Recently watched: 3 Nuts in Search of a Bolt (1964). (Tagline: “The screwiest comedy of the year!”).
Renaissance man of vintage smut Tommy Noonan (actor, comedian, screenwriter, director and producer) followed up his witless but profitable 1963 Jayne Mansfield sex farce Promises ... Promises! with this even more witless sex farce a year later. This time, that other Eisenhower-era blonde bombshell Mamie Van Doren steps into Mansfield’s Spring-o-lator heels in the lead role of exotic dancer Saxie Symbol. (Note that Noonan had the rare distinction of appearing onscreen with Marilyn Monroe in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Mansfield in Promises … Promises! and Van Doren here).
3 Nuts is a slapdash and incoherent mess (for example, for some reason it shuttles between black-and-white and colour), Noonan’s mugging is mind-numbingly unfunny, but it exerts a weird fascination for connoisseurs of bad movies. By this point, Van Doren would have been considered "washed-up" (to quote The Simpsons, “show business is a hideous bitch goddess”) but her 1960s look of dark eye make-up and bouffant up-swept bubble hairdos is irresistible. While never a natural anarchic comedienne like Mansfield, the woman possesses a genuine “je ne sais quoi.” (Also: Van Doren doesn't bare quite as much flesh as Mansfield did in Promises).
3 Nuts’ best moments are Van Doren’s opening and closing burlesque numbers and the bathtub sequence (it’s like a retro Playboy magazine pictorial come to life. We’re meant to believe Saxie is bathing in beer). The cast also features ultra-campy female impersonator and actor Thomas Craig “T C” Jones as the personal secretary of a sexy female psychiatrist (Ziva Rodann) and he’s good fun. (Jones was also a highlight in Promises … Promises! imitating Tallulah Bankhead and Bette Davis). For what it’s worth, Playboy magazine called 3 Nuts “a zany comedy of Freudian tomfoolery!” Perhaps more accurately, The San Francisco Examiner termed it “a strong candidate for the worst picture of this or any other year.”
Full movie below!
