Sergeant Dead Head (1965)

Another of the teen romcom romps that Buster was in in the ’60s.  Like Pajama Party, it’s silly, corny, and utterly insane – it still cracks me up that this is what these movies are about.  Like, did Buster just happen to be in all the crazy ‘60s teen movies, or were films like this super-popular with young people at the time?  They’re so weird, I’m almost a little impressed by them (premise spoilers.)

This isn’t so much a beach party movie, since it takes place on an air base.  Interminable screwup Sgt. O.K. Deadhead is in love with Airmen Lucy Turner, but every time they’re getting ready to tie the knot, Deadhead gets himself in trouble with a commanding officer and the ceremony can’t go through.  As it happens, he’s not quite ready to get married and is intentionally putting it off.  His efforts go so far that he accidentally winds up hitching a ride on an experimental rocket launch piloted by a chimpanzee.  Due to… I don’t know, cosmic space rays or something? ...he undergoes a complete personality change (the summary on IMDb says he switches brains with the chimp, but I don’t think it’s as clear-cut as that – more than anything, he just becomes really obnoxious and arrogant.)  The military, not wanting to admit their big screw-up, has to pretend they intended for Deadhead to go into space all along, somehow keeping his personality change from the press and Lucy before their now PR-approved wedding.

So yeah, totally crazy.  It’s amusing enough, cute and inoffensive with nice music, and Frankie Avalon and Deborah Walley are charming in the lead roles.  Most of the supporting players are totally ridiculous, and it all gets quite farcical.

There’s less of Buster in this film than there is in Pajama Party, but fortunately, his role is way less racist.  He plays Pvt. Blinken, an over-eager gofer who has plenty of enthusiasm but little competence.  Like I said, he’s not around much – he’s in a few memorable slapstick bits in the first third of the film and then mostly disappears.  He does get to have a little bit of fun, though.  I like the gag where he utterly fails to lead a group of airmen on a march, and my biggest laugh is watching him stand stalwartly with a fire hose during an emergency, with barely a hint of water dribbling out of it.  Even though these movies, naturally, can’t compare to anything Buster did in his own films, they’re good reminders of how he could shine under any circumstance and in the smallest of moments.

Warnings

Lots of suggestiveness, a little drinking/smoking, and some slapstick violence.