Reflections on ... Leigh Bowery! at Tate Modern

 

/ Portrait of Leigh Bowery by Nick Knight, 1992 /

“In his brief life Bowery was described as many things. Among them: fashion designer, club monster, human sculpture, nude model, vaudeville drunkard, anarchic auteur, pop surrealist, clown without a circus, piece of moving furniture, modern art on legs. However, he declared if you label me, you negate me and always refused classification, commodification and conformity. Bowery was fascinated by the human form and interested in the tension between contradictions. He used makeup as a form of painting, clothing and flesh as sculpture and every environment as ready-made stage for his artistry. Bridging the gap between art and life, he took on different roles and then discarded them, presenting an understanding of identity that was never stable but always memorable. Bowery embraced difference, often using embarrassment as a tool both to release his own inhibitions and those of people around him. He wanted to shock with his looks and performances. At a time of increasing conservative values in Britain, Bowery refashioned ideas around identity, morality and culture. At times, this caused offence ...” 

This is the introductory text at the exhibit Leigh Bowery! at Tate Modern. (Boy, is that exclamation point warranted!), which probes the life and times of debauched post-punk drag monster, performance artist, nightclub promoter, fashion designer, artist’s model, muse, musician, Australia’s twisted gift to the world and all-round visionary Leigh Bowery (1961 - 1994). I visited it on Sunday, and it scrambled my brains in the best possible way. I’m still processing it! The images Bowery created remain freaky, nightmarish and beautiful, un-mellowed by the passage of time. (Even “off-duty”, Bowery sought to freak out the squares, wanting to resemble “the weirdo on the street that you tell your mum about”). I was particularly struck by his collaborations with bad boy of dance Michael Clark and ferocious post-punk band The Fall and a video clip by Charles Atlas of Bowery miming to an old Aretha Franklin song, a pair of novelty red lips from a joke shop affixed to his face with safety pins. The exhibit is on until 31 August 2025. Here are my pics!

Reflections on ... Rent-A-Cop (1987)

Recently watched: Rent-A-Cop (1987). When Burt Reynolds and Liza Minnelli were originally teamed for the 1975 film Lucky Lady, the result was a notorious and expensive mega-flop. So, I could kiss on the lips whoever approved reuniting the duo for crime thriller / romantic comedy hybrid Rent-A-Cop, the acme of gleefully enjoyable 1980s schlock. 

When a police sting operation goes horrifically wrong, gruff tough-as-nails Detective Tony Church (Reynolds) joins forces with kooky free-spirited escort girl Della Roberts (Minnelli). Della, you see, witnessed the carnage and is the sole person who can identify masked gunman Adam "Dancer" Booth (played by James Remar. Sex and the City fans will recognise him as Samantha Jones’ on-off boyfriend Richard Wright. Remar also made his share of good movies, like The Warriors, Cruising (both 1979) and Drugstore Cowboy (1989)). But not if Dancer kills her first! Or, as Rent-A-Cop's tagline exclaims “There’s a killer on the loose and the lady is the target.” 

Inevitably – after some wacky hi-jinks - the sparring odd couple of Tony and Della gradually fall in love. Aside from a cameo appearance in The Muppets Take Manhattan, this represents Minnelli’s first screen role after a gap of five years following her highly publicized stint at the Betty Ford Clinic (her previous major part was Arthur in 1981). Awash in sequins and mugging furiously, this is certainly Minnelli at her most “Minnelli”. Della’s sex work is depicted as a wholesome TV sitcom-friendly lark (she offers her johns the gamut of “his mommy, Little Bo-Peep, or Helga the Bitch Goddess”. It should be noted that the same year, Minnelli’s peer Barbra Streisand also unconvincingly played a high-price prostitute in Nuts). 

Anyway, Rent-A-Cop abounds with “what-the-fuck?” moments: Dancer inexplicably performs a sweaty homoerotic Flashdance-style number in front of a mirror. A bewigged drag queen at a nightclub accosts Della with “I love your muff!” Guest star Dionne Warwick portrays Della’s madam. Weirdly, Rent-A-Cop is set in Chicago and exteriors were shot there but the interiors were filmed in Rome’s Cinecittà Studios. And the screenplay was written by Michael Blodgett – best-remembered by cult cinema fans as hunky Lance Rock in the 1970 Russ Meyer sexploitation classic Beyond the Valley of the Dolls! Reynolds and Minnelli were both nominated for the 1988 Golden Raspberry Awards for Worst Actor and Worst Actress (Minnelli won). 

Further reading: the Cranky Lesbian blog’s shrewdand in-depth analysis. She quotes Reynolds' not very chivalrous but frank recollection on acting opposite Minnelli: “She’s not the easiest person in the world to act with. She’s never quite with you. It’s like she’s reading something somewhere off-camera. Yet she’s amazing as a live performer.”

Reflections on ... The Substance (2024)

 

/ Demi Moore in The Substance (2024) /

Hagsploitation truly is the horror sub-genre that keeps on giving. Sparked by the unexpected success of 1962’s What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? in the 1960s and 70s, maturing female stars of golden age Hollywood extended their careers by swallowing their pride, embracing their inner scream queen and plunging into exploitation shockers: think of Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, Tallulah Bankhead, Olivia de Havilland, Agnes Moorehead and Shelley Winters starring in the likes of Strait-Jacket, Hush … Hush … Sweet Charlotte, Berserk, Lady in a Cage, Die! Die! My Darling, Dear Dead Delilah and especially the “question movies” Whoever Slew Auntie Roo?, What’s the Matter with Helen? and What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice? 

Roaring back from career doldrums (I last remember her playing Miley Cyrus’ mother in 2012), 61-year-old Demi Moore finds herself in a similar position in director Coralie Fargeat’s grisly and stylish satire The Substance. In a gutsy, exposed (in every sense) performance, Moore plays Elisabeth Sparkle, a middle-aged television celebrity abruptly fired by ageist and sexist network executive (Dennis Quaid, really chomping the scenery). Despondent, Elisabeth takes desperate measures to rejuvenate her “best self” with a mysterious unregulated black market scientific procedure called The Substance … and things swiftly unravel. 

Characterized by stunning art direction and a visceral sound design that emphasizes every repulsive squelching noise, The Substance ratchets up maximum dread and offers a goldmine of knowing movie references: Basket Case. Carrie. Death Becomes Her. The Elephant Man. The Shining. Every single David Cronenberg “body horror” flick but particularly The Fly. Thematically, it reminded me of two specific b-movies from the late 1950s: The Wasp Woman and The Leech Woman, in which the anti-heroine experiments with science (or voodoo) to restore youth and beauty with monstrous consequences (and – it must be noted - these films make their point with a fraction of The Substance’s budget and two hour-and 40-minute running time). 

The Substance is bound to be divisive. There was multiple “walk outs” when I saw it yesterday. Does it critique society's youth fixation or wind up reaffirming it? And has Fargeat lost control of the material by the ultra-gory splatter fest finale? However you cut it, it’s a wild ride and destined for cult status.

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.

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.

Mamie Van Doren's Christmas Pictorial in Escapade Magazine (1966)

 

In the countdown to Kitschmas ... Mamie Van Doren's festive pictorial for Escapade magazine, 1966.

I posted this set on my Facebook and Instagram accounts earlier. Instagram instantly went haywire flashing warnings that my post violates their terms and they are deleting it. I scrambled to delete it from Facebook as well - I can't risk going to Facebook or Instagram jail or losing my accounts!

These pics are 57 years old but still freaking out the prudes! Anyway, posting them here for your delectation.

Remembering Jean Hill (15 November 1946 – 21 August 2013)

 

“The doorbell rang, I opened the door and there she was – my dream-come-true, four-hundred pounds of raw talent. I carefully invited Jean in, and the first thing she did was goose me to totally unnerve me. She asked for a drink and got it. She laughed and said she had no objections to nudity (“I’ve got a lot to show, honey”), would certainly dye her hair blonde (“Big deal. I’ve had blonde hair twice before”) and asked for a special chair that wouldn’t break when she sat on it. After listening to her give a hilarious reading from the script, we went over the contract, I gave her an advance on her salary, and it was settled.” 

/ John Waters recalling his first encounter with Jean Hill when she auditioned for Desperate Living in the book Shock Value (1981) / 

“Could the mighty Jean Hill in her very heart have been a deeply sincere, vulnerable and perhaps even a (gasp!) shy person? Actually, I think she was, and her outrageous persona was a way to compensate for this and connect with people and get them to drop the bullshit, prejudice and affectation and deal with her person-to-person. She refused to be labelled. She was fat, she was black, and her health problems forced her to become a kind of permanent “patient,” and she was sometimes on welfare, so she was also filed as a “charity case,” but she refused to be put in any of these boxes or to be looked down upon. She was forged in defiance. There is nothing unique about that — the ghetto is full of defiant people, but it becomes special when that defiance is coupled with intelligence, wit, humour, compassion and a flair for the absurd, and that’s what made Jean stand out in any crowd.” 

/ From the Bright Lights Film Journal's lyrical, sensitive obituary for Jean Hill by Jack Stevenson / 

Died on this day ten years ago: John Waters’ majestic “soul diva” Jean Hill (15 November 1946 – 21 August 2013), unforgettable as Grizelda in his 1977 bad taste punk classick Desperate Living. (She also makes a fleeting but vivid cameo appearance in Waters' 1981 film Polyester). 

World Book Day 2023!

“Liz Renay is a most unusual woman with a most unusual past. A prominent author recently said, “I looked into her eyes, and they held me, and they haunt me now for in them I saw two thousand years of living!” 

She began as a smalltown girl in Mesa, Arizona as a sibling in a family of religious zealots. Then World War II came and she became a “V-girl”, attracting servicemen with her beautiful face and large breasts.

Thus began the “two thousand years of living” that took her into the world of high fashion models and 52^nd Street strippers. The quaint pranks of fate led her into the underworld, and she became known as a Mafia moll, trusted and respected. 

To escape from the world of crime, she went to Hollywood, where she became known as “Mickey Cohen’s girl.” 

She had already won a Marilyn Monroe lookalike contest. Cecil B DeMille was enthralled with her. Opportunities were opening up everywhere. 

Meanwhile, her paintings were selling for as much as $5,000 each. Her poetry was recorded and broadcast. 

And then came 13 Grand Jury appearances and screaming front page headlines. (On one day, nothing but her face and a headline about her filled the front pages of two daily newspapers in New York City on the same day). 

True to the people who trusted and protected her, she refused to cooperate with the efforts to put a gangster behind bars. She was tried and found guilty of perjury. 

Three years in a woman’s prison. Six marriages. More narrow escapes than Hairbreath Harry. And more love relationships than any six swingers of our time can boast of combined. 

And this is only part of the Liz Renay story. Told in her own words and with a candor and honesty unusual in autobiography. (But this still glamorous beauty is an unusual person!). 

My Face for the World to See is her story in her words – without the benefit of ghostwriters and professionals. It is compelling to read and memorable to have read!” 

To commemorate World Book Day (2 March 2023): the blurb from Liz Renay’s 1971 memoirs My Face for the World to See, which I’m currently reading. Her writing style can best be summarized as “chatty.” It really does read like a tipsy, garrulous woman at a cocktail lounge decided to sit next to you and start regaling you with her life story!

Reflections on ... Aline (2020)

 

I was in Canada (for the first time since 2017) between 31 August – 7 September. On the Air Canada flight from London to Montreal I finally watched Aline, the notorious French-Canadian 2020 Céline Dion biopic. (Even though the film’s tone is insanely worshipful, this is an unauthorized biopic so “Céline Dion” is referred to as “Aline Dieu.” But the Quebecoise diva’s management apparently signed-off on the project because all her hits are used. The singing is provided by Victoria Sio but you’d swear it was via Dion herself). 

Anyway, Aline cleaves to every conventional rags-to-riches show biz cliche. One major obstacle for the film is how to smooth-over and make palatable Aline’s romance with Guy-Claude (Sylvain Marcel), the much older record producer / mentor who first meets her aged nine, guides her to stardom and then marries her once she reaches adulthood. Another considerable downside if – like me – you’re not a fan of Dion’s power ballads is suffering through the multiple loving recreations of Dion in concert. (Her version of Tina Turner’s "River Deep Mountain High" is a crime against music!). 

In the tradition of Barbra Streisand, French actress Valérie Lemercier stars, writes and directs. Aline is clearly a labour of love for Lemercier and you can’t fault her commitment. But she makes a truly nutty creative decision that ensures Aline some degree of Bad Movies We Love-style infamy. The 57-year-old Lemercier opts to portray Aline throughout all her life – including early scenes as a 9-year-old and 12-year-old. Watching a wide-eyed and “Facetuned” Lemercier nibbling on a cookie is so genuinely freaky it feels like an Amy Sedaris parody. 

In a final flourish of craziness, it ends with Aline delivering the most bombastic ballad imaginable direct to camera, insisting she's just an ordinary woman who loves her neighbour and just wants world peace. (It turns into a plea for humanity). In conclusion, Aline needs to be seen to be believed. Frustratingly, it’s still not available for streaming in the UK!

Guardian review 

Hollywood Reporter review

Variety review

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 ... Poor Pretty Eddie (1975)

Recently watched: Poor Pretty Eddie (1975). “Look, I have two weeks before my next concert. Now I’m going to get in my car and drive until I find a nice, quiet hole to crawl into.” When glamorous but exhausted African American show biz diva Liz Wetherly (Leslie Uggams) utters those words, little does she anticipate the horrors this impromptu solo road trip holds in store. In no time, her car has broken down on some godforsaken Southern dirt road in the middle of nowhere. (Poor Pretty Eddie was filmed in Athens, Georgia). Looking for assistance, Liz wanders into a decaying isolated hunting lodge called Bertha’s Oasis. The first person she encounters is handyman Keno (Ted Cassidy – aka Lurch from The Addams Family) just as he’s beheading a chicken with an ax! Further grotesquery awaits: the proprietress Bertha (Shelley Winters) is a former showgirl-turned-sloppy alcoholic harridan who lives with her much-younger studmuffin lover, aspiring Country & Western singer Eddie (Michael Christian). While her car is getting repaired, Liz checks into one of Bertha’s cabins – but will she survive to check out?

Poor Pretty Eddie is a putrid exploitation shocker that lives up to its notorious reputation. It’s a prime exemplar of “hicksploitation”: the subgenre of rural horror movies featuring homicidal rednecks. The hit film Deliverance came out three years earlier and clearly influenced the representation of hillbilly characters here. And the decrepit shanty town locale also anticipates Mortville in John Waters’ punk epic Desperate Living (1977).

The acting is genuinely good. As child-like but dangerously deluded halfwit Eddie, Christian manages to be simultaneously repellent and sexy (it must be said: he fills-out his Vegas-era Elvis fringed outfits nicely). And of course, Winters specialized in portraying blowzy, frowzy slatterns. An aside: for some masochistic reason, I’ve read both volumes of Winters’ wildly self-aggrandizing memoirs. She’s keen to depict herself as the highly-principled uncompromising earth mother of Method Acting – but she never once mentions the multitude of low-budget hagsploitation b-movies she mainly made from the early seventies onward. That would have been so much more interesting!

What the hell was classy mainstream entertainer Uggams thinking when she signed up for this? The only comparable example that comes to mind is Lyle Waggoner appearing in the necrophilia-themed Love Me Deadly (1972). Full credit to Uggams, though: she fully embraces the material. I love the haughty contempt with which Liz contemplates the dumb crackers she’s surrounded with, and she gives great side eye. Interestingly, the role was originally offered to Nichelle Nichols (Uhuru from Star Trek). I bet Nichols felt like she had a lucky escape!

Eddie’s behind-the-scenes story is almost more interesting than what unfolds onscreen. The production company had links to pornography, organized crime and money-laundering. (The executive producer was known as “The Scarface of Porn”). In a laudable attempt to cover all the bases, the film was released under multiple titles for different demographics. For the honky drive-in / grindhouse circuit it was called Poor Pretty Eddie. For African American audiences, it was sold as a blaxploitation movie re-titled Black Vengeance. And there’s supposedly a radically different, much softer-core version entitled Heartbreak Hotel that shifts the emphasis to Eddie and Bertha’s relationship – and has a happy ending!

With its queasy, bad taste emphasis on rape and racism, Eddie has something to offend everyone. It certainly abounds with unpleasant moments. But it feels weirdly relevant today in the era of Black Lives Matter and Trump. Today, the hicks who brutalize Liz would sport MAGA hats, rage against the removal of Confederate flags and be addicted to opioids. Time has not mellowed Poor Pretty Eddie. Approach with caution!

Further reading:

Temple of Schlock's in-depth account of the production of Poor Pretty Eddie.

Funny and perceptive analysis of Poor Pretty Eddie here.

Reflections on ... The Grim Reaper (1976)

The Grim Reaper (1976). Tagline: “The explosive motion picture about Satan’s demonic army!” 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).

I must admit, this is a new one on me: Grindhouse Gospel, also known as Christploitation or Godsploitation. (Definition: “a sub-genre of exploitation film that uses shock, gore or horror-elements to promote Christianity”). Deranged Baptist propaganda flick The Grim Reaper is by the undisputed maestro of Christploitation, director Ron Ormond (1910 - 1981). Originally, hack-for-hire Ormond made straightforwardly lewd and titillating exploitation cheapies with titles like Mesa of Lost Women (1953), Untamed Mistress (1956), Please Don’t Touch Me (1963) and Monster and The Stripper (1968). Once Ormond and his family became “born again” and embraced evangelical Christianity in the early seventies, he exclusively focused on fear-mongering religious movies (beginning with If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do? (1972)), but still employing the same low budgets and sensational schlocky approach of his earlier work. 

In cautionary tale The Grim Reaper, parents Verne and Ruby fret because their son Frankie is insufficiently pious (in fact, he says things like “This religion thing is your scene, not mine!” and “Religion? Not for this dude. No way!”). Inevitably, when Frankie is killed in a car accident – he goes straight to hell! Tormented by nightmarish visions of their son, the grieving parents embark on a quest to save his soul from beyond the grave, unwisely dabbling in seances, occultism and spirituality before being steered back onto the right course. (Note: the film’s casual trashing of other religions is in shockingly bad taste). 

This scenario barely hints at The Grim Reaper’s lunatic tangents (it’s been correctly described as “naive surrealism”). Ormond was surely the Ed Wood Jr of his genre. Like Wood, he’s inept but also never allowed his considerable budgetary restrictions (in this case, the equivalent of a Sunday school play production) limit his ambitiously twisted vision. There are flashbacks to ancient Biblical reenactments and – best of all – mind-boggling glimpses of fiery hell, where the demons wear dime store Halloween monster masks. Impossible to describe, these latter segments are like delirious, hallucinatory fever dreams and make The Grim Reaper essential viewing for aficionados of Bad Movies We Love. (Warning: this film features a superstar guest appearance by televangelist Reverend Jerry Falwell). 

/ This is what low-budget hell looks like! Via /

I first read about The Grim Reaper in the book High Camp: A Gay Guide to Camp and Cult Films, Vol 2 by Paul Roen (1997) – a sacred religious text in this household. After approvingly citing the outrageous bouffant wig leading lady Viola Walden (who plays Ruby) sports throughout, Rouen concludes, “approximately twenty years too old for her middle-aged role, she exhibits an amateurish enthusiasm which reminded me of the late, great Edith Massey. Ah, what histrionic wonders Walden might have wrought, if only John Waters had discovered her before Ron Ormond did!” (Sadly, Viola Walden is such an obscure figure there are seemingly no decent photos of her on the internet - but here is a screen grab).

Get on your knees, repent and watch The Grim Reaper here ... before it's too late!

Reflections on ... Mademoiselle (1968)

“Mademoiselle (1968, Tony Richardson). The wildest screenplay I can remember written by none other than Saint Jean Genet himself. In a remote French farming village lives a frustrated school mistress (Jeanne Moreau) whose suppressed sexual desires explode into secret wanton acts of violence. She delights in smashing birds’ nests, poisoning the farm animals’ drinking water, drowning pigs and setting fire to her neighbor’s houses, all in the name of sexual gratification. But the village blames the new stud in town for all her mayhem, so Jeanne springs into action. She lures him into a field and, in what is easily the most startling scene in the film, seduces him by crawling on all fours like a dog and licking his hands and boots. That accomplished, Jeanne immediately cries rape and the villagers stone him to death. A heroine only Jean Genet could create in this midnight movie way before its time.”

From John Waters’ book Crackpot: The Obsessions of John Waters (1983).

I would have read Waters’ intriguing description of Mademoiselle when I was still in my teens but only just now got around to watching it. (When Jeanne Moreau – one of the essential faces of mid-century European art cinema - died last year, I added loads of her films to my Cinema Paradiso wish list). Mademoiselle is less lurid and sensational than Waters makes it sound – it’s actually a punishingly austere and slow-moving, bleak art movie. But boy, it’s still genuinely bizarre and disturbing! (Especially the images of animals in torment. Apparently, the audience booed at Mademoiselle’s Cannes premiere in '68. I can kind of understand why!).  Genet’s script explores his recurring preoccupations: the nature of evil, sadomasochism, violence, Catholic hypocrisy. The school teacher’s thwarted erotic obsession with the Italian lumberjack finds a twisted expression in acts of deliberate destruction: sexual and emotional repression unleashes evil. Interestingly, Genet wrote the script with Anouk Aimee in mind.  Much as I love Aimee, who else but Moreau – with her hints of perversity and eerily aloof self-possession - could essay a role like this? I love her secret Mona Lisa-like half-smirk as she surveys the chaos and flames she’s created. (In real life, Mademoiselle’s director Tony Richardson was then married to Vanessa Redgrave but would abandon her to be with Moreau). Richardson wanted Marlon Brando for the male lead but thank god it went instead to the insanely rugged and handsome Ettore Manni. He’s so sexy you can understand why Moreau goes berserk over him! Mademoiselle was a French-English co-production: the Italian characters speak in Italian with English subtitles while the French peasants are dubbed in English, with British-accents, which feels weird. The film’s message about anti-immigrant prejudice and the scapegoating of minorities certainly feels timely. Fifty years later, time has not mellowed Mademoiselle!

Further reading: many years later Moreau would star in another Jean Genet adaptation - Querelle (1982), R W Fassbinder's last film.

Read my epic 2010 interview with John Waters here.

When John Waters Met Nico

It turns out that cult filmmaker extraordinaire John Waters and I have something in common: we both revere the late, great German chanteuse Nico. I bought his riotous 1981 book Shock Value: A Tasteful Book about Bad Taste in the late 1980s when I was still a university student and it had a profound impact on me. In it he briefly and tantalisingly recalls meeting...

“... Nico, my favourite singer, who was so out of it when I met her that she asked, “Have I ever been here before?” (I had to tell her I really had no idea).”

I wanted to know more about this historic meeting between cinemas’s Sleaze King and the heroin-ravaged Marlene Dietrich of punk. I interviewed Waters (a life-long hero of mine) for Nude magazine in December 2010 when he was in London promoting his excellent new book Role Models, so I was finally able to get him to elaborate on his encounter with Nico. It was the end of the interview and this was only for my own personal interest and never intended for the final article (which you can read here).

So here it is: when John Waters Met Nico...

Graham Russell: Before you go, tell me about the time you met Nico.

John Waters: Nico ... I met her when she played in Baltimore. Well, (before that) I saw her play with The Velvet Underground at The Dom on St Marks Place (in New York) with The Exploding Plastic Inevitable. I have the poster still. But I met her much later when she had her solo career, which I loved. She was a total heroin addict. Did you ever read that book The End? (The 1992 book is a jaundiced and not exactly objective account by her former keyboardist James Young). It’s so hilarious. It was that – although it wasn’t that, that was later when she was touring England. She played at this disco, and I went. And people went, but not a lot, it wasn’t full. And she was heavy and dressed all in black with reddish dark hair, and she did her (makes guttural moaning noise). Afterwards I said, “It’s nice to meet you, I wish you’d play at my funeral”, and she said (mimics doom-laden Germanic voice), “When are you going to die?” I told her, “You should have played at The Peoples Temple; you would’ve been great when everyone was killing themselves!” Then she said, “Where can I get some heroin?” I said, “I don’t know.” I don’t take heroin, so I don’t know. But even if I did, I wasn’t copping for Nico!

“But that was basically it. But I’ll always remember her, and I love Nico. I remember when she died, when she fell off the bicycle (in 1988). Every summer my friend Dennis and I, we play Nico music on the day she died (18 July). I saw that documentary Nico-Icon (Susanne Ofteringer, 1995), which was great. It’s a shame: she was mad about being pretty! She was sick of being pretty, being a model. And I remember her when she was in La Dolce Vita (1960), even before. Nico ... great singer; and even the Velvet Underground hated having her. And her music can really get on your nerves. You have to be in the mood. Sometimes it gets on my nerves. You have to be in the mood to listen to it. To put on a whole day of Nico can be ... my favourite song of Nico ever, and I only have it on a tape that someone made, it’s a bootleg. Did you ever hear her sing “New York, New York”? It’s great! I wish she’d done a whole album of show tunes! Like “Hello Dolly” or “The Sound of Music”! (Mimics Nico singing “Hello Dolly”).



/ Nico in the 1980s at New York's Chelsea Hotel singing a punk-y and dramatic version of her classic song "Chelsea Girls" /



/ Nico with Marcello Mastroianni in Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita (1960) /

/ Rare shot of Nico and Fellini during the filming of La Dolce Vita /

/ John Waters: The Maestro /

/ Hog Princess: The Filthiest Woman in the World -- Divine. RIP /

 / John Waters and I at his book launch party in London in December 2010 /

The Nude website is now defunct, sadly, but you can still read my full interview with John Waters here