204. Catalina Caper (1967)

60s Family Entertainment. Pollyanna (1960), Swiss Family Robinson (1960), The Absent-Minded Professor (1961), The Parent Trap (1961), Hatari! (1962), Son of Flubber (1963), Beach Party (1963), The Pink Panther (1963), Mary Poppins (1964), The Sound of Music (1965), That Darn Cat! (1965), The Love Bug (1968). The younger generation dictated entertainment. Kids stories veered into teen stories and happy families trended to cool chicks and guys. Nightly Prayers, Tank Tops, Tickle Bazooka, Joel Remembers The Sixties, “Creepy Girl”, Selling Tupperware. “Ohh a Scuba film”, “Hmm Jacques Cousteau Meets The Pink Panther”, “Dork Shack, baby, yeah…” “That’s where it’s at” or “About to set sail”?

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One of my top comfort episodes.

“The only genuine talent in this film!”

Little Richard GIF

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Creepy Girl.

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Joel Remembers The Sixties.

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Catalina Caper Chart.

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Frank Sells Tupperware.

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Little Richard Slays.

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This Is The Place.

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This is where Twilight Girl’s Dad (pre-mustache) and Mom first met. They’re totally extras in this milkfed teen dance brigade.

Which definitely helps explain why T.G. looks at male-female relationships in such a screwed-up way.

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I love this host segment!! I find it really hard to get through the movie itself because it is so non-sensical and ridiculous but the host segments, especially this one, are just gold!

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Of all the Jim Begg movies, this one is the Jim Beggest.

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A beach party movie where the former Mouseketeer is Tommy Kirk instead of Annette Funicello.

I never understood why the bumbling inspector was named Fingers O’Toole, which sounds more appropriate for a pickpocket or a safecracker.

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I’ll just be honest here. This one has been tricky for me. I’ve watched it a couple of times and it has it’s moments. But I just don’t see it as a classic like many Msties do. I feel the same way about Fugitive Alien. So, in the spirit of Bruce’s posts, and because this is a summer feeling movie, I’m going to give it a rewatch. See if it catches me this time.

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This is one of my favorites, probably because the host segments are so good. Joel Remembers the Sixties is probably the host segment that made me laugh the most the first time I saw it. And of course “Creepy Girl” is a classic earworm.
Another gem of this movie is the gawdawful music and dancing (begging your pardon, of course, Mr. Richard). I’ve seen it in some other films too but the teen movie genre of this era always seemed to feature the most frenetic, rhythmless, unattractive dancing ever unleashed by repressed white people. Catalina Caper is like a bunch of bad music videos peppered with some scenes about a treasure hunt and a misogynistic harem anime lol.

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There’s always a soft spot in me for CC. Its early MST which gives it a glow of nostalgia, and it has a “Boatniks” sort of goofy vibe to it that puts it in the era of other similar movies like “The Computer that Wore Tennis Shoes”. These are 60s movies that have a kind of innocent charm to them which gives them a pass (IMO) for some of the problematic historical aspects. They’re goofy. They’re silly. They don’t have any pretense or agenda. They’re just movies about teens doing teen things and sticking it to “the adults” along the way.

In small doses such movies are fine for what they are but for sure a little bit of them goes a long way and I wouldn’t want to watch Catalina Caper, Village of the Giants, and Attack of The The Eye Creatures back to back.

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The second “e” is grammatical, otherwise it would be Crepy Girl.

Not a huge fan of the song, but I love that line.

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I’ve always thought of it as a solid episode, but it’s not one of my personal all-time greats. I do award extra points for trying to riff on a comedy. Which, as I think Mike Nelson commented once, is automatically tougher than riffing a film where everyone’s being ultra-serious or sincere.

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I agree, it is tougher to riff a comedy. Although, they really pulled it off well in Attack of the Eye Creatures. Now THAT might be a top five for me from the CC era.

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My absolute favorite thing is this episode is them casually mentioning Jacques Tati. Several years after I first saw this, I got to attend a retrospective of his movies. It was a blast.

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It makes sense to mention Tati. That detective was a blatant ripoff of Hulot.

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