She Blogged By Night

This post not only contains spoilers, but due to the subject matter of the film, may contain items you don't want to read at work, at school, around kids, or for any reason at all, actually. You have been warned.

"The Maltese Bippy" is a stupid film. It is offensive, vapid, incoherent, and the absolute antithesis of funny. But I get ahead of myself.

"The Maltese Bippy" is a Rowan and Martin vehicle designed to cash in on the intense popularity of their show "Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In". I will confess right now that I don't get "Laugh-In". Perhaps it's my age -- "Laugh-In" was long out of production yet still tiredly plugging along in reruns by the time I was old enough to watch television. Most of the performers had gone on to be perpetual game show contestants in the mid and late 1970s, and I much preferred seeing Jo Anne Worley spazz out on "$10,000 Pyramid" than on "Laugh-In", where the audience howled at her flinging of a boa as though it was comedy gold. I admit to having some political qualms as well. When I was a teen in the 80s, I first saw the clip of Nixon asking the audience to "sock it to me", and I was appalled. Surely this supposed counterculture comedy knew it was validating Nixon and giving him positive publicity during his re-election campaign by allowing him to participate in the very thing that opposed him? I was somewhat reassured about my opinion when I read Vincent Canby in his 1969 New York Times review make the same comment.

Finally, what I've always wondered about "Laugh-In" is how two old squares like Rowan and Martin could have been considered counterculture. The show's political satire seemed unconvincing when coupled with the hosts' Vegas lounge lizard style. Rowan and Martin were, indeed, a seasoned whitebread comedy duo that did a popular but unoriginal act in Vegas. They were primarily skeevy woman-chasers in their act, on the show, and they carried this reputation to "The Maltese Bippy". Rowan's greasy attempt at suaveness -- the übertan, the tuxedo, the glamorous smoking -- made him ridiculous. When I see Rowan I always imagine he is actually a character played by Harvey Korman. And then I wish I was watching Harvey Korman do... well, anything.

Dick Martin is no better. My recollection is that he played the dumb guy to Rowan's straight man, but Martin isn't particularly dumb in this film. He says stupid things, but stupid in a "that phrase was never, ever, ever hip" sort of way. Just check out the poster; was "well, ring my chimes" ever cool? No. No, it wasn't. He's also on the make, marginally less sleazy but still far too old to be saying crude things to a college student. Rowan and Martin were both 47 years old when "The Maltese Bippy" was released.

The film opens as though it were a Cecil B. DeMille epic, with slaves toiling under a cruel master, Irving the Horrible. The screen then informs us that the film has nothing to do with Irving and is actually set in a cemetery in Flushing, New York. A woman screams, and then the INTERMISSION screen appears.

So do Rowan and Martin, who banter about credits and about the film we're not yet watching. Martin immediately starts in with jokes about the woman screaming like a woman in his bedroom did last night. Classy! The monologue ends with Rowan calling Martin a "doo doo".

You heard me. A "doo doo".

By the way, the title of the film has absolutely nothing to do with anything. There is no scene in Malta or anything Maltese, and "bippy" is never even said in the film, despite it being a famous catch phrase from "Laugh-In". The title is simply a blind riff on "The Maltese Falcon". This isn't surprising, as a few half-hearted attempts at referencing old murder mysteries is made in the film, but nothing substantial comes of it.

The film finally begins and we're in a business office, actually an ersatz movie studio. Rowan is Sam Smith, the director of porno films, and Martin is Ernest Gray, an actor in said films. Pornos and doo doo. Oh yeah, we are off to a thrilling beginning, my friends. One of the few funny bits in the film are the interchangeable backdrops for the pornos. The tiny backdrops which must only measure 5 feet by 5 feet imply absolutely no movement, no set changes, and no props. The pornos all have the titles, "Lunar Lust", "Jungle Lust", and "Submarine Lust". Later, Smith refers to a past film he made titled "Sherlock Lust".

While filming, Sam suddenly howls like a wolf. Before he can figure out why he did that, the owner of the office evicts the entire cast and crew and we cut to a scene elsewhere. A murder has taken place in a cemetery, and a woman at a nearby house reports being bothered by a man who howled at her like a wolf. Meanwhile Sam and Ernest ride in a moving truck filled with their meager film studio possessions. They arrive at Ernest's house, which is right next to the murder cemetery in question.

We're only a few minutes into the film and it's clear that this is going to be quite an uphill trudge. Rowan can't deliver his lines and Martin's dialogue must have been cobbled together from old Bazooka gum wrappers. The sets and cinematography are unimaginative and the supporting cast is rarely given anything worthwhile to do.

Ernest arrives at his house, which we learn is a boarding house for a young college student named Robin, a violinist named Axel, and Ernest himself. Sam also freeloads there. The police are asking the cook and housekeeper Molly (Mildred Natwick) about the night of the murder. The police detective is Robert Reed, sadly barely used at all in this film except to walk around in a noir-esque suit and fedora. His assistant is Sgt. Kelvaney, played by Dana Elcar, also woefully underused. While questioning Molly, Sgt. Kelvaney keeps getting irritated at her complete answers. Finally he starts asking Ernest questions which clearly should be answered by Molly, but the gag here is that Molly gabs a lot and irritates the men, so that's what they try to convey. Ernest makes cracks about how she's been his servant for years so he has to put up with her irritating behavior. Since Molly is simply providing much-needed exposition for the audience and isn't irritating at all, Ernest and Sgt. Kelvaney's comments seem hostile and unwarranted.

They are all interrupted by Helga, a next-door neighbor controlling her big, dangerous German Shepherd. Helga (Eddra Gale) is a stern, large, Eastern European woman. Her only purpose in the film is to accompany the other two who live in the house with her. The actress is given no lines, she is relegated to the background, and is directly mentioned only twice, both times in fat jokes; Ernest says she must have eaten her way through the Iron Curtain.

The college student Robin Sherwood arrives. Where do they get these names? Robin Sherwood? I was surprised she didn't eventually marry a man with the last name "Forest". The police question her, too, and ask her why she's living in a boarding house instead of on campus. Two reasons, the first being her own personal dissenting from all the dissent. She goes on to decry all the "love ins" and the like. Maybe it's supposed to be a self-referential ironic stab at "Laugh-In", but it comes across as establishment wish-fulfillment. The second reason she doesn't live in a dorm is because all the "kooks" on campus want to sleep with her. Right.

Robin goes to her room and uses a telephoto lens out her window to view the German Shepherd's collar, which has a talisman of a wolf on it. Ernest barges in to ask her on a date. She makes her excuses by claiming she has a lecture on female anatomy that evening, and Ernest can't pass up the opportunity to leer and make cracks about doing some "field research" on the subject.

Ernest's psychologist Dr. Charles Strauss (David Hurst) arrives at the house to give Ernest some psychotherapy and a shot in the bum. Hurst is, by far, the best actor in the film. His subtle reaction when Ernest says he's worried about this compulsion to drop on all fours and lick the doctor's hand is easily the funniest moment in the whole film.

Meanwhile Robin goes downstairs to snoop around, and runs into Sam, who crudely propositions her by asking her to be in one of his pornos. She says she cannot, as she has no experience, and he offers to teach her. Ew. It's also the second time that "experience" double entendre has been used thus far. Sam gapes at her hinder as she walks off and stumbles backwards in distraction; he finds a talisman with a wolf on it.

The next door neighbor Ravenswood (Fritz Weaver) arrives to ask if his sister Carlotta is around. He claims Carlotta is unbalanced and thinks Ernest is a lost love of hers. Helga is, apparently, Carlotta's keeper. Ravenswood also has one of the wolf talismans around his neck. Outside Carlotta (Julie Newmar) has found Ernest and is reminiscing about wild nights of sex, but does so in Hungarian so we can only imagine what's said. Newmar is lovely as always, but seems bored with the role and puts nothing into her performance. Ravenswood finds her and drags her, Helga, and the dog back into the house.

A prospective buyer for the house arrives. Molly desperately wants Ernest to sell the house, as she was happier working for him in his previous city apartment. The real estate agent explains the prospective buyer is a diamond merchant, just like the former owner of the house, and he actually knew the former owner before he left town.

Dr. Strauss has finally decided that Ernest is becoming a werewolf. He lists the characteristics of werewolfiness, focusing especially on Ernest's itchy, hairy palms. Oh, will the comedy never cease? They decide to trap the werewolf who bit Ernest by attempting a ritual involving horsehair and wolfsbane. Sam arrives and decides this would be a great act for a variety show featuring "chorus broads". When the ritual begins, Ravenswood, Carlotta and Helga arrive and tell Ernest that he is a werewolf just like they are. Except, well, they're dressed like vampires and when they knock Sam out, they try to convince Ernest to bite Sam's neck. I don't know if the confusion between werewolves and vampires is deliberate or not, I really don't. Sgt. Kelvaney arrives with the doctor who had been outside, laying in wait for the werewolf. Sam comes to, doesn't remember what's happened, and is still excited about the Ravenswood and company act.

That night Ernest has a dream about turning into a werewolf. Robin comes from her room down the hall and wakes him from his nightmare. Just then they hear a crash and a scream and go downstairs to investigate. Eventually they wind up outside and walk to Ravenswood's, where they see Ravenswood, Carlotta, Helga, and Dr. Strauss chuckling over their fake wolfman act. Ravenswood isn't a werewolf, Carlotta is dim but not deranged, and the doctor may not even be a doctor. They are pulling this act to scare Ernest out of the home, so they can take the opportunity to search for something called "Excalibur". They also note that Robin isn't who she claims to be.

Ernest and Robin return home just as Dr. Strauss calls Ernest. Ernest knows he's a fake, but he uses pre-planted hypnotic suggestions to get Ernest to strangle Robin. Ernest tries but when he hits his head during the chase, he's knocked to his senses. Robin explains that her father excavated the actual Excalibur, a sword made of gold and encrusted in emeralds, but the guy who bought the house they're now in stole it from her father. Then that guy disappeared and Ernest bought the house, but the sword is still supposedly hidden in the building. She wants to find it before Ravenswood does.

Suddenly a dead person falls out of the dumbwaiter. They call the police but the body has been yoinked by the time the detective and sergeant arrive. Robin then tells the police that Ernest had tried to strangle her earlier that evening, and Ernest looks betrayed. They both get hauled off to the police station.

Sam arrives the next morning, still thinking that Ravenswood is an act he can parlay into big bucks. Carlotta distracts Sam while Ravenswood and gang search the house for Excalibur. While at lunch, Sam puts the sleaze on Carlotta, asking her if she really can turn into a dog at will. She says she can, and this launches a slew of dog sex jokes that are just beyond revolting. Carlotta walks ahead of Sam while he stares at her bottom, shrugs and says, "What the hell, I can always get a distemper shot." WOMEN ARE DOGS. HAW HAW.

When Sam takes Carlotta to a motel for a quickie, he leaves for a moment to call an agent about the act. She says, "Ciao" and he says, "That's up to you." HAW HAW DOG CHOW. ALSO EATING SOMETHING IF YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN.

Can you tell I've lost it? Because right here in the film is where I completely lost my patience. But I'll calm down for the sake of the synopsis.

When Sam comes back to the motel room he finds a dog on the bed. It has come through the porch door while Carlotta went to call her brother Ravenswood for advice. Sam thinks it's her, and here we go again with the dog sex jokes. When Carlotta returns she's upset with her brother, so she tells Sam about the real scheme so he'll help her steal Excalibur from the others, and they will share the wealth.

Back at the house Ernest comes back from a night at the police station. Robin comes back, too, and apologizes for telling the police that Ernest tried to kill her. Except, well, he did try to kill her. This isn't funny.

The house has been ransacked by Ravenswood and friends, but they didn't find Excalibur. Robin admits that Excalibur is actually a 191-carat diamond and not the sword at all, although the reason for her initial lie isn't given. The dead body that disappeared the night before turns out to be the previous owner of the house, the one who stole Excalibur, and he's got some code written on his chest in blood. They search the house for the body and/or Excalibur but can't find either. We soon discover Axel the violinist has the body, he helped the previous owner steal Excalibur, and the blood code is a message from the dead guy to Axel, telling him that he swallowed the diamond.

Everyone wants the dead body so they can cut it open and extract the diamond. After some wrangling between Axel and Robin, Sam, and Ernest, Axel is subdued and Sam starts to dig into the corpse.

Today I discovered that corpse mutilation is just as funny as dog sex.

Anyway, Sam is interrupted by Ravenswood. Just as Ravenswood is about to kill them for the body, Carlotta kills Ravenswood. Then the real estate agent kills Carlotta, Helga kills the real estate agent, that diamond merchant who was a potential buyer kills Helga. Molly, the police detective, and Sgt. Kelvaney arrive. The police detective says he is from the motion picture association and he is arresting everyone for "excessive violence in films." All the dead people stand and start to file out when Dick Martin tells them to stop -- he can create a better ending than that.

Martin's ending is that the moving truck driver from the very beginning of the film is Robin's father, the owner of Excalibur, who arrives at the last minute. He shoots at Ernest for strangling his daughter but she takes the bullet for him, which is even creepier than apologizing for turning him in earlier in the film.

Rowan stops the film and says he can come up with an even better ending. In his ending, the police detective names the murderer (there's only one?!) as though this were an old-fashioned murder mystery. Molly is the murderer, and she admits it, while also professing her love to Sam and her jealous hatred of Ernest.

After that Rowan and Martin leave the house, and Martin muses that movies always end with the lovers walking into the sunset together. Rowan says no one is left alive except them, so Martin decides they have to do the walk themselves. They hold hands and walk into the sunset while the U.S. Navy theme "Anchors Aweigh" plays.

Ah. After a film of puerile, adolescent sex talk and full-on woman hatred, it ends with a gay joke. Terrific. I want that 90 minutes of my life back.

I have nothing else to say, except that I promise you the next few entries will be about movies I like. To preserve our sanity, it is the only way.

EDIT: I would like to add that Jack Pendarvis says I was too harsh on Jo Anne Worley, and he makes a compelling argument. I will forgive him for comparing her to Charles Nelson Reilly, who is like unto a god and cannot be compared with any human, but she is awesome and I shouldn't have brought her into this.

I also wanted to point out the rec.arts.movies.past-films thread on "The Maltese Bippy", which has been a great source of "what were they thinking" comments. Poster Grant Hurlock reminded me of a rather creepy point in the film: early on when you're seeing the downtown area of NYC, a marquee scrolls by with the enormous letters "MARTIN LUTHER KING JR SH". You don't see all of the last word, but it's probably "shot", and it's chilling.

FURTHER READING:
Living in a Media World on what "bippy" might mean
Shock Cinema's entry on "The Maltese Bippy"

Like most of my film entries, this post on "Sh! The Octopus" contains spoilers. Since this film has a twist ending, you may not want to read on unless you've already seen the film

For the entire 54-minute run of this film, I kept asking myself, "Self, just why did you ever want to watch this movie?" And the only answer I could come up with was because it's a longstanding alt.movies.silent in-joke. That's not a half bad excuse, and I know I've seen plenty of other films for lesser reasons.

"Sh! The Octopus" is based on two plays: "The Gorilla" by Ralph Spence, and the later play "Sh, the Octopus" which was a send-up of "The Gorilla". This gets a bit confusing, as "The Gorilla" was already a spoof of the murder mystery genre, so a send-up of a spoof is, well, overkill. "The Gorilla" was made into a silent film in 1927, and I should warn you that the review of the film by F. Gwynplaine Macintyre on the IMDb is likely incorrect - that reviewer is a prankster who writes reviews of lost films he claims to have seen, but clearly could not have viewed. (Whether his Wikipedia entry, home page, or any other information out there is legitimate is under question as well. I personally think he's the product of several cinephiles' spare time, much like the Andrea Chen troll on Usenet. I also suspect I'll be hearing from him about this post forthwith.)

The 1927 version of "The Gorilla" is lost and I have never seen the 1931 version, but the New York Times review reveals that the film has the exact same plot as "Sh! The Octopus", except with an octopus instead of a gorilla. Another version in 1939 starred the Ritz Brothers, and allegedly caused the trio to refuse to work until their salaries were increased. By 1939, this plot was assuredly well-worn, and one wonders if the Ritz Brothers were hoping to simply avoid making the film altogether. Instead they got their raise and a re-worked plot that invoked more than a little of Poe's The Murders in the Rue Morgue.

"Sh! The Octopus" opens with Paul Morgan (John Eldredge) coming to claim an abandoned lighthouse on a tiny isolated island. A Captain Cobb (I swear he was called "Greene" in the film, but the IMDb disagrees) has escorted him to the lighthouse, and warns Morgan of Captain Hook, a sailor with a hook hand who might arrive, and who is thrown into a murderous frenzy by the sound of ticking clocks. Hook (George Rosener) does indeed arrive, just in time to find a wallet of a famous scientist in the lighthouse - this scientist has invented a radium ray.

We switch to a car driving in the rain. Police officers Detective Kelly (Hugh "woo woo" Herbert) and Detective Dempsey (Allen Jenkins) are off-duty when a dispatcher calls in to say Kelly's wife is at the hospital giving birth. Kelly seems surprised by this. He's also nervous, so he starts taking a bunch of unidentified pills to calm his nerves. Meanwhile the car gets a flat, and while Dempsey changes the tire, Kelly reads a newspaper article about the new police commissioner going after the "crime octopus". The crime octopus is apparently a media handle for a crime syndicate, and there's a $50,000 reward for the head of the syndicate -- The Octopus' -- capture.

Suddenly a woman runs out of the forest towards Kelly and Dempsey. She says she is Vesta Vernoff (Marcia Ralston) and her stepfather has been murdered in a lighthouse nearby. She also says that her stepfather invented a radium ray and was murdered for the ray. When the cops mention the Crime Octopus, she says "the octopus" is in the basement. The two cops, seeing a chance to ingratiate themselves with the new commissioner by getting "The Octopus", head for the lighthouse.

At the lighthouse, Morgan is alone and discovers there is a dead body dripping blood and hanging bat-like from the top of the tower. There are no stairs left in the old lighthouse, however, so there's no way to explain how the body got up there. At the same time we see octopus tentacles come after Morgan from behind a curtain, but they don't grab him. When the cops and the woman arrive, Morgan hides behind the curtain, which makes no sense - the octopus is back there!

After a few moments Morgan comes out from behind the curtain. Vesta knows who he is, but he denies knowing her, which causes her to cry terribly. After Dempsey and Kelly leave to search the place, Morgan says he told that lie for a reason and Vesta should trust him.

Captain Hook shows up again, this time with another lady who had grounded her boat just off the island. After she arrives, hidden stairs up to the top of the lighthouse appear, but the octopus (or at least a tentacle, we haven't seen the entire creature yet) turns off the lights and a gun goes off. The lights come back on and Hook has disappeared. Then another person arrives, Nanny, a kindly old woman who has been Vesta's companion for over a year. Vesta clearly relies on Nanny for emotional comfort.

Dempsey decides to take everyone's wallet, and then sends Kelly up the stairs to get the body down. Kelly drops the body on accident, which gave me the first laugh of the movie -- the body is clearly a dummy, and I am not immune to the charms of a dummy falling from great heights. Dempsey realizes that's not a real body and the blood was ketchup (he finds a full, unbroken bottle of ketchup on the dummy, which is bizarre at best), but before he can do anything about it, Morgan holds everyone up and has Vesta take the wallets back. The dummy also has a wallet. How wacky.

Hook comes back, the light on the lighthouse comes on, and the octopus keeps closing and locking doors on everyone. Things really do happen that quickly in the film, and it has a very discombobulating effect. The humor is almost non-existent with the exception of a couple of one-liners and Hugh Herbert's occasional mumbled joke, followed by a "woo woo!" Herbert is almost impossible to hear in this film.

Finally Kelly and Dempsey realize that there's "another" octopus, a real one, and they're not dealing with the Crime Octopus at all. They decide to go into the basement to get away from some poison gas that is filling the lighthouse, but Hook doesn't go with them. Instead, he gets eaten by the octopus. Moments later in the basement Kelly sees the octopus through a sort of window thing that looks like an aquarium, although I think it's supposed to be a hole in the rocks that allows a view to the ocean. Meanwhile Morgan and Vesta are approached by the other woman, Polly, who asks Morgan to "play ball". He refuses to do whatever "play ball" refers to.

Dempsey tries to get the wallets back from Vesta, but she says she no longer has them, and runs in hysterics to Nanny. Again, no explanation. Vesta runs to Nanny several times in the film, always because she's been terribly upset, although I never figured out what exactly she was upset about. While exploring, Dempsey and Kelly wind up accidentally falling several feet to a floor below, which leads to the best dialogue in the film:

DEMPSEY: Where are we?

KELLY: Out in the ocean, under a lighthouse, with a lot of screwballs.

You got that right. Finding themselves next to a small pool, Kelly is sent underwater in a diving suit to confront the octopus. The octopus is not a particularly frightening creature, as it's difficult to see through murky water. I'm of the opinion that the murkiness was added to hide defects in the creature creation, but who knows. When they pull Kelly back up, they find Captain Hook now in his diving suit. Impossible and, most importantly, not funny.

They go back to get Kelly and pull him up, and Dempsey asks him what he was doing down there. Kelly mumbles something about a mermaid's husband which is obscured by some dubbed in "woo-woo"s. A disembodied voice tells the occupants of the lighthouse that the music they hear will be their funeral march. The only music I'm hearing is the soundtrack, but whatever - by this point, I'm used to nothing being explained to me.

Kelly is left downstairs to keep an eye on things while Dempsey -- the marginally smarter police officer -- goes upstairs with everyone else. While downstairs, Hugh Herbert is involved in an extended sequence with a bunch of animals doing wacky things.

Upstairs, we discover that no one is who they claimed to be: Morgan is an FBI agent, Hook is with the Intelligence Department, Cobb is with the International Police, and Peggy is with the Peace League and wants to get hold of the radium ray before it's used to destroy the world. Everyone wants to find the Crime Octopus. But is the Crime Octopus even involved in this real octopus... er, thing?

In the basement, Kelly hears the voice again. Then Nanny shows up and wants to look through the wallets -- she says one holds the deed to her family farm. When she finds the deed, she gives it to Kelly for safe keeping. They both see the octopus, again through an odd window-aquarium thing, and she encourages him to come back upstairs with her.

He does, just in time for the new police commissioner to arrive. This commissioner turns out to be Vesta's father, but we don't know if he was just pretending to be the commissioner, or if he's her step-father or real father, or what. Suddenly the octopus arrives and eats Hook -- again.

While everyone is off guard we get the one truly surprising and scary part of the film: Nanny is the Crime Octopus! She rips off her white-haired wig as her features completely change in a really well-done sequence that's genuinely frightening for a moment. Her friendly face turns into a nasty, mottled, grizzled countenance as she cackles and screeches at everyone. Apparently the creature octopus is under the control of the Crime Octopus, and as she backs Morgan, Cobb and the police commissioner to the door, they get grabbed by tentacles and, I suppose, eventually devoured. I'm completely okay with this.

Nanny Octopus explains to everyone left that they cannot escape unless they know which switch to flip on this enormous wall of switches that we haven't seen until now. One will blow up the tower, but one will let them escape. Surprisingly, as Nanny backs up near the door to the basement, the octopus grabs her and drags her away, too. Peggy, Vesta, Kelly and Dempsey run to the big contraption and of course flip the wrong switch. The lighthouse explodes.

The end? No.

We fade to a scene in a hospital where Kelly is on a bed, flailing about and being attended to. Turns out he fainted because of all those pills he was taking in the car at the beginning of the movie. Vesta and Peggy are nurses at the hospital, and Kelly points this out in a manner that's extremely similar to the final scene in "Wizard of Oz" 2 years later. So all that stuff that just happened? Never happened.

Kelly's wife has had her twins, and they go in to see the newborns, who are both actually Allen Jenkins in baby get-up, the implication being that Kelly's babies are actually Dempsey's. The look on Jenkins' face is priceless. Just like throwing dummies off a cliff, the old "someone else is the father" gag never gets old to me. But then a nurse shows up and explains that the twins aren't Mrs. Kelly's, they're Mrs. Dempsey's, which causes Dempsey to faint.

Now it's the end.

The dream/hallucination ending does explain a lot, but it doesn't explain the opening sequence with Morgan, Cobb and Hook, nor does it explain how neither Dempsey nor Kelly knew their wives were pregnant. I still prefer to think of this film as an exercise in surrealism, the filmed product of a drugged-up goofy cop. It makes me happy.

All in all, I can't say that I completely hated this film. It was bad, but it was still competently made, and that goes a long way in my opinion. I'm always amazed at mistakes and carelessness in a film that was allegedly done by a good studio, with a quality cast and crew. That happened to me this morning as I was watching "Alvarez Kelly" on TCM, and saw Roger C. Carmel's character had the worst fake beard I've ever seen. It was a noticeably cheap material, inflexible and crunchy, and was dark brown - Carmel has reddish hair. Did no one involved in this million-dollar film notice or care?

You could tell some care went into "Sh! The Octopus", however, as it had precious few technical problems or continuity errors. As insane as the plot got, you never saw an actor upstairs when he was supposed to be in the basement, nor were there any major contradictions. The set was sparse but decent, the creature acceptable, the filming and editing perfectly professional. After years of seeing indifference turn a decent movie into a poor one, I was pleased to see a poor movie become a decent one because of a little care and competence.

FURTHER READING:

1000 Misspent Hours entry on "Sh! The Octopus"
Will Pfeiffer's blog X-Ray Spex - Has a great screencap sequence of the Nanny's transformation
Apocalypse Later's post on "Sh! The Octopus"

Note: Due to Internet outages I didn't get around to adding the final paragraphs of the review until today.