The Soul of the 70s: Part Two "An Unfortunate Show of Good Taste"

When it comes to 70s exploitation, always bet on black!

Black Eye

(1974)

Synopsis

Shep Stone (Fred Williamson) used to be a L.A. police lieutenant before his sister died of a drug overdose and he started doing more than just arresting pushers. Since being fired from the force he spends most of his time finding runaways and drinking bourbon in his favourite bar. When his hooker neighbour is killed by a psycho named Chess for a silver topped cane she stole from the gravesite of a dead silent movie star, he convinces an old friend from the force to let him investigate the crime for $200 and a gun permit. Around the same time a worried father named Dole hires him to find his missing daughter, Amy. Investigating both cases takes Stone into the worlds of pornography, the occult and a local “church” whose flock consists of young hippy Jesus freaks, until they converge and lead Stone to the same MacGuffin—$250,000 of uncut heroin.

Pertinent Details

Unfaithful Adaptation: Black Eye is based on the 1971 Jeff Jacks novel, Murder on the Wild Side, but—according to this review—differs significantly from this source material in several ways. Jacks’ protagonist is white and was kicked off the force for stealing money from a drug bust. He’s also based in New York, instead of Los Angeles. Also instead of a voluptuous redheaded hooker/porn star/medium, his murdered neighbour in the novel is an old lady known as the “The Handkerchief Woman”. In the book Stone agrees to investigate the murder to get his P.I. license, not a gun permit.

Religion Sucks: Williamson's romantic co-star in Black Eye was the extraordinarily lovely Teresa Graves, who remains best known as the star of the Blaxploitation inspired TV series Get Christie Love. After Black Eye she starred in only one other film—the 1975 Clive Donner directed David Niven oddity Old Dracula—before giving up acting because it conflicted with her newfound Muslim faith.

Best Hack in the Business: Black Eye was the first of two Blaxploitation movies made by Jack Arnold (the other being Boss, which also starred Williamson), the director of Creature From the Black Lagoon, Tarantula and The Incredible Shrinking Man (as well as 26 episodes of Gilligan’s Island).

Despite being one of the biggest names in the genre, Fred Williamson has never made it a secret that he hates the Blaxploitation label, repeatedly asking the question, “Who was being exploited?” whenever he discusses the subject. Watching Black Eye it’s easy to understand where he is coming from. Despite its title, the film bares little resemblance to the outlandish films so expertly parodied by Black Dynamite and I’m Gonna Git You Sucka, and is instead a fairly straightforward private detective picture that just happens to have a black protagonist.

As a result, Black Eye both benefits and suffers from its lack of traditional Blaxploitation trappings. Director Arnold was one of the best pros in the business and gives the film a solid professional look, and Williamson is outstanding as Stone, a character who never descends into stereotype and who could have easily appeared in more films had this one proven to be a success. The problem is that the script takes what appeared to have been very exploitation friendly source material and annihilates it in an unfortunate show of good taste. The film was rated PG, despite being based on what looks like an X-rated novel.

Williamson does his best to carry the film on his broad shoulders, but its not enough and he’s weighed down by slow-placing and a plot that is never as interesting as it thinks it is. The one intriguing element that does remain (the grudgingly respectful relationship he forms with his girlfriend’s lesbian sugar-mommy) gets short shrift and ends up being unresolved and feeling superfluous.

Fans of “The Hammer” will definitely want to give this one a look, but it’s likely going to bore those who expect some goofy tackiness in their Blaxploitation movies. The best Black Eye can offer up in that direction is this brief "lovers frolicing" scene and—as much as I love it—it just isn't enough.

Bad Mother—shut your mouth! rating: 5 out of 10

The WWTTM Pantheon - Part One "Eastbound and Down, Down, Down for the Count"

WWTTM: A film so misconceived and obviously doomed for failure that it forces the viewer to ask one question: What Were They Thinking?!?!?

Smokey and the Bandit Part 3

(1983)

Synopsis

After twice failing to get his hands on the legendary speedster known as Bandit, Sheriff Buford T. Justice (Jackie Gleason) has decided to retire and move to Florida with his simple-minded son, Junior (Mike Henry). Almost immediately bored, he decides to return to Texas, but before he can leave, the father and son team of Big and Little Enos Burdette (Pat McCormick and Paul Williams) compel him to make a bet. If he can make it back home from Florida in 35 hours, he wins $250,000, but if he can’t they get his badge. The Burdette’s aren’t above cheating to win, but when their roadblocks prove less than reliable, they call on the Bandit’s partner-in-crime, Cledus Snow (Jerry Reed), who seizes the opportunity to literally step into his hero’s shoes. Partnered with a hitchhiker named Dusty Trails (Colleen Camp) he repeatedly steals the plastic fish Sheriff Justice needs to have to win the bet, but he ends up letting the sheriff win, because, “You can’t have a Bandit, if you ain’t got a Smokey.”

Pertinent Details

Urban Legend: The production of this WWTTM sequel is so mired in secrecy and bad decisions it’s literally the stuff of Urban Legends and has been discussed on Snopes.com. More on this below.

Not a Good Year: Coming off the success of the first two Smokey and the Bandit movies, Jackie Gleason’s movie career came to a sudden halt when this and another WWTTM sequel, The Sting II both bombed at the box office.

First and Last: This was the first and last feature film of Dick Lowry, who remains best known for his work on such memorable TV movies as Angel Dusted, Kenny Rogers as The Gambler, Pigs Vs. Freaks and the Mr. T vehicle, The Strongest Man In the World.

Inconsistency: The film is titled Smokey and the Bandit Part 3, even though the previous film, Smokey and the Bandit II, used Roman numerals to indicate its sequel status.

Despite the fact that many of the folks involved in its production are still very much alive, the full official story of the debacle that resulted in Smokey and the Bandit Part 3 has still never been fully revealed. The film’s failure and terrible reputation have spared the participants from ever being interviewed for DVD retrospectives or participate in Alamo Drafthouse screenings, which means the facts of what happened are still open to debate and conjecture.

The one thing everyone knows is this—when it came time to make the film, both star Burt Reynolds and director Hal Needham decided to pass and make Stroker Ace instead (an admittedly lateral move in retrospect). Co-star Sally Field, who by then had already won one of her two Oscars, also passed, as did Jerry Reed. This left only the series' Smokey, Jackie Gleason, willing to return.

In a more sensible time, this would have been enough to cancel the project and enjoy counting the megabucks the first two films brought in, but the studio and producers believed there were more dollars to be mined from the franchise and decided to try and think of ways the series could continue with only its antagonist at the wheel.

And here’s where things get murky. One thing we do know is that this teaser trailer was made:

From this we know the film was original conceived not as Smokey and the Bandit Part 3, but as Smokey IS the Bandit, but the question no one has completely been able to answer is just what exactly that film was meant to be.

Popular myth has it that—in a bizarre bit of post-modernism—the decision was made to have Gleason portray both Sheriff Justice AND the Bandit in the film. Legend has it that when they showed this version of the film to an early test audience, they were so confused that the decision was made to scrap the scenes with Bandit-Gleason completely.

Less fantastic, but much more plausible (until the above trailer was found), is the theory found in the Snopes piece linked above (a theory I personally came to on my own as I was watching the film for the first time in preparation for this post). It suggests that the “IS” in Smokey IS the Bandit wasn’t meant to be taken literally, but instead indicated that in this third film, Sheriff Justice’s situation had been reversed and he had in essence taken on the role the Bandit served in the previous two films—the chaser had become the chased and the lawmen was now the outlaw. In this case, the test audience complained not because they were confused, but because they hated the idea of a Smokey and the Bandit sequel that had no Bandit in it.

This second theory makes more sense owing to the fact that it isn’t totally fucking stupid, and—despite its popularity as a filmmaking legend—years had passed without anyone seeing a single piece of evidence that supported the idea that scenes of Gleason as the Bandit had ever been filmed. That was until a couple of years ago, when this photo appeared online:

This puts us right back at square one. Whichever version is true (and it is possible it is a combination of both), the result of the test screening debacle was that the producers managed to convince Jerry Reed to return and shoot new scenes of him as Cledus, dressed as the Bandit, driving around with an utterly superfluous Colleen Camp (who wears such a ridiculously conservative outfit, she doesn’t even seem to be there for added sex appeal). These scenes were edited into the previously shot material (which explains why Gleason and Reed never appear in the same shot during the entire movie) in a way that almost makes sense, so long as you acknowledge how hopelessly ridiculous the film’s entire premise was to begin with.

If the notion of Gleason playing both the hero and the villain took the film in a strange meta direction, the decision to have Reed play a character “playing” the Bandit isn’t any more conventional. Just watch this scene and try to comprehend how it must have been viewed by fans of the original movies who came to this expecting a traditional sequel experience (Note: The clip isn't embeddable, so click the picture to go to the YouTube page--AND THEN COME RIGHT BACK!!!!):

As a premise, Cledus IS the Bandit is no less strange than Smokey IS the Bandit, and it puts the film in the same uncomfortable territory as the Pink Panther movies that Blake Edwards kept making after Peter Sellers died. Rather than merely glossing past Burt Reynolds' legacy in the role by recasting the part with another actor, the filmmakers instead highlight it by having a character from the other films acknowledge his transition into the Bandit persona. However, instead of placating the audience, all this does is make us even more aware of Reynolds' absence. The lesson is the same one the computer learned at the end of War Games—the only way to win is not to play the game.

Since Reed winning as the Bandit didn’t match the ending with Gleason that had been shot, the filmmakers were forced to contrive an excuse for his losing, and what they came up with is the film’s most explicit recognition of its own meta-narrative (Note: For some reason this one was embeddable. YouTube is fucked):

Without even wanting to, the film's very existence forces Smokey and the Bandit Part 3 into Charlie Kaufman territory.

The other reason why Cledus/Bandit has to lose the chase seems especially ironic, considering how quickly the failure of this film killed the franchise—Smokey needs to keep his badge in case they wanted to make Part 4 (or IV). It also allows for Reynolds’ brief cameo in the film, in which the delusional sheriff hallucinates that Reed is the actual Bandit and makes the decision to let him go rather than wither away in the Bandit-less world of retirement (Note: Click for video):

Strangely, for all of its behind the scenes mythology and utter failure to resemble anything like a normal movie, you don’t hear a lot of people discuss Smokey and the Bandit Part 3 in Bad Movie circles. Having just watched it for the first time, I think it definitely qualifies for cult status. There’s something extremely compelling about watching a successful franchise permanently self-destruct right before your eyes. There's no doubt that this was a film made for the most craven and desperate of reasons, even though everyone involved had to clearly know it had no chance of ever succeeding. For that reason it is an essential entry in the WWTTM Pantheon.

Sisters Are Doing It For Themselves: Part One "The Squad With the Misleading Name"

Girls just want to have fun, but there are so many psychos out there who refuse to let them. Mark my words, those bastards are gonna pay.With their balls!

Rape Squad

(1974)

Synopsis

Linda (Jo Anne Harris) is a part-time student and food truck operator whose peace is forever shattered when she’s raped by a maniac in an orange jumpsuit and hockey mask. Based on his nasty quirk of forcing his victims to sing “Jingle Bells” while he attacks them, the police determine she’s his fifth victim, but haven’t figured out a way to identify or stop him. Frustrated by the law’s impotence, Linda convinces her fellow victims to form a “Rape Squad” dedicated to protecting other women and getting revenge on rapists who’ve escaped the law. Their attacker notices their efforts and devises a plan to relive his vile experiences—this time with all five women at once. Only fate will tell if the “Rape Squad” is ready for him.

Pertinent Details

Alternate Title: Probably because Rape Squad sounds more like a movie about a squad dedicated to committing rape, rather than avenging it, the film was also released—and is currently available—under the title of Act of Vengeance.

Use of Sporting Goods: Rape Squad’s villain disguised himself with a hockey mask a full eight years before Jason Voorhies famously adopted the same look in Friday the 13^th Part III.

Feminist Fake Out: Though some viewers might be led to believe that the presence of female writer Betty Conklin would result in a more tasteful and less exploitative depiction of its difficult subject matter, the reality is she didn’t exist and is instead the pseudonym of David Kidd, who also co-wrote (with Jack Hill) The Swinging Cheerleaders as Conklin that same year.

Of all the various exploitation genres, rape/revenge films are easily the trickiest and most problematic in today’s cultural landscape, especially those made in the 1970s, when many of them were made to titillate as much as they were to educate. Even those with the noblest of intentions remain controversial and find themselves accused of contributing to the misogyny they would appear to be fighting against.

Rape Squad isn’t one of those noble efforts. As much as it pays lip service to the way the justice system violates women as much as any rapist and allows its characters to confront the asshole dudes clueless enough to mock their violation, the fact is the film remains mostly an excuse to showcase their bodies in various stages of undress. Each of the film’s various rape scenes are clearly more focused on exposing the breasts of each actress rather than the crimes they are supposedly depicting.

It also hurts the film that each member of the “Rape Squad” is so poorly drawn. It wasn’t until the end of the movie that I finally knew all of their names, and—besides Linda—none of them are given a clear personality to separate themselves from one another. They’re all just victims, several of whom only seem mildly interested in the project that unites them.

Still, there are some good moments to be found and nuggets that suggest director Bob Kelljan (Scream Blacula Scream) could have made a better movie if he had a less feeble script to work with. The scene where the squad confronts a rapist who was acquitted by a court biased against women is as good as any you’ll find in this kind of film, even if it chickens out in the end. Even better is the scene where the squad take down a pimp trying to force a woman who wants to escape “the life” back out onto the street.

Ultimately, though, Rape Squad is too timid for its own good. The sudden violence at the end feels out of place in a film previously more interested in exposing flesh than depicting vigilante justice. The result is far more Lipstick than Ms. 45.

Cut Their Balls Off Rating: 1 measly testicle out of 5.

Vanity Fear Vlog Review - "Don't Ruin It...."

Because I don't care if you hate my video reviews.

The Soul of the 70s: Part One "Pimps, Hos and Cat Pee"

When it comes to 70s action exploitation, always bet on black!

Truck Turner

(1974)

Synopsis

Mac “Truck” Turner (Isaac Hayes) is a former pro-football player who is just barely making ends meet as a bounty hunter with his partner, Jerry (Alan Weeks). Together they agree to take on the generous bounty for a dangerous pimp named Gator (Paul Harris), who ends up getting killed trying to getaway from them. Gator’s best girl, Dorinda (Nichelle Nichols), takes over his operation and posts a bounty of her own on Truck’s head, offering 50% of her profits to any pimp willing to put him in a body bag. Her call is answered by Harvard Blue (Yaphet Kotto), who assembles a crew of assassins he calls “The Insurance Company” to take down Truck. They manage to kill Jerry, but Truck won’t go down as easily, especially now that they’ve made him mad.

Pertinent Details:

Soundtrack: Composed by Hayes, who had previously won the Oscar for Best Song for his classic “Theme From Shaft”. It’s available on iTunes in a double disc package with the soundtrack from the same year’s Tough Guys. It features tracks entitled “Buns O’Plenty”, “Pursuit of the Pimpmobile” and “Hospital Shootout”.

Trekkie Trivia: This was not only the first and last Blaxpoitation appearance of Nichols, but was the only feature she appeared in during the decade between Star Trek’s cancellation in 1969 and the release of Star Trek: The Motion Picture in 1979.

Eurotrash connection: The part of Stalingrad, the blond hooker with Gator just before he dies, is played by Werewolf Woman's Annik Borel.

Corman Connection: This AIP feature was directed by Jonathan Kaplan, who got his start directing Night Call Nurses (1972) and The Student Teachers (1973) for Corman. Today he remains best known as the director of the Oscar-winning Jodie Foster rape drama The Accused (1988).

The tone of Truck Turner is established right from the beginning, when we see its title character get up and get dressed in the morning. Truck realizes that his pet cat has peed on his only clean shirt and is forced to decide whether that deems it unwearable or not. In the next scene, he’s driving in his car, wearing the cat-pee shirt. Clearly, Truck is not the ultra-smooth John Shaft, Isaac Hayes won an Oscar singing about. He’s a slob, he’s broke, and his girlfriend, Anne (Annazette Chase), is just getting out of a stint in prison for shoplifting. But rather than alienate us, it actually makes him a much more sympathetic protagonist. It helps that he’s portrayed as being good at his job—his name means something on the streets—he’s just not that good at life.

This plays out in the movie in many hilarious ways. Late picking up Anne after she’s released from prison, he treats her to a “special” dinner of Kentucky Fried Chicken. Later on, when he realizes she’s in danger from the assassins hired to kill him, he frames her for shoplifting, knowing she’ll be safer back in lockup. None of this is smooth or heroic. Truck is never as cool as you’d expect a Blaxploitation hero to be, but that actually makes his acts of violence that much more intense—his sudden competence in this area stands out compared to everything else we’ve seen.

Truck’s vulnerability is also reflected in the other characters, both heroic and villainous. Though the pimps and hookers never transcend their status as 70s cartoons, Dorinda’s fury seems justified and gives her character a slightly tragic quality she might not have otherwise had. Kotto’s Harvard Blue is just a greedy, evil bastard, but he’s still given the glory of one of the better drawn out death scenes I’ve ever seen.

For a film this light-hearted, the violence is often shocking and brutal. The result is a tension that feels completely of the time and reminds us why these films remain so much fun to watch today. Sadly, what makes it all work is probably the same thing that kept us from getting a Truck Turner Returns or more films with Hayes in a leading role. Audiences at the time wanted their black action heroes to be supermen akin to James Bond or Bruce Lee, not a character who could have just as easily been played by Elliot Gould (who pretty much did just that in Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye).

 

Bad Mother—shut your mouth! rating: 10 out of 10

Starting At the End: Part One "Kids Kicking Butt"

What better way is there to get into a franchise than through its final film? They must have perfected the series by that point, right? Right?!?!?

3 Ninjas: High Noon at Mega Mountain

(1998)

Synopsis

Rocky, Colt and Tum Tum’s afternoon at the popular Mega Mountain amusement park is cut short when it’s invaded by the glamorous international criminal Medusa (Loni Anderson) and her henchman, Lothar Slogg (Jim Varney). With the help of washed up TV action hero, Dave Dragon  (Hulk Hogan), and their cute tech-wiz neighbour, Amanda, the 3 young ninjas work together to save the day and foil Medusa’s evil plan.

Pertinent Details:

Comes after: 3 Ninjas (1992), 3 Ninjas Kick Back  (1994), and 3 Ninjas Knuckle Up (1995)

Returning performers: Victor Wong (as Grandpa), Margarita Franco (as Mom) and Alan McRae (as Dad), None of the 3 Ninjas.

Theatre or DTV: Direct to video.

Current Rank on IMDb’s 100 Worst List: 89 (2.4/10 with 6,622 votes)

Kids love people who are really good at kicking shit, so it was only a matter of time before Hollywood gave them a franchise dedicated to young white kids being trained to do exactly that by their wise Asian grandfather (a Japanese character played by a Chinese-American actor, whose apparently half-Asian daughter is played by a clearly Latina actress who somehow managed to mother three of the most Caucasian looking children the universe has ever known). The first two entries in the 3 Ninjas franchise managed to do well enough in theatres to justify two more DTV sequels, of which today’s example proved to be the last. Was this a case of the series merely losing steam or being snuffed out earlier than it might have by creative incompetence?

Judging by what I watched, it seems more the former than the latter. Despite the film’s low IMDb rating, High Noon at Mega Mountain is no better or worse than any other DTV film made for the children’s market. If anything it has a few saving graces that elevate it to a higher level than I expected.

Chief among these is the performance of Loni Anderson as the film’s leather-clad villain, which strikes all the right notes and—I’m sure—left many of its young viewers with confused feelings they couldn’t quite understand at the time. In a clear example of the filmmakers getting away with something purely because no one was paying attention, there’s a moment in the film where Medusa, unconvincingly disguised in a nun’s habit, tells a security guard she’s there representing “Our Lady of Perpetual Motion”—a joke that surely meant nothing to its intended audience, but which had me laughing after I immediately recognized it as a reference to George Carlin’s “I Used to Be Irish Catholic” routine from his classic comedy album, “Class Clown”.

Unfortunately the filmmakers keep these adult friendly in-jokes to a minimum and settle instead for a predictable series of action scenes, which are admirably executed by their young cast who appear to be performing many of the complicated fight scenes themselves (though they are occasionally helped out by speeded up footage).

The result is bland, maudlin and cartoonish, and lacks the “What the fuck!” factor of similar Asian-produced films like Lucky Seven (1986) and the Young Dragons/Kung Fu Kids series, but is likely the sort of thing I would have watched happily over and over again when I was six or seven years old.

Chances of my watching other films in the franchise: I’m good.

Final Franchise Entry Rating: One and a half high kicks out of four

Out There In Internetland

Sorry folks, it's been a full month since my last update due to a combination of boring factors. Despite this I have been able to get some of my thoughts up on the Internet else-a-wheres, so here are some links if you want to check them out:

First my XOJane author's profile has been revised with some exciting new information!

And I've had five articles go up since I last did one of these link posts, they are:

"I Like the "Friend Zone""

"Why This Ad Guy Isn't Impressed By "Boobvertising""

"Spider-Man, Wonder Woman and Other Gender Inappropriate Childhood Heroes"

"I, Brony? The Unexpected Brilliance of "My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic""

"Not a Robot: Confessions of a Man Who Cries"

Thomas Havas Is a Rapist

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B-TV Part Five: Sizzle Without the Steak

Remember back when porn required effort? If you grew up during the Internet age, chances are you don’t, but for those of us old enough to remember when e-mail was a term entirely devoid of meaning, it’s easy to recall those strange days where being too young to legally watch porn actually meant it was difficult to get your hands on it.

Maybe you had a friend with a drunk dad who wouldn’t notice a missing video from his stash or you found a torn up magazine some mentally ill stranger decided to throw away in the nearby neighbourhood park.

But mostly though it just existed as this thing you knew was out there, but no one talked about—kept hidden away in curtained sections of video stores and the top shelves of drug store magazine racks.

Like all things kept out of reach, this only inflamed our curiosity—a fact many TV news shows appreciated, knowing a “serious” report about the adult film industry was a guaranteed way to increase ratings, especially since it allowed them to show images of pretty young women in very little clothing all in the name of “real” journalism.

Given the kind of programing made during that time, it was rarer for fictional shows to explore this same territory—somehow porn just didn’t fit in well with The A-Team or Mr. Belvedere—but that’s why they invented the TV movie, which at the time had already become notorious for exploiting anything at all salacious for the sake of ratings.

That’s why Death of a Centerfold: The Dorothy Stratten Story, starring Jamie Lee Curtis, risked dancing on its subject’s grave in order to be seen on TV screens less than a year after she was murdered by her ex-boyfriend, Paul Snider (beating Bob Fosse’s much better treatment of the same story, Star 80, by two years). The ratings proved worth the effort and the networks regularly sought out material that involved tons of tastefully implied nudity with a touch of realistic drama (see also 1984’s I Married a Centerfold and 1991’s Posing: Inspired By Three Real Stories).

So in 1987, they took notice when the PBS documentary series Frontline aired Death of a Porn Queen, which told the story of the 1984 suicide of an adult film starlet named Shauna Grant (Colleen Applegate).

Applegate’s story was a sad one, but hardly unique. She had left the small town of Farmington, Minnesota, to seek her fortune in California, where she and her boyfriend quickly spent all of their money searching for jobs that didn’t exist.

Desperate for cash, they found an ad for the World Modeling Agency, which was owned and operated by Jim South (a well-known figure in the porn world who was hilariously named “Tim North” in Traci Lords’ autobiography Underneath It All, because she clearly didn’t give a fuck about people figuring out what sleazy asshole she was talking about).

Through South, Applegate went from being a nude model to a full-on porn star. During this period she developed a serious coke addiction and began a relationship with a small time dealer named Jack Ehrlich. Her life spiraled out of control when Ehrlich was sent to prison and ordered her to move out of his house. Certain she couldn’t move back home and live a normal life after her time in porn, she shot herself in the head with a rifle and died a few days later.

Like Stratten’s story it had all of the right elements—a hot blonde, porn, drugs and, best of all, a tragic ending. Producers rushed to her family’s doors and they agreed to sell the rights to Colleen’s story for enough money to pay for a nice tombstone for her grave. That next year, Shattered Innocence hit TV screens right in front of the eyes of twelve year old me.

It must have been successful, since it aired more than once and I watched it every single time for one key reason—it starred Jonna Lee and she possessed an impressively curvy figure. But that’s not to say it didn’t have an emotional effect on me. I remember being drawn in to her character’s sad story and it’s regretable conclusion. Enough so that I always remembered the film and was compelled to buy it when I saw it had been made available by Warner Brothers as a MOD DVD release.

Watching it now, I am struck by two things that prove how much time can colour our perceptions. The first is how awful Ms. Lee’s performance is throughout much of the film and the second is how writer/director Sandor Stern made the strange decision to make her character the least sympathetic person in the film.

The copy line on the back of the DVD case reads “She was a decent girl in an indecent world,” which indicates that whoever wrote it never actually watched the film, but instead came up with this line on the basis of a quick plot summary. As written and performed, “Pauleen Anderson” (all of the names were changed despite the “This is a true story” announcement at the beginning of the film) is spoiled, bratty, foolishly ambitious and kinda dumb. She never strikes the viewer as ever having enough innocence to be shattered.

This is made even more apparent by the fact that characters who should come off at least a little scumbaggy are presented as thoughtful human beings with Pauleen’s best interests at heart. Even her coke dealer boyfriend is presented as a loving, caring guy who wishes she could see how the drugs he sells are ruining her life.

The problem is that the limits of the TV medium forces the film to imply Pauleen’s degradation—showing us only her tearfully crying in a shower after her first on camera sex scene. With a better actress it might have worked, but Lee is too inconsistent as a performer to sell the shame she feels.

At the time Stern was best known as the screenwriter of the hit movie, The Amityville Horror, which was based on a fictional book that was sold as a true story, and he had been working in television for several years when he made Shattered Innocence. As a piece of filmmaking it is never less than professional, but suffers from budget issues that make it feel stage bound, like many other TV productions. His next film, Pin: A Plastic Nightmare, would end up being his first and last theatrical feature, which is a shame since it’s a genuinely great movie about mental illness that was unfortunately sold as a run of the mill horror outing.

Lee’s career, which had seen her playing the blond ingénue in the Judd Nelson vehicle Making the Grade, didn’t survive Shattered Innocence. I remember recognizing her a few years later when she appeared as a model in a then-ubiquitous exercise equipment commercial where the camera spent a lot of time focusing on her chest.

Ultimately the problem with Shattered Innocence is that it refuses to acknowledge its exploitative heart and insists on being far too tasteful for its own good. Stern was too talented to allow the production to descend into tasteless camp, but that’s precisely what it needed to overcome the budgetary and censorship limitations he was forced to deal with. Despite being based on a true story, the film feels bloodless and generic (had the producer’s waited seven years, they could have made pretty much the same movie about Shannon “Savannah” Wilsey, an adult actress whose tragic story didn’t differ that greatly from Applegate’s), making what could have been a potential B-TV classic into a tedious cliche.

Viewed in a post-Boogie Nights world, Shattered Innocence plays itself too straight and corny to work as either a piece of entertainment or compelling anti-porn propaganda. I suspect Stern made the choices he did precisely to avoid the latter, but his even-hand ends up hurting the film rather than saving it. If you're going to a take a plunge into these murkey waters, you gotta go deep to find the treasures that make the trip worthwhile.

B-MOVIE BULLSH*T - Part Twenty "The Hips, The Legs, The Torso!"

B-Movie Bullsh*t

Part Twenty

Flareup

(1969)

Synopsis

Michele, a Las Vegas dancer, watches helplessly as her friend Nikki is shot by Alan, her disturbed ex-husband. Alan blames Michele for the end of his marriage and makes it clear that he’s going to kill her too. She flees to Los Angeles to get away from him and quickly finds work in a club called The Losers, where she meets Joe, a handsome parking valet who instantly takes a liking to the gorgeous young woman. Alan soon learns where Michele is and hitchhikes to L.A.—killing an innocent motorist along the way. He confronts Michele and chases her through a zoo at night, but she’s saved by a pair of cops. Suffering from traumatic shock, she’s kept safe in a local hospital, but she decides to run and escapes through her window, only to find Alan waiting at the apartment she shares with Joe. Alan tells her he’s going to make her watch Joe die before killing her, but she manages to set him on fire before that happens. Even though Alan is dead, Michele still feels compelled to run and tries to get Joe to come with her to Mexico. He refuses and she drives off, only to turn back around and jump into his waiting arms.

There is a melancholy aspect to Raquel Welch’s career that I personally find very affecting. She was a performer whose appearance was so extraordinary that it transcended mere sex appeal to that of an onscreen joke—she was so gorgeous that she actually became a caricature of herself. But unlike other actresses who possessed this same quality—Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield, Anita Ekberg—she bristled at the notion of being portrayed as a living cartoon.

It didn’t help that her career really began to take off just as living cartoons were becoming passé in favour of more realistic representations. Jane Fonda could make the transition from Barbarella to They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?, but she possessed a gift for dramatic acting Welch did not share. Welch’s gifts were best suited for light-hearted fare (her best performances can be found in such amusing trifles as Bedazzled, One Million Years B.C., The Last of Sheila and Richard Lester’s two Muskateer films), but her desire to be taken seriously compelled her to seek out roles that only served to prove why no one did.

A perfect example of this is found in Flareup—a film seemingly designed to exploit Welch’s sex goddess persona, but which turns out to actually be a misbegotten attempt to transform her into a dramatic leading lady. While the film’s memorable trailer plays up her character’s career as a go-go dancer, it fails to mention that it shows all of the dancing she does in the film. What we’re left with instead is a very poorly written thriller featuring a lot of unconvincing performances in a production as ambitious as any TV cop show from the era.

Writing about Sophia Loren and Gary Cooper, Pauline Kael once wondered why audiences were so invested in their acting abilities. Why wasn’t it enough that they simply looked better on camera than anyone else in the world? Watching Welch dance at the beginning of the film, it does make you wonder why this isn’t an achievement worth truly celebrating. The fact is that Welch isn’t even a particularly talented dancer, but she’s such a magnetic presence it’s impossible to take your eyes off of her. Then she stops dancing and starts emoting and all of the joy is sucked out of the picture.

It does make you wonder why one form of performance is considered so much more important than another. While it is true that Welch could have never played Jane Fonda’s role in Klute, it is equally true that Fonda—for all her big hair and abundant Barbarella curves—could never have held the screen as expertly as Welch does in Flareup’s one dance sequence. Both feats require skill and charisma, yet as far as everyone is concerned, Fonda’s is the only one that counts.

That said, even Fonda couldn’t have saved Flareup from self-destructing. Watching the film, it feels like it’s based on a first draft of a script that needed at least six more revisions before it was actually filmable. The structure is terrible. The first act is so rushed that we never get a sense of why we should give a fuck about anyone we’re watching, while the second meanders interminably with scenes between Michele and Joe that are so banal as to be ridiculous (until they get on the horse, where it’s just flat out ridiculous).

But the script’s biggest problem is Michele, whose impulsive need to run is a character trait screenwriter Rodgers had to establish to justify the idiotic decision she makes at the beginning of the final act. Rather than making her seem wounded and complex, he only succeeds in making her appear confused and flat-out stupid. Despite this, I was about to give him credit for a least staying true to the character he created during the film’s final scene, until he caved in and gave me the happy ending I’d been dreading.

The script is also unnecessarily homophobic, including not one but two gay characters whose sexuality ultimately adds nothing to the plot. I have no problem with a scene where Michele rejects another dancer’s advances if it were to pay off later in the movie, but it’s an utter non sequitur that goes nowhere. And apparently it wasn’t enough to justify the bartender's snitching on Michele to Alan by making him a junkie; he also has to be a gay junkie with a crush on his dealer. Again, I wouldn’t mind this if it had anything to do with the rest of the plot.

It doesn’t help that director James Neilson, who was 60 at the time, directs the film like a glorified TV episode—the only thing at all cinematic being the nudity seen in the first few minutes. I’ve long argued that the clearest sign of a filmmaker’s indifference isn’t when they ignore their script, but rather when they remain faithful to it even when logic dictates a change should have been made.

A good example of this comes in the scene where a police officer reads out the details from the killer’s file, including his year of birth—1945. The problem with this is that this establishes that Alan is 24, even though Luke Askew—the actor playing him—was 37 at the time and very much looked his age. It literally would have taken a second for Neilson to tell the actor playing the cop to say “1935” instead, but the fact that he didn’t proves how little he was invested in creating a credible product.

(I should also mention the hilarious onscreen error where—as the stuntman playing Alan flails around in flames—the nozzle of a fire extinguisher can clearly be seen rising up into the camera's frame. Apparently the shot was deemed too important to sacrifice even though it's impossible not to spot this blunder, no matter how hard you try.)

Sadly, the best thing about Flareup is the performance by James Stacey as Joe. I say this because—once again proving my thesis that the IMDb is the most depressing website on the Internet—it turns out the Emmy-nominated actor was forced to “retire” in the 90s when he served a six year prison sentence for molesting an 11 year-old girl. This shouldn’t affect the experience of watching him, but it really kinda does, especially since Joe is portrayed as the ultimate good guy.

Welch followed Flareup with Myra Breckinridge, another attempt at relevance that ended up being an even a bigger (albeit much more memorable) disaster. She had slightly better success with Hannie Caulder and Kansas City Bomber, but it wasn’t until her supporting performance as the clumsy Constance in The Three Musketeers that audiences got to see how much fun she could be onscreen when she stopped trying so hard.

By then, though, it was too late. Within a few years she found herself spoofing the image she tried so hard to shed on Mork & Mindy (in an episode Robin Williams has publically described as the mark of the show's decline) and was fired from David S. Ward’s 1982 film Canary Row after 5 days of shooting (reportedly for her diva-like behaviour, but in her successful multi-million lawsuit against the producers, she argued that she had been given the part so the film could obtain its financing, only to be fired and replaced by the director’s preferred choice—Debra Winger—after filming began and it was too late for the financiers to pull out).

In his great book Hype and Glory, Oscar-winning screenwriter William Goldman asked us to consider who the better actor is—Laurence Olivier or Arnold Schwarzenegger. A seemingly no-brainer, he went on to remind us that while Arnold would be terribly cast in productions of Hamlet or Richard III, Larry would have been equally as useless in The Terminator or Conan the Barbarian. In other words, there’s a huge difference between being a great actor and a great movie star.

Raquel Welch was never going to be the former, but in a different place and time she could have been the latter. I know this because I’ve seen and own a copy of her greatest achievement—her million-dollar 1970 TV special Raquel! which I’m going to have to discuss in detail sometime soon.

Until then, I urge you to give Flareup a miss.

Repost: Of Sex Sirens Past (and Paster)

(I've decided to repost this in anticipation of tomorrow's new B-Movie Bullsh*t, which shares a very important connection to this particular film. The reason why it's taken me so long to repost it is because doing so represented a major reformating challenge. I think I managed to take care of most of the problems, but I ask your forgiveness for the places I missed or was too frustrated to spend any more time trying to fix.)

Since this is the third time I have taken it upon myself to discuss a WWTTM (a What Were They Thinking Movie, for those of you who are just coming in) I suppose I should take a moment to explain the difference between a film that has earned the above honorific and one that merely sucks ass.  It all comes down to two factors, the first of which is that the film itself must be constructed upon an idea, philosophy, casting choice, artistic vision or adaptation that any sane person could instantly tell had no chance of succeeding, and the second is that the resulting movie must be—either despite or because of its inherent flaws—constantly compelling to watch from beginning to end.  A WWTTM can be many things—ridiculous, offensive, desperate, cheap, lavish, tacky, dignified, ambitious, lazy or even (in the case of one movie I plan on discussing in the future) genuinely good—but the one thing it CANNOT be is boring.

The subject of today’s discussion can be described by almost all of the adjectives above, with the only exceptions being dignified and genuinely good.  It is a film that reaches a level of being one can only attain by accident and not deliberate will—a satire so confused and muddled that it becomes a grotesque self-parody that is easy to laugh at, but impossible to laugh with.  It is a filmed adaptation of a novel that is so misguided and distracted by its occasional attempts at plot that one doesn’t have to be familiar with the original book to appreciate how badly the filmmakers failed to do it justice—one has to assume that the book at least made some kind of sense and had an actual point upon which its satire was constructed.  It is a film that badly wants to make fun of the period it takes place in, but instead only serves to illustrate the era’s excesses rather than mock them—its desire to be hip being the very thing that renders it square.

I am, of course, talking about:

Our humble little film begins with a note, written by the films hero, just before he is about to become its heroine.  It reads:

Aum, shouldn't this be written in yellow ink?

Randolph, we will later learn, is Myron's psychiatrist/dentist--a revelation that is somewhat dampened by the fact that the character doesn't appear in the film until its last 15 minutes (and even then his appearence is completely unnecessary), by which time the contents of this note have been completely forgotten and his introduction is more than a bit confusing in its seeming randomness.We then cut to the most annoyingly “surreal” operating room ever committed to celluloid, where our hero is impatiently waiting for his operation to get underway.

Sadly, this marks the high point of Reed's performance.

This is Myron Breckinridge, as played by the famous confused shoplifter and film critic, Rex Reed (whose only other cinematic credits include cameos as himself in Superman and Lost in America, a small part in the Drew Barrymore vehicle Irreconcilable Differences and a performance that didn't make it past the editing room in Inchon, one of the biggest flops of the 80s).  And while you may assume that since Myron is about to undergo a sex change operation that will--rather improbably--transform him into Raquel Welch, this will be the last we see of him, do not fret. He's not going anywhere.

According to director Michael Sarne, the spectators represent film directors who want to celebrate emasculation.

He says a lot of stuff like that in his commentary.

He's an asshole.

With a group of spectators and a young woman with a whip in attendence, the good surgeon undertaking the operation (b-movie stalwart and father of Robert, Keith and David--John Carradine) finally arrives (to applause) and attempts to talk Myron out of going through with it.  "You realize once we cut it off, it won't grow back," he warns him.  "I mean it isn't like hair, fingernails or toenails...,"

See that nurse there?

She appears several times throughout the movie, making references to "nuts".

Sarne calls her appearances a "leitmotif".

Did I mention Sarne's an asshole?

"How about circumcision?" the surgeon suggests as a compromise, but Myron won't have any of it."C'mon, c'mon, let's get it over with," he says impatiently, "Myra's waiting!"The doctor shrugs and gets to work, while Myron starts to sing "I've Got A Secret Place" to himself.

It is then at this point that we are first exposed to an editing decision made by director Michael Sarne that involves cutting to scenes from classic films to either comment on or serve as ironic counterpart to specific moments in the movie.

Here we cut to a scene from a Shirley Temple movie in which the adorable lil' moppet tells us that she's about to sing a song called "S-M-I-L-E".  True to her word, she starts singing the song and we see Myron as he walks down the street in a snazzy white suit.  But wait!  Didn't Myron get a sex change in the previous scene?  Yes he most certainly did, but this seeming inconsistancy is soon shown to be a dramatic device--Myra still sees herself as Myron, so his presence is always with her, even though the rest of the world only sees this:

I'm going out on a limb to say this, but Raquel Welch was hot.

Now I know what you're thinking,

how could

become ? 

I have no fucking idea.

After she has entertained us by dancing with her male half along the sidewalk, Myra explains to us that Myron died so she could live and that she is "...a dish and don't you ever forget it you mot-BLEEP-herfuckers--as the children say nowadays," (you can definitely tell that this is a film from 1970 in that they chose to bleep the word "mother" rather than "fucker"):   

 

She also tells us that her "...purpose in coming to Hollywood is to witness the destruction of the American male in all its particulars..." and that the best place to witness said destruction is at the drama school run by Myron's uncle, a former cowboy actor named Buck Loner (John Huston in a performance that makes you truly forget what a great filmmaker he was).

Apparently Huston actually lobbied to get this role (Sarne wanted Mickey Rooney instead).

This makes me incredibly sad.

Myra introduces herself to Buck as Myron's widow and explains to him that her late husband left her the property he had inherited from his mother.  Since this property consists of half of the land upon which Buck's drama school is built, she expects him to buy her out to the tune of $500,000.  Rather than hand her the cash right away, he accepts her offer to hire her on as a teacher at the school (specializing in the subjects of Posture and Empathy) for $1000 a month.

After we are introduced to Irving, one of Buck's longterm students (who tells Myra that most of the school's pupils have been there longer than most of the faculty), we cut to a scene of Myra teaching a class while dressed in a navy officer's uniform (which, of course, comes after a clip of Marlene Dietrich in the same outfit).  Buck watches her from a monitor in his office as she tells the class that it is a "...hard fact that American women are eager for men to rape them--and vice versa--and that in every American there is a strangler longing to break a neck during orgasm":

 

We then cut to scenes of life at the school.  Students practice archery, western saloon antics and onscreen lovemaking, as Irving gives Myra (who we see as Myron) a tour of the facilities.  In a moment that is meant to be bitingly satiric, but only comes across as lame, an asian janitor stumbles out from behind the bushes of the archery target with an unconvincing arrow sticking through his chest.  He collapses to the ground, just as a hippie dwarf and his lady walk on by.

It's just not the right kind of pretentious if you don't get a Little Person in there at some point.

Unsurprisingly, Buck is hesitant to give up half of his property to someone who claims to have married his "fag" nephew, so he decides to investigate Myra's claims and see if they hold up to any scrutiny.  Meanwhile, Myra is lecturing about the importance of "star power" to a group of mouthbreathing students at a table in the school's saloon.  Among these students are a studly young hillbilly named Rusty Godowski (Roger Herron in his first and only major film role) and his ultra-blond girlfriend Mary Ann Pringle (a 23 year-old Farrah Fawcett) who Myra--quite accurately--calls "retarded".

This picture completely fails to convey the complete vacuum that is this couple's onscreen film presence.

It is at this point in the proceedings that the film takes it single biggest leap into the nonsensical and bizarre, as it is here that we are introduced to:

It really is best that you don't think about what's coming next.

Leticia Van Allen is the top agent in Tinseltown, specializing in--as her sign makes explicitly clear--LEADING MEN ONLY. Leticia, as it turns out, is something of a Renaissance Woman, as she is not only a top agent, but also a movie star, recording artist and nightclub singer.  But these various pursuits rank far behind the true raison d'etre of her existence, which is to get laid and speak only in an endless stream of embarrasingly unsubtle inneundo.  This in itself would not be to bad, were it not for the fact that Ms. Van Allen is portrayed by none other than Mae West herself, who was 77 when the movie was filmed and looks it.

Among the gaggle of handsome men waiting to see Ms. Van Allen is a young Tom Selleck, who is selected by the horny geriatric to sit down on her casting couch:

Selleck's ability to convincingly play a man who isn't revolted by West's creepy overtures

sure doesn't help squash the gay rumors that have dogged him for years.

If you're wondering what West's character has to do with the plot of the move, don't expect the film to supply an answer.  Despite West's top billing and generous onscreen time, her character could have been excised completely from the film without it effecting the story in any way.  Instead all she manages to do is remind the viewer that Raquel Welch is actually doing a pretty good job with the material she's being given, which inspires the hope that she'll return onscreen as soon as possible.

Let's hear it for gratitous panty shots!

Following the unpleasentness of the previous sequence, the movie cuts to the the much more attractive sight of Myra and Mary Anne relaxing at Myra's apartment.  After giving a short lecture on the glories of singing stars from the past ("Why the Andrew Sisters really did "Roll out that Barrel" and no one yet has ever rolled it back.") Myra tells the young woman that of all the students at the school she has the most star potential.  Mary Anne recieves the compliment graciously, but admits that she only goes to the school to be with Rusty and all she wants from life is to marry him and have four children--a revelation that sickens Myra to her very core.

Can you feel her frustration and rage?  Or do you expect her to start ranting about wire hangers?

After she has ranted to Myron about Mary Anne's ignorance of popular music from the 40s and her selfish desire to help populate an over-crowded world, Myra once again recites her mission statement, telling us that:"My goal is the destruction of the last vestigal traces of traditional manhood," in order to "realign the sexes," while "decreasing population," thus "increasing human happiness, " and "preparing humanity for its next stage."How exactly she is to do this by working at a low-rent drama school and fucking around with a hillbilly and his retarded blond lollipop of a girlfriend is anybody's guess.But before we can start pondering this too deeply, we are then treated to the most bizarre tribute to masturbation ever lensed in the 7^th decade of the 20^th century.  In a scene that is best not overly contemplated, lest it cause migraines, Myra proceeds to give her male counterpart a blowjob:

Oh, the horrible waste of it all.

They could have at least hired someone who would have enjoyed pretending to be fellated by the lovely Ms. Welch.

While he in turn fantasizes about being fed bananas by a lingerie clad Mary Anne.

There are no words.

After a few--way too long--shots of Reed pretending to pleasure himself (sans Myra) we cut over to a scene where his female half is giving a lecture on the incredible star presence of Johnny Weismuller in Tarzan and the Amazons, which infuriates one of the faculty members who complains that the film is "trash" and "lacks a single moment of truth in it".

Sarne thinks it is amusing to cut to a shot of himself (he's got the beard)

just as Myra starts talking about actors who have played Jesus.

That's something an asshole would do.

Thanks to his TV monitors, Uncle Bucks hears Myra speaking and decides to abandon his massage in order to tell her that her crazy ideas are having a negative affect on the students.  Myra will have none of it and tells him that his school has "...assembled...the national dregs, the misfits, the neurotics--in short, the fuck ups of our culture."  Buck defends his pupils and threatens to fire her, to which she responds by threatening to take away the entire school from him.  This gets his back up and he tells her that he isn't certain that she was "...even ever really married to that fag."  Myra responds to this suggestion like a true lady.

Oh, snap!  Oh no, she dinnit!

This brief bit of action (which has to be the most poorly shot punch I've ever seen) is followed by another appearance by The Mummy--I mean Leticia Van Allen.

And this is with ten pounds of make up and an industrial strength wig!

Here the next three minutes of the film are dedicated to propping up a poor deluded old woman's ego as some poor Italian actor is forced to play a scene where he declares his eternal love and devotion to West, having flown all the way from Italy just to see her in person.  Again, this has nothing to do with the actual plot of the movie.Speaking of the plot, it makes an appearance again when Uncle Buck confronts Myra with the news that there is no record of her marriage to Myron anywhere in the country.  Rather than admit the truth of her ruse, Myra is able to explain this decrepency with the explanation that the reason there is no record of the marriage in the U.S. is because the union occurred in Mexico, which she proceeds to prove by pulling out a (forged) wedding certificate from her riding britches (no, seriously, she's wearing riding britches).

Britches people!  Britches!

In his commentary Sarne complains that the film's second screenwriter, David Giler (who remains best known for producing the Alien series of films), inserted a lot of irrelevent political commentary into the script, which he had no choice but to film.  Though my inclination is not to believe a single word Sarne says, the next scene goes a long way to giving credence to his alibi.  In it Buck meets with his lawyer, Charlie Flager Sr. (character actor Robert Lieb), who rants about the pornographic movie he just watched for the third time.  As the two oldtimers complain about the commie perverts who are taking control of the culture, a couple make out behind them and a hippy is beaten (very gingerly) by a group of cops outside.  This is as hamhanded and obvious as political commentary can get, but before we can feel any sympathy for Sarne, he caps the scene with the second appearance of his "leitmotif" who asks if Flager wants any "nuts" on his banana split.

Asshole!

We then go on to a sequence where Myra mindfucks Rusty as she gives him a lesson in posture (one of her two specialties remember).  She eventually gets him against a wall, where she proceeds to pull down his jeans with a gleeful "Gotcha!"

Why Sarne?  Why?

We are spared the sight of Rusty's reaction to this humiliation, as the film instead cuts to a short party/orgy sequence that adds nothing to the plot (which comes as no surprise since it features Mae West's character) and only seems to exist to provide some nudity to justify the film's X rating.  That done, the movie then gets back on track and returns to the school's saloon where Mary Anne tearfully tells Myra that Rusty has been arrested for violating his parole.  It is at this point where Mae West's character actually comes closest to being relevent to the film, as she now appears in the saloon with Buck, who treats her with the respect her status deserves.  As they sit down she complains that "...all the gay boys are going to take the business over.  There's no more studs around anymore.  Everyone's poppin' pills and smokin' grass."  What this has to do with anything is anyone's guess, but she does deliver her lines with gusto, reminding us just how annoying a bad Mae West impersonater (which is really the best way to describe her performance) can be.

It was most likely this movie that propagated the rumor that West was really a drag queen

who kept a really big secret for 50 years. I don't think it's true, but she is more manly than Rex Reed.

Speaking of performances, it's probably a good time to mention that Welch's take on her transexual character largely involves her wearing a different outfit and hairstyle in every single scene she appears in.  Each ensemble is more outrageous and fambloyant than the next, but if I were more open with my inner homo I would spend the next paragraph rhapsodizing about the frilly black number she wears in the only scene in which she is onscreen with her chief onset rival (the two actresses loathed each other; West hated Welch for her lack of respect and rudeness, while Welch resented the fact that West got top billing for a role that adding nothing to the film and was truly pissed off that the filmmakers acquiesced to all of the older star's bizarrely inappropriate demands).  Instead I will merely say that I find it very attractive and it makes me wish I could have sex with her, which I think is the appropriate hetero response.

Isn't it just so utterly fabulous!

But then it might be a bit of a stretch to say that the two actresses appear together in this scene, since we never actually see both of their faces in the same shot.  It's fairly obvious that the two divas hated each other so much that they refused to work together and the entire scene was shot using body doubles.  This probably explains the look on John Huston's face:

Through their body doubles, Leticia and Myra are able to bond--imagining a time when they will have as many handsome young men to bed as they desire.  Myra is also able to convince Leticia to help her extricate Rusty from his legal woes.  In the scene that follows, Leticia calls a judge she knows intimately and gets Rusty released into Myra's care.  This is literally the only moment when her character does anything relevent to the plot of the movie we are supposed to be watching.  Somehow I think they could have figured out another way to get Rusty out of jail, but that's just me.  After having to listen to another "politically satirical" rant from the judge, Myra reunites Rusty with Mary Anne and the three of them go out for a night on the town, where that evening's entertainment consists of--who else?--Leticia Van Allen.  Among the demands that West made that irked the holy living bejesus out of Welch, the oddest had to be her insistence that she be giving not one, but two musical numbers in the film.  Considering that a) the movie wasn't supposed to be a musical, b) West's character was supposed to be an agent, not a night club performer and c) she was too old to do anything a real musical number physically required, I think Welch had a good reason to be enraged that Sarne agreed to the older star's insane stipulation.  That said, the musical numbers are entertaining in a Faces of Death kind of way.

I think I've done a good job of establishing my belief that Raquel Welch was a smoking hottie.

As the old woman "sings" her song onstage, Rusty and Myra engage in a debate about homosexuality which goes like this:

Rusty:  Hell, jail wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for all those faggots.  There's alway some fruit after you. 

Myra:  That shouldn't bother you Rusty.

Rusty:  Well, the whole idea makes me wanna puke--a man should act like a man.  Know what I mean?

Myra:  How should a man act?

Rusty: (after a loooong pause)  He should ball chicks.  That's how.

At this point Sarne inserts another appearance from his "leitmotif".

Assholesezwhat?

After pondering Rusty's last piece of wisdom, Myra waxes philosophic.

Myra:  What is normal?

Mary Anne:  Well, it's what everyone does.  I mean, it's what the majority of society does most.

Rusty: (after a slightly shorter pause than before)  Yeah!

Thus ends the great human sexuality debate of 1970, just in time for another musical number during which West does something truly attrocious to Otis Redding:  

This cuts to several scenes that give us unneeded and unwanted insight into Buck's home life and fondness for massages.  And here we finally come to the scene for which this WWTTM is best remembered.  Sarne calls the scene the film's "sine qua non," but he's an asshole so ignore him at your leisure.  That said it isn't unreasonable to declare the scene the film's raison d'etre, which is unfortunate because when it ends the movie still doesn't make any sense.On the pretext that Rusty needs his spine "traced" for a back brace he requires to tend to a recent injury, Myra calls him into the school's infirmary late at night and proceeds to weigh and measure him.  She also makes him provide a urine specimen, which seems like questionable medicine to me, considering he's there about his back and she's not actually a nurse or doctor.  Finally, after she has adminstered the "cough" test, she gets to the real reason she called him into the infirmary and orders him to drop trou so she can "take his temperature."  He protests the need to have it taken "that way," but she threatens to go to the judge and have him sent back to jail if he doesn't comply.  He gives in and--to keep him still--she ties him to the examining table. 

The stupidest man alive, ladies and gentlemen.

Thank you and good night. Having ensnarled him in her trap, she explains to him that he "...has a lot to learn.  All you men have a lot to learn and I have taken it upon myself to teach you."  "What are you going to do?" he asks her.

And cue dramatic thunderclap...now!

"I shall ball you Rusty," she answers him diabolically.  "It's very simple." And then she sodomizes him as the movie cuts frantically to footage from classic films:

Insert lame Brokeback Mountain joke here.

The first part of her plan now complete, she lets Rusty go.  If he is upset about her horrible desecration of his body, he does not show it (or at the very least Roger Heron lacks the ability to express that particular emotion).

I don't quite get why she is the one who looks like she's just gotten some junk stuck in her trunk.

"Can I go now?" he asks her as he gets dressed.She nods and tells him he's free to leave, but before he goes she asks him one last question."Aren't you going to thank me for all of the trouble I've taken?""Thank you, ma'am," he answers her quietly, before he leaves.

I have nothing funny to say in this caption.

Back at her apartment, Myra recieves a call from Mary Anne who is downstairs and wants to come up and see her.  She happily invites her up and explains to Myron that "...having raped Rusty's manhood, I must now complete the cycle and seduce his girl.  Only then will my victory be complete.  Thus exuding power over both sexes and indeed over life itself."  Before Myron can correctly accuse her of being a crazy bitch, Mary Anne arrives at the apartment.  Then, under Myron's disapproving gaze (which Reed rather amusingly illustrates through the use of single cocked eyebrow), Myra attempts to seduce innocent young Mary Anne, who is distraught by Rusty's disappearance following his declaration that he "...was sick of women."  Gee, I wonder why?  (One has to assume that in Vidal's book Rusty's rejection of all things female was meant to suggest a reversal of his contention that the definition of manliness is the inclination to "ball chicks", but here it seems more like the understandable result of the resentment anyone would feel after having a woman rape them up the ass.)

Note the disapprovingly crooked eyebrow. Now that's acting!

Myra manages to convince Mary Anne to change into a pair of men's pajamas and stay in her bed that night.  As she (and Myron) comfort the beautiful retard, she gets a call from Leticia, who thanks her for sending Rusty over to her place, where they have done things I refuse to think about.  "Is it the right colour?" asks Myra, referring (I'm assuming) to Rusty's penis.  "Well, I guess so," says Leticia.  "It's the usual colour.  Didn't you ever make it with him?"  "Not in the classic way, no," answers Myra.

In his commentary Sarne tells us that Rusty's position in the bed is "obviously" based on Dali's Crucifixion.

It is his use of the word "obviously" that makes me conclude that he is an asshole.

Back at the drama school, Buck and his lawyer's son confront Myra with accusations that her Mexican wedding certificate is bogus and demand proof that she and Myron were really married.  Myra calls their bluff and informs them confidently that "Proof will arrive before the end of the week in the person of Dr. Randolph Spencer Montag."  This news stops the two men dead in their tracks.  "M-montag?" stutters Flager, Jr.  "The great dental psychiatrist?"  Yes, that Dr. Randolph Spencer Montag, who just happens to be the Randolph mentioned in the note at the very beginning of the film.

Okay, would you trust your teeth to guy who looked like this?

Your mind, maybe, but your teeth?  Never. Randolph is only too happy to help Myra out of her jam and agrees to fly over to California and confirm her and Myron's wedded status.  In the end, though, it proves to be a wasted trip, since Myra is able to prove her connection to Myron with only a few words of encouragement from the good doctor (in fact the only reason the character appears in the film at all is to justify his being mentioned in the earlier note--I'm guessing he had a much more significant role in the book).Upon being told there is no record of Myron's death to be found anywhere, Myra finally tells her Uncle and his lawyers the truth--that she is in fact Myron.  To prove her point, she gets up on Buck's desk, lifts up her skirt and drops her panties.

I don't quite get what this would prove.  Did the surgeon not give Myron a vagina?

We know he doesn't have a penis, so is there just a Ken doll blank spot where his cooter should be?

"That's the ballgame," sighs Uncle Buck, knowing that he's been beaten.Her finances secure, Myra focuses her attention back on Mary Anne, who is willing to share a bed but won't "seal the deal" if you get what I mean (ie. have sex with her).  She thanks Myra for all of her care and attention, but can't go through with a full-on descent into lesbomania.  "If only you were a man," Mary Anne laments, unaware of the irony of her wishes.

Now this here is some deviant sexuality I can get behind and give my full support!

We then cut to a shot of Myra attempting to cross a busy road, where she is almost hit by a car.  Who is at the wheel?  Why, it's Myron!

What could this possibly mean?  Wait for it....

"I'll get you this time," we hear Myron think to himself.  "It's a dangerous thing, ambition.  It ruined Mickey Mouse's whole career.  Well, now it's eight bars and out, honey.  You were no more than a Linda Darnell paper doll; a Disney cow that got over the fence.  You got ambitious.  You were great in Cinemascope and Technicolor, but you can't cut it in black and white."Before we have time to figure out what the fuck that all means, Myron gets another chance to plow into Myra and this time he does not miss.

Oh, snap!  Oh no, he dinnit!

But soon we learn that it wasn't Myra who was hit by a car, it was:

Confused?  Don't worry, enlighenment is nigh upon us.

As he is taken away by the paramedics, Sarne gives us one last final look at his "leitmotif":

Apparently her appearance in the film was inspired by a Fellini movie Sarne had seen.

Assholes tend to steal ideas from more talented people.

The DVD of the film includes two different versions of the movie that are identical save for the very last scene.  In the regular version of the film (which features an entertainingly honest commentary by Welch), this scene is in colour, but in the "Director's Cut" (which features a weaselly commentary by Sarne) it is in black and white, which--the director tells us--is meant to remind us of The Wizard of Oz.Like Dorothy, Myron wakes up in a bed, but instead of being surprised to discover his friends and family keeping watch over him, like she did, he grabs his chest and asks "Where are my tits?  Where are my tits?":

Somehow I think we're still not in Kansas here.

Turns out Myron is in a hospital, where he is visited by a doctor who resembles the world's most famous lost millionaire.

With this one small cameo, the film is saved by the "Jim Backus Rule",

which clearly states that you have to love any movie that features an appearance from Mr. Magoo.

The two men engage in a brief and completely nonsensical discussion about movies, as the brunette nurse who is giving Myron an injection transforms into:

Thanks to sloppy editing (the "transformation" could just as easily be confused for a continuity error, which it might have actually been)it is unclear if Mary Anne's appearance here is a fantasy or something that is really happening.

As Myron takes in this vision of loveliness, he realizes that his life as Myra was just a dream.  The proof of this being the movie magazines on his night stand, which feature a famous actress on their cover:

Thank God they didn't go with Mae West.

And that my friends is the end.

As the credits roll Sarne insists that it is perfectly clear that the film we have just seen is about a movie critic who got hit by a car and dreamed he was a woman and that the only way he could make this any clearer would be to remake the whole film again.  I think you know by now what word I shouted at my TV set when he said this, but in case you don't, I'll give you a hint--it rhymes with "mass pole".

So that's Myra Breckinridge.  Having read about it you would all do well to remember that it won't grow back if you cut it off--unless you do it in a dream.

Lemme Know How It Is....

So as I was browsing on YouTube yesterday I discovered that someone had courteously uploaded the 1986 Italian movie Vendetta dal futuro (aka Hands of Steel) in its entirety for all to enjoy. Since this just happens to be the movie from which the dominant image of this site's banner originates, it seemed appropriate to post it. I've never seen it and it's at the end of a very long queue, so feel free to let me know if it's worth my increasingly valuable time.

Why Susan Sarandon is the Future

I am obsessed with Susan Sarandon.

Not just as a great actress, outspoken ideologue, mother of Eva Amurri Martino (yowza!), ping-pong enthusiast and all around luminous beauty, but also for how I believe she symbolizes a future world I am REALLY looking forward to living in.

Sarandon’s career started five years before I was born, and in its early stages featured roles in cult classics (Joe, The Rocky Horror Picture Show and The Hunger), art house hits (Atlantic City and Pretty Baby) and some major Hollywood flops (Lovin’ Molly and The Great Waldo Pepper). Despite working steadily throughout the 70s, she perhaps remained best known then because of an interview Cher once gave in which she proclaimed Sarandon’s frequently exposed breasts to be the best Hollywood then-currently had to offer.

As strange as it sounds today, at that point in her career Sarandon was just a ghost whisper away from being the Jennifer Love Hewitt of her generation. Possibly her lowest point came ironically with what was then her biggest film, 1987s The Witches of Eastwick, where she was originally cast as the lead opposite star Jack Nicholson, only to be contractually forced to accept a much smaller role when—of all people—Cher told the filmmakers it was the only part in the movie she’d be willing to play.

A year later, though, everything changed for her thanks to the film where I first became aware of her existence as a 13 year-old lad in the full throes of adolescence—Bull Durham. At 42, she finally made a lasting, unforgettable impression on mainstream audiences with her portrayal of Annie Savoy, a self-described acolyte of the Church of Baseball, who takes it upon herself each year to “educate” a new disciple from the local minor league ball team in the ways of her beloved game (and sex).

A decade and a half before society decided it was time to popularize crass terms like “milf” and “cougar”, Sarandon suddenly found herself at the forefront of a small group of actresses whose appeal remained undiminished as they entered the age where leading roles traditionally used to dry up and parts like “protagonist’s mother” and “age appropriate wife” were all that was available. Defying this sexist standard, she blazed through the 90s and starred in a string of critical and popular hits, climaxing with her Oscar winning performance as Sister Helen Prejean in Tim Robbin’s masterful Dead Man Walking.

This is all amazing, but the true reason she’s in my head for at least 75-80% of your average day is for the shallowest of all possible reasons—I enjoy entertaining the thought of what it would be like to have intimate relations with her.

“Dude,” I know you’re thinking, “that’s creepy and gross!" But—trust me—I’m going somewhere with this. It might turn out to be someplace creepy and gross, but let’s at least get there first before you judge.

The reason why I think my fantasy is worthy of reporting to you, is because in it I never once entertain thoughts of gettin’ freaky-busy with the young buxom star of Rocky Horror, the vampire lesbian of The Hunger or even Annie Savoy, but always the Susan Sarandon of the here, now and today. The Susan Sarandon who is a year older than my retired father.

While for some younger readers, who have spent their entire lives living in a world of face lifts and Botox, this doesn’t sound THAT strange—I have to explain that I’m old enough that I actually remember when anyone over 60 was OLD. Not just “grandparent” old, but silver-haired, wrinkled, hard candy loving, kinda-racist old people OLD.

To understand what I’m talking about I ask you to consider two different TV shows from two different eras. Murder She Wrote debuted in 1984 and starred Angela Lansbury as Jessica Fletcher, an aging widow whose late-in-life career as a mystery writer found her inexplicably solving murder cases on a weekly basis.

Body of Proof debuted last year and stars Dana Delaney as Megan Hunt, a hot, stylish medical examiner who has a much better excuse to be around dead bodies all the time. The roles couldn’t be more different in terms of style and appearance, yet Delaney, at 56, is only 2 years younger than Lansbury was when Murder She Wrote first hit the air.

When you spent your childhood growing up in a Jessica Fletcher world, certain associations cannot help but be made. That’s why it’s seems so extraordinary (and awesome) to see the women of today break free from this mold. (Just think, in 1967 it was considered completely appropriate to cast 36 year-old Anne Bancroft as cinema’s most iconic “older woman”—Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate. I’m 36 now and still occasionally need to provide ID to purchase alcohol.)

But in specific reference to Sarandon, what I find so fascinating about her is that her sex appeal for me hasn’t merely remained consistent as she’s aged gracefully (like, for example, Helen Mirren, Jane Fonda or Raquel Welch—whose epic geriatric hotness is simply the natural result of a lifetime’s worth of smoldering sensuality and dedicated maintenance), but has actually grown considerably with each passing year. The older Sarandon gets, the hotter she becomes.

And she’s not alone. I am such a fan of Meryl Streep that I may be the only person on the planet who actually considers her underrated (my logic is that by referring to her as the greatest actress of all time, people ignore the fact that no male actor can touch her and she’s simply the greatest period), so my judgment may be skewed, but I personally find the Earth goddesses of Mamma Mia! and It’s Complicated way more attractive than the brittle blond ice queens of Manhattan and Kramer Vs. Kramer.

I could spend many more paragraphs listing other examples of this increasingly prevalent phenomenon, but that would assuredly take an already creepy post and send it into the “ick!” stratosphere, so I’ll instead go on to say that physical beauty obviously only plays a role in what’s going on here. It isn’t the whole sexy enchilada.

Clearly talent, life experience, innate indefinable charisma and just a general sense of awesomeness also explain how Sarandon defies our traditional expectations of female sexuality past 60, but I do not believe this is an outlier situation that only involves famous internationally-renowned Hollywood movie stars (or supermodels or singers or anyone else who has a professional interest in causing boners—both of the traditional and lady variety). I firmly believe that Susan Sarandon symbolizes the future—the hot, sexy future.

Part of this is to blame on the fact that so many of us refuse to act our age. Speaking personally my lifestyle has pretty much remained unaltered since I dropped out of university in 1996 (this—more than my actual face—explains why so many underestimate my actual decrepitude), and even those of us who do behave like adults make frequent efforts to avoid looking like one, whether its through diet, exercise, healthy living or an increasingly extensive array of elective surgical procedures.

Many consider this to be a bad thing, but I disagree. The fact is that the goalposts in terms of life expectancy are moving ever onward and as more and more of us can expect to hit 100 (or even, by some estimates, 120) in the future, it makes sense that we reconsider what is appropriate for each of our decades. As 60 slowly moves towards being middle-aged, the notion that it is a point where female sex appeal melts like a Nazi’s face at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark should become ridiculous.

So, considering how much I enjoy considering Susan Sarandon now, in my late 30s, the idea that I will be surrounded by a legion of Susan Sarandons by the time I hit my 60s is one of the better reasons I can think of to always look both ways before crossing the street and to unplug the toaster before trying to dig burnt bread out with a knife.

If that isn’t a reason to keep living,

I don’t know what is.

What I've Been Up To....

I'm not dead! No, really! Unfortunately for VF, I just reached a point where time was not on my side. That said, I have managed to remain somewhat productive online--just not here. I urge you to enjoy the following links as I attempt to think of ways to keep the site updated more than every couple of months.

Canuxploitation:

1) Killer Party

2) TC 2000

3) Bounty Hunters

xoJane:

1)  I Am Not A Hipster! (I Just Look, Sound and Act Like One)

2) Why I'm Not A Strip Club Dude

3) I'm A Guy Who Loves Romantic Comedies

Flick Attack:

1) Cotton Comes to Harlem

2) Penelope

3) Tucker & Dale Vs. Evil

4) Going Ape!

5) Little Darlings

6) No Time For Sergeants

7) Cold Turkey

The ABCs of B-Movie Monster Bullsh*t - B is for Brains

B

is for

Brains

Brains are icky. Brains are gross. Brains are piles of squishy meat that somehow manage to control who we are, the words we say and what we do. No wonder then that they play such an important role in the world of B-Movie Monster Bullsh*t.

First, they sit in the heads of the mad scientists who create the monsters, either by accident or design. These brains are perverted by their need for conquest and glory—to prove to the world that the cheerleaders and jocks shouldn’t have laughed at poor Poindexter when he won the Grade 12 science fair. They build to destroy and direct science in ways it should never go.

Second, they’re placed in the heads of poor pathetic creatures whose monstrosity is not their own fault, but the result of their patchwork design. Big, small, beautiful and ugly, these sons and daughters of Mary Shelley, came out of the lab fully formed with brains from jars labeled “Abnormal”. Poor sad bastards.

Third, there are the mutated brains that don’t need bodies to justify their existence. They exist instead as forces of pure malevolence, whether they’re The Brain that Wouldn’t Die, Donovan’s Brain, The Brain From Planet Arous, The Brain or a Fiend Without a Face.

And, fourth and finally, brains are the food source of choice of many a rampaging creature. Soft and squishy, they’re ready to serve right from the source, just make sure you pronounce it the proper way, because in this case saying anything other than brrrraaaaaaaaiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnssssss will be a dead give away that yours are good to eat.

B

is for

Brains

and

Brains

are

Badass