Steambath (1973)

Bill Bixby stars in this weird adaptation from the Broadway show Steambath. It opens with Tandy (Bixby) going into a steambath for the first time, and talking with the odd characters found there. Herb Edelman (Stan, from Golden Girls !) is in there, and is a crusty, disagree-able type. Valerie Perrine is the chick who walks into the steamroom and takes a shower...showing some side-boob. Valerie will go on to be "Samantha" in Can't Stop the Music.... and of course, the Superman movies. Then two gay guys come in and do a dance routine (of course.) Their dance routine is also provocative, and they slowly lose their towels. Don't forget Kenneth Mars, from Young Frankenstein, What's Up Doc?, and my favorite, The Producers. There IS cussing, and plenty of what are now incorrect slurs of the time. Bill Bixby, already 40, runs around in his tighty whities. I knew him from "Incredible Hulk", but apparently he was also in "Magician" series. Stephen Elliot is the old guy, who seems to know what's really going on here. Elliot was the chief in "Beverly Hills Cop", and also Bert in "Arthur". Jose Perez is "Morty", the steambath attendant; I won't say too much about him, or that would give away important plot points.Lots of 1970's references -- All in the Family, psychedelic music, automats, roller skating rink. The writer, Bruce Friedman, was also one of the writers of Splash (1984), and was nominated for an Oscar for that. Very good, but LOTS of talking.. Long, wordy speeches by Tandy and The Attendant. Clever idea, though - some of the experimental stuff from the 1960s and 1970s. The last 20 minutes are one long diatribe by Bixby. So serious. and L O N G. Directed by Burt Brinckerhoff...started as an actor. Looks like he did TONS of TV movies and series.

Steambath starts out with a whole cross section of the human race waking up in a steam room, wrapped in nothing but towels and wondering just how they got there. These people are not an easy fit with each other, but the clue should have been that this particular steam room also has a woman in it, not something usual in the Seventies or now, and definitely not something that the two gay men in the place would have found inviting even with the woman being Valerie Perrine.It's Perrine and Bill Bixby who realize the situation and also the various waiters are not quite human. Where is God in this whole affair and he makes his appearance shortly in the form of Jose Perez, the washroom attendant.What author Bruce Jay Friedman has done is given us a Seventies version of the old after life classic Outward Bound which got two big screen versions under its original title and later as Between Two Worlds. The majestic figures of Dudley Digges and Sydney Greenstreet as the Great Examiner are replaced here by Jose Perez who has a sardonic view of the highest life forms on the pecking order he's created.There is no great moralizing here, death is merely a process whereby you transition from one existence to another. The Steambath is merely a synonym for purgatory like the ocean liner was in those two films Only Bixby really does want to go back and he and Perez get into a bit as to just what he's going back to.Steambath is an amusing and existential take on life and death and man's ultimate place in the universe. Maybe a Steambath is what our souls need, a place to dry out and relax before moving on.

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that most comments about this play center on Valerie's nudity and not on the play's content. Valerie is a babe, all right, but can we get past the nipples and butt to the show's dialog? It's pretty clever. Was Freidman saying that God is capricious? Mean? Enigmatic? Just? Was the old sailor the one who made the most sense by stating that he at least "lived" his life? When the individuals finally left the steamroom, were they walking into oblivion? Or to their reward? I always thought Valerie had a great body (remember Superman), but she also played a damn good part in Steambath. What impressed me most about the play was not nudity, but that the damn show was entertaining, and it made me think. A good figure can take your thoughts only so far.

I was fifteen when this movie originally aired. I watched it because I was a Bill Bixby fan, of all things (I was a big My Favorite Martian fan, and "The Courtship of Eddie's father was THE antidote to my real father). OK, I was fifteen, and the sight of Valerie Perrine in a towel made a big impression on me, but so did the themes and thought of this play. A lifelong agnostic, sometimes the sense of humor is the only sense that makes sense. PBS, if you won't re-air this, please make it available on video.