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 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!

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 ... New Year's Evil (1980)

Recently watched: New Year’s Evil (1980). Tagline: “Don’t dare make new year’s resolutions … unless you plan to live!” 

Over the holidays, my boyfriend Pal and I punctuated our almost continuous prosecco drinking with some festive themed movie viewing. We watched the original Black Christmas (1974) and then on New Year’s Day, this grisly low-budget slasher flick. 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 maniac 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 exploitation of the punk subculture. Considering it was filmed in Los Angeles 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 rock 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 the performance of Roz Kelly. Do younger people have a clue who Kelly was? 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 here: