The Magic Christian [1969]: Peter Sellars, Ringo Starr, Isabel Jeans, Wilfrid Hyde-White, Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Peter Graves, John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Richard Attenborough, Leonard Frey, Laurence Harvey, Christopher Lee, Spike Milligan, Yul Brynner, Roman Polanski, Raquel Welch; with music by Badfinger (& Paul McCartney); written by Terry Southern.
In other words, two Goon-Show vets, two-plus Beatles, two Pythons, one thoroughly mainstream actor and future director, one cult director of horror/occult films, one gay icon, perhaps the most prolific horror-film actor of all time, a romantic lead of a few melodramas and suspense thrillers, an icon of the stage and screen, a pinup sex goddess, and a few mostly elderly British character actors. (BTW, the Peter Graves in this one is one of those less-well-known character actors, not the American one of the same name who played the pilot in Airplane!.)
I expect that to be topped by many of your submissions, fellow Dopers, but I’ll be darned if I can imagine one at the moment.
Skidoo, directed by Otto Preminger, starred Jackie Gleason, Carol Channing, Frankie Avalon, Frank Gorshin, Peter Lawford, Burgess Meredith, George Raft, Cesar Romero, Slim Pickens, Austin Pendleton, Mickey Rooney, and Groucho Marx as “God”. All the credits (yes, every last one) are sung–music by Harry Nilsson (the “Coconut” song).
Scatman Crothers
Eric Idle
Casey Kasem
John Moschitta (the Micro Machines guy)
Judd Nelson (then the movie king of the world)
Leonard Nimoy
Robert Stack
and the late, great Orson Welles in his final role.
Susan Hayward as “Bortai”
Pedro Armendáriz as “Jamuga”
Agnes Moorhead as “Hunlun”
Lee Van Cleef as “Chepei”
William Conrad (Cannon) as “Kasar”
…and John Wayne as Genghis Kahn.
And as an interesting side note, almost everyone involved with the production later died of cancer due to nuclear fallout from the location shoot:
Orson Welles, Buck Henry, Art Garfunkel, Bob Newhart, Jack Gilford, Anthony Perkins, Martin Sheen, Martin Balsam, Paula Prentiss, Richard Benjamin, Jon Voight, Norman Fell…
Two movies stick out in my mind as having truly bizarre casts:
Sneakers (1992):
Robert Redford
Sidney Poitier
Dan Ackroyd
River Phoenix
Ben Kingsley
James Earl Jones
What was Phil Robinson on?
The Story of Mankind (1957)
Hedy Lamarr
Ronald Colman
Vincent Price
Peter Lorre
The Marx Brothers (!!!) (Harpo plays Sir Isaac Newton!!!)
Agnes Moorehead
Virginia Mayo
John Carradine
Cesar Romero
Francis X. Bushman as Moses**
Irwin Allen wasn’t sure what to do with this one. It’s part fantasy (Vincent Price plays “Mr. Scratch”, the Devil, which makes sense, while Ronald Colan is “THe Sirit of Mankind”), part serious, and part over-the-top comedy (The Marx Bothers, fer cryin out loud – and they’re not on camera at the same time.)
There’s also one of Akira Kurasawa’s movies tha eatures a major Japanese comedy star (playing it as a comedy) alongside Toshiro Mifune an other “classical” Japanese actors, playing it very straight. I don’t recall the ttle, and don’t feel like digging out my copy of Donald Richie’s book, but it’s like having Paul Rubens as Pee Wee Herman playing alongside, say, Sir Lawrence Olivier. (It’s one of Kurasawa’s older and less-seen films, not like Yojimbo)
They’re worth mentioning, because they tried to be so inclusive, but I don’t thin they’re as weird as the ones I just listed: Around the World in 80 Days (the Michael Todd version, of course, with a cast of Everyone In The World)
There’s this cast, which probably sounds like names chosen at random:
Woody Allen
Sharon Stone (as Woody’s wife)
Alfonso Arau
Andy Dick
Fran Drescher
Elliott Gould
Joseph Gordon-Levitt
Kathy Kinney
Cheech Marin
Lou Diamond Phillips
David Schwimmer
Kiefer Sutherland
Hector Elizondo (uncredited)
Lily Tomlin (uncredited)
Plot Summary: Marlo Manners is enjoying her honeymoon with Sir Michael Barrington, husband number 6.
Cast:
Mae West… Marlo Manners/Lady Barrington She was eighty-five!! :eek:
Timothy Dalton … Sir Michael Barrington
Dom DeLuise … Dan Turner
Tony Curtis … Alexei Andreyev Karansky
Ringo Starr … Laslo Karolny
George Hamilton … Vance Norton
Alice Cooper … Waiter
Keith Allison … Waiter in Alexei’s Suite
Rona Barrett … Herself
Van McCoy … Delegate
Keith Moon … Dress Designer
Regis Philbin … Himself
Walter Pidgeon … Mr. Chambers, the chairman
George Raft … Himself
Gil Stratton … Himself
Keenan Ivory Wayans did pretty good with I’m Gonna Git You Sucka.
First, you have the usual complement of Wayanses: Keenen Ivory Wayans, Damon Wayans, Kim Wayans, Marlon Wayans. Shawn Wayans (the latter three in 'blink and you’ll miss’em parts)
Then you have the bloxploitation icons: Bernie Casey, Antonio Fargas, Steve James, Isaac Hayes, Jim Brown, Clarence Williams III (if they got Tamara Dobson, Ron O’Neal, Yaphett Kotto and Pam Grier, this would have been perfect!)
**Then, a good mix of recognizable black TV stars from the 70s, 80s and 90s:**Robin Harris, Ja’net DuBois, Dawnn Lewis, Kadeem Hardison, Anne-Marie Johnson, John Witherspoon, David Alan Grier, Chris Rock
And – BEST part – some “Nah, that’s not really them” moments… John Vernon, Eve Plumb (from the Brady Bunch!), Marc Figueroa, Peggy Lipton, the incredible voice actor Don Messick, rapper KRS-ONE and Robert Townsend
Desire Under the Elms, O’Neill’s update of Phaedra, had Burl Ives & Sophia Loren as a married couple, Anthony “Psycho” Perkins as the stepson she’s in lust with (?) and features Pernell Roberts as Burl’s other boy
Casino features the Scorcese New York Gangster Acting Company (DeNiro, Pesci), Sharon Stone, and in dramatic roles (not as themselves) Vegas staples Dick Smothers, Don “Why the Hell Does this Guy Have a Career?” Rickles, and the late Alan King, and for a touch of sleaze James Woods as a pimp his ex ho can’t live without
HOCUS POCUS features Bette Midler, Kathy Najimy and Sarah Jessica Parker as not only sisters but as 17th century witches, real life brother/sister Garry & Penny Marshall as a married couple (eww!) and features a rock number.
Urban Cowboy is probably the only movie ever made about blue collar southwestern trailer dwelling line dancers ever to star a guy from Brooklyn and an Israeli armed forces vet as its Texas born leads.
Ben Stiller
Janeane Garofalo
Hank Azaria
William H. Macy
Greg Kinnear
Geoffrey Rush
Claire Forlani
Paul “Pee-Wee Herman” Reubens
Eddie Izzard
Lena Olin
Tom Waits
They were all in Mystery Men, a wickedly-funny comedy about a team of third-rate loser superheroes trying to prove themselves when the most competent superhero in town (Kinnear) is captured by the over-the-top villain (Rush). Tom Waits plays a scientist who invents all sorts of bizarre weaponry for the team, and Eddie Izzard is one of the bad guys. It’s not a GREAT movie, but I like it a lot, it is very funny, and has that tremendous cast.
How about:
Peter Weller
Ellen Barkin
Jeff Goldblum
Clancy Brown
Carl Lumbly
John Lithgow (villain)
Christopher Lloyd (villain)
Vincent Schiavelli (villain)
Yakov Smirnoff
Very good cast in a very cool, very funny cult classic from the '80s: The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension.
If I had to declare a winner at this point, it’d have to go to davmilasav’s submission of Sextette, with its inspired romantic pairing of the octogenarian Mae West and a young Timothy Dalton (I gotta see this one!), plus a truly hallucinogenic roster of supporting actors. Let’s face it, George Raft and Alice Cooper don’t belong on the same planet, let alone the same movie. Some of the other ideas were right up there, esp. I’m Gonna Git You Sucka (the inclusion of Eve Plumb was a nice touch) and Skidoo.
Still, I have a hard time believing that this is as crazy as it gets… is there nothing out there that pushes the madness still further?
Sextette doesn’t actually show Mae West and Timothy Dalton in bed or naked or anything, does it? :eek:
WOOHOO!! I win!! I’d like to thank God, the Academy, my da… um, oh, it’s a no-prize? Damn.
I’ve never seen it but I read about it in the recent Keith Moon bio. After reading the reviews on IMDb I think I’d rather claw out my eyes and bathe them in lemonade than wdatch this movie. I wonder if NetFlix has a copy…
Rosemary’s Baby has a great line-up: Mia Farrow Sinatra Previn Allen of course as Rosemary, independent film tsar John Cassavetes as her husband, Maurice “Dr. Zaius” Evans (then a regent of the Anything for a Buck School of Acting) and Ruth “Harold & Maude” Gordon in major supporting roles, Ralph Bellamy (best remembered today perhaps for his Eddie Murphy roles) and Charles Grodin (ugh) as doctors, but my favorite casting was his assemblage of veteran “oh that’s what’s his name…” character actors such as Phil Leeds as members of a Satanic coven. It was impossible to watch their later appearances on Night Court or Facts of Life and not think of them as the same character, but the cherry atop the Satanic sundae was Hope Summers- seeing/hearing Aunt Bea’s best friend, Clara, joyfully shout “Hail Satan!” made me forever wonder just what was in those prize winning pickles.
Wholly Moses has an odd line-up of stars: Dudley Moore (then sizzling hot from Arthur and 10), Richard Pryor, James Coco, John Ritter (as a very neurotic and angsty devil), Laraine Newman (as a giant-shagging wife) and John Houseman (in a pair of fake wings).
Well there’s always Kentucky Fried Movie: Donald Sutherland
George Lazenby
Bill Bixby
Forrest J. Ackerman
Uschi Digard
Tina Louise
Leslie Neilson
Shadoe Stevens
Or Casino Royale:
Peter Selles
Orson Welles
Woody Allen
Ursula Andress
David Niven
Walter Huston
George Raft
Charles Boyer
Jean-Paul Belmondo
David Prowse
Kurt Kaszner
Anjelica Huston
Burt Kwouk
Caroline Munro
Peter O’Toole
William Holden
Jacqueline Bissett
I’ve come back to add that I thought there was an mp3 link to Mae West singing in the Sextette review I linked to above, but I had misremembered. The mp3 is in a review of another film featuring Mae West as octogenarian sex-kitten, Myra Breckinridge, which also deserves a mention here: http://www.agonybooth.com/myra_breckinridge/ (see page 8)
Cast includes Raquel Welch, John Huston, Mae West, Rex Reed, Farrah Fawcett, John Carradine, and Tom Selleck. Based on a Gore Vidal novel.
