Reflections on ... Day of the Locust (1975)

Recently re-visited: Day of the Locust (1975) directed by John Midnight Cowboy Schlesinger. I vividly recall seeing this disturbing movie on Canadian TV as a kid and it made a haunting impression, but it’s not the easiest film to see these days (possibly because it was an expensive mega-flop at the time). The characters are frankly unsympathetic, the tone is cynically downbeat, critics judged the film harshly in comparison to the 1939 source novel by Nathanael West and - clocking in at about 140-minutes - Schlesinger could be accused of self-indulgence. In other words – my idea of bliss!

Locust is set amidst the grubby desperate fringes of Hollywood, and suggests that even as early as the thirties, the show business dream factory was already toxic, corrupt and decaying. Visually, Schlesinger creates an astonishing evocation of Depression-era golden age Hollywood. Every single actor onscreen – including every extra who only fleetingly appears in a crowd scene – looks vividly, memorably distinctive and odd (like escapees from photos by Weegee or Diane Arbus. The casting director clearly had a great eye for the grotesque). Schlesinger assembles a truly great cast, even in small cameo parts (like Geraldine Page as an Aimee Semple McPherson-style Christian evangelist and Natalie Schafer – Mrs Howell from Gilligan’s Island – as a brothel madam). 

/ Karen Black and William Atherton in The Day of the Locust /

Locust's protagonist is ambitious but naive art director Tod Hackett (William Atherton), although he’s truthfully more of an anti-hero. Eager to break into the movie industry and new in town, Tod moves into the seedy pink stucco San Bernardino Arms apartment complex – where the fellow residents number a foul-mouthed, hard-drinking dwarf and a truly hideous and hateful child star of indeterminate gender. The patrician-looking Atherton was a ubiquitous actor of the period, cropping up in other memorable films like Sugarland Express (1974) and Looking for Mr Good Bar (1977). Good as he is, Atherton is upstaged by career-best performances from two exemplars of seventies "New Hollywood", Donald Sutherland and Karen Black. Sutherland is meek, sexually-repressed and self-loathing accountant Homer Simpson (yes, that’s where the name originates), ensnared in a dysfunctional, manipulative and asexual relationship with grasping wannabe starlet Faye Greener (Black). 

Note: considering the character of Faye is meant to be 17, the 36-year old Black is theoretically at least almost two decades too old for the role. And yet her fearless, frequently borderline-grotesque performance is so compelling it scarcely matters. (And Black looks spectacular in her thirties wardrobe and marcelled platinum blonde hairstyle).

/ Karen Black promoting The Day of the Locust on the cover of After Dark magazine /

My highlights: Homer and the infantile, petulant Faye argue in the kitchen. They attempt to reconcile by dancing to “Jeepers Creepers” by Louis Armstrong - but as they dance, both of their faces are twisted into rictus masks of agony. Fantastically uncomfortable! (In fact, Schlesinger deliberately recycles the song "Jeepers Creepers" throughout the film until it becomes a kind of anxiety-inducing torture). When the characters visit the most gorgeous white-and-silver Art Deco nightclub where a drag queen (Paul Jabara) is singing Marlene Dietrich’s “Hot Voodoo” number from Blonde Venus. Speaking of Dietrich, two moments are as cruel and emasculating as anything out of Josef von Sternberg’s The Blue Angel: Homer painstakingly making breakfast in bed for Faye by recreating an illustration in a woman’s magazine – sliced strawberries arranged on cornflakes. He carries it on a pristine tray into her bedroom. Faye glances at it, grimaces and tells the crestfallen Homer, “Cornflakes? I’ll just eat the strawberries.” Then: Faye has been splashing-out on a whole new deluxe wardrobe for herself on Homer’s credit. We see her modelling and dancing around in her new finery – and then discarding them on the floor in her childlike excitement. Each time she does this, Homer bends down to retrieve the dropped item. Once she notices, Faye starts doing it deliberately just to watch him stooping-down in servile mode.

/ Donald Sutherland in the harrowing conclusion of The Day of the Locust /

Locust builds to a nightmarish finale where the crowded premiere of the 1938 Cecil B DeMille film The Buccaneer at Grauman's Chinese Theatre erupts into a violent riot, ending in a fiery vision of hell straight out of a painting by Hieronymus Bosch or Francis Bacon. The film’s depiction of  the motion pictures industry as a horror movie anticipates David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive and Inland Empire. It may have bombed in '75, but seen today, Locust looks like an impressive achievement. In fact, as the ever-provocative queer auteur Bruce LaBruce persuasively argues, Day of the Locust "could arguably now be regarded as one of the best films of the seventies." Added bonus: you get to see Latino actor Pepe Serna naked.