Penelope

Another of the movies that I had the chance to watch recently is the oddball comedy Penelope.

Penelope Elcott (Natalie Wood) is a woman who walks into a bank one day, disguised as an old lady. She goes up to one of the tellers, and demands the money, walking away with quite a substantial sum! She then goes into the ladies' room and changes into her normal clothes, enabling her to get away since everybody's looking for an old lady. She then gets rid of more evidence at a thrift shop, before heading off to her psychiatrist, Dr. Mannix (Dick Shawn).

Boy does she have stories for Mannix. Apparently she's been a kleptomaniac for some time, mostly stealing because she doesn't get enough attention from her husband James (Ian Bannen), who is a wealthy banker. Indeed, Penelope robbed the bank she did precisely because it's a big new branch where James is the manager, and robbing it most certainly would get her attention! Not that James would believe it if Penelope told him she had robbed his bank, of course.

Meanwhile, the bank does the natural thing, which is to call the police, who sent Det. Lt. Bixbee (Peter Falk) to investigate. James tells her about the investigation, and invites her to the precinct where he's got to do some of the unpleasant business of identifying things and providing evidence. But this allows Penelope to see how the investigation is going and possibly influence it.

And she's certainly going to have to influence it. After doing some investigation, Bixbee decides that a woman named Honeysuckle Rose committed the crime, and has her arrested. Now, we all know this isn't true, and that Penelope actually did the deed. And because of the reasons she did it, she doesn't want to see an innocent person convicted of the crime she committed, so she finally tells James and Bixbee what really happened. Unsurprisingly, they don't believe her. How can Penelope get out of this jam?

There's a really fun idea behind Penelope, but once again, I found it to be a slightly maddening movie, mostly because of the character of Penelope. The way she's written, manipulating everyone around her, especially Dr. Mannix, you want somebody to take her and literally shake some sense into her. She's supposed to be off-kilter, but for me, she came across more as obnoxious. And I can't imagine the doctor allowing himself to get involved in the scheme the way Penelope does to him in the movie.

Still, Penelope is not a movie without it's charms; it's just more of a movie that's going to be a bit of an acquired taste. People who like kooky characters will probably enjoy it more than people who more reasonable characters.

Penelope has received a DVD release courtesy of the Warner Archive Collection.