The story is a loosely
connected series of adventures dealing with young Pauline, a girl raised
in the Baskerville Orphanage, befriended by George Stedman (Pat Boone).
When they are young adults, he leaves Baskerville 'to make his fortune,'
promising to return and wed Pauline when the time is right. But before
George can fulfill his promise, the orphanage is shut down and teen Pauline
is sent to teach in Africa (?). She becomes a tutor for sex-crazed 12-year-old
Prince Benji who wants to start his own harem with her [e.g., his
voice is dubbed to sound like Rocket J. Squirrel from Rocky,
Bullwinkle & Friends].
She eventually avoids
his seduction. However Pauline is then sold to the "white pygmy
chief of the Congo" (Billy Barty). She gets rescued by safari
hunter Willy Sten-Martin [played by Terry-Thomas] but then slips through
his fingers. Meanwhile, George Stedman - now the richest man in the world
- is also attempting to find his Pauline. The audience is taken on an
array of endless adventures as everybody crisscrosses the globe, gets
lost and then gets found, but they are also cryogenically frozen, brainwashed,
climb over the Berlin wall, become cosmonauts... and, oh, yeah, Pauline
then meets a "far-out" Italian filmmaker Frederico Frandisi
and becomes the star of his newest film. Besides all that (and even more),
Pauline and George run into a wild gorilla ...twice.
This was Pat Boone's
final theatrical film, followed by the religious 'mean streets'
actioner The Cross and the Switchblade in 1970. Incidentally,
Mungo Jerry also appears as Pat Boone's traveling butler. He may be remembered
as the singer behind the '70s hit In the Summertime.

The
tagline for this movie was: "That 'Rebellion Girl' is dodgin'
unbelievable perils in The Perils of Pauline!" While difficult
to imagine today, here's a perky blonde girl who became known exclusively
for a string of television car commercials. She was 'the Rebellion
Girl' based on a limited series of Dodge TV ads. ("The Dodge
Rebellion wants you!"). That was her claim to fame. No lasting
guarantee of continued popularity as she would certainly be replaced unceremoniously
when the new Dodge girl arrived with the 1968 car models. It was - indeed
- a very tiny window for building a star.
But
everything about 1967 seemed to embrace an 'instant' quirkiness that refused
to fail. First, there was the Beatles and then [blink] the Monkees.
'The Adventures of Batman' suddenly hit the top of the
ratings [blink] new episodes would start airing twice a week. Everybody
was talking about James Bond [blink] enter The Man From Uncle
and then [blink] Get Smart. Universal Pictures had
a huge hit with Julie Andrew's roaring-20's musical Thoroughly Modern
Millie. The studio wanted to do an immediate sequel as a TV series.
They tapped Joshua Shelley (the successful director of the Get Smart
series) to make it happen quickly, providing him with all the Millie
props and sets.
The
director knew he didn't have time nor experience to create a TV musical
comedy on such short notice. He requited Pat Boone to play lead with the
virtually unknown Dodge girl and began making a TV series, set in the
Roaring '20s but ultimately based on an old movie serial Perils
of Pauline. But the executives at Universal were becoming impatient
and wanted to premiere the TV show while Pamela Austin was still center-stage
in the heavy run of Dodge commercials. In a peculiar move, Universal decided
to abandon the TV route; rather, splice everything together and release
PERILS to the motion picture theaters, resulting
in a wildly cockeyed, illogical [yet decidedly psychotronic] experience
for the big screen.

An
American film in English language; fullscreen, (104 minutes) in DVD
encoded for
ALL REGION NTSC, playable on any American DVD machine;
Extras include radio
promotion plus Pamela Austin's collection of Dodge TV commercials

Violence/Sexual
Situations
for Mature Audiences
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