Reflections on ... The Mafu Cage (1978)

 

/ Above: Carol Kane (as Cissy) and Lee Grant (as Ellen) in The Mafu Cage directed by Karen Arthur /

Recently watched: The Mafu Cage (1978). Tagline: “A terrifying love story.”  

Basically, nothing I say can prepare you for this truly disturbing and hypnotic oddity. Ellen (Lee Grant) and Cissy (Carol Kane) are two adult sisters leading an isolated, codependent existence in a palatial mansion somewhere in Los Angeles. We gradually learn that both their parents are dead; they grew up in the jungles of Africa, there’s a vague sense of unspecified trauma in their past, and that their father was an anthropologist who studied simians. Cissy still yearns for Africa and has seemingly never adjusted to life in the US. Level-headed, responsible and maternal Ellen combines her career as an astronomer at Griffith Observatory with caring for mentally fragile Cissy, who is childlike, ethereal – but also capable of shocking brutality. When Ellen develops romantic feelings for a male colleague, the sisters’ delicate equilibrium swiftly unravels with horrific consequences ... (Note that while Kane has the showier role, Grant is equally remarkable. Both actresses are exemplary). 

/ Carol Kane in The Mafu Cage /

The Mafu Cage is “horror adjacent” without being remotely kitsch, camp or exploitative: it's a deeply cerebral psychological meditation on insanity and claustrophobic, dysfunctional family dynamics. I’d argue relevant reference points would include What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) by Robert Aldrich, Secret Ceremony (1968) by Joseph Losey, That Cold Day in the Park (1969) and 3 Women (1977) by Robert Altman and the 1975 documentary Grey Gardens. Unsurprisingly, the distributors were flummoxed about how to promote this curiosity: it was marketed as a horror flick under various titles including Don’t Ring the Doorbell (“Chop, chop … Slice, slice … Another man would be so nice!”), My Sister, My Love and Deviation. The Mafu Cage was little seen at the time but has gradually been embraced as a cult film. Warning: some of the images in The Mafu Cage will haunt your subconscious forever! A bonus: the supporting cast includes Will Geer (Grandpa Walton)!

Watch The Mafu Cage on YouTube. 

Reflections on ... The Unholy Wife (1957)

 

/ Illustration by Olivier Coulon /

Recently watched: The Unholy Wife (1957). Tagline: “Half-angel. Half-devil. She made him half-a-man!” 

This pedestrian but enjoyably sordid film noir is unique for being made in scorching colour. Even in the faded print circulating on YouTube, British sex bomb leading lady Diana Dors’ gleaming platinum hair and skin-tight costumes in royal blue, fuchsia and ice pink are eye-popping. (Director John Farrow was no hack: he made some of Robert Mitchum’s greatest films (Where Danger Lives (1950), His Kind of Woman (1951). He clearly had an “off day” here). 

The Unholy Wife offers a portrait of a dysfunctional marriage in the verdant sun-dappled vineyards of Napa Valley. Or as the publicity blurb promises “This is the wine cellar of the most respectable house in the Valley. This is where she met them, made love to them, laughed with them at her husband … at the man who gave her a name, a home and a heritage – the man she wanted to destroy!” The action unfolds in flashback, with present-day Phyllis (whose name evokes the Barbara Stanwyck character Phyllis Dietrichson in Double Indemnity (1944)) in jail, recounting the events that led to her imprisonment. (In these scenes, jailbird Dors is seen scrubbed of make-up and sporting brown hair, which can’t help but recall her earlier British film Yield to the Night (1956)). In a role originally intended for Shelley Winters, Dors is a seething, manipulative married woman scheming with her lantern-jawed, broad-shouldered lover San (hunky Tom Tryon) to murder her cuckolded husband, vineyard owner Paul (played by Rod Steiger – in a role originally intended for Ernest Borgnine - in the then-fashionable mumbling Actor’s Studio tradition). Wringing her hands in the background is mother-in-law Emma, played by Beulah Bondi (a part intended for Ethel Barrymore). 

/ Tom Tryon and Diana Dors in The Unholy Wife /

Watch for one truly glorious sequence of Phyllis and her pal Gwen (hard-boiled, nicotine-saturated noir icon Marie Windsor) toiling as “hostesses” at a low-down gin joint. While the blowzy resident nightclub singer (Maxine Gates) wails “One for My Baby (and One More for the Road”), Phyllis – sheathed in sensational silver lamé - kvetches, “Not much action around here tonight.” Windsor’s appearance is fleeting and makes you wish The Unholy Wife was mainly 90-minutes of just her and Dors hanging out. The commercial and critical failure of The Unholy Wife ultimately cut short Dors’ brief and unhappy sojourn in Hollywood, and she returned to the United Kingdom. (For gossip-hungry sensationalism freaks, Dors and Steiger - both married to other people - had a fling during production).

/ Frustratingly, I couldn't source a good colour image of Marie Windsor and Diana Dors online in this nightclub sequence. (Windsor's dress is bright red). /

Watch The Unholy Wife here.

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 ... MaXXXine (2024)

Recently watched: MaXXXine (2024). Tagline: “She’s gonna be a star no matter what it takes!” 

MaXXXine, of course, represents the hotly anticipated concluding chapter of the juicy elevated horror trilogy beginning with X (2022) and the prequel Pearl (2022) by director Ti West and leading lady Mia Goth. I’ve been yearning to see this one for what felt like an eternity. Its trailer (soundtracked by the Laura Branigan classic “Self-Control”) was so tantalizing it tormented me! We watched MaXXXine last weekend (its opening weekend) and it was - OK! I felt like I was willing it to be better. Of the three films, MaXXXine is definitely the slightest and flimsiest entry. Maybe my expectations were unrealistically high and the remarkable Pearl (which I consider a modern masterwork) set an impossibly high bar for this follow-up. 

Anyway, there is still much to enjoy. Set in 1985 Los Angeles, MaXXXine unfolds against a backdrop of satanic panic paranoia, the rise of Tipper Gore’s censorious Parents Music Resource Centre, Ronald Reagan’s presidency and the Night Stalker’s reign of terror. Goth returns as driven, burning-with-ambition porn starlet Maxine Minx. Now 33, she knows it’s now or never if she’s ever going to transition from skin flicks into legit cinema (well, a low-budget slasher movie entitled Puritan II in this case). “In this industry, women age like bread not wine” she laments. But just as stardom finally seems within Maxine’s grasp, her friends start getting gruesomely picked-off one by one by a serial killer … 

MaXXXine boasts an authentically scuzzy, grungy discount bin VHS vibe. The soundtrack pumps with 80s tunes (ZZ Top. Frankie Goes to Hollywood. “Obsession” by Animotion. Kim Carnes’ “Bette Davis Eyes.” John Parr’s theme tune to St Elmo’s Fire. And yes, Laura Branigan). Aficionados of 1980s trash cinema will revel in West’s references to the likes of Savage Streets (1984), Brian De Palma’s Body Double (1984), Vice Academy (1989), Angel (1984) and Avenging Angel (1985). Goth is a riveting, singular presence and one of THE great actresses currently working (The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw aptly called her the Judy Garland of horror). MaXXXine is a pulpy, grisly down-and-dirty summer thriller – just don’t expect another Pearl!

Next Lobotomy Room Film Club ... Satan in High Heels (1962) on 20 June 2024

 

This month, the FREE Lobotomy Room cinema club presents Satan in High Heels (1962)! 20 June 2024 at Fontaine’s bar! 

Hard-boiled and stylish, Satan in High Heels represents the acme of early sixties sexploitation cinema NOT made by Russ Meyer. Characterized by exceptionally good acting, atmospheric film noir black-and-white cinematography and an urgent jazz soundtrack, Satan was filmed in just 21 days with an estimated budget of less than $100,000 – and is a taut 89-minute journey into deep sleaze! 

/ Above: jazz chanteuse, actress and pin-up queen Meg Myles as Stacey / 

Weary of her hard-scrabble two-bit existence bumping-and-grinding in the carnival, scheming, manipulative and utterly amoral fairground burlesque dancer Stacey Kane (Meg Myles) ditches her useless junkie husband and flees to New York to re-invent herself as a singer. Cynically employing sex and a smile, the redheaded vixen inveigles her way into a gig crooning at the upscale Greenwich Village nightclub managed by fiercely chic and jaded lesbian proprietress Pepe (the reliably intense Grayson Hall). Stacey promptly becomes the mistress of wealthy married businessman Arnold Kenyon, but – to considerably complicate things – she also pursues Kenyon’s feckless beatnik son Laurence! As the poster’s tagline leers “The father … the son … the husband … the lover … they all had her … but she had them – right where the heat was hottest!” 

/ Stacey sparring with Pepe. With her butch tailored tweed suits, ascots and long cigarette holder, the fierce Grayson Hall is a consummate scene stealer and a great LGBTQ role model. So Satan makes an ideal choice for Pride Month! /

Aside from some fleeting glimpses of side boob in a gratuitous skinny-dipping scene, no actual nudity is on display. But Satan’s producer Leonard Burtman’s background was in the realm of fetish porn magazines and that sensibility is amply reflected onscreen in the emphasis on Stacey’s spike-heeled Spring-o-Lator mules and the kinky black leather dominatrix ensemble she wears (complete with jodhpurs and riding crop) growling the climactic musical number “The Female of the Species” (sample lyric: "I'm the kind of woman/ Not hard to understand / I'm the kind that cracks the whip / And takes the upper hand"). Everyone snarls their tough-as-nails dialogue, chain-smokes and knocks-back hard liquor. (You could play a fun drinking game taking a sip every time a character onscreen does, but it would risk projectile vomiting). 

/ Watch also for simpering ultra-kitsch sex bomb Sabrina (the British Jayne Mansfield) playing herself as Stacey’s bitter burlesque rival. She’s gloriously awful! /

Lobotomy Room is the FREE monthly film club devoted to Bad Movies for Bad People! Third Thursday night of every month downstairs at Fontaine’s cocktail lounge in Dalston. Numbers are limited, so reserve your seat via Fontaine’s website.via Fontaine’s website. Alternatively, phone 07718000546 or email bookings@fontaines.bar. The film starts at 8:30 pm. Doors to the basement Bamboo Lounge open at 8:00 pm. To ensure everyone is seated and cocktails are ordered on time, please arrive by 8:15 pm at the latest. Full putrid details on Facebook event page. Facebook event page. 

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 ... Thundercrack! (1975) and The Scala Cinema

/ George Kuchar and Marion Eaton in Thundercrack! (1975) /

To commemorate the release of the excellent new documentary Scala!!! Or the Incredibly Strange Rise and Fall of the World's Wildest Cinema and How It Influenced a Mixed-up Generation of Weirdos and Misfits (2024), the British Film Institute is currently holding Scala: Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll Cinema, a season of films associated with London’s notorious, much-missed repertory cinema. 

Reader, I was one of the mixed-up generation of misfits warped by the Scala at an impressionable age. (I moved to London just in time to experience its final year or so; I remember feeling bereft when it closed). The first double bill I ever saw there was within a month or two of arriving: Girl on a Motorcycle (1968) / The Wild Angels (1966) (in other words, Marianne Faithfull and Nancy Sinatra as black leather-clad biker mamas). This was when Kings Cross was still a genuinely dangerous grungy red-light district / junkie central (just walking from the tube station to the cinema felt like risking your life).

From there, I plunged into essential underground classicks by the likes of John Waters, Russ Meyer, Kenneth Anger, Andy Warhol, Richard Kern and Bruce LaBruce. But for me, the film synonymous with the Scala will always be Thundercrack! (1975). It was a blast to revisit it on Sunday afternoon with friends. In this triple X sensual and depraved oddity written by George Kuchar and directed by Curt McDowell, a motley crew of freaky outsiders seek shelter at an isolated old dark house one rain-lashed night. The house in question is called Prairie Blossom and its chatelaine is the eccentric, drunk, reclusive and deeply horny Mrs. Gert Hammond, a Blanche DuBois-type wearing Anna Magnani’s black slip. 

/ Marion Eaton as Gert Hammond /

If you’ve never experienced Thundercrack!, anticipate hardcore sex scenes interspersed with verbose faux Tennessee Williams dialogue (“Take me away from all this! I’ve got money, a car and a body – and they’re all yours!”). You get a measure of Thundercrack! immediately when Gert vomits into a toilet, her wig falls into the bowl, and she simply slaps it back onto her head to answer the front door. (“Who’s there that speaks to me in the voice of a woman? It’s been years since those doors felt the touch of a human knuckle!”). As Gert, the remarkable Marion Eaton’s gutsy and committed performance deserves to be proclaimed alongside Divine’s in Pink Flamingos or Female Trouble in the gutter movie pantheon.

/ Ken Scudder's deeply memorable jockstrapped crotch in Thundercrack! Read his story here /

Scala!!! is in cinemas now and will be available for streaming soon. Thundercrack! is apparently available on Blu-ray, but really, you wanted to watch it in a cinema full of rowdy drunk people - ideally at midnight! 

The Next Lobotomy Room Film Club ... Strait-Jacket (1964) on 18 January 2024

 

Considering campy horror masterpiece Strait-Jacket turns sixty this month (it was released on 19 January 1964), it’s only fitting that it’s the first Lobotomy Room presentation of the New Year!

Call it “hagsploitation” or “psycho-biddy”, Strait-Jacket (directed by low-budget trash maestro William Castle – one of John Waters’ primary influences) is a stark, vicious little b-movie featuring a truly berserk and mesmerizing performance from bitch goddess extraordinaire (and perennial Lobotomy Room favourite) Joan Crawford as a deranged axe murderess! If you liked What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) or Hush … Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964), you’ll LOVE Strait-Jacket! In fact – and I appreciate this is a controversial opinion – I’d argue Strait-Jacket is the superior film. Join us at Fontaine’s on Thursday 18 January and I’ll explain why over cocktails! But take note – as the original poster exclaimed, “Warning! Strait-Jacket vividly depicts axe murders!”

Lobotomy Room is the FREE monthly film club devoted to Bad Movies for Bad People. Third Thursday night of every month downstairs at Fontaine’s cocktail lounge in Dalston. Numbers are limited, so reserving in advance via Fontaine’s website is essential. Alternatively, phone 07718000546 or email bookings@fontaines.bar. The film starts at 8:30 pm. Doors to the basement Bamboo Lounge open at 8:00 pm. To ensure everyone is seated and cocktails are ordered on time, please arrive by 8:15 pm at the latest.

“As a movie, Strait-Jacket is no better than adequate. As myth however, it’s something else again. For homosexuals this is a remarkably resonant film. Few images could be more iconic than Joan Crawford as the ultimate castrating mom: an axe murderess who carries a weapon which has a handle that seems to grow longer with each successive reel. Add to this the fact that she’s all dolled up in forties finery, including a shoulder-length hairstyle and a flashy flowered dress. Her mouth is a livid, lipsticked slash. To complete the ensemble, she sports a set of charm bracelets which clank and tinkle ominously whenever she’s hefting her hatchet.”

/ From High Camp: A Gay Guide to Camp and Cult Films, Vol 2 by Paul Roen (1997) / 

“Strait-Jacket continued Joan Crawford’s descent into grand guignol. She played an axe murderess in the film by William Castle, who had achieved fame by dangling skeletons over audiences and wiring seats with electrical charges. Joan was paid $50,000 and a percentage of the profits, which were considerable, but the film seemed to lower her reputation.”

/ From Joan Crawford: A Biography by Bob Thomas (1978) /

“After seeing What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? fifteen times, [William] Castle dreamed of hitting the big time, of working with stars like Bette Davis and Joan Crawford. One evening at a party in Beverly Hills, he had the good fortune to be introduced to Crawford. “He almost fell at her feet,” said writer Hector Arce. “He told her he had a script that he had written specifically for her. It was called Strait-Jacket. It was written by the man who wrote the Hitchcock classic Psycho. “I’m listening, Mr. Castle,” said Joan … After Crawford read Strait-Jacket, she called the director. The woman was supposed to age from thirty to fifty. Joan wanted to make the character younger, to lop off five years at each end. Castle agreed. He also said yes to her salary, percentage and contract demands.”

/ From Bette & Joan: The Divine Feud (1989) by Shaun Considine /

[Crawford was approximately 59 at the time (her precise birth year is disputed –somewhere between 1904 and 1908) so in the opening epilogue, she’s playing a woman of 25].

Sure, Strait-Jacket is a gruesome serial killer exploitation flick – but deep down, is the real subject motherhood? Let’s have a heated debate on Thursday 18 January!

 

Yes! Come see Joan Crawford wearing the harshest jet-black wiggiest wig ever committed to celluloid at Fontaine’s bar in Dalston on 18 January! 

Full putrid details here. 

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). 

The Next Lobotomy Room Film Club: Lady in a Cage (1964) on 20 July 2023

 

“Help! I am trapped in a small private elevator!” Seriously - don’t you just hate it when that happens? That’s the dilemma that befalls genteel, affluent widowed poetess Cornelia Hilyard (Olivia de Havilland). She’s recuperating from a broken hip; her son is away for the weekend – and the small private elevator in question malfunctions, leaving her trapped between floors. And just then, when Cornelia is at her most vulnerable, a gang of feral delinquents break into her home …

Berserk 1964 thriller Lady in a Cage is firmly in the post-Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? hagsploitation tradition (interestingly, the lead role was originally offered to Joan Crawford.  And the same year de Havilland co-starred opposite Bette Davis in that other hagsploitation classic, Hush … Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964)). Won’t you join us on Thursday 20 July when the free monthly Lobotomy Room cinema club (devoted to Bad Movies for Bad People) presents Lady in a Cage? But take note of the leading lady’s warning: “Do Not See Lady in a Cage Alone! It is a shocking picture with a terrifying theme! No holds are barred in Lady in a Cage. So, take somebody along and hold onto them – for dear life!” There will be safety in numbers downstairs at Fontaine’s cocktail lounge – and stiff cocktails to steady your nerves!

 

Lobotomy Room Goes to the Movies is the FREE monthly film club devoted to cinematic perversity! Third Thursday night of every month downstairs at Fontaine’s cocktail lounge in Dalston! Numbers are limited, so reserving in advance via Fontaine’s website is essential. Alternatively, phone 07718000546 or email bookings@fontaines.bar to avoid disappointment! The film starts at 8:30 pm. Doors to the basement Bamboo Lounge open at 8:00 pm. To ensure everyone is seated and cocktails are ordered on time, please arrive by 8:15 pm at the latest.

Facebook event page.

/ Below: the truly nutty original trailer for Lady in a Cage /