The Party, with Peter Sellers, 1968 - Mod Movie Monday at The Tiki Bar

Get out your Naru jacket, tune up the sitar and get ready to watch a truly mod movie from the psychedelic ’60s, baby! Peter Sellers and Blake Edwards got together only once to make a comedy that wasn’t about The Pink Panther.  The Party, 1968 is a crazy, mod, very ’60s flick about Hollywood craziness of the day, and spoofs a big hippie-era Hollywood party so well you’ll wish you were there.

Peter Sellers plays an Indian actor named Hrundi V. Bakshi who is trying desperately to get his big break in American films. As you might expect, he does more harm than good on the set and gets himself put on the black list, only to be accidentally put on the invitation list to the big Hollywood shindig instead. Add every 1960s mod movie gag in the book, hot women, pot smoking musicians and a baby elephant and you can’t miss. And I guarantee, for the rest of your days every time you see a parrot, you’ll want to call him Birdy Num Num.

You’ll have to put yourself in the era to enjoy this flick - it’s not exactly action-packed, and there’s no real story, just one funny scene after another. (According to IMDB: “This film was improvised from a 56-page outline. Each scene was shot in sequence, and built upon the previous scene. To aid in this experiment, the film’s producers had a video-camera tube attached to the Panavision camera and connected to an Ampex studio videotape machine, allowing the actors and crew to review what they had just filmed.”)

Since the movie is about a big swingin’ Hollywood party in 1968, suitable fare should include fondue, caviar, California salad and cucumber sandwiches. For drinks, Champagne would be grand, or Beefeater Martinis for the cocktail set.

-Tiki Chris for Tiki Lounge Talk

Mod (Retro) Movie Monday: Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, 2004

Sky Captain

Direct from the Tiki Blog - When I started Mod Movie Mondays, I said they might not always be mod, and they might not always be old. Here’s a flick that will have anyone into Art Deco, retro-30’s style and the sci-fi future of yesteryear drooling.

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, 2004

Beautifully created Art Deco sets inspired by the work of Norman Bel Geddes (of 1930s World’s Fairs fame) transport you back to an alternative history, a 1930s New York where retro-futuristic technology co-exists with fat-fendered cars, where ray guns are real and Nazis are more interested in flying luxury airships than conquering the world. So if Nazis aren’t the nemises in this pre-WW2 adventure, who is? An evil scientist, of course, played by Sir Lawrence Olivier (yes, he was long dead at the time this movie was made - they made fantastic use of B&W archive footage!)

Sky Captain is an airplane pilot who flies a modified P-40 fighter (it not only flies, it’s a submarine). His mission is to protect the world, basically, from anyone who tries to crack things up. When a small army of giant iron robots lands in the Big Apple and start tearing things apart, Sky Captain swoops in. The story progresses from there in a 1930s comic book-style and takes him to exotic lands like Shangri La.

But enough about the story, time to talk about why this flick is being featured here. As I said, the sets are incredible - works of art in every scene. And almost none of it was real - this was one of the first full-length movies to be filmed almost entirely in front of a blue screen, with all of the sets digitally sequenced in. Some sets came from actual photographs, some from vintage art, and the rest were created electronically just for the film. What this translates into is a work of art on a moving canvas living behind the action of the actors. If you like the retro life, you will wish you lived in this movie.

Since the action takes place mainly in 1930s New York of the Future, I’d suggest a retro-futuristic dinner and drinks. Try a deli style sandwich platter of corned beef, roast beef, Swiss or Havarti cheese, and coleslaw on marble rye, served up on your favorite Jetsons-style dishes with a side of waffle fries. For dessert, Dove chocolate ice cream banana splits in Art Deco, blimp-shaped bowls. And for the drinks - Highballs, Slow Gin Fizzes, and of course, Manhattans, served in your finest futuristic stemware.

-Tiki Chris Pinto for Tiki Lounge Talk, South Florida’s Swingin’ Scene for Retro Hipsters and Tiki Lovers

The Groove Tube, 1974 - Mod Movie Monday at The Tiki Blog

One of the craziest, funniest, raunchiest movies of all time, the first major motion picture ever to use the sketch comedy format made famous by Saturday Night Live and Second City TV, here’s this week’s Mod Movie Monday Feature

The Groove Tube, 1974

Starring Ken Shapiro, Chevy Chase, Richard Beltzer and ensemble.

In the 60s and early 70s modern ’sketch’ comedy was still new, and Channel One Theater in New York was one of the groups pioneering this off-beat sort of comedy. From that was born The Groove Tube, written and directed by Ken Shapiro of Channel One.

As always I won’t give anything away, but I can give you a basic idea of what you’re going to see. The viewer is to believe they are not watching a movie, but TV in a world where nudity, adult themes, far-out trips, cursing and unbound comedy is uncensored. After the opening credits (which spoofs 2001-A Space Odyssey and features music by Curtis Mayfield) the viewer seems to be watching a TV that someone else is controlling…changing stations, watching commercials, etc. (much like Robot Chicken does today (except with real people instead of toys)). (wow, that’s a (lot of) brackets!) Each sketch is a full commercial or part of a TV show, and include such greats as Koko the Clown, Brown-25 from The Uranus Corporation,  a commercial for “Geritan”, Chevy Chase singing “I’m looking over a four leaf clover”, and “Channel One Evening News.”

Although Shapiro played the anchor on the Evening News, the skit and its tagline, ‘Good night and have a pleasant tomorrow,’ were taken along to Saturday Night Live with Chevy Chase, and live on today as Weekend Update.

This movie pulled out all the stops, using full-frontal nudity, drug use, prostitution, and silliness in a truly funny way. I also believe this was the first and only time a grown man in a suit, hat and brief case danced through the streets of New York singing “Just me, Just You” and lived to tell about it.

Seriously, this movie is funny as hell. I waited 25 years to see it and wasn’t disappointed. Back in 1975, when it was playing at the Towne-4 movie theater next to the Searstown Mall in Pleasantville, NJ, my family wanted to see it. The TV commercials made it look like a straight-up comedy (without the raunchiness), and the newspaper ad showed it as being rated “G” (it’s actually rated R). When we got to the movies, and I still remember this clearly, the pretty young girl at the ticket counter told my my parents “Aw, you don’t want to take him in there”, to which they said, “But it’s rated G”, to which she replied, “Oh no, sorry about that. The paste up guy at the newspaper didn’t do the ad right and the “R” slipped off the ad, if you look at the paper again you’ll see the “R” overlapping the ad under it.” How about that, huh? So I didn’t get to see it. Considering I was 7, it’s probably a good thing.

It wasn’t until the early 2000’s when I finally found the DVD available on the internet that I was able to see it. I gotta tell you, even after 35 years it still is funny, and has some shock value.

This is some pretty low-brow comedy so for a drink & snacks I’d say cheap beer and chips all the way. Miller High Life and Doritos would be very 70s. If you’re not a beer drinker, then Jack on the rocks, and Herrs potato chips. Some New Yawk style pizza too. Watch it by the glow of a Lava Lamp and a Spencer’s Gifts fiber-optic tree for full effect, man. Yeah.

-Tiki Chris for Tiki Lounge Talk

Tiki Blog Mod Movie Monday - Make Mine Music, 1946

Ok, this flick goes back a few years, but I wouldn’t be true to my Tiki-Retro Blog’s reason for being if I didn’t include one of my favorite old-time movies…

Make Mine Music, Walt Disney, 1946

In the spirit of Fantasia, this is a collection of “shorts”…5 to 10 minute sequences animated to music. Sort of Music Videos from the era when everyday people enjoyed jazz and classical music.

And as far as Mod goes…vibrant colors, a singing whale, and jazz combo let by a dancing clarinet through a surreal dream…done up years before LSD was invented.

The “Movie” features music by Nelson Eddie, Dinah Shore, Benny Goodman, The Andrews Sisters and more, and tells musical tale from Peter and the Wolf to an Operatic Whale named Willie.

But there are two main reasons I dig this flick…and they’re both by Benny Goodman. “All the Cats Join In” is as hep as it gets, swinging the long version of Goodman’s tune with crazy bobby-soxers cartooning it around the house, malt shop and streets. It’s very clever, with the characters and backdrops being drawn as the action progresses. The music is hot and swings perfectly with the comedy of the animation.

“After You’ve Gone” features the Benny Goodman Quartet, with Teddy Wilson, Cozy Cole, and Sid Wiess. This has a special place in my heart…The first time I saw this cartoon was when it was played during a 1985 PBS salute to Goodman…which happened to be his last televised performance before his death. I video taped the show and watched the cartoon over and over, not just for the incredible and surrealistic animation (who wouldn’t love a clarinet dancing around in the clouds with disembodied fingers dancing like legs on a piano keyboard), but for the absolutely unbelievable facility of Goodman’s playing on this number. I asked everyone I knew, young and old, and in 1985 no one could remember where this toon came from. 16 years later, the internet finally gave up the secrets. Here it is, “After You’ve Gone” by Benny Goodman from “Make Mine Music”

and “All the Cats Join In”…a caracature

Mod Movie Mondays: Superfly, 1972 Layin’ it down at the Tiki-Retro Blog

Sometimes the movies ain’t mod. But sometimes they’re just so hip, they fall into a class by themselves.

Today’s flick is soaked in coke, cheap liquor, prostitution and the pursuit of getting out of the ghetto. It’s the modern-day (70s) Funk-tastic equivalent to  The Grapes of Wrath. It’s

Superfly, 1972

“Never a dude like this one! He’s got a plan to stick it to The Man!”
Now, let me lay this on you…If nothing else, watch this movie for the car.

This is, without doubt, one of the best movies ever to depict the conditions in the poor areas of NYC and the people who tried to survive there in the ’60s and ’70s. It was made to show how things really were, to ‘keep it real’. Now it’s a fantastic time capsule, giving us a glimpse into the bad side of the old days, the dilapidation of the crumbling city, the poverty, and the crime. Watch this film with the cellphone turned off and the computer in sleep mode, and try to put yourself back in that era of payphones and typewriters, 8-Track tapes and big American cars, when Deep Throat was playing at theaters in Times Square and Nixon was president. It’ll blow your mind.

All that aside, it’s got an incredibly kick-ass soundtrack by Funk master Curtis Mayfield, including the title track “Superfly” and the instrumental “Freddie’s Dead”. The story centers around a drug pusher-pimp who goes by the name of Priest Youngblood, a man who is sick of the crime life, sick of the streets and is looking for a way out. In the mean time, he does all that he can to try to live the good life, from having a color TV in every room, to driving a custom Cadillac convertible.
Ah, the Superfly Cadillac.

Now we come to my favorite part of this post. The car, a 1971 Cadillac Fleetwood Eldorado custom convertible,

Supefly Cadillac Eldorado from the movie

became as much a character in the movie as Priest. It was featured on the poster, and became the icon of this film ever since. The entire opening sequence and titles features the Caddy being driven through the streets of New York City, with the defining “Freddie’s Dead” theme song weaving through the background. This big black Cadillac was a real car, customized by a coachworks in north Jersey that operated under the name Dunham Coach. They specialized in customizing large American luxury cars, i.e. Cadillacs and Lincolns, and had a steady clientele of “underworld” figures through the 1970s. In fact, the car used in the film was owned by an actual pimp at the time who went by the name “KC”. He let them use the car in exchange for a cameo in the film.

My 1975 Superfly Eldorado, in 2000. I should have never sold it.

I had the good fortune to own one of these Superfly Caddy’s back in the 1990s. It was a 1975 Cadillac Fleetwood Eldorado Coupe with running boards, a Continental kit (spare tire on the trunk), Rolls-Royce Grille and Headlights, and a 1941 Cadillac hood ornament. Mine was blue and silver, not black.

Anyway, back to the flick…This is a gritty film, and as I said really puts you in the era. Maybe not the best writing, or acting. Maybe not the most original storyline. It was low budget, and sometimes it shows. But it’s sho-nuff fun to watch. Now…tune your ears into what I’m laying down on you kats, and dig it for real: This is a hard-edged, realistic depiction of ghetto life in New York City in the early 1970s. There’s violence, nudity, drugs, corruption, racism, sex, more drugs, gambling, and fine Cadillacs. The protagonist is a pimp and a drug pusher, and you’re rooting for him at the end. So I wouldn’t recommend this one for family night.

That said, here’s my riff: Dig this movie with the lights dimmed down low in your pad. Sip Merlot, and dine on a big, thick plank steak the way Priest would. And absolutely get the soundtrack, it’s Super Fly, baby. You dig?
Here’s a video of an interview with Les Dunham, creator of the Superfly Cadillac. Lots of shots of the car.

Superfly at Tiki Lounge Talk, by “Mack”