Professor Popinjay's Compendium of Perspicacity

A Non-Review by Prof. Popinjay

It’s an amusing scenario. Bob Hope plays a reluctant leader of a junior scout troop and he wants nothing more than to ditch the little twerps and woo a nice adult female human. The troop on the other hand seeks to save him from such worldly vices and does their best to intervene with Hope’s plans. For whatever reason, this group finds themselves aboard a luxury cruise ship where a murderous plot is about to take place.

The focus was more on the murder plot than anything so I’m not sure I grasp the title choice of this film unless it was meant to be ironic. It just really didn’t have much to do with that irony either.

Among the scouts was the second in command after Hope, an older boy named Stanley (I think) who was actually the son of the scout group’s founder and therefore a bit of an overseer to Hope’s character. Of course the constant points of order provided by “Stanley” were a major annoyance to Hope and the cutting banter between these two was pretty hilarious.

I don’t recall much racial insensitivity but I’m sure it’s there. It almost always is.

It was a decent flick although it could have used more Count Dracula. As it stands, the vampire quotient in this film remains at 0% which is always disappointing. Not sure why I bring this up as there was never any indication this film should have Dracula in it at all but I remain disappointed nevertheless.