THE MAN CALLED FLINTSTONE (1966)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*

I might be giving my grade-school self too much credit, but though I watched all five seasons of the 1960-66 FLINTSTONES teleseries, and liked it fairly well, I don't think I ever thought the show was any sort of "classic." It was a pleasant, "comfy" sort of comedy, lacking any of the clever touches of the only real "satire" to which I was exposed in the sixties decade, ROCKY AND BULLWINKLE.

I saw MAN CALLED FLINTSTONE in its theatrical release and liked in on the same level, though I wasn't aware that the TV show had ended slightly before the movie came out. I was aware that the movie's animation was slightly better than that of the TV program, and that it was having fun spoofing the superspy genre that had generated the cinematic phenomenon of the Bond-films in the last four years. In fact, in retrospect the TV show had already executed a better spoof in 1964, an episode titled "Doctor Sinister," in which Fred and Barney got involved in super-spyjinks.

MAN feels a lot like a TV episode with a lot of padding. In the Stone Age smorgasbord of the Flintstones and the Rubbles, a spy agency (curiously, with no wacky acronym-name) is monitoring the activities of a supercriminal named The Green Goose, who has built a super-missile that might give him control of the whole world. The film skirts the basic rule of spy-fi-- that the only way a missile could be used for world domination would be through destroying a nation to make others capitulate. Later it'll be mentioned that Fred and Barney's country, whatever it might be named, has been working on an "anti-missile," so nuclear brinkmanship is implied though understandably never stated.

Agent Rock Slag, who happens to look exactly like ordinary citizen Fred Flintstone (Allan Reed), flees a Mutt-and-Jeff pair of the Green Goose's agents. Slag gets injured and happens to end up in the same hospital where Fred gets treatment for a minor mishap. Slag's boss Chief Boulder (none other than Harvey Korman) spots Fred's resemblance to Slag and cons the simple caveman into taking his family and friends (Mel Blanc, Jean Vander Pyl, and Gerry Johnson) on a trip to "Eurock." There Fred must pinch-hit for Slag to meet with a Green Goose agent who may be willing to betray the master villain. Said agent is sexy siren Tanya (June Foray), who's one of the better designs, in that her sloe-eyes pop all the way through the brim of her fashionable spy-chapeau.

During the Eurock adventure, the Mutt-and-Jeff henchmen keep trying to murder the man they think is Rock Slag. Fred isn't aware of their attempts, but wherever he goes, beautiful women throw themselves at him. I don't think the Bond films in 1966 had quite got to the point where everyone and his neighbor seemed to know that the hero was MI-6's foremost operative. But this bit of Hanna-Barbera business, though not intended as actual satire, is a little amusing for anticipating the way the Bond films would work out.

Wilma, Betty and Barney don't catch Fred in his spy-games until he has to rendezvous with tantalizing Tanya, and of course this leads to various jealousy jokes. The plot finally heats up when Fred thinks he's going to capture the super-villain, but he's betrayed by double the usual number of double agents. For good measure, the Green Goose (who has a saber-toothed pet who looks like Fred's "cat" from the TV show's theme song) also captures Barney when Barney follows Fred into danger. Barney's loyalty is rewarded with the old "you can torture my friend as much as you like but I'll never talk" routine. The schtick, while serviceable, seems to clash with the rest of the movie.

For a Hanna-Barbera movie the final chase scene (plus the revelation of the main villain's secret ID) boasts some decent excitement. The conclusion's fairly muddled, in that the villains are rocketed into space in their own missile. I'm not sure why this was preferable to having them arrested, though I confess that as a kid it didn't occur to me that the fiends were all going to DIE of asphixiation. Fred, instead of being sworn to secrecy by the government, gets to reveal his heroism to the whole world. But one of those besotted beauties doesn't get the memo, and that's how THE FLINTSTONES' original franchise ends, with yet another corny fade-out on the beleaguered comic caveman.