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! 

Reflections on ... Multiple Maniacs (1970)

[I reviewed Criterion's new Blu-ray release of John Waters Multiple Maniacs for gay arts and culture website HISKIND in March 2017. Read it here.  Disappointingly, they edited the hell out of it, deleting all my efforts to put the film into context – so I’m posting it here in its uncut / uncensored original version!]

It’s looking increasingly unlikely cinema’s high potentate of trash John Waters will ever make another movie following 2004’s commercial flop A Dirty Shame. (In recent years, the 70-year old “peoples’ pervert” has successfully diversified, spreading his joyous message of filth via books and spoken word tours instead of films). 

But happily for Waters’ legions of fanatics ravenous for a lurid sensationalism fix, they get to rediscover one of his freshly-exhumed obscure classicks (sic). For decades, Multiple Maniacs (1970) - which Waters himself calls his “celluloid atrocity” - has been virtually impossible to see.  A grainy, scuzzy VHS was issued in the eighties, then it occasionally surfaced as a poor-quality pixelated bootleg (Waters’ legal team promptly deletes it every time it crops up on YouTube) - but until now it’s never officially been available on DVD or Blu-ray. And now Criterion has handled Multiple Maniacs like it’s a prestigious art movie, giving it a loving deluxe digital remaster treatment. Watching this crystalline deep velvety black-and-white revival of Multiple Maniacs is like experiencing a whole new film.

/ Divine as Lady Divine in Multiple Maniacs / 

Forty-seven years later, the restored, reviled and revolting Multiple Maniacs hasn’t lost its capacity to startle. It still feels insanely raw, nasty, punk and queer. And it’s essential to understanding Waters’ subsequent films (Multiple Maniacs suggests a preliminary sketch for his next film, 1972’s more famous Pink Flamingos). In her first starring role, Waters’ 300-pound hog princess drag queen leading lady and muse Divine portrays Lady Divine, the cruel and amoral proprietoress of traveling freak show “The Cavalcade of Perversions” of assorted sluts, fags, dykes and pimps. (The sensational revue incorporates vomit eaters, bicycle seat lickers, a junkie writhing in withdrawal and “two queers actually kissing on the lips like lovers”). When we first encounter Lady Divine, she’s lounging stark naked on a bed and barking orders at her minions – think Liz Taylor as Cleopatra. Upon learning her carnival barker boyfriend and criminal accomplice Mr David is leaving her for another woman, a homicidal Lady Divine embarks on a berserk rampage.  The film concludes with a cannibalistic blood orgy (Multiple Maniacs – made in ’69 – was Waters’ response to the Charles Manson Family murders in same way Beyond the Valley of the Dolls was for Russ Meyer). Oh and – spoiler alert – a giant lobster is involved.

/ David Lochary as Mr David in Multiple Maniacs /  

Sure, in technical terms neophyte Waters’ filmmaking is frankly amateurish (which makes Multiple Maniacs feel like a lunatic home movie) and the actors sometimes stumble over the verbose script. But there is much here to make a Waters devotee swoon in frenzied ecstasy. The cast features Waters’ familiar stable of regular actors at their most heartbreakingly youthful and fresh-faced, like David Lochary and Mink Stole (Raymond and Connie Marble, the villains of Pink Flamingos), Mary Vivian Pearce, Cookie Mueller as Divine’s hard-boiled lisping (frequently topless) juvenile delinquent daughter and – in her film debut - the beloved snaggle-toothed outsider actress and punk granny Edith Massey.  The vicious dialogue is predictably quotable (“I love you so fucking much that I could shit!” “And all at once she inserted her rosary into one of my most private parts …”) while the soundtrack encompasses ominous rumbling surf instrumentals and twangy rockabilly. Thematically, Multiple Maniacs sees Waters lashing out at his Catholic upbringing:  the “rosary job” Divine receives from perverted religious whore Mink Stole and the blasphemous re-enactment of the Stations of the Cross still feel taboo and sacrilegious. 

/ Edith Massey as The Virgin Mary in Multiple Maniacs / 

Best of all, Multiple Maniacs captures iconic freak diva Divine-in-embryo, still a fleshy young starlet or ingénue on the ascent.  Mincing around like Jayne Mansfield in a skin-tight leopard print pencil skirt and brunette wig, snarling her lines and sometimes actually foaming at the mouth in excitement, this represents early Divine at the height of her monstrous beauty.

The promotional tagline for Multiple Maniacs screams, “Better than amyl nitrate! Better than Carbona! Better than heroin!” What other film could live up to those claims? It’s like an intravenous jolt of bad taste. For long-term Waters aficionados, the Blu-ray release of Multiple Maniacs is the equivalent of Christmas day. For newcomers to Waters’ oeuvre, it offers an excellent introduction. Get corrupted!

MULTIPLE MANIACS - available to buy on Blu-ray from 20th March 2017 from the Criterion Collection 

Further reading: Read my epic 2010 interview with John Waters here

A Year and a Bit of The Lobotomy Room Goes to the Movies Club!

Now that 2016 is circling the drain, won’t you indulge me in reminiscing a bit about Lobotomy Room Goes to the Movies? My free monthly film club (focusing on the cult, the kitsch and the queer!) in the basement Bamboo Lounge of Dalston’s Art Deco fleshpot Fontaine’s is just over one year old. Let’s get all retrospective and wistfully re-visit the titles we’ve presented over the past year.

Let the countdown commence!

Seven Sinners (1940) – 24 November 2015

The seven films director Josef von Sternberg and his muse and leading lady Marlene Dietrich made together between 1930 and 1935 were dark, erotic, witty and sublime works of art. Together they honed Dietrich’s complex, sultry and feline persona and brought a whiff of genuine Weimar decadence to mainstream Hollywood. By comparison Seven Sinners (made after Dietrich and von Sternberg’s personal and professional relationship imploded) is pure trash - but kitschy, enjoyable fun trash of the highest order! It’s a romantic comedy starring Dietrich as good time girl nightclub chanteuse Bijou Blanche, set adrift and stirring up trouble in a South Seas port, while pursuing a hunky naval officer (played by a young and still relatively unknown John Wayne).  Event page.

Pee Wee’s Christmas Playhouse Special (1988) - 15 December 2015

In honour of the holiday season, let’s get festive and combine some Christmas cocktail capers with the most kitschy and campy of all TV specials – Pee-Wee’s Playhouse Christmas Special from 1988! In which that bow-tied perverse brat Pee-Wee Herman welcomes a mind-boggling selection of special guests to his playhouse - including Grace Jones, Little Richard, Cher, Joan Rivers, Charo, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Oprah Winfrey and kd lang! [Note: the TV special is actually just under an hour long, so before and after I will play my most abrasive atomic-era Christmas tunes to pad things out!]. So … won’t you join me for a snowball, glass of prosecco or mulled wine and learn about the true meaning of Christmas with Pee-Wee Herman? See you there!

Kitten with a Whip (1964) - 27 January 2016

The featured presentation this month will be the ultra-lurid 1964 juvenile delinquent exploitation psychodrama Kitten with a Whip – starring quintessential atomic-era sex kitten-gone-berserk Ann-Margret. This sleazy little black and white B-movie urgently poses the question: why do the sweetest kittens have the sharpest claws? Fresh from cavorting with Elvis in Viva Las Vegas, red-headed vixen Ann-Margret plays a vicious teenage sociopath escaped from her high-security juvenile detention centre – who then takes hostage and torments straight-laced local politician John Forsythe in his palatial suburban dream house. (Yes – a cardigan-wearing and still dark-haired John Forsythe as in Dynasty’s silver fox Blake Carrington!). From there, Ann-Margret’s gang of thug friends turn up – and things just get wilder!

Morocco (1931) - 24 February 2016.

Considering Valentine’s Day falls this month, February’s selection is a love story. But bear in mind this is, after all, Lobotomy Room Goes to the Movies – so the love story is a twisted, high camp tale of amour fou. In Morocco (1930) – directed by visionary maestro of kinky exotica Josef  von Sternberg – dissolute nightclub chanteuse and woman of mystery Amy Jolly (German screen diva Marlene Dietrich in her sensational Hollywood debut) finds herself adrift in North Africa and caught in a love triangle, torn between a handsome amoral Foreign Légionnaire (lanky young Gary Cooper at the height of his beauty) and a wealthy playboy (Adolphe Menjou. Perversely, Menjou is meant to represent von Sternberg himself – who in his complex off-screen relationship with the bisexual Dietrich stoically stood by and watched her seduce legions of men and women both). Depending on your sensibility, Morocco culminates in an ending which you’ll either find irresistibly romantic or totally absurd. Either way, the film is a blast!

Desperate Living (1977) - 23 March 2016

The featured presentation this month will be John Water’s ultra-twisted punk-y black comedy Desperate Living (1977). It’s one of his relatively lesser known gems (probably because his usual muse and leading lady - three hundred pound drag queen Divine - isn’t in it). The genuinely nasty Desperate Living has something to offend everyone! See the film that Variety lambasted as “amateur night on the psycho ward” and that Waters himself has called “the worst of all my films. And it’s the grimmest!”

The Wild, Wild World of Jayne Mansfield (1968) - 27 April 2016

Rated “X” upon its release in 1968, the ultra-trashy faux documentary chronicles the kinky globe-trotting misadventures of Hollywood sex kitten-gone-berserk Jayne Mansfield.  Watch agog as kitsch icon Mansfield - the punk Marilyn Monroe, revered by John Waters and Divine (and “the face” of Lobotomy Room) - visits the hedonistic “sin spots” of the world, encompassing topless go-go clubs, gay bars, drag queen beauty contests and nudist colonies, usually accompanied by her pet Chihuahua! The low-budget Wild, Wild World was in production 1964 - 1968. Bear in mind Mansfield died in 1967. Part of the fun is spotting how the producers cobbled things together after Mansfield’s death in order to complete the film. Watch for the (many) shots of a body double filmed from behind wearing Mansfield’s dishevelled blonde wig. And the sound-alike who delivered the voice-over narration (nailing Jayne’s breathless babydoll coo) deserved an Oscar!

Valley of The Dolls (1967) – 25 May 2016

“You have to climb Mount Everest … to get to the Valley of The Dolls.” Before Mommie Dearest … before Showgirls … the original “What the hell were they thinking?” Bad Movie We Love was Valley of the Dolls. A perennial favourite of drag queens and a cult classic for connoisseurs of kitsch, the unintentionally hilarious and wildly entertaining 1967 film adaptation of Jacqueline Susann’s lurid 1966 bestseller took the already trashy source material – and went even tawdrier with it! (At the film’s premiere, an outraged Susann reportedly called the film “a piece of shit!”). A cautionary tale about the perils of show business, it follows the travails of three ambitious casualties of the glamour jungle: friends Anne, Neely and Jennifer. (The “dolls” of the title refer to the fistfuls of uppers and downers the characters pop like Tic Tacs throughout – usually washed down with booze). Valley of The Dolls packs everything discriminating thrill-seekers demand in its lunatic two hours: hammy performances, pill-popping, bouffant wigs, cat-fights, slurring drunken scenes, rehab, drug-fuelled meltdowns and crap-tastic musical numbers.

Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1966) – 27 July 2016

“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to violence, the word and the act. While violence cloaks itself in a plethora of disguises, its favourite mantle still remains: sex. Violence devours all it touches, its voracious appetite rarely fulfilled. Yet violence doesn’t only destroy – it creates and moulds as well! Let’s examine closely, then, this dangerously evil creation, this new breed, encased and contained within the supple skin of woman… the softness is there, the unmistakable smell of female. The surface shiny and silken. The body yielding yet wanton. But a word of caution – handles with care and don’t drop your guard! This rapacious new breed prowls both alone and in packs, operating at any level! Any time! Anywhere! And with anybody! Who are they? One might be your secretary! Your doctor’s receptionist! Or a dancer in a go-go club!” Yes! The Lobotomy Room Goes to the Movies film selection this month in the Bamboo Lounge of Fontaine’s is ultimate sexploitation B-movie Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1966). Perhaps cleavage-fixated director Russ Meyer’s defining masterpiece, it follows a trio of vicious thrill-hungry go-go dancers going on a homicidal rampage in the desert. As cinema’s sleaze maestro John Waters argues, “Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! is beyond a doubt the best movie ever made. It is possibly better than any film that will be made in the future!”

[Pussycat! was our biggest hit to date - the first time we had to post a warning on Facebook that if you hadn't already reserved a seat in advance, don't turn up on the night!]

La Dolce Vita (1960) – 28 August 2016

Attention, jaded Continental sophisticates! Embrace the spirit of Eurotrash hedonism (and pretend we’re still in the EU) when Lobotomy Room presents a FREE special decadent Bank Holiday Sunday screening of Federico Fellini’s carnival-esque and hallucinatory epic masterpiece La Dolce Vita (1960)! You know that iconic image of voluptuous Swedish sex bomb Anita Ekberg frolicking in Rome’s Trevi Fountain? That’s from La Dolce Vita – one of the most stylish movies ever made! It captures the acme of Italian glamour: the cars, the clothes, the nightlife (no one films debauched nightclub, party and orgy scenes like Fellini in his 1960s pomp) and most of all – the sunglasses! While you watch the film, take the edge off your hangover with negronis or glasses of Prosecco! Needless to say, it’s illegal to smoke in the Bamboo Lounge, but feel free to keep your shades on! 

Blonde Venus (1932) – 28 September 2016

Of the seven sublime films director Josef von Sternberg and leading lady / muse Marlene Dietrich made together, surely the wildest and weirdest is Blonde Venus (1932). It stars sultry German glamour puss Dietrich as a hausfrau and mother forced to resume her career as a nightclub chanteuse due to circumstances too complicated to go into here – and then finders herself entangled in a romantic triangle between her sick scientist husband and a suave millionaire (played by a very young Cary Grant). But none of that is important! It’s mainly an excuse to luxuriate in Dietrich’s shimmering close-ups, multiple extravagant costume changes and sensational musical numbers. Most notorious of the latter is the riotously kitsch and freaky “Hot Voodoo” sequence. If you’ve never seen it before I won’t spoil it for you, but 1) “Hot Voodoo” is the campiest thing you’ve ever seen, 2) watching it might turn you gay and 3) over eight decades later, the likes of Grace Jones, Madonna and Kate Moss are still referencing it in videos, concerts and photo shoots. 

[This was the third Dietrich film I’ve screened. The previous two – Seven Sinners and Morocco – both bombed big-time and just didn’t lure any punters in – which was really demoralising, as Dietrich is possibly my all-time favourite actresses and I'd hoped to make her films Lobotomy Room staples. In retrospect, the main reason the two earlier two screenings belly-flopped was because I hadn’t yet mastered the dark art of promoting them properly online – which is, to shell-out loads of money to Facebook every month to reach more people! Happily, Blonde Venus was a maximum-capacity, red-hot triumph! It restored my faith in the allure of Marlene Dietrich!]

Elvira: Mistress of the Dark (1988) – 28 October 2016

Embracing the spirit of Halloween, the October presentation is … Elvira: Mistress of the Dark (1988)! A gleefully low-brow, raunchy broad comedy starring buxom, beehive-haired horror movie hostess Elvira, the beloved cult figure for generations of punks, psychobillies, Goths and misfits of all description. In the film, Elvira inherits a haunted house en route to making her Las Vegas debut – but really, it’s all mainly an excuse for endless boob jokes. If you’re a fan of trashy eighties cinema or the humour of Pee-Wee Herman and John Waters, this is the Halloween movie of your (wet) dreams! 

Sextette (1978) – 23 November 2016

This month we’re really scraping the barrel with perhaps the WORST film we’ve screened to date – Mae West’s infamous final film Sextette (1978)! Think of it as an unintended camp classick – or a freaky Diane Arbus photograph come to life! Bewigged, carefully shot in ultra-soft-focus, virtually immobile and never making eye contact with any of her co-stars, West frequently looks like she has been mummified or taxidermied. Just how nuts was West? When West and [Timothy]Dalton duet on the Captain and Tennille soft rock hit “Love Will Keep Us Together” (did I mention Sextette is a musical?), West insisted the original lyric “young and beautiful / someday your looks will be gone” be changed to “young and beautiful / your looks will never be gone!” Gasp in astonishment at the mind-boggling Sextette – one of the most wildly misjudged films ever made! See the movie that made The New York Times declare, “Granny should have her mouth washed out with soap, along with her teeth!"

Pee-Wee’s Playhouse Christmas Special (1988) – 2 December 2016

Christen Christmas party season 2016 on a sweaty, desperate note – at Lobotomy Room! When we transform the Polynesian-style basement Bamboo Lounge of Dalston’s premiere Art Deco vice den Fontaine’s into Santa’s grotto! Friday 2 December! For the final festive and boozy Lobotomy Room of 2016, we’re combining the film club and the dance party! COME for the FREE screening of the most kitschy and campy of all seasonal TV specials – Pee-Wee Herman’s 1988 Playhouse Christmas Special! Watch agog as bow-tied perverse brat Pee-Wee welcomes a mind-boggling cavalcade of super star special guests to his playhouse - including queer favourites Grace Jones, Little Richard, Cher, Joan Rivers, Charo, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Oprah Winfrey and kd lang!

And so we conclude by coming full circle with Pee-Wee Herman. (His Christmas special is an annual festive tradition! Sadly, I’ve deduced from bitter experience that both Pee-Wee and Elvira – for me, beloved cult idols – just aren’t that well-known or appreciated in London judging by the tepid responses to the Halloween and Christmas screenings. And I blew a lot of money promoting these! For the most part, Brits – especially the millennials – just don’t know who they are!).

So - who knows what 2017 holds for Lobotomy Room Goes the Movies? The first film club of the New Year will be Wednesday 25 January and the title is yet to be determined. (An announcement will follow soon!). Some potential clues for upcoming selections: John Waters – the Peoples’ Pervert, revered Filth Elder and a holy religious figure for Lobotomy Room – celebrates his birthday in April. And June 2017 represents the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Lobotomy Room’s patron saint, definitive doomed Hollywood Babylon starlet Jayne Mansfield (19 April 1933 - 29 June 1967). You’d better believe we’re going to commemorate that! Suffice to say, I’ll be endeavouring to excavate more cinematic curios and oddities to titillate and corrupt! Follow me on Facebook here and/or here to keep informed.

Read more about Lobotomy Room Goes to the Movies in Loverboy magazine

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Lobotomy Room Goes to the Movies presents ... Sextette!

Lobotomy Room Goes to the Movies is the film club devoted to Bad Movies We Love (our motto: Bad Movies for Bad People), with an emphasis on the cult, the queer and the kitsch. This month we’re really scraping the barrel with perhaps the worst film we’ve screened to date – Mae West’s infamous final film Sextette (1978)! Wednesday 23 November in the basement Bamboo Lounge of Fontaine's! Think of it as an unintended camp classick – or a freaky Diane Arbus photograph come to life!

Full respect to screen legend Mae West (1893 – 1980): in her thirties heyday, she was a gleeful pioneer of sexual liberation and a true original who wrote all her own wisecracking material. West was also one hip cosmopolitan sister, drawing on African-American and queer subcultures for inspiration. By 1978 though the desiccated 84-year old diva was living in a seriously self-enchanted bubble (think Nora Desmond in Sunset Boulevard) with a seemingly shaky grasp on reality. 

Persuaded to make one last film, the geriatric sex kitten made zero concessions to her advanced age and cast herself as a much-lusted after bombshell surrounded by besotted male admirers (in some cases young enough to be her grandsons). Leading man is 34-year old Timothy Dalton as her husband -  50 years her junior.  (Presumably the future James Bond would love to burn every last negative of Sextette in existence! The truly oddball cast also includes Ringo Starr, Alice Cooper, Keith Moon, Tony Curtis and George Hamilton).

/ “She won’t be satisfied until she’s loved by all mankind - one man at a time!”/

Bewigged, carefully shot in ultra-soft-focus, virtually immobile and never making eye contact with any of her co-stars, West frequently looks like she has been mummified or taxidermied. Just how nuts was West? When West and Dalton duet on the Captain and Tennille soft rock hit “Love Will Keep Us Together” (did I mention Sextette is a musical?), West insisted the original lyric “young and beautiful / someday your looks will be gone” be changed to “young and beautiful / your looks will never be gone!” 

/ Any gerontophiles out there? /

Fun facts: Sextette is directed by Ken Hughes – who also directed sixties children’s classic Chitty Chitty Bang Bang! The awful musical numbers are choreographed by the same guy who did The Sound of Music and Mary Poppins! West’s gowns are by legendary Hollywood costume designer Edith Head! In the segment where West serenades a gang of semi-naked bodybuilders, some of the baby-oiled muscle men are alumni from the world of seventies gay porn! For everyone involved, Sextette represents the nadir of their careers!

/ Who's up for an evening of old-school muscle worship, Mae West style? /

Gasp in astonishment at the mind-boggling Sextette – one of the most wildly misjudged films ever made! See the movie that made The New York Times declare, “Granny should have her mouth washed out with soap, along with her teeth!"

Wednesday 23 November at Fontaine's. Admission: Free! Doors to the Bamboo Lounge open at 8 pm. Film starts at 8:30 pm. Arrive early, order your cockails and venture downstairs: I'll be projecting grainy black and white vintage homo porn and playing punk music before the film starts.

Events page

The trailer for Sextette:

Read more about celluloid atrocity Sextette here

Reflections on ... Kitten with a Whip (1964)

From the Lobotomy Room Goes to the Movie's Facebook events page for my 27 January 2016 screening of Kitten with a Whip:

Hey! Did you know about Fontaine’s FREE weekly film club? As winter draws in, how better to break the monotony on a Wednesday night than watch a FREE film, drink cocktails and eat canapés in the plush and intimate environs of Fontaine’s basement Bamboo Lounge? As host and DJ of the regular monthly Mondo Trasho punkabilly club night Lobotomy Room (last Friday of every month downstairs in the Bamboo Lounge!), I – Graham Russell - will occasionally crash the proceedings and screen a rancid film of my choice!

The featured presentation this month will be the ultra-lurid 1964 juvenile delinquent exploitation psychodrama Kitten with a Whip (1964) – starring quintessential atomic-era sex kitten-gone-berserk Ann-Margret. This sleazy little black and white B-movie urgently poses the question: why do the sweetest kittens have the sharpest claws? Fresh from cavorting with Elvis in Viva Las Vegas, red-headed vixen Ann-Margret plays a vicious teenage sociopath escaped from her high-security juvenile detention centre – who then takes hostage and torments straight-laced local politician John Forsythe in his palatial suburban dream house. (Yes – a cardigan-wearing and still dark-haired John Forsythe as in Dynasty’s silver fox Blake Carrington). From there, Ann-Margret’s gang of thug friends turn up – and things just get wilder!

Don’t miss this rare opportunity to catch this should-be cult classick and genuine curiosity: Kitten with a Whip is not available on DVD in this country and never crops up on TV. It’s got it all: a genuinely feral wild child performance from Ann-Margret at the height of her bad girl beauty, dramatic shadowy film noir photography, a finger-snapping Henry Mancini-style cool jazz score and cringe-worthy faux beatnik hepcat dialogue galore. (Samples: “Ooh! Everything’s so creamy! Kill me quick, I never had it so good!” “How come you think you’re such a smoky something when you’re so nothing painted blue?” “Now cool it, you creep, and co-exist!” “Hands off, buster! Don’t you ever bruise me ... God knows what I might do to you if you ever bruise me.”).

Perhaps the highest compliment of all? Kitten with a Whip is a sentimental favourite of John Waters’. (In 2011 he introduced a screening of it at Anthology Film Archives in New York). He’s described it as “almost like a Russ Meyer movie, an early one, only without as much tits” and reminisced, “Divine and I saw this movie together, definitely. Several times, actually. And he loved it, too. It was very much a big influence on us. And in 1964, I was a senior in high school, so on LSD, so angry, so insane, and so it came at one of the most insane periods of my life as far as being a disturbed teenager. I mean, we wanted to be Ann-Margret! Divine was my Kitten with a Whip, in a weird way.”

As usual: arrive circa 8 pm to order your drinks and grab the best seats. The film starts at 8:30 pm prompt!

/ John Forsythe and Ann-Margret in Kitten with a Whip (1964). Virtually all photos via  /

Happily, this was my most successful Lobotomy Room Goes to the Movies film night so far (well, it was only the third to date!). The basement Bamboo Lounge was full and the hip audience totally got the trashy magic of Kitten with a Whip. They were also drinking Fontaine’s potent cocktails – which probably contributed to their enjoyment. As they arrived and filed downstairs, I was already blasting Ann-Margret’s irresistible cocktail lounge 1960s tunes and had my grainy black and white vintage homo porn projected on the big screen just to add to the sleazy Lobotomy Room ambiance.

/ "She reached for evil with both hands ..." Believe it or not, Kitten with a Whip is a literary adaptation! It began life as a 1959 pulp novel by Wade Miller /

Kitten with a Whip is crying out to be discovered and embraced by a new generation. In an ideal world, it would be cherished as a cult film with rapt audiences repeating its endlessly quotable dialogue. Sure it is kitsch as hell (mainly due to its sensational tone and bludgeoning lack of subtlety), but it’s also a wildly entertaining, tightly-constructed, suspenseful little B-movie. It also anticipates both the “yuppie-in-peril” genre of the eighties (think After Hours, Something Wild [the Jonathon Demme film, not the 1961 Carroll Baker film!], even Desperately Seeking Susan) and the “home invasion” horror genre.

Even its occasional incompetence is fun. As Slant magazine points out (in a bit I have to admit I’ve missed despite repeated viewings!): “Toward the end, there's a lot of driving around in front of rear projection, and at one point, as Jody is at the wheel, there's no dashboard in front of her, as if somebody just forgot to put it there, and this signals the film's almost avant-garde ineptitude.”

/ "Luscious - and only seventeen ... she's all out for kicks ... and every inch of her spells excitement!" Original ad campaign for Kitten with a Whip in 1964. Seen today, that lecherous barely-legal / jail-bait angle looks pretty sordid! /

Mainly, though, I treasure Kitten with a Whip as an ideal vehicle for Ann-Margret, who I revere as a berserk mid-century sex kitten second only to Jayne Mansfield. After several musicals in a row [State Fair (1962), Bye Bye Birdie (1963) and Viva Las Vegas (1964)] which emphasised her considerable singing and dancing talents, Kitten with a Whip represented an opportunity to showcase the red-hot young Swedish-American starlet as a “serious” dramatic actress. And boy did she embrace it over-zealously! In fact you could say Ann-Margret sinks her claws into the role. The film is like a mouse she subjects to a full feline attack! 

Ann-Margret’s frenzied full-throttle performance as Jody is one long continuous mood-swing, temper tantrum or “glamour fit”. She is so genuinely feral using female animal comparisons feel obligatory: she evokes not just “kitten”, but “tigress”, “minx”, “vixen” or “lynx.” Ann-Margret’s cat-on-a-hot-tin-roof portrayal was savaged by critics at the time (the film’s commercial and critical failure threatened to torpedo her initially promising career) and then later more kindly reappraised as campy and so-bad-it’s-good – but in fact (in the tradition of similarly histrionic actresses like Elizabeth Taylor or Karen Black), she collapses hidebound conventional distinctions between “good” and “bad” acting. If Ann-Margret’s performance in Kitten is “bad”, it is fiercely, awesomely bad – and never dull for one second. (For me, her overripe, bravura acting contrasts beautifully with John Forsythe’s wooden, straight-laced approach). As Slant magazine’s Dan Callahan argued, watching her in Kitten “I was reminded of the novelist Manuel Puig, who was a mentor to my friend Bruce Benderson, and a famous routine he had about Ann-Margret. Whenever A-M came up, Puig would ruminate, very seriously, in his Argentine accent: “Ann-Margret! Sometimes you think she is a good actress, and sometimes you think she cannot act at all. Sometimes you think she is a good girl, and sometimes you think she is a total slut! Ann-Margret!” he would cry, and take a momentous pause. “She is anything but reassuring.””

Like Marianne Faithfull with Girl on a Motorcycle or Patti Duke with The Valley of The Dolls, Ann-Margret was apparently mortified by Kitten with a Whip, considering it one of the nadirs of her acting career. By the time I saw the then-64 year old durable show business veteran perform her sparkly cabaret revue at the now-demolished Stardust Casino in Las Vegas in 2005 (the show was a kitsch hallucinatory fever dream!), her attitude had seemingly softened. Reflecting on how as a young starlet her looks saw her typecast in bad girl roles, Ann-Margret joked,"I call it my Kitten with a Whip phase. Sometimes I still feel like that little kitten. It's just getting a little harder to crack the whip. But I still manage."

/ "Don’t you ever bruise me ... God knows what I might do to you if you ever bruise me.” /

Additional reading:

From the Shock Cinema website:

“On the heels of her show-stopping numbers with Elvis in Viva Las Vegas, Ann-Margret decided to take the low road with this no-budget, b&w melodrama: a surprisingly sleazy juvenile delinquent flick, with a killer performance from everyone's favourite sex kitten. John Forsythe stars as a suave, fat cat politician, whose palatial house is 'borrowed' by a bleach blonde cutie named Jody (Ann-M), dressed in nothing but a nightgown. Not unlike Goldilocks, Forsythe discovers Jody napping in his bed, and the guy is mildly intrigued by this disheveled dish with the crazy curves. And (since his wife is conveniently away) Forsythe's sympathy goes out to the teen when she tells him she a runaway from an abusive home. But he quickly learns that Jody's not your ordinary jailbait. She's on the run from the cops, after breaking out of a detention home, setting fire to the place and stabbing a guard. And pretty soon the tables are turned, with Ann-M playing mind games on the increasingly nervous dweeb and threatening Forsythe with rape charges. A few thrill-crazy (though unbelievably clean cut) hoods join the party and provide a smidgen of bloodshed, but Ann (as well as the viewer) quickly gets bored with their cretinous hijinx, and she eventually dumps the punks and takes Forsythe on a Mexican joy ride... Lemme tell you, this flick is without a doubt the finest showcase of Ann-Margret's talents. She's a tough, no-nonsense bitch, using sex 'n' a smile to get what she wants, and this harder edge makes her more alluring than ever. When she snarls and brandishes the broken end of a whiskey bottle -- well, I think I'm in love. Plus, Forsythe is such a cardboard clod, overflowing with morality, that you can't help but enjoy watching her make him squirm. Douglas Heyes' direction is cheap but energetic, complete with an endless supply of hip dialogue and a no-compromise finale that had me cheering. Kitten is a much-loved, vicious li'l B-movie with Ann-Margret proving once and for all that she's a slut goddess extraordinaire." 

Excerpts from John Waters discussing Kitten with a Whip in Interview magazine in 2011:

“[Ann-Margret] never looked greater. She is fucking gorgeous in this movie. When I was young, I had movie posters in my house everywhere. Now, in only one place where I live do I have a movie poster, and it's Kitten with a Whip.”

On Kitten’s reputation as a terrible “bad movie we love”/ "so bad it's good"-type film:

“I think it's not one bit terrible. It reminds me of a film noir. It's almost like a Russ Meyer movie, an early one, only without as much tits. There was a whole bunch of movies from that period that started with people in turmoil, like with someone breaking into a house. You know what I mean? Like Lady in a Cage, or Penthouse—all these movies about juvenile delinquents taking over. And I think it was a period when a lot of movie stars tried to make these arty ones. Carroll Baker made a movie called Something Wild. There was a movie that I really love called A Cold Wind in August ... They were these early-'60s art films that were American, but yet were made with movie stars that wanted to be cutting-edge and prove they could act rather than be sex kittens.

“Look, it's a great film, and you know I'm screening this film not as a camp movie, but as an undiscovered art movie that people should see for real ... Kitten never became a midnight movie. It might be too arty to be a midnight movie, although I can imagine people standing up and shouting out some of that dialogue. It's just an art film that fell through the cracks, and has a title that is notorious, basically. And that poster is notorious. It's a movie that takes itself fairly seriously.”

/ "She's all out for kicks! And every inch of her spells excitement!" /

Waters nails perhaps one key to Kitten’s failure at the time: it’s made in ’64, but feels like a 1950s film. [You could easily imagine it made in the mid-fifties with Mamie Van Doren as Jody, with only minimal changes].

“It's fun to watch Ann-Margret be a juvenile delinquent, all juvenile delinquent movies are fun, but this is a juvenile delinquent movie too late. Because those movies were in the 50s. This is a 50s movie made too late. When the neighbours show up, it's very Douglas Sirk. That's very Magnificent Obsession.”

Read the essential Dreams Are What Le Cinema is For blog's analysis of Kitten with a Whip here.

Think of Kitten with a Whip as being sandwiched between two other essential Ann-Margret films ...

/ Above: Viva Las Vegas (1964) /

/ Above: Tommy (1975) /

The next Lobotomy Room Goes to The Movies film club is Wednesday 24 February 2016. Details below:

Hey! Did you know about Fontaine’s FREE weekly film club? How better to break the monotony on a bleak wintry Wednesday night than watch a FREE film, drink cocktails and eat canapés in the plush and intimate environs of Fontaine’s basement Bamboo Lounge? As host and DJ of the regular monthly Mondo Trasho punkabilly club night Lobotomy Room (last Friday of every month downstairs in the Bamboo Lounge!), I – Graham Russell - will occasionally crash the proceedings and screen a rancid film of my choice!

Considering Valentine’s Day falls this month, February’s selection is a love story. But bear in mind this is, after all, Lobotomy Room Goes to the Movies – so the love story is a twisted, high camp tale of amour fou. In Morocco (1930) – directed by visionary maestro of kinky exotica Josef Von Sternberg – dissolute nightclub chanteuse and woman of mystery Amy Jolly (German screen diva Marlene Dietrich in her sensational Hollywood debut) finds herself adrift in North Africa and caught in a love triangle, torn between a handsome amoral Foreign Légionnaire (lanky young Gary Cooper at the height of his beauty) and a wealthy playboy (Adolphe Menjou. Perversely, Menjou is meant to represent Von Sternberg himself – who in his complex off-screen relationship with the bisexual Dietrich stoically stood by and watched her seduce legions of men and women both). Depending on your sensibility, Morocco culminates in an ending which you’ll either find irresistibly romantic or totally absurd. Either way, the film is a blast!

Morocco represents the first glimpse American audiences got of Marlene Dietrich (she and Von Sternberg had already triumphed with the German filmThe Blue Angel (1930) but it wasn’t released in the US until afterwards. They ultimately made seven movies together – each one a wild, decadent masterpiece!). It’s a chance to see the origins of the Dietrich myth. Morocco is the film in which she first famously donned a man’s top hat and tails, a daringly butch look which would become her signature. Morocco is also significant in terms of queer cinema history for the notorious musical number in which Dietrich – in male drag – nonchalantly kisses a female audience member on the lips. All these decades later, the scene still feels taboo and transgressive.

Note! The management of Fontaine’s says: drag up as Marlene Dietrich on the night, get a free drink!

Film starts at 8:30 pm prompt! Show up circa 8 pm to order drinks, food and grab the best seating! I’ll be blasting Marlene Dietrich tunes LOUD as you arrive.

Events page

/ Above: Marlene Dietrich in femme mode as Amy Jolly in Morocco (1930) /

The next Lobotomy Room club night is Friday 26 February. Details here /