Reflections on ... Sins of Jezebel (1953)

Recently watched: Sins of Jezebel (1953). Tagline: “Delilah. Cleopatra. Salome. Bathsheba … they learned their wiles, wickedness and evil from the woman called Jezebel.”

Sometimes nothing hits the spot like a kitschy 1950s sword-and-sandals Biblical epic. This one feels directly inspired by Cecil B DeMille’s earlier Samson and Delilah (1949) – you can certainly imagine Jezebel’s veteran leading lady Paulette Goddard (playing “The Most Wicked Woman Who Ever Lived!”) wanting to replicate the success of her 1930s contemporary Hedy Lamarr. But while Samson was a lush spectacle via a major studio (Paramount), by comparison, Sins is independent and low budget (as the critic from The Toledo Blade concluded, "The desire was strong, but the cash was weak”). The setting is visibly Californian (exteriors were shot at the Corriganville Movie Ranch in Ventura County, normally used for Westerns). At points, Sins suggests a campy and exotic Maria Montez movie with Goddard wearing the yashmak instead, or even the underground cinema of Jack Smith or Kenneth Anger.

I didn’t think I was familiar with Sins’ poverty row journeyman director Reginald Le Borg, but I Googled him and I have seen his horror movie So Evil, My Sister (aka Psycho Sisters) from 1974. The New York Times review was dismissive: “Most of the time the cast edges in and out of court boudoirs or uneasily holds forth on Jehovah and false, graven images … As the hypnotic heroine, Miss Goddard fans her eyelashes, swings a bare midriff with pendulum precision and weighs crises of religion and state as though a wad of gum were parked behind the royal tiara.” 43-year-old Goddard is juicy and glamorous as the conniving Baal-worshiping bad girl, but in terms of eye candy she’s upstaged by hunky George Nader as Jehu. My favourite line of dialogue: “Captain! There hasn’t been such a gathering here since the Queen of Sheba came to see Solomon!”

There’s a gorgeous HD restoration of Sins of Jezebel on YouTube. The blazing garish “Ansco Color” really pops!

Next Lobotomy Room Film Club: Berserk! (1967) on 20 November 2025

 

OK, so Halloween is over but let’s extend the horror vibe this November when the FREE monthly Lobotomy Room cinema club (committed to Bad Movies for Bad People) presents ultra-kitsch, gloriously lurid British-made shocker Berserk (1967)! 

“This absurd suspense melodrama was the next-to-last film of Joan Crawford’s career. She’s cast as Monica Rivers (a typically glamorous Joan Crawford character name), owner and ringmistress of a circus where strange murders occur. In the very first scene, a tightrope walker falls to his death. Joan takes charge immediately, shooing away the paparazzi and sending out a contingent of clowns, who flap their arms to amuse and distract the audience. “We’re running a circus, not a charm school!” she points out, “and, most importantly, people have to be entertained!””

/ From High Camp: A Gay Guide to Camp and Cult Films Volume 2 (1997) by Paul Roen /

Never was a film more aptly titled – and boy, does it earn that exclamation point. Highlights to anticipate: 1) 62-year-old leading lady Joan Crawford (in her second last film) is on fearsome scary diva form as hard-as-nails circus ringmistress Monica Rivers (a serial killer is gruesomely picking-off her circus’ performers one by one). Crawford’s portrayal can be summarized as “lipstick over concrete.” And don’t even get me started on the insane auburn wiglet Her Serene Crawfordship wears, or the special “glamour lighting” that ensures a flattering dark shadow is cast under her chin at all times. 2) Anytime impossibly hunky Ty Hardin (Crawford’s love interest) takes his shirt off. (Hardin is so devilishly handsome he’s like a homoerotic Tom of Finland illustration came to life). Note also that Hardin’s death-defying tightrope act involves him wearing a face-obscuring hood, which enables a body double to do it all on his behalf! 3) Zaftig British sex goddess Diana Dors’ juicily bitchy performance (and her straw-like bouffant hairstyle) in a supporting role. 4) The plot is considerably padded out with circus performance footage (which you see in all its plodding entirety), but Phyllis Allan and her Intelligent Poodles are delightful! 5) Not a spoiler, but the abrupt, lunatic ending (just after the murderer exclaims, “I killed them ALL! I HAD to! Now I’m going to kill YOU!”) ensures the scriptwriters are freed from explaining how any of this could have been feasible! 

“Berserk! was a lurid tale of murder in the circus and while it offered little to challenge Crawford’s dramatic talent, she was still able to display here commendable figure in a leotard as ringmistress. “What about these?” she said, exhibiting her breasts to her producer Herman Cohen. “And no operations on ‘em, either.” She wore her own clothes in the film - “Save your money, Herm; I’ve been hustling clothes all my life” – but asked that Edith Head design the leotard.”

/ From Joan Crawford: A Biography by Bob Thomas (1978) / 

Join us at Fontaine’s on 20 November to embrace the full lunacy of Berserk! (over cocktails!). Reserve your seat by emailing bookings@fontaines.bar. Full details here. 

Lobotomy Room is the FREE monthly film club committed to cinematic perversity. Third Thursday night of every month downstairs at Fontaine’s cocktail lounge in Dalston. Numbers are limited, so reserve your seat via Fontaine’s site. Alternatively, phone 07718000546 or email bookings@fontaines.bar. The film starts at 8:30 pm. Doors to the basement Bamboo Lounge open at 8:00 pm. To ensure everyone is seated and cocktails are ordered on time, please arrive by 8:15 pm at the latest.

Reflections on ... Three Nuts in Search of a Bolt (1964)

Recently watched: 3 Nuts in Search of a Bolt (1964). (Tagline: “The screwiest comedy of the year!”). 

Renaissance man of vintage smut Tommy Noonan (actor, comedian, screenwriter, director and producer) followed up his witless but profitable 1963 Jayne Mansfield sex farce Promises ... Promises! with this even more witless sex farce a year later. This time, that other Eisenhower-era blonde bombshell Mamie Van Doren steps into Mansfield’s Spring-o-lator heels in the lead role of exotic dancer Saxie Symbol. (Note that Noonan had the rare distinction of appearing onscreen with Marilyn Monroe in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Mansfield in Promises … Promises! and Van Doren here). 

3 Nuts is a slapdash and incoherent mess (for example, for some reason it shuttles between black-and-white and colour), Noonan’s mugging is mind-numbingly unfunny, but it exerts a weird fascination for connoisseurs of bad movies. By this point, Van Doren would have been considered "washed-up" (to quote The Simpsons, “show business is a hideous bitch goddess”) but her 1960s look of dark eye make-up and bouffant up-swept bubble hairdos is irresistible. While never a natural anarchic comedienne like Mansfield, the woman possesses a genuine “je ne sais quoi.” (Also: Van Doren doesn't bare quite as much flesh as Mansfield did in Promises). 

3 Nuts’ best moments are Van Doren’s opening and closing burlesque numbers and the bathtub sequence (it’s like a retro Playboy magazine pictorial come to life. We’re meant to believe Saxie is bathing in beer). The cast also features ultra-campy female impersonator and actor Thomas Craig “T C” Jones as the personal secretary of a sexy female psychiatrist (Ziva Rodann) and he’s good fun. (Jones was also a highlight in Promises … Promises! imitating Tallulah Bankhead and Bette Davis). For what it’s worth, Playboy magazine called 3 Nuts “a zany comedy of Freudian tomfoolery!” Perhaps more accurately, The San Francisco Examiner termed it “a strong candidate for the worst picture of this or any other year.”

Full movie below!

Reflections on ... Who Killed Mary What's 'Er Name? (1971)

 

Recently watched: Who Killed Mary What's 'Er Name? (1971) aka Death of a Hooker (tagline: “Somebody just murdered your friendly neighborhood hooker. Start asking questions, and before you know it, you’re in trouble.”). 

Directed by Ernest Pintoff and soundtracked by mournful jazz music, Mary is a low-budget, gritty and offbeat crime thriller set in derelict early seventies New York. Red Buttons stars as Mickey Isador, a plucky diabetic former boxer who takes it upon himself to investigate the murder of a local sex worker, when he feels the NYPD are indifferent. The emphasis on Mickey’s diabetes feels odd (his daughter is constantly pestering him to take his insulin), but this detail becomes important at the genuinely tense finale. 

Mary has the grungy, seedy look and vibe of an exploitation movie, but the violence is tame and there’s no explicit sex or nudity (in fact, Who Killed Mary was rated PG). We get frequent evocative glimpses of bag ladies, elderly women leaning out their windows and haggard gin-blossomed drinkers at dive bars, all resembling escapees from the street photography of Weegee or Diane Arbus. The lead cast is predominantly middle-aged and worn-out looking (which for someone of my vintage is reassuring and relatable) and is surprisingly comprised of 1970s television stalwarts like David Doyle (Bosley from Charlie’s Angels) and Conrad Bain (Arthur Harman on Maude, Phillip Drummond on Diff’rent Strokes). One exception: a very young, lanky and adorable shaggy-haired Sam Waterston in his Timothée Chalamet era! Best of all, wild, fiercely abrasive and utterly distinctive character actress Sylvia Miles (pictured) crops up in the supporting role of Christine, a chain-smoking, nasal-voiced and bewigged tough cookie prostitute – and she absolutely slays! The print on YouTube is a faded and scratchy “raw scan”, but in a beautiful and atmospheric way.

Next Lobotomy Room Film Club: The Brain That Wouldn't Die (1962) on 16 October 2025

 

Attention, sensationalism freaks! This October the FREE monthly Lobotomy Room cinema club (devoted to Bad Movies for Bad People) ushers you into the Halloween season (or as we call it, “gay Christmas”) with a screening of The Brain That Wouldn’t Die! (Tagline: “Alive … without a body … fed by an unspeakable horror from hell!”). Thursday 16 October at Fontaine’s inDalston! 

Look, this insane 1962 horror b-movie has a terrible reputation and is routinely listed as one of the worst films ever made (and it was completed in 1959 but sat in a vault until 1962, which admittedly doesn’t bode well!). But in his essential 1996 book Slimetime: a Guide to Sleazy, Mindless Movies, Steven Puchalski calls Brain “a crisp little chuckle fest … dim-witted, sleazy and (unlike lots of fifties passion pitters) true to the silliness of its ad campaign.” To its credit, Brain features … a deranged scientist dabbling in God’s domain! A hideous misshapen mutant (played by 9-foot-tall carnival sideshow performer Eddie Carmel, who’d later be immortalised by Diane Arbus in the portrait “The Jewish Giant at Home with His Parents in the Bronx, N Y 1970”)! Burlesque scenes in a tawdry strip club (including two women rolling on the floor in a catfight)! And an unforgettable performance from Virginia Leith as the severed head of the title! Rest assured, consuming Fontaine’s excellent range of special offer £6 cocktails will improve the quality of Brain immeasurably! 

/ Virginia Leith in The Brain That Wouldn't Die (1962) /

Reserve your seat by emailing bookings@fontaines.bar. More details on event page. 

ALSO: Fontaine’s is holding its first Halloween party for five years on Friday 31 October – and I am DJ’ing! Full putrid details to follow soon!

Lobotomy Room is the FREE monthly film club committed to cinematic perversity. Third Thursday night of every month downstairs at Fontaine’s cocktail lounge in Dalston. Numbers are limited, so reserve your seat via Fontaine’s site. Alternatively, phone 07718000546 or email bookings@fontaines.bar. The film starts at 8:30 pm. Doors to the basement Bamboo Lounge open at 8:00 pm. To ensure everyone is seated and cocktails are ordered on time, please arrive by 8:15 pm at the latest.

Reflections on ... Dead Beat (1994)

/ Bruce Ramsay in Dead Beat (1994). Tagline: "A tale of deep love ... and shallow graves" /

“Famed not so much for his mid-sixties killings of three teenage girls as for his mind-boggling fashion statements, he was sentenced to death, one suspects, for his atrocious taste. “Smitty”, as he was called, pompadoured his dyed jet-black hair and wore a thick coat of pancake over his dirty unshaven handsome face. His Casanova lips were covered in white lipstick, and he designed a quarter-size beauty mark made of putty that resembled a hideous cartoon witch’s mole. His ultimate accessory was the large filthy bandage he wore on his nose for no apparent reason. Like all models, he wished he were taller, so he stuffed his boots with a three-inch layer of tin cans and rags …” 

That’s John Waters describing Charles Schmid Jr (aka the “Pied Piper of Tucson”) in his 1983 volume of essays Crackpot. Schmid’s story is loosely adapted for the screen in deadpan black comedy Dead Beat (1994) by first-time director Adam Dubov. “Smitty” is reimagined as Elvis-worshiping small-town Lothario Kit (Bruce Ramsay) (pictured. As you can see, they dispensed with the nose bandage!). For cult cinema aficionados, Dead Beat overlaps with the cinema of Waters and David Lynch in terms of style, content and casting. Its pastel-hued kitschy retro art direction evokes Waters’ Hairspray (1988), complete with neon signs, cars with fins and bouffant hairstyles. (And Deborah Harry appears in both films). Surf rock instrumentals by Link Wray and Dick Dale rumble on the soundtrack. (So do some rockabilly tunes by James Intveld – who provided the singing voice of Johnny Depp in Waters’ Cry-baby (1990)). Balthazar Getty and Natasha Gregson Wagner would go on to feature in Lynch’s Lost Highway (1997). And of course, the presence of Gregson Wagner recalls her mother Natalie Wood, who starred in the Rolls Royce of juvenile delinquent movies, Rebel without a Cause (1955).  

/ Above: the real Charles Schmid Jr /

Ramsay attacks the role of Kit with wolfish lip-smacking elan. (Watching him makes me wish Waters had cast HIM in Cry-baby instead of Depp). But my favourite performance is by a virtually silent Sara Gilbert (Darlene from Roseanne). Also noteworthy: Meredith Salenger, who I remember with affection from schlocky 1988 horror movie The Kiss. And cult director Alex Cox (of Repo Man (1984) and Sid and Nancy fame (1986)) also makes a memorable cameo appearance. 

Not all of Dead Beat works by any means, but it’s stylish (Dubov does wonders with a shoestring budget), provocative and worthy of investigation. You can find it on YouTube. 

Reflections on ... The Only Game in Town (1970)

 

Recently watched: The Only Game in Town (1970). Tagline: “Dice was his vice. Men hers.” 

/ Pictured: George Stevens and Elizabeth Taylor during production of The Only Game in Town /

Director George Stevens and leading lady Elizabeth Taylor triumphed collaborating on A Place in the Sun (1951) and Giant (1956). Far less well-remembered is this downbeat Las Vegas-set character study about two losers tentatively embarking on a love affair. I say “losers” – the two main characters are portrayed by ultra-glamorous and photogenic international movie stars Taylor and Warren Beatty. Joe Grady (Beatty) is a jaded lounge pianist saddled with crippling gambling debts. (The role was originally intended for Frank Sinatra). Fran Walker (Taylor) is a chorus girl who’s been waiting for her wealthy married business executive lover to leave his wife for the past five years. (To establish that Fran is a showgirl, Stevens clumsily splices fleeting close-ups of Taylor in sequins “dancing” into long shots of a huge lavish production number. It is unintentionally hilarious). Both yearn to leave Vegas and start over. 

/ Above: the leading man and leading lady of The Only Game in Town / 

(An aside: if you do any researching on Game, you’ll frequently see Fran described as an “ageing showgirl”. Taylor would be only 36 years old here! Thank God the parameters of “ageing” have changed over the years. But in this regard, Game has thematic parallels with the 1973 made-for-TV Kim Novak movie Third Girl from the Left and, more recently, The Last Showgirl (2024) starring Pamela Anderson). 

Fascinatingly, the budget for this small-scale and intimate comedy-drama promptly spiraled to $11 million. Game was made when Taylor and then-husband Burton – as author Lee Server wrote – were at “their jet-setting, conspicuously consuming, bad-movie-making height.” Taylor was still able to command her mega-star $1.125 million salary and demanded Game be filmed in Paris where Burton was currently making his own flop movie (Staircase (1969)), necessitating the construction of an “ersatz Vegas” on a French sound stage. (I’m hypnotized by the fake rear projection view of the Sahara casino from Fran’s living room window). As Wikipedia concludes: “The Only Game in Town was the second-worst financial failure for Fox, behind Cleopatra, also starring Taylor. Stevens did not direct another film.” 

/ Miss Taylor's wigs by Alexandre of Paris! / 

Anyway, Game is inconsequential and wispy but suffused with retro charm (the décor of Fran’s apartment, her groovy wardrobe of ponchos, muumuus and mini dresses. Taylor’s wild coiffures and wigs are via Alexandre of Paris). The contrasting acting styles of Taylor and Beatty is fascinating (he’s only five years younger, but Beatty embodies “New Hollywood” whereas she’s old-school). The melancholy opening montage of Fran walking through a seedy neon-lit and deserted (actual) Vegas by night is gorgeous.

Watch The Only Game in Town here:

/ Further listening: the reliably excellent Karina Longworth devotes an installment of her You Must Remember This podcast to the late-period career of George Stevens here. 

Reflections on ... Anne Baxter in Ritual of Evil (1970)

 

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?

You can watch Ritual of Evil on YouTube (in a beautiful sparkling print) here. 

Reflections on ... Third Girl from the Left (1973)

 

I haven’t seen the movie The Last Showgirl yet, but I intend to! (It just recently opened in the UK). Alongside Demi Moore in The Substance, Pamela Anderson’s is the comeback story de nos jours. 

But what I did revisit in preparation is the ABC 1973 made-for-TV Third Girl from the Left, which shares a virtually identical theme. Written by singer-songwriter Dory Previn, it’s a downbeat, wistful character study starring Kim Novak (in her television debut) as Gloria Joyce, a veteran showgirl (in New York this time rather than Vegas) hitting a crisis point in her life. At 36, after years of being centre stage in the line-up, she’s been asked to “move to the back” to make space for a new girl. Has Gloria “aged out” of her showbiz career? (Isn’t it wild to reflect that 36 was considered “past it” in 1973? Novak herself is 40 years-old here). In addition, Gloria’s 13-year relationship with lounge crooner Joey Jordan (Tony Curtis, clearly having a blast luxuriating in this sleazebag role) is fizzling out. Bruised and uncertain, she embarks on a tentative romance with a younger man (Michael Brandon). 

Misty, ethereal and vulnerable, Novak seems to be deliberately evoking her earlier performance as Polly the Pistol in Billy Wilder’s Kiss Me, Stupid (1964). There are introspective songs via Previn (the genius who wrote the anguished lyrics to the Beyond the Valley of the Dolls theme, composed by her then-husband Andre Previn). In the striking opening credits, we watch Gloria in close-up applying her stage make-up as Previn sings about her on the soundtrack (“Gloria / Remember her? A flowered blouse, a ribbon bow, the night you had a year ago … Her eyes were sad … you asked if you could see her place / A pale perfume, a paler face / You stayed a while / She liked your smile …”). You’ll notice the credit “Executive Producer: Hugh M Hefner”: Third Girl from the Left is a Playboy Production (perhaps inevitably, his then-mistress Barbi Benton has a supporting role. So does Anne Ramsay from Throw Mama from the Train!). Curtis and Novak would reunite seven years later in The Mirror Crack'd (1980).

You can watch Third Girl from the Left on YouTube:

Next Lobotomy Room film club: Dead Ringer (1964) on Thursday 16 January 2025

 

For the first film club presentation of the New Year, Lobotomy Room comes screaming back (out of the gutter and into your arms!) with ultra-campy 1964 psychological thriller Dead Ringer (aka Who Is Buried in My Grave?)! Thursday 16 January at Fontaine’s! Starring volcanic grande dame of golden age Hollywood Miss Bette “Mother Goddamn” Davis in dual roles! (As Eric Henderson of Slant magazine puts it, “It features the compelling spectacle of Bette Davis competing for screen space with the only actress capable of upstaging her: Bette Davis”). 

Made between What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? and Hush … Hush, Sweet Charlotte, it sees Davis portraying long-estranged identical twin sisters (Margaret is now an affluent socialite, while Edith is impoverished, seething with resentment - and vengeful). Veteran Davis’ career was so long at this point she’d already made a variation of this film in the 1940s with A Stolen Life (1946)! Packed with juicy suspenseful twists and turns, Dead Ringer is a blast! And Davis in full blowtorch abrasive, gloriously self-parodic Medusa-like mode is simply magnificent. (This is precisely the incarnation of Davis that nightclub female impersonators like Charles Pierce and Craig Russell would seize on). 

Lobotomy Room is the FREE monthly film club devoted to Bad Movies for Bad People! Third Thursday night of every month downstairs at Fontaine’s cocktail lounge in Dalston. Numbers are limited, so reserve your seat via Fontaine’s website. Alternatively, phone 07718000546 or email bookings@fontaines.bar. (Fontaine’s is closed until 10 January so don’t be surprised if you don’t hear back until later in month). The film starts at 8:30 pm. Doors to the basement Bamboo Lounge open at 8:00 pm. To ensure everyone is seated and cocktails are ordered on time, please arrive by 8:15 pm at the latest. Facebook event page. 

And remember -- the only thing more fun than a movie starring Bette Davis – is a movie starring TWO Bette Davises!

Watch the trailer below:

Reflections on ... Scorchy (1976)

 

Recently watched: low-brow 1976 grindhouse crime thriller Scorchy. IMDb’s ultra-concise plot summary: “Connie Stevens is Jackie "Scorchy" Parker, the hottest undercover agent the Feds have ever known. She makes fast friends - and deadly enemies.” 

I’d always yearned to see this one, but found Scorchy somehow not quite as juicy or fun as I hoped, especially considering its outrageous tagline (“She's Killed a Man, Been Shot at And Made Love Twice Already This Evening... And The Evening Isn't Over Yet!”). The storyline sees spunky fun-loving narcotics agent Jackie (Stevens) orchestrating an elaborate undercover operation to nab heroin-smuggling drug baron Philip Bianco (Cesare Danova). There are shoot-outs and car chases - AND helicopter and speedboat chases! (Considering Scorchy’s director Howard Avedis mainly focused on sexploitation fare like The Teacher (1974) and Dr Minx (1975), he shows a real flair for action sequences). 

/ Representative glimpse of the ultra-seventies hair, clothes and decor in Scorchy /

Scorchy frequently suggests a 1970s Blaxploitation flick, but with honkies in the central roles. Like, it feels like it should be Pam Grier playing Jackie, but it’s Connie Stevens. (And Grier’s superior 1975 film Friday Foster hits some of the same trashy sweet spots as Scorchy). Anyway, the then 38-year-old Stevens seizes the opportunity to distance herself from her ingenue days as Cricket Blake in TV’s Hawaiian Eye. There are glimpses of her bare breasts, a gratuitous skinny-dipping scene and raunchy dialogue aplenty delivered in Stevens’ trademark whispery babydoll voice (in the context of Scorchy, 1970s women’s liberation equals Jackie exclaiming about getting laid. In one exchange, she teases her boss Chief Frank O’Brien (Norman Burton) with “You look tense. You need a blowjob!” Perhaps understandably, he responds, “You’re a fruitcake, you bitch!”). I know the character is based on Stevens’ sex kitten contemporary Joey Heatherton, but with her frosted pale lipstick and feathered blow-dried hair, in her close-ups Stevens frequently resembles Catherine O’Hara as Lola Heatherton in SCTV. Anyway, you also get the backdrop of Seattle in the 1970s AND hunky young male starlet Greg Evigan before B J and The Bear. Weirdly, in theory “Scorchy” is meant to be Jackie’s nickname but I don’t recall any of the characters addressing her by that in the entire film?

/ Above: Catherine O'Hara as Lola Heatherton in SCTV. Below: publicity shot of Connie Stevens for Scorchy (clearly, the movie's poster was adapted from this pic) /

Watch Scorchy on YouTube. (Because of the sex and violence on offer, you will need to log-in!).

Reflections on ... The Unholy Wife (1957)

 

/ Illustration by Olivier Coulon /

Recently watched: The Unholy Wife (1957). Tagline: “Half-angel. Half-devil. She made him half-a-man!” 

This pedestrian but enjoyably sordid film noir is unique for being made in scorching colour. Even in the faded print circulating on YouTube, British sex bomb leading lady Diana Dors’ gleaming platinum hair and skin-tight costumes in royal blue, fuchsia and ice pink are eye-popping. (Director John Farrow was no hack: he made some of Robert Mitchum’s greatest films (Where Danger Lives (1950), His Kind of Woman (1951). He clearly had an “off day” here). 

The Unholy Wife offers a portrait of a dysfunctional marriage in the verdant sun-dappled vineyards of Napa Valley. Or as the publicity blurb promises “This is the wine cellar of the most respectable house in the Valley. This is where she met them, made love to them, laughed with them at her husband … at the man who gave her a name, a home and a heritage – the man she wanted to destroy!” The action unfolds in flashback, with present-day Phyllis (whose name evokes the Barbara Stanwyck character Phyllis Dietrichson in Double Indemnity (1944)) in jail, recounting the events that led to her imprisonment. (In these scenes, jailbird Dors is seen scrubbed of make-up and sporting brown hair, which can’t help but recall her earlier British film Yield to the Night (1956)). In a role originally intended for Shelley Winters, Dors is a seething, manipulative married woman scheming with her lantern-jawed, broad-shouldered lover San (hunky Tom Tryon) to murder her cuckolded husband, vineyard owner Paul (played by Rod Steiger – in a role originally intended for Ernest Borgnine - in the then-fashionable mumbling Actor’s Studio tradition). Wringing her hands in the background is mother-in-law Emma, played by Beulah Bondi (a part intended for Ethel Barrymore). 

/ Tom Tryon and Diana Dors in The Unholy Wife /

Watch for one truly glorious sequence of Phyllis and her pal Gwen (hard-boiled, nicotine-saturated noir icon Marie Windsor) toiling as “hostesses” at a low-down gin joint. While the blowzy resident nightclub singer (Maxine Gates) wails “One for My Baby (and One More for the Road”), Phyllis – sheathed in sensational silver lamé - kvetches, “Not much action around here tonight.” Windsor’s appearance is fleeting and makes you wish The Unholy Wife was mainly 90-minutes of just her and Dors hanging out. The commercial and critical failure of The Unholy Wife ultimately cut short Dors’ brief and unhappy sojourn in Hollywood, and she returned to the United Kingdom. (For gossip-hungry sensationalism freaks, Dors and Steiger - both married to other people - had a fling during production).

/ Frustratingly, I couldn't source a good colour image of Marie Windsor and Diana Dors online in this nightclub sequence. (Windsor's dress is bright red). /

Watch The Unholy Wife here.

Reflections on ... Death at Love House (1976)

 

Recently watched: 1976 ABC Movie of the Week Death at Love House. Joel and Donna Gregory (Robert Wagner and Kate Jackson) are a husband-and-wife writing duo collaborating on a biography of the doomed Hollywood star Lorna Love, who died tragically young in 1935. (Coincidentally, Joel’s artist father had an impassioned affair with Lorna and painted a portrait of her). And for reasons never fully explained, the couple move into Love’s totally intact Hollywood mansion to research their book (Love House was shot on location at the former estate of silent movie star Harold Lloyd). 

Creepily, Lorna’s perfectly preserved, eternally youthful corpse is on permanent display – Snow White-style - in a shrine on the premises. Strange occurrences immediately start happening. Who is the ethereal “woman-in-white” Donna glimpses in the garden? Why are there macabre occult symbols everywhere? Who was Father Eternal Fire, Lorna’s satanic looking “spiritual advisor”? And who tried to kill Donna in the locked bathroom by carbon monoxide poisoning? 

Obviously, almost anything produced by Aaron Spelling is bound to be campy fun. Raspy-voiced, gorgeous young Jackson is always an engaging screen presence. With its emphasis on occultism, golden age Hollywood and lurid showbiz tragedies (Lorna is clearly inspired by Jean Harlow), Love House suggests a page torn from Kenneth Anger’s Hollywood Babylon. It will also remind you of other, infinitely superior movies: Sunset Boulevard (1950), The Legend of Lylah Clare (1968), Fedora (1978). And like 1944 film noir Laura, characters spend a lot of time staring, mesmerized, by an oil painting of a dead woman. For verisimilitude, supporting parts are played by actual classic Hollywood veterans like Sylvia Sidney, Joan Blondell, Dorothy Lamour and John Carradine. (The Gregorys’ literary agent is played by Bill Macy - Walter from Maude!). 

Less happily, zero effort is taken to make Lorna 1930s “period appropriate”. (She’s seen in flashbacks portrayed by Marianna Hill - cult movie fans will recognize her from Messiah of Evil (1973) and The Baby (1973) - with a feathered blow-dried 70s Farrah Fawcett coiffure). And the ending is worthy of an old episode of Scooby-Doo! Smudged, murky prints of Love House are easy to find on YouTube.

Reflections on ... Rent-A-Cop (1987)

Recently watched: Rent-A-Cop (1987). When Burt Reynolds and Liza Minnelli were originally teamed for the 1975 film Lucky Lady, the result was a notorious and expensive mega-flop. So, I could kiss on the lips whoever approved reuniting the duo for crime thriller / romantic comedy hybrid Rent-A-Cop, the acme of gleefully enjoyable 1980s schlock. 

When a police sting operation goes horrifically wrong, gruff tough-as-nails Detective Tony Church (Reynolds) joins forces with kooky free-spirited escort girl Della Roberts (Minnelli). Della, you see, witnessed the carnage and is the sole person who can identify masked gunman Adam "Dancer" Booth (played by James Remar. Sex and the City fans will recognise him as Samantha Jones’ on-off boyfriend Richard Wright. Remar also made his share of good movies, like The Warriors, Cruising (both 1979) and Drugstore Cowboy (1989)). But not if Dancer kills her first! Or, as Rent-A-Cop's tagline exclaims “There’s a killer on the loose and the lady is the target.” 

Inevitably – after some wacky hi-jinks - the sparring odd couple of Tony and Della gradually fall in love. Aside from a cameo appearance in The Muppets Take Manhattan, this represents Minnelli’s first screen role after a gap of five years following her highly publicized stint at the Betty Ford Clinic (her previous major part was Arthur in 1981). Awash in sequins and mugging furiously, this is certainly Minnelli at her most “Minnelli”. Della’s sex work is depicted as a wholesome TV sitcom-friendly lark (she offers her johns the gamut of “his mommy, Little Bo-Peep, or Helga the Bitch Goddess”. It should be noted that the same year, Minnelli’s peer Barbra Streisand also unconvincingly played a high-price prostitute in Nuts). 

Anyway, Rent-A-Cop abounds with “what-the-fuck?” moments: Dancer inexplicably performs a sweaty homoerotic Flashdance-style number in front of a mirror. A bewigged drag queen at a nightclub accosts Della with “I love your muff!” Guest star Dionne Warwick portrays Della’s madam. Weirdly, Rent-A-Cop is set in Chicago and exteriors were shot there but the interiors were filmed in Rome’s Cinecittà Studios. And the screenplay was written by Michael Blodgett – best-remembered by cult cinema fans as hunky Lance Rock in the 1970 Russ Meyer sexploitation classic Beyond the Valley of the Dolls! Reynolds and Minnelli were both nominated for the 1988 Golden Raspberry Awards for Worst Actor and Worst Actress (Minnelli won). 

Further reading: the Cranky Lesbian blog’s shrewdand in-depth analysis. She quotes Reynolds' not very chivalrous but frank recollection on acting opposite Minnelli: “She’s not the easiest person in the world to act with. She’s never quite with you. It’s like she’s reading something somewhere off-camera. Yet she’s amazing as a live performer.”

Reflections on ... The Weak and the Wicked (1954)

 

/ Pictured: Diana Dors and Glynis Johns in The Weak and the Wicked (1954) /

Recently watched: The Weak and the Wicked (1954) (re-titled Young and Willing for the North American market). Tagline: “Frank, raw-truth exposé of women’s prisons! The terrors … abuses … scandals!” 

Who doesn’t love a gritty women-in-prison exploitation movie? Give me a Caged (1950), Women’s Prison (1955), Betrayed Women (1955), Girls in Prison (1956), Women Without Men (1956) or Caged Heat (1974) and I am entranced! (The whole genre was brilliantly parodied by SCTV in 1977 in the essential sketch “Broads Behind Bars”). 

Compared to these lurid, hard-boiled American exemplars, the British variation The Weak and the Wicked undeniably feels buttoned-up, drab, downbeat and yes, tame, by comparison but it’s not without its merits. Glynis Johns stars as Jean Raymond, a posh upper-class woman (she wears prim little white gloves!) with a gambling addiction sentenced to prison on a trumped-up fraud charge. We watch as Jean and the other new arrivals file-in to be “processed” by the stern prison matrons: weighed, bathed (“strip!”), checked for lice and issued their frumpy uniforms. Once installed, Jean promptly befriends brassy peroxide blonde Betty Brown (the perennially sensational Diana Dors. Betty’s first words to Jean: “gizza fag!”). With each new female inmate Jean encounters, we get a flashback outlining her backstory (some are funny, some are tragic). British cinema aficionados should watch for Rachel Roberts, Sybil Thorndike, Irene Handl and Sid James in small roles. (I think it was contractually obligated for either James or Herbert Lom to appear in every single British film of the period). Director J Lee Thompson would reunite with Dors for yet another, better-known women-in-prison movie, Yield to the Night (inspired by the Ruth Ellis case) in 1956.

Reflections on ... The Deliverance (2024)

 

Recently watched: Netflix’s The Deliverance (2024). Tagline: “Every family has its demons.” 

Directed by the reliably juicy and lurid Lee Daniels (the filmmaker best known for Precious (2009) and The Paperboy (2012)), it begins as a gritty urban drama (complete with Lil’ Kim on the soundtrack) about poverty, abuse, alcoholism, and racism as we watch the troubled African American Jackson family (mother, three kids and grandmother) hoping for a fresh start by moving into a new home in blue collar Pittsburgh. But within no time, it becomes apparent the house is cursed, and The Deliverance shifts tone into berserk, traumatic down-and-dirty horror in the tradition of The Exorcist (1973) or Amityville Horror (1979). (Or more accurately, The Deliverance is like an update or variation of Abby, the 1974 Blaxploitation version of The Exorcist). All the demonic possession horror movie tropes are present and correct: possessed children scuttle up the walls. Characters suddenly adopt growling, guttural voices or speak in tongues or develop stigmata on their hands. A cross on the wall bursts into flame. When someone is sprinkled with holy water, they scream “It burns!” 

Is The Deliverance silly and cliched? Sure, and the reviews have been savage, but if you keep your expectations low it’s also a blast. And the acting is exceptional: Andra Day is ferocious as tough, beleaguered single mom Ebony Jackson, as is Mo’Nique as a no-nonsense social worker. But it’s Glenn Close - gamely sporting wig and make-up choices pitched somewhere between Tammy Faye Bakker and Rachel Dolezal - as flamboyant born again grandmother Alberta (her wildest role since playing J D Vance’s Mamaw in Hillbilly Elegy) who steals the whole thing. Alberta is the kind of part Shelley Winters or Susan Tyrrell once might have played and the way Close attacks it is pure, gleeful hagsploitation. My favourite scene: the three generations of Jackson women (grandmother, mother and granddaughter) braiding each other’s hair while watching 1967 camp classic Valley of the Dolls on TV and reciting the “Broadway doesn't go for booze and dope” dialogue off by heart. But weirdly, for such a cine-literate family, none of them seems to have watched The Exorcist!