The Happy Hooker Goes to Washingtopn

The Happy Hooker Goes to Washington (1977) is a cinematic time capsule. Think of an actor or actress who you saw every week on television in the 70's but whose name you just cannot remember. He or she is in this movie. The guy who played Darrin Stevens's boss on Bewitched (both Darrins, same boss)? He's in it. The frenetic corporal on F Troop? In it. George Hamilton? Wait, his name we remembered. But he's in it, anyway. Billy Frickin' Barty is in it.... as a mafia don... whose henchmen pick him up so he can be at eye level with those to whom he speaks. Anyone who was almost someone but didn't have that little something extra made it into this second installment of the Happy Hooker series.

Scoop's note:

Other members of the marvelous cast include Uncle Martin from My Favorite Martian, Gunther "Ooh-Ooh" Toody from Car 54, Odd Job from Goldfinger, Rip Taylor from The $1.98 Beauty Show, and Phil Foster and Jack Carter, who were required to be on TV every minute in the 70s. They were to 70s TV as Eric Roberts is to low budget movies.

Oh, that got me sidetracked. I foolishly decided to research my analogy. Roberts actually peaked in 2000, and is now slowing to a crawl.

Eric Roberts IMDB credits per year:

1998 7
1999 9
2000 14
2001 12
2002 8
2003 6

Even the babes who give up some goodies you might recognize from other places... in which they gave up some goodies.

Point 1: Joey Heatherton takes over from Lynn Redgrave as Xaviera Hollander. The plot goes that she has become the respectable queen of style in the Western world. And one of her proteges has gone missing from her job in Washington, D.C. So she travels to testify about something or other and winds up telling stories about her other employees. And yada, yada, yada. You'll recognize Joey because she gave up upper goodies in Bluebeard, but here she wears dresses with plunging necklines, nothing more.

Point 2: Two of Xaviera's girls... including the one who has gone missing... are played by former Hefmates. They are Miss May for 1973, Bonnie Large, and for 1974, Pamela Zinszer. They show hooters only, but you should enjoy the view because so far as I can tell this was the only movie in which either appeared, much less revealed anything interesting.

Point 3: Raven Delacroix, a staple of 70's nudie movies, has a short, uncredited part. Louisa Moritz, another frequently nekkid babe, has an equally short but credited role. Both show boobs and bum

Points 4: Cissie Cameron-Colpitts, Dawn Clark and Marilyn Joi provide the bulk of the exposure. Cissie was topless in Billy Jack, that iconic movie of the early 70's, Dawn was tres nekkid in Hollywood Knights and Marilyn Joi disrobed in movies ranging from one of the Ilsa, Wicked Somebody from Somewhere series to Cheerleader's Wild Weekend. You'd never guess the names, but you might recognize the... uh, faces.

Point 5: Okay, this is a tough one. Linda Gildersleeve shows up, disrobes and proceeds to sport hump on the lunch counter of her local diner. You do not want to know why. Linda, if you recall, was nekkid about half the time in Sun Bunnies and went topless in Cinderella.

not currently on DVD

So that does for The Happy Hooker Goes to Washington. This is a movie filled with the detritus of Hollywood, a B movie to end all B movies, or rather, The Mother of All B Movies. And in case you miss the point of the whole enterprise, the Washington Monument, phallic symbol par excellence, spends as much time on screen as any of the characters.

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IMDB summary. IMDb voters score it 2.7/10

The meaning of the IMDb score: 7.5 usually indicates a level of excellence equivalent to about three and a half stars from the critics. 6.0 usually indicates lukewarm watchability, comparable to approximately two and a half stars from the critics. The fives are generally not worthwhile unless they are really your kind of material, equivalent to about a two star rating from the critics, or a C- from our system. Films rated below five are generally awful even if you like that kind of film - this score is roughly equivalent to one and a half stars from the critics or a D on our scale. (Possibly even less, depending on just how far below five the rating is.)