Cinema: Erotic Errors

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A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum was one of the hottest burlesque shows that ever hit Broadway. It had a grossly libidinous libretto snippeted out of the plays of Plautus, and lickerish leerics that read like Pompeian graffiti. Above all, it had a huge round Zero named Mostel, who wore a fingertip tunic the size of a pup tent and went tippety-skipping about the stage like a bull walrus in drag.

The movie has all these things and plenty more. It has Color by Deluxe, some charmingly scummy urbs and suburbs, a hilarious "sitdown orgy for 40," and a bunch of top bananas: Phil Silvers cast as a pious pimp who combines worship and whoreship, Jack Gilford playing a collector of "erotic pottery," the late Buster Keaton doing a deadpan dad with a somewhat unusual problem: "My daughter is a eunuch?"

Unhappily, Director Richard Lester (A Hard Day's Night) sells his mirth-right for a mess of footage. Broadway's Forum was a head-spinning comedy of erotic errors in which three men and two women paired off in most of the possible permutations. A direct director could have reduced complexity to clarity; but Director Lester, with his scatty continuity and wham-bam camerantics, has about the same effect on this picture as a dachshund puppy might have on a game of chess.

What matters more is that the Lester manner conflicts with the Mostel style. Caught up in the director's web of whimsies, this most projectively physiological of comedians subsides like an elephant conquered by cobwebs. Not once is Hero Zero permitted to charge the camera, as he charged his Broadway audiences, with the massive animal aggression that is the essence of his comedy and the soul of slapstick.

In his quieter moments, however, Mostel comes through beautifully. As a prospective purchaser, he examines a leggy pair of twin slaves like a prosperous matron examining a pair of table lamps, and then earnestly inquires: "I don't suppose you'd break up a set?" And as a connoisseur of wines, he inspects a jug of fine Falernian and asks sniffishly: "Was 1 a good year?"