Candy (1968)

Candy (1968), directed by Christian Marquand, screenplay by Buck Henry from a novel by Terry Southern.

Not so much a movie as one of those late-60s film projects, a mostly painful jumble of comically groovy outrageousness. The Magic Christian (1969), also by Southern, is a similar effort. Candy was made right at the cusp of that time when the sex restrictions in film were collapsing. It was meant to be saucy, although we get only flashes of nudity and brief simulated sex.

I was going to complain that the satiric episodes don't actually have any targets worth satirizing (Mexican biker girls avenging the lost virginity of a brother? A transvestite magic show?) but then read in the wikipedia that this is meant to be a satire on pornographic stories themselves. That went right by me. Whatever I knew of such literature in my youth has faded away.

It has some moments, but is really not worth it unless you are fascinated by that era or film genre.

The major characters and skits:

• Ewa Aulin (Miss Teen Sweden) is Candy, the obdurately innocent seeker, provoking uncontrollable lust in every man she meets. She has that vacant English girl look. Candy = Candide, get it?

• John Astin plays twin brothers. One is Candy's uptight father, the other her lascivious and degenerate uncle.

• Richard Burton is a hammy Byronic poet, hair blowing in the wind even indoors. He's in it for the money, booze, and college girls. We see him licking whiskey off the floor and molesting a mannikin.

• Ringo Starr is a Mexican gardener who speaks kind of rasta.

• Walter Matthau is a repressed, crazed general.

• James Coburn is a maestro surgeon, operating to bullfight music. John Huston is his hospital administrator. A bit where they bellow insults in the hallway is funny.

• A mobster bar.

• A frantic Italian filmmaker (played by the director).

• A hunchback criminal mastermind (?)

• The transvestite magic club.

• Marlon Brando is a rascal guru with a fully furnished semi trailer. A long skit includes the usual kama sutra sex position jokes.

• We have a weird visit to an underground Hindu "temple of doom".

• At the end, everyone reappears for a grand hippie festival on the hillside.

I kind of liked that final bit: the seeker arrives, the vision quest completed.

80% at RottenTomatoes? Far out.

The rock score by Dave Grusin includes songs by the Byrds and Steppenwolf.

The DVD is out of print and expensive on the used market. Later: available on Blu-ray.

For some reason looking at the thumbnails makes me like it better.