Wild Party (1975)

Wild Party: Directed by James Ivory. With James Coco, Raquel Welch, Perry King, Tiffany Bolling. With the arrival of talking pictures, a silent film comedian (a Fatty Arbuckle-type) throws a lavish party to try and save his failing career. His plan is to release one last, great silent epic. In HD.

“The famous poem of the 1920s becomes an ambitious meeting of American International and Merchant-Ivory, who sink into a most un-Merchant-Ivory-like Hollywood orgy in this tale suggested by, but not actually dramatizing, the Fatty Arbuckle scandal that ruined his career. With a screenplay and songs by Broadway songwriter Walter Marks, it seems to lick its lips at all prospects for lasciviousness, reveling in the bare breasts and spent drunken bodies the morning after. The songs are OK, and James Cocou0026#39;s excellent, carefully indicating the conflicting warmth, selfishness, and desperation in Jolly Grimm. But Raquel Welch feels anachronistic, not convincingly of the Twenties, and her singing and dancing are at best proficient. Itu0026#39;s a messy movie, the plot threads not really hanging together, and the trendy camera-work belongs to 1975 and 1975 only. Letu0026#39;s call it an interesting failure.”