Review of What's a Nice Girl Like You...?

1971's "What's a Nice Girl Like You...?" was an ABC TV movie boasting an impressive cast for an ill conceived outline that proves to be neither comedy nor drama, just improbably drawn out and deadly dull. Brenda Vaccaro headlines as Bronx working girl Shirley Campbel, enduring a whirlwind week in which she is kidnapped, threatened at gunpoint, and even yelled at by a myriad bunch of hired goons just because of her resemblance to a wealthy heiress who later is revealed to be deceased. Jack Warden is her unlikely love interest, a put upon police lieutenant concerned about their age gap while putting himself in harm's way. Things should take a turn for the better at the midway mark, with Roddy McDowall as would be actor Albert Soames and Vincent Price as extortion mastermind William Spevin, but even their efforts aren't enough to raise one's hopes, let alone those of the old man (Edmond O'Brien) whose promised cash payout to see his long lost daughter once more is the ultimate goal. With so many corpses left in her wake, an over the top Brenda Vaccaro almost singlehandedly sinks this attempt at a starring vehicle in the wake of her recent Oscar nomination for "Midnight Cowboy," a little bit of her goes a long way with those repeated shouts to "drop dead!" It wouldn't be any surprise if this tanked in the ratings, one of the very few instances of Vincent Price doing an actual TV movie rather than another of his numerous guest shots on popular series.