REVIEWED BY DAN STUMPF:


SKIPALONG ROSENBLOOM. Eagle-Lion/United Artists, 1951. “Slapsie Maxie” Rosenbloom, Max Baer, Jackie Coogan, Hilary Brooke, Fuzzy Knight, Raymond Hatton. Written by Eddie Forman and Dean Reisner. Directed by the indefatigable Sam Newfield.

   A surprisingly sharp comedy in the anything-goes mode of Hellzapoppin and Never Give a Sucker an Even Break, co-written by a guy who went on to Dirty Harry and other prestigious Clint Eastwood flicks, and helmed by a director who routinely churned out a clunker or two every week for PRC.

   Let me pause here and reflect on something I read so long ago I’d most forgot about it, let alone who wrote it and where I read it, but it goes something like this: When we think of the B-movie classics, we tend to remember the noirs, the westerns and the horror films, because tragedy is easy to do. It’s hard work doing comedy and practically impossible to do it in a low-budget film.

   Skipalong Rosenbloom is a happy exception, performed with gusto by a willing ensemble, laced with a few surprisingly subtle jokes (Maybe too subtle for its own good; did anybody but me laugh when Jackie Coogan kicks an obnoxious brat and snarls, “Child actors are murder.” ?) and directed with the slapdash abandon one normally associates with Same Newfield — only here it works.

   The whole thing is framed as 50s television show, complete with commercials, obviously satirizing the Hopalong Cassidy craze of that time. Maxie Rosenbloom takes the title part (surprise!) and runs with it, obviously delighted to be the star of the piece. Max Baer is just as good, snarling threats and gloating wonderfully at each new dastardly plot. Hillary Brooke makes an enthusiastic frontier vamp, with just the right amount of over-playing, while Western Icons Fuzzy Knight and Raymond Hatton lend a bit of authenticity to the whole thing — particularly Fuzzy as Sneaky Pete, cinema’s most enthusiastic henchman ever.

   As for the film itself, I’m not going to repeat any of the outrageous jokes; take my word for it, they anticipate what Mad comic books would start dong the next year — Jackie Coogan even looks a bit like Melvin. Raymond Hatton lives in a ranch house about the size of a tool shed, and at one point when Sneaky Pete wants to eavesdrop, he simply sticks his head in the window, unnoticed by all.

   From this we go on to chases, gun battles, fist-fights, falling off a mountain and a particularly brutal gopher-beating. That’s right: a gopher-beating. This is, in short, a film in its own little world, like no other movie ever — and I mean that in a good way.