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.

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 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 Children (1980)

 

Recently watched: gleefully cheap, nasty and enjoyable exploitation flick The Children (1980). Tagline: “Something terrifying has happened to … The Children.” 

It was free to stream on Amazon Prime (as well it should be) and their synopsis is more succinct than anything I could come up with: “A nuclear-plant leak turns a busload of children into murderous atomic zombies with black fingernails.” 

Yes, the contemporary reviews were scathing (The Orlando Sentinel termed the cast “the ugliest bunch of folks we've seen assembled on any screen at any one time” and The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette accurately but cruelly noted that the children’s charred victims resemble “leftover pepperoni pizza, complete with black olives and anchovies”). 

But seen today, The Children looks like a prime example of irresistible low-brow drive-in fare complete with gore, violence, bad special effects and the occasional glimpse of bare breasts. And there is artistry here: as the It Came from Beyond Pulp blog perceptively argues, “once night falls, [director Max Kalmanowicz’s] true gifts come into play. Under cover of near-darkness, he exhibits an almost supernatural mastery of simple, evocative, and scary-as-hell shot framing, shock reveals, and pacing. He doesn’t make the mistake, common in the slasher genre, of overlighting his shots: the lighting here is the familiar blindness-inducing pitch black of a moonless night, in which headlights, flashlights, and candles illuminate just enough to remind you of how cavern-dark everything else is. It’s here, in the dark, where he uses his scary kids brilliantly. Smiling, arms outstretched, calling “mommy, mommy” in their piping voices, they loom out of the blackness like pretty little angels of death: this is the single scariest image I can remember from any horror film.” 

Unsurprisingly, The Children’s cast is mainly unknowns, but one woman felt vaguely familiar: Gale Garnett (who delivers a very broad, soap opera-style performance). She was the singer of 1964 hit "We'll Sing in the Sunshine", which I remember being ubiquitous on the radio when I was a kid.

The Next Lobotomy Room Film Club ... Strait-Jacket (1964) on 18 January 2024

 

Considering campy horror masterpiece Strait-Jacket turns sixty this month (it was released on 19 January 1964), it’s only fitting that it’s the first Lobotomy Room presentation of the New Year!

Call it “hagsploitation” or “psycho-biddy”, Strait-Jacket (directed by low-budget trash maestro William Castle – one of John Waters’ primary influences) is a stark, vicious little b-movie featuring a truly berserk and mesmerizing performance from bitch goddess extraordinaire (and perennial Lobotomy Room favourite) Joan Crawford as a deranged axe murderess! If you liked What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) or Hush … Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964), you’ll LOVE Strait-Jacket! In fact – and I appreciate this is a controversial opinion – I’d argue Strait-Jacket is the superior film. Join us at Fontaine’s on Thursday 18 January and I’ll explain why over cocktails! But take note – as the original poster exclaimed, “Warning! Strait-Jacket vividly depicts axe murders!”

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 reserving in advance via Fontaine’s website is essential. 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.

“As a movie, Strait-Jacket is no better than adequate. As myth however, it’s something else again. For homosexuals this is a remarkably resonant film. Few images could be more iconic than Joan Crawford as the ultimate castrating mom: an axe murderess who carries a weapon which has a handle that seems to grow longer with each successive reel. Add to this the fact that she’s all dolled up in forties finery, including a shoulder-length hairstyle and a flashy flowered dress. Her mouth is a livid, lipsticked slash. To complete the ensemble, she sports a set of charm bracelets which clank and tinkle ominously whenever she’s hefting her hatchet.”

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

“Strait-Jacket continued Joan Crawford’s descent into grand guignol. She played an axe murderess in the film by William Castle, who had achieved fame by dangling skeletons over audiences and wiring seats with electrical charges. Joan was paid $50,000 and a percentage of the profits, which were considerable, but the film seemed to lower her reputation.”

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

“After seeing What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? fifteen times, [William] Castle dreamed of hitting the big time, of working with stars like Bette Davis and Joan Crawford. One evening at a party in Beverly Hills, he had the good fortune to be introduced to Crawford. “He almost fell at her feet,” said writer Hector Arce. “He told her he had a script that he had written specifically for her. It was called Strait-Jacket. It was written by the man who wrote the Hitchcock classic Psycho. “I’m listening, Mr. Castle,” said Joan … After Crawford read Strait-Jacket, she called the director. The woman was supposed to age from thirty to fifty. Joan wanted to make the character younger, to lop off five years at each end. Castle agreed. He also said yes to her salary, percentage and contract demands.”

/ From Bette & Joan: The Divine Feud (1989) by Shaun Considine /

[Crawford was approximately 59 at the time (her precise birth year is disputed –somewhere between 1904 and 1908) so in the opening epilogue, she’s playing a woman of 25].

Sure, Strait-Jacket is a gruesome serial killer exploitation flick – but deep down, is the real subject motherhood? Let’s have a heated debate on Thursday 18 January!

 

Yes! Come see Joan Crawford wearing the harshest jet-black wiggiest wig ever committed to celluloid at Fontaine’s bar in Dalston on 18 January! 

Full putrid details here. 

Reflections on ... New Year's Evil (1980)

 

Staying in tonight? Want some thematically appropriate festive viewing? I recommend grisly low-budget slasher flick New Year’s Evil (1980). Tagline: “Don’t dare make new year’s resolutions … unless you plan to live!” In Los Angeles, glamorous hard-boiled celebrity DJ and television’s first lady of rock’n’roll Blaze Sullivan (Roz Kelly) is hosting “Hollywood Hotline”, a live televised coast-to-coast New Year’s Eve countdown. Viewers are encouraged to phone in to vote for their favourite New Wave song of the year - but one of the callers is a misogynistic serial killer calling himself “Evil”, who threatens to murder a “naughty girl” as each time zone hits midnight – culminating with Blaze herself!

What distinguishes New Year’s Evil is its focus on the punk subculture. Considering it was filmed in LA in 1980, the mind boggles at the actual bands the filmmakers could have feasibly utilized for the musical sequences: X, The Screamers, the Germs, the Zeros, The Weirdos! The presence of any of these would make New Year’s Evil a valuable time capsule. But no – we see only two appalling ersatz punk bands (nonentities Shadow and Made in Japan), and at tedious length. The film’s received wisdom about how punk rockers behave (they are troublemakers with piercings and Mohawks who mosh and stick their tongues out a lot) is unintentionally hilarious. New Year’s Evil also fails to clarify why hardened young hardcore punk fans are so rabidly enthusiastic about sequin-clad middle-aged Blaze. Is it because she exhorts things like “It’s time to spin out and boil your hair!” while wielding a feather boa?

Which brings us to Roz Kelly. In her brief heyday, she was best known for portraying Pinky Tuscadero, Fonzie’s tough cookie girlfriend in seventies sitcom Happy Days. Her screen presence was certainly … um … distinctive. Whether playing Pinky, Anthony Franciosa’s brassy secretary Flaps (yes – Flaps!) in Curse of the Black Widow (1977), cavorting in Paul Lynde’s infamous 1976 Halloween special or indeed here as Blaze, Kelly is consistently abrasive, brittle and borderline hostile. Her bizarre acting choices are perhaps the scariest aspect of New Year’s Evil! 

Watch it for free on YouTube.

Reflections on ... The Wild World of Batwoman (1966)

 

Recently watched: The Wild World of Batwoman (1966). Tagline: “A Thrill-cade of Excitement! Roaring through the city streets into Wildville!” 

Look, I have a high (possibly masochistic) tolerance for terrible films. In fact, I have a twisted affection for them. Give me a The Brain That Wouldn’t Die (1962) or I Eat Your Skin (1971), and I’m transfixed. But The Wild World of Batwoman defeated even me. Its duration is a mere one hour and six minutes, and yet somehow it felt like three numbing hours long. IMDb gives up on even attempting a synopsis: “The pointlessly named Batwoman and her bevy of Batmaidens fight evil and dance.” (Rotten Tomatoes makes more of an effort: “A busty vampire needs a scientist's atomic bomb, made from a hearing aid, to save a comrade”).  Opportunistic hack director Jerry Warren clearly aimed to exploit the popularity of the campy Batman TV series. When they legally threatened him over copyright infringement, Warren simply re-titled it She Was a Hippy Vampire. 

Anyway, the titular Batwoman (ineptly played by Katherine Victor) is a tired looking middle-aged woman in an exploding punk fright wig, Halloween mask and dominatrix outfit. She’s also a crime-fighting vampire ruling over a bevy of groovy “Bat Chicks” who are forever breaking into frantic go-go dancing. (Are they doing the Frug? The Watusi? The Jerk? I couldn’t tell you).  The ensuing wacky hi-jinks are utterly incomprehensible. To add to the confusion, Warren also pads-out the action by splicing in footage from The Mole People (1956), an entirely different film.  

The naïve kitschy tone has its appeal. There’s some decent twang-y garage rock music. The Wild World of Batwoman would inevitably be more tolerable broken into chunks on something like Elvira’s Movie Macabre or Mystery Science Theatre 3000. Anyway, I stuck it out to the bitter end. I defy you to the do the same! The Wild World of Batwoman (viewable on YouTube) is routinely described as one of the worst films ever made – find out why! 

Reflections on ... Hush (1998)

 / Johnathon Schaech and Jessica Lange in Hush /

Recently watched: Hush (1998). Tagline: “Don’t breathe a word …” 

Hush is a long-forgotten, misbegotten hot mess of a psychological thriller very much in the late eighties / nineties lineage of The Hand that Rocks the Cradle or Fatal Attraction. (We know it’s a psychological thriller from the opening credits, which features the eerie lullaby “Hush, Little Baby” and a toy carousel spinning). 

Jackson Baring (Johnathon Schaech) and girlfriend Helen (Gwyneth Paltrow) are a strikingly attractive young New York yuppie power couple who live in an enviable loft apartment (heavy on the glass bricks). When Jackson takes Helen home to Kentucky for the Christmas holidays to meet mom for the first time, she’s surprised to see that “home” is an ominous and palatial estate called Kilronan (picture a replica of Tara from Gone with the Wind, complete with pillars). There she meets manipulative widowed matriarch Martha Baring (Jessica Lange), who we VERY quickly establish is stark raving mad beneath her genteel patrician façade. Seething with neurosis, brandishing glasses of whisky and furiously puffing cigarettes, Lange’s histrionic (and self-parodic) performance – seemingly channeling Geraldine Page, Faye Dunaway and Blanche Dubois (or perhaps Faye Dunaway as Blanche Dubois) – firmly anchors Hush in campy hagsploitation horror territory. Her honeyed Southern accent also evokes Bette Davis in Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte and Tallulah Bankhead in Die, Die My Darling. (Speaking of which – how come Martha has a pronounced Southern accent but her son doesn’t seem to have one?). 

Anyway, Martha harbours dysfunctional Oedipal feelings for Jackson and is scheming for him to return to Kilronan and take over the family horse farm. Martha breeds purebred horses – and seems intent that Helen will deliver a purebred male heir for the Baring family! Once that’s achieved – Helen will be superfluous! Hush reaches a crazed zenith when Martha bakes a cake for Helen spiked with a veterinary drug used to induce labour in pregnant mares! 

Hush - apparently the first and last film directed by Jonathan Darby - was filmed in 1996 and due to be released in ’97, but when test screening audiences roared with laughter at all the wrong moments the cast was reconvened almost two years later to shoot additional scenes. Hence the plot holes, wild shifts in tone and the fact that in some scenes Paltrow (who’d cut her hair in the meantime) is wearing an ill-fitting wig so transparently fake it rivals Christina Aguilera’s in Burlesque. Even after it was drastically re-edited (with an entirely different ending), Hush flopped at the US box office and went quietly straight-to-DVD in the United Kingdom. (I demand to see the director’s cut with the original ending!). “I’ve never been able to keep my mouth shut,” Jessica Lange has declared. “So, if somebody asks me how I feel about Hush, I’ll say it’s a piece of shit.” Presumably Paltrow would love this one scrubbed from her résumé too. But I wonder if Ryan Murphy saw Lange in Hush. It makes a great audition for her subsequent work in American Horror Story. 

(Hush is viewable on Amazon Prime and YouTube - at your own risk!).

/ Even if you're wary of committing to watching Hush in its entirety, the trailer alone (with its "voice of doom" narration) is a delightful kitsch artifact in its own right. Fascinatingly, the trailer retains glimpses of original scenes that were deleted from the final film (like we can see the original fiery ending - entirely different from the underwhelming later conclusion!). 

Reflections on ... Inconceivable (2017)

 

Recently watched: Inconceivable (2017). Tagline: “The perfect family. Perfect friends. A perfect surrogate”. I’m using this period of enforced social isolation to explore the weirder corners of YouTube and Amazon Prime for long forgotten and obscure movies. (My boyfriend is accompanying me only semi-willingly).

This amusingly preposterous low-budget pregnancy-themed melodrama stars Nicolas Cage, Gina Showgirls Gershon and veteran scary diva par excellence Faye Dunaway. I know what you’re thinking - what a cast! Except it could have been even better! One of the lead roles (manipulative villainess Katie) was originally conceived for messy Hollywood bad girl Lindsay Lohan! (The studio demurred and Nicky Whelan, a nondescript Australian soap opera actress, played the part instead). With Lohan starring, Inconceivable would probably be embraced today as a minor modern cult favourite like Lohan’s I Know Who Killed Me (2007) rather than wholly forgotten. 

Anyway, Inconceivable cleaves very faithfully to the well-trodden conventions of eighties and nineties psycho-biddy psychological thrillers like The Hand that Rocks the Cradle and Single White Female (or in fact, The Temp which starred Dunaway herself!), but with the generic made-for-TV appearance of a Hallmark or Lifetime production. Cage and Gershon are Brian and Angela, an affluent middle-aged married couple who seemingly have it all – but struggle with infertility problems and crave another baby. They are susceptible, then, when seemingly innocent mysterious young single mother (and potential surrogate) Katie insinuates herself into their household. The only person suspicious of Katie’s intentions is Dunaway as Brian’s patrician mother. 

Points of interest: Nicolas Cage's ink-y jet black dye job gives him that that aging male Goth look suggestive of late-period Nick Cave or Marilyn Manson. And his indifferent performance couldn’t be more “phoned-in.” Gershon does most of the heavy lifting in terms of acting and at least tries to muster some identifiable human emotions. Obviously, the mere presence of the imperious La Dunaway adds instant camp appeal to any film she appears in. She apparently broke her leg just before production, so the director compensates by only filming Dunaway sitting down. You never see her standing or walking at any point. Somehow this immobility contributes to Dunaway’s stateliness. In the spirit of chivalry, I won't comment on Dunaway’s plastic surgery choices, but the huge equine veneers on her teeth do make her slur and lisp her lines. 

Fun facts: Inconceivable was filmed at the breakneck speed of just fifteen days and was scripted by Zoe King – the daughter of trash auteur Zalmon King, responsible for 1980s softcore faux-erotica like Wild Orchid (1989) starring Mickey Rourke. Inconceivable represented filmmaker Jonathan Baker’s directorial debut – and perhaps unsurprisingly, he’s never been entrusted with making a follow-up since. A nice example of Baker’s judgement: in an act of vanity, he made the executive decision to cast himself in a supporting role. Baker’s grandiose IMDb profile begins “Jonathan Baker has always been enthralled by smart storytelling and larger-than-life figures, taking inspiration from greats like Ernest Hemingway to guide his own sensibilities as a writer, producer, director and adventurer.” One of his personal quotes claims “I can wave my hand and make the impossible happen.” As the damning Hollywood Reporter review concludes: “the aptly titled Inconceivable is something that both Nicolas Cage and Faye Dunaway will want to leave off their filmographies, and at this point that’s saying something.” Inconceivable is FREE to view on Amazon Prime – as it should be!

Reflections on ... Shock Treatment (1964)

Recently watched: Shock Treatment (1964). Tagline: “The Nightmare World of the Mad ...” “You won’t be the same … when you come out of Shock Treatment!” I’m using this period of enforced social isolation to explore the weirder corners of YouTube for long forgotten and obscure movies. (My boyfriend is accompanying me only semi-willingly). 

An overlooked black-and-white psychological-exploitation film, Shock Treatment starts on a wonderfully lurid note even before the opening credits roll. A homicidal maniac gardener (played by a bug-eyed Roddy McDowall) sneaks up behind the elderly Beverly Hills millionairess he works for – and in a moment worthy of William Castle’s Strait-Jacket, abruptly decapitates her with his gardening shears! 

/ Lauren Bacall, Roddy McDowell and Stuart Whitman in Shock Treatment / 

McDowell is Martin Ashley, a freshly released psychiatric patient. His ill-fated employer was Mrs Townsend. At the subsequent trial, it’s revealed that Martin - convinced that money is "the root of all evil" - burned one million dollars of Townsend’s fortune after killing her. At least two people doubt Martin’s account. Harley Manning - the executor of Mrs Townsend’s estate - is convinced he’s faking and has hidden the money somewhere. And the icily efficient and untrustworthy Dr Edwina Beighley (Lauren Bacall), who oversees the high security mental institution where Martin is a patient, has her own nefarious designs on the $1 million. 

/ "To hell with conformity!" Gorgeous Stuart Whitman displaying his "chest meat" in Shock Treatment /

Manning’s solution is to hire a struggling actor Dale Nelson (Stuart Whitman) to feign insanity, go undercover as a patient in the asylum to befriend Martin and learn where the $1 million is hidden. There’s an unintentionally campy moment when Dale asks Manning why he picked him for the job. “You’re a convincing actor,” Manning replies. (This is ironic because in terms of acting ability, hunky Whitman mostly coasts on his rugged square-jawed good looks). Anyway, it proves remarkably easy for Dale to get committed. He plays “mad” by smashing a store window in broad daylight, tearing off his shirt, donning a pair of sunglasses and berating the cops in beatnik lingo about conformity (“Why must you gentlemen conform?” he implores, “Why not turn to these peasants, look them in the eye and say, “To hell with conformity?” The disciples of conformity are bleeding from the narrowness of your mind!”). For this little outburst, the judge determines, “His antisocial behavior indicates a disturbed state of mind” and sentences Dale to ninety days. 

Shock Treatment follows the same narrative as Samuel Fuller’s far more highly-regarded and famous Shock Corridor (1963): someone is hired to infiltrate and investigate what’s happening in a sanitarium – and then they can’t get out! Rest assured Shock Treatment won’t win any awards for sensitivity for its sensational representation of mental illness. McDowell plays psycho killer Martin with such sexual ambiguity that his scenes with Dale throb with a homoerotic tension the script probably never intended. Meanwhile, Carol Lynley is a female patient who serves as Dale’s love interest. Her psychiatric condition seems to consist of whiplash mood swings between frigidity and nymphomania. “I just dislike being touched!” she exclaims. “Kissing and touching are sins!” but then moments later, she pleads, “I want you to touch me, Dale! To hold me and touch me – now! Love me, Dale! Love me!” Luckily, Lynley’s problems are easily cured: as the script hints, all she needed was the love of a good man. (Watch also for a fleeting but vivid appearance by eccentric character actor Timothy Carey). 

Shock Treatment may be low-grade schlock, but it’s compelling schlock suffused with genuine tension and paranoia, tightly constructed, wreathed in menacing film noir shadows and genuinely suspenseful.  And it features a magnificent turn by Lauren Bacall as the manipulative Dr Beighley, scheming to test her experimental drugs on a human guinea pig. Bacall made her film debut in 1944. It’s a sign of how far the Hollywood diva’s stock had fallen that twenty years later she was reduced to acting in b-movie fare like Shock Treatment. But the husky-voiced Bacall is utterly mesmeric in a rare villainous role, playing it with a malevolent, steely composure and poised elegance (she makes her white lab coat look like haute-couture). Call me perverse, and I’m probably in a minority of one, but it’s one of my favourite performances by Bacall.

Watch Shock Treatment here:

 

Reflections on ... The Girl in the Black Stockings (1957)

 

Recently watched: The Girl in the Black Stockings (1957). Tagline: “She was every inch a teasing, taunting “come-on” blonde … and she made every inch pay off!” I’m using this period of enforced social isolation to explore the weirder corners of YouTube for long forgotten and obscure movies. (My boyfriend is accompanying me only semi-willingly). 

/ The stars of The Girl in the Black Stockings: Lex Barker, Mamie Van Doren, Anne Bancroft and Marie Windsor /

Look, I don’t mean to overpraise what’s essentially a lurid minor exploitation b-movie. But in terms of low-brow fifties pulp thrills, the addictively trashy Girl in the Black Stockings veritably pulsates with prurience, misogyny, twisted psychology and an almost tangible revulsion towards sex. And it condenses its shock-by-shock twists into a taut 73-minutes. 

While vacationing at The Parry Lodge, a luxe mountain resort in Utah, hunky Los Angeles-based attorney Dave Hewson (Lex Barker) tentatively romances shy Beth Dixon (Anne Bancroft), the hotel’s switchboard operator. We first encounter the couple dancing by moonlight at an outdoor pool party. “Are you breathing this hard because of me or the altitude?” Hewson suavely inquires.  Their tryst is abruptly ruined when he lights a cigarette, and the flame illuminates a brutally slain female corpse in the bushes. The dead woman is Marsha Morgan – the local “good time girl” (prepare for lots of slut-shaming and blame-the-victim talk). Her throat has been slit – and her black stockings are in shreds! Suddenly, every guest and employee at Parry Lodge is a suspect – and what a menagerie of freaks they are! They’re all hiding sordid secrets, and they all seem guilty as hell. One thing’s for sure: as Hewson surmises, “We’re not dealing with an ordinary killer committing an ordinary crime!” 

The hotel’s proprietor is Edmund Parry (Ron Randell), an embittered misanthropic quadriplegic who viscerally loathes women in general and Marsha Morgan in particular. “I must say, the man-eating witch deserved it!” he’s apt to declare. “She was poison. Like a disease! A common creature whose every word, every breath, every gesture, was the show of an empty shallow strumpet. Miss Morgan was an example of a completely justifiable homicide!” Edmund is doted on by Julia (Marie Windsor), his devoted-to-the-point-of-incest sister. Does Edmund’s paralysis eliminate him as the killer? (It’s hinted his disability is psychosomatic). And what about the hotel’s knife-wielding, blood-splattered Native American handyman Joe (Larry Chance)? Due to an alcoholic black-out, he can’t account for his actions on the night of Marsha’s murder. Or bad boy ex-con sawmill employee Frankie (Gerald Frankie), who was sexually entangled with Marsha? Meanwhile, faded matinee idol Norman Grant (John Holland) is staying at Parry Lodge while preparing for a screen comeback, accompanied by his platinum blonde paramour Harriet Ames (Mamie Van Doren). As more dead bodies begin cropping up (cut to newspaper headline exclaiming “Maniac Strikes Again!”), it becomes apparent a serial killer is stalking this remote desert town. Who will be next? 

/ Edmund Parry (Ron Randell) /

/ Sheriff Jess Holmes (John Dehner)/

/ Joe (Larry Chance) /

/ Frankie (Gerald Frank). Who was the actor Gerald Frank? He looks like an escapee from Bob Mizer's Athletic Model Guild and fills-out a tight white t-shirt and pair of Levis beautifully! /

/ Harriet Ames (Mamie Van Doren) /

/ Dave Hewson (Lex Barker). Screen grabs via / 

The Girl in the Black Stockings certainly boasts a fun ensemble cast.  By this point, premium fifties beefcake leading man Lex Barker (a former husband of Lana Turner’s) had already portrayed Tarzan and was yet to feature in Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita (1960). Barker’s facial expression is permanently set to “pensive squint”, but we get copious glimpses of his wondrous physique, so who’s complaining? Today we remember Anne Bancroft as a heavy-weight credible “prestige” talent, but before she won her 1962 Best Actress Academy Award for The Miracle Worker, she paid her dues in b-movies like Don’t Bother to Knock (1952), Gorilla at Large (1954) and this one. Character actor John Dehner plays local sheriff Jess Holmes as if he’s wandered in from a Western. Tough-as-nails film noir broad Marie Windsor is cast against type in a virtuous “good girl” role. The Girl in the Black Stockings’ poster mischievously hints archetypal fifties bad girl and personification of moist womanly needs Mamie Van Doren is the film’s star (and the titular girl in the black stockings). In fact, her third-billed role as “the stunning blonde who lived for pleasure” is surprisingly small. Ultimately, it’s Ron Randell’s ferocious performance as the twisted-by-hatred Edmund that leaves the most indelible impression. 

/ Marie Windsor, Ron Rendell and Anne Bancroft /

/ Ron Rendell and Lex Barker /

/ John Dehner and Lex Barker /

Because it was made in ’56 (when the Motion Picture Production Code was still enforced), The Girl in the Black Stockings can only imply the violence and kink. All the murders occur off-screen, but the script compensates by having characters describe the mutilations in gruesome detail (“A girl was slaughtered and carved-up like a side of beef tonight!” “Those arms! Cut up like a jigsaw puzzle!”). Some particularly vivid moments: when one of the potential culprits is cornered by the cops at the lumber mill, he panics and falls into a buzz saw! And when a little girl discovers a dead body floating face down in the hotel’s pool, she giggles, “Look at that funny man!” Foreshadowing Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960), William Castle’s Strait-Jacket (1964), eighties slasher films and even David Lynch’s Twin Peaks (think of Marsha Morgan as the equivalent of Laura Palmer), The Girl in the Black Stockings offers a tawdry good time.

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