'THE WICKED DREAMS OF PAULA SCHULTZ'......ELKE SOMMER MEETS HOGAN'S ZEROS....

 The Wicked Dreams of Paula Schultz (1968)

      Only our undying love and admiration for the supreme 1960's starlet Elke Sommer helped us survive the agonizing 113 minutes of this dire farce.

        Crawling into theaters in the dead of winter of 1968, you could already sense United Artists wanted this film dead and buried as quickly as possible. 

         With the look of a dirt cheap, rock bottom TV sitcom, the film offered two main attractions....

         First selling point (and the only reason BQ suffered through it) - the sight of the bubbly, impossibly adorable Ms. Sommer hurling herself into all-out goofy comedy.....and sometimes achieving this in her underwear and similar skimpy outfits. 

          Second selling point - four of the principal cast members of the long running World War II prison camp sitcom, "Hogan's Heroes". (and all skilled, veteran farceurs) Bob Crane,Werner Klemperer, John Banner and Leon Askin. 

          The storyline throwing this odd bunch of actors together - In Cold War Berlin, Champion East German Olympic athlete Paula Schultz (Sommer) pole vaults over the Berlin wall to defect to the West. Through slapstick circumstance, she falls into the hands of cynical black marketeer Bill Mason (Crane). The ever greedy Bill, already in trouble with fellow crooks, makes a cash deal to turn over Paula to a bunch of bumbling, cartoonish Russians (Klemperer, Banner, Askin). But wait.....love hits Bill hard after one night with Paula......(the only part of this plot we believed....

          And now.....cue the frantic, desperately unfunny farce, with the 'Hogan's Heroes' calamitous coterie drenching themselves in flop sweat as they try to wring laughs out of a dead on arrival script. Nobody should hold their breath waiting anything here approaching humor. 

          We do worship Elke and she certainly throws herself into this rotting junk like a born trouper, fully up for any dumb physical gag the film forces upon her.  But the whole sorry mess becomes painful to watch, like being the only audience member seated in front of failing comics as they perform in an otherwise empty theater......to the sounds of no hands clapping. 

           This film really deserves nothing less than Zero Stars, but on behalf of Elke Sommer, we'll succumb to our everlasting crush on her.....

           One fourth of a star (1//4).  For everyone who isn't as entranced with Elke as we are, you've had fair warning about the rest of it......