Sextette
D: Ken Hughes (1978); with Mae West, Timothy Dalton, Dom DeLuise, George Hamilton, Walter Pidgeon, George Raft. This film, a famously misguided team-up between the former Diamond Lil and the future James Bond, is guaranteed to wrench a nauseated grimace from any critic’s mug at the mention of the title alone — but is it really that bad? The answer is yes and no. As far as any attempt at labeling it a “good” film, it is undoubtedly indefensible — a pastiche of misfiring one-liners, puerile political satire, and so-called sexy situations built around a marriage between a young rich Briton and an eightysomething ex-sexpot who, at this point in her life, must have been giving her corset-maker hazard pay. As camp, however, it manages to avoid the one thing that kills many a candidate for “bad film” history; it’s not boring. It can’t be — there’s a new terror around every corner: DeLuise, as West’s assistant, launches into the Beatles’ “Honey Pie” for no apparent reason; normally laid-back and natural actor Ringo Starr shrieks and mugs through a large cameo; Alice Cooper sings a sappy ballad wearing a Barry Manilow wig. There are also some delights, like how Keith Moon, though more out-of-control than Starr, instead comes off as hilariously manic (in an unfortunately shorter cameo), and occasionally a zinger from waddling West hits rather than misses (not among them, her description of herself as a dedicated actress who’s “at Paramount all day and Fox all night” — say it out loud). Revelations that West’s also a former government agent and that a previous mob boss husband (who supposedly left her a widow) is still kicking serve to drive the plot on in increasingly implausible directions, and eventually we’re actually treated to the appearance of the ultimate cliché of bad Seventies comedy: the Jimmy Carter look-alike whose only job is to sit and grin like a ninny in front of a bowl full of peanuts. If you don’t mind your laughs largely unintentional, Sextette provides ’em, but there are some rough waters to tread here. Or did I forget to mention that the flick opens with a pronouncement by Regis Philbin? Despite the star’s already advanced age, that wasn’t a start that boded well for the film’s longevity.This article appears in October 8 • 1999.