Rabbit Test (1978)

          Among the many impressive accomplishments in comedienne Joan Rivers’ long and multifaceted career, she was one of the few women to direct a Hollywood feature in the ’70s. Unfortunately, the significance of this professional milestone is largely symbolic, because Rabbit Test is an embarrassingly bad movie that flopped during its original release and has aged poorly. Starring Billy Crystal in his first big-screen starring role, the movie is about the world’s first pregnant man. Yet the picture, which Rivers also cowrote, never offers any explanation for how the lead character defies human physiology. In fact, there isn’t much of a storyline at all, because Rabbit Test mostly comprises sketches filled with rude jokes at the expense of every ethnic group imaginable.

          In the film’s nadir, Lionel Carpenter (Crystal) becomes a worldwide celebrity invited to meet various heads of state, so he ends up in the hut of an African chieftain. Men from the tribe entertain their illustrious visitor by performing an R&B version of “Frére Jacques” while wearing grass skirts—as other tribesmen stand around the room wearing jockstraps and holding basketballs. Then, to drag the scene all the way down into cringe-worthiness, ’70s TV star Jimmie “J.J.” Walker shows up in the hut to perform a ventriloquist act, and Walker’s “dummy” is played by little-person actor Billy Barty. In blackface. It’s like that for the movie’s entire 84-minute running time. The UN Secretary-General lauds Lionel’s achievement by saying, “Next to you, the moon walk was doo-doo.”  Lionel’s cousin Danny (Alex Rocco) makes a TV deal to broadcast the impending birth, and then says, “If the money’s up front, we can show Lionel’s gentiles.”

          Crystal struggles valiantly to give a humane performance while Rivers bombards viewers with clunky one-liners and laborious sight gags, but the shallowness and stupidity is stultifying. Rivers’ desperation shows in the way she crams in bit-part performances by second-rate celebrities including Norman Fell, George Gobel, Rosey Grier, Peter Marshall, Roddy McDowall, Tom Poston, Charlotte Rae, and, of course, Rivers herself. None of it generates so much as a chuckle, except perhaps for the outrageous line that flamboyant comic Paul Lynde delivers while playing an excitable gynecologist: “Call maintenance—I have sperm all over my desk again!”

Rabbit Test: LAME

The Villain (1979)

          Revered stuntman Hal Needham made a successful transition to directing by helming a pair of hit comedies starring his buddy Burt Reynolds, Smokey and the Bandit (1977) and Hooper (1978), and the team scored once more with The Cannonball Run (1981). Unfortunately, the rest of Needham’s directorial filmography is quite grim, and the downward spiral began with this ghastly Western. Starring Kirk Douglas as an inept outlaw who tries to bushwhack a young woman carrying a strongbox filled with money, The Villain represents a sad attempt to piggyback on the success of Mel Brooks’ outrageous Blazing Saddles (1974). Even in his prime, Douglas wasn’t particularly well suited to comic material, and by the time he made The Villain, Douglas had succumbed to an excessive style of acting that approached self-caricature. Worse, The Villain was clearly conceived as a live-action cartoon in the style of classic Looney Tunes, so the middle of the picture comprises numbingly repetitive vignettes of Douglas falling off cliffs, getting run over by boulders, and receiving the full blasts of dynamite explosions. Think Wile E. Coyote, but without the wiliness.

          The allusions to vintage Warner Bros. cartoons are so overt that Douglas actually spends the last moments of the film bouncing up and down, in wearisome fast-motion photography, while the Looney Tunes theme plays on the soundtrack. It’s all as painful to watch as you might imagine, and yet the juvenile textures of Douglas’ performances aren’t the only eyesores in The Villain. Ann-Margret gives a vapid turn as the imperiled young woman, “Charming Jones,” and Arnold Schwarzenegger costars as Charming’s escort, “Handsome Stranger.” The unfunny running gag with these characters is that Charming is so hot for Handsome that she’s virtually salivating in every scene, but Handsome is too dim to notice. Even Ann-Margret’s beguiling cleavage fails to make her scenes interesting. Campy actors including Foster Brooks, Ruth Buzzi, Jack Elam, Paul Lynde (as an Indian named “Nervous Elk”), Robert Tessier, and Mel Tillis populate the periphery of the movie, though none is able to elevate the infantile rhythms of Robert G. Kane’s script. Bill Justis’ godawful score—which punctuates every would-be gag with an over-the-top horn blast—merely adds insult to injury.

The Villain: LAME