Trivia / The Phynx

• Box Office Bomb: The film's budget is unknown, but it clearly must've cost a handful, with the celebrity cameos and special effects. But it never even got a full release: there are only two documented screenings for the film in 1970—one in Hollywood for the cast, and a "world premiere" in Indianapolis on May 6, presumably meant to see whether the movie had any potential legs in Middle America.
• Breakaway Pop Hit: A Cover Version of the film's final song, "(How 'Bout a Little Hand for) The Boys in the Band", credited to a group called The Boys in the Band (and possibly based on a remix of the film version), was a moderate hit on the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at #48 (and also cracked the Top 40 on the competing Record World chart, reaching #38), which is incredible given how much of a flop this film was.
• Colbert Bump: A 2016 late night Turner Classic Movies airing marked the first time a lot of people even learned of this film's existence.
• Creator Backlash:
  • Denny Sarokin (aka Dennis Larden) is well-aware of the film's reputation as one of the worst movies ever made, and fully agrees.
  • The fact that Leiber and Stoller do not say a single word about this project in their joint memoir Hound Dog suggests that it was a fiasco of Let Us Never Speak of This Again proportions for them.
• The Danza: The members of The Phynx are technically playing fictionalized versions of themselves, using either their real names or a Stage Name (Dennis Larden being one for Dennis Sarokin, and Ray Garcia is credited as Ray Chippeway).
• Dueling Works:
  • It was greenlighted around the same time that The Monkees' film Head was being made, with both films being cheeky, freewheeling rock musicals. The Phynx was filmed shortly after Head bombed in its initial run, which may well have influenced the filmmakers to go in a more conventional direction with their movie.
  • It came out the same year as Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, which also mixed Satire and Fanservice, and also had a flamboyant No Celebrities Were Harmed version of Phil Spector as a character.
• Follow the Leader: It's distantly a knockoff of Help!, but more directly inspired by The Monkees. You even get the sense that this film is more along the lines of the kind of romp Columbia Pictures was expecting Head to be like, rather than the Mind Screw it ended up being.
• He Also Did:
  • The film was co-written by Stan Cornyn, who spent several decades as a highly-respected Warner (Bros.) Records executive, best-known for his innovative creative services work, included some award winning album liner notes. This marked his only foray into filmmaking.
  • It was produced by Bob Booker and George Foster, who'd written and produced a whole bunch of popular sketch comedy albums in The '60s, like When You're in Love The Whole World is Jewish (the source of Frank Gallop's enduring novelty hit "The Ballad of Irving"). Booker had previously been one of the masterminds behind The First Family, the hugely popular comedy album spoofing John F. Kennedy.
  • Dennis Larden had been a member of the One-Hit Wonder band Every Mother's Son ("Come On Down To My Boat" was a Top 10 hit in 1967), and kept busy in the music business after this film, working with the likes of Ricky Nelson and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (though he eventually reverted back his real name, Denny Sarokin). In a Hilarious in Hindsight case, he even briefly backed Davy Jones and Micky Dolenz at some post-Monkees concerts.
  • Lonny Stevens also had some musical cred, having worked as a staff songwriter for Motown. He later switched to acting full-time, and has also worked as an acting coach.
  • One cast member of this film was a Singer-Songwriter with an album under his belt—Mike Kellin (Bogey), believe it or not, who took time out from his very busy character acting career to record And the Testimony's Still Coming In!, a collection of dryly comic Folk Music, in 1967.
• Posthumous Credit: Bowery Boys mainstay Leo Gorcey died just weeks after filming the climactic scene with the celebrities at the castle. He's very visibly not in great shape (and given that he died of liver failure, almost certainly drunk as well).
• The Shelf of Movie Languishment: It sat on the shelf for almost a year before its "world premiere", then was hastily shelved again after that one screening, but reports conflict on whether it was because of negative audience reaction, or a new regime at Warner Bros. deliberately burying a film greenlighted by the old executives (or perhaps even both).
• Shoot the Money: The Rome scenes were shot on location, and reportedly location work was also done in England and Spain.
• Stillborn Franchise: Warner had big multimedia plans for The Phynx in 1970, including releasing a soundtrack album for the film, and sending the band out on a concert tour (with Madison Square Garden in New York and The Forum in Southern California reported as possible venues). Instead, none of those things happened after the film was quietly buried after its two known screenings.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The shooting script aimed very high in its ambitions for celebrities to make cameos in the film, listing Kirk Douglas, Frank Sinatra and Bob Dylan among the stars being held captive in Albania.
  • Greta Garbo was courted for a cameo at one point.