Reflections on ... The Big Cube (1969)

The Big Cube (1969). Tagline: “Poor mama. She stood in the way of the $3,000,000 inheritance. So, they spiked her medicine with the big cube. Poor, poor mama...” 

I’m using this period of enforced social isolation to explore the weirder corners of YouTube for long forgotten and obscure movies. (My boyfriend Pal is accompanying me only semi-willingly). One of the running gags in sitcom 30 Rock was that Tracy Jordan once starred in a hit movie entitled Honky Grandma Be Trippin'. That title is essentially the premise of lunatic 1969 exploitation thriller The Big Cube, in which veteran Golden Age Hollywood glamour girl Lana Turner goes full-blast cray-cray when she unwittingly drops LSD. 

Turner portrays glamorous stage diva Adriana Roman. When Adriana weds wealthy-beyond-measure tycoon Charles Winthrop, she earns the resentment of his jealous young socialite daughter Lisa. After Charles dies in a tragic freak yachting accident during their honeymoon, the widowed Adriana and stepdaughter Lisa clash over the conditions of his will … and things soon turn nasty. Especially once Lisa’s reptilian and parasitic fiancé Johnny – a medical student with a sideline in manufacturing LSD – gets involved. Johnny’s twisted solution: have Adriana declared mentally unfit (or persuade her to commit suicide. Or something) by lacing her sedatives with acid, so that they get their hands on all the inheritance themselves. 

/ Check out the wiglet! Via /

This synopsis barely hints at the insanity of The Big Cube, an oddity from the late sixties period when Old Hollywood was in its flailing death throes and struggling to lure the youth market. It’s easy to see why 48-year old Turner was attracted to the film. The Big Cube is reminiscent of her successful earlier Ross Hunter-produced atomic-era melodramas, but with the formula updated with a “youthquake” twist of countercultural psychedelia, complete with drug-taking, orgiastic groovy party scenes and topless go-go dancers! I can imagine Turner reading the script and loving all the big emotional confrontations and juicy demanding nervous breakdown scenes. It must have looked like an opportunity to rejuvenate her image with something edgy, modern and “with it”, with the additional bonus of a youthful “mod” wardrobe of mini-dresses, caftans and go-go boots by Travilla (the costume designer behind Valley of the Dolls), gauzy soft-focus close-ups and an assortment of baroque wedding cake-like hair pieces. (In some shots Turner almost resembles Nancy Sinatra!). 

How could she have anticipated that The Big Cube would be a mortifying fiasco and essentially finish her career? (Turner wouldn’t make another film appearance for six years). George (West Side Story) Chakiris is extremely unappealing as the villainous Johnny, so I guess he's perfect in Cube. (Those turtleneck sweaters and ankh pendants he wears throughout do him no favours). As Lisa, fashion model-turned-untalented actress Karin Mossberg is simply catastrophic. You’ll note that the presumably American Lisa has an inexplicable Swedish accent (the plot tries to cover this by reminding us she attended a Swiss finishing school. That explains it!). But while Mossberg is merely bad (stilted, wooden, affected), old pro Turner is majestically terrible and glorious to watch, especially at her most tormented. And the art-y lighting effects used in Turner’s bad trip freak-outs are worthy of Andy Warhol’s Exploding Plastic Inevitable. The definition of “bad movies we love”, The Big Cube is a mind-blowing fun time - for all the wrong reasons! 

Watch The Big Cube here.



Further reading:

My analysis of the 1965 Lana Turner melodrama Love Has Many Faces.

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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