A mad journey into the mind of the depraved!
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
THE HAPPY HOOKER GOES TO WASHINGTON (1977)
Joey Heatherton takes over the title role as Xaviera Hollander and the first thing you notice is she's completely lost her Dutch accent and seems nothing like the character from the first film. Then things get weird. Going into this expecting it to be a continuation of the first movie you're in for quite a shock as you quickly realize that they replaced most of the dramatic elements with slapstick comedy and endless cameos of TV stars of the past. It starts off with Joe E. Ross from CAR 54 WHERE ARE YOU?, then you get Rip Taylor as a photographer, then the dad from LAVERNE & SHIRLEY, Ray Walston from MY FAVORITE MARTIAN, the general from I DREAM OF JEANIE, the guy from F-TROOP, Odd-Job from the James Bond movies, legendary midget-actor Billy Barty and those were just the ones I recognized. The list goes on and on. I was happy to see one of my favorite character actors, Mr. Sydney Lassick as a government-employed TV censor but even he couldn't save what is really a hodgepodge mess of a film. There's 70's commercial-spoofs thrown in for no real reason and I would have thought they were trying to go for a sort of AIRPLANE! satire-movie vibe except that movie didn't exist yet. Also the movie tries to shoehorn in a stupid plot about The Happy Hooker being put on trial for being immoral but these bits in-between all the silly chaos going on ends up with a jarring feeling and none of it works much at all. I think if I made this sequel I woulda went the complete opposite direction and made it a hard-edged thriller with crazy sex-hi-jinks but at least we get more boobs popping out in this than the first and that's about all I can say that's positive about it.
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