Bumper Crop of Nuts

The Horizontal Lieutenant (M-G-M). Funnyman Jim Hutton, 26, is an unpolished bean pole (6 ft. 3 in.) who gangles at all angles like the second-string center on a Y.M.C.A. basketball squad, but sputters sourprises like a bright, green Lemmon. Funnywoman Paula Prentiss, 23, is a Texas skyscraper (5 ft. 9 1/4 in.) who can look slim Jim in the eye without a periscope, and can come on and cut up like a junior-miss Rosalind Russell. If humor were measured in inches, Hutton and Prentiss would be the daffiest double in show business; since it isn't, they are merely the most promising young pair of romanticomedians currently in camerange. Last year they got off to a funning start in Where the Boys Are, then made a clattering success of The Honeymoon Machine. Now they have imparted their talent for the trivial to a dogface farce that may not fracture any funny bones, but manages at least to pile up a bumper crop of nuts on the usual Pacific island.

"The island." Lieutenant Hutton is told when he arrives, "isn't much, but you'll learn to hate it.'' He does. There are 4,000 servicemen in residence and 18 white women. What's more, the 4,000 servicemen have nothing to do but chase one little old Japanese soldier who still holds out in the hills and at night sneaks past the U.S. sentries to pilfer the colonel's private stock of gefilte fish. After a year of this, the servicemen are so desperate for something to do that they start teaching a hen to type.

By sheer, outstanding inability, Lieutenant Hutton quickly rises to the top of the nut heap. He is a go-day-wonder-how-he-made-it who begins the war as a casualty (he tries to catch a baseball with his ear), continues it as a sad sack (he reports for duty by hitting the wrong pedal, ramming his jeep through the side of a building, parking it smartly beside the C.O.'s desk), but ends it as a hero (he captures the gefilte-fisherman). The nut occasionally has a date: Lieutenant Prentiss, a nurse who in civilian life was "just a tall girl, but now I'm a short commodity." When he wants to get in trouble, he unfortunately has a buddy: an industrious Nisei (Yoshio Yoda) who labors day and night to "indoctrinate" every native girl on the island. And when he wants to get out of trouble, he unfortunately has a shocking-pink colonel (Charles McGraw) who turns purple every time the hero appears.

Best bit: Hutton, as chief of the island's intelligence section, arrests an ancient is lander suspected of consorting with the enemy, waggles a thin Rathboney finger, and grimly begins to interrogate the dear old gentleman. The islander seems willing to talk but he can't talk English. Hutton summons an interpreter who speaks Eng lish and Japanese. The old man can't speak Japanese. Hutton summons an interpreter who speaks Japanese and Carolinian. The old man can't speak Carolinian. Hutton summons an interpreter who speaks Carolinian and a dialect called Charono. The old man speaks Charono. Back through the chain of interpreters, Charono to Carolinian to Japanese to English, comes the old man's message. He has to go to the bathroom.

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