Skidoo is a 1968 American comedy film directed by Otto Preminger, starring Jackie Gleason, Carol Channing, Frankie Avalon, Fred Clark (who died on December 5, two weeks before the film's release), Michael Constantine, Frank Gorshin, John Phillip Law, Peter Lawford, Burgess Meredith, George Raft, Cesar Romero, Mickey Rooney and Groucho Marx playing a top mobster named "God". It was written by Doran William Cannon and released by Paramount Pictures on December 19, 1968. The screenplay satirizes late-1960s counterculture lifestyle and its creature comforts, technology, anti-technology, hippies, free love and then-topical use of the drug LSD.
Singer-songwriter Nilsson, who wrote the score and receives credit as a member of the cast, appears in a few brief scenes with Fred Clark, as both portray prison tower guards swaying to Nilsson's music while under the influence of LSD.
Synopsis
Prologue
As a cartoon character dressed in prison stripes (and holding a peace-logo flower which turns into a tiny parasol and then a helicopter blade) executes a few dance steps to the music of Nilsson's Skidoo theme, the words "Otto Preminger" appear below him. Additional words "presents SKIDOO starring" can also be seen as the camera pulls back to reveal that this image is on a TV screen, while Carol Channing's voice is heard exclaiming to Arnold Stang: "No, Harry, not that. No, I don't wanna see that," with the sound of a Zenith Space Command mechanical ultrasonic TV remote accompanying the channel suddenly switching to show a US Senate hearing conducted by (fictional) Senator Hummel, portrayed by Peter Lawford, who asks a series of organized crime figures various questions to which they invariably reply: "I refuse to answer on the grounds it may tend to incriminate me."
Every few seconds, the screen showing the hearing switches through non-broadcasting channels to another broadcast channel which is screening Preminger's black-and-white 1965 feature, In Harm's Way, and through more non-broadcasting channels to other channels which have one spurious commercial after another. The initial ad depicts an attractive blonde declaring, "now you too can be beautiful and sexually desirable like me instead of being that fat, disgusting, foul-breathed, slimy, wallowing sow that you are", the second has another intensely smiling blonde stating that "maybe we blondes do have more fun" and the third ad depicts a drunken slob swilling beer and belching, interspersed with an image of a pig with beer foam around its snout, while an unseen announcer exclaims: "feel big, drink pig!"
After another switch to In Harm's Way, Channing's voice is again heard, complaining, "no, Harry, I don't like films on TV. They always cut them to pieces." Additional channel changes produce more images of the beer pig, then another scene from In Harm's Way, followed by an ad for "Fat Cola", with three generously proportioned middle-aged women, wearing bathing suits, beach hats and carrying little parasols, gyrating to the jingle, "You'll never lose your man if you drink fat cola, you'll never have to worry about losing him", then an ad showing a boy and a girl, both about six years old, dressed like adults at a picnic setting, next to a dog resembling Our Gang'''s Pete the Pup (Pete's trademark circular ring around the eye is here drawn at a sharply oblique angle), with all three vigorously emitting smoke from long cigarettes held in their mouths, while happy young voices sing the jingle: "Puff, puff, puff, puff, puff, if you want to have a girly, you must puff, puff, puff."
The following ad shows a family, including small children, standing in front of their house, all holding guns, with the father declaring, "...get a gun for everyone in your family — remember, for family fun, get your gun", while the next ad, for "New Daisy Chain Deodorant," has a voice followed by another voice singing ever more insistently, "I want my deodorant, I want my deodorant..."