Hello!

I wouldn’t necessarily call this a public service … we expend too much effort around here arguing that movies and entertainent used to be better, so here’s something that proves the opposite. By 1974 I was in college and far away from Television, so I missed this pilot for a follow-up comedy series to follow George Schlatter’s Laugh-In.

It’s called Lampoon, and instead of doing something new, it copies the incredibly lame humor formula from the first show. The ‘zoom-in-and-out on a go-go dancer bit’ wore thin in the first year of Laugh-In but Schlatter doesn’t seem to have anything new in his bag of tricks — the not-well-cast Desi Arnaz Jr. and Brenda Vaccaro, a corps of Broadway hopefuls tasked with making something out of nothing, and slightly fancier pre-disco lighting effects. In the worst bit, about 15.5 minutes in, the new cast mimics the distinctive talent from the first show. It’s just not working.

Vietnam jokes!  Oil embargo jokes!  Are you laughing yet?  It kills me to see the obviously talented cast members giving their all for this. True, almost every variety show from the time looks pretty lame, seen as little as ten years later; I’m kind of glad I wasn’t watching much. A lot of The Smothers Brothers held up, but it was taken off the air in 1969…

Thanks to Michael McQuarrie for sending in both of today’s links.

Correspondent Michael also sent along this photo, reminding me that it is indeed true that, over on the Mediterranean island-nation of Malta, the old ‘Sweethaven’ set for the Robert Altman / Robin Williams / Shelley Duvall musical comedy Popeye (1980), has been turned into a tourist destination. The set was an entire little town on a cove, built for Altman’s scores of actors to improvise in.

It has its own tourism website as Popeye Village. The big attractions are a restaurant, a winery and The Beach Bar.

A former boss/business partner retired to Malta. The scenery and historical sites, and the port of Valetta look wonderful, but I don’t really know if I need to see this movie place. Another friend (local) reacts to the mere mention of the movie Popeye as if it’s Kryptonite, the worst thing ever made. We like parts of it, especially its spot-on Popeye-Olive Oyl combo. I once had a theory that every scene takes 3 minutes to get going, and goes on 3 minutes too long. I wanted to edit a trimmed-down version severely pruning the ‘local color’ inanities … material that some fans is the best thing in the movie.

Anyway, can you see yourself having lunch at Popeye’s Sweethaven?

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson