Reflections on ... The Gypsy Rose Lee Show

Oldshowbiz is the essential Tumblr account of comedian turned author and astute show business historian Kliph Nesteroff devoted to “Showbiz Imagery and Forgotten History.” He regularly exhumes a treasure trove of mid-twentieth century kitsch curiosities and obscurities – including THIS delectable high camp bonanza. 

Turns out brassy burlesque legend Gypsy Rose Lee hosted her own talk show in the sixties (The Gypsy Rose Lee Show, 754 episodes, aired 1965–1968). As the ads exclaimed, “Gypsy is Fresh! Delightful! Mad-cap! Cheery! Glittering! Irrepressible! Provocative! INCOMPARABLE!” The summary for this 1965 installment: “Singer-actress Eartha Kitt talks of men and love and singer-actress Lainie Kazan sings a tongue-in-cheek love song “Peel Me a Grape””.  Thrill as these three camp icons let their hair (wiglets?) down and dish some “girl talk” over coffee (although my boyfriend Pal suggests their coffee cups appear empty. There’s also a bottle of champagne on the table but it goes untouched). The episode captures intense, fiercely glamorous Kitt around the same time she portrayed Catwoman on TV’s Batman series, while Kazan purrs a sex kitten anthem with lyrics like “Peel me a grape / Crush me some ice / Skin me a peach / Save the fuzz for my pillow … Pop me a cork, French me a fry / Crack me a nut, bring a bowl full of bon-bons …” It culminates in the three women joining forces to belt-out Lee’s signature tune “Let Me Entertain You.” If you weren’t gay already, you will be after watching this!

Reflections on ... Arlene Dahl (11 August 1925 – 29 November 2021)

 / Coiffeur-to-the-stars George Masters styling Arlene Dahl’s hair poolside in 1961 /

Farewell to Arlene Dahl (11 August 1925 – 29 November 2021). The star of stage, screen and television, beauty advice columnist, astrologist, authoress of fifteen books, surprisingly durable glamour queen and kitsch icon (and one of the last survivors of Golden Age Hollywood) has died aged 96.

/ Glamour shot of Arlene Dahl featured in May 1957 issue of Modern Screen magazine via /  

Renowned for her flaming red hair and trademark beauty spot, Dahl was routinely cited as “one of the most beautiful women in the world” in the fifties. Most of her movie roles were decorative, but the lurid film noir Slightly Scarlet (1956) is genuinely great, and I need to properly re-visit Wicked as They Come (1956). (Both of these are viewable on YouTube last time I checked). Like many an aging star, in the seventies and eighties Dahl cropped-up as a celebrity guest star on TV shows like Love Boat and Fantasy Island and then the soap opera One Life to Live.

/ Dahl with Rhonda Fleming in Slightly Scarlet (1956) / 

In addition to acting, Dahl diversified into journalism (writing the newspaper column “Let’s Be Beautiful”) and business (as an entrepreneur, she launched Arlene Dahl Enterprises, marketing her own range of cosmetics, negligées and perfume. In the early seventies she hawked wigs for Sears!).

Dahl married six times. Her former husbands included screen Tarzan Lex Barker and suave Argentinian actor Fernando Lamas (Their son Lorenzo Lamas starred in 1980s soap opera Falcon Crest). She also had a fling with John F Kennedy in the forties.

Her most noteworthy literary effort - Always Ask a Man: Arlene Dahl’s Key to Femininity (1965) - rivals Joan Crawford’s 1971 volume My Way of Life as a camp sacred text. Let’s charitably say Dahl’s tips are “of their time.” “It’s a man’s world!” she preaches. “Don’t fight it – the key to happiness and success is femininity! You may be healthy, attractive, intelligent, witty, athletic, personable and rich but it just isn’t enough – for that man – if you’re not feminine!”

Reflections on ... Cleopatra (1934)

/ Henry Wilcoxon and Claudette Colbert in Cleopatra (1934) /

Recently watched: Cleopatra (1934). Apologies to Elizabeth Taylor, but Claudette Colbert is cinema’s authoritative Queen of the Nile. Visionary director Cecil B DeMille’s lushly opulent and risqué account of the life and loves of Cleopatra VII is infinitely superior to the bloated 1963 version starring Liz’n’Dick. For one thing, DeMille tells his story in 105-minutes – a model of concision compared to the sixties version, which is a ponderous, mind-numbing four hours and twenty minutes long! The 1934 interpretation also offers the most sumptuously Art Deco of screen Cleopatras. (Which makes sense, considering the Art Deco aesthetic was at least partially inspired by ancient Egyptian imagery). 

The Motion Picture Production Code came into effect during production, so the eroticism DeMille was able to sneak past the censors is impressive. (We see exposed female nipples in the opening credits!). DeMille was the undisputed maestro of kinky pagan spectacle, and here proceedings reach a bonkers climax when Cleopatra initiates Marc Antony into Egyptian-style hedonism on her gilded barge. Accompanied by mounds of jewels and goblets of wine, the duo feast on skewers of “reed birds” while languorously reclining. Cleopatra presents a lavish production number to seduce Antony, incorporating legions of homoerotic baby-oiled gladiators, slave boys in loincloths and semi-naked female concubines waving peacock feathers. The pageantry grows ever more crazed. Girls dressed as leopards cavort, crawl on all fours and then somersault through flaming hoops while a muscular male “lion tamer” in ass-baring bondage gear cracks a whip. Finally, Cleopatra gives the signal that she and Antony wish to make love, and her battalion of underlings swing into action. Giant billowing silk curtains unfurl to give the couple privacy. Temple dancers ritualistically perform. Flower petals rain from the sky. The camera pulls back to reveal the galley slaves rowing the barge to the beat of a drum. The segment is a fever dream of orgiastic depravity and a pinnacle of Golden Age Hollywood camp nirvana! 

Colbert makes for a coolly calculating and seductive Cleopatra. (Those butterfly wing-shaped brows really cast a spell!). Her slinky and revealing ensembles (heavy on gold lamé and exposed flesh) are by costumier Travis Banton, the genius who also dressed Paramount’s other divas like Marlene Dietrich and Mae West at the time. His creations all seem to focus attention on Colbert’s boobs, and weirdly anticipate the wild looks Bob Mackie would create for Cher in the seventies. Bear in mind Colbert made It Happened One Night, Imitation of Life and Cleopatra all in the same year. She was effortlessly, stylishly confident in screwball comedies, melodramas and historical epics. So why doesn’t Colbert get the kind of acclaim for this range in the way her peers like Davis, Crawford and Stanwyck routinely do? 

Anyway, as Marc Antony rugged British leading man Henry Wilcoxon matches Colbert for pulchritude and sex appeal (those shortie togas showcase his powerfully muscled thighs beautifully). Which reminds me of an anecdote in Boyd McDonald’s essential 1985 volume of essays Cruising the Movies. McDonald offers an account shared by a sailor friend who was once picked-up by Wilcoxon. The actor gave him a lift from San Francisco to Los Angeles, which involved an overnight hotel stopover. Apparently, Wilcoxon “expressed himself in “animal groans”” and “dropped him at the gardenia-scented Biltmore, sore-assed but satisfied.”

Reflections on ... The Fan (1981)

Recently watched: The Fan (1981). Tagline: “This is the story of a great star and a fan who went too far …” This notorious woman-in-peril slasher flick proved as popular as scabies when it emerged in 1981 (coincidentally, the same year as Mommie Dearest!), promptly sank into deep obscurity, rarely appears on television and has only intermittently been available on DVD over the years. But for cognoscenti of so-bad-they’re-great cult films, The Fan is exalted as an essential kitsch classic.

In a truly miscalculated career move, veteran Golden Age Hollywood queen Lauren Bacall stars as chain-smoking, mink-clad Sally Ross, a tough but vulnerable, bitter but sexy fifty-something Broadway diva (think Margo Channing or Helen Lawson. Or in fact, Bacall herself!). Just as Sally is embarking on rehearsals for an ambitious new stage musical, she begins being stalked by obsessive fan Douglas Breen (Michael Biehn).  Douglas bombards Sally with letters (today, he’d be trolling her on Instagram or Twitter rather than snail mail). As he grows increasingly frustrated and thwarted, the tone degenerates from lovelorn ("I bought a gorgeous new lucite frame for one of your most famous pictures”) to threatening (“Dear bitch. See how accessible you are? How would you like to be fucked by a meat cleaver?”). Eventually, Douglas turns homicidal: anyone in Sally’s orbit he perceives as an obstacle or a threat gets cut! (If you’re squeamish about spurting geysers of blood, The Fan isn’t the film for you).

To be fair, The Fan isn’t really as terrible as its reputation suggests. It certainly isn’t low-budget schlock. The production values are high. The direction is competent and even occasionally stylish, with effective flourishes of suspense. The milieu (disco-era show business glamour-meets-gruesome violence) isn’t dissimilar to the 1978 thriller The Eyes of Laura Mars starring Faye Dunaway.  It offers vivid glimpses of the lost grungy New York of the late seventies and early eighties. (As ever, I was riveted by a brief sequence in a smoky gay dive bar - with a sullen hustler loitering outside!). There’s (mostly) good acting from the A-list cast, like Maureen Stapleton as Sally’s loyal and wisecracking personal assistant (the Thelma Ritter role) and (DILF alert) James Garner as the ex-husband Sally still holds a torch for. And full credit to the distractingly handsome Biehn for attempting to breathe some credibility and conviction into the psycho fan Douglas.

And Bacall is simply majestic. (Unbelievably, Anne Bancroft and Shirley MacLaine were offered the part before Bacall). Sally is a grand dame, a monstre sacré, a force of nature! “I’m a spoiled brat!” Sally exclaims in a moment of self-awareness. Men leap to light her cigarettes for her. “Get the hell out of here!” she’s apt to roar. (Bacall's growling acidic line delivery recalls another bronchial baritone babe: Bea Arthur). Sally laughs, she cries, she shouts. She drinks the shit out of her drinks, she smokes the shit out of her smokes. Sally also consumes one helluva lot of coffee, which can’t help but evoke the ultra-kitsch High Point instant coffee advertisements Bacall was doing on TV around the same time. (I noticed that at rehearsals Sally sips coffee out of those nasty white Styrofoam disposable cups that are verboten now in this more environmentally aware era). 

Some commentators unchivalrously snipe that 56-year old Bacall looks haggard in The Fan. And certainly, some of her close-ups are unforgiving. But this was decades before Botox and fillers were commonplace, and I’d argue Bacall resembles a gloriously ravaged, puffy-eyed lioness. Her face is “lived-in” in the style more commonly associated with older European actresses (think late-period Jeanne Moreau, Anna Magnani, Simone Signoret or Melina Mercouri) than American ones.

But what elevates The Fan to camp nirvana for gay viewers are the enticing glimpses of Sally’s glitzy musical Never Say Never. (Her previous play was entitled It’s Called Tomorrow). These scenes hit the same sweet spot as Neely O’Hara or Helen Lawson’s musical segments in Valley of the Dolls (1967). (The ballad "Hearts Not Diamonds" is Bacall's equivalent of "I'll Plant My Own Tree”). We get to chart Never Say Never’s progress from early rehearsals (cue dancers in leg warmers doing stretching exercises in front of a mirror and Bacall in a leotard) to glittering gala opening night. But what kind of gruesomely bizarre and inadvertently hilarious production is this meant to be? For one thing, it seems to feature a grand total of two songs. Everyone seems wildly enthusiastic about Sally’s singing, but raspy-voiced Bacall’s sixty cigarettes-a-day croak is grating. (Can I just point out here that Lizabeth Scott could sing?). What we see on the triumphant first night involves shocking pink neon lighting, male and female dancers gyrating Fosse-style on scaffolding, copious dry ice mist – and no perceptible plot. “She’s got no love – in Paris!” a male dancer hisses dramatically. At least we know who to thank. Note the credit “musical staging and choreography by Arlene Philips”. Phillips (formerly of British dance troupe Hot Gossip, much later a judge on TV’s Strictly Come Dancing) choreographed the disastrous Village People disco movie Can’t Stop the Music the year before, so she’s partly responsible for not one but two kitsch masterpieces! After the infamous debacle of Can’t Stop the Music, whose bright idea was it to hire Phillips again so soon? Whoever it was, I could kiss them!

Further reading:

Read some funny and perceptive analyses of The Fan here, here and here. 

There’s something perversely fascinating about seeing a classy, prestigious performer like Bacall wind up in an exploitation shocker like The Fan. When interviewed for a 1981 People magazine cover story supposedly to promote the movie, the leading lady was typically blunt: “The Fan is much more graphic and violent than when I read the script. The movie I wanted to make had more to do with what happens to the life of the woman and less blood and gore.” The producers must have been thrilled! Bacall’s appearance in The Fan is comparable to Lyle Waggoner in Love Me Deadly (1972) and Leslie Uggams in Poor Pretty Eddie (1975). 

My reflections on what I consider Bacall's most underrated performance in Young Man with a Horn (1950).

Reflections on ... Hot Blood (1956)

Recently watched: Hot Blood (1956). Rotten Tomatoes synopsis: “Set in the gypsy community of contemporary Los Angeles, dancer Stephano Torino (Cornel Wilde) is tricked into an arranged marriage with tempestuous Annie Caldash (Jane Russell).” Taglines: “In the midst of that steaming night their blood reached its boiling point!” and “Jane Russell shakes her tambourines and drives Cornel Wilde!” (Who doesn’t love a good boob joke?).

I’d always been intrigued by romantic musical comedy Hot Blood, made by visionary director Nicholas Ray (1911 - 1979) between two of his definitive artistic statements, Rebel Without a Cause (1955) and Bigger Than Life (1956). Considering Ray’s status as a major auteur and that he was then at his creative zenith, Hot Blood feels like a weirdly forgotten entry in his filmography. Having finally watched it (via Cinema Paradiso), I can understand why – this is a minor work rather than a lost classic. The initial Taming of the Shrew-style antagonism between Stephano and Annie isn’t very engaging (it must have been written into Russell’s contracts that she must squabble with all her leading men) and the treatment of the “volatile” Romani characters is rampantly clichéd. 

But no movie directed by Ray and starring Jane Russell in the fifties could be without some compensations. Filmed in Cinemascope and Technicolour, Hot Blood is entrancing in visual terms.  In his 1957 review for Cahiers du Cinéma, Jean-Luc Godard (who once declared, "cinema is Nicholas Ray”) raved, “No reservations are necessary in praising the deliberate and systematic use of the gaudiest colours to be seen in the cinema: barley-sugar orange shirts, acid-green dresses, violet cars, blue and pink carpets.” To that list, I would add: the ever-present shocking pinks and deep blood-reds, the powder blue Thunderbird that Russell’s blonde love rival drives and for that matter, the thick coat of coral lipstick that Russell herself wears. The soundtrack is by maestro of exotica music Les Baxter! Russell gets to sing (the Middle Eastern-style ballad almost threatens to turn into “Misirlou”), and Wilde gets to go shirtless (phwooar!). The catfight Russell has with another woman is enjoyably vicious. As a homoerotic bonus, there are swarthy, dark-eyed and curly-haired “gypsy boys” loitering in the crowd scenes who look like refugees from a Bob Mizer photo shoot. (The character of Annie’s brother Xano is played by the stunning James H Russell - Jane Russell’s own real-life brother!).

/ Above: real-life sibling James H Russell (as Xano) and Jane Russell (as Annie) in Hot Blood /

Hot Blood’s s campiest moment: Stephano and Annie’s dramatic, elaborate and S&M-tinged dance routine at their wedding celebration (I say “S&M-tinged” because it involves a lot of whip-cracking). We see Wilde and Russell dancing together in close-ups and medium shots, and then in the long shots it’s transparently (and hilariously) obvious they are replaced by professional dancers costumed like them doing the complicated steps. Verdict? More like Tepid Blood!

Reflections on ... Love Has Many Faces (1965)

Recently watched: tantalizingly lurid and trashy melodrama Love Has Many Faces (1965) starring 44-year old screen diva Lana Turner at the height of her mature glamour. The steamy action is set in sun-drenched Acapulco amidst the amoral la dolce vita milieu of the jaded idle rich, where tanned half-naked gigolos ply their trade on the beach to sex-starved affluent society matrons. (In this realm, it's women who buy the services of male prostitutes, not other men). The hedonistic idyll is abruptly interrupted when Billy Andrews, one of these beach boys-for-hire, washes-up dead on the shore. Was he murdered? Did he commit suicide? A bracelet on his wrist (engraved “Love is Thin Ice”) links him to married 40-something heiress and playgirl, Kit Jordan (Turner). 

/ Pete (Cliff Robertson) and Kit (Lana Turner) pouting through the pain aboard their yacht. Note Robertson's safari leisure suit - so atomic-era. Note too the glasses of brandy: this duo continuously knocks back brandy (in the blazing heat on the beach!) as if their lives depend on it. Taking a sip each time they do would be a fun drinking game. Interesting: in real life Turner was reportedly a hard drinker, but onscreen her drunks scenes are wildly unconvincing / 

/ Portrait of a marriage /

The all-star cast screams "1965": buff Cliff Robertson as Turner’s ex-hustler husband (Robertson, of course, tormented another older diva - Joan Crawford - years earlier in Autumn Leaves), gravel-voiced Ruth Roman (she gives Love’s earthiest, most nuanced performance as a horny middle-aged tourist. Years later she would make a vivid impression as the butch, growling bewigged mother in freaky exploitation film The Baby), god-like furry-chested Hugh O’Brien as wolfish veteran gigolo Hank (he spends most of the film virtually naked and is a sight to behold. His motto is “Always treat a tramp like a lady and a lady like a tramp”) and Stefanie Powers in her early ingenue starlet years. 

/ Margot (Ruth Roman) cops a feel of Hank (Hugh O’Brien). Can you blame her?! / 

/ Above: A tousled, post-coital Ruth Roman as Margot /

Mainly, though, Love is a star vehicle for Turner: as troubled socialite Kit, she gets to suffer, emote and hide a painful secret, drink and smoke too much, wear sunglasses, dramatically ascend and descend a spectacular staircase, impatiently snap orders at servants in Spanish and repeatedly changes clothes (her garish Edith Head-designed wardrobe was one of the film’s major draws and cost an estimated $1 million). Turner's fellow actors’ close-ups are in crisp normal focus, but when the camera cuts to Turner, the lens is abruptly misty with Vaseline or gauze. No one over-acts quite like Lana Turner. Is she awful or majestic? She’s certainly always undeniably compelling. 

/ Lana - shimmering in soft focus / 

/ Poor Stefanie Powers doesn't stand a chance: you barely notice her when she shares a scene with the majestic Turner /

/ Below: a sampling of Turner's much-ballyhooed Edith Head-designed "Million Dollar Wardrobe" in Love Has Many Faces / 

/ Fascinating five-minute behind-the-scenes"featurette" about Turner's wardrobe, narrated by Edith Head /

Seen today, the unapologetic and overt focus on bronzed and oiled male flesh is eye-popping. Love needs to be embraced by modern audiences as an LGBTQ camp classic! While all the romantic interludes depicted are strictly hetero, it’s difficult to imagine a queerer movie emerging from mainstream Golden Age Hollywood. (Well, considering this is 1965, this is Golden Age Hollywood in its protracted agonizing death throes). In fact, there’s so much outrageously homoerotic beefcake worship in Love Has Many Faces it suggests Bob Mizer  of Athletic Model Guild was some kind of consultant or adviser! In addition to women looking to luxuriate in a weepy deluxe melodrama, I suspect the audience was full of connoisseurs of firm male flesh and “confirmed bachelors.” 

/ MILFS gone wild! Cougars on the loose! Sex tourists Margot (Ruth Roman) and Irene (Virginia Grey), hungrily eyeing up the local talent and out of their depths in Acapulco. (Note the sliced lemon motif on Irene's sunhat). Do these two actually represents gay men? Let's have a heated debate! /

/ Love for Sale: cynical hustler Hank and his smooth-skinned, younger and more naive twink colleague Chuck (Ron Husmann). Their scenes together sizzle with repressed homoeroticism. Regrettably, they never once kiss /

/ Kiss! For the love of god - kiss! /

(I know virtually nothing about the director of Love Has Many Faces, Alexander Singer (who's still alive at 91). But his very skimpy Wikipedia page alerted me that his debut film was the steamy, intenses low-budget 1961 sexploitation film A Cold Wind in August, in which the excellent Lola Albright plays a 30-something stripper infatuated with a cute 17-year old thug. Alexander Singer has suddenly shot up in my estimation! It was John Waters' praise of A Cold Wind in August in his book Crackpot that led me to seek it out years ago. Sadly, it's very difficult film to see. Come on, Criterion - bring out a digitally remastered director's cut Blu-ray of this essential movie!). 

/ Above: Lola Albright in A Cold Wind in August (1961) / 

The storyline is inconsequential soap opera (by the end I was still unclear whether Billy was murdered or committed suicide. It ultimately didn’t seem to matter very much). Singer's direction is frequently indifferent and the pace can drag. But then things build to a totally unexpected climax involving a charging bull (!) that is genuinely jolting and surreal. You will rub your eyes in disbelief! Another bonus: Turner’s palatial beach house is minimalist atomic-era “Tiki moderne” heaven. The most lingering impressions left by Love Has Many Faces is Turner at her most histrionic and the sight of Hugh O'Brien in his revealing bathing suit. 

/ Glimpses of Turner's sumptuous beach house. She makes maximum use of that spectacular staircase for dramatic moments. And check out her zebra-print robe! /

/ Some bonus pin-ups of O'Brian in his tiny well-stuffed white briefs /

Further reading:

Comprehensive and excellent analysis of Love Has Many Faces here.

In August 2018 I spoke my brains to To Do List magazine about the wild, wild world of Lobotomy Room, the monthly cinema club – and my lonely one-man mission to return a bit of raunch, sleaze and “adult situations” to London’s nightlife! Read it - if you must - here. 

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I have serious issues with the frankly homophobic, puritanical, hypocritical and censorious Tumblr these days, but you can follow me on there.

And I'm now spreading my message of filth on Instagram!

Reflections on ... Secret Ceremony (1968)

/ Italian movie poster for Secret Ceremony via /

Glittering hedonists Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton were the foremost show business power couple of the last century. (I’m sorry, but Kanye and Kim who?). As world-famous and tabloid-friendly as the tempestuous, jet-setting and hard-drinking duo were, the actual films they made together and individually during their marriage were mostly notorious mega-bombs. Some, though, were genuinely interesting and deserve reappraisal. Take, For instance, Secret Ceremony (1968).

Pop culture theorist Camille Paglia has rhapsodized about the impact of seeing Secret Ceremony on its original release. “One of the most spectacular moments of my movie-going career occurred in college as I watched Joseph Losey’s bizarre Secret Ceremony,” she would recall in her essay “Elizabeth Taylor: Hollywood’s Pagan Queen” in the March 1992 issue of Penthouse magazine. “Halfway through the film, inexplicably and without warning, Elizabeth Taylor in a violet velvet suit and turban suddenly walks across the screen in front of a wall of sea-green tiles. It is an overcast London day; the steel-grey light makes the violet and green iridescent. This is Elizabeth Taylor at her most vibrant, mysterious and alluring at the peak of her mature fleshy glamour. I happened to be sitting with a male friend, one of the gay aesthetes who had such a profound impact on my imagination. We both cried out at the same time, alarming other theatregoers. This vivid silent tableau is for me one of the classic scenes in the history of cinema.”

/ A vision in violet: via /

Seen today, peculiar London-set late 1960s psychodramas Secret Ceremony is the type of film John Waters would describe as a “failed art movie” – but that’s one of my favourite genres, and if you’re going to make a failed art movie, make it this wildly baroque, weird and claustrophobic! Screen diva Taylor (at the zenith of her zaftig double-chinned, caftan-wearing era) stars as Leonara, a blowsy middle-aged prostitute tormented by the memory of the death of her young daughter by drowning. One day profoundly disturbed and deluded poor little rich girl Cenci (post-Rosemary’s Baby Mia Farrow at her most waif-like) latches onto her and decides Leonara represents the return of her recently-deceased mother, dragging her back to her haunted art nouveau mansion in Holland Park. Leonora soon clashes with Robert Mitchum as Albert, Cenci’s sexually predatory stepfather. From there things just get progressively more twisted!

/ Elizabeth Taylor: the caftan years (albeit a caftan by Dior) /

/ Frankly psychotic nymphette Cenci. You may find Farrow's performance begins to grate as the film progresses /

Secret Ceremony keeps threatening to turn into a horror movie and never quite delivers – but it is satisfyingly jarring and gothic, nonetheless. Taylor in shrewish bitch goddess-mode is hypnotically compelling as only she can be. At one point, Leonara hungrily gobbles a big fried breakfast and loudly belches – a moment worthy of Divine! There’s a reason Taylor is revered as a campy queer icon! (Cruelly, the film repeatedly draws attention to Taylor’s matronly weight. “I’m so fat!” Leonara wails to Cenci, surveying herself in a mirror. Later, Albert tells Leonara “You look more like a cow than my late wife. No offense - I'm very fond of cows”).  The fragile and intense Farrow hams it up as a demented child-like pixie. Secret Ceremony is effortlessly stolen from them both, though, by the torpid Mitchum, who breathes complexity and humanity into the perverse role of Albert.  

/ Gruesome twosome: Albert (Robert Mitchum) and Cenci (Mia Farrow) /

/ The bathtub scene was apparently considered the hint of depravity in 1968, hinting at both lesbianism and incest /

No spoilers, but out of this freakily dysfunctional trio, only one will survive and they will mutter to themselves, “There were two mice fell in a bucket of milk. One yelled for help and drowned. The other kept pedaling around until, in the morning, he found himself on top of butter”. Watch for the closing credits, which announce Taylor’s wardrobe is via Dior and her hairstyles by Alexandre de Paris. The film is like a lesbianic, female-centred version of director Joseph Losey’s earlier, more celebrated movie The Servant (1963). Secret Ceremony almost certainly suffered at the box office by the failure of the even-more berserk Boom! (1968), the flop film based on a Tennessee Williams play Losey made with Taylor and Burton that same year - another movie I love!

Further reading:

My analysis of the other Elizabeth Taylor / Joseph Losey "failed art movie"of 1968 - the infamous Boom! - here.

The essential Dreams Are What Le Cinema is For blog goes in-depth on Secret Ceremony here.