wrong turn: Carnival of Souls (1962)

    Carnival of Souls. The Criterion Collection, no. 63 [New York, N.Y.], 2016. DVD. 2016. Two-DVD special edition. 2 videodiscs (78 min.): black and white; 1 booklet. ISBN: 9781681431772, 1681431777. OCLC Number 950981645.
    Herk Harvey, director & producer; John Clifford, screenwriter; Maurice Prather, Gene Moore, Dan Palmquist, editors; Maurice Prather, director of photography; Gene Moore, composer. Performers: Candace Hilligoss, Frances Feist, Sidney L. Berger, Art Ellison, Herk Harvey.  
    Summary: a young woman in a small Kansas town is haunted by strange images and events after she experiences a car crash. She agrees to take a job as a church organist in Salt Lake City. En route, she is haunted by a bizarre apparition that compels her toward an abandoned lakeside pavilion. Made by industrial filmmakers on a small budget (reportedly $33,000), this low-keyed horror film was little noticed upon its initial release but over the years has attained the status of cult classic. Filmed on location in and around Lawrence, Kansas, and Salt Lake City, Utah.
    Special features: Disc 1. Selected-scene audio commentary featuring director Herk Harvey and screenwriter John Clifford; deleted scenes; outtakes, accompanied by Gene Moore's organ score. Disc 2. Final Destination: new interview with comedian and writer Dana Gould; Regards from Nowhere: new video essay by film critic David Caims; The Movie That Wouldn't Die!, a documentary on the 1989 reunion of the film's cast and crew; The carnival tour, a 2000 update on the film's locations; excerpts from movies made by the Centron Corporation an industrial film company based in Lawrence, Kansas that once employed Harvey and Clifford; history of the Saltair Resort in Salt Lake City, where scenes in the film were shot; trailer; essay by writer and programmer Kier-La Janisse (insert).


   “I don’t belong in this world.”

  [Note: minor SPOILERS in the comments below.]  Carnival of Souls is such an established cult classic, complete with dedicated fanbase, that I’m pretty much embarrassed to write about it, since what I offer will largely repeat what’s already been said by commentators more astute than I. Nonetheless … as my local library only has a grainy public domain copy, my recently stumbling onto a pristine print of Souls via the tv program Harvey’s Festival of Fear was a fortuitous accident that compels me to opine a bit about my continued appreciation of this one-of-a-kind, still largely under-the-radar masterpiece.
    For all its positive qualities, technically and otherwise, describing the content of Souls is quite the slippery slope. With its shifting center of gravity and shaky narrative one stumbles as to articulate exactly what the film is, insofar as genre is concerned. [1] Psychological horror? Supernatural noir? Neo-surrealist? Well, it’s not really horror, not noir at all, and barely supernatural. Possibly surreal. Definitely psychological. Even more difficult is any attempt to define what message is being conveyed, and for that matter if Souls is a ‘message movie’ at all. To be sure the film has been dissected, spiced, sliced and diced from varying points of view, both online and in print, so I’ll do my best not to go over ground that’s already been covered, but rather offer some personal observations. Aside: based on my own, very unscientific, perusal of writings online it seems the most frequent critical takes on Carnival of Souls are from the feminist and queer perspectives.
 

    Whatever its genre or message, Souls gets better with repeated viewings, and this includes the performers. Candance Hilligoss as Mary gives a wondrous performance, and her nuanced interpretation captures the character perfectly. The supporting and bit players, too, semi-professional at best as they are, do a terrific job. Actually I think the lack of professional actors adds to the story’s verisimilitude, along with the on-location real life locales and the low-keyed, documentary-like presentation of the story. In fact everything about the film is handled with such a sure hand for a first-time, apparently only time, feature film director that we might be forgiven for thinking that the unseen presence of Orson Welles is somewhere in the mix, guiding things along. Indeed there are many Welles-like tableaux along the way, and the comparison of the abandoned pavilion in Souls to the funhouse in The Lady from Shanghai is almost too facile, but I’ll make it anyway.
    Getting back to the cast, I’d be remiss not to mention the performance of Sidney Berger, who plays John Linden, Mary’s lecherous neighbor next door. Like the film itself, he also gets, shall we say, better with repeated viewings, not because he becomes more likeable, but because Mr. Berger’s take is so real, and so natural, removed as it is from the precious affectations of ‘acting.’ To be sure, John is among the most irritating characters in the history of cinema, and it’s one of our crosses to bear that we have to endure his endless come-ons to Mary in order to get to the really good stuff in the film.
    But subsequent viewings reveal the character of John to be, well, if not exactly sympathetic, then at least human, and we can to some extent understand, though not necessarily excuse, his behavior. John is doubtless self-conscious of his proletarian roots and current blue collar status. Thus he sees the regal Mary as quite the catch and a chance to date up. [2] Most of us guys at one time or another in our lives have wanted a woman who was out of our league, and after a rebuff or two we had to suck it up and move on to more suitable company. But John just won’t walk away. His approach is to ratchet up the pressure, and Berger’s all too real performance captures his unsettling combination of imploring, cajoling and implied threat.
    To be fair, if we can be fair to such a jerk, Mary’s hot and cold messages to John can be an understandable source of frustration and confusion, but his misguided strategy is to turn up the heat even more. Maybe it’s the best he can do. It’s ultimately to his credit that when she freaks out after seeing The Man yet again he leaves the situation pronto. Hot item Mary may be, John doesn’t want to deal with a crazy woman. [3]. And we breathe a sigh of relief at his departure. Indeed this is when the film’s highest octane emotional juice really begins to kick in.
   But perhaps a detour to talk about Mary’s possible lesbian inclinations. In the film’s very first image we see Mary, rather incongruously, in a car with two butch girls. By the way why would a class act like Mary be in a car joy riding with a couple of juvenile delinquents in the first place? Are the three a Sapphic ménage à trois? Is this a tipoff, as early as the first scene, of Mary’s latent, or not so latent, lesbianism? Well, maybe, and maybe not. It’s true that later on in the film Mary tells the doctor she’s never had any boyfriends, or felt the need for close (heterosexual) relationships. But if we were to describe Mary’s attitude as to close friendships, it would be asexual, certainly appropriate for a walking ghost. This is reinforced by her skittish responses to John’s romantic overtures: she says yes, sort of, but her actions – her constant pulling away from John’s affectionate entreaties as if disgusted by them – imply no.
    Getting back to things remiss, it would be criminal not to mention Gene Moore’s murky organ music. Its off-kilter harmonies recall the spooky music we hear in Last Year at Marienbad, a film not unlike Souls in its dreamlike ambience and somnambulist characters. By the way, the minister’s sacking Mary for playing a few dissonant chords, when the church is empty at that, seems an extreme punishment, almost to the point of absurdist.
    One could go on and on, given the film’s many confluences and connections. Indeed film scholars  and just plain enthusiasts have gone on and on. But bottom line is: what is it that makes Carnival of Souls such an enduring classic? Some would say the character of Mary: cool, ambiguous, distant, self-possessed, a Hitchcock blonde without the fire underneath. But then again there’s the Saltair pavilion, creepy, other worldly, with its Moorish design giving the impression of levitation. And for some it’s something more undefinable, not so easy to get hold of, like the movie itself. We might call it mood or atmosphere. The uneasy sense of the not quite real, not quite being there, a combination of the quirkily surreal and down-home prosaic. Ultimately Carnival of Souls invites multiple interpretations, but its emotional core remains the same. Like Mary, we search for something. For some of us it’s a sense of belonging, or meaning, for others the redeeming beauty of art, still for others simply the desire to go home. But, at least in the case of Mary, the search is only realized in that ultimate release, death itself. 
   [Update, 30 April 2626: I recently had the great pleasure of catching the 3-D version of Souls at our local arthouse theater. Truth be told, I wasn't that fond of the 3-D effects but it was a treat to finally see this genuine classic on the big screen. Three-dimensional or no, it's still a great movie.]

  [1]  Carnival of Souls may well fall into the curious subgenre sometimes referred to as the spectral icognizance film (Briefel, 2009),* in which a subject doesn’t realize his/her own death and gradually learns to the truth. The trope was a favorite of the Twilight Zone, used to great effect especially in the ‘After Hours’ and ‘Hitchhiker’ episodes. Movies that employ a spectral insognizance theme or flirt with the idea include The Others, Last Year at Marienbad, DOA, Dementia/Daughter of Horror, and Sixth Sense.    
     * Souls has also been cited as being a representative of the ‘highway horror’ subgenre (Murphy 2017).
    
   [2] In his crude, rough-around-the-edges way John represents life, and thus he gravitates to things that would give pleasure to a living human being: coffee, food, alcohol, dancing, bars, human company, not least the company of women. By contrast Mary doesn’t quite belong among the living, ergo her resistance to John’s advances. She has no passion in life, except perhaps her music, and even here she seems under the control of something outside herself. Everyone else in Souls, even in a limited way, represents death, not least being The Man, whom we could call the angel of death, but in this context might be might be seen as a competitor for Mary’s affections. If The Man and John are indeed rivals, it’s no great mystery as to who will win this competition. Just when Mary seems to accede, however reluctantly, to John’s romantic overtures and their implied inevitable culmination in the sex act, The Man intervenes in most timely (or is it untimely) fashion. Mary goes full-on hysterical and gradually retreats into madness. As for John, he simply disappears from the movie.

    [3] It’s not only Mary who acts weird: nearly everyone - and everything - in Souls is a little off. Mary's hand movements at the organ never match the music she's performing; she manipulates the organ footpedals barefoot; landlady Frances Feist is both blandly reassuring and a little bit creepy; the minister and psychiatrist attempt, in their clumsy, eminently patriarchal ways, to fix Mary;** and the guy at the drinking fountain in the park is just plain bizarre. Of course all the ghouls who menace Mary, most conspicuously The Man, are by definition strange, if toned down and almost benevolent compared to their siblings in, say, Night of the Living Dead. About the only normal character in Souls is, counter intuitively, John, simply because he is so real, and in his way, upfront about being such a slimebag.
    Insofar as the way it presents the character of Mary, Carnival of Souls is a mildly subversive work in that it portrays Mary as an independent woman who resolutely insists on going her own way. Thus, and eminently apropos for a cult movie, she resonates with those who are just different – eccentrics, gays, introverts, bohemians, and yes (by the standards of the era), independent-minded women, all of whom, like Mary, don’t fit into the world in a conventional way and who want to stop at their own Saltair to enjoy the baths and smell the roses.
     ** The heavy-handed approach of both almost smacks of conversion therapy. Hooray for Mary for resisting these bumbling attempts to control her, or at least guide her to the light.

Further reading:

    Aviva Briefel, “What Some Ghosts Don’t Know: Spectral Incognizance and the Horror Film,” Narrative, v17, n1 (January 2009), pp 95-108
    Kimberley Monteyne, “From the Question of Soul to a Carnival of Souls,” Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, v58 n1 (Fall 2018), pp 24-46
    Bernice M. Murphy, Carnival of Souls (1962) and the Highway Safety Film, FORUM 24 (Spring 2017)  
    James Riley, “Have You No Respect? Do You Feel No Reverence?: Narrative and Critical Subversion in Herk Harvey’s Carnival of Souls,” in: Crash Cinema: Representation in Film, edited by Will Godfrey, Jill Good, Mark Goodall, Cambridge Scholars, 2007, pp 14-24
    Lawrence A. Walz, “Mary Henry’s Journey from Owl Creek Bridge,” Literature/Film Quarterly v23, n4  (1995), pp 262-65

too late for tears : Die bitteren Tränen der Petra von Kant (1972)

   
    Die bitteren Tränen der Petra von Kant: ein Krankheitsfall gewidmet dem, der hier Marlene wurde = The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant. Written and directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Janus Films; Tango Film Produktion. Originally produced as a motion picture in 1972. Kurt Raab, art director; Michael Ballhaus, cinematographer; Maja Lemcke, contume designs; Thea Eymèsz, editor. ISBN: 9781604659405; ISBN: 1604659408. The Criterion collection, 740. Disc 1: feature film; disc 2: bonus features.
   Performers: Margit Carstensen, Hanna Schygulla, Katrin Schaake, Eva Mattes, Gisela Fackeldey, Irm Hermann. Summary: One of the earliest and best-loved films of this period in Fassbinder's career, which balances a realistic depiction of tormented romance with staging that remains true to the director's roots in experimental theater. This unforgettable, unforgiving dissection of the imbalanced relationship between a haughty fashion designer and a beautiful but icy ingenue is based on a sly gender reversal of the writer-director's own desperate obsession with a young actor.
   Special features: Disc 2: Outsiders (documentary features actors Margit Carstensen, Eva Mattes, Katrin Schaake, and Hanna Schygulla discussing the production of the film and their experiences working with director Rainer Werner Fassbinder); Michael Ballhaus interview; Jan Shattuc interview; Role play: women on Fassbinder (1992 German television documentary by Thomas Honickel featuring interviews with actors Margit Carstensen, Irm Hermann, Hanna Schygulla, and Rosel Zech); New English subtitle translation. Insert, essay by critic Peter Matthews.

    I discovered Rainer Werner Fassbinder rather late in life, at sixty something years to be more or less exact, and by a most indirect route. I’d seen a few snippets of his films [1], but as far as I knew nothing all the way through. And I’d heard his name mentioned in film groups, lectures and documentaries. This is quite a confession from a self-anointed film buff who prides himself on his offbeat tastes, which include foreign movies. Only later did I discover that Fassbinder was the most prominent exponent of the New German Cinema that emerged in the 1970s, and arguably the most important German director since the great auteurs of the 1920s and 1930s.

    The roundabout way I came across Fassbinder was, appropriately enough, via a Douglas Sirk movie, the 1954 weepie Magnificent Obsession. Sirk was also German by birth but Americanized by profession and career. My Fassbinder discovery moment, or more specific, the discovery of his importance, insofar as it applies to Sirk, was via the commentary track of Magnificent Obsession, in which it was mentioned that the two main factors in the Sirk renaissance of the 1990s were feminism and Fassbinder. Later I learned that Fassbinder was an admirer of Sirk's films and moreover that his Ali: Fear Eats the Soul was a kind of remake of Sirk's All That Heaven Allows.
    But getting back to Bitter Tears, and even as a Fassbinder novice, for me this has to be the director’s ultimate masterpiece. The amazing camera movements, poetically incisive script, surreal set, and spot on performances he draws from the all-women cast are little short of miraculous for one of 27 years at the time, even taking into consideration that the film’s fluid visuals and high gloss look may be as much the contributions of cameraman Michael Ballhaus and costume designer Maja Lemcke as that of Fassbinder’s auteurist vision.
    As an aside, I invoke the inevitable, and admittedly facile, comparison, specifically the seemingly ever hovering ghost of Orson Welles (actually Welles was alive and kicking – and making movies – in the early Seventies and didn’t pass on until over a decade later). Anyhow I’m tempted to call Fassbinder the German Orson Welles – but I won’t. Still, and much like Welles, Fassbinder never quite repeated the pinnacle he achieved in the extraordinary early effort that was Bitter Tears (though for some devotees the true pinnacle is Ali: Fear Eats the Soul). Another aside: I have to wonder, this time a Kane-esque reference: did Fassbinder have total artistic control, including final cut approval, over Bitter Tears, a control he might not have had in later efforts? Given how much of a control freak Fassbinder reportedly was, it would be surprising if he didn't demand total authority over all his productions. Whether he got it is another matter.
    Yet another Welles connection, of a sort. Both Welles and Fassbinder were reputed to be short tempered, intimidating, and domineering taskmeisters, to the point of threats of physical violence for noncompliance on Fassbinder’s part. But this reputation has to be treated with kid gloves: there are also stories that Welles at least was wonderful to work with. So who can say? Incidentally both frequently appeared as characters in their own films, usually as the villain or otherwise playing an unpleasant sort.
    Speaking of casts, the aforementioned all-female cast of Bitter Tears is a marvel and Fassbinder gets the absolute most out of his hand-picked divas, especially Margit Carstensen in the performance of a lifetime. Throughout the film she seems to be channeling Joan Crawford – and more than a pinch of Norma Desmond – with her intense acting style. As a nice contrast we have Katrin Schaake as Petra’s best pal Sidonie, who bears an uncanny resemblance to Liza Minelli’s Sally Bowles, not least for her Twenties style hairdo. Both films were released in 1972 and the similarity may be coincidental, but considering the films’ strong German elements one has to wonder. It must be admitted, however, that Cabaret’s German-ness is achieved more by proxy (i.e. setting and era) than actual production.
    Then there’s the enigmatic, unspeaking Marlene (Irm Hermann), who functions as a kind of companion/servant/secretary and all-around Sancho Panza to Petra. But she could be many more things, and various interpretations have spewed forth. Since we see her working on Petra’s designs, and we never actually see Petra working, is she a kind of fashion design ghostwriter for her mistress? In any case it’s hard to imagine anyone else playing the respective characters in Bitter Tears [2], and maybe not too much of an exaggeration to opine that these will be the roles the actresses are remembered for, quite a claim given their long and distinguished careers.
    I leave to others to sort out Bitter Tears’ socio-economic, psychosexual, existential, and even political undercurrents. And as much as Tears deals with archetypal themes like lust, betrayal, obsession, narcissism and the like, it’s still a work of its time. To wit, and strangely enough perhaps, with its close to the bone, unsentimentalized view of the human condition, Tears strikes me as similar in tone and execution (if infinitely more polished and classy) to the slice-of-life, rough around the edges movies popular in the U.S. during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Of course one could make the same claim for any number of Fassbinder films. In any case, the lack of a music score also contributes to the Bitter Tears' verismo, somewhat voyeuristic vibe. Actually there is music, of a sort. Source music, compliments of The Platters, the Walker Brothers, and Giuseppe Verdi intermittently wafts in the background.
    Whatever the film’s aesthetic or other subtexts, I prefer to appreciate The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant as pure cinema. And what cinema it is, incredibly rich, multi-faceted, beautiful to look at, and eminently rewarding of repeated viewings. In a word, everything works in this movie, and its stately paced 124 minutes never seem to drag.

     1 To date I’ve only seen a minimum of his considerable oeuvre: Lili Marleen, Bitter Tears, Ali: Fear Eats the Soul and Faustrecht der Freiheit in their entirety, and snippets of Veronika Voss, Despair, and Berlin Alexanderplatz.
   2 The stunning Hanna Schygulla takes the role of the beautiful ingenue Karin, whom Petra, Pygmalion-like, decides to mold into a top fashion model. Here we see echoes of Hitchcock and his control over his icy blonde actresses, as well as the makeover(s) – first by Tom Helmore and later by James Stewart – of Madeline (Kim Novak) in Vertigo. Then again, Petra’s brutal dismissal of Karin – “no, she’s not talented, she just sells herself well” – might be an unconscious self-indictment. Perhaps it’s Fassbinder’s sly way of reminding us that there’s a thin line between ‘genius’ and salesmanship. An interesting bit of trivia: Margit Carstensen was only three years older than Hanna Schygulla, though the characters they portray seem to have a much greater age difference: Karin is perhaps in her early twenties and Petra fortyish.

any dream was better than no dream ... The Day of the Locust (1975)

   The Day of the Locust [DVD]. Hollywood, Calif.: Paramount Pictures, 2004. John Schlesinger, director. Based on the novel by Nathanael West. Director of photography, Conrad Hall; music, John Barry; editor, Jim Clark. Summary: a naive young set designer seeks work in Tinseltown and falls in love with an aspiring actress who lives with her alcoholic father, a former vaudevillian entertainer turned snake oil salesman. Originally produced as a motion picture in 1975. Performers: Karen Black, Burgess Meredith, Donald Sutherland, William Atherton, Richard A. Dysart, Geraldine Page, Paul Stewart.


     John Schlesinger’s bitterly sardonic take on Nathanael West’s blistering novel hasn’t lost any of its bite even today, a half century later. Alas, like West’s novel, the film version languishes under the radar, and indeed a reconsideration of both is long overdue [1]. Day of the Locust is in the tradition of such gloves-off portrayals of the dark side of the movie business the likes of Sunset Boulevard and The Bad and the Beautiful, just more so. At 144 minutes Locust is a tad long with many weird detours, dead ends and lost weekends, but director Schlesinger keeps things moving apace so well that we don’t really notice.    

     First, a comment on the look of the movie. Locust is at heart a dark fairy tale – some would say a horror film – that takes place (nearly) nine decades ago. Yes, it’s still the Depression [2]. Thus it deserves a strange look, and gets it, filmed through a mist-like gauzy overlay that actually adds to the film’s mystique. Moreover, the story is rendered through a prism of mid 1970s cinéma vérité aesthetic, Seventies style slice-of-life chic if you will, but in this case a glamorous, if falsely so, slice.

     For me the centerpiece of the film, figuratively and literally – it takes place about half way through – is the visit to Big Sister’s revival. It breezes by much too quickly and ostensibly doesn’t have a lot to do with the Hollywood milieu, then again maybe it does. The revival meeting's schtick is really a massive production number that mirrors the hype and glitz of Hollywood productions. Entertainment and show business by any other name, while the ka-ching of cash registers and the counting of money provide a realpolitik if admittedly heavy-handed obbligato [3]. Moreover, the religious frenzy at the revival parallels the later, gaudy opening night extravaganza, complete with de rigueur searchlights, of DeMille’s The Buccaneer. In the latter the potential for violence releases itself in an orgy of destruction and rampant savagery that still shocks even today in our supposedly seen-and-heard-it-all world. Perhaps the gala opening is a metaphor for American society itself in the Thirties, but it actually comes too close for comfort in our supposedly more enlightened 21st Century: the fans who jostle, shove and gouge for a glimpse of the god- and goddess-like stars are selfish, materialistic sorts, obsessed with the glamor of the illusion, or is it the illusion of glamour? Either way, the various losers, hangers-on, and assorted white trash that do their best to crash the première mirror the locust-like little people that litter the film and which Tod keeps bumping into. In Nathanael West’s vision even those on the inside or the fringes will be pulled down into the Hadean cauldron with the rest of us ordinary mortals. And seemingly benign characters such as Hackett, Claude Estee and Helverston, because of their very casual cruelty and aloofness to the industry's savage indifference to the little guy, are more loathsome than the various abrasive grotesques that flit in and out.
    By the way, Geraldine Page is wonderful as the evangelist with pizazz, the aforementioned Big Sister, one of those offbeat characters she does so well. The role actually anticipates – by nearly a half century – similar characters in the television miniseries Penny Dreadful: City of Angels and Perry Mason (they just love including those Thirties-era spiritual leaders as secondary characters in Hollywood period pieces). As the fellow said, the end times may be upon us, but they can be very entertaining. 

     But in a movie of myriad disturbing images and scenes, for me the most brutal and heartless of the lot is the impromptu cockfight which looks all the world like the real thing. Truly a heartbreaking result as a bloodied animal lies on the floor, probably mortally wounded. Perhaps appropriately, after the cockfight the spectators enjoy a dinner party that transitions to a kind of PG-rated bacchanal, with Faye as the main attraction.

"magic is what I'm selling"

     But getting back to humans, the various losers, grotesques and other outsiders who populate Locust, waiting at the stop sign of life for their one big break, are actually depicted in one of Hackett’s tableau as three chalk faced folks wait on a bench at a bus stop. West himself had a love-hate relationship with the film industry that mirrored his own contradictory nature: he was both a romantic and cynic; a plagiarist who was also a gifted, original writer; a savage critic of the Hollywood dream who never quite gave up on the dream.

     In any case, West knew of what he spoke: he toiled as a writer of B scripts and like Locust’s hero Tod Hackett lived in dive hotels and run-down apartments. He knew all too well the labyrinthine mechanics of the movie business and the frustrations of the extras, bit players, assistant directors, and, lowest of all, writers. Tod Hackett, Locust’s hero and arguably a West self-portrait, is one of the few haves in a world of have-nots. A rather high-minded artiste just beginning his career as a set designer, he struggles to come to terms with going Hollywood, and appropriately his opus maximus, created on the sly, is a painterly tableau titled “The Burning of Los Angeles.”
     Along the way Hackett encounters various seedy and colorful characters, among them an actress neighbor who catches his eye. He also crosses paths with the actress’s father, a washed-up vaudevillian turned snake oil salesman, as well as a certain Homer Simpson, onetime accountant convalescing in California’s balmy climate. Monosyllabic cowboys, amorous Mexicans, and a curmudgeonly midget named Abe Kusich add to the mix. Not many of the characters who populate Locust are likable, not even the ostensible good guy Tod. But that was the idea: West wanted to portray the desperate low-lifes and perpetual wannabes existing under the façade of Hollywood glitz and glamour. Unpalatable the little people may be, we still feel sympathy for them and this is part of West’s genius.

     All these elements are beautifully realized by the film, especially the performances, which are generally over-the-top, and rightly so. This makes them so on the money because the exaggerated deliveries are in their way genuine, masking as they do the desperation and disappointment the characters feel. Meriting a singling out are Karen Black in the performance of a career as the vacuous Faye Greener, Burgess Meredith as Faye’s alcoholic father, Natalie Schafer as brothel madam Audrey (a long way from hoity-toity Mrs. Howell), and the great Billy Barty as the obstreperous dwarf Abe Kusich. More sedate are a bland William Atherton as our nominal hero Tod Hackett and Richard Dysart as a cold fish Hollywood executive with a taste for softcore porn and high class call girls. Good performances, true, by Atherton and Dysart but as haves in a world of have nots their characters can afford to be more guarded and reserved. Contrary to the critical and fan rave reviews for Donald Sutherland, I wasn’t taken with his zombie-like interpretation of the Homer Simpson.

     My only complaint is that the Paramount DVD has zero bonus features, a major oversight considering the film’s literary, historic and aesthetic connections. There seems to be a ‘limited edition’ blu-ray, which I understand has a generous sampling of supplements. And this is only just. Day of the Locust is a forgotten masterpiece that deserves a presentation and packaging worthy of its stature.   

   [1] To be technically correct, academics and cultists have long been familiar with West’s magnum opus, but among the general public West doesn’t have the high profile of the likes of Hammett, Chandler, and Cain.  

   [2] I may have missed it but I don’t recall any overt references to the year in which Locust is taking place. But from all the clues we’re given I place it to be ca. 1938.

   [3] The show biz connection couldn't be made plainer when Harry hallucinates that his on-stage 'cure' is another performance and the ecstatic faithful are his audience. 'I stole the show,' he later reminisces.

high gloss trash, and a second ten

     Myra Breckinridge. Beverly Hills, California: Twentieth Century-Fox Home Entertainment, [2018]. DVD. Screenplay by Michael Sarne and David Giler; produced by Robert Fryer; director of photography, Richard Moore; film editor, Danford B. Greene; music, Lionel Newman. Directed by Michael Sarne; produced and released by Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corp. Originally produced as a motion picture in 1970. Based on the novel by Gore Vidal.
    Summary: after going to Europe to have a sex change operation, Myron Breckinridge is transformed into Myra, who claims to be Myron's widow. Performers: Raquel Welch, Mae West, John Huston, Rex Reed, Farrah Fawcett, Roger Herren, Calvin Lockhart, Jim Backus, John Carradine, William Hopper.

    I’m usually all in for bad movie classics, just out of pure curiosity. Besides, guilty pleasures or no, bad movies can be immensely entertaining. Moreover, they (usually inadvertently) provide a window into social and and cultural attitudes of the day. Anyhow it was a little out of character that I waited so long to catch Myra Breckinridge. But since there’s a DVD copy at my local library I decided, what the heck, I’ll give it a whirl and see what happens. I was happily surprised. Contrary to its reputation as one of the worst movies of all time, Myra Breckinridge is actually pretty good, in a Valley of the Dolls sort of way [1]. Say what you will about Myra Breckinridge, it’s seldom dull, and from a purely technical standpoint, rather skillfully put together. Approached in a certain frame of mind, MB can be great fun. And maybe there’s a certain ironic justice at work in that, for all its supposedly chaotic production disasters and the subsequent critical savaging it received, the creators of Myra may well have gotten in the last word after all. Today it’s considered a bona fide cult classic and has a devoted, if small, following, and as a result its reputation steadily increases with the passage of time.

    The film’s legendary haphazard production history actually gives us some, perhaps unintended, aesthetic benefits as the bumpy narrative plays with our expectations, then frustrates them. To wit, as Myra in most leisurely fashion gives our stud Rusty his physical exam, we suspect it will culminate in a more or less conventional sexual encounter, and thus her wild ride-the-bronc scene is all the more effective because it’s so unexpected (and, it must be admitted, shockingly over-the-top in its bad taste). Another element of unexpectedness is that the scene also reverses (is that the word?) the usual woman-on-top configuration. Other felicitous results are the Golden Age film clips interspersed, albeit somewhat jarringly, throughout. There’s also the Myra/Mary Ann quasi-lesbian encounter, which teases us with affectionate moments, but never goes all the way to the Sapphic heart of the matter (it seems that Mary Ann was just too reluctant, probably because she was straight). For all that the scene is sensitively and beautifully done, it’s a pale shadow of the Cynthia Myers/Erica Gavin steamy encounters in Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, which are far superior in their titillating depiction and resultant emotional impact.

"OK, boys. Get your resumes out"

   Which brings us to the movie I always associate with MB, and that’s the aforementioned Beyond the Valley of the Dolls [2], henceforth simply referred to as Dolls. Both were released in the same year, by the same studio. Both employ the same garish color palette, and both go gangbusters in satirizing the film industry, California counterculture, gender roles, superficiality of American materialism, and anything else they could think of. And both reap the benefits of, shall we say, hindsight. Yes, time has been kind to Myra and Dolls, especially Dolls. Even with its greater nudity and more overt sexual situations, Dolls has a warmth, optimism and innocence not present in MB, which has a harsher, more cynical tone. Moreover, Dolls is straight up the far more polished product, in a word, just a better film, even if it lacks Mae West [3].

    Speaking of Mae West, I’ve never been much of a fan. To me there was always a one-note quality to her saucy persona. But here, as the man-eating agent Leticia Van Allen, she’s just right. She seems to be having a great time essaying what’s basically a parody of herself. What’s more she just looks great: actually I think she’s sexier in MB than in her glory days in the early Thirties.

    One unexpected pleasure was a cameo by the usually virtuous William Hopper of Perry Mason fame. In MB he’s cast against type as a far right (and eminently hypocritical, corrupted and corruptible) judge. Quite the send-up of the ultra-conservative political views of his mother, the infamous gossip columnist Hedda Hopper. Whatever the context, the joy of seeing Hopper is tinged with a certain sadness as he died in 1970 at the age of fifty-four, just a few months before MB’s release. It was his last film and as such a somewhat inglorious end to a solid if under-appreciated career.

    The real revelation of Myra Breckinridge is Raquel Welch. In the title role she delivers the performance of a career, and we get a glimpse of just how good an actress she was. It serves as a bittersweet reminder of the career that might have been had she been taken seriously as an actress and not always typecast as a sex bomb [4].

    As for my somewhat superfluous ‘best movies of all time’ second ten, what can be said? I seem to be on a best/most kick these days, and I thought another list wouldn’t hurt. It might have been out of a sense of frustration that, in compiling my original top ten, indeed I had to limit the list to ten titles. Ergo a second ten. Actually numbers eleven to twenty might be a more accurate description. Readers will note that I’ve fudged a bit and included ties this time around. So be it. Anyhow drumroll please, here they are, more or less in chronological order:

tie: Metropolis, M
Olympia
The Seventh Victim
Les Enfants du Paradis
Meshes of the Afternoon
The Red Shoes
tie: The Seventh Seal, L’Avventura
The Naked Kiss
tie: Death in Venice, Portrait of a Lady on Fire
Blade Runner


[1] The original Valley of the Dolls, that is, not the ‘Beyond’ version. More on that film in the post above. By the way both Valley of the Dolls and Beyond the Valley are discussed elsewhere in these pages.
[2] Indeed it seems I’m not alone in conflating the two camp/trash classics, as over the years it’s not been uncommon for theaters to screen Myra Breckinridge and Beyond the Valley of the Dolls as a double feature.
 [3] Part of the explanation may be that Dolls was helmed by Russ Meyer, who was probably just a better director than Michael Sarne. Another possibility is that Meyer may have been given a freer hand by the studio.
[4] In a case of MB paralleling Dolls again, Hollywood also missed the boat on Cynthia Myers, not as good an actress as Raquel Welch by a long shot but her equal in sex appeal and screen charisma. Another instance of a career that might have been.

brief candles: Lola Montez (1821-1861)

    Lola Montès [videorecording (DVD)]. Gamma-Film prèsente un film de Max Ophuls; scenario de Max Ophuls; adaptation de Annette Wademant et Max Ophuls; dialogue de Jacques Natanson; une co-production Gamma, Florida, Union Films; producteur délégué, Albert Caraco. Criterion Collection, 2009. 2 videodiscs (114 min.). Based on the novel by Cécil Saint-Laurent. Originally produced as a motion picture in 1955.

   Performers: Martine Carol, Peter Ustinov, Anton Walbrook, Henry Guisol, Lise Delamare, Paulette Dubost, Oskar Werner, Jean Galland, Will Quadflieg, Helena Manson, Germaine Delbat, Jacques Fayet, Friedrich Domin, Werner Finck, Ivan Desny. Summary: The life of the notorious showgirl who had affairs with kings, became a courtesan, and traveled the world trying to fit in. Lola Montès charts the course of Montès's scandalous past through the invocations of the bombastic ringmaster of the American circus where she has ended up performing


whatever Lola wants ...

   The woman we know today as Lola  Montez was actually of impeccable British pedigree, having been born in Ireland as Eliza Rosanna Gilbert to well-to-do upper middle class parents: her father was a career officer in the King’s army and her mother’s father a member of Parliament. Most decidedly she did not descend from a Spanish noble family, as she later would claim. But somehow along the way the deception stuck, and she metamorphosed, spectacularly, into the more modish and exotic identity of ‘Lola Montez.’

   She was best known as a notorious dancer but from all accounts wasn’t very good. As if to compensate she sometimes danced naked. She was also an actress but apparently couldn’t act. More to the point, she was the century’s most notorious femme fatale before the term existed. Indeed some sources say the phrase had to be invented to describe Lola.

   If contemporary portraits and vintage photographs are any indication she was an attractive woman but not really a great beauty, at least by Twentieth and Twenty-first Century ideals of female physical perfection. But like Cleopatra she had something that inspired various male suitors – rich, famous and otherwise – to seek out her company, often with unfortunate consequences for both the suitor and Lola. Anyhow, and to invoke Twentieth Century comparisons further, Lola might be described as a Nineteenth Century version of Marilyn Monroe, Bettie Page and Eva Peron all rolled into one, with more than a touch of the Gabor sisters. In a word she was famous for being famous.

   Accordingly Lola’s life had numerous permutations, convolutions, confluences and connections. Classical music buffs glimpse her as one of Franz Liszt’s many amours. Other liaisons included author Alexander Dumas, newspaper publisher Alexandre Dujarier, and King Ludwig I of Bavaria. Herein another, albeit tenuous, connection with Liszt. Ludwig’s grandson, later King Ludwig II, was a near fanatical admirer of Richard Wagner’s operas. Wagner just happened to be Liszt’s son-in-law, having married Liszt’s daughter Cosima. Indeed some sources claim that Lola had a fling with Wagner himself, though this is doubtful. By all accounts Wagner met Lola only briefly and didn’t much like her ("a heartless, demonic being," he later wrote of her).

   Her liaison with Ludwig I created a furor at court and resulted in the king’s eventual abdication. Thus with her star fading fast in Europe Lola in the early 1850s moved to America and eventually made her way to the bawdy environs of San Francisco in the Gold Rush days. Lola was an immediate succès de scandale in America, with one of the more sensationalist stories about her being, apropos her fiery ‘Latin’ temperament, that she whipped a German policeman who had offended her. She later disowned the story but it’s a great story all the same, so much so that she always carried the horse-whip onstage during performances to discourage men from treating her disrespectfully. As her popularity waned she took her shtick to smaller mining towns in northern California and eventually made a tour of Australia.

   Lola returned to the United States in 1856. At this point, only 34 years old and in poor health she turned to spirituality and lived quietly in New York, mostly doing charity work for homeless women, until her death from complications of pneumonia and syphilis at age 39 in 1861.

   Lola’s tempestuous life and career has been essayed by most every art form and entertainment medium, but film connoisseurs best remember her from the 1955 widescreen extravaganza Lola Montès, directed by legendary German auteur Max Ophuls, with Martine Carol in the title role.

   Mirroring the woman herself the film Lola Montès has had a bumpy evolution. From its riotous, scandalous premieres in 1955 – accompanied by mixed, mostly negative, reviews – to its gradual comeback, it has survived various studio-imposed cuts and revisions, finally receiving a glorious and much deserved full restoration in 2008. Still, Lola has polarized fans and critics since its first screening nearly seven decades ago. Jacques Rivette and Francois Truffaut praised the film on its initial release, and in 1963 the eminent American critic Andrew Sarris famously proclaimed it the greatest movie of all time [1], surely an exaggeration but not really that far off the mark. Moreover Lola is getting further, more recent, critical love: in 2012 the film received five votes in the BFI/Sight and Sound poll of the greatest films of all time, which might place it as a low grade honorable mention but nonetheless a sign of its growing critical acceptance.

   Today Ophuls is the cult director par excellence and Lola Montès his cult movie of choice by devotees (even if his The Earrings of Madame de … remains the critical darling). Indeed if we grant that Lola Montès is an art movie then it’s not hyperbole to describe it as one of the half dozen or so greatest art movies ever.
   Hitherto best known for appearing in French boudoir farces in the 1950s, Martine Carol is the perfect embodiment of Lola, a little too much as it turned out. As though providence itself had been tempted Miss Carol was struck down by cardiac arrest in 1967 at the youthful age of forty-six.

[1] Mr. Sarris seems to have had second thoughts given his subsequent reflections on the ‘greatest films.’

no exit : D.O.A. (1950)

[Minor SPOILERS in this post]. Noir-heads are only too familiar with the genre’s favorite tropes: doomed heroes, back-stabbing femme fatales, visual flourishes, fatalistic plots, thunderous music. But D.O.A. stands out amongst the noir oeuvre for its totally sui generis status. Yes, it has virtually all the noir themes and characters, in abundance. But its premise, and to some extent, underlying psychology, is unique. I can’t think of any film, noir or otherwise, that has as its main plot point a guy that’s been murdered and he’s still literally alive [1], not just alive but trying to solve the case. Probably the closest is Sunset Blvd., in which we have a wise guy narrator who talks to us from beyond the grave. But it’s not quite the same thing; the William Holden character in Sunset is already dead and is just retelling the story. In D.O.A. the murdered hero is still alive, kicking, and trying to figure out what’s going on in a spiritual and existential morass that spirals out of control to a degree that’s extreme even by noir standards.

   The basic issue is not whether Frank Bigelow will die or not – that’s been pre-ordained – but why. Our hero’s eventual discovery, far too late, is as much about the how as the why of his murder. As for the real reason, well, it’s merely the vicissitudes of fate, or to put it more bluntly, and quintessentially noirishly, for no good reason at all. Yes, there is a technical reason – notarizing a bill of sale. But the ultimate consequences are hardly proportional to the transgression, if one may put it that way. Again we have a classic noirish message: it’s an unfair universe, fella. Get over it.

   As the movie whirls and twists its way through the maelstrom we become more, not less, confused amongst the myriad receipts, bills, sales, aliases, spiked drinks, femmes fatales, false leads, photographs, love letters, philandering and threats of philandering, and we never quite know the full story. But who cares? Best to sit back and enjoy the wild ride and delight in the dream-like excess. Indeed the whole production is awash in over-the-topness, especially the earnest B level acting that verges on camp but never quite gets there. My guess is that all involved were playing this totally straight as just another B movie, Ed Wood with a bigger budget and more talent, if you like.

   But first, let’s get to the only real misstep, and dispense with it straight away. It’s of course the hokey and hopelessly in-bad-taste (to current sensibilities anyway) wolf whistles while Frank ogles the ladies upon his arrival at the hotel. The whistles are especially incongruous given that the women Frank admires look singularly unappetizing, adorned as they are in frumpy, Forties-style garb. (Perhaps it's appropriate that, among the ladies at the hotel, it's the flirtatious Sue that's the only woman who dresses with any sense of style and elegance). D.O.A.'s only other, arguable, misfire is the prolonged romantic scene between Paula and Frank toward the end of the film.
     Now moving on to the good stuff: there’s great on-location scenes in San Francisco and Los Angeles (you can’t go wrong with the Bradbury Building for a thriller). Maybe the best sequence in the film is the scene at the jazz club (appropriately named The Fisherman) [2], shot in an orgiastically expressionist manner with alternating hopped up audience and wild-eyed musicians performing a bobsled ride of a jazz tune at an ever frenzied pace. By the way the proto-Beat clientele is mostly white but if one looks closely we can see hints of a multi-racial crowd, something quite unusual for a late Forties film, even an under the radar product like D.O.A. Oddly enough, and contrary to popular opinion, jazz features little in noir either as background or source music [3]. Jazz clubs are even scarcer, and this is one of the best sequences ever. The more conventional film music for D.O.A. is, in its different way, just as good. The manic pace and sweltering, claustrophobic feel throughout the story is perfectly complemented by Dmitri Tiomkin’s intrusive, bombastic score.

   Anyhow, as to the cast, Edmund O’Brien is perfect in the role of Frank Bigelow, in many, and sometimes surprising ways. For a hefty guy he shows some pretty fancy footwork skipping down steps and sprinting to avoid the bad guys chasing him. And as much as O’Brien more or less dominates the film as the frantic, frazzled Bigelow, it’s the women who steal the show.

   Pamela Britton as Paula usually gets the brunt of the bad reviews, both for the performance and the character. Okay, Miss Britton may not be the best actress in the world, or even the best in this movie. Similarly the character Paula is usually savaged for being a stereotypical clinging, whiny girlfriend/wife wannabe. But upon repeated viewings, and from the perspective of seventy years on, Paula (and Miss Britton’s performance) becomes something of an acquired taste, growing more appealing, human and sympathetic each time [4]. Indeed a case might be made that she’s the only admirable character in the story. She’s attractive, loyal, steadfast, speaks her mind (albeit sometimes impulsively and not too wisely), wants to love and be loved, and moreover is a darn good secretary. She actually looks pretty good next to the various specimens of womanhood – grifters, schemers, low-lifes, alcoholic nymphomaniacs, jazz freaks, double crossers, and who knows what else – Frank encounters on his quest. This doesn’t excuse his unchivalrous penchant for roughing up women along the way. No sympathy points for Frank here. To his credit he reserves even rougher treatment for the men, most of whom, happily, have it coming.

   1950s B movie scream queen Beverly Garland (here billed as Beverly Campbell) has a small role but registers a wallop with her bulging eyes. Ditto for a snarling Laurette Luez as the duplicitous ingénue – why didn’t this woman have a bigger career? [5] We talk more about Virginia Lee as the jazz obsessed ‘Easy’ in the footnote, below. But maybe best of all among the ladies is a 26 year-old Lynn Baggett playing, very convincingly, a fortyish grieving widow with something to hide. Her real life saga is only too noir-like: her career and life were cut short in most untimely, and most cruel, fashion. (After a tumultuous life she died in 1960 at the age of 36 from an overdose). Then there’s salon stylist and small town femme fatale Kitty (Carol Hughes) who has the eye for Frank. Alas she departs the story much too soon. Finally, how can we overlook Cay Forrester as Sue, the woman who likes to dance, and likes her alcohol. She comes on to Frank a bit too strong, much to her husband’s disapproval.

   The spot on remainder of the cast sparkles, even – especially – the supporting and bit players, who include some familiar faces in the noir universe. Peter Graves lookalike William Ching makes for a wonderfully smooth bad guy. The suave, always delightful Ivan Triesault, so memorable as the sinister Mathis a few years earlier in Notorious, here is reduced to a cameo as the manager of the photography studio where Frank goes to track down ’George Reynolds.’ Nonetheless he’s a welcome touch of Old World savoir faire. Which reminds me, yes, I have to give props to Neville Brand as Majak’s psychotic enforcer Chester. His is a chillingly overwrought take. By contrast, Luther Adler as the aging capo Majak oozes calm, sinister elegance. Trivia: IMDB credits Hugh O’Brian and John Payne for bit parts in D.O.A., but darned if I see them.

   So … is there a moral to D.O.A.? Indeed a case can be made that all films noirs are at heart morality plays, in which the (anti)-hero, or –heroine, eventually learns the folly of his ways, at great remove, i.e. too late, usually accompanied by a very steep, sometimes irreversible, price. Such is the case with Frank Bigelow. Yes, his behavior is often loutish and he's something of a cad, but he doesn't deserve his ultimate fate. To his credit he passes by several temptations, thus implying that, perhaps unconsciously, he was really more committed to Paula than he realized. But for Frank, the epiphany comes much too late, with the resultant cost being very high indeed. If there is a moral to D.O.A. it’s perhaps this: to know what we’ve already got, and be grateful for it. It may not be too much of a stretch to see a mythic quality to D.O.A.: Frank’s loss of Pamela and subsequent, alas far too late, appreciation of just how much he’s lost has overtones of the Orphic legend.
  
   The seemingly inevitable, nowhere near as good, remake appeared in 1988. There was also an unofficial remake, Color Me Dead (1969).

   [1] D.O.A.’s murder plot exists in a sort of reverse-retroactive time frame: the crime of murder has been committed but the hero’s death will actually take place in the future. This is distinct from the similarly plotted ‘spectral incognizance’ story, in which the unbeknownst protagonist has been dead or is in the process of dying all along, and it’s only revealed to the audience, and the protagonist, at the end. The early Sixties cult classic Carnival of Souls is a good example. The trope was also employed for at least one Twilight Zone episode.

   [2] The scene at The Fisherman is one of the more unvarnished portraits of a jazz club in a mainstream film up to this time. A few years later the Brit noir Sleeping Tiger did a pretty good job of a realistic depiction of a jazz club, as did Kiss Me Deadly (1955), I Want to Live (1958), and Odds Against Tomorrow (1959), with KMD presenting a fairly sedate, otherwise all-black club where Mike Hammer likes to hang out. Like The Fisherman, the club in Odds Against Tormorrow is multi-racial, rare for films of that era. The jazz club in the below mentioned Sweet Smell of Success (1957) is a low-keyed, well scrubbed affair. Another depiction of a 1950s jazz club, this one another fairly bland, clean cut example, can be seen in the Perry Mason tv series, ‘The Case of the Jaded Joker,’ episode (1959).
    One of the aficionados of The Fisherman is an uptown, enigmatic blonde with a hint of the femme fatale. She seems to use jazz as an opiate, and there are even hints that she gets sexual pleasure from listening to the music. Naturally she catches Frank’s wandering eye. Anyhow she’s played perfectly in mildly flirtatious, come-hither form by Virginia Lee. IMDB lists her character’s name as Jeannie (actually Bigelow addresses her as such), but I swear she calls herself ‘Edie’ or ‘Easy.’ In either case Miss Lee, whether as ‘Easy’ or ‘Jeannie,’ goes uncredited in the final print. By the way, the character of 'Easy' recalls the unnamed woman (memorably portrayed by Joan Miller) who also sat at the end of the bar in Criss Cross of a few years earlier, though her thing was strictly alcohol, not music.
    Trivia: In D.O.A. the bartender at the club chastises Bigelow for not being very hip. Surprising that he uses this term given ‘hep’ was more in fashion in the Forties and even Fifties. Interestingly, in Sweet Smell of Success, which appeared nearly a decade after D.O.A., Hunsecker lectures the senator that any hep person could see that he and the young woman who accompanies him are an item. In the 1946 film Ziegfeld Follies Judy Garland performs “The Great Lady Gives an Interview,” in which she declares that she wants her fans to know she’s really hep. In 1958 Ann Miller essayed a live TV version of the same number and also used the word ‘hep.’ By the way, Ann Miller's version holds up pretty well when compared with the Garland.

[3] Joel Dinerstein, The Origins of Cool in Postwar America, Univ. of Chicago Pr., 2017, pp.198-206.

[4] Miss Britton was woefully underutilized in the movies, and in the Fifties and Sixties she confined her work mostly to theater and television, most notably as Mrs. Brown on the tv series My Favorite Martian. Panela Britton was only 51 years old when she died of a brain tumor in 1974.

[5] Miss Luez plays Marla Rakubian in D.O.A. Marla's a bit of a mystery woman since her status in Majac's criminal organization, as well as her ultimate fate, is murky. (Perhaps she used that ticket to Buenos Aires after all). We can assume she's 'George Reynold's'/Ray Rakubian's cousin, sister, or, most likely, widow. She seems to have a cozy, albeit non-romantic, relationship with Majac: he treats her in the manner of an affectionate uncle, but he actually seems more fond of his brutal protégé Chester.
     Curious, considering D.O.A.'s all-time classic noir status, the film lacks a true femme fatale. Cay Forrester as the gin-soaked Sue and Virginia Lee as the jazz obsessed 'Jeanie' have femme fatale qualities but aren't the complete package. Ditto for the ostensibly neutral secretary Miss Foster (Beverly Garland), who has her own secrets and deceptions. Even the flirtatious hairdresser Kitty might be considered a small-town version of the trope.
    Aside: the fatale femme's mirror image, the virtuous heroine, here is embodied by Bigelow girlfriend and wife wannabe Paula, played to perfection by the much maligned – unfairly so, in this writer's opinion – Pamela Britton. In any case, probably the two characters who come closest to filling the femme fatale role are Marla Rakubian (Laurette Luez) and Mrs. Phillips (Lynn Baggett). Miss Rakubian probably best fits the physical mold with her long dark locks, black dress and dusky looks, and she scores extra points for her testy attitude. But Mrs. Phillips is probably the most fatale of the women in D.O.A. in that her actions lead directly to Eugene Phillips' death, and moreover she participates in the cover-up. And with her elegant uptown style she more or less looks the part.

In praise of little-known movies

Under-the-radar gems worth a look

What are the exact parameters that define a neglected classic, or semi-classic? For some almost any obscure film noir, especially one with a cult following, would be in the running. Other tastes would lean more to westerns or (especially 1950s) sci-fi/horror. But, and much as I’m a huge fan of noir, especially the little noirs [1], and sometimes even sci-fi and westerns, to be representative and equitable I didn’t want to focus too much on one genre or historical era.

Some of the titles listed below are indeed cult classics and regularly show up at second run and arthouse theaters, and they also appear on tv programs that specialize in oddball movies. As such several have loyal if small followings. Some have been critically praised to the skies (and some have not). Admittedly with many films available in their entirety online nowadays and the constant flow of DVDs from prestige labels like Criterion and Kino Lorber, a few of the titles listed below – well, most actually – aren’t quite so obscure as they once were. Indeed, among hardcore old movie buffs some may be more than a little familiar. Even so …

Digression: the term ‘cult’ appears more than once above, thus a word on cult films vs. little known films. A film can be underrated, unfamiliar or underappreciated, which is not quite the same as a film that generates a quasi-religious devotion among its (usually) small coterie of admirers, and as a result, somewhat parodoxically, sneaks into cinematic mass consciousness in an influential and noteworthy way. The titles listed below are of the former category, but as hinted above some of them indeed have become cult classics. Conversely a cult movie isn’t necessarily unknown or under-appreciated, but often is.

In any case, and most important in the context of present ruminations, the entries in this compilation are, in the writer’s humble opinion, just plain good movies, quite apart from their familiarity, lack of it, or cult status. And, in what’s dubbed full disclosure these days, most of them are personal favorites. In contrast, almost by definition a bad film can’t be undervalued or under-appreciated. To wit: there are numerous cult movies that conventional wisdom would deem as irredeemably bad (bad in the sense of being inept or amateurish in concept and execution, apart from being bad in any ethical or moral sense). An example might be the Ed Wood-like The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies. This one certainly has a dedicated, if small, following, but few among us would extol its aesthetic virtues. In other words, it’s just a ‘bad’ movie.

Thus, drumroll please:

Blast of Silence. 1961. A smoky, jazzy minor masterpiece that might well be the last gasp of the classic noir era. Blast of Silence tells the story of a hit-man’s visit to New York to take out a mid-level mob boss. Directed by and starring Allen Baron.

A Coffee in Berlin. 2012. CiB chronicles the picaresque travails of a ne’er-do-well slacker and his quest to find the perfect cup of coffee – any cup of coffee – in the big city. Filmed in stylish black and white and populated with lovably eccentric characters, the film serves a snapshot of life in hip Berlin ca. 2010.

Creation of the Humanoids. 1962. Blade Runner meets Forbidden Planet, with a pinch of Metropolis, in this talky sci-fi camp classic. The striking, albeit low budget, visuals and Jack Pierce’s makeup are the true stars of Humanoids. An added bonus is Dudley Manlove of Plan 9 from Outer Space as one of the replicants, who are disparagingly referred to as ‘clickers’ by the self-anointed superior humans. Directed by Wesley Barry.

Curse of the Crying Woman (La Maldición de la Llorona). 1961. Beautifully filmed at night and often described as the Mexican Black Sunday, Crying Woman follows the familiar Gothic formula while throwing in a few, decidedly Mexican, twists and tricks of its own. With references not only to witchcraft but also voodoo, vampirism and lycanthropy, the film is one of the summits of Mexican horror cinema.

Dementia (Daughter of Horror). 1955. (Not to be confused with Francis Ford Coppola's Dementia 13). My, but this is one strange movie. A mixture of German silent film, urban melodrama, crime thriller, and surrealist fantasy, Dementia chronicles the sinister hallucinations of a disturbed young woman. This one's like nothing you've ever seen before: a dark night of the soul, and a long night's journey into madness. Trivia: was Orson Welles influenced by Dementia's De Chirico-like visuals of Venice, California? The visual similarities to Welles's later Touch of Evil are uncanny, so it's certainly possible.

Deux Hommes dans Manhattan (Two Men in Manhattan). 1959. The story is of little consequence as mood and atmosphere run rampant in this affectionate tribute to the Big Apple. Truly a hymn to the night. Directed by and starring Jean-Pierre Melville. With: Pierre Grasset and a mostly unknown supporting cast.

Distinto Amanecer (Another Dawn). 1943. Andrea Palma and Pedro Armendariz shine in this tense story of skulduggery in an atmosphere- and night-drenched Mexico City. Directed by Julio Bracho and filmed by cinematographic legend Gabriel Figueroa, Distinto is one of the peaks of the Golden Age of Mexican cinema.

The Exiles. 1961. Great on-location work in the Bunker Hill district of L.A. highlights this tale of Native Americans trying to adjust to life in the City of the Angels.

Frida: Naturaleza Viva. 1984. Superior in many ways to the far better-known Salma Hayek version, this Frida features Ofelia Medina, who bears a striking resemblance to the great artist. She delivers a knockout performance.

From Hollywood to Deadwood. 1989. FHtD is an amiable neo-noir in which two second-rate private detectives are hired to find a starlet who has mysteriously disappeared. Knowing banter, a well-paced plot and colorful locales highlight this enjoyable spoof of the private eye genre. Directed by Rex Pickett.

The Furies. 1950. Western specialist Anthony Mann helms perhaps his greatest western, a sweeping psychological epic marked by serious scenery chewing compliments of Walter Huston and Barbara Stanwyck. The heart of the story is a kinky father-daughter relationship that’s part affection, part battle of wills. Huston’s final film and arguably Stanwyck’s best performance, The Furies also boasts a stellar supporting cast, most notably Wendell Cory, Blanche Yurka, Gilbert Roland, Judith Anderson and Beulah Bondi.

Hot Enough for June (Agent 8 3/4). 1964. Dirk Bogarde, Sylva Koscina and Robert Morley sparkle in this lightweight spy spoof, laden with eminently Sixties style and sensibilities.

The Hunted. 1947. Tidy little B noir that packs a punch. Tough cop Preston Foster shadows former girlfriend Belita, who's been released from prison for a crime she insists she didn't commit. Belita's acting isn't quite as good as her skating, but she makes a compellingly languorous femme fatale. Her skating number is the best part of the film.

Isle of the Dead. 1945. Boris Karloff heads the credits but atmosphere is the star in this murky, less appreciated entry in the Val Lewton canon. Katherine Emery, Ellen Drew and Ernst Deutsch highlight a strong supporting cast, and Leigh Harlene’s creepy score adds to the ambience.

Les dames du Bois de Boulogne. 1945. A beautiful society woman plots revenge on a boyfriend who has jilted her for another woman. She ignores the inconvenient fact that she had already dumped him, sort of. Robert Bresson’s masterly direction and the fine cast, especially Maria Casarès as the vengeful femme fatale, lift the thin material above its pedigree. The sumptuous black & white look is really the true star of the film. 

Les Yeux sans Visage (Eyes Without a Face). 1960. All is bathed in perpetual twilight and gloomy semi-darkness in this horror thriller that's a strong candidate for the mantle of the creepiest movie of all time.

Lizzie. 1957. Eleanor Parker rocks as the multiple personality woman in this poor man’s Three Faces of Eve. Directed by Hugo Haas. 

Mickey One. 1965. Warren Beatty's strangest film is a paranoia-drenched expressionistic thriller with a strong touch of the post-noir. Ghislain Cloquet's cinematography is the true star of the film, which features offbeat on-location scenes in Detroit and Chicago as well as a strong supporting cast that includes Hurd Hatfield, Jeff Corey, Alexandra Stewart, and Franchot Tone in one of his last roles. Directed by Arthur Penn.

Murder by Contract. 1958. It’s Vince Edwards in the role of a lifetime as a quirky, ice cold contract killer. Caprice Toriel shines as the nervous, piano playing mark. Directed by Irving Lerner. 

Private Property. 1960. In this once-lost late B noir, psycho-sexual manipulation combines with a critical undercurrent of 1950s American materialism. A disturbing but compelling little film that keeps you guessing till the last scene, especially noteworthy for its three knockout lead performances. This one still shocks even in today's seen-and-heard-it-all cinematic environment. Directed by Leslie Stevens.

Riffraff. 1947. A tropical noir set in Panama City, Riffraff features Pat O'Brien as a laid back private detective, Walter Slezak as the erudite heavy, and Anne Jeffreys the virtuous heroine with a touch of femme fatale. Maybe not a overlooked masterpiece, Riffraff is nonetheless a well-heeled programmer served up in RKO's best style. Directed by Ted Tetzlaff.

The Sound of Fury (Try and Get Me). 1950. A ruthless criminal recruits a down-on-his-luck veteran to assist him with his nefarious schemes. Unpleasant and difficult to watch, Try and Get Me is a fine film nonetheless, with Lloyd Bridges a standout as one of cinema’s most irredeemable bad guys.

Spider Baby. 1967. Offbeat black comedy with creepy kids, predatory relatives, and an old dark house. Directed by Jack Hill. I thought I'd  included the ultimate strange movie in this compilation with Dementia/Daughter of Horror, but the recent discovery of this little gem makes me rethink my original assessment. Spider Baby is a scrumptious concoction of, well, let's say House on Haunted Hill meets Manos, the Hands of Fate, with no small helpings of Freaks and Psycho thrown in. I don't recall being so entertained by such questionable, decidedly politically incorrect material. An added bonus is the Carol Ohmart cheesecake scene.

The Spiritualist (The Amazing Mr. X). 1948. A rich woman (a Joan Crawford-esque Lynn Bari) searches for messages from her dead husband through the medium Alexis (Turhan Bey). The surrealistic visuals create a creepy mood in this 1940s style supernatural thriller. Indeed this modest little film may be cinematographer John Alton's masterpiece. This one just gets better with repeated viewings.

Stark Fear (1962). 1950s B movie scream queen Beverly Garland stars in this obscure, low-rent exploitation film about a wife-in-peril who just can't seem to leave her sadistic husband. Stark Fear is a quirky quasi-noir with a strong supporting cast (especially Hannah Stone as Garland's stoic friend) and a shifting feminist/anti-feminist message. Directed by Ned Hochman and Skip Homeier, and filmed on location in Arkansas and Oklahoma.

Terror in the Crypt (Crypt of the Vampire). 1964. Gothic is the word in this stylish, shadows-laden Italo-horror thriller with a subtly erotic charge. Christopher Lee is the marquee name of the cast, but it’s the ladies who steal the show, especially our two leads Adriana Ambesi and Ursula Davis. Crumbling locales, creepy music and a strong Sapphic undertow contribute to this little known gem.

Waterloo Bridge. 1931. Not to be confused with the much better known, but not as good, Vivien Leigh version of a few years later, Waterloo Bridge is a pre-Code treasure. In the performance of a career, Mae Clarke is wonderful as the working class streetwalker who captures the heart of an American serviceman in WW1 London. Directed by James Whale.

Who Killed Teddy Bear. 1965. Directed by Joseph Cates. In Greenwich Village, a disco hostess (Juliet Prowse) is stalked by a sexual predator, and she requests help from an intense vice squad detective who takes a personal interest in her case. Still a bit shocking even by today's standards with its unvarnished depiction of a seedy, mid-60s New York, Teddy Bear anticipates the far better known, more high gloss Midnight Cowboy of a few years later. A kind of gritty, American version of Peeping Tom, Teddy Bear is truly one of the summits of Sixties sleaze noir. 

Wicked Woman. 1953. This trashy little gem features 1950s B movie legend Beverly Michaels, but Percy Helton steals the show as the most repellent lecher in cinema history. Running a brisk 77 minutes, Wicked Woman positively drips in sleaze, and it’s a small miracle the film got past the censors in the early Fifties.

Woman on the Run. 1950. Ann Sheridan hits it out of the park in this under appreciated quasi-noir that boasts a fine supporting cast, especially police inspector Robert Keith and shady journalist Dennis O’Keefe. WotR is also notable for the effective use of sinister San Francisco locales. Directed by Orson Welles protégé Norman Foster.

Women in the Night. 1948. German scientists plot revenge on the victorious allies by developing a cosmic ray weapon. Meanwhile, beautiful women prisoners provide 'tea and sympathy' at an officers' club. Ostensibly a thriller, this (post)WW2 propaganda film received the full pulp noir treatment from director William Rowland. Featuring Tala Birell, Virginia Christine and especially Jean Brooks, who (more or less) reprises her persona from The Seventh Victim. Gloriously lurid and irresistibly kitschy, Women in the Night also has the dubious distinction of being (arguably) the first Nazi exploitation movie.

[1] For an exceptionally thorough perusal of under-the-radar B noirs see: Arthur Lyons, Death on the Cheap: the Lost B Movies of Film Noir, Da Capo, 2000. For the cult angle there’s Danny Peary’s three volumes on cult movies. See also Millie De Chirico's TCM Underground: 50 Must-See Films from the World of Classic Cult and Late-Night Cinema.