Sept. 6, 2012 TCM

I dvr'd this movie last nite, and watched it a couple of times, planning to watch it at least once more before I delete it. I hadn't seen it since it was in theaters in '69 and I was amazed to find it was actually better, more fun, to watch now, than it was when it was new. The main difference is, of course, then I was watching it and comparing it to the Laugh In shows that I watched regularly then, and it didn't hold up well to that, but now I am only watching it as an old movie I barely remember. It was totally derived from many other old movie comedies, Abbott and Costello of course, and somewhat from the Bob and Bing Road pictures, and even a bit from The Three Stooges. This is not a bad thing, one point of all those formulaic entries is that you know what to expect, and in this movie you always knew what to expect and could anticipate everything that happened. This is definitely not a good picture, but as a bad picture its still worth watching just to totally escape, and abandon all sense and logic, and to listen to the one-liners, like "trying to catch a cab on a rainy night in Flushing". I laughed despite myself now, where in '69 I just groaned at the lameness.