Reflections on ... Nancy & Lee in Las Vegas (1973)

This unexpectedly downbeat hour-long cinema verité-style Swedish film (made in 1973 but shelved until 1975) documents pop duo Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood’s residency at The Riviera Hotel. It instantly entranced me with its opening travelogue footage of early seventies Las Vegas in all its garish splendor. Filmed from a car window, we pass Vegas Vic the iconic neon cowboy followed by tantalizing peeks at the old-school mid-century casinos (mostly now long demolished): The Golden Nugget. The Sands. Caesars Palace. The Mint. Judging by one billboard, Sinatra’s friend and former leading man Elvis Presley is also in town, starring at the Las Vegas Hilton. But the tone is surprisingly wistful and suffused with melancholy from the start. One of the first things you hear is Sinatra’s voice complaining, “I wanna go home. I wanna go home to LA.” 

Nancy & Lee in Las Vegas is ultimately a contemplation on the cruel whims of show business, capturing Sinatra and Hazlewood on a downturn. With their heady hit-making days of the mid-sixties (heralded by the tough, sassy “These Boots are Made for Walkin’” in 1965) behind them, they are now considered passé and obligated to hustle as a nostalgia act. (Sinatra has recalled perceptively and without bitterness in the past about how in the late sixties, youth culture tastes shifted towards a preference for “serious” rock bands, making go-go booted girl singers in general and Sinatra’s brand of kitschy pop instantly obsolete. Alongside the disparate likes of Bobbie Gentry, Serge Gainsbourg and Yma Sumac, Hazlewood and Sinatra were among the acts rehabilitated in the nineties “loungecore” movement when their back catalogue was reissued on CD. They’ve been a hip reference point ever since). 

Their names may be displayed in lights and they’re headlining at the glittering high-end Riviera, but the film doesn’t make a Las Vegas residency appear glamorous. Nor is it particularly lucrative. Choreographer Hugh Lambert (Sinatra’s handsome and supportive husband, who is producing and directing her Riviera revue) confides that - initially at least - mounting the whole enterprise is so expensive it’s a money-losing venture for them. (The implication is that performing in Vegas will put Sinatra back on the map). Even Sinatra’s two bodyguards admit they are being paid peanuts for this gig. 

The focus shuttles between performance footage and backstage scenes of the musicians and entourage relaxing pre-and post-show in Sinatra’s ritzy green-and-white dressing room. They kvetch over cigarettes and beer about the indifferent audiences who talk over the songs, hostile reviews and The Riviera’s jaded and uninspired house band.  Sinatra’s between song patter onstage is surprisingly negative. She delivers a diatribe about how when she first began recording in the early sixties, people sniped that her surname bestowed her with an unfair advantage and guaranteed success. But all of her pre-“Boots” singles flopped, she snaps, so clearly it was the songs that mattered, not her family connections. Then she recalls how collaborating with songwriter and producer Lee Hazlewood changed her fortunes, resulting in a string of hits - except then he “abandoned” her to relocate to Sweden. Following that introduction, Hazlewood joins her for some duets. For connoisseurs of Lee and Nancy’s sublime “country exotica” oeuvre, these performances, including “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’”, “Did You Ever?” “Summer Wine”, “Jackson” and “Arkansas Coal” (so hushed and dramatic it’s almost performance art) offer the documentary’s highlights.   

“Psychedelic cowboy” Hazlewood gets a solo spot during the set (presumably while Sinatra changes costumes). Clad in double denim leisure wear, Hazlewood somehow looks even more seedy sans his trademark retro porn star ‘tache. His strange charisma is nicely captured as he croons a finger snappin’ rendition of the jazz standard “She’s Funny That Way.” At the end he ad libs “She’s kinda squirrelly that way. She’s kinda goofy that way. She’s kinda Nancy that way …” Sinatra herself is diminutive and doll-like. Backstage, she seems exhausted. Onstage, she’s luminous. At one point, we watch Sinatra seated before her dressing room mirror dreamily teasing and then meticulously smoothing her mane of golden hair. Nancy Sinatra was never more beautiful.

/ This candid shot of Sinatra chilling with "gal pals" Liza Minnelli and Goldie Hawn was clearly taken in the same Riviera dressing room /

Watch Nancy & Lee in Las Vegas here.

Reflections on ... Rocco and His Brothers (1960)

/ Alain Delon and Annie Girardot in Rocco and His Brothers (1960) /

Recently watched: Italian art cinema virtuoso Luchino Visconti’s ambitious epic (177-minute!) tragedy Rocco and His Brothers (1960). In his review, critic Roger Ebert summarizes Rocco and His Brothers as “operatic” and “homoerotic” – both descriptions are apt! What greater recommendation is there? 

Led by widowed matriarch Rosaria, the Parondi family relocates from grinding poverty in the rural south to urban industrialized north (in this case, Milano) in search of better prospects. Instead, all they find is relentless catastrophe. And the options for the brothers seem limited to boxing or crime. 

Like his contemporary Pier Paolo Pasolini, Visconti had a superior “queer eye” when it came to casting handsome male actors. All five Parondi brothers are stone cold stunners – particularly beauteous young Alain Delon as Rocco. (We get ample opportunity to ogle the brothers wearing the de rigueur Italian neo-realism white “wife beater” vests, sparring in the boxing ring and showering). In terms of homoeroticism: also note the corrupt boxing promoter and how he is coded as vaguely sexually predatory (especially the scene where he walks into the gym’s changing room and stares frankly at Simone and Rocco as they shower. Although I can’t say I blame him). 

/ The memorable shower sequence in Rocco and His Brothers /

But arguably, the film is dominated by Annie Girardot as local prostitute Nadia, the Parondis’ new neighbour. Encountering the glamorous, sensual and insouciant Nadia throws a hand grenade into the family’s life, with both deeply flawed Simone (Renato Salvatori – magnificent in this complex and demanding anti-hero role) and Rocco falling hopelessly in love with her. Inevitably, heartbreak and death ensue. (As someone laments towards the end, “Christ will regret the suffering visited upon us!”). 

 / Annie Girardot and Renato Salvatori as the doomed couple in Rocco and His Brothers /

Perhaps understandably, Rosaria is prone to glancing skyward despairingly and calling Nadia a “putana.” (This archetypal black-clad Italian peasant mamma is actually played by volatile Greek actress Katina Paxinou. And Delon and Girardot are, of course, French actors playing Italian characters – and dubbed by Italian voices. Watch also for gorgeous young starlet Claudia Cardinale in a supporting role). I’m embarrassed to admit I wasn’t very au fait with Annie Girardot (1931 - 2011) beforehand but judging by her heart-wrenching performance here she was every bit the equal of other iconic European art cinema actresses like Jeanne Moreau, Anna Magnani and Monica Vitti. Time hasn’t blunted the impact of Rocco and His Brothers.

The Lobotomy Room Test Kitchen ... Ann-Margret's Cookies

 

Ann-Margret is many things. A consummate entertainer. A “triple threat” (actress, singer and dancer). A sex kitten par excellence. An enthusiast of sequins. One thing she most definitely ain’t: a reliable recipe source. I attempted to make the redheaded vixen’s seemingly straightforward cookie recipe – and let’s just say it turned into a total hot mess!

My learnings: I bought North American style measuring cups rather than Googling the equivalent of every ingredient in grams. From my research: if you see the term “shortening” in an American recipe, replace with butter.  Granulated sugar and caster sugar are the same thing. “Chocolate morsels” and chocolate chips are also the same thing, and a 12-ounce package of chocolate chips (American) is pretty much the same as a 100-gram package (UK). Morrisons (my local grocery store of choice) didn’t have chopped pecans in stock, so I replaced them with a packet of chopped mixed nuts. 

I followed Ann-Margret’s instructions to the letter and carefully dolloped-out small “rounded teaspoon fulls” of the cookie batter onto a foil-lined baking tray. So far, so good. They are meant to create 100 (!) 2-inch cookies. I manged about 28 teaspoon-sized dollops onto the baking tray, so resolved to bake them in batches. But once in the oven, my cookies instantly swelled and “spread-out”, ultimately forming one giant mass and after 15-minutes (considerably longer than A-M instructs), they were still squidgy and under-cooked! (But smelled amazing). So, I left them in for a further 15-minutes until they were firmer and more of a golden-brown shade. Once it cooled I wound-up cutting this wodge of solid cookie into irregular “squares.” I mean, they taste like intensely sweet and delicious chocolate chip cookies (of course they’re delicious: their primary ingredients are butter and sugar) but they don’t look remotely like what I was expecting.  Same thing happened with the second batch. When I was scraping-out the last of the batter from the mixing bowl, the “cookie dots” became smaller – and those final cookies didn’t spread-out and flatten but remained individual circles. So that was the solution – take that “rounded teaspoon” of batter and reduce by half! 

In conclusion: little kids can make chocolate chip cookies. I’m a middle-aged experienced cook and I botched these. File under: never again!

Further reading

My recollections of seeing Ann-Margret perform at The Stardust casino in Las Vegas in 2005.

Reflections on ... Inconceivable (2017)

 

Recently watched: Inconceivable (2017). Tagline: “The perfect family. Perfect friends. A perfect surrogate”. I’m using this period of enforced social isolation to explore the weirder corners of YouTube and Amazon Prime for long forgotten and obscure movies. (My boyfriend is accompanying me only semi-willingly).

This amusingly preposterous low-budget pregnancy-themed melodrama stars Nicolas Cage, Gina Showgirls Gershon and veteran scary diva par excellence Faye Dunaway. I know what you’re thinking - what a cast! Except it could have been even better! One of the lead roles (manipulative villainess Katie) was originally conceived for messy Hollywood bad girl Lindsay Lohan! (The studio demurred and Nicky Whelan, a nondescript Australian soap opera actress, played the part instead). With Lohan starring, Inconceivable would probably be embraced today as a minor modern cult favourite like Lohan’s I Know Who Killed Me (2007) rather than wholly forgotten. 

Anyway, Inconceivable cleaves very faithfully to the well-trodden conventions of eighties and nineties psycho-biddy psychological thrillers like The Hand that Rocks the Cradle and Single White Female (or in fact, The Temp which starred Dunaway herself!), but with the generic made-for-TV appearance of a Hallmark or Lifetime production. Cage and Gershon are Brian and Angela, an affluent middle-aged married couple who seemingly have it all – but struggle with infertility problems and crave another baby. They are susceptible, then, when seemingly innocent mysterious young single mother (and potential surrogate) Katie insinuates herself into their household. The only person suspicious of Katie’s intentions is Dunaway as Brian’s patrician mother. 

Points of interest: Nicolas Cage's ink-y jet black dye job gives him that that aging male Goth look suggestive of late-period Nick Cave or Marilyn Manson. And his indifferent performance couldn’t be more “phoned-in.” Gershon does most of the heavy lifting in terms of acting and at least tries to muster some identifiable human emotions. Obviously, the mere presence of the imperious La Dunaway adds instant camp appeal to any film she appears in. She apparently broke her leg just before production, so the director compensates by only filming Dunaway sitting down. You never see her standing or walking at any point. Somehow this immobility contributes to Dunaway’s stateliness. In the spirit of chivalry, I won't comment on Dunaway’s plastic surgery choices, but the huge equine veneers on her teeth do make her slur and lisp her lines. 

Fun facts: Inconceivable was filmed at the breakneck speed of just fifteen days and was scripted by Zoe King – the daughter of trash auteur Zalmon King, responsible for 1980s softcore faux-erotica like Wild Orchid (1989) starring Mickey Rourke. Inconceivable represented filmmaker Jonathan Baker’s directorial debut – and perhaps unsurprisingly, he’s never been entrusted with making a follow-up since. A nice example of Baker’s judgement: in an act of vanity, he made the executive decision to cast himself in a supporting role. Baker’s grandiose IMDb profile begins “Jonathan Baker has always been enthralled by smart storytelling and larger-than-life figures, taking inspiration from greats like Ernest Hemingway to guide his own sensibilities as a writer, producer, director and adventurer.” One of his personal quotes claims “I can wave my hand and make the impossible happen.” As the damning Hollywood Reporter review concludes: “the aptly titled Inconceivable is something that both Nicolas Cage and Faye Dunaway will want to leave off their filmographies, and at this point that’s saying something.” Inconceivable is FREE to view on Amazon Prime – as it should be!

Reflections on ... Of Love and Desire (1963)

 

Recently watched: Of Love and Desire (1963). Tagline: “If you are an adult in every sense of the word, you will probably understand about Katherine and Paul – and why there were so many men in her life!” 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).  

When smolderingly handsome American civil engineer Steve Corey (Steve Cochran) lands his private plane in Mexico City to work for the mine owned by wealthy industrialist Paul Beckman (Curd Jurgens) and his half-sister Katherine (Merle Oberon), Bill Maxton - the man Corey is replacing - is quick to tip him off about Katherine. "All you have to do is touch her! She goes off like fireworks!” he leers. “There were plenty of guys before me - and there'll be plenty after me." After encountering her at a chichi cocktail party (complete with a mariachi band and female guests all wearing bouffant Jacqueline Kennedy-style helmet hair), Corey is indeed sucked into Katherine’s voracious sexual web. Maybe it’s the dramatic way she descends the staircase, or how she inscrutably murmurs, “I may look like champagne – but deep down I’m scotch and soda.” Their first date, though, is cataclysmic. When it comes for the goodnight kiss, Katherine lunges at Corey’s mouth, pawing him while hungrily gasping, “Please! Please!” then takes offence at his startled response. “Did I give in too fast for you?” she demands. “Didn’t I play the game right? I didn’t set the stage right, did I? I should have turned off the lights! Put on soft music! I should have pretended longer, but just how much longer? One hour? Two?! Just what do you need to make you feel like I’m a conquest?!” 

Despite Katherine’s whiplash mood swings, transparent neediness and “scarlet” past, gallant Corey is no slut shamer and finds himself genuinely falling in love with this troubled temptress. “I like you,” he assures. “I think you deserve to be treated like a woman.” (Is Katherine glamorously neurotic? Neurotically glamorous? You be the judge!). The sun rises and church bells toll as they make love for the first time. But what’s the deal with Katherine and Paul’s oddball relationship? At the party, Paul had leaned-in and sniffed Katherine’s perfume, inquiring, “Black orchid?” in a most unbrotherly gesture. And why is he taking such an unhealthy interest in Corey and Katherine’s burgeoning romance? 

Today Merle Oberon is best remembered for portraying Cathy opposite Laurence Olivier’s Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights (1939) and for her secretive origins (during her lifetime the Bombay-born Anglo-Asian Oberon concealed her biracial identity, allegedly passing-off her sari-clad mother as her maid). In the thirties and forties Merle Oberon had been hailed as one of golden age Hollywood’s great beauties. By the early sixties, movie offers had sputtered to a halt (she hadn’t made a film since 1956) and she was residing in Mexico as a jet-setting socialite with her Italian millionaire husband.  Perhaps surprisingly, Oberon decided to resume her film career aged 53 and the result was this bizarre comeback vehicle / vanity project.  Of Love and Desire is a candy-hued, lushly appointed melodrama in a similar vein to the deluxe soap operas that producer Ross Hunter was then concocting for aging screen divas like Lana Turner and Susan Hayward. Sammy Davis Jr croons the bossa nova-tinged opening theme tune over the opening credits of lush tropical flowers. The travelogue-style footage of mid-century Mexico is gorgeous. All the key players are well into in their late forties or fifties. Oberon’s close-ups twinkle with flattering Vaseline and gauze, she sports a fabulous wardrobe (including – memorably – a bikini) and she may well be wearing her own jewelry collection. Many of the interior scenes were reportedly filmed in in Oberon’s own sumptuous Mexican hacienda. 

But what’s most unique about Of Love and Desire is its prurient focus on incestuous attraction and the agony of nymphomania. This was the era when popular culture was titillated by “oversexed women”, treating the topic as both a genuine psychological condition and an alarming social issue. In her romantic lead heyday Oberon’s roles were mainly decorative and ladylike. While her tremulous performance here isn’t “good” by most standards, there’s something undeniably gutsy about how Oberon commits to the messy, sexually insatiable Katherine. It helps that she’s partnered with rugged film noir tough guy Steve Cochran. Who couldn’t be “oversexed” near Cochran’s pheromones? A 46-year-old DILF here, Cochran is a soupçon beefier and fuller-faced than he was in the forties and fifties, but his allure is most definitely undimmed (and we get to see him in revealing swimming trunks). 

Anyway, for enthusiasts of camp Of Love and Desire teems with moments to treasure. Prepare for overwrought dialogue like, “Oh, darling! I wish I were as young as you make me feel!” Corey had commented of Katherine’s long opulent upswept beehive coiffure (clearly a wiglet): “I can’t run my fingers through it …” In response, Katherine spontaneously instructs a barber to lop it off into a perkily youthful shorter ‘do (a makeover sequence shamelessly swiped from the Audrey Hepburn film Roman Holiday). “Now you can run your fingers through my hair any time you want!” she simpers. Watch for a bathtub sequence in which Oberon daringly reveals a surprising amount of tanned naked flesh. Best of all, in a climactic moment, Katherine is overcome by self-loathing and has a psychological freak-out while in public. Running through the street and then a hotel lobby, she is horrified that everywhere she looks there are MEN ogling and approaching her (and they’re saying things like “Hey, lady!” “Is something wrong?” and “Que pasa?”). Hilariously, it culminates with Katherine becoming trapped in a revolving door. In closing: extramarital sex and female desire lead to nothing but heartache, but don’t judge nymphomaniacs – they have their reasons.

Watch Of Love and Desire here.

Further reading:

Stunningly ageist and misogynistic contemporary review of Of Love and Desire in the New York Times.

Amusing analysis (with some great pics) in the reliably great Poiseidon's Underworld blog. 

Reflections on ... Shock Treatment (1964)

Recently watched: Shock Treatment (1964). Tagline: “The Nightmare World of the Mad ...” “You won’t be the same … when you come out of Shock Treatment!” 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). 

An overlooked black-and-white psychological-exploitation film, Shock Treatment starts on a wonderfully lurid note even before the opening credits roll. A homicidal maniac gardener (played by a bug-eyed Roddy McDowall) sneaks up behind the elderly Beverly Hills millionairess he works for – and in a moment worthy of William Castle’s Strait-Jacket, abruptly decapitates her with his gardening shears! 

/ Lauren Bacall, Roddy McDowell and Stuart Whitman in Shock Treatment / 

McDowell is Martin Ashley, a freshly released psychiatric patient. His ill-fated employer was Mrs Townsend. At the subsequent trial, it’s revealed that Martin - convinced that money is "the root of all evil" - burned one million dollars of Townsend’s fortune after killing her. At least two people doubt Martin’s account. Harley Manning - the executor of Mrs Townsend’s estate - is convinced he’s faking and has hidden the money somewhere. And the icily efficient and untrustworthy Dr Edwina Beighley (Lauren Bacall), who oversees the high security mental institution where Martin is a patient, has her own nefarious designs on the $1 million. 

/ "To hell with conformity!" Gorgeous Stuart Whitman displaying his "chest meat" in Shock Treatment /

Manning’s solution is to hire a struggling actor Dale Nelson (Stuart Whitman) to feign insanity, go undercover as a patient in the asylum to befriend Martin and learn where the $1 million is hidden. There’s an unintentionally campy moment when Dale asks Manning why he picked him for the job. “You’re a convincing actor,” Manning replies. (This is ironic because in terms of acting ability, hunky Whitman mostly coasts on his rugged square-jawed good looks). Anyway, it proves remarkably easy for Dale to get committed. He plays “mad” by smashing a store window in broad daylight, tearing off his shirt, donning a pair of sunglasses and berating the cops in beatnik lingo about conformity (“Why must you gentlemen conform?” he implores, “Why not turn to these peasants, look them in the eye and say, “To hell with conformity?” The disciples of conformity are bleeding from the narrowness of your mind!”). For this little outburst, the judge determines, “His antisocial behavior indicates a disturbed state of mind” and sentences Dale to ninety days. 

Shock Treatment follows the same narrative as Samuel Fuller’s far more highly-regarded and famous Shock Corridor (1963): someone is hired to infiltrate and investigate what’s happening in a sanitarium – and then they can’t get out! Rest assured Shock Treatment won’t win any awards for sensitivity for its sensational representation of mental illness. McDowell plays psycho killer Martin with such sexual ambiguity that his scenes with Dale throb with a homoerotic tension the script probably never intended. Meanwhile, Carol Lynley is a female patient who serves as Dale’s love interest. Her psychiatric condition seems to consist of whiplash mood swings between frigidity and nymphomania. “I just dislike being touched!” she exclaims. “Kissing and touching are sins!” but then moments later, she pleads, “I want you to touch me, Dale! To hold me and touch me – now! Love me, Dale! Love me!” Luckily, Lynley’s problems are easily cured: as the script hints, all she needed was the love of a good man. (Watch also for a fleeting but vivid appearance by eccentric character actor Timothy Carey). 

Shock Treatment may be low-grade schlock, but it’s compelling schlock suffused with genuine tension and paranoia, tightly constructed, wreathed in menacing film noir shadows and genuinely suspenseful.  And it features a magnificent turn by Lauren Bacall as the manipulative Dr Beighley, scheming to test her experimental drugs on a human guinea pig. Bacall made her film debut in 1944. It’s a sign of how far the Hollywood diva’s stock had fallen that twenty years later she was reduced to acting in b-movie fare like Shock Treatment. But the husky-voiced Bacall is utterly mesmeric in a rare villainous role, playing it with a malevolent, steely composure and poised elegance (she makes her white lab coat look like haute-couture). Call me perverse, and I’m probably in a minority of one, but it’s one of my favourite performances by Bacall.

Watch Shock Treatment here:

 

Reflections on ... Games (1967)

Recently watched: Games (1967). Tagline: “Passion wears a mask of terror in this strangest of all games!” 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). 

In this freaky and claustrophobic psychological thriller, a jaded, wealthy young high society couple Paul (James Caan) and Jennifer Montgomery (Katharine Ross) avert ennui by throwing wild, hedonistic “happening”-style parties, indulging in pranks and dabbling in the occult. (You can easily imagine the thrill-seeking Montgomerys “slumming it” at Andy Warhol’s Factory for low-life kicks). One day an unexpected visitor materializes at the door of their opulent Upper East Side New York townhouse filled with pop art and vintage pinball machines. She’s Lisa Schindler (Simone Signoret), an inscrutable, world-weary Continental woman of indeterminate age, garbed like a black widow (black turban, black cape, the long black leather gloves of an assassin. If you imagine Games to be a fairy tale, Lisa represents the wicked witch). She claims (unconvincingly) to be a door-to-door cosmetics saleswoman, promptly collapses from exhaustion and then effortlessly inveigles herself into their household. Anyway, Lisa alleges she possess psychic powers, which amuses them. Paul and Jennifer had imagined themselves to be blasé sophisticates, but the depraved Lisa is in another league entirely. Who is she – and why does she have a pair of loaded pistols in her trunk? Soon the unlikely ménage à trois is playing increasingly perverse and sadistic mind games. How long before someone gets killed? 

Truthfully, the "shock twist" that underpins Games can be easily deduced early on, but director Curtis Harrington maintains such a stylish and sinister mood you won’t really mind. In fact, any film by intriguing and durable maverick Harrington is always worth catching. An associate of Kenneth Anger’s, he graduated from underground avant-garde experimental cinema to low-budget horror movies (Harrington is an essential figure in the hagsploitation genre: in the early seventies he turned Shelley Winters into a scream queen in Who Sloo Auntie Roo? and What’s the Matter with Helen?) before later diversifying into television, helming episodes of series like Charlie’s Angels, Wonder Woman and Dynasty. Everything Harrington touches is imbued with an understanding of camp and an overtly queer sensibility. Maybe that’s why his camera embraces the male leads so appreciatively. (Games is a nice reminder of just how cute Caan was in his early male starlet days. His hair is even styled like a sixties-era Ken doll’s. See also Don Stroud in tight double denim as the horny grocery delivery boy sucked-into the weird rituals. Do yourself a favour and Google Stroud’s 1973 Playgirl pictorial!). 

One of Games’ themes would appear to be the collision between American naivety and European “old world” decadence. Lisa has a powerful monologue where she explains that three times in her life, she had to scale a barbed wire fence to survive: “by the third time, I grew to like it”.  Much as I admire puffy-eyed French actress Simone Signoret's performance as the manipulative woman-of-mystery, Harrington originally conceived Lisa with Marlene Dietrich in mind and it’s fascinating to speculate how she would have interpreted the role. (There's no way Dietrich - who hadn’t made a film in years at this point - would have agreed to doing the part, but still!). My favourite moment in Games: an imperiled Katharine Ross is wandering through the house at night in a long filmy white trailing nightgown and carrying a candelabra, looking like every idealized woman on the cover of a sixties or seventies Gothic romance pulp novel come to life.

Additional reading:

In Games’ opening party sequence, one of the most prominently featured guests is strikingly glamorous Czech actress Florence Marly. Marly, of course, made an unforgettable impression as the titular Queen of Blood (1966) in Curtis Harrington’s earlier science b-movie. Read my analysis of that one here. 

Read Dreams Are What Le Cinema is For's perceptive analysis of Games here.