Gus (1976)

Live-action Disney movies from the ’70s often courted abject stupidity but remained watchable thanks to charming acting and energetic physical comedy. Alas, some of the studio’s pictures from this era were so moronic that even the valiant efforts of skilled comic performers were insufficient to maintain interest. For example, Gus is about a Yugoslavian mule named Gus that becomes an NFL field-goal kicker. The folks at Disney loved telling stories about animals becoming involved in human endeavors, with the innate cuteness of, say, chimpanzees or dogs providing much of the appeal. Yet calling a mule “cute” is a stretch—even when the filmmakers dress the titular animal in a custom-built football helmet and jersey. Plus, the mildly amusing image of Gus kicking field goals loses its novelty quickly. The movie’s insipid plot revolves around a dismal NFL team that enlists the mule out of desperation, thereby attracting the attention of nefarious types who don’t want the scheme to succeed. Struggling to make all of this bearable is a solid cast of Disney regulars and familiar actors from the worlds of film and television. Gary Grimes, the earnest young star of ’70s films including Summer of ’42 (1971), concluded his brief feature career by starring as Andy Petrovic, Gus’ handler. Grimes shares most of his scenes with Ed Asner, who plays a team owner; Don Knotts, who plays a coach; and real-life former NFL player Dick Butkus, who plays Gus’ gridiron rival. (Forgettable starlet Louise Williams portrays Andy’s love interest.) Other pros appearing in Gus include Bob Crane, Harold Gould, and Dick Van Patten, with Happy Days guy Tom Bosley and slapstick favorite Tim Conway forming a comic team as crooks hired to menace the mule. Suffice to say that the “highlight” of the movie is the interminable climax during which Bosley and Conway chase Gus through a grocery store, causing lots of property damage in the process. Like many of Disney’s lesser offerings, Gus is harmless and might amuse very small children, but it’s a grim 95 minutes for grown-up viewers.

Gus: LAME

They Went That-a-Way & That-a-Way (1978)

The second of two pictures that funnyman Tim Conway made for a short-lived outfit called the International Picture Show Company, this abysmal would-be farce tries to present Conway and Chuck McCann as a bumbling comedy duo. The actors get the bumbling part right, but if either of them actually does anything funny in the course of the picture’s painfully stupid 95 minutes, it escaped my view. Sadly, Conway also penned the flick—one of the only feature-length projects for which he took a solo writing credit—so one fears They Went That-a-Way & That-a-Way represents his best guess at what makes people laugh. To say Conway was someone who benefitted when collaborators raised his game is an understatement. The story concerns a pair of idiot small-town cops (Conway and McCann) going undercover as convicts in order to uncover corruption among prison officials, but mostly the script is a vessel for delivering one sequence of physical comedy after another. Even from the first scene, the gags in They Went That-a-Way & That-a-Way bludgeon the senses with their ineffectiveness. In the opening bit, Conway and McCann sit in a patrol car, and Conway tries to start the car. The failure of the engine to ignite is meant to be funny—during five repeated attempts. And yet then, when a suspect drives by, Conway starts the car without any difficulty, as if the previous five gags hadn’t happened. Unimaginably, it gets worse. The bad guy (played by a valiant Dub Tayl0r) is named “Warden Warden,” the lead characters prove incapable of using such simple devices as potato peelers and tape dispensers without causing chaos, and the “high point” of the picture involves an extended Carol Burnett Show-style sketch of Conway’s character attempting to perform dentistry on the bad guy while repeatedly injecting himself with Novocain. Oh, and the climax involves Conway and McCann disguised as, respectively, a buck-toothed Japanese dignitary and his geisha companion—because, apparently, the film’s various portrayals of brainless rednecks weren’t sufficiently offensive.

They Went That-a-Way & That-a-Way: SQUARE

The Billion Dollar Hobo (1977)

Thanks to his small-screen success with McHale’s Navy (1962-1966) and The Carol Burnett Show (1967-1978), funnyman Tim Conway earned a shot at big-screen starring roles in the mid-’70s. With his impressive ability to play even the stupidest scenarios straight, Conway was ideally suited to ensemble work or to functioning as part of a comedy duo—hence his G-rated buddy movies with Don Knotts—but, inevitably, Conway wanted to topline his own pictures. And that brings us to The Billion Dollar Hobo, one of the most depressingly unfunny comedies ever made. Part of a two-picture deal Conway made with an indie outfit called the International Picture Show Company (the other picture being the equally awful 1978 romp They Went That-A-Way & That-A-Way), this misfire borrows narrative elements from Frank Capra and Preston Sturges, and then delivers its storyline by way of shtick so moronic it would embarrass Benny Hill. Conway stars as Vernon Praiseworthy, a well-meaning nincompoop who discovers he is heir to a railroad tycoon’s fortune. There’s a catch, of course, so Vernon is tasked with traveling the country as a hobo to learn life lessons before he’ll be granted his inheritance. How dumb is The Billion Dollar Hobo? Well, let’s see. In the first scene, Vernon gets hired as a short-order cook and left alone to run a kitchen after less than a minute of training, at which point Vernon fails to accomplish even the simplest kitchen functions, eventually blowing up the diner. Need more? How about the fact that the tycoon (Will Geer) assigns as Vernon’s traveling companion a dog whom the tycoon correctly believes is smarter than Vernon, and will keep Vernon out of trouble? And then there’s the whole business of Vernon stumbling into a criminal plot to kidnap a shar pei dog named “Lee Ching Win.” Can we stop now? Or must we dwell on scenes of Conway walking into doors and/or standing with his mouth open and his shoulders slumped, giving the impression that he’s just been lobotomized? Save yourself a few brain cells by giving The Billion Dollar Hobo a wide berth.

The Billion Dollar Hobo: SQUARE

The Prize Fighter (1979)

After achieving considerable fame separately, funnymen Tim Conway and Don Knotts made several films together, mostly in the ’70s, that became popular among children but didn’t curry much favor from grown-ups. For instance, The Prize Fighter—a PG-rated flick, as opposed to the duo’s usual G-rated fare—gets mired in so many numbingly predictable plot twists that it’s too tedious for very young kids to enjoy, even as the picture’s reliance on lame physical-comedy shtick ensures the film is too stupid for sensible adults to tolerate. Set in the Depression, The Prize Fighter follows dim-witted losers Bags (Conway), a former boxer, and Shake (Knotts), a former boxing manager. Through incredibly convoluted circumstances, these two get involved with a brutal mobster named Mike (Robin Clarke). It seems Mike wants to use Bags and Shake to swindle Pop Morgan (David Wayne), the owner of a boxing gym that Mike wants to raze for development purposes. Mike arranges for Bags to re-enter the boxing ring as a contender for the world championship, and Mike fixes all of Bags’ fights except the last one—while also tricking Pop Morgan into betting his gym on Bags’ victory. The storyline in The Prize Fighter never quite gels, since it’s predicated on every character except the villain being a complete idiot, and it’s hard to care much what happens to Bags, who is portrayed as a brainless man-child, or Shake, who is portrayed as a whiny sycophant happy to let Bags do all the dirty work. And when trite devices like training montages and a weepie storyline about an orphaned kid are thrown into the mix, The Prize Fighter becomes a chore to watch, no matter how innocent its intentions. Conway must shoulder much of the blame for this lifeless movie, since he co-wrote the script in addition to starring, and TV-hack director Michael Preece does Conway no favors with colorless direction that’s way too obviously patterned after the style George Roy Hill used for another comedy set in the Depression, The Sting (1973).

The Prize Fighter: LAME

The Shaggy D.A. (1976)

In a word: woof. This live-action Disney comedy is a sequel to the studio’s minor 1959 hit The Shaggy Dog, about a young boy who turns into a sheepdog thanks to a magic spell. In the sequel, the boy has grown up to become reputable attorney Wilby Daniels (Dean Jones). When his house is robbed in broad daylight, Wilby decides to run for district attorney because the current D.A. is soft on crime. Unfortunately, that old magic spell gets reactivated, so Wilby starts turning into a sheepdog at inopportune moments, like when he’s preparing to get interviewed on television. Meanwhile (there’s always a meanwhile), current D.A. John Slade (Keenan Wynn) conspires to eliminate our hero before the lycanthropic litigator  can discover that Slade is in bed with the Mob. Disney regular Jones is amiable and diligent, investing considerable energy to give insipid scenes bounce and spunk, but not even the most gifted comedian could make Don Tait’s hackneyed screenplay sing. Very small children might be amused by vignettes of Jones growing hair on his face and by scenes of the sheepdog galumphing about while speaking with Jones’ voice, but grown-up viewers will have a hard time sitting through this barrage of cartoonish slapstick, clunky effects, and labored plotting. Matters are not improved by Tim Conway’s supporting performance as a dim-witted ice cream man, because his bumbling-idiot routine gets tired very quickly. And for dog lovers, presumably one of the movie’s target audiences, it’s a drag to watch the scene of the hirsute hero getting herded into an animal shelter’s gas chamber before he stages a four-legged jailbreak, since puppy euthanasia ain’t exactly comedy gold. Twenty years after this sequel was released, Tim Allen starred in a CGI-heavy remake of the original film.

The Shaggy D.A.: LAME

The World’s Greatest Athlete (1973)

          Considering that he had already appeared in a several hard-hitting movies for grown-ups by this point in his career, it’s bizarre that Jan-Michael Vincent was offered a juvenile role in this squeaky-clean Disney comedy; it’s even more bizarre he accepted the offer. The World’s Greatest Athlete is inane even by the standards of live-action Disney pictures, which is saying a lot. Fed up with his losing streak at a small college, coach Sam Archer (John Amos) and his trusty assistant, Milo (Tim Conway), head off for a safari vacation in Africa. (The fact of two adult males traveling without female companions is unremarked upon, as is their subsequent preoccupation with a half-naked young man.)

          During the safari, they discover a white jungle boy, Nanu (Vincent), who possesses extraordinary athletic abilities. Sam learns that, according to tribal custom, a man who saves another man’s life must accompany the rescued man wherever he goes. He thereupon tricks Nanu into such an obligation, or at least believes he does; in actuality, Nanu’s godfather, witch doctor Gazenga (Roscoe Lee Browne), wants Nanu to see the outside world. Accompanied by his pet tiger, Nanu travels to America with Sam and Milo, where Nanu is tutored by pretty teacher/love interest Jane (Dayle Haddon) and groomed for sports competitions. Yes, that’s really the plot—not Disney’s finest hour.

          Making matters worse, the picture is filled with painfully stupid physical comedy. There’s an awful running gag about a nearly blind landlady (Nancy Walker) mistaking the tiger for a person, and there’s an excruciating sequence in which Gazenga shrinks Milo down to three inches in height. The screenplay is so blunt that it’s as if the story’s being told to newborns, not youngsters, and pretty much everything related to Africa is nonsensical and quasi-racist—for instance, why does Nanu speak like Tarzan if his godfather speaks perfect English? The climactic scene, in which Nanu performs several athletic events in succession, is enjoyable, and Vincent deserves faint praise for trying to play the movie straight. But with Amos’ unpersuasive overacting, Conway’s nattering-idiot routine, and the degrading sight of Browne wearing feathered headdresses and, at one point, a bone through his nose, The World’s Greatest Athlete is unrelentingly dissonant.

The World’s Greatest Athlete: LAME

The Apple Dumpling Gang (1975) & The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again (1979)

          Standard Disney live-action fare about cute youngsters getting into mischief, The Apple Dumpling Gang features skillful support from grown-up players Bill Bixby, Tim Conway, Don Knotts, Harry Morgan, and Slim Pickens. The Old West story concerns three young orphans whose varmint uncle dumps them into the care of an irresponsible gambler (Bill Bixby), who in turn tries to dump the kids onto someone else until the moppets discover gold in a mine belonging to their family. When assorted disreputable types try to rip off the gold, seeing the children endangered causes Bixby to grow a conscience. Television icons Conway and Knotts are the main attraction, working as a comedy duo for the first time, and they’re comfortably amusing even though their slapstick antics as a pair of inept outlaws are contrived and silly (typical bit: trying to steal a ladder from a firehouse and slamming the ladder into everything in sight). Earnest, old-fashioned, and beyond predictable, The Apple Dumpling Gang moves along at a pleasant clip, despite cloying music and rickety process shots, so the movie is innocuous entertainment for very young viewers; grown-ups should be able to swallow everything except perhaps the requisite warm fuzzies at the end and the cutesy theme song.
          Bixby and the kids were jettisoned for the sequel, The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again, in which Conway and Knotts try to go straight but end up running afoul of the army, a crazed sheriff, and a criminal gang, causing destructive mayhem along the way. The sequel’s storyline is a patchwork of Western clichés—the climax is a train robbery—so neither Conway’s deadpan delivery nor Knotts’ bug-eyed crankiness is enough to liven up the proceedings. And the less said about the scene they play in drag, the better. Harry Morgan returns in a different role than he played in the first movie, while Tim Matheson, Jack Elam, and Kenneth Mars add color to the cast. The overstuffed plot and the depiction of the “heroes” as complete morons makes the sequel far less palatable than its predecessor, but as a small mercy for those who take the plunge, The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again runs its forgettable course in a mere 88 minutes.

The Apple Dumpling Gang: FUNKY

The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again: LAME