'Loved One' skewers host of targets in '60s farce

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An enduring cult classic, Tony Richardson's 1965 farce The Loved One, makes its long-overdue digital debut via Warner Home Video ($19.97). It's our...

DVD pick of the week

Successfully melding Evelyn Waugh's 1948 novel with screenwriters Terry Southern and Christopher Isherwood's decidedly '60s sensibilities, the film casts Robert Morse as Dennis Barlow, a young English poet lost amid the cultural excesses of a contemporaneous L.A., specifically those practiced at the gauche, gaudy Whispering Glades Memorial Park, lavish final resting place for the rich and eccentric.

There, Dennis battles demented chief embalmer Mr. Joyboy (Rod Steiger) for the affections of brainwashed underling Aimee (Anjanette Comer) while helping to maintain a nearby pet cemetery run by deposed Hollywood agent Harry Glenworthy (Jonathan Winters).

Billed as "the motion picture with something to offend everyone," "The Loved One" doesn't limit its satiric thrusts to America's overkill approach to interment but skewers tangential targets ranging from corporate greed to military profiteering, sexual repression, religious hypocrisy and gluttony (amply represented by Ayllene Gibbons as Mr. Joyboy's obese mom).

While "The Loved One" has certainly been out-grossed by countless movies and TV shows since, the movie retains a refreshingly unjaded sense of irreverence tinged with genuine outrage.

Star-spotting supplies further fun, with Milton Berle, Tab Hunter, James Coburn and even Liberace surfacing in clever cameos, while Mr. Winters' performance in dual roles -- he hilariously doubles as Whispering Glades' avaricious owner, the Blessed Reverend -- reveals his largely under-tapped talents for brilliant screen comedy.

A fascinating new featurette, "Trying to Offend Everyone," combining illustrative clips with interviews with the film's surviving players, rounds out this essential disc.

Warner, meanwhile, contributes an additional quartet of vintage titles: Sean Connery as an irresponsible poet in A Fine Madness (1966), the Jimmy Breslin mob comedy adaptation The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight (1971), Peter Sellers in the psychedelic romp I Love You Alice B. Toklas (1968), and Richard Lester's complex 1968 romantic drama Petulia ($19.97 each).

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