The Fat Spy (1966)
Posted: Thu Jun 09, 2022 7:26 am
As part of an experiment, I recently compiled a list of every movie I have access to (both locally and streaming) and wrote a script that selects one randomly from the list. Last night was the script's maiden voyage, and the first film it selected was 1966's The Fat Spy, available in its entirety on YouTube.
It's hard to believe a film with a runtime of only 80 minutes could go so far off the rails and stay there for so long, but The Fat Spy pulls it off. The movie's plot had potential: a group of teenagers convene on a remote island to party which, unbeknownst to them, may be home to the fountain of youth. The problem is, other than talking about it... nothing really happens.
George Wellington is the owner of a cosmetics company, and the previously mentioned remote island. Working for Wellington is a pair of identical twins -- Herman Gonjular, his right hand man, and Irving Gonjular, the titular "fat spy" who keeps an eye on Wellington's island. When Irving reports that teenagers have landed on the island, Herman and Wellington's busty daughter "Junior" are dispatched to the island to take care of business. I think.
Both Gonjular twins are played by Jack E. Leonard, a comedian known for his sarcastic and biting humor (he once introduced Don Rickles as "the man who has been doing my act for 12 years"). The Fat Spy was originally intended as a vehicle for Leonard, although he's given nothing funny to do in the entire movie. Herman's love interest, Wellington's daughter Junior, is played by Jayne Mansfield. Why anyone who looks like Jayne Mansfield would be interested in anyone who looks like Jack E. Leonard makes no sense, and it's not one of the top 1,000 things in this film that doesn't make sense. Leonard's other character, the Fat Spy, is in love with Camille Salamander, played by Phyllis Diller. Depending on when you saw it, The Fat Spy was billed as a vehicle for Leonard, Mansfield, and Diller, although none of them did much to claim it.
It shouldn't have been that hard to come up with a 90 minute film based on the fountain of youth, but somehow writer Matthew Andrews and director Joseph Cates were only able to come up with about 45 minutes of material, so they padded the rest of the film with musical performances and dance scenes. The film opens -- and I mean opens, before the credits, before anything -- with a "rockin" acoustic folk song performance two minutes in length. A few minutes later, we're treated to a dance party sequence on the beach that is so long it manages to make busty women bouncing around in bikinis seem boring. The Fat Spy has more musical numbers than every show on Broadway combined, and isn't billed as a musical.
It has been said that this film is a parody of spy movies, and a parody of beach movies, but at best it's just a parody of the art of making a movie. The plot is confusing and splintered, constantly being interrupted by random musical numbers by major characters, minor characters, and complete strangers. The comedy sprinkled between the songs is like a study in being unfunny -- sight gags that don't pay off, jokes that fall flat, and character traits that don't make any sense. It's like someone didn't quite understand what comedy was, or tried to invent a new style of it.
"Where did you get those eyes?"
"They came with the head!"
The Fat Spy currently has a 2.7/10 rating on IMDB, and appears in the 2004 film The 50 Worst Movies Ever Made. The film damaged the film careers of both Jack E. Leonard and Phyllis Diller -- the former returned to stand up and the latter, comedy and television. Mansfield, who died in a car crash the following year got off the lightest. The Fat Spy was the last screenplay written by Matthew Andrews, and while Joseph Cates went on to direct and produce tons of television specials, by far the best thing he produced was Phoebe Cates.