So I was feeling my oats this time around and counterpunched Joe Bannerman’s choice of Boardinghouse with 1961’s Dondi. It’s a horrible schmaltzy comedy / drama adaptation of the comic strip about a plucky war orphan. It’s also the kind of thing that only Chad R and I really enjoy, so bonus for that. It’s also one of the movies the Medveds featured in their seminal tome, The 50 Worst Films of All Time.
The film’s biggest defect by far in a terrible performance by a kid actor in the lead role. You can’t understand damn near anything he says, except for the work buddy, which he uses to cap every line of dialog he’s given. He’s really quite dreadful. David Janssen plays the lead in full “when do I get paid” mode, and a supporting cast of comic vets–Arnold Stang, Gale Gordon, Robert Strauss all take a bullet here–doesn’t help. Walter Winchell (!) plays himself, and the female lead is playing by Patty Page the Singing Rage. She has the best line of the picture, as she looks at Dondi praying in the next room and reverently tells another onlooker, “He’s praying to the most influential Buddy of them all.”
Host Paul provided a palette cleanser with an episode of Baywatch which seemed to imply that Alexandra Paul’s recently deceased character had been reincarnated as a dog. (!!) Really. This was mated with an episode of Manimal, to wit the second of the show’s entire run of eight. Called The Night of the Scorpion, it featured no scorpion nor did it take place at night. There was a deadly tarantula, though. Dumb as only an ’80s Glen Larson show can be.
Finally we got the midnight “Plan 9” slot. Unlike B-Fest, we don’t actually show Plan 9 every year, but instead another black and white ’50s-era doozy. This year it was Beast of Yucca Flats. The harebrained narration is as delicious as ever, and it runs a scant 60 minutes.
