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The corpse's laughter, the mortician's art. "The city is of night, perchance of death," proclaims the poet on his way to Southern California, "it was either Los Angeles or Calcutta, so I thought, you know, what the hell?" Robert Morse as the "artificial insemination donor" from England is given the Beatles mop-top and the Terry-Thomas gap-tooth, Haskell Wexler's ornate-sterile compositions welcome him. John Gielgud's noble gaze of mortification as he's ushered out of the studio office sums up limey knighthood whoring itself under the Hollywood sun, this is payback time. (The Evelyn Waugh adaptation Buñuel nearly made would have been an incalculably greater film, yet how appropriate it is to have this comprehensive depredation executed with Tony Richardson's sledgehammers.) The tour of false idols leads to the funeral Xanadu, where the young cosmetician (Anjanette Comer) is seduced with pilfered verses and morbid aestheticism. Milton Berle and Margaret Leighton are "the well-balanced American couple," the oracular guru is really Lionel Stander chewing on a cigar, the casket display is manned by Liberace. "Beauty in every form!" Terry Southern's "prevert" note from Dr. Strangelove is adduced and dilated with Christopher Isherwood's support—the missiles now are part of an air force mission precipitated by whiz-kid snobbery and clinched with an orgy among coffins. The mincing glee of Rod Steiger's Mr. Joyboy is but one entry in a bravura sick-humor gallery that encompasses Jonathan Winters' magisterial rendition of the twin visages of hucksterism (half evangelist, half corporation toady). Stiffs in the garden, stained-glass salaciousness: When the truth unmoors the guileless mind, embalmed lyricism becomes the last refuge. "Bad form, gentlemen, bad form." With Roddy McDowall, Dana Andrews, James Coburn, Robert Morley, Tab Hunter, Paul Williams, Barbara Nichols, and Robert Easton. In black and white
--- Fernando F. Croce |