'THE NEW CHICK'??..........A LOW DIVE INTO "LOVE IN A GOLDFISH BOWL"

Love In A Goldfish Bowl (1961)    Nothing floats BQ's boat more than unearthing bizarre relics of the 1960's like this one.........

              Trust me, in all his wild adventures, Indiana Jones never dug up a stranger piece of bric-a-brac than this one........

                How can you not adore it......a teen romantic triangle involving not one, but two talent-free sides of 1960's prime beef, Fabian and Tommy Sands.......

                The object of their affliction?  A platinum cupcake named Toby Michaels........or, as she's proudly billed in the opening credits, 'The New Chick' (!!)

                The weirdness starts early. Since Sands and Michaels supposedly enjoy a strictly platonic brother-sister relationship, Sands' hair is platinum-ized to match Michaels..........they look like a college-age version of the kids from "Village Of The Damned".....that is, if the kids from "Village" had been born babbling idiots.........

                A fragile pair indeed, these two. Early on, a random bully knocks both of them down like they were 3rd graders. Undeterred, off they go for a platonic spring break at the beach house owned by Sands' jet-setting mother. (Jan Sterling). Meanwhile, Michaels' dad (the forever sputtering Edward Andrews) fumes about her unknown whereabouts........

                 Into the mix comes a smooth, suave Coast Guard sailor (Fabian) who promptly starts romancing Michaels, much to Sands' perpetual annoyance.  And 'perpetual annoyance' is a fairly accurate description of Sands' character, made doubly obnoxious by the actor's monotone overplaying.

                 Watching Sands becomes the visual equivalent of listening to 90 minutes of fingernails dragged across a blackboard.........it takes him the entire running time to figure out he wants to be a little more than a big brother to Michaels......

                 Naturally, taking place in 1961, sex will never rear its forbidden head (or any other appendage)......how could it, when Sands bedtime attire consists of underwear underneath his pajamas......he's twice as virginal as Doris Day......

                  At the windup, poor Fabian's moved on and Sands and Michaels are back in the same position they started. Sitting in a car's backseat, their feet propped up on the front seats, plotting their next move......

                   They may have found love, but they're still blindingly dumb blondes........

                    If you're a 60's film archeologist like BQ, you'll need to see this rare museum piece at least once. Not quite the Ark Of The Covenant, but loads of unintentional fun.  For everyone else, a
1 star (*) bit of vanilla fluff...........like whatever ungodly crap they used on Tommy Sands' hair......