VISIT TO A SMALL PLANET, a successful, award-winning play by Gore Vidal satirizing the military paranoia of the Cold War—hijacked adapted into a 1960 vehicle for Jerry Lewis. If that isn’t enough of a reveal on a vacuum-in/tailpipe-out culture then digest that the year was trampled on visited by two more Jerry riots, The Bellboy and Cinderfella. This amounts to serial assault, even as we had to deal with Jill St. John bringing a poodle to the magnified lizards of The Lost World. At least that one provided laughs. 

Dropping in on Earth from ‘Planet X7’ (“eight million light-years away“) human-curious alien ‘Kreton’ (Lewis) visits a family in the suburban American South of 1960, mistakenly thinking its a hundred years earlier (them much-missed Civil War days). Dispelled of that notion by the family he stays with, he wows them and their community with his mind control powers and learns a few lessons about Earth folk and how their erratic emotions can pose pesky challenges.

As morked by Jerry (33, still playing as though he were 18) Kreton may as well be Cretin, with the usual barrage of face-making, sound dweebing, herkyjerk movements that hordes fans rolled in the aisles over. His popularity ensured box office success and this ranked #28 in ’60, taking in $9,100,000.

The patient gent calling “Action!” & “Cut!” was Norman Taurog, in the last of eight times he directed the hyperactive star, or tried to. The patrician wit Vidal was greatly miffed, not least because producer Hal Wallis had assured him that David Niven would play the lead. Gravity was lost in space in the Jerry-rigged script by Edmund Beloin and Henry Garson which blew Gore’s trenchant poke at collective mindlessness out the escape hatch in favor of frantic mugging, lazy gags and  special effects suitable for a second-rate sci-fi programmer. Somehow the wan Art Direction was Oscar- nominated, one of a slew of Academy Award flubs that year.

Lewis, who at least dials back the whiny voice element a bit, is backed by pretty Joan Blackman, 21, strident Earl Holliman and older pros Fred Clark, John Williams, Lee Patrick, Jerome Cowan and Gale Gordon, none of them well served by the material. The best segment is a visit to a beatnik lair, where Barbara Lawson (of the immortal Girls On The Loose) displays some slinky dance moves.

Call this 85 minute goon walk “My Unfavorite Martian”. With Milton Frome, Ellen Corby, Buddy Rich, Joe Turkel and Paul Smith.  Vidal: “If satire is to be effective, the audience must be aware of the thing satirized.”