In 1965’s The Ghost In The Invisible Bikini, the recently deceased Hiram Stokely (Boris Karloff) is informed that he has just 24 hours to perform a good deed and get into Heaven. He also has 24 hours to keep Basil Rathbone from stealing his estate. Hiram teams up with the ghost of his his dead girlfriend (Susan Hart) and together, they help Hiram’s real heir throw a pool party!
I know, I know. That makes no sense. Go with it, it’s the 60s and it’s a party. The film is silly even by the standards of the typical beach party film but it features Boris Karloff and Basil Rathbone somehow managing to maintain their dignity and Nancy Sinatra singing a song. (Dean Martin’s daughter, Claudia, also makes an appearance.) Even more importantly, this is a film that epitomizes an era. Released in 1965, this was the last AIP beach party movie and it’s a product of the innocent, fun-loving early 60s that would soon be replaced by the violent turmoil of the late 60s. Hiram was probably happy that he got out when he could.
1941’s Here Comes Mr. Jordan tells the story of Joe Pendelton (Robert Montgomery).
Joe’s a boxer, an honest and kind-hearted guy who is in training for the big title fight. Despite the concerns of his trainer, Max (James Gleason), Joe decides to take his own private airplane out for a flight. A freak accident causes the plane to go into a nosedive and Joe suddenly finds himself standing amongst the clouds with a bunch of other people who are waiting for their chance to enter Heaven.
7013 (Edward Everett Horton), an angel, explains that he took Joe’s soul up to heaven when he saw that the plane was about to crash. Joe is not happy about this. He wants his title fight! 7013’s superior, Mr. Jordan (Claude Rains), checks his records and discovers that a mistake has been made. Joe was supposed to live until 1991 and he was also supposed to win the boxing championship. Unfortunately, Max has had Joe’s body cremated. Mr. Jordan decides to put Joe’s soul into the body of someone else who is scheduled to die. Joe asks to be put in the body of an athlete so that he can pursue his boxing career.
Instead, Joe ends up in the body of a middle-aged banker named Bruce Farnsworth. Farnsworth has been poisoned by his wife (Rita Johnson) and her lover (John Emery). At first, Joe refuses to become Farnsworth but when he sees his murderers taunting Bette (Evelyn Keyes), whose father was defrauded by Farnsworth, Joe changes his mind. His murderers are shocked when Farnsworth turns out to be alive. Bette is shocked when the previously cold Farnsworth helps her get back the money that her father lost. And Max is shocked when Farnsworth calls him to the mansion and explains that he’s really Joe Pendleton. Only with Joe/Farnsworth plays the saxophone badly does Max believe what Joe says. Joe asks Max to train him for the boxing match that he was scheduled to fight while alive. Max agrees but Mr. Jordan warns Joe that, if he’s going to fulfill his destiny and become champ, it’s not going to be as Bruce Farnsworth, regardless of the fact that Joe/Farnsworth and Bette have now fallen in love.
A romantic comedy that is blessed with two likable performances from Robert Montgomery and Evelyn Keyes and a great one from Claude Rains, Here Comes Mr. Jordan was nominated for Best Picture of 1941. It lost to How Green Was My Valley. While Here Comes Mr. Jordan really can’t compare to some of the other films that lost (amongst the other nominees were Citizen Kane and The Maltese Falcon), it’s still a wonderfully charming film that holds up well today. Everyone should be as lucky as to have a guardian who is as charming and urbane as Claude Rains is as Mr. Jordan.
In 1978, Here Comes Mr. Jordan was remade by Warren Beatty, who named his version of the story Heaven Can Wait. That version of the story was also nominated for Best Picture, though it lost to The Deer Hunter.
The 1966 film, The Ghost In The Invisible Bikini, asks the question, “What can you do if you want to have a beach party but you don’t have a beach?”
The answer: “Find a pool!”
Seriously, a pool is just as good as a beach and fortunately, Chuck (Tommy Kirk) has a pool where his friends can hang out and listen as Vicki (Nancy Sinatra) sings a song. It’s in a big old mansion and hey, it might be haunted. It used to belong to Hiram Stokeley (Boris Karloff) and he’s dead now so he certainly won’t mind, right?
Well, what if he’s not dead!?
Oh wait, actually, he is dead. But he’s still hanging around. It turns out that he needs to do at least one good deed in order to get into Heaven. (Isn’t starring in Frankenstein enough? I mean, c’mon…..) It also turns that Hiram only has 24 hours to do that good deed or it’s off to Hell for him. Maybe he could figure out a way to help Chuck and his family win his fortune! Hiram enlists the help of his long-dead girlfriend, Cecily (Susan Hart). Cecily, we are told, is wearing an invisible bikini but we just have to take the film’s word on that because it’s invisible and, seeing as how Cecily’s a ghost, it’s always possible that only reason she’s transparent is because she’s a spirit. I mean, seriously, who knows how ghosts work?
Anyway, it’s not going to be easy for Hiram and Cecily to ensure that Chuck inherits that fortune, largely because Chuck and all of his friends are idiots. The other problem is that Reginald Ripper (Basil Rathbone), Hiram’s lawyer, is determined to win that money for himself and, if you have any doubt that he’s a bad dude, just check out his name. GOOD PEOPLE ARE NOT NAMED REGINALD RIPPER! Fortunately, even though Reginald graduated from law school and is played by Basil freaking Rathbone, he’s still an idiot and he comes up with the stupidest plan possible to get Chuck and friends out of the house.
He’s going to make them think that it’s haunted!
(But it is haunted….)
Reginald’s plan is to have his evil associates, J. Sinister Hulk (Jesse White), Chicken Feather (Benny Rubin), and Princess Yolanda (Bobbi Shaw), pretend to be monsters and ghosts in order to scare all of the teens out of the house. He also enlists his daughter, Sinistra (Quinn O’Hara), to help but Sinistra isn’t really bad. She’s just extremely near-sighted and someone thought it would be a good idea to name her Sinistra.
And then the bikers show up! This is one of AIP’s beach party films so, of course, there are bikers. Eric von Zipper (Harvey Lembeck) shows up and pretends to be Marlon Brando in The Wild One. Of course, at the time this film was made, the real Marlon Brando was filming Arthur Penn’s The Chase so I’m going to guess that Harvey Lembeck probably had more fun pretending to be Brando than Brando was having being himself….
Anyway, this is a stupid movie even by the standards of the AIP beach party films. It’s also notably disjointed. That probably has something to do with the fact that Karloff and Susan Hart weren’t actually added to the film until after the movie had already been shot. Apparently, AIP felt that the first cut of the movie was missing something so they said, “Let’s toss in a little Karloff!” Of course, Boris Karloff was such an old charmer that it doesn’t matter that he doesn’t ever really interact with anyone other than Susan Hart over the course of the film. You’re just happy to see him.
So yeah, technically, this is not a good film but, at the same time, you kind of know what you’re getting into when you watch a movie called The Ghost In The Invisible Bikini. The jokes fall flat. The songs are forgettable. But the whole thing is such a product of its time that it’s always watchable from an anthropological perspective. Add to that, you get Boris Karloff and Basil Rathbone, doing what they had to do to pay the bills and somehow surviving with their dignity intact. Good for them.
Tonight, on Kolchak, someone or something is eating the elderly and poor residents of Roosevelt Heights! Carl Kolchak investigates!
After battling Native American monsters, Cajun monsters, and European monsters, Kolchak finds himself battling a Hindu demon in this episode. Apparently, Chicago was quite a busy place in the 1970s.
This episode originally aired on December 20th, 1974, just in time for the Christmas season.
Through the Shattered Lens 