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....you come up smelling like fleas". One of the lines actually spoken (by Tony Bennett)in "The Oscar". Words can not describe this film. It is so so bad...it is GREAT! Stephen Boyd's performance is way way way over the top like nothing you have ever seen before. He is like a rabid dog hopped up on speed. The other performers are terrible too! Especially Tony Bennett who looks like he is reading his lines off cue cards. But it is the script that will have you on the floor laughing. There are so many memorably bad lines in this that I recommend you have a whole pad of paper and a pen ready to jot them all down. Rush don't walk to your nearest video store and rent this! One of the best (if not THE best) of the camp crazed melodramas of the 1960's. 10/10 as ultra grade A+ high camp. Regular still high 6/10 for its sheer audacity and 60's chic look at the bowels of Hollywood. Norma Desmond Mr. Boyd is ready for his close up.

If anyone follows my reviews one will note that I always use the expression hero/heel when talking about Tyrone Power. He could be a full blooded hero or he was a hero/heel, a likable sort of guy, but one who was ruthless in getting what he wanted. You need someone of Power's ability and charm to play such a part. And sad to say that was something Stephen Boyd just doesn't bring to The Oscar.

Even when one is an anti-hero there has to be certain qualities brought out that make you root for the guy. Two minutes into watching The Oscar and I wanted to punch out Stephen Boyd. This guy is all heel with no charm and uses people like toilet paper.

Joseph E. Levine assembled quite a cast to support Boyd and I don't think I've ever seen so much talent squandered on such a mediocre picture. Try counting the number of Oscar winners in it. Just Edith Head's Oscars and she plays herself in the film must bring the total to over 20. She got a nomination here for costume design, one of two The Oscar got, the second was for Art&Set design.

Tony Bennett is the hero's best friend who is similarly used and abused doesn't give a half bad performance and this was to be a breakthrough for him as a dramatic actor like Bing Crosby or Frank Sinatra. I also liked Milton Berle as his agent.

Some of the women in Boyd's life in this film are Eleanor Parker, Elke Sommer, and Jill St. John. The one I liked best was Jean Hale as a star who the up and coming Boyd is sent on a publicity date with. She's a female version of him so there is one great moment where she gets dumped on literally.

One woman who was in Stephen Boyd's life and who always tried to promote his career in her column appears her as herself in one of her last appearances. Rumor has it that Boyd made old Hedda Hopper's life particularly memorable in her golden years.

In the old My Favorite Martian series there was an episode where Ray Walston uses a special light bulb in the room and it gives off a benevolence bulb. You just become inexplicably likable to all around. Bill Bixby sees this as a great way to score with women and he uses it. But Walston tells him that on earthlings it gives you a hate me glow and the two spend the rest of the episode trying to find the antidote.

That's what Boyd projected here, a two hour hate me glow. And in fact this review is dedicated to an attorney I knew back in Brooklyn, a man who had ambitions for a great political career, but had a hate me glow that made Boyd look like Albert Schweitzer. No names of course, but Ronald J. D'Angelo this film is for you.

The Oscar is a campy all star look at an ambitious actor and if you can stand the hate me glow that Boyd projects, you'll like looking at the stars.

There is no other way to concieve of this film getting made other than being the by-product of extraterrestrials intercepting tv signals of DYNASTY, MELROSE PLACE and the like and recreating them as a realistic depiction of the way Earthlings behave. This gets my vote as the most unintentionally fall-on-your-ass hilarious movie ever made; you simply can't write comedy this good! The dialogue must have turned John Waters chartreuse with envy, and the performance by Steven Boyd is akin to what if one of the THUNDERBIRDS marionettes had been cast in WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLFE?. His body language is quite like some poor puppet being randomly jerked around while the puppeteer tries to shake off LSD-conjured spiders. And the incredibly strange dialogue from a knife-wielding strip joint owner:(attempting to be intimidating, with a crazy gleam in his eye and tossing his switchblade between both of his hands) "Pretty? Pretty?" No one in the history of civilization has ever talked like any of the characters in this film. If you are fortunate enough to have this unjustly out-of-print film at your local video store, not only should you rent it immediately, but you should invite over all of your friends and let them stare at this mess in slack-jawed amazement. A solid 10 on the laughs scale! And you will pee your pants at Tony Bennet's narration/ performance!!! RENT IT RIGHT NOW, FOR GOD'S SAKE!

Perhaps the most notable thing about "The Oscar," aside from the fact that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences probably wishes it didn't allow the filmmakers to use its award as a part of their turkey, is that the opening credits of the film give away two key elements that really shouldn't be revealed, one of which laughably gives away the ending!

This really goes to the point that nobody in this film seemed to know or care about the process of making it and were more enamored with the concept of setting their film on Oscar Night than in having the story make any sense, and were more about getting names to list, hoping to increase the Box Office receipts. Bad move.

I was hoping for an over the top, completely ridiculous, scenery chewing melodrama, and I was rather disappointed. Granted, Stephen Boyd definitely does have some ludicrous dialog and plays bigger than he should for what he's doing, but it really isn't "fun" to watch. Even more to the point, there's no one in the film who can challenge him.

Milton Berle comes the closest as his agent. But Berle doesn't get to crack wise, as we would expect him to do with a knucklehead client like this one. He plays it straight up. What was the point of that? And Elke Sommer is such a conflicted character, it's difficult to understand what she brought to the film, aside from the obvious eye candy intended.

The other oddity is in seeing Tony Bennett play his one and only acting role. Clearly, he wasn't ready for this sort of challenge and I can't blame him for begging off film for the safety of his music career after this disaster.

Wasted were Oscar Winner Ernest Borgnine who plays some two bit private eye and Edie Adams who actually seems the most realistic character in the entire film. Also, Edith Head, the multiple Oscar winning Costume Designer, who was seen on screen in three different scenes, and uttered half a word.

But I'm seriously still reeling over the credit spoilers. If you do watch this film (and I don't recommend you do because it definitely isn't good and it unfortunately isn't bad enough to be amusing) don't read the opening credits!

I also love this movie. I first saw it about 12-15 years ago on a short-lived series on TNT called "Bad movies we love" or something like that. For many years I traditionally watched it right before the Oscar broadcast. The "Airplane" of bad movies, the hilarious dialogue just keeps coming. I taped it from a pay TV source many years ago, but would also buy a pristine VHS or DVD copy. Jill St. John's finest hour. Struggling young actor,impatient for stardom, steps on everyone he meets on his way to an Oscar nomination. Terrible overacting by nearly everyone involved, and ridiculous,riotous dialogue make this a classic guilty pleasure. Made at a time when Hollywood was not yet consciously making "bad" movies. Great fun.

... and a film that would never win an Oscar nor do I think its makers imagined that it would.

In the same vein as "Valley of the Dolls", it's a camp classic about Hollywood. It paints Hollywood as full of vicious amoral people, but the worst of them is Frankie Fane (Stephen Boyd). The film starts at the Academy Awards where Frankie Fane is expecting to win the Best Actor Oscar, which he needs to get back on top. The film then traces his rise in Hollywood, a rise that is full of him stepping on other people. There are tons of Hollywood stereotypes and situations in the process.

But along the way he meets an actor who has aged out of leading parts and has suddenly been labeled box office poison and has to take a job as head waiter where his old Hollywood pals eat because he has also ran through all of his money. Frankie is terrified of becoming that guy, and yet he oddly does everything he can to become just that guy. He uses people and discards them, and he also spends like there is no tomorrow. And then tomorrow comes. Complications ensue.

It's too bad Boyd isn't better remembered today for roles other than that of Messala in Ben Hur, because he really was a very good actor. He takes a part that could have been quite two dimensional and breathes some life into it so that his character is a very believable and hissable villain.

Atrocious film from producer Joseph E. Levine, here ripping the lid off the Hollywood can but getting nothing out of it except hot air. Ruthless, snarling Stephen Boyd scratches his way up from seamy strip joints (as manager for the non-blushing Jill St. John) to the top of the H-wood heap as the world's most constipated actor. Laughable backstage melodrama is high camp, but how can one laugh without feeling sorry for all the embarrassed personalities on the screen--none more so than Tony Bennett, looking like a basset hound in a tuxedo. The fifth-rate screenplay is full of now-legendary fruit-loop lines, boiling over with 'significance', while the surroundings (once considered plush) now look tatty. Elke Sommer (as a sketch artist for Edith Head!) is the one cast member who doesn't bulldoze her way through the picture. Otherwise, it ain't for the squeamish! *1/2 from ****

Sometimes Hollywood thought of itself in such high regard that taking a serious look in the mirror was impossible. The Oscar is probably the weirdest example of this. Stephen Boyd stars as Frankie Fane, a walking, talking Ken doll with the charm to match. Boyd has always been one of my favorite actors in the looks department, he had a great face and usually gave good performances. Here it's like someone else borrowed his body for the production. The story tells of how a star got to the point of an Oscar nomination, his rise to fame and all the people he walked over to get there. This film would make a great double feature with Valley of the Dolls, they both take themselves way too seriously for the level of writing and direction and the result is bizarre and unintentionally hilarious. Chock full of stars of the time, great production, costumes, sets, it's all there in an epic extravaganza of campy melodrama. Very colorful and big yet it has the performance quality of an episode of The Beverly Hillbillies. The script is beyond cliché and everyone tries to eat the scenery to grab their moment. Everyone that is except Tony Bennet who would have served the film better by being a singer in a nightclub scene. Elke Sommer does strange things with her eyes to emphasize emotion and many of the fine actors must have cried themselves to sleep the night of the premier, or thrown tantrums, aghast at what they had been part of. Must be seen to be believed. At one point Bennet calls Boyd to tell him of the nomination, "You and Burton and Lancaster..." Righhhhhht.

I just saw this film and I had to go out to buy it. Why? it's so bad its good!

This film was supposed to show all the nasty side of how an Oscar nomination goes to the head of its nominee and what he would do to win -- and in a way it does.

But the acting is so over the top...you can't help but laugh. The hair styles are big, the performances are big..come on, it's just one of those fun little 60's 'soap opera' films that you'd never watch for serious sake, but mindless fun with you and your friends. (Remember the soap opera 'General Hospital' in the early, early 60's with the obviously over the top acting, silly drama situations, the real organ playing, etc.? Well this is even funnier!)

It grabs ya, but you cannot help but laugh, laugh laugh, it's SO over the top. If anyone wants to know what makes a "campy" film, don't rent "Mommie Dearest", rent this one. There isn't any way you could hate this film, you'd be laughing too hard. I'd watch it on rainy days, or if I'm feeling blue, or I just want to get together with a bunch of friends and just point out just how over the top this is.

This is a 10+ on the campy scale, a 5 regular. Go out and rent it, just to have a ball. It's fab-u-lous!

This obscure, sublimely over-heated film is a second cousin to "Valley of the Dolls" in terms of pure, unadulterated Hollywood camp. The film is like a massive wad of cotton candy for those who enjoy a two hour trip to movie hell. Opening at the ceremony for the title statuettes, we see that Boyd is the front-runner for Best Actor. But first, the audience must step back in time to discover how he got there. It falls to Bennett to narrate the with the most dry delivery of horrendous socko '60's scripting. Looking like a Dean Martin wax figure that's been left in the sun for two hours, he is a stumpy, squatty disaster in this film. Billed as "Introducing Tony Bennett", he has zero charisma, receives corpse-lighting, doesn't sing even once and forever after (thankfully) played only himself in films. At any rate, as the film flashes back, lean, mean Boyd (in a performance that ensured he'd never see another "Ben-Hur") is instantaneously irredeemable and agonizing as a big mouthed roamer who's joined by his stripper girlfriend (St. John) and a passive buddy (Bennett.) In these early scenes, St. John actually manages to come off as sexy despite a crazed tigress costume and the tacky surroundings. Soon, though, she's chewing one end of the scenery while Boyd chews the other. They meet in the middle where hapless Bennett is sitting like a bump on a log. Soon Boyd is trying to make it as an actor with the assistance of love-starved talent scout Parker (in a typically dedicated performance) and agent Berle (solid, also, in a non-comedic role...at least it is meant to be non-comedic!) Boyd's eternal bad attitude and horrible personality continue to inflict pain on all those around him and the viewing audience. In the film, he has a magnetic presence that draws everyone to him and causes them to embarrass themselves repeatedly. This charm is invisible to the film's viewers. One of his victims is the lovely Sommer, who looks stunning in an array of Head gowns and intricate hairstyles. His rise to the top of his profession is spoiled by his own ego and eventually he gets tripped up. He even gets one of those hilarious dreams with smoke swirling and actors dully repeating their lines. The movie is jam-packed with bits by stars who should have known better, some of them even Oscar-winners themselves (Crawford, Brennan, Borgnine.) Other cameos of people playing themselves lend a faux verisimilitude to the proceedings (Hopper, shortly before her death, Head, Hope, Oberon, even James Bacon appears at a press conference looking pouty because Archerd got all the lines.) There's a great little part for Hale as a snotty, demanding starlet and it's one time when Boyd comes off well. Lawford has a bit as a fallen star who works in a restaurant. Sadly, his own career would soon hit the skids as well. Adams adds a bit of verve as Borgnine's showy wife. She has one unfortunate scene, though, in which her behind is spread right in front of the camera. The film is a feast of kicky '60's production design, fun clothing and enormous hairdo's. There are a few clever touches in the film. At least twice, scenes involving different people are duplicated to show the parallels. The film has one of the all-time hilarious "surprise" resolutions...one last cackle before the credits roll. A MUST for any connoisseur of bad films!

There are good and bad movies in every genre. The genre of the film making business contains Sunset Boulevard, The Player, Contempt. It also contains Won Ton Ton, The Wild Party and The Oscar. One of the things wrong with the Oscar is that it's attempt to portray low down sleaze with kid gloves. If the story is down and dirty, FILM it down and dirty. Where Hymie Kelly should have yelled BULLS**T, they have him yell, "BIRDSEED." I would love to remake this movie and make it totally repulsive and revolting. Make it a Hollywood story by way of Sin City. Take no prisoners. Change the names that would normally distract from the horrible elements that would push the story forward. Where do I sign?

If any of the reviews on IMDb say that "The Oscar" is a good film, you can safely assume that they either wrote the screenplay for this film or they are insane (or both). However, despite being a very bad film, I can see folks liking it, as it IS entertaining in a sleazy, over-the-top and awful sort of way--much like the film "Valley of the Dolls".

Frankie (Stephen Boyd) is a vulgar, self-absorbed jerk. At the beginning of the film, he's basically pimping out his girlfriend (Jill St. John) instead of working. But when he sees someone who can help him move up the food chain, he quickly dumps her for the new girl...and pretty much this pattern is repeated throughout the movie. Frankie hurts people, uses people and charms the right people in order to become the Oscar-nominated jerk.

During the course of this film, you hear the worst dialog ever recorded on celluloid. Oddly, however, despite being nothing but god-awful dialog and over-acting, the film has been given the full Hollywood treatment. It has a HUGE cast of stars and guest stars and obviously producing trash took a LOT of money! The likes of Eleanor Parker, Joseph Cotten, Milton Berle, Bob Hope and MANY others make appearances in the movie...presumably because the checks from the studio cleared! They obviously did NOT make the movie because of its artistic merits or quality!! Perhaps the producers were holding family members hostage to get them to appear in this dreck-fest.

Director Russell Rouse's over-the-top opus follows the exploits of Frankie Fane (Stephen Boyd, with all the animation of a mechanical bear) as a Hollywood heel hellbent on becoming a star and, as the title implies, there's a "melodramatic" climax at the Academy Awards. It's irresistible trash with an all-star cast -producer Joseph E. Levine's very own "Hollywood Babylon"- and epitomizes the often incorrectly applied expression, "so bad it's good". Naturally, this over-ripe farrago is right up there with the schlockmeister's HARLOW, THE CARPETBAGGERS and WHERE LOVE HAS GONE, twinkling eternally in Bad Movie Heaven, Super-Productions, all.

What a glorious mess- Stephen Boyd is bombastic and way too intense throughout but no one got away unscathed, especially the ladies, all in various states of undress. They shot Eleanor Parker through Vaseline (she had the same lighting Joan Crawford did with shadows hiding her neck) and they should have shot Jill St. John for the appalling histrionics. I never realized what an awful actress Elke Sommer was, either, and the only thing that really bugged me about this howler was Elke's bangs. I'm sure I must have at some point in my life but I can't recall ever seeing that woman's forehead (she probably had the f-word tattooed on it or something). I enjoyed seeing Merle Oberon, Frank Sinatra, Bob Hope, Hedda Hopper, and Edith Head all-too-briefly play themselves and I also spotted James Bacon and Army Archerd (I think, it's been so long) in a crowd of reporters.

I didn't pick up on this when I first saw THE Oscar on TV back in the '70s but the obnoxious, self-deluded movie queen played by a platinum blonde Jean Hale was named "Cheryl Barker", a none-too-subtle swipe at Carroll Baker who was having it out with Paramount producer Joseph E. Levine at the time. There was obviously a lot of bad blood there; Hale's "C. Barker" was made up to look exactly like C. Baker in HARLOW and Jean did a mean (and mean-spirited) imitation of Carroll at a premiere. This "CB" was as over-bearing as Frankie Fane who humiliated her by shouting, "She's NOTHING!" before dumping a salad all over her in front of Hedda Hopper on their studio-arranged "date". Jean Hale/Cheryl Barker is also listed dead last in the closing credits even though her part was larger than a number of others listed above her. At this point, Carroll Baker was at the bottom of the heap in Hollywood; an industry joke, she high-tailed it to Europe where she'd make films for the next fifteen years before returning "home" (in triumph, by the way) for STAR 80. For many reasons -none of which have anything to do with film as an art form- THE Oscar is not to be missed!

Apparently antihero Frank Fain, stiffly played by Steven Boyd, never heard the saying "Be nice to the people you meet on the way up..." because he abuses everyone he meets and makes every mistake in the book including believing his own press clippings. The trouble is that Steven Boyd doesn't give us a hint of the charisma that made Fain even a potential candidate for the Oscar to begin with. Tony Bennett's portrayal of agent Hymie Kelly nearly sinks the movie like a torpedo. Fortunately, the rest of the supporting cast understands kitsch and do what they can to have fun while moving things along at an otherwise bearable pace. Milton Berle, Ernest Borgnine, and Edie Adams are especially marvelous as hard-boiled bottom-dwellers. Elke Sommer actually does a halfway decent job as Fain's disillusioned main squeeze. The final sequences are camp classics.

Stephen Boyd stars as a wannabe actor willing to climb the ladder and walk over anyone who gets in his way in doing so, in this campy it's-so-bad-its-good tale of Hollywood. To begin with, the dialogue in the first thirty minutes or so is so awful it's laughable, especially lines delivered by Jill St. John and Tony Bennett. Yes, crooner Tony Bennett is in this. If you have the desire to keep with it, it becomes totally engrossing. It's so over the top in its presentation, you can't argue with the fact that it entertains. In fact, it boasts a very colorful and memorable supporting cast including Elke Sommer, Eleanor Parker, Ernest Borgnine, Edie Adams, and Milton Berle, who is surprisingly believable and underplays his role as Stephen's agent. Despite the fact that Stephen Boyd's ego is practically the whole show, everyone else is just great in their roles, especially Edie Adams. If you get a chance to catch this, don't turn the channel. In fact, I'd watch it again right now. It's that much of a guilty pleasure. It's the kind of bad picture that is a lot of fun and is better than it has a right to be. The big question is who wins "The Oscar?"