"Can Heironymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy
Humppe and Find True Happiness?"

This is a 1969 musical film directed by and starring Anthony Newley.  He plays the autobiographical
title role of Merkin, an internationally successful singer approaching middle age who retells his life
story in a series of production numbers on a seashore in front of his two toddler children (played
 by Newley's actual kids) and aging mother.  Merkin focuses on his promiscuous relationships with
women, particularly Polyester Poontang (played by Joan Collins, who was Newley's wife at the time)
and the adolescent Mercy Humppe (Playboy centerfold Connie Kreski).  Merkin is constantly
surrounded by a Satan-like procurer, Goodtime Eddie Filth (Milton Berle) and an angelic presence
(George Jessel) who interrupts Merkin's biography with cryptic Borscht Belt level jokes to denote
 birth and death in Merkin's life. Newley periodically steps out of character to complain about his
"Merkin" role with an unseen director (voiced by Newley), two screenwriters, the film's producers,
and a trio of blase movie critics who are turned off by the story's eroticism and lack of plot.

The film's presentational style anticipated Bob Fosse's "All That Jazz" (1979). "Merkin" was rather
controversial at the time because of it's original X rating, which meant that many newspapers in the US
wouldnt accept advertising for it.  It was generally considered to be a commercial and critical failure,
though it did receive a very positive review from a young upstart Chicago film critic named Roger Ebert,
who was at the time right in the middle of creating "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls" with Russ Meyer, a
 film which also flopped but later became a beloved cult classic while "Merkin" fell into relative obscurity.
In 2006, it wont a Chicago Tribune reader's poll as the Worst Film of All Time.  Collings later cited the
 film as a contributing factor in her divorce from Newley.  Considering the autobiographical nature of
 that aspect of the film's plotline too (including her character's name), it's not too surprising.

This is a good quality print that does have one very short set of commercials halfway thru, but
the film's adult content (which seems quite tame today in the same way as "Midnight Cowboy")
should all be intact, and it should be the complete film shown in cinemas (for the short time that
 it lasted there).  There are reports of a longer print that runs almost two hours and contains a
 song called "Oh What a Sonofabitch Am I", but Ive never come across it.  Ive tracked down
two subterranean copies of "Merkin" over the years, and this is the best quality of the two.

$7.77

DIVX AVI
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ROGER EBERT REVIEWS "HEIRONYMUS MERKIN"

WIKIPEDIA ENTRY

 SUBTERRANEAN CINEMA