Another Nice Mess

Although Another Fine Mess had a brief run at two or three Los Angeles theaters in August 1972, and the Box Office review listed a release date of September 1972, it does not appear to have been distributed nationally. Reviews list the film's title as Another Nice Mess, but key art expands the title to read "Here's Another Nice Mess You've Gotten Me Into!," alluding to the line spoken by comedian Oliver Hardy to his partner, Stan Laurel, in many of the team's popular films.
       Plot information gleaned from reviews indicated that the characters of "Richie" (Rich Little) and "Spiro" (Herb Voland) were made up to look like then President Richard M. Nixon and Vice-President Spiro Agnew but also resembled Laurel and Hardy in demeanor and dress, with Little mimicking Laurel and Voland mimicking Hardy.
       According to news items and reviews, comedian Tom Smothers financed the film's production with his company, Smo-Bro International Productions, Inc., on a budget variously reported in news items as $250,000 and $1,000,000. The picture was shot in Los Angeles, with an estate in Bel Air standing in for the White House. Another Nice Mess was the first film to be directed by Bob Einstein, who also had a small part in the picture. Einstein, who had been one of the writers on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, the popular, late 1960s CBS television series, is the son of radio comedian Harry Parke, popularly known as "Parkyakarkus," and the brother of actor-comedian Albert Brooks. Beginning with appearances on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, Einstein has spent much of his career portraying the accident-prone stuntman known as "Super Dave Osborne."
       As critics pointed out, Another Nice Mess, like the Smothers Brothers' television series, featured biting political satire, usually presented in the form of absurd situations. For information on another political satire of the Nixon administration, please see the entry below for the 1971 release Millhouse: A White Comedy.