The Maltese Bippy

(New York City)88 minutesCountryUnited StatesLanguageEnglish

The Maltese Bippy is a 1969 comedy horror film, directed by Norman Panama and released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.^[1] The film is a vehicle for comedy team Dan Rowan and Dick Martin, who had recently found fame in their television show Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In. "Bippy" is a catchphrase from their show.

In the film, two sexploitation producers are suspects in a murder investigation. One of them considers himself a werewolf, and suspects that his monstrous alter ego performed the murder.

Plot

Business has never been so bad for sexploitation filmmakers Sam Smith and Ernest Gray. After their premises are busted by the authorities for non-payment of rent, the hapless pair become prime suspects in a nearby cemetery murder. The mental pressure of near-destitution and criminal investigation becomes overwhelming for Ernest. So much so, he comes to believe he has mutated into America's first werewolf. He begins to question whether he—or rather, his lycanthropic self—might be the culprit responsible for homicide in the neighborhood graveyard.

Cast

Reception

In The New York Times, film critic Vincent Canby wrote:

[One] problem that I carried to The Maltese Bippy was an inability to distinguish between Rowan and Martin, something that hasn't mattered much on television where their duties are more or less interchangeable... I've now seen The Maltese Bippy, which opened yesterday at the DeMille and Beekman Theaters, and I'm still not sure of their identities, partly because, as actors, they still are television hosts, and partly because they really do look alike. Although one of them has a mustache, they have the same general contours. Television, the great leveler, has produced the ultimate comedy team, a pair of personalities of similar sex, height, weight and wit, which, I suppose, is the direction in which we've been heading ever since Martin and Lewis convinced us that comedy teams need not be physically grotesque—maybe one man should be slightly Italian and one man slightly Jewish, but not grotesque. On the other hand, The Maltese Bippy is a movie that cheapens everything it touches...^[2]

Reviewing the film in the present-day for SFGATE, film critic Mick LaSalle wrote:

...[here's] the surprise. Dick Martin could have had a movie career. If he were around today, he might have been a film star along the lines of Owen Wilson. He could do the full range from goofy to serious, without either end of that spectrum making the other seem less real. He also was enormously appealing, just someone you automatically like and want to look at. He was subtle, too, in a way that his partner wasn’t.^[3]

See also

• List of American films of 1969

References

External links

• The Maltese Bippy at IMDb