307-Daddy-O

Film Genre:  1958
Genre:  Drama
Director:  Lou Place
Starring:  Dick Contino, Sandra Giles, Bruno Vesota, John McClure
MST Season:  3
Featured Short:  "Alphabet Antics"

The Short

Quirky short tries to entertain the tots and bore the adults by going through every letter of the alphabet, and list things that start with the respective letter.  Alas, toward the end the narrator gets desperate and starts to stretch some of the tougher letters.

A is for awful.
B is for boring.
C is for cut the crap and move on to the movie!

Speaking of…D is for “Daddy-O!”

The Movie

Here we have a cheapie teen flick about a street-racer who finds himself stripped of his license to drive, but starts to investigate the death of a friend.  This leads him to a shady nightclub where he becomes a singer (because every murder mystery needs some jazzy musical numbers).  But as his new career goes on, he digs deeper into the illegal inner workings of the club.

Nearly forgotten film  is only notable in hindsight for being the first film scored by the legendary John Williams, who went on to become one of the most notable film composers of all time, composing most of the Star Wars films, the first three Harry Potter films, and almost every film directed by Steven Spielberg (which include Jaws, ET:  The Extra-Terrestrial, Saving Private Ryan, Jurassic Park, Schindler’s List, and all four Indiana Jones pictures).  Williams’ score sets an appropriately jazzy mood for Daddy-O, proving he was still at his best even when the movie was at its worst.

As for the rest of the film, what can really be said?  It’s a goofy, if harmless piece of moldy cheese.  The melodrama is thick, and the acting is crap.  But Daddy-O doesn’t strive for a sense of reality, but just to make a buck off the teenage audience that wants to see sexy leads, minor mystery, and a few songs.  And even those aspects aren’t important, because those most likely to see this movie were likely making out during the entire thing.  But I suppose if we were to judge the movie based on these aspects:  The leads are handsome and/or voluptuous; the mystery isn’t intricate, but it gets from point A to point B with relative ease; and while the songs aren’t anything special, they won’t make your ears bleed.  All of this makes Daddy-O an okay movie to watch if you aren’t paying attention to it.

The Episode

Our episode starts with a tedious short that Joel and the bots do their best with.  Unfortunately they barely scratch the thing.  It’s a fully monotonous affair and since the short hardly ever offers anything new other than a droning narrator one moment to the next, a lot of the riffs start to sound the same.  The boys fare the best when they riff the footage they’re being showed, but even that starts to get a little tiresome.  Luckily the movie revs them up and they’re rock out with it.  They poke and prod at the movie with playful ease (it’s an easy target), and probably set a better mood in the room than the film itself.

The host segments are fairly beefy this time around.  One of the highlight of the episode (but not THE highlight, more on that in a little bit) is Joel’s wonderful parody of the music numbers in the film, as well as mocking the wardrobe, called “Hike Your Pants Up.”  It’s catchy, and Joel’s daffy grin will haunt you forever.  Less interesting is the second segment where the bots have a nutty drag race, though the third features Mike doing a killer impression of one of the film’s more outlandish characters.  Invention Exchange theme this week is babies, with an air freshener mobile and an alien teething nook (based on the film Alien).

Even with the help of a short subject opening us and some fairly long host segments, the episode runs short of its full time length.  In order to fill time, our gang comes up with a cool idea to pad the episode out by taking the baby from the Invention Exchange and have him mess with the keyboard, having him break the button that ends the experiment.  The closing credits start and stop frequently for about five minutes, and it’s pretty hilarious.

Despite a weak short, Daddy-O comes fully recommended.  It’s hip and groovy fun.

Good

The DVD

Daddy-O was released by Shout Factory on their Volume XXXIII set, featuring good audio and video.  Bonus features include a brief making of for the film (BECAUSE WHO WOULDN’T WANT ONE?!), that basically boils down to “genre was popular, we made another one.”  Also included are Mystery Science Theater Hour wraps.