Conservative talk show star Michael Medved first came to the public’s attention back in 1980 as the co-author of The Golden Turkey Awards, a supremely entertaining book about really, really bad movies.
In that book, Medved dubbed Plan 9 from Outer Space the “worst film of all time,” and the label stuck. Which is silly because the actual “worst film of all time” would be literally unwatchable, and Plan 9 holds up to repeated viewings thanks to its goofy sincerity; (it’s a lot like a charmingly clumsy children’s Christmas pageant, like the one in Belles of Saint Mary’s…)
No, Skiddoo is MUCH worse, but this Otto Preminger disaster was justly forgotten soon after its 1968 release and existed mostly in the confused and possibly faulty memories of anyone weird or stoned enough to have sat through it, who told their younger brothers about it, who told their friends. Skiddoo is so weird that its weirdness never got exaggerated during this game of “telephone”, because nothing you can add to it is any weirder than the original stuff.
For years, trash mavens like me heard rumors about this bizarre film, which sounded more like an urban legend than a real movie: Jackie Gleason on acid? Groucho Marx as “God”? A striptease by Carol Channing?
You could only get a copy from places like this.
Then Turner Classic Movies ran Skiddoo last year, allowing us to see this mess for ourselves. I can’t really believe I sat through the whole thing, but after all these years I felt weirdly obligated to do it.
Anyway, TrailersFromHell has the trailer up:
