PUSSYCAT, PUSSYCAT, I LOVE YOU

 

PUSSYCAT, PUSSYCAT, I LOVE YOU (1970) is something of a follow-up to the popular 60s comedy WHAT'S NEW PUSSYCAT. It attempts to be sexy and funny, but it's just plain weird. The main reason I watched it was due to the fact that Veronica Carlson makes an appearance in it. 

PUSSYCAT is set in Rome and concerns the amorous adventures of one Fred C. Dobbs, played by Ian McShane. (Yes, the character does have the exact name as the one played by Humphrey Bogart in THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE.) Fred is an apparently successful English playwright, who doesn't do much actual writing, because he's too busy living it up in Italy with all the various women in his life. Fred has a wife (Anna Calder-Marshall), a mistress (Beba Loncar), a buxom maid who he is very familiar with (Gaby Andre), and he's just hired the maid's gorgeous teenage niece (Katia Christina) as his "secretary". Fred also has one-night stands with just about every woman he comes into contact with. All this activity bothers his wife, who decides to play the field for herself, especially when she encounters a handsome American movie star who goes by the name Grant Granite (John Gavin). In between all the many romantic encounters between all the main characters, all sorts of wacky and bizarre happenings ensue. Unfortunately none of them are very amusing, or entertaining. 

PUSSYCAT tries to be a Swinging Sixties sex romp, with plenty of mini-skirts, cleavage, beautiful women, and several makeout sessions, but it just winds up being a big tease. Nothing really raunchy ever happens, and because all the characters act so silly, you don't really care what happens to them. The movie tries to set up Ian McShane as cool, hip, and charming, but from today's perspective he's an irresponsible sexist lout. It's also hard to believe that every woman in the movie would go swooning over him, even if this is a dopey comedy. 

Writer-director Rod Amateau was an American TV veteran, and it shows in the fact that the film's attempts at humor are on a very mediocre sitcom level. There's a number of LAUGH-IN-style blackout gags, parodies of DOCTOR ZHIVAGO and MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE, freeze-frames, and occasional sarcastic narration. Fred's best friend is a "scalp therapist" (Fred's afraid of losing his hair) who gets a kick out of listening to his client's stories of his numerous affairs. The goofy doctor (Severn Darden) has a stern wife (Joyce Van Patten), and the two are constantly trying to kill each other (sadly a lot of screen time is spent on this subplot). Fred also has nightmares about a male gorilla who is in love with him (don't ask). 

Towards the climax all the main characters get involved in the production of a lousy spaghetti western. The ironic thing about that is the cinematographer of PUSSYCAT was Tonino Delli Colli, who did the same job on THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY. But even he couldn't make this movie any better. 

As for Veronica Carlson, she's in the pre-credits sequence (she and Ian McShane are trying to make out in her very small car). Veronica also appears in about the first twenty minutes of the movie, and after that she is gone....and so was my interest in anything else about the story. Another famed Hammer lady, Madeline Smith, has a very small role as Fred's young sister-in-law, who is another one of his conquests. Eurocult veteran Paul Muller has a cameo as a guru at a party--every Swinging Sixties movie has a party sequence where all sorts of fine-looking young folks wearing eccentric costumes dance and gyrate for about five minutes. 

The music score for PUSSYCAT was by Lalo Schifrin, even though variations on Burt Bacharach's WHAT'S NEW PUSSYCAT theme are used a number of times. There's also a main credits song called "Groove Into It" which is sung by a guy who sounds like Tom Jones, but his name is actually one Henry Shed. 

PUSSYCAT, PUSSYCAT, I LOVE YOU is one of those many 1960s bedroom farces that have aged horribly. It's also 100 minutes long, and by the time I was halfway through it I was waiting for it to end. It does have plenty of attractive women in it (Veronica Carlson, as expected, is simply stunning), but it never adds up to anything. I watched this film on Tubi, and I will say that their widescreen presentation of it was of Blu-ray quality.