Director: George Sidney
Cast: Janet Leigh, Dick Van Dyke, Ann-Margret, Maureen Stapleton
Have I Seen It Before: I feel like I have seen those episodes of Mad Men where they try to cannibalize this movie for the very first Diet Pepsi* commercial. Does that count?
Did I Like It: There’s something vaguely unsettling about the movie at its very core, as if it were the natural conclusion of someone trying to make a gender-swapped Lord of the Flies.
Maybe it’s just that I get the sense that there was a version of this film—and certainly the broadway play—where Kim (Ann-Margret) is something of a second-tier character, and the story is really about Rosie (Leigh) and Albert (Van Dyke).
That film could have been a nice romantic comedy centering on two of the more charming personalities to ever be in a movie. That isn’t the film as presented.
As it stands, the teenage girls swarm over the characters of the film like locusts. I don’t even think the film is being fair to the phenomenon of adolescence, or even the phenomenon of adolescence in the late 1950s which it is seeming to satirize. But these girls are frightening. There isn’t even a frolicking chase to keep things light, as in A Hard Day’s Night (1964). These girls won’t be bough, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. They just want to consume this music star, Conrad Birdie** (Jesse Pearson), even if they’re not entirely sure what consuming him might be. There might not have been any need for Carpenter to re-make Village of the Damned (1960), this production got the job done only three years after the original.
No wonder Van Dyke and Leigh get pushed out of almost every frame they’re in. And it might be contrary to say so, but the film is poorer for it.
*Or Patio, if you’re nasty.
**While we’re on the subject, Birdie is clearly supposed to be a stand-in for Elvis, but named to spoof Conway Twitty, who ended up becoming the schmaltziest kind of country crooner. His beg legacy is a running gag on Family Guy. At least The Beatles and Elvis had some good songs…