Bank Chick

Penelope. "Whe-ere can I find the la-adies room?" quavers a dear little old lady who smiles like Grandma Moses as her palsied little paw presents a pistol that is possibly somewhat larger than the little old lady herself.

"O-over th-there," answers a female bank teller who looks the way Red Riding Hood looked when Grandma turned out to be the Big Bad Wolf.

"Tha-ank you, my de-ear," the old lady replies with an even sweeter smile as she turns away with an alacrity amazing in one obliged to carry, in addition to her years, the staggering great stack of bank notes she has just forced the teller to stand and deliver.

"Eeeeeeeeeek!" the teller screams, and moments later the bank guards converge on the ladies room with revolvers drawn. The door bursts open, and out bolts a chic chick who looks as though the Loch Ness monster had just popped out of the drain.

"That horrible old lady!" she gasps as she staggers toward the nearest exit. The guards charge into the ladies room prepared to corner a criminal, but all they find is a grey wig and a rubber mask and their own foolish faces in the lavatory mirror.

"Stop that girl!" the bank dicks bellow as one man, but by the time they reach the exit, the chic chick--and $60,000--have vanished in the crowd.

Now that's a catchy opening scene for a thriller. Unfortunately, Penelope is not a thriller. The studio releases hopefully describe it as a comedy, and in a picture of this quality the point is hardly worth arguing. The script, based on Howard Fast's pseudonymous potboiler about a light-fingered socialite, soon degenerates into a droll call of ancient wheezes that add up to a 97-minute heh. The actors (Natalie Wood, Dick Shawn, Ian Bannen, Peter Falk, Lila Kedrova) try hard to laugh it up, but most of the time they look the way the audience feels: like geese stuffed with chestnuts.

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