Kiss Me, Stupid

Kiss Me, Stupid (1964) is a Billy Wilder comedy you can watch online on iFILM. Set in the fictional town of Climax, Nevada — the name alone tells you the register — it stars Ray Walston as Orville, a jealous piano teacher who moonlights as a hopeless songwriter alongside his friend Barney, a local mechanic with grander ambitions than his garage allows.

When Dean Martin rolls through town playing a loose version of himself — Dino, the irresistible Vegas crooner — Barney sees a way in. He engineers a delay to keep Dino in Climax for the night. Orville, knowing the singer's reputation with women, ships his own wife out and hires a local waitress named Polly (Kim Novak) to stand in, hoping a willing hostess will soften Dino up for a song deal. The plan immediately begins to collapse.

Wilder made this right after The Apartment and Some Like It Hot, and audiences in 1964 were not ready for it — the film was pulled from Catholic Legion of Decency-approved theatres and dismissed as cynical. It is cynical. It is also one of Wilder's sharpest takes on small-town hypocrisy: everyone here lies to everyone else, and most convincingly to themselves. Stream Kiss Me, Stupid (1964) online on iFILM.