A Trailer a Day Keeps the Boogeyman Away! The Name of the Game is Kill! (1968)

THE NAME OF THE GAME IS KILL! [1968]

Also known as ‘The Female Trap’

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Written by Gary Crutcher who gave us Stanley (1972) the man loves snakes, and Featuring the song-“Shadows”
Performed by The Electric Prunes

The Electric Prunes
Experimental psychedelic group of the late 60s. The Electric Prunes had a hit in 1966 “I Had Too Much to Dream (Last Night)” also recognized for the song “Kyrie Eleison,” featured on the soundtrack of Easy Rider.

I keep coming across these great obscure creepy shockers from the 1960s. Often starring actors like Tab Hunter and Susan Strasberg. This bizarre theatre of lunacy was directed by Gunnar Hellström 

 Strasberg The Name of The Game is Kill

The Name of the Game is Kill! is a nice contribution to the psychotronic -cult-cinema genre, just because of the hostility, the great casting and the psychedelic music alone.

It’s an odd offering featuring some even more bizarre characters- three sisters, Susan Strasberg who plays Mickey Terry, Tisha Sterling  who plays Nan Terry and Collin Wilcox Paxton as Diz Terry.

I love Collin Wilcox, I think she is one of the most underrated character actresses, so it’s nice to see her here with Tisha Sterling and Ms Strasberg doing what she does best, playing a quiet, deeply composed box of kindling with layers and layers of mood and intuitive style.

Jack Lord of Hawaii Five -O fame plays a stranger, a Hungarian traveler named Symcha Lipa (Sim) who is passing through an isolated town and hooks up with the peculiar Terry family run by matriarch and patriarch Father and Mother Terry, the androgynous T.C Jones (you remember Nurse Betty in Alfred Hitchcock Hour’s An Unlocked Window she/he was also in 3 Nuts in Search of a Bolt 1964 as Henry.)

The girls invite Sim to their home for some hospitality. Mother Terry lives with her three beautiful daughters and a menagerie of poisonous snakes and tarantulas.Mickey is friendly and welcoming but the other two sisters exude a malicious venom themselves. When Sim almost dies, he winds up in the hospital being warned by local Sheriff  Fred Kendall played by Mort Mills not to get involved with the Terry family. Of course Sim doesn’t listen…

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The Name of the Game is MonsterGirl  finding you delicious goodies to feast your eyes on.

A Trailer a Day Keeps the Boogeyman Away! ‘They Were So Young’ (1954)

“Too innocent! Too willing! and far, far Too Eager!… and so Beautiful!”

THEY WERE SO YOUNG 1954

They Were So Young Film poster

Directed by Kurt Neumann (The Fly 1958)and starring Johanna Matz as Eve Ullmann a young girl who answers an advertisement for international models, whose fashion shows are just fronts for men to buy what they ‘like.’

What unfolds is the dark underbelly of international white slave trafficking. The film was shot on location in Hollywood but created as the playground of Rio De Janeiro.

They Were So Young lobby card

Scott Brady is Richard Lanning, a guy who works for Jaime Coltos a rich Brazilian mine owner (Raymond Burr) Jaime invites Richard to his country estate for a little romp, but one of the new ‘models’ Eve isn’t playing the game, and breaks a bottle over his head when he tries to get ‘friendly.’ Once Eve finds out the real operation she works for, she begins to make trouble. Also starring Ingrid Stenn ( Bewildered Youth 1957) as Connie Voorhees.

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Also co-starring Gisela Fackeldey as Mme. Lansowa, Katharina Mayberg as Felicia, Erica Beer as Elise LeFevre, Hanita Hallan as Lena, Gert Fröbe as Lobos.

Of course Richard with the bruised ego and head, will wind up being the hero in the end, not realizing that his Boss is behind the slave trade ring. It’s just a fun harmlessly risqué romp, of course it’s not Preminger, Russ Meyers or even Ed L Cahn, but we love all the shades of bad here at the Last Drive In.

“They came to Rio with their heads so high in the clouds they never realized their feet were in the dirt.”

Still a young and wild MonsterGirl

The Film Score Freak Recognizes iconic 70s songwriter-Paul Williams

PAUL WILLIAMS

Paul Williams

Paul Williams sings

Paul and Kermit

Growing up in the 7os, a lot of what inspired me to follow my journey as a singer/songwriter had much to do with the brilliant, evocatively poignant and memorable compositions by artists like the great Paul Williams. I still can’t listen or sing one of his iconic songs without becoming a fountain of tears, melting into an emotional puddle of ‘feelings.’ His contribution to the world as a singer/songwriter has been so immense, that I feel inadequate just showing a little love here, instead of doing one of my long winded posts.

But I am too agitated with excitement about the documentary Paul Williams Still Alive, and to have found him  alive and well on Twitter. I love you, We love you Paul Williams.

You have given us a magical, alchemical concoction of music that will forever flare up like molten gold in our hearts. It’s so good to see you again.

So here’s a just a little reminder of SOME of the things this beautiful, brilliant man has brought us from his heavenly throne where he sits with the other musical angels.

From the new documentary, here’s the official trailer for Paul Williams Still Alive

Karen Carpenter sings Rainy Days and Mondays

Kermit the Frog sings The Rainbow Connection from The Muppet Movie

Karen Carpenter sings We’ve Only Just Begun

Barbra Streisand sings Evergreen from A Star is Born

Jessica Harper sings Old Souls from Phantom of The Paradise

Here’s to the immortal genius! – With love Jo Gabriel the little singer/songwriting MonsterGirl

The Todd Killings (1971) -The Oedipal Minstrel Killer of Tuscon and the Cult of Anti-Hero Worship

“Another Kill. Another Thrill”

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The Todd Killings (1971)

Directed by Barry Shear, (Wild in the Streets 1968,Across 110th Street 1972) written by Joel Oliansky, Dennis Murphy and Mann Rubin. It stars Robert F. Lyons  as the infamous true life serial killer (Charles Schmid) Skipper Todd. The film hosts an incredible cast of actors, Richard Thomas, Belinda Montgomery, Sherry Miles, Joyce Ames, Holly Near, James Broderick, Gloria Grahame, Fay Spain, Edward Asner, Barbara Bel Geddes, Michael Conrad and Meg Foster.

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It’s a bit of rare 70s THRILLER genre vérité, which is brutally stripped bare of self consciousness or moral ambiguity. Director Barry Shear shows no pretense with this film, it’s bleak and graphic and stars the fresh scrubbed American youthfulness of Robert F Lyons who is chilling as he inhabits the persona of Steven ‘Skipper’ Todd with the acuity of an anti social archetypal socio-path, a foreshadowing doppelgänger of serial killers to come.

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Based on the real life character of 60s thrill killer, Charles Schmid also dubbed the Pied Piper of Tucson who was found guilty of murder in 1966 and sentenced to death, but wound up getting 50 years to life, when the state of Arizona temporarily abolished the death penalty in 1971. Eventually Schmid himself was murdered in prison.

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Lyons worldly ruthlessly inhospitable persona channels a charismatic young philosophical misanthrope who embodies the 60s attitude of the anti establishment credo, taking it to a violent level of psychotic abandon. Todd becomes an anti- hero to the local youth who worship him, in particular the very young women he easily beds, who treat him like a deity. He exhibits the qualities of a Svengali as he manipulates both male and female devotees. Todd is cool and urbane, charming his way into the lives of several high school teenagers in a small California town. There is a jaundiced atmosphere to this community, as the complacency and rumbling undercurrent of disturbed restlessness paint a very uneasy portrait of American life off kilter.

When the film opens, Todd has killed a 16 year old girl named Sue Ellen Mack, having recruited two other teenagers to help cover up the crime by burying the body in the vast and ceaseless desert, the perfect place to lose a body. One teen is an overweight girl Norma (Holly Near) who hangs on Skipper like a minion, clinging to him like a swooning groupie and the other a scraggy termite called Andy.

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Shear directs each scene with a heartless realism. The three while leaving the desert just having buried Sue Ellen, pick up Billy Roy ( Richard Thomas) who is hitchhiking, just having been released from reform school. There is the sensibility to the film that exposes a mob mentality. This heightened sense of a younger fringe craving to dwell aimlessly outside of society, the phrase used often to signify an opposition to society or being a ‘citizen’ is prevalent in sub genre films, such as the biker genre. In this environment it is feasible that an awakening adolescence would be mesmerized by an outlier, a bad boy, and therefore aide in concealing the crime. It’s conceivable that a flock of youths could be present at the scene of a murder, not only do nothing to stop it, and in fact, help in it’s surreptitious design to cover it up, and allude the police. The unrepentant complicity to the crimes bares a similarity to the working dynamic of the 1986 film The River’s Edge

Robert F Lyons as Skipper Todd
Robert Thom wrote Angel Angel Down We Go. He envisions the anti hero as a guitar strumming Svengali-Here Robert F.Lyons is the songwriting/psychopath Skipper Todd
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Jordan Christopher portrays the similarly brutal misanthropic sociopath Bogart Peter Stuyvesant in Robert Thom’s Angel Angel Down We Go 1969. Both peddlers of sex and death, wielding guitars as their weapon of seduction.

Skipper Todd manipulates Richard Thomas‘ character Billy like a master puppeteer, dangling the potential for romance with his former classmate Amata. Billy has been obsessed with Amata since High School. Unfortunately Amata only has eyes for Skipper, and poor naive Billy is so easily influenced and blinded by his attraction to this girl that he doesn’t see how Todd is using him as yet another pawn in his coterie.

Belinda Montgomery plays Roberta a pretty 16 year old girl from an affluent family, who is less pliant and impressionable at first. It is her rebellious attitude and her blatant defiance toward Skipper’s malevolent magnetism, which charge his advances which become more potent, as he becomes drawn to her the more she resists.

She’s the one female who appears immune at first to Skipper’s charms. Although she restrains from falling into the same infatuated vapidness like the other girls, ultimately after Skipper breaks into her house one night, beats and rapes her, she finally breaks down and succumbs to his control and decries that she loves him. The manifest use of violence against women as sexual stimulation, and the tenet of annihilating women’s power through control, not love is another inherent trope of the story. Skipper mother as a role model only teaches him to take, to make money, and skews the boundaries of love for him by bestowing upon him an odd, underlying sexualized affection.

We are clued into Skipper Todd’s evolution as a misogynist, as an Oedipal nightmare, who fancies himself an elitist an Ãœbermensch, Friedrich Nietzsche’s superman who poses as anti-hero, bemoaning the state of society and it’s lemmings who conform, yet ironically depending on the very thing he condemns in order to suck the life force out of it. This he needs for his egoist dogma to be able to thrive, feeding off the susceptible, and violating the vulnerable, just as Mrs. Todd picks the bones clean of the elderly men she is charged to take care of.

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Though living as an outsider, he needs followers to facilitate his crimes. To help him bury the bodies. He espouses that people have ‘stale dreams’ and that society is riddled with lying and selfishness. In this he is a true Sociopath, as he is the most selfish phony of them all. As self deluded as was Charles Manson who consider himself to be a songwriter and profit, Todd also writes songs on his guitar, recording himself singing glorifying lyrics about his strangulations of the girls he kills. A minstrel madman, strumming and fucking his way through Tucson.

As I’ve said earlier, Todd’s followers include a young Richard Thomas as Billy Roy a guileless yet loyal young man, who unwittingly enables Todd to continue his blood lust and ravaging of young girls. Billy remains naive until the end, when he finally sees the true evil nature of his friend Skipper Todd, and ultimately turns on him.

Shear’s The Todd Killings conveys the feeling of hopelessness and hollow confinement which pervade much of the film and the collective scenes of impulsive brutality. Whether or not the story is historically accurate to the events that led up to Scmid’s capture is unclear, regardless the narrative is a somber, chilling mood piece about society and the attractive monsters it sometimes breeds.

The film creates an eerie, often brutally unsettling tone that unleashes a sense that there is no way out of conformity. You either live an existence of an ugly sterile complacency or wind up being sacrificed on the altar of individual freedom.

The use of the desert as a playground/killing field for Todd and his followers creates an alienating environment. Todd’s compulsion sets the tone for a fraying wire of isolation, in which a barren land of free love and reckless idolatry ultimately lead Todd and his followers to devolve by the film’s tragic end.

At the root of Todd’s twisted nature lies that hint of Oedipal fixation, as his relationship with his mother portrayed by Barbara Bel Geddes bares the reflections of an incestuous partnership. Todd’s conflation of sex and violence, his natural adeptness at manipulation and psycho-sexual violation ultimately make him a serial killer who thrives on destroying that which he is fixated on. The film provides us with an insight into his hatred of women, American motherhood, and the society that engenders both to be simple offerings for the slaughter.

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Bel Geddes as Mother Todd –“I could use a little of your help around here you know”
Skipper-“robbing the cadavers?”
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Mrs. Todd’s unbounded greed in one single minute-“now that juice comes to forty cents a quart young man so drink up “
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Mrs Todd-“the lord put me on this earth, just to support you”"¦.
Skipper “If I do not get my allowance in four seconds flat I’ll (he whispers in her ear, then she smiles )
Mrs Todd- “uh hum, I think you’re capable of that.”
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Mother giving her little angel his milk money for the week

Mrs. Todd’s, Skipper’s money hungry mother owns a nursing home for elderly men running it like a military complex, all of who’s family members never visit. She manages this ‘institution’ like a waiting room for decaying livestock, providing minimal comforts, she’s more militant in her administrations than compassionate as a care giver. For her this is nothing but a business arrangement that supports her simple lifestyle. She shows no emotional connection to the elderly men in her care, nor for her son, who visits periodically, skulking around for hand outs. No emotional maternal outpouring, yet a queer romantic sort of banter.

Skipper tells her that he would  ‘rather die than make my living that way.’ She tells him that he is in fact ‘living off them…We all make our lives that way, that’s what life is all about.”

Skipper treats her more like one of the many girlfriends he uses in order to cop some ready spending money. Mrs Todd spouts off about life like an unemotional puritanical hen, urging him to find employment or at least help her out there at the home, which he violently rejects.

The entire atmosphere of the old age home and the town, is disparaging of the human condition and gives us a little insight into Skipper Todd’s lack of empathy, largely pronounced by the contrasting verve of the youth culture shown asphyxiating by the small -town’s conservatism.

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Todd’s mother is a clinically acidic detached, and cold-blooded ‘mother figure’ and a reminder that though Skipper seems repulsed by the way the old men have been abandoned by their families, it is still their money that he virtually parasites off of when he comes calling for a hand out from his confederate mother.

Without giving away the climax of the film, I will say that there is a particular scene towards the end that is so savage, framed with such a starkly simple realism, that it is utterly jarring.

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The Todd Killings creates a story telling that fuses together our very real fears of the social boogeyman who lurk amidst all us ‘normal’ seeming folk, and although filmed in the 70s, it makes a timeless leap into a contemporary arena without loosing any of its thrust. It tells the story of a monster like Charles Schmid, without feeling outdated or hazy around the edges due to lack of a more graphic or gore drenched narrative.

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The film also doesn’t rely on police procedural to fill us in on the details, it is told partly from the perspective of Todd’s own dystopian psyche and partly from the victims themselves. In particular Montgomery’s portrayal of Roberta which is nuanced, strikingly dramatic and ultimately heart wrenching.

The film also stars one of my favorite unsung actresses Gloria Grahame as Billy Roy’s mother. It also co-stars the wonderful Edward Asner, Fay Spain, James Broderick, Michael Conrad as Detective Shaw, and good old Holly Near as Norma ( just can’t forget her in Angel, Angel Down We Go 1969) as one of Skippers nubile sycophants.

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Holly Near as Norma

from LIFE magazine-

“Teenage girls looking for the body of Alleen Rowe, in connection with murderer Charles Schmid.” Photo from LIFE magazine., via Sweetheart of the Rodeo’s blog post: Hell among the yearlings

On March 10, 1975, Schmid was stabbed 47 times by two fellow prisoners, he died almost a month later.

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Notorious Pied Piper of Tucson killer of teenage girls-Charles Schmid

CLICK BELOW FOR:

Fantastic photos and blog entry by Sweetheart of the Rodeo: Hell among the yearlings

QUOTES:

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Police Officer: Do you have relations with men?

Skipper Todd: I try not to. But sometimes there’s a guy who’s really sweet… it’s so easy. We’re both men… we both know where it’s at. Personally, you’re not giving anything away.

Police Officer: What’s your feeling’s towards girls?

Skipper Todd: I can sleep with them once because it degrades them. It makes them dirty. The worst thing about it is… you meet a chick who isn’t… bad. You can’t screw her because you don’t want to make her “dirty.”

Belinda J Montgomery
Belinda J Montgomery 70s staple television actress and film star. Giving a brilliantly nuanced performance as Roberta, the object of Skippers affection/annihilation desire.

Roberta: You actually came to see me without any of your baby-pimps? Wow. How do I rate that honor?

Skipper Todd: I just loved your performance at the pool.

Roberta: So, you’re the one who rides the dune buggy and “services” the little girls huh?

Skipper Todd: Oh yes… and speaking of little girls, how old are you?

Roberta: 16. Just about your speed too, isn’t it?

Skipper Todd: Ha-ha! It’s a good age. It’s a little over the hill these days, but it will do.

Roberta: How old are you?

Skipper Todd: 23

Roberta: Why don’t you do something besides hang around the pool.

Skipper Todd: I’m a songwriter. I’m gonna immortalized all of us here.

Roberta: Wanna drink?

Skipper Todd: Uh… sure.

Roberta: It’s interesting what turns on the little girls. What do you think it is? Is it because you’re a creep? Or is it because you’re dangerous?

Skipper Todd: It’s some of each.

“Skipper Todd digs girls. It’s his idea of killing time…”

I dig you all- genre fans, so stay with me while killing some time -Eternally yours -MonsterGirl

Quote of the Day! Lon Chaney Jr. as Bruno The Chauffeur: Spider Baby (1968)

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Lon Chaney Jr. Spider Baby

Lon Chaney Jr. is the sympathetic Bruno the chauffeur, who teaches the kids a little bit about ethics in Jack Hill’s sublime cult horror gem Spider Baby or, The Maddest Story Ever Told (1968)

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“Just because something isn’t good doesn’t mean its bad.”

That’s right Bruno-MonsterGirl

Postcards from Shadowland No. 8

Ace in The Hole 1951
Billy Wilder’s Ace in The Hole (1951) Starring Kirk Douglas and Jan Sterling
Brute Force
Jules Dassin’s prison noir masterpiece-Brute Force 1947 starring Burt Lancaster, Hume Cronyn, and Charles Bickford
citizen kane-
Orson Welles- Citizen Kane (1941) also starring Joseph Cotten
devil and daniel webster
William Dieterle’s The Devil and Daniel Webster 1941
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Directed by John Brahm-Hangover Square 1945 starring Laird Cregar , Linda Darnell and George Sanders
House by The River
Fritz Lang’s House By The River 1950 starring Louis Hayward, Lee Bowman and Jane Wyatt.
i cover waterfront-1933
I Cover the Waterfront 1933- Claudette Colbert, Ben Lyon and Ernest Torrence
Jewel Mayhew and Wills Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte
Robert Aldrich’s Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte 1964 starring Bette Davis, Olivia de Havilland, Joseph Cotton, Mary Astor, Agnes Moorehead and Cecil Kellaway
Key Largo
John Huston’s Key Largo 1948 Starring Edward G Robinson, Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall
Killers Kiss
Stanley Kubrick’s Killers Kiss 1955 Starring Frank Silvera and Irene Kane.
Lady from Shanghai(1947)
Orson Welles penned the screenplay and stars in iconic film noir The Lady from Shanghai 1947 featuring the sensual Rita Hayworth, also starring Everett Sloane
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Lady in a Cage 1964 directed by Walter Grauman and starring Olivia de Havilland, James Caan, and Jennifer Billingsley.
long dark hall
The Long Dark Hall 1951 Starring Rex Harrison and Lilli Palmer
lorre M
Fritz Lang’s chilling M (1931) Starring Peter Lorre
Mark Robson The Seventh Victim
Mark Robson directs, Val Lewton’s occult shadow piece The Seventh Victim 1943 Starring Kim Hunter, Tim Conway and Jean Brooks
Meeting leo-Ace in the hole with leo 1951
Kirk Douglas in Ace In The Hole 1951 written and directed by Billy Wilder
mifune-and-yamamoto in Drunkin Angel 48
Akira Kurosawa’s film noir crime thriller Drunken Angel (1948) starring Takashi Shimura and Toshiro Mifune
Panic in the Streets
Elia Kazan’s socio-noir Panic in The Streets 1950 starring Jack Palance, Richard Widmark, Paul Douglas, Barbara Bel Geddes and Zero Mostel
persona
Ingmar Bergman’s Persona 1966 starring Liv Ullmann and Bibi Andersson
Queen of Spades
The Queen of Spades 1949 directed by Thorold Dickinson and starring Anton Walbrook, Edith Evans and Yvonne Mitchell
Saint Joan of the Angels 1
Director Jerzy Kawalerowicz’s beautifully filmed Mother Joan of The Angels 1961 starring Lucyna Winnicka.
shanghai express
Josef von Sternberg’s Shanghai Express 1932 Starring Marlene Dietrich, Clive Brook and Anna May Wong
The Devil and Daniel Webster
The Devil and Daniel Webster 1941
The Haunting
Robert Wise’s The Haunting 1963. Screenplay by Nelson Gidding based on the novel by Shirley Jackson. Starring Julie Harris, Claire Bloom, Richard Johnson, and Russ Tamblyn
the Unsuspected_1947
Michael Curtiz’s The Unsuspected 1947 starring Claude Rains, Joan Caulfield and Audrey Totter
Viridiana
Luis Bunuel’s Viridiana 1961 Starring Silvia Pinal, Fernando Rey and Fransisco Rabal
What Ever Happened To Baby Jane?
Robert Aldrich’s cult grande dame classic starring Bette Davis and Joan Crawford-What Ever Happened To Baby Jane? 1962

A Trailer a day keeps the Boogeyman away! The Mini-Skirt Mob (1968)

“They’re hog straddling female animals on the prowl.”

THE MINI-SKIRT MOB (1968)

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Diane McBain plays Shayne the ruthless head of a motorcycle gang who is obsessed with punishing and getting her ex-lover Jeff (Ross Hagen) to come back to her no matter what it takes. Shayne ignites a sadistic onslaught against her ex-lover and his new bride Connie.(Sherry Jackson)

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Patty McCormack as little Rhoda Penmark in Mervyn LeRoy’s 1956 psychological thriller THE BAD SEED

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Also starring The Bad Seed’s 1956 nefarious little psychopath Rhoda, Patty McCormack as Edie, Shayne’s younger, naive yet ethical lil sister. Cast includes Harry Dean Stanton as Spook and Jeremy Slate as Lon. With a score by Les Baxter that makes this cheesy 60s exploit more fun.

“Nothing is more vicious than a scorned, guilt ridden blonde!”

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MonsterGirl back on the prowl!

From The Vault: Valley of the Dolls (1967) “Boobies, boobies, boobies. Nothin’ but boobies. Who needs ’em?”

Valley of The Dolls 1967

Directed by Mark Robson, produced by David Weisbart and Helen Deutsch, with a screenplay by Dorothy Kingsley and Harlan Ellison. Cinematography by William H. Daniels (CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF 1957, IN LIKE FLINT 1967).

Film editing by Dorothy Spencer (STAGECOACH 1939, TO BE OR NOT TO BE 1942, LIFEBOAT 1944 and CLEOPATRA 1963) Set Direction by Raphael Bretton (HUSH HUSH SWEET CHARLOTTE 1964 and THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE 1972) and Walter M Scott. (THE SOUND OF MUSIC 1965 and BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID 1969) Art Design by Richard Day (ON THE WATERFRONT 1954, A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE 1951 and THE GRAPES OF WRATH 1940) and Jack Martin Smith (BATMAN 1966 and PLANET OF THE APES 1968) and wardrobe by Travilla.

With all that creative talent on board, you can call the film trashy, but it sure has a lot of style!

Starring Barbara Parkins (THE MEPHISTO WALTZ 1971 never looking more beautiful in my opinion. One of my favorite horror films of the 70s, I plan on doing a long winded overview of it this Winter 2012.)

The incredible Barbara Parkins…and her killer boots!

as Anne Welles, Patty Duke as Neely O’Hara, Sharon Tate as Jennifer North, Susan Hayward as Helen Lawson, Paul Burke as Lyon Burke, Toni Scotti as Tony Polar, Lee Grant as Miriam Polar, Martin Milner as Mel Anderson, Alexander Davion as Neely’s 2nd husband the bisexual Ted Casablanca, Naomi Stevens as Miss Steinberg and Robert H Harris as Henry Bellamy.

From the moment the utter fabulousness of this tawdry pulp icon of the 60s starts rolling on screen with Barbara Parkin’s heavenly visage gazing out the train window, and Dionne Warwick starts confessing the movie’s theme song with her soulful voice… I get verklempt.

Doll a euphemism for little colored pills of varying types of barbiturates… ‘uppers’ and ‘downers.’

It is based on the best-selling explosively trashy novel by Jacqueline Susann and directed by, of all people, Mark Robson. (THE SEVENTH VICTIM 1943, THE GHOST SHIP 1943, ISLE OF THE DEAD 1945, and well his telltale progression into melodrama land with PEYTON PLACE 1957 and eventually into darker territories with DADDY’S GONE A- HUNTING 1969)

Growing up as a little girl in the ’60s, there wasn’t a coffee table or bookshelf that I didn’t see a copy of Valley of the Dolls sitting atop next to a hardcover of a best-selling self-help book by Dr. Thomas A. Harris’, I’m Okay You’re Okay which was first published in 1967, the year Valley of The Dolls was released.

There was certainly a copy of it in my own house and I remember seeing the film either during its theatrical release or later on the huge Magnavox cabinet tv with only three dials. At first, I was struck by the incredible score from composer John Williams and songs by Andre Previn and lyrics by Dory Previn. And then I fell under the spell of the badness and the beautifulness of it all…

Standing out is its vivid colors of the 60s film processing, the vogue style couture, flashy set design, and mod art direction. Populated by the campy, over-the-top acting in all the right places, of course, by the entire cast, it makes for one hell of a ride through the tunnel of tragic love in high-dramaville. As cliche after libidinous, compulsive, and histrionic cliche prance across the screen as a story of meandering disassembled desire by the needful women and their male companions.

It’s campy and tawdry and melodramatic trash, and that’s a GOOD THING for us junkies of melodramatic trashy & campy flicks from the 1940s -1960s.

Continue reading “From The Vault: Valley of the Dolls (1967) “Boobies, boobies, boobies. Nothin’ but boobies. Who needs ’em?””

Postcards From Shadowland No.7

La Belle et la Bete (1946)
Caged (1950)
Criss Cross (1949)
Devil Girl From Mars (1954)
Les Diaboliques (1955)
Experiment in Terror (1962)
Les yeux sans Visage (1960)
Les yeux sans visage (1960)
Gloria Grahame The Cobweb (1955)
I Bury The Living (1958)
Island of Lost Souls (1932)
Kiss The Blood Off My Hands (1948)
Lady in a Cage (1964)
Mother Joan of The Angels (1961)
Belle et la Bete (1946)
Strait-Jacket (1964)
Sunrise (1927)
The Haunting (1963)
The Queen of Spades (1949)
Vampyr (1932)
The World’s Greatest Sinner (1962)