The Perils of Pauline Reviews

This picture has nothing to do with the superior biography that starred Betty Hutton. Instead, it uses the same title and goes back to the original 20-episode serial Pearl White made in 1914. It was shot as a TV pilot but was released in theaters when no network saw fit to put it on its schedule. Austin, who became famous doing automobile commercials, stars with Boone and Terry-Thomas. The whiz-bang story has Boone and Austin as two young orphans who fall for each other while living at the home where they have been raised. Boone leaves first and promises to return for her when he becomes rich. Seven years pass and Boone is somehow the richest man in the world. He comes back for Austin, but she's now living in Arabia as the nanny for Natoli, the 12-year-old prince. Natoli has lecherous eyes for Austin and is already planning to begin his very own harem with Austin as the centerpiece. When she balks at that, he sells her into slavery to a band of Pygmies in Africa. These little guys want to shrink her down to their size. A huge gorilla saves her from that fate, and then she is rescued by Terry-Thomas, an African hunter whose fame is legendary. Meanwhile, Boone has come down with a strange disease he picked up on the Dark Continent and is in New York to recuperate. Austin comes to the Big Apple, falls down a sewer, and is saved by 99 1/2-year-old Horton, the second richest man in the world, who would like her to marry his one-year-old grandson. In order to effect that union, he tosses Austin into a deep freeze to wait for the infant to grow. Boone has himself frozen as well, despondent over not being able to locate Austin. They both thaw ahead of schedule, and Austin winds up in a spacewalk (don't ask how, just read!), having been coaxed there by Soviet agents. When she returns to Earth, she accepts a job in a movie directed by Scotti (very funny, as always) and costarring the gorilla who saved her from the Pygmies (Kleven in costume). When the huge beast kidnaps Austin, Boone comes to her rescue. The two marry and go off to Venice where their gondola begins to sink as the film ends. Every stunt possible is crammed into this movie, leaving absolutely no room for anything else, in an attempt to be as campy as the TV hit of the day, "Batman." But camp is a delicate matter, and this picture's a sledgehammer.