Forgotten Movie Songs #2: "Something in the Air" from THE MAGIC CHRISTIAN

SIR GUY GRAND (over an image of a 10-pound note): Ladies and gentlemen, this is what is commonly known as money. It comes in all sizes, colours, and denominations - like people. We'll be using quite a bit of it in the next two hours... luckily I have enough for ALL of us.

First off, you have to love a movie that gathers the talents of so many far-flung geniuses. Even if it seems too 1960s for you, 1969's The Magic Christian, written by the era's idiosyncratic Terry Southern, still amalgamates Peter Sellers (as the richest man in the world, Sir Guy Grand), a late-Beatles-era Ringo Starr (as his once-homeless adopted son), and a plethora of choice cameos including Richard Attenborough, Christopher Lee, Raquel Welch, John Cleese, Lawrence Harvey, Leonard Frey, Wilfred Hyde-White, Dennis Price, and a unexpectedly lovely cross-dressing cabaret singer played by Yul Brenner, toying at first with Roman Polanski while singing "Mad About The Boy" (a song of which star Peter Sellers did a flawless cover once):



The absolute batshit crazy tempo of Joseph McGrath's The Magic Christian--as it tells the story of the restless Sir Guy Grand's successful attempts to humiliate his fellow wealth-holders--is a superb conduit for the now-iconic, pot-stirring song "Something in the Air," written by and sung by John Steele, who was acting as the frontman for a Who-inspired offshoot group called Thunderclap Newman. The group only recorded one album, called Hollywood Dream, with Who guitarist/songwriter Pete Townshend as their producer. Knowing that, it's obvious that Townshend liked Keene's voice because it sounded very much like his own, and both in that way and in how the single is instrumentally arranged, it becomes kind of a shadowed Who song. Anyway, it's a lovely piece of work, and a perfect second entry for my new series of posts. It appears in the movie as the closing credits song (after a bunch of money-mad dandys have masked their noses while dunking into vats of urine, crap, and blood to gather up free-floating money; this makes the song funnier, by the way). The fact that the song's been used in commercials during the last few years definitely dilutes its original power, of course. But I don't watch much TV, so I guess this doesn't offend me horribly.

As always, the lyrics--by John Steele, as is the music--are printed below the song, which is here performed "live" via some long-lost British pop music boob-tube cavalcade.



Call out the instigators
Because there's something in the air
We've got to get together sooner or later
Because the revolution's here, and you know it's right
And you know that it's right

We have got to get it together
We have got to get it together now

Lock up the streets and houses
Because there's something in the air
We've got to get together sooner or later
Because the revolution's here, and you know it's right
And you know that it's right

We have got to get it together
We have got to get it together now

Hand out the arms and ammo
We're going to blast our way through here
We've got to get together sooner or later
Because the revolution's here, and you know it's right
And you know that it's right

We have got to get it together
We have got to get it together
Now

Film #83: Barbarella

Jane Fonda, then absorbed in the cheesecake phase of her career she no doubt regrets, teamed with her then-husband, overrated womanizer/director Roger Vadim, to produce 1968's campy adaptation of Jean-Claude Forest's French comic book Barbarella. Psychedelicized art direction by Luchino Visconti's house designer Mario Garbuglia (The Leopard, Rocco and His Brothers) and costume design (by Jacques Fonterey and cologne magnate Paco Rabanne) make this quirky cult film a visual treat as it follows super-sexpot Barbarella in her fight against loopy madman Durand-Durand (Milo O'Shea) who, of course, threatens peace in the universe.

Along the way, she's assisted by a blind angel played by John Phillip Law (who was himself a staple of Italian film and the star of producer Dino De Laurentiis' equally wild though much better Danger: Diabolik--the male Barbarella, as I like to refer to it, also from 1968 and directed by horrormaster Mario Bava). Barely clothed throughout (which I have to admit, is the main reason I like this movie), Fonda's Barbarella seeks advice at one point from the world's most famous mime, Marcel Marceau (in a rare speaking performance as Professor Ping) as well as from Blow-Up star David Hemmings as the suggestively monikered Dildano. Finally, she faces the lesbian Black Queen, played by a scenery-devouring Anita Pallenberg. Using her powerful sexuality, Barbarella vanquishes Durand-Durand and his Orgasmotron (the funniest scene in the film), as well as Pallenberg's memorable sharp-toothed, clothes-tearing devil dolls. As in all superhero movies, Barbarella, shall we say...comes out on top.Barbarella is a really idiotic, sloppy movie (it's ripe for a remake, supposedly to come with Rose McGowan as the lead--an idea which could do no damage to the film's worth). Despite having a script co-written by an obviously bombed-out Terry Southern (Candy, Dr. Strangelove, Easy Rider), it falls apart in its latter half, save for O'Shea's appearance as the famously named Durand-Durand (y'know...that band...in the 80s? Oh, never mind...). But I do eat up its elegant design. And it has one of the most famous credits sequences ever--Fonda shedding her space suit to the tune of that fetching title song, sung by the now long-gone Glitterboxes (60s keyboard-meisters Ferrante and Teicher did a good version of it, too). And up until about 40 minutes in, I have great affection for its goofiness. But I get real bored as it gets bogged down in a plot I hardly care about. It's only Fonda's baby-doll-with-a-hot-box that gets me through it all. But that's enough, I gotta say! Whew!! That girl was FIT!!