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Hawks' I Was a Male War Bride is the solid bedrock, Buñuel's Él points up the ruthless view. Vets in love, Guadalcanal (Tom Ewell) and Korea (Sheree North), three years of Beverly Hills marriage. He writes TV scripts and is shown up at his own anniversary party by the young flyboy (Rick Jason), in his cups he pins old medals to a rumpled tuxedo. "Are those real?" "They are, but I'm not." The Air Force calls but he flunks the physical, his wife enlists to be by his side and is instead sent off to Hawaii, and that's the setup. "Forty men for every woman," it is said of the paradisiacal military base, meanwhile the fellow bunks with his agent (Les Tremayne) to the point where they split the same striped pajamas. (The Seven Year Itch is duly taken account of with Rita Moreno as the kitty upstairs, her purring stills the typewriter and is squirted with suntan lotion.) "This is the first time I've felt like saluting you." A monstrous satire of male neurosis, a furioso Frank Tashlin affair. The protagonist in his uniform resembles the Good Humor Man, he settles for an apron but not before a Gauguin getup with a hired odalisque named Hipslider (Sylvia Lewis). (The missus catches her wriggling act and spoofs it raucously at home to The Lancers' "Rock Around the Island.") Cutie gams and manly torsos equally bare, melons in the fridge are a feature of the bachelor pad, a bugle in the brain heralds the ugly private war. "I don't know what you're talking about." "You better know or I'll sauté your sarong, sister!" Cassavetes in A Woman Under the Influence runs with its harrowing screwball complications. With Alice Reinheart, Gregory Walcott, Jean Willes, Jacqueline Fontaine and Edward Platt.
--- Fernando F. Croce |