Goin' Coconuts
Over the years many Mormons have stopped by and offered me The Book of Mormon but they have never once offered me it's film companion, the wacky Donny and Marie vehicle from 1978, GOIN' COCONUTS. Maybe Mitt Romney bought all the copies in an effort to suppress it. Really makes you wonder. Maybe it's time to take a look. It starts with a bang in full disco mode with Donny and Marie performing some song about boogying down while nervous manager Sid(Herb Edelman) frets offstage. He doesn't want them to miss their flight to Hawaii and neither do we cus after that song we really want to get this motherfucker over with. On board, Marie unwittingly becomes the mule for a fake priest smuggling an ugly necklace. A couple of extremely goofy crooks are competing to get the necklace as well as a hot blond gal. Poor Ted Cassidy plays the chauffeur/goon of one of the crooks, who in turn is played by the guy that is Wo-Fat on Hawaii 5-0. Cassidy looks a lot like John Holmes, if Holmes had been to the tropics and caught some kind of freaky growing disease. Harold (Odd Job) Sakata is also briefly seen. But the standout villain has to be veteran character actor Ken Mars. Maybe at the request of TV veteran director Howard Morris or maybe just for the hell of it, Mars plays his role as Kruse by mimicing Peter Sellers' Dr. Strangelove. It's also slightly similar to his role in YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN. Mars really goes for it. He's got the accent, the gloved hand, everything. I can't imagine why they thought the average Donny and Marie fan would find it hilarious or even recognize it but there it is. Personally I would've preferred he base his character on Dr. Pretorious(BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN) as played by Ernest Thesiger but that's just me. What do I know about mormonsploitation anyway? Donny actually looks pretty much like he does today but Marie looks a lot like a cartoon chipmunk covered in flesh during a arcane ceremony. Donny may actually be doing one of those portrait of Dorian Grey deals and from the looks of it Marie might have bought some tits at some point. And they both have the same haircut. I kept looking for something weird or embarrassing but there's not too much outside of the film itself. There are several songs and comedic bungling by the crooks, along with typical throwaway gags. Jokes about Donny's teeth and so on. Donny calls his parents "mother and father" on the phone which seemed a bit Norman Bates. The tone overall is very much TV film or a special sitcom show, you know the ones where the Cunninghams go to the dude ranch, Brady's in Hawaii,The Facts of Life in Turkey, etc. There was some gun play which probably wouldn't fly now in a family flick and one dumb joke about an Asian guy's slanty eyes which also wouldn't make it today. I suppose the actual death of the villains was a bit of a surprise, since usually they just get caught. I did notice it was novelized for you hard-core types and has a sound track album as well.I wonder if there's anybody that has never seen the film but has read the book. No appearance by that really weird looking Osmond kid, Jimmy, either. But if a Mormon comes to your house, go ahead and ask about it GOIN" COCONUTS. Study his reaction closely.