One of the weirdest movies ever made will be on your TV shortly…that is, if you get Turner Classic Movies. I do want to make clear that though I write a lot about this film, I am not (repeat: NOT) telling you that Skidoo is a great movie and that you will admire the brilliant filmmaking skills on display. This is a movie to make your jaw hang open in astonishment and to cause you to mumble, "What the hell were they thinking?" Or maybe "What the hell were they smoking?"
There are a lot of such movies around but it's rare that you see one with so many familiar faces, including those of Jackie Gleason, half the cast of the Batman TV show, and Groucho Marx in his final screen appearance. I guess Groucho figured that after you've played God, anything else is anti-climactic.
I will suggest that this film has redeeming features, above and beyond its sheer camp value. Friends and I have had some spirited, enlightening discussions about what the movie business was going through in 1968, with studios and filmmakers floundering about, trying to grab onto a youth market that wasn't warming to the same old, same old. It also says something — the "what" is highly arguable but there's something — about the way the country was changing and leaving some people (Otto Preminger, obviously among them) behind.
Anyway, I suggest you watch or tape or TiVo. But I have to warn you that this is not Gone with the Wind. Then again, it also isn't The Gong Show Movie, either. (It has long amused me that those two movies appear, one after the other, in Leonard Maltin's movie guide.)
