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 Sex Symbol (1974)

 Sure, excitement is buzzing over Blonde (Netflix’s adaptation of Joyce Carol Oates’ speculative 1999 Marilyn Monroe biography drops on 23 September). But I doubt Blonde will be anywhere near as much fun as The Sex Symbol (1974)! 

Not streaming on any legit platform and never issued on DVD, this thinly veiled made-for-TV roman à clef / Monroe biopic starring kitschy sex kitten Connie Stevens surely qualifies as a “lost film”. But a serviceable bootleg print of The Sex Symbol is currently viewable onYouTube - and I’m ecstatic to confirm it’s every bit as gloriously tasteless, exploitative and deranged as I could have dreamed! 

/ Connie Stevens is Marilyn Monroe. I mean, Kelly Williams / 

“Agatha Murphy from golden Hollywood with the biggest scoop 1957 has yet brought us!” jeers a vicious show business television presenter (played by shameless hambone Shelley Winters as a hybrid of Old Hollywood gossip columnists Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons). “Kelly Williams, one of the most sex-sational movie stars of our time, is through! She has been reporting late for work or not all on the Phoenix production of Will You Be Mine? claiming to be ill …” Williams, Murphy announces, has been fired by Nick Fortis (Nehemiah Persoff), head of Phoenix studios. “She fled to her Bel Air home and is reported to be secluded there near hysteria!” 

“Hysteria” is an understatement! Incognito in headscarf, dark sunglasses and white pantsuit, our ersatz Monroe Kelly Williams pushes past the mob of press and fans gathered outside her front door. Once safely installed inside her sumptuous purple boudoir, she sloshes vodka (or is it gin?) into a tumbler and watches Murphy’s broadcast. When Murphy crows, “It is such a shame that in less than ten years, a young fresh once-great beauty has disintegrated into a neurotic alcoholic mess!” it represents the last straw. Kelly hurls the liquor bottle at the TV screen. It shatters. “I finally found a way to shut that Aggie’s fat ugly mouth!” Kelly screams to Joy Hudson (Madlyn Rhue), her infinitely patient confidante and personal assistant. (Some viewers have discerned a Sapphic aspect to the women’s relationship.  Later we see Joy giving a nude Kelly a rubdown on massage table – just what’s in her job description? – and Joy always seems vaguely disapproving of Kelly’s gentleman callers). 

Even worse, just then Agatha Murphy’s people phone requesting an exclusive interview. “Why don’t you tell her I have sclerosis of the liver!” Kelly screeches to Joy. “Or I’m a dope fiend! That oughta give her a story for tomorrow!” 

“You can’t keep wallowing in self-pity!” long-suffering Joy explodes. “A dozen doctors have told you there’s nothing wrong with you physically except you keep stuffing yourself with barbiturates and booze!” Predictably, Kelly doesn’t respond well to Joy’s truth bomb. “Get out of here! Don’t you tell me how to run my life! You’re nothing but a vulture, like the rest of Hollywood! You leech!” 

Cut to the delayed opening credits. Over the Henry Mancini theme song, we see a procession of garish faux Warhol Pop Art portraits of various doomed Hollywood Babylon-type female stars: Marilyn Monroe. Jayne Mansfield. Veronica Lake. Carole Lombard. Betty Grable. Ann Sheridan. Jean Harlow. Maria Montez … and finally Kelly herself. 

By now it’s evident The Sex Symbol has been made “on the cheap”. Minimal effort is taken to conjure the forties or fifties time periods. As Kelly, Stevens always resembles what she was at the time: an early seventies Las Vegas headliner with a shaggy frosted blonde coiffure, frosted blue eye shadow, frosted pink lipstick and costumes (and wigs and hairpieces) straight out of a Frederick’s of Hollywood catalogue. 

/ At one point, we see a flurry of "glamour shot" pin-ups of Kelly Williams, including these. Weirdly and confusingly, these exact photos would be recycled two years later to promote Stevens' subsequent film Scorchy (1976) / 

The Sex Symbol’s premise is that we’re witnessing Kelly’s dark night of the soul. In fact, the final night of her life. We’re presumably meant to find Kelly a tragic figure, but she’s insufferable. Her breathless baby doll voice quickly grates. Kelly rages, “Canned from one stinkin’ movie! Anyone would think I was dead!”, swills booze, pops fistfuls of pills, goes on crying jags and lashes out at her Spanish-speaking maid (“No! I’m not hungry!”). Much of the time she’s in bed shrieking into a pink telephone, like the worst-possible adaptation of Jean Cocteau’s La Voix Humaine. In terms of acting, Stevens’ guiding principle seems to be: “Patty Duke didn’t go nearly far enough as Neely O’Hara in Valley of the Dolls.” (Speaking of Dolls, Kelly is pitched as Neely and Jennifer North rolled into one).  And as my friend Kevin spotted, Stevens in full rampage in her bedroom anticipates Mink Stole’s tantrums as Peggy Gravel in John Waters’ Desperate Living (1977). 

In the present, Kelly frantically phones (harasses? Terrorizes?) the men in her life, which prompts flashbacks. The main victim is her psychiatrist. “I don’t mean to be rude calling you at home,” she begins. “I’m just beside myself. The studio has fired me. And that television witch says I’m finished! You heard me complaining often enough that my first husband claimed that I wasn’t very good in bed. Now I’m just a lush who’ll go with any man who asks!” Kelly then becomes gripped by paranoia the doctor might commit her into a mental institution – like what happened to her mother. “I’m not a nobody!” she bellows. “I’m a star! I made myself a star so no one could tell me what to do!” 

Our first flashback rewinds to World War II when pre-fame Kelly (still known as Emmaline Kelly) is toiling at an airplane factory. This may be unchivalrous to note, but at 36 (the age Monroe died) Stevens fails to convince in these scenes as a dewy wannabe starlet in her early twenties. Kelly’s photo has appeared in the newspaper captioned “Miss Blowtorch 1945” and Kelly vows to her soldier boyfriend Tommy that she’ll send the pic to modelling agencies and pursue her show biz dreams: “I got this thing burning in me. I just gotta be someone!” Unimpressed, Tommy implies she’ll wind up “auditioning in hotel rooms”. “I’m gonna be a star, Tom!” Kelly insists. “And I’ll do it standing up!” 

Kelly rapidly abandons this principle, because next time we see her she’s the protegee and mistress of hot shot agent Phil Bamberger (Milton Selzer).  Clearly modeled on Johnny Hyde (the talent agent who initially discovered and molded Monroe), kindly and significantly older Phil is a father figure, mentor, champion and lover. “There’s something pure about you,” Phil gushes. “It can’t be changed or violated.” Kelly (who describes herself as “an orphan kicked around from foster home to foster home”) confesses that one of her foster fathers did indeed violate her, then insists, “Cuddle me!” “Go slow, kitten!” Phil chuckles. “I’m an old man!” Worryingly, he also has a “bum ticker” – and promptly dies of a heart attack. Before that, Phil connects Kelly with cigar-chomping producer Jack P Harper (exploitation / horror director William Castle, who delivers one of the better performances). “Aggie Murphy started the rumour he died in bed with me!” Kelly wails to him. 

Harper dispatches Kelly on a cross country personal appearance publicity tour (“We’re selling a product here. A very lovely product, I must say!” In this sequence, Stevens wears a bouffant wig very similar to Monroe’s look in the unfinished Something’s Got to Give or the 1962 Bert Stern photo shoot - the sole time she’s styled to resemble Monroe). Kelly is a star-in-the-making! (The titles of her films - Midnight Madness. Will You Be Mine? Sex Bomb. Deep Purple. That Lady from Cincinnati – are hilariously generic). 

Back in the present-day, the doctor hangs up on Kelly. Affronted, she calls him right back. “Kelly, it’s after midnight!” “I pay you to be there to help me!” Kelly updates him that she’s she tracked down the phone number of her long-lost biological father via the county orphanage. Ignoring that bombshell, he counsels her, “As I’ve told you before, you shouldn’t ever take barbiturates if you’ve been drinking!” 

We watch Kelly’s first encounter with Agatha, when the gossip maven invites the newcomer over for tea. “This industry lives on gossip and scandal,” Agatha clucks. “You can expect to be called a promiscuous tramp. A nympho. And even worse!” Speaking of “promiscuous tramp”, Kelly is juggling two men: married Senator Grant O’Neal (Don Murray impersonating John F Kennedy) and retired football star Buck Wischnewski (William Smith), a Joe DiMaggio substitute. It’s Buck she marries, swayed perhaps when he says he does charity work for orphanages (the news makes Kelly tremulous: “I was an orphan!”). Their honeymoon, though, is a bust. Kelly is frigid. “Don’t you enjoy making love with me?” Buck inquires hesitantly. “Not very much, Buck. It isn’t your fault. It’s me. I just never … I mean, I’ll try harder next time. I’m sorry”. Kelly inexplicably consoles Buck by serenading him with the lullaby “Hush, Little Baby” in a little girl voice. Within minutes of announcing their marriage, Agatha proclaims their divorce. (It lasted 10 months). 

In the present, Kelly phones her manager Manny Fox (Jack Carter), waking him up. “Jeez, do you do know what time it is?” “What the hell do you mean do I know what time it is? I pay you ten percent to answer the phone any time!” Afterwards, Kelly mutters to herself, “Everybody in this whole stinkin’ town needs love. Nobody even knows the meaning of the word”  while smearing cold cream onto her face. 

At Agatha’s Christmas cocktail party, Fortis introduces Kelly to “America’s greatest living artist” Calvin Bernard (James Olson, the intellectual Arthur Miller equivalent). “You possess deep spiritual beauty,” Calvin rhapsodizes. “You’re a great beauty. A brilliant mind. A tremendous strength. All waiting for you to learn how to use them – and I intend to be your teacher!” He urges her to go to New York with him: “It’s the only civilized place to live in this country! Hollywood, California is a vulgar mirage, but New York … you’ll see!” Cut to the newspaper headline: “Sex Symbol to Wed Art Great.” In New York, Calvin pressures Kelly to abandon movies to study acting and perform Chekhov and Ibsen onstage. Emboldened, Kelly dares to complain about the quality of her latest script to Fortis. “She can’t act her way out of a paper bag!” Fortis thunders. “Pretty face. Good rear. Great chest. Period! She’s a piece of meat that I buy and sell just like the rest of them!” 

/ Shelley Winters, Connie Stevens and Nehemiah Persoff in The Sex Symbol (1974) /

Back in Hollywood, Kelly is invited to add her autograph and hand prints to the Hollywood Walk of Fame outside Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. To Calvin’s horror, in front of the assembled press she “goes rogue” and also presses her boobs into the wet cement as observers whistle and cheer lasciviously! (“Oh, my goodness!” Agatha swoons. “What is she doing?”). 

This stunt spells the dissolution of their marriage. Watching Kelly wash down pills at bedtime with alcohol, Calvin asks, “When did you get on the tequila kick?” “In Mexico. On our honeymoon.” “That must’ve been your first husband. We’ve never been to Mexico together.” “That’s right. (Laughs). That’s funny!” Glugging it back, Kelly toasts (and mispronounces) “Salut!” “Your ear for foreign languages is as lacking as your sense of good taste!” Calvin mocks. 

The action is catching up to Kelly getting fired from Will You Be Mine? “What happened? Booze or an orgy?” the queen-y disapproving director snaps as Joy guides a late and hungover Kelly onto the set. In the make-up chair, a dazed Kelly starts applying cold cream to her face while staring at her reflection – and then smears it all over the mirror, obliterating herself. 

That night, Kelly reaches her father by phone – at 2 am! It’s not the reunion she hoped for. “You must have the wrong number, lady!” “Daddy? Daddy? Daaaaad?” she howls when he hangs up. When she calls him back later, he shouts, “Listen, you! It’s almost five in the morning!” Abandoned by every man in her life, the end is neigh for Kelly Williams … 

Perversely, some of the participants (like Winters and Murray) in this debacle knew the real Marilyn. Stevens’ shrill “I’m-a-victim” portrayal never evokes Marilyn (and she’s inept in the drunk scenes). The sequence where Kelly beguiles reporters with her ditzy blonde comedy schtick feels like a chapter from the Jayne Mansfield story rather than Monroe’s. Stevens does, though, recall Pia Zadora, Liz Renay, Carroll Baker in Harlow (1965), Joey Heatherton, Catherine O’Hara parodying Joey Heatherton as Lola Heatherton – and Connie Stevens herself! Startlingly, there’s a totally gratuitous tits-and-ass nude scene towards the end. (The Sex Symbol received a European cinematic release padded with bonus material, which is the version on YouTube. The original ABC cut was one hour and 14-minutes. This one is one hour and 47-minutes). In conclusion: The Sex Symbol is required viewing!

12 May 2012 Dr Sketchy Set List

 / A strawberry blonde that's never existed in nature: Sex kitten extraordinaire Ann-Margret /

This Saturday afternoon Dr Sketchy at The Old Queen’s Head happened to coincide with my birthday. The reliably louche Dusty Limits was on emcee duties. Our burlesque performer and female model was the diminutive Amelie Soleil, who I’ve never worked with before. She has a circus school background and is a contortionist: she can do the splits as casually as most of cross our legs, and was able to hold the pose for an eye-watering length of time! She also incorporated fire-eating into her burlesque act – wow! You can read about Amelie’s pretty remarkable background in circus, cabaret and burlesque here. Our male model was the aptly-named Luscious Luke, who's recently been featured as a pin-up in Meat magazine (think of it as the UK equivalent of Butt).

   

/ Luke and Dusty topping up their fluid intake/

   

/ The ultra-bendy Amelie Soleil /

   

/ Amelie and Luke ensemble /

Because it was my birthday, I invited along some friends of mine: Angela (the sassy Scottish lassie who put the “ange” in “danger”), Paul (aka Johnny Cashpoint, formerly of art-punk band Matron – who should’ve made it big!), Derek and “Stuckist” artist and musician Ella Guru (formerly of the Voodoo Queens, currently in The Deptford Beach Babes). All of them were Dr Sketchy virgins, and really seemed to dig it.

   

/ My official birthday 2012 portrait: no photo of me is complete without my trademark sweat patch /

I’m still working in new material from CDs I bought at Amoeba Records in San Francisco in April. From Ain’t Love Grand, the much-maligned 1985 fifth album by the Los Angeles punk band X (a record that rocked my world as a teenager. It merits a whole blog to itself), I played the dramatic and bluesy torch song “My Goodness”, which seemed to make an impression. The punk-y and strange last few songs were just me clowning around because I was drunk by then and it was my birthday. I’ve also started introducing some tracks from a compilation CD entitled Good Girls Gone Bad I picked up at the wonderful Rooky Ricardo's Records in San Francisco. (God, how much do I love this store? I also bought some Ike and Tina Turner fridge magnets there. Imagine! Ike and Tina fridge magnets! I thought I’d died and gone to heaven). The compilation is a gem: I would call it an early 60s girl group anthology (it does feature some great obscure girl groups with names like The Tiaras, The Fortune Cookies and The Half-Sisters) but it mostly comprises tear-jerking laments by dimly-remembered wholesome white solo “girl singers” from that late 1950s-early 1960s post-army Elvis and pre-Beatles period that conventional baby boomer rock historians routinely condemn as some kind of cultural 

wasteland.  

/ Rooky Ricardo's Records on Haight Street /

Well, received wisdom sucks. Yes, the pop music of this era is often terminally un-hip, tame and neutered: think clean-cut teen idols like Tommy Sands, Connie Francis, Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello, think "Kookie, Kookie Lend Me Your Comb.". Yet because the music is so white bread, wholesome and square, there’s often an intriguing bat squeak of strangeness and kinkiness under its middle of the road veneer. Transgressive filmmakers like Kenneth Anger (think Scorpio Rising (1963); the Paris Sisters cooing “Dream Lover” in Kustom Kar Kommandos (1965) would comfortably fit on Good Girls Gone Bad) and David Lynch recognise this, returning again and again to the music of this period for their soundtracks. Lynch in particular: Bobby Vinton’s “Blue Velvet”, Connie Stevens’s “16 Reasons” and Linda Scott’s “I’ve Told Every Single Star” in Mulholland Drive (2001). The early 1960s is also the period John Waters came of age as a teen and which he lovingly evokes in Hairspray (1988).

   

"16 Reasons" in Mulholland Drive The Connie Stevens original (Better known as an actress, platinum blonde starlet Connie Stevens cut a few records in the early 60s, singing in a breathless little girl voice. Her "Little Miss Understood" is one of my highlights on Good Girls Gone Bad). Connie Stevens in her beehived glory When I bought the CD, the man who I assume to be Rooky Ricardo himself exclaimed, “Oh you’ll like this – it’s white girls with problems.” Corny as hell, the songs pack a fluffy kitsch period charm, but also throb with innocence and urgent teen drama. Good Girls Gone Girl Bad sketches out a soap opera realm in which tearful, passive-aggressive and needy girls next door pine for their “good-bad but not evil” leader of the pack-bad boys in heartbreak ballads. “Twenty four hours of loneliness / Twenty four hours of heartbreak / Every minute has been like this / How much more can I take?” Bonnie Lou demands, audibly at the end of her rope, while Joni Lymon’s “Happy Birthday Blue” is a variation on “It’s My Party and I’ll Cry if I Want To.” On “Call Him Back”, Donna Lewis argues with her boyfriend on the phone, hangs up on him and then goes batshit crazy regretting it. Things reach a fever pitch with “It Should Have Been Me”, in which the lead singer of the aforementioned Fortune Cookies turns deranged stalker, watching her ex’s wedding from a phone booth across the street. Her delivery makes you hope the newlyweds have taken out a restraining order. (It’s worth remembering that it was around this time (1960) that Ike Turner first unleashed on the world his tigress of a wife, the volcanic Tina. Consider her frankly sex-wracked scream on “A Fool in Love” and then consider the disparity between black rhythm and blues and white pop records of the time). The yearning lyrics and keening vocals on Good Girls Gone Bad bristle with the kind of dysfunctional "stand by your man" masochism whose DNA still pulses in the knowingly retro, noir-ish and David Lynch-ian music of ice princess Lana Del Rey today. “He can‘t be all bad / even though he’s got an awful lot of rebel in him ...” long-forgotten ingénue Cobey Carson simpers. “It’s no wonder he’s in trouble every day / No kind word ever comes his way ...And I’m glad he’s mine.” That’s precisely the kind of sentiment Del Rey (the only modern pop star who matters) explores in a more overtly troubled/troubling, potentially self-destructive way in songs like “Blue Jeans” and “Born to Die.” Of course one of the (many) things Del Rey takes so much flack for is being a poor feminist role model for her “irresponsible” lyrics (her intriguing 1950s good girl/bad girl mixed messages are older than Ann-Margret and Nancy Sinatra). Lana, oh, Lana: I understand you But masochistic themes of romantic despair are present in all great love songs – they’re the life force of pop itself. Think of the mid-century female masters of the art of heartbreak (Piaf longing for her legionnaire, the entire oeuvre of Billie Holiday, Dusty Springfield wailing “I Just Don’t Know What to Do with Myself”) and all the blues and Country & Western greats of both genders (an utterly defeated Hank Williams crying into his beer on “You Win Again”). Good Girls Gone Bad taps into this, and makes me shudder in ecstasy. Anyway, later that night I met up with Christopher and Lauren and went to The Hillbilly Hop (London’s best monthly rockabilly club; kudos to its promoter, Greaser Leo). From there, things got messy, but it was fun and worth the next day’s hangover. I quickly snapped a few drunken (brutally close-up) photos at the Hillbilly Hop. Consider them Nan Goldin-style portraits of my friends Lauren Christopher Danny Danny again Quiet Village - Martin Denny Run - Jeri Southern Laisse-moi tranquille - Serge Gainsbourg Wimoweh - Yma Sumac Mama Look A Boo Boo - Robert Mitchum Go Calypso - Mamie Van Doren De Castrow - Jaybee Wasden La Bamba - Eartha Kitt Vesuvius - The Revels I Want Your Love - The Cruisers Margaya - The Fender Four Jim Dandy - Sara Lee and The Spades You Can't Stop Her - Bobby Marchan Screwdriver - Luchi Chicken - The Spark Plugs Kruschev Twist - Melvin Gayle Chop Suey Rock - The Instrumentals Love Potion # 9 - Nancy Sit Fujiyama Mama - Annisteen Allen The Bee - The Sentinels Oo-Wee, Mr Jeff - Georgina Lane Tall Cool One - The Wailers Always True to You in My Fashion - Denise Darcel 8 Ball - The Hustlers Fever - Ann-Margret You're My Thrill - Chet Baker (instrumental) Mon coeur n'était pas fait pour ça - Juliette Greco Anasthasia - Bill Smith Combo Strolling After Dark - The Shades Womp Womp - Freddie and The Heartaches Hard Workin' Man - Captain Beefheart A Man What Takes His Time - Marlene Dietrich I Want a Boy - Connie Russell Handclapping Time - The Fabulous Raiders One Mint Julep - Sarah Vaughan Dragon Walk - The Noble Men Hurt Is All You Gave Me - Ike and Tina Turner This Thing Called Love - Esquerita That Makes It - Jayne Mansfield Beat Party - Ritchie and The Squires Boss - The Rumblers How Come You Do Me? Junior Thompson The Beast - Milt Buckner Do It Again - April Stevens Kiss - Marilyn Monroe My Goodness - X Mondo Moodo - Earls of Suave Lazy - The Nuns Crazy Vibrations - The Bikinis You're the Boss - Elvis Presley and Ann-Margret Bonnie and Clyde - Serge Gainsbourg and Brigitte Bardot Love is Strange - Johnny Thunders and Patti Paladin Begin the Beguine - Billy Fury Mack the Knife - Hildegard Knef La Javanise - Juliette Greco The Girl Can't Help It - Little Richard Witchcraft - Elvis Presley Viens danser le twist - Johnny Hallyday Beat Girl - Adam Faith Little Miss Understood - Connie Stevens Big Girls Don't Cry - Edith Massey What's Wrong with Me? X What Do You Think I Am? Ike and Tina Turner