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:

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.