MAKSQUIBS CINEMATHEQUE: SAIL A CROOKED SHIP (1961)

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It's a bit like seeing Rembrandts & Titians in a book reproduction, or from posters with iffy color values, no texture or weight to the surface and the wrong dimensions . . . all while snacking on chips & soda. (Oops! You get that at your local cinema,too.)
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Saturday, May 14, 2022

SAIL A CROOKED SHIP (1961)

From a novel by Nathaniel Benchley* (son of Algonquin Round Table Robert/father to JAWS Peter) a twee comic programmer where junior shipping exec Robert Wagner's idea to salvage a fleet of rusty old freighters leads him straight into a gang-who-couldn’t-shoot-straight pack of bank robbers. Occasional director Irving Brecher (formerly a go-to writer for M-G-M comedies & musicals) hardly sweats the details on a plot that doesn’t add up, content to let a cast of good-natured comic zanies run the deck on board. Wagner looks fit tossed by a hurricane in a Buster Keaton routine (alas, he grins thru the whole sequence); a pre-convent Dolores Hart holds on to her chastity; Ernie Kovacs, in his last film, fights Frank Gorshin for gang leadership; moll Carolyn Jones cuddles for warmth & loses her makeup to Wagner in a lifeboat (where’s Blake Edwards when you need him?); Frankie Avalon kicks a jukebox to life to accompany him on ‘Opposites Attract’; Jesse White & Harvey Lembeck can’t get a laugh; and so on. Still, enough lands to keep you watching and there’s a fascination in wondering what possible audience Columbia Pictures was aiming at.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK: *Benchley had far better luck in another nautical comedy, the well-played Cold War slapstick of Norman Jewison’s THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2011/03/russians-are-coming-russians-are-coming.html

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Saturday, May 14, 2022

SAIL A CROOKED SHIP (1961)

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