The Oscar (1966) In BQ's neverending quest for Guilty Pleasures so abysmal they leave an audience collapsed with derisive laughter.......I present you a Treasure Of Treasures.....
After I calmed down from 2 hours of convulsive giggles, I still cannot solve the most puzzling mystery surrounding this movie.....
What in the name of holy hell possessed the Academy Of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to grant this film permission to use the Academy Awards (the ceremony and the statuettes) as a backdrop?
I only ask because "The Oscar" rolls out the most hilariously overdone, overripe, overacted depiction of Hollywood as a circus of greed, depravity, backstabbing and amorality. Or as they like to call it in tinseltown.....Monday.
Unintentionally funny from beginning to end, the film resembles an epic-length Saturday Night Live skit, spoofing the well-worn tale of a showbiz heel's rise and fall......liberally seasoned with cartoonish faux-melodramatic dialogue, heated up to volcanic temperatures.....,.
Incredibly, the script was co-written by legendary sci-fi master Harlan Ellison. I can only assume Ellison viewed this project as a golden opportunity to shred the film and TV industries for their mistreatment and handling of his scripts.
But just like everyone else who got a look at the final results, he could only stare at film, appalled and disgusted, yet another example of Hollywood screwing him over.......
For the rest of us seekers of truly terrible movies, though, "The Oscar" remains the Holy Grail of gloriously catastrophic disasters.........demeaning, degrading and humiliating every single person unlucky enough to participate in its production.
Oh where oh where to begin? Let's start with the film's lead character.....the cruel, rapacious, heartless shark Frankie Fane.....a one note, unrepentant bastard, performed as a single-minded, monotone monster by Stephen Boyd. (mostly famous for his villainous turn in "Ben Hur")
Frankie's a toxic spill in human form and his only friend (and parasitic minion) is Hymie Kelly, his whimpering, simpering, groveling boyhood friend. And prepare yourselves....the role of .Hymie, a ludicrous character to begin with, fell to.....Tony Bennett.
Poor poor Bennett. Relatively new to acting, the film forces Bennett into some hysterically over-the-top raving and ranting at Boyd...... you can't help feeling sorry for him when he gamely launches into hand-wringing monologues that would test the skill and range of even trained, talented actors, let alone a rank novice. (Mortified and demolished by the experience, Bennett wisely restricted all his subsequent film and TV work to making cameo appearances only as himself...)
Moving right along, the ambitious but ever obnoxious Frankie hooks up with a fading, aging actress (Eleanor Parker), leading him to a screen test and a rapid rise up the ranks of Hollywood stardom. But soon moviegoers detecting what a creep he is, avoid his films, making him box office poison. With his career on the skids and broke from his lavish spending, Frankie's one stop away from begging for a TV pilot when he's nominated for Best Actor Of The Year.
And here's where the movie, already bubbling up to full boil, flies even further off the rails. Frankie, believing sympathetic Academy voters would rally around him with an Oscar win, , deliberately plants a scandalous story in the press about his younger days touring bars to promote a stripper. (Jill St. John)
By this time (and not until the very end of a long, long 2 hours) the rest of the cast of characters finally come to realize that Frankie's a man-sized turd who walks upright.......thereby making the final scene, steeped in supposed irony, the least surprising climax you could imagine.
All the primary fun here (apart from Boyd's stiff impression of a jerk and Bennett's woeful stabs at theatrics) comes from the florid, wildly overwritten dialogue, most of which sound like lame, hopelessly clumsy attempts to duplicate the classics lines of "Sweet Smell Of Success") (whines Frankie, "Why.....why...why do I always try to destroy the people I love?")
(And as a bonus, you don't want to miss the random appearances of gossip queen Hedda Hopper and costume designer Edith Head)
As I've done in the past, I feel like I need to issue two separate ratings for a movie like "The Oscar"......so here goes.....may we have the envelopes, please.....
On the basis of artistic merit - Zero stars (0)
But on the scale of joyfully cheesy Guilty Pleasure......5 stars (*****)....for all of us who adore trainwrecks that'll make you laugh louder than any comedy you've ever seen, it's a FIND OF FINDS.
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