Confidentially -- It Stinks! (COLLEGE CONFIDENTIAL - 1960)

There is a special thrill I get when, ten minutes into a movie, I feel that I may be watching the worst film ever made. Such was the case when I watched American Movie Classics recent showing of COLLEGE CONFIDENTIAL (1960). It may not be the worst movie ever made, but it definitely has a berth in the playoffs.

The film stars Steve Allen as a college professor who is working on a sociology project concerning teen morals. Mamie “Have Breasts, Will Travel” Van Doren is one of the many college students participating in the project, and when Van Doren spreads a lie about Professor Steve and his “sex survey”, it sets the ball in motion for, as Walter Winchell himself breathlessly (and inaccurately) puts it, “a chain of events that would rock the civilized world!”

The film alienates us right from the start, as Mamie Van Doren and Elisha Cook Jr. unconvincingly shout overwritten dialogue at each other for ten minutes straight. Elisha Cook plays Van Doren’s father (genetically, I don’t buy it), who objects to his daughter coming home at three in the morning. So they argue. And argue. They make their points and they make them again. They go off on tangents and belabor metaphors. And they do it all at a decibel level that would cause Ozzy Osbourne to jam cotton in his ears. Finally, Van Doren breaks down and blames it all on Professor Steve and his sex survey, so in the next scene, Elisha Cook and Allen shout at each other for another ten minutes.

Steve Allen was a marvelously funny comedian, and one of the greatest ad-libbers of all time. But as an actor, he could have started his own acting school, teaching the “Pop Up and Shout” method. Whenever he wants to express indignation (which is every five minutes), he dramatically pops up from his seat and shouts out a melodramatic line, and then spends the next few minutes awkwardly not knowing what to do except possibly sit down again.

There is a hardly a scene or a line of dialogue that rings true, hardly a performance that rises above the level of a community theater revival of “The Drunkard”. All the “kids”, from Van Doren on down, are uniformly dreadful. Conway Twitty, as Van Doren’s boyfriend, does a dead-on impression of what Elvis Presley would sound like with a mouthful of congealed pudding. Mike Shaunessey, as the town grocer and magistrate, manages a decent, human performance undermined by several factors, especially his irritating habit of removing his glasses before saying any line. Only Jane Meadows as a reporter emerges from the film with her reputation relatively unharmed. With her soft, pleasant and cultured voice, she scores major points as the film’s “sonic relief”.

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