R | 1h 38min | Comedy | 19 December 1968 | Color, ws
Director: Otto Preminger
Stars: Jackie Gleason, Carol Channing, Frankie Avalon.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063612/
Watched online, blurry.
I probably queued this because of Carol Channing singing a song, and what looked like multiple songs in the Soundtracks. Really only 3 songs by Nilsson here, and 2 are performed by him off camera.
We got a little bit of nudity (painted breasts, a woman's rear cleavage) and a lot lot lot of drugs, mostly LSD fed to an entire prison, including the warden on the regularly-scheduled day he ate with the prisoners. We also see Arnold Stang with a bullet in his head through a cracked windshield.
Don't let the fact of Groucho Marx playing the mob kingpin attract you. There's nothing here worth the time it takes to watch this. It's written either by someone who likes drugs, or just wants to appeal to people who like drugs, or people who want to appear hip. According to IMDb trivia for the film: "Groucho Marx's LSD trip is the subject of the article "My Acid Trip with Groucho" by Paul Krassner, Yippie founder and editor/publisher of famed satirical magazine The Realist." But if it's a satirical magazine, does the article describe reality?
Another IMDb trivia item: "At the midpoint of the movie (0:49:15,16), The Professor is saying the words "ride with the waves" as he advises Tony, who has just accidentally taken LSD, about how to have "a good trip". The movie itself was a result of Preminger's real-life period of experimentation -- and presumably good trips -- with LSD."
Since I'm not big on relinquishing control to substances of unknown (or even known) origin, this does not appeal to me. Nor does it illuminate anything useful about people who do.
distr. Paramount, dir. Preminger; 5-
