Bugsy Malone (1976)

Retrofit Drive In

Sep 19, 2021

Child stars and their little dogs too shine at the Retrofit Drive In this week, where we learn to trust no one over 15.

Our main feature is the kid-driven gangster flick Bugsy Malone (1976). It is a hilarious parody of the 30s James Cagney-Humphrey Bogart-Edward G. Robinson tough guy tales that filled palatial theaters with the sounds of screeching tires and blasting machine guns. There are both in Bugsy, but the getaway cars are the pedal kind and the WMDs aka “splooge guns” shoot whipped cream and marshmallows.

A certain level of discomfort must have come from the genius acting of Jodie Foster, who earlier that same year had played a 12-year-old prostitute in scuzzy old 70s New York in Taxi Driver (1976). She is the classy Tallulah, Fat Sam’s gun moll and doll of the speakeasy. Her performance, along with the music of Paul Williams, take the film to the next level.

Jodie Foster is 12 when shooting Taxi Driver, 13 when Bugsy Malone is released.

Funny thing happened on the way to the hit, man. Even near future teen heartthrob Scott Vincent James “Chachi” Baio couldn’t make Bugsy click with the Bicentennial box office. It took the cool kids of the 80s with their cutting edge Betamax and VHS technologies to make this THE stay-puffed hit of the slumber parties.

With Bugsy in mind, we rewind back to the era it mirrors in Our Gang Follies of 1938, when the Little Rascals were the gold standard of Hollywood youth, just behind Shirley Temple. Follies is a fever dream of Alfalfa, who desires to break away from the kid stuff and pursue serious opera. It’s a cold world out there, singing Rossini like a frozen weenie on snowy street corners. A trip to the ultra-chic Club Spanky underscores his sorry career choice.

Buckwheat and Darla get cute at Club Spanky while Alfalfa freezes in the snow.

Woof! Who let the dogs out in the club? That could be the logline for a little bow-wow entitled Hot Dog (1931). It is another hard times classic from Dogville Shorts, a series of all-canine high-tail comedy shorts.

Original gangsters: Cagney, Bogart, and some other guy.

We close with a star studded Looney Tune, as 40s movie stars flock to Ciro’s on Sunset Boulevard. See how many big names have become completely unrecognizable in our modern times. It happens. There will come a time when someone has to explain who Megan Fox and Machine Gun Kelly were.