GROUCHO MARX, KING OF THE JUNGLE

A blonde, a B-movie and a bevy of Groucho wisecracks.

Randy Spellman, loincloth-clad star of the Ty-Gor franchise, is lingering on Soundstage 3 because he’s dead, probably by the hand of his recent amour, Hollywood blonde Dorothy, who never met a man she didn’t want to unzip. Her new love, Enery McBride, chief cannibal in the Ty-Gor now filming, insists Dorothy’s innocent, even if she is hiding out, and asks his scriptwriter pal Frank Denby to suss out the truth. Frank hems and haws but finally agrees. So does his sleuthing partner Groucho (Groucho Marx, Secret Agent, 2002, etc.). The two find Dorothy. They lose Dorothy. They find a treasure map. They find naughty pictures Randy may have used to blackmail Warlock studio heads, gambling kingpins, studly musclemen and the daughter of Ty-Gor creator Arthur Wright Benson, living in splendor on his lavish private jungle estate Rancho Tygoro, whose landscape is cluttered by (surprise!) a recent corpse. With a quip-quip here and a quip-quip there, Groucho and Frank downgrade the B-movie plot to B-minus just in time for a dash to the maternity ward, where Frank’s wife Jane is giving birth to the next generation punster.

A few amusing takes on rewriting scripts, placating studio producers and kowtowing to authors and stars, but too many punch lines that will make you wince and would probably make Groucho do the same.