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 ... Honky Tonk Nights (1978)

 

Recently watched: no-budget shitkicker exploitation flick Honky Tonk Nights (1978). Tagline: “Drinkin' ... Lovin' ... Fightin' ... and Cussin'. Those were the nights. Those Honky Tonk Nights.” Synopsis via The Grindhouse Cinema Database: “Dreaming of Nashville while singing at a rowdy tavern, a stripper-turned-songstress fends off male patrons while the owner battles shady businessmen.” 

Truthfully, Honky Tonk Nights is virtually unwatchable by any objective standards, but as an accurate time capsule of 1970s drive-in or grindhouse fare, it’s exemplary. Set in the low-end of country music dive bars, it offers 71-minutes of barroom brawls and fistfights (if you like seeing chairs smashed over peoples’ heads, THIS is the movie for you), car chases and car crashes (and motorcycle chases and motorcycle crashes), a wall-to-wall soundtrack of Country & Western music of wildly varying quality that quickly grows numbing, softcore sex scenes and copious female nudity (women routinely start undressing mid-conversation with  no apparent reason). Honky Tonk Nights' pungent ambiance of sleaze and murky 1970s porn vibe is perhaps inevitable - director Charles Webb mainly specialized in X-rated films (and the cast includes noted golden age of porn performers like Georgina Spelvin and Serena. For verisimilitude, esteemed American folk singer Ramblin’ Jack Elliott also crops up). 

San Francisco’s iconic topless go-go dancer Carol Doda (1937 - 2015) stars as heroine Belle Barnette. “Winner of the 1979 Dolly Parton lookalike contest!” the poster promises. Doda certainly shares Parton’s physical attributes and penchant for cotton candy wigs, but regrettably not her on-screen charisma (at least as evidenced here) or musical ability. And anyway, Doda vanishes from the action for long stretches. (For such a short movie, Honky Tonk Nights is overburdened with subplots and supporting characters). In conclusion: if you want an exposé into the realm of country music, stick with Robert Altman’s Nashville (1975). Honky Tonks Nights is free to watch on Amazon Prime and YouTube.

Happy 60th Anniversary to Promises ... Promises! (1963)

 “The movie is a bedroom farce about a writer (Tommy Noonan) and his wife (Jayne) who are on a cruise with their friends, a famous actor (Mickey Hargitay) and his wife (Marie “The Body” McDonald). Tommy and Jayne want to have a baby, and Jayne takes various concoctions cooked up by the ship’s doctor. Tommy, who believes he is sterile, also drinks potency potions. There is a bedroom mix-up, a female impersonator who does Tallulah Bankhead imitations and two short sequences of Jayne thrashing about in bed bra-less, having disturbing dreams. It was because of these sequences that the movie was only shown in “art” theatres. Jet Fore, who was publicist for the movie, had erotic posters of Jayne printed up with a lot of words about the first time ever au naturel for a major star. Each sequence lasts about thirty seconds and bears no relation to the rest of the film which is as clean as a troop of Girl Scouts … In Promises … Promises! Jayne, wearing wedgies and skin-tight pedal pushers, straddles an open door and rubs her calf suggestively up and down against it. One expects the door to moan. It was theatre of sex at its most laughable.”

/ From Jayne Mansfield and the American Fifties by Martha Saxton, 1975 /

“It was at this point that Jayne made the most inexplicable, self-destructive move of her career, one that tipped her over from fading star to unemployable dirty joke. Actually, it was two moves: she agreed to star in the cheesy softcore porn film Promises … Promises! and to pose topless for Playboy … Why did Jayne agree to do nude scenes and in such a cheap film? She was not stupid or naïve when it came to show business – she had to have known no major studio would star her after this, and that family-friendly TV would be off-limits. But she had to work, even if she was a big nude fish in a small scummy pond.”

/ From Jayne Mansfield: The Girl Couldn’t Help It by Eve Golden, 2021 /

Today in smut history: the notorious Jayne Mansfield "nudie" movie Promises … Promises! was released sixty years ago (15 August 1963). It definitively ended the "reputable" part of her career.

Reflections on ... my podcasting debut!

 

Hear me rant like a lunatic on my podcasting debut! 

The suave host of the Soho Bites podcast attended the 15 July 2021 Lobotomy Room film club screening of British sexploitation b-movie Too Hot to Handle (1960) at Fontaine’s bar and afterwards we discussed the film, the club, Jayne Mansfield, the representation of Soho onscreen – it’s divoon! And when he calls me “sleazy evil genius” in the introduction, I feel seen!

Listen to the episode of Soho Bites here.

Read my reflections on Too Hot to Handle here. 

Reflections on ... The Female Bunch (1969)

 

Recently watched: The Female Bunch (1969). Tagline: “They dare to do what other women only dream about!” I’m using this period of enforced social isolation to explore the weirder corners of YouTube for long forgotten and obscure movies. (My boyfriend is accompanying me only semi-willingly). 

Naïve young Las Vegas cocktail waitress Sandy (Nesa Renet) is fed up with men and through with hurting. In fact, Sandy is so distraught after the failure of her romance with a lounge singer that she overdoses on pills. Luckily, she’s rescued by her glamorous blonde go-go dancer friend Libby (Regina Carrol). And Libby knows the solution to Sandy’s problems. Blindfolding her first, Libby drives Sandy to a secret, isolated Californian ranch, the premises of a cult-like all-female community of hardened man-hating feminists. “We are completely independent of men!” thunders Grace (Jennifer Bishop), the sadistic and alienated leader of these female supremacists. This being a late sixties sexploitation film, this pack of misandrists still resemble off-duty strippers or glamour models, complete with heavy dark eye make-up, ratted-up bouffant wiglets and cleavage-flaunting wardrobes straight out of a Frederick’s of Hollywood catalogue. Once Sandy passes the terrifying initiation ritual (she’s buried alive in a coffin), she’s a fully paid-up member of “the sisterhood.” Before long, though, the in-over-her-head Sandy learns of the women’s criminal activity (they’re smuggling heroin over the Mexican border) and penchant for psychotic violence. Can she escape from their clutches in one piece? 

As this synopsis suggests, exploitation Western The Female Bunch shares DNA with Russ Meyer’s Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965) in which a trio of vicious go-go dancers embark on a homicidal crime spree in the desert. A z-grade grindhouse hack, director Al Adamson is no Meyer: his film-making is functional rather than dementedly inspired, but he does sustain an atmosphere of cruelty and sweaty urgency. Don’t expect much character development or motivation. For example, once the ultra-militant feminist amazons cross the Mexican border and start downing tequila in a taverna, within no time they are literally rolling around naked on the sawdust floor getting pawed by male admirers in an orgiastic bacchanal. So hetero-normative! So much for “man-hating!” Valerie Solanas would be vomiting with rage! (To be fair, only one of the gang members is overtly delineated as lesbian). 

In truth, the real-life behind-the-scenes stories surrounding The Female Bunch are considerably more interesting than anything that unfolds onscreen. The cast includes two genuine down-on-their-luck Hollywood stars presumably hungry for work (Lon Chaney Jr and Russ Tamblyn). Notoriously, The Female Bunch was filmed on location at the Spahn Ranch in the summer of 1969 - when it was inhabited by The Manson Family! Perhaps the most striking member of the female gang is statuesque redhead Sadie, played by Aleshia Brevard (billed here as A’lesha Lee). Brevard enjoyed a lengthy career on the margins of show business as a film, stage and TV actress, Playboy playmate, model and nightclub entertainer – and was a transgender pioneer. She kept her gender reassignment surgery a secret until 2001 when she released her autobiography The Woman I Was Not Born to Be. (She died in 2017 aged 79). As Libby, the magnetic Regina Carrol nails one of my favourite sixties bad girl looks (disheveled teased mane of peroxide hair, frosted white lipstick). Carrol was married to the director, and tragically died of cancer aged just 49.  And finally, Al Adamson was gruesomely murdered aged 66 in 1995 (his live-in handyman killed him after a dispute and “entombed” the corpse under cement where the jacuzzi used to be. The LA Times headline screamed: “Horror Film Director Found Slain, Buried Under Floor”).

 

The Female Bunch is free to view on Amazon Prime

Reflections on ... Passport to Shame (1958)

Recently watched: Passport to Shame (1958), a tense, irresistibly trashy black-and-white British b-movie that aims to expose the scourge of prostitution rings in London. Tagline: “EXPOSED! The Shame of London Vice!” Alternate American title: Room 43. I was already enticed just by the RadioTimes description (“a cheap, tawdry and utterly fascinating piece of vintage sexploitation”) – and it didn’t disappoint!

You know Passport is going to be good when it commences with an unintentionally hilarious “what you’re about to see” public service announcement, with lawman Fabian of the Yard earnestly addressing the camera to warn us about this “blight” on society. (He employs the now rarely-heard word “seamy” – let’s bring that back!). The putative lead actress is Odile Versois as protagonist Malou, the naïve French girl unwittingly lured into white slavery. But Malou is a wan and tiresome one-dimensional victim (and saddled with a terrible ponytail wiglet).

Instead, Passport is comprehensively stolen by 26-year old Diana Dors - British cinema’s reigning bad girl - at her pouting sex goddess zenith in a secondary role as fellow prostitute Vicki. Dors is given a fabulous introduction on a busy street at night. The camera lovingly pans up from her stiletto heels, to her skin-tight white pencil skirt before settling on her platinum blonde mane. A male passerby grabs Vicki by the elbow to stop her from stepping off the curb into a puddle. “You almost wound up in the gutter!” he exclaims, and Dors gives him a knowing smirk before swiveling away. (An interesting visual shorthand: virtuous Malou typically wears full skirts with crinolines, while Dors and the other "working girls" hobble around in painted-on pencil skirts).

 

I’d assumed the action would occur in the vicinity of Soho, but in fact Passport’s locale is mainly situated around Bayswater. Anyway, Passport is swathed in moody film noir-style lighting and boasts some exceptional performances. Craggy-faced tough guy Eddie Considine is the Canadian cabdriver with a heart of gold determined to save Malou’s virtue. Brenda de Banzie as Aggie the brothel madam suggests a malevolent, fro frou and British-accented version of Ethel Mertz from I Love Lucy, and Herbert Lom exudes menace as sleazeball pimp Nick. (Boy, does he not appreciate being reminded of his humble origins in the East End!). Passport reaches a crazed climax when – in a moment worthy of Reefer Madness – an unsuspecting Malou smokes marijuana (she assumes it’s a regular cigarette) and proceeds to have a berserk German Expressionist nightmare.

/ Below: bonus cheesecake shot of Dors. In the film itself, we only get a fleeting glimpse of Vicki wearing this sexy lingerie but Passport to Shame's publicity material seemed to focus on it! / 

Reflections on ... Good Morning ... and Goodbye! (1967)

Recently watched: Good Morning … and Goodbye! (1967), a juicy, lurid and raunchy family melodrama concerned with the pain of adultery and the serious, genuine psychological condition of nymphomania, directed by visionary maestro of sexploitation and “the rural Fellini”, Russ Meyer. (Tagline: “For those who measure success only in the hours before the morning light!”).

/ This promotional photo is strange: that's Alaina Capri and Haji - but I'm pretty sure the blonde on the right does not appear in Good Morning ... and Goodbye? She certainly isn't the third female lead, Karen Ciral /

As the very chatty narrator (who comments on the action throughout) opines, “All of the characters are identifiable, perhaps even familiar. And perchance you may view the mirror of your own soul!” Cuckolded impotent Burt (Stuart Lancaster, the wheelchair-bound old man in Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!) is tormented by the rampant, wanton infidelities of his much-younger cat-on-a-hot-tin-roof trophy wife Angel (Alaina Capri). Meanwhile, his sexpot teenage daughter Lana (Karen Ciral) is itching to lose her virginity and casting around for a likely candidate …

As per usual with Meyer, expect an emphasis on eye-popping heaving décolletage, titillating glimpses of near-nudity, outrageously verbose “hepcat” dialogue, spontaneous bursts of frantic go-go dancing, skinny-dipping, fist fights, muscle cars (Angel speeds-around in the most magnificent low-slung matte gold Cadillac DeVille convertible) and male beefcake (for a resolutely hetero and breast-fixated filmmaker, Meyer’s camera was a surprisingly equal opportunity lech. The “well-developed” frequently shirtless male eye candy here - Patrick Wright and Don Johnson - could have stepped straight out of a 1960s homoerotic Athletic Model Guild physique pictorial). In addition, the fabulous Haji (the volcanic Latina go-go dancer Rosie from Faster, Pussycat!) inexplicably pops-up as a mystical forest-dwelling semi-nude … what would you call her? A sorceress? A sprite? A wood nymph? Anyway, she represents “passion and sex exploding a scent of musk and earth that surrounds her body like a mist. She is a honeycomb with no takers, a witch that can fly only one night a year!”

But Good Morning truly belongs to the sin-sational Alaina Capri as hot-pool-of-woman-need Angel, breathlessly described as "a lush cushion of evil perched on the throne of immorality … a monument to unholy carnality, and a cesspool of marital pollution, a shameless, brazen, bulldozing female prepared to humiliate, provoke, and tantalize, savagely seeking the tranquilizer of unrestrained fulfillment". Snarling her acidic dialogue in the flattest, most sullen tones imaginable from beneath a mane of teased bouffant hair and resembling a debauched Barbara Parkins (Anne Welles from Valley of the Dolls), Capri is a trampy bitch goddess extraordinaire. In an ideal world she would be as celebrated as other Meyer leading ladies like Tura Satana or Erica Gavin. Good Morning … and Goodbye! just may be Meyer’s most underrated work.

In conclusion: Good Morning ... and Goodbye! is apparently so obscure and forgotten by 2020 that when I searched online for representative high-resolution images to illustrate this blog post, I came up with almost nothing decent. There are no good pin-ups of Alaina Capri online either. How disappointing!

Further reading:

My reflections on Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965)

My reflections on Vixen (1968)

Reflections on ... Seeds (1968)

Seeds (1968). Tagline: “Sowed in Incest! Harvested in Hate!” I’m using this period of enforced social isolation to explore the weirder corners of YouTube for long forgotten and obscure movies. (My boyfriend Pal is accompanying me only semi-willingly). 

I’ve recently been delving into the filmography of notorious gutter auteur and cult figure Andy Milligan (1929 - 1991). Milligan is frequently derided as one of the worst directors of all time but judging by Seeds at least, that assessment is unwarranted. A mind-boggling true cinematic atrocity, Seeds offers a frenzied study in depravity and should be catnip for aficionados of John Waters and the Kuchar brothers. 

Tyrannical alcoholic invalid Claris Manning is enraged to discover that her youngest daughter Carol has invited her long-estranged siblings over for Christmas. The ill-fated family reunion that ensues rapidly descends into a journey into hell, with bed-hopping, ugly vitriolic emotional confrontations and suicide. Even worse: a serial killer begins picking off the family members one by one as the weekend proceeds. 

Words like “toxic” and “dysfunctional” barely scratch the surface of this ultra-perverse bad taste psychodrama.  Everything coalesces to administer a rude shock: insanely melodramatic music surges on the soundtrack, the actors screech their dialogue as if their lives depend on it, and Milligan hurls his camera right into the fray, using low angles to maintain maximum claustrophobia. There’s also copious nudity (bare breasts and glimpses of pubic hair of the female variety. Considering Milligan was gay, ideally, we would have seen more male flesh!). 

As Claris the venomous wheelchair-bound matriarch twisted by hate, Maggie Rogers should be embraced as a hagsploitation icon. Seated at the head of the dinner table, she exclaims to her offspring, “There isn’t anyone sitting at this table I’d give two cents for!” followed by  “Well, you’ve ruined my life and I’ve just ruined yours!” When one of her daughters timidly suggests, “I wish you’d have some food, mother …” Claris roars, “You know I hate FOOD!” Watch Seeds and ask yourself: what kind of tormented mind dreamed this up? 

Watch Seeds here:

Note: the digitally remastered director's cut of Seeds is also available on Blu-ray and DVD via the reliably excellent Vinegar Syndrome.

Read more about Andy Milligan here.