Surprisingly incoherent and boring

Excellent, smart action film.

It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

This is with out a doubt the worst movie I have ever seen. Plastic characters spewing the most amazingly bad dialog imaginable. If Ed Wood had still been directing in the 70's, this could have been his masterpiece. I am still surprised that Perry King and Raquel Welch did not pool their funds to buy out every print, so they could be spared the embarrassment of the general public seeing the most laughable dance sequence ever put on celluloid. It is especially sad to think that this was a big movie for James Coco. His true comedic talents were totally wasted in this mess of a film. The film is so unbelievably bad that I am surprised that it has not reached some sort of "cult film" status. It should be played at midnight at art house all over the US. It would bring screams of laughter from everyone in the audience. Maybe John Waters should do the re-make?

This is an interesting and ambitious feature that has much to recommend it--and a fair number of strikes against it, too. On the credit side, James Coco is outstanding in the lead role of Jolly Grimm, an aging screen comic desperate to make a comeback. He's ably supported by David Dukes as his straight arrow screen collaborator and especially by Royal Dano as his lanky and loyal personal assistant. The story is simple but interesting, the silent film footage of Brother Jasper expertly mounted, and there's an eerily effective and almost otherworldly performance by the unheralded Annette Ferra as an ambitious young dancer.And now for the not so good news: despite a praiseworthy attempt to drape this in Roaring '20s ambiance, a few too many 1970s anachronisms--clothing wise and hairstyle wise--creep distractingly into the background, the original songs are generally mediocre, and the sensational sex scenes are gratuitous at best. The result is a somewhat schizophrenic production that uneasily tries to balance a serious story with five minutes of over the top group grope scenes which will offend some and disappoint others. There's enough here to render these scenes superfluous, but even with their inclusion the film remains a fine character study that will hold the attention of those interested in the history--apocryphal or otherwise--of early Hollywood.

**SPOILERS** Surviving from what happened in the wild party of the night before at comedy legend Jolly Grimm ,James Coco, mansion writer Jimmy Morrison, David Dukes, is laid up in his hospital bed recovering from a bullet wound in his neck. Jimmy is doing what he does best writing a screenplay about the terrible events that put him in the hospital and ended up taking the lives of two people, one a major screen heart-throb, at the party.It all started when comedian Jolly Grimm who hadn't made a movie in years invited all the Hollywood big shot producers and a number of actors actresses, and hangers on, to his place to view his new film "Brother Jasper" that he hoped will re-start his fledgling career. Having had an amazing 27 hits in a row Grimm is now considered a has-been by the studios and hasn't been giving any staring parts in any of their major motion pictures. Grimm decided to go over their heads and make a movie that he stares in and and directed himself. Grimm still needs the Hollywood honchos to distribute his movie for it to reach the public and it's at the party that Grimm is throwing that he hopes to impress them in just doing that. Tense and nervous the day before the big party Grimm takes it out on his live-in girlfriend Queenie, Requal Welch, who put up with his manic-depressive actions for years but now it seems that even she reached her breaking point with Grimm unable, or not wanting, to control his violent outbursts anymore that she's at the receiving end.Showing Jimmy the movie "Brother Jasper" to get his professional opinion Grimm's told that the movie needs a number of changes or cuts, like a comedic cannibal scene,in what's supposed to be a heart-wrenching and serious film, that has poor Jimmy almost thrown out of the Grimm Mansion. With all the Hollywood illuminates showing up to see what Grimm hoped to be his masterpiece and the movie that would catapult him back on top of the weekly theater ticket receipts, and on the silver screen, things don't go as well as Grimm hoped in fact the party turns out to be a total and deadly disaster for him.Loosely based on an incident about actor Fatty Arbuckle back in the 1920's when he was arrested and put on trial for the rape and murder of a young starlet that he invited to a drunken party, and orgy, of his. Arbuckle was found innocent but his career was finished and he died a poor and broken man some ten years later.James Coco is at his best as the tragic Jolly Grimm who ends up not only losing any chance of getting back in the Hollywood limelight but also looses Queenie first to movie matinée idol Dale Sword, Perry King, and then ends up losing her life due to his jealous and uncountable rage. Grimm is not at all that much of a villain in the film "The Wild Party" he's more a victim of his own spectacular success.Sweet and loving at first when he took Queenie off the street and gave her a place to stay, in his, mansion and put her in a number of his movies as well, as taking care off all her needs Grimm also treated Queenie as an equal not as someone who's totally dependent on him. It was only when his career started to fall apart that Grimm became an abusive swine towards her as well as everyone else. With the party degenerating into an orgy free for all and Queenie leaving Grimm, by going off with Dale Sword, all by himself that the drinks and suspicions that were overwhelming his already fragile mind took control and Grimm lost it as well as lost what life and freedom that he still had left.

Unforgettable, very well done depticition of decadent 1920s Hollywood. Raquel Welch is superb as the desperate, sweet mistress of a deeply disturbed overweight and washed up comic named Jolly Grimm, ably played by James Coco. To resuscitate his career, Jolly throws a party that ends in tragedy. Very loosley based on Fatty Arbuckles story, this unforgettable and devastating film features fine support from Perry King as a Valentiniesque actor, and especailly from Miss Tiffany Bolling, as a lovely but unhappy film starlet. All in all, a class A effort that should have gotten a better recption at the time, but may well emerge as a cult classic. It is newly released on DVD , which should add to the fine film.