Movie Details
| Title: | The Magic Christian | |
| Director: | Joseph McGrath | |
| Year: | 1969 | |
| Genre: | Hippie | |
| Times Seen: | 1 | |
| Last Seen: | 04.23.07 |
Other Movies Seen By This Director (0)
| Date Viewed | Venue | Note |
| 04.23.07 | Music Monday | Hippie movie starring Peter Sellars and Ringo Starr and a cavalcade of cameos with a script from Terry Southern based on his book. I think I was a little more shocked with Candy at the mere existence of something that delusional so now that I've had a little more exposure to the British wit style of surrealism, I'm a little better equiped to handle it. This is really episodic and bizarre and absurd and pretty funny. Sellars plays a rich guy who adopts Ringo, a homeless dude, as his son. Then they basically fuck with people, offering lots and lots of money to get them to sell out and go against their code, like making a cop eat a parking ticket or a Sotheby's guy watch as a painting is destroyed or the Oxford crew team to ram the Cambridge team during the race. But then toward the end they go on this boat called the Magic Christian and it loses all sense of place and time and becomes scene after scene of sheer craziness. then it comes back to (relative) normal where Sellars and Ringo throw a bunch of money into a vat of piss and shit and blood and guys go in after it. The end. My favorite bits: on the train when they keep switching out one asian man for another to prove that the guy sitting in the next seat couldn't tell them apart, but then he gets swooped into a secret party room in the train where it's all strobe lights and nakedness. Just before that, Sellars is in a board meeting where he proposes this gigantic car in a crudely animated piece with 30 starlets in the back seat and roman columns for a grill. Then the meeting ends and he passes out envelopes to each member of the board saying they're fired and a clue as to where they are (it's revealed that they've been riding in a train the whole time) and a letter of recomendation for their next employer. There's also a news item about this black power guy getting into Crufts dog show with a very odd breed of dog. It's actually a panther with a black poodle's fur draped over it (including a little tail poof followed by the rest of the panther's long tail). the panther gets in there and eats a bunch of dogs and it's really funny. And the Magic Christian stuff. Yul Brenner in full drag singing to Roman Polanski, CHristopher Lee as dracula roaming the halls, a black and white gay bodybuilding duo dancing the tango in micro-bikinis, Raquel Welch in full roman dominatrix gard whipping a hull full of topless women into rowing Ben-Hur style... about as phantasmagoric as they come. so yeah, pretty crazy. |
