Wednesday Bad Movie

Number 160 of a Series

There must be a reason I am selecting this movie for the Wednesday review. If there is, then somebody please tell me, because this is a really bad movie. Let’s say this gets the Wednesday review owing to its being one of a classic series. It’s one of the Bob Hope and Bing Crosby Road Movies. Road to Bali came out in 1952, twelve years after the first of the series, and it is the next to the last of seven. Wikipedia has the details, so read there, because this movie does not have a plot.

• Bing Crosby as George Cochran
• Bob Hope as Harold Gridley
• Dorothy Lamour as Princess Lala McTavish
• Murvyn Vye as Prince Ken Arok
• Peter Coe as Gung
• Ralph Moody as Bhoma Da
• Leon Askin as King Ramayana
• Carolyn Jones as Eunice
• Michael Ansara as Guard
• Harry Cording as Verna’s father

Hope and Crosby make these movies by way of their sheer star power. They were tops in on-stage performance in the 20th century. Here are George and Harold in Melbourne, Australia, wowing the audience with their song and dance routine. It’s worth watching the movie just to see the two perform.

The performance is cut short, however, due to the arrival, with authorities, of two damsels wanting the two to make good on promises of marriage. We see them on a train out of town, apparently heading for Darwin on the opposite point of the island. They are cheapskates to the core. Harold rides the coach (one ticket) and passes food to George, riding the rods below.

They get ejected from the train and stroll over to the employment bureau in Darwin. The only job available is for salvage divers, and they scoop it up. It turns out the job is a death trap. Prince Ken Arok has sent multiple divers down to recover sunken family jewels, and all are now dead from the sea monster that guards the site.

But it is here the movie begins to get interesting. Enter Princess Lala McTavish. Her father was Scottish, but she is as exotic as the island of Bali. George and Harold are immediately taken to her, which is standard for these movies.

The setting gives opportunity to a number of flashy dance routines. Here is only one.

Some cinematographic magic adds spice. Lala plays the flute, but instead of a snake emerging from the urn, up comes an exotic dancer, growing to full size as she emerges.

To cut it short, George retrieves the jewels, escaping the monster. The prince shows his true colors and prepares to shoot all three, but the monster emerges and sweeps the prince overboard, and the three take the boat and head for Mali.

But they don’t make it. The boat founders on a rock, and they escape to shore on a strange island. There are many adventures on the island, but I am going to skip over those. This series must have been a preamble to Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In. It is salted with sight gags and drop-ins. Here a man with a rifle emerges from the jungle and fires off his gun. It is one of two scenes I recall from seeing it decades ago. George explains it’s his brother, and he promised him a shot in the movie.

Here is another notable vignette. They come upon Humphrey Bogart as Charlie Allnut towing the African Queen through the swamp. The film came out the year before this one, and in my younger days this was the first time I heard of the movie.

Anyhow, the movie has to wind down, and both men want Dorothy Lamour, and she chooses George, which is how these movies always turn out. As a consolation, the princess hands Harold the urn, which somehow turned up on the island, and beckons him to conjure up a doll of his own. Out comes Jane Russell, and Harold is delighted, except Jane goes off with George and Lala, leaving Harold attempting to halt the end of the movie by shoving aside the “THE END” banner.