William Cannon

Elliott Baker

Otto Preminger	Director,Producer
Stanley Ralph Ross	Screenwriter
Doran William Cannon	Screenwriter
Elliott Baker	Screenwriter
Charles Spurgeon	Special Effects

Editorial Reviews

One of the most legendary of all Hollywood fiascos, Skidoo witnessed Otto Preminger and most of his cast delving headfirst into psychedelic absurdity. The film predated Easy Rider and Bob & Carol by a year, rising like a festering wound out of the period when Tinseltown studios were making desperate and embarrassing attempts to connect - in any way possible - with the throes of the then-burgeoning counterculture. Unfortunately - unlike the same year's wonderful I Love You, Alice B. Toklas (yet another picture about squares who decide to drop out) - this loony and misguided, acid-fueled gangster farce never finds its footing. That said, it doesn't begin as a complete disaster, but forks off into left field about halfway through. The curtain rises on a conventional and surprisingly genial note - in the first act, Jackie Gleason, Carol Channing and Frankie Avalon seem to be delivering the kind of characterizations and dialogue more at home in a Disney farce. But once Gleason gets imprisoned and accidentally ingests LSD, beware; the film makes a beeline toward supreme audience irritation and never lets up. Preminger seems to be equating nonsensical mishmash and illogic with "hipness"; this may be the only picture in memory to feature a "Dance of the Garbage Cans" musical number, a deus ex machina in which three prisoners escape by building a hot air balloon with materials found inside of a penitentiary, and a finale in which two romantically (and physically) involved couples swap partners and marry at the drop of a hat, just, apparently, for the sake of confounding the logical fabric of the script and being weird. Much has been made of the bizarre fact that Harry Nilsson sings the final credits (yes, right down to the "Copyright MCMLXVIII,") but that represents the very least of the film's problems. Frankly, the picture isn't funny, or for that matter, entertaining either - not even for aficionados of terrible cinema. The most depressing sidelight is that the studios' attempts to connect with the youth movement continued for several years after Skidoo, and quickly sank even lower. Hollywood didn't really figure out a way to squeeze psychedelic extremities like the ones seen here into a mainstream picture until the brilliant psychodrama End of the Road hit cinemas in 1970. But by that time, the counterculture was already at death's door.