An All Star Cast in "The Dirty Movie That Wasn't"

I recall, as a young lad reading the daily Los Angeles Times delivered to our door, always checking out movie ads and posters. The really good ones fascinated me -- like the great one for The Dirty Dozen , with Lee Marvin and his squad in an action painting that promised a machine-gun epic.

The sexy ads and posters -- let's face it -- turned me on a bit at a young age. Women in bikinis -- whether real women or sexy paintings. Oh, yeah. (Try 1967's "Deadlier Than the Male," for instance.)

And sometimes, in the daily Los Angeles Times, you would get a "daily build-up" SERIES of ads to promote a new movie.

Look at the poster for "Candy" shown on this moviechat page. See how in different spots in the ad, there is a painting of one of the male stars -- Walter Matthau at the top(evidently he was actually the biggest male movie star in the group at the time, newly hot from The Odd Couple). Marlon Brando on the side(a major star but in a career slump.) James Coburn. Richard Burton. Ringo Starr(not much of a movie star, but a Beatle...and that was bigger.)

Well, what happened in the Los Angeles Times was, each day, you would get the painting of only ONE of those stars, like this:

Monday: "Good Grief! Walter Matthau is in Candy."

Tuesday: "Good Grief!" Marlon Brando is in Candy."

Wednesday: "Good Grief!" Richard Burton is in Candy.

And so forth, until by Friday...maybe Monday..they put out the ad with all the stars in it -- and the pretty blonde young thing (Ewa Aulin) -- dangerously close to teenage level -- who played Candy.

I was "excited by hype" even at that early age, and I was excited to see that Brando AND Burton AND Coburn AND Matthau AND Starr were in Candy. (Not to mention, John Huston and John Astin for flavor.)

But alas, I knew I wasn't going to get to actually SEE "Candy." For it was X-rated(wasn't it?) and it was from a very, very "dirty book" that I DID know about -- even at that age -- because the book was much talked about in the press and it was in the parental "stash" of dirty books that one could find if one looked hard enough (hello, Fanny Hill.)

So I blushed a bit and swallowed hard and just had to wonder about an X-rated movie with Our Man Flint and Oscar Madison in it.

Flash forward -- years, decades, VHS -- and I finally got to SEE Candy. By then, it looked "old fashioned and quaint" -- filmed on the long-ago film stock of 1968, with the kind of jumbled editing and poor script-writing that make for a movie that really doesn't play like a movie.

"How did they make a movie out of Candy?" Just like "How did they make a movie out of Lolita?" Well, both times , they didn't. (Even with the great Kubrick behind the camera of Lolita.)

Its the sex part of Candy that plays ridiculous now. The X and R ratings were just barely upon us in 1968(the ratings came in November, Candy came in December), and the movie has a timidness and awkwardness about it that doesn't even qualify as soft-core(probably with all those movie stars in it , that wasn't allowed anyway. Though Mr. Brando would soon get into it with Last Tango in Paris.)

What we get are brief glimpses or extended blurred visions of nudity. Brief sexual positions that don't look like sex could really be had. And mainly a constant air of the titular Candy being ogled, conned and seduced by the male stars. The "sex" comes in the foreplay dialogue, not in actual scenes.

I'm reminded that come the more liberated 70's, both foreign and American films would have graphic -- if brief -- full on sex scenes and plenty of nudity. (I'll offer Rancho Deluxe and North Dallas Forty as having two good ones.) Had Candy been made then, maybe this would have occurred. But maybe they wouldn't have been able to cast Richard Burton and Walter Matthau.

Even with all those American male movie stars, Candy is definitely a "Eurofilm" and somewhat of an attempted art film -- it doesn't make sense on purpose. The ending is particularly "of its time" -- with pretty Ewa walking across a bucolic landscape as each of the male movie stars makes a final silent cameo appearance(obviously filmed by each star when the other male stars weren't there) Matthau riding awkwardly on a horse with a saber is the most ridiculous one; James Coburn transformed into a little boy(complete with Coburn's beard) is the weirdest one. And Brando does a "Jesus crucifixtion" bit (carried high into the air on a wire) that he tranforms into slapstick(Brando LIKED to perform slapstick.)

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