I am evangelical about my love for the Sam Pancake Presents the Monday Afternoon Movie podcast, devoted to the 1970s and 80s l'âge d'or of made-for-TV movies. In his latest installment, the effervescent Sam Pancake interrogates barely comprehensible but undeniably diverting occult nonsense Ritual of Evil (1970).
For me, it’s chiefly noteworthy for a truly wild ripsnorting guest star performance from veteran Hollywood diva Anne Baxter as washed-up alcoholic actress Jolene Wiley. Buggin’ out in ensembles of gold lamé and marabou feathers, permanently boozy or hungover, constantly availing herself of a crystal decanter of scotch and tinkling the ice cubes in her rocks glass, no one hams it up quite like Anne Baxter in full cry. Reference points here might include Grayson Hall in Dark Shadows or Baxter herself a few years later in “Requiem for a Falling Star”, the 1973 episode of Columbo she appears in.
We’re first introduced to Jolene on a dark and stormy night. The power has gone out and she’s wielding a candelabra straight out of Liberace’s mansion. “I think I’m going mad,” she slurs to suave French-accented psychiatrist David Sorrell (played by suave French-accented Louis Jordan). “You wanna drink?” She starts regaling him about a party she attended earlier: “I got loaded! You know how sometimes you get loaded very quickly and other times (world-weary pause and eye roll) it takes all night?” then cackles "This is absurd! I'm too sophisticated for this, I really am!" (No matter how tipsy Jolene is, Baxter’s old-school transatlantic diction is flawless. I suspect she went to the same elocution teacher as Eleanor Parker). Her finest moment: Jolene has an embittered meltdown reclining on a fur bedspread, lamenting “I’m not so old, you know. I just wear this middle-aged body on the outside. Inside, I’m really young.” Who among us can't relate to those sentiments?
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