Directed by Robert C. Dertano(Gun Girls 1957, Girl Gang 1954) Also known as Pin Down Girls!
Timothy Farrell (The Devil’s Sleep 1949,Jail Bait 1954)plays Umberto Scalli a gangster who manages women wrestlers as a front for his bookmaking, drug, and prostitution rackets.. Introducing… Peaches Page! ???
The strange love-life of a wrestling gal!
SHE WAS ONLY “18” AND EAGER FOR HER “NEW PROFESSION”
“He’s the kind of a guy who would change a girls evening stroll from recreation into an occupation!”
Herk Harvey’s one film masterpiece of the macabre, starring Candace Hilligoss.
I’ve taken scenes from the film and edited them together with my song called Vacant Little Stare off the album Fools and Orphans.
This cult classic is so incredibly atmospheric and the imagery so unique for its day, that I couldn’t resist melding it together with my song, of alienation, loneliness, and madness, which compliment Mary Henry’s persona very well I think! Enjoy!-Joey
‘A story so unusual it will burn itself into your mind’
Very low-budget gay biker flick – “six rough and tumble motorcyclists meet at the side of an empty highway to plan their adventurous excursion cycling to Los Angeles” …
Writer/Director Curtis Harrington’s (Night Tide 1961, Games 1967 What’s The Matter With Helen 1971) space fantasy about a female alien specie emblazoned with a silver 60s bee hive hairstyle and a proclivity for drinking blood and laying eggs, takes over the crew of a rescue ship sent to Mars. Starring the swarthy John Saxon, as astronaut Allan Brenner Basil Rathbone as Dr. Farraday Judi Meredith as Laura James Dennis Hopper, Paul Grant, Florence Marley as Alien Blood Queen, and a cameo spot for Forrest J Ackerman as Dr. Farraday’s aid.
“A deathless witch who devours men…turns the milky way into a galaxy of GORE!!!!!!!”
A crew of daring space explorers landing on Venus…are captured by long-limbed beauties! They take them to their leader…the queen of outer space.
They are the only men on the whole planet. Oh boy! But!!!… Will they ever be able to return to Earth?????
Starring Zsa Zsa Gaboras Talleah, Eric Flemingas Capt. Neal Patterson, Paul Birch as Prof.Konrad, Dave Willock as Lt. Mike Cruze and Lisa Davis as Motiya, Laurie Mitchell as Queen Yilana, and Barbara Darrow as Kaeel. Directed by Edward Bernds and written for the screen by Charles Beaumont from a story by Ben Hecht.
“You’ll see a revolt that brings the planet under the domination of strangely masked females who HATE and FEAR the male animal!!!!!”
Happy Trailers MonsterGirl -who doesn’t hate the male animal…
I had the honor of being the next person interviewed with Tura in Indie Filmmaker Steve Balderson’s experimental art film, Phone Sex. It was a thrill to come after the vivacious and wonderful Ms. Satana!
Three wild women, Tura Satana as Varla, Haji as Rosie, and Lori Williams as Billie, are strippers thrill-seeking cross paths with a young couple in the desert. Once they get rid of the boy, they take the girl hostage and set out to steal a crippled man’s stash of cash, that he’s supposedly hiding. The old man has two sons who they try to seduce in order to get at the old man’s money. But they don’t realize that they’re dealing with something a little more than a feeble man in a wheelchair. Exploitation at its best. Satana is a treasure to watch. She just plain kicks ass!
R.I.P you warrior woman! (July 10, 1938 "“ February 4, 2011).
“Lunatics are similar to designated hitters. Often an entire family is crazy, but since an entire family can’t go into the hospital, one person is designated as crazy and goes inside” -Suzanna Kaysen from Girl Interrupted (1993)
“But you “are” Blanche, you “are” in that chair!”~ these are the words I often utter to myself or amongst friends, merely cause it tickles me.
I could question whether or not Aldrich made these films as a vehicle in which to translate the lives of the psychologically intricate, often tragic women which he viewed through a sympathetic lens, or perhaps some of his female-driven films are an exercise in misogyny.
So was he a misogynist? Perhaps some might find the portrayal of his female characters unattractive, or maybe he didn’t differentiate between his male and female roles. He was definitely more focused on both genders’ struggles. These outliers of society couldn’t simply fit in, so if the film’s driving character happened to be a woman then it would stand to reason she would also be an outcast or damaged in some way. If he did make a distinction as to gender, he was mostly preoccupied with the character’s system of dealing with the obstacles they faced in their lives. It does appear that his “women” usually are the solitary focus, while his “men” are framed as groups of men trapped by precarious situations.
Robert Aldrich is still one of my all-time favorite directors.
Aldrich always brings us a story that is cynical and gritty with very flawed characters who are at the core ambiguous as either the protagonist or the antagonist. Aldrich studied economics in college, then dropped out and landed a very low-paying job at first as a clerk with RKO Radio Pictures Studio in 1941.
He studied with such great directors as Jean Renoir and it was his training in the trenches that made him the auteur he is, delving inside the human psyche and questioning what is morality. Aldrich went on to become the assistant director, scriptwriter, and associate producer, to various filmmakers who were later on targeted by the blacklist.
Aldrich has a flare for the dramatic, he likes to break molds and cross over boundaries. He also has a streak of anti-authoritarianism running through the veins of his films. There aren’t just traces of his ambivalence toward the Hollywood machine in his film philosophy, he also conflates the ugly truths beneath the so-called American Dream and the “real” people who inhabit that world.
Aldrich’s film really became the turning point in pictures that synthesizes the golden age of Hollywood in theory – that imposes a tragic, painful disjunction for actresses who age out of their prime function as desirable movie stars. What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? gave rise to an entire movement on screen that featured Hollywood’s most essential women paraded out either as emblems of archaic desire or in the case of Baby Jane Hudson, a pageantry of the grotesque. Bravo to Bette Davis for taking on the myth and using dark satire to flip it on its head.
At the start of Baby Jane, the screen is pitch black, we can hear a child sobbing. The 1st prologue begins in 1917. The screen still blacked out, we hear a man’s voice say “Don’t you want to see it again, little girl?” This is setting up an eerily invasive narrative as we do not know yet if it is something sinister making the child cry. The male voice adds “It shouldn’t frighten you” then a quick jump cut and we are able to see a Jack in the Box toy popping up, causing terror in the child. Now we actually see the little girl staring at the toy with tear-soaked cheeks as she gasps for air. The toy has disturbed her with its quick movements and odd expression. There is a shot of its peculiar face which has an uncanny shedding of tears down its tin cheeks. The use of children’s toys in horror films has often been used as a mechanism to evoke fear or otherworldly dread in us as if they might embody some incarnate evil. Here is a great link to Horror Film History’s website.
Next, we hear vaudeville music and see Baby Jane Hudson’s name up in lights on the marquee of the theater. The theater is sold out, Jane is tap dancing in the spotlight, to Stephen Foster’s “Swanee River” in front of a packed house. Her father is waiting off-stage with Blanche and their mother. He is rallying her with encouragement from the wings while the wife looks solemnly at him, simultaneously young Blanche is looking at him with resentment. Both figures are feeling left out. Young Blanche is played by Julie Allred who was marvelous as little Priscilla in the Boris Karloff Thriller episode Mr.George.
Mr Ray Hudson played by Dave Willock comes out to a cheering audience holding a banjo and tells the crowd okay folks one final request. A little freckle-faced boy stands up and requests “I’ve Written A Letter To Daddy” And so the lights dim and father sits at the piano to accompany his little girl on this very popular tune. The voice has such a warbling vibrato that it makes little Jane sound bizarre and incongruous (no offense to the singer Debbie Burton) as a child’s voice. She sings with such a sugary exaggeration. Jane’s got the affected style of performer down to all the overreaching body gestures indicative of a ham. Holding the letter to her heart, kissing it, looking upward toward the ceiling sky. “And wish you were here with us to love” As she sings this line she wraps her arms around herself clinging as if the embrace is for a lover but meant for her father.
Mr Hudson, Jane’s daddy comes out from behind the piano and joins his daughter in a dance, which makes them appear as if a romantic couple. From the side of the stage, we see the expressions on Mrs. Hudson’s face and young Blanche, there is obviously no room in the father and Jane’s relationship for either sister Blanche or the mother.
After the performance a little boy runs on stage and hands Jane a replica Baby Jane doll of her very own. Jane’s daddy is a showman all the way, “folk’s have you ever seen such a lovely doll” (he in fact has objectified his daughter, as well as exploited her for profit “a genuine Baby Jane” doll. “And kids remember you can tell your moms that each and every one of these genuine beautiful great big dolls is an exact replica of your own Baby Jane Hudson.” Continue reading “Grande Dames/ Guignol Cinema: Robert Aldrich’s Hag Cinema “But you *are* Blanche, you *are in that chair” Part I”→
The Naked Kiss (1965) Part III Meaning it bares no emotion. It’s empty of real substance. It has the taste of perversion to it.
SPOILER ALERT!!!! I DO THE SYNOPSIS RIGHT TO THE END OF THE FILM…
Working at the hospital while Kelly and one of the nurses are bathing the children Kelly notices that she is troubled and asks “Do you want to talk about it? Have you been to a doctor?”She has the intuition that the young girl is pregnant. Kelly instead of bringing the ‘plague’ to Grantville has brought insight and compassion to the women who are troubled in this provincial prison. In this way, the film can be viewed as feminist. She brings her strength and independence.
Crossfade, Kelly, and Grant are slow dancing at Grant’s house. Kelly tells him that she wants to talk about something, something she needs to get off her mind. “I’m afraid our dance is over.”Asks him to sit down and listen to the words. “When I came to this town, the first day I came… I was a prostitute. My first customer was my last one, next morning I quit. Now I’m in love with a man who’s the dream of every woman.” Grant is seated looking puzzled Kelly continues “Every woman who has the right to dream…but the man has got to stop seeing me before the volcano erupts.”
Grant looks up at her and grabs her hand. Pulls her close to him.“I love you Kelly.. .will you marry me?” She says “I’ve got to think it out.. .(now cheek to cheek) Oh I’ve got to think it out.”
Kelly’s in her room drinking from the blown Venetian glass from Venice that Grant gave her. She’s contemplating the marriage proposal. We hear a voice over, it’s Grant’s monologue “I wasn’t cut out to be a monk and you’re not the type to turn nun… but together we’ll prove our whole existence for each other, the only woman I want for my wife.”
Voice over by Grant “I wasn’t cut out to be a monk, and you’re not the type to turn nun. But together we’ll prove our whole existence for each other. You’re the only woman I want for my wife… If they condemn you for your past, I don’t want them for my friends. Kelly darling no one can forbid you your tomorrow. And I’m all your tomorrows.Â
Kelly gets up from the bed, sighs and walks over to the tailor’s dummy, and asks “Charlie, what should I do?” Again we hear Grant’s voice “If they condemn you for your past, I don’t want them as my friends, Kelly darling…no one could forbid you tomorrow, and I’m all your tomorrows, all of them.” Kelly raises her glass and answers to Charlie “That’s right!…why should Grant want to marry a woman like me?.. .confidentially Charley, (her arm around the fake soldier now) we girls are always chasing dreams… why shouldn’t I have a right to catch mine?”
Now Kelly has an internal monologue “Many women had a past like mine, and they made out didn’t they?” She answers aloud asking the question “Or did they?… ah, of course, they did.. .and you know why because there was always the Rock of Gibraltar to give them strength” She raises the blown glass to Charlie in a toast “That’s what Grant is…The Rock…The Rock of Gibraltar.”
So Kelly needs a man to legitimize her self-worth, otherwise, she is still considered machinery. “Oh Charlie”now we hear Grant’s voice again “We’d be living an endless honeymoon” She goes back over to Charlie and hugs him “Oh Charlie, the dread of every woman in my business…is ending up alone…I know that world.”
She looks at the glass again and says “And I know his world( chuckles ironically) and that makes me a woman of 2 worlds… and that’s not good, or is it?” She looks at Charlie’s hat. She’s got her arm around his stuffed shoulders. “With him, I’m complete, a whole woman”the voiceover by Grant breaks in again “I’ll never strike at your past, not even with a flower” Kelly hugs Charlie closer, “Oh Charlie, Charlie Charlie, Charlie…what should I do?…”
Fade to Black.
in this look on Grant’s face, we sense something cold and unsavory deep-rooted in his soul. A removed reptilian hypothermic smile. It is not his fine breeding, it is something dark and unwholesome he keeps bubbling below the surface of his refinement.
At Grant’s house, the doorbell rings, and Kelly comes bursting in “Oh it’s a wonderful day Barney!… it’s a beautiful day!” Barney tells her that Grant is still asleep. She ignores him and yells “It’s a glorious day!” She goes to the stereo and puts on Beethoven’s 5th Symphony and conducts. Barney still in his robe goes upstairs to get Grant. Kelly is conducting the music, she spins the large globe as if she’ll be able to see the world now.
Grant comes down in his silk pajamas, yawning and putting his robe on, he watches as she pretends to conduct the music. She runs to him and grabs his hands “I love you…it’s a deal” He looks oddly at her, pleased but more like he’s just sealed a business deal, not the reaction from a man truly in love. As they discover wedding plans he wants to send her to Paris to buy the most expensive wedding gown. Kelly has always paid for every stitch of clothing on her back. That tells you how independent she has been while working as a prostitute. Not taking any more than for her services to get by. Kelly has throughout shown to be a woman of integrity, thus the challenge in the narrative is to balance the conflict of judging her as a whore with morals.
Dusty gets help from Kelly. Who gives her $1,000 and tells her whether the guy marries her or not she is to keep the baby. Dusty tells her, “Boy or girl I’ll name it Kelly.”
Kip’s gaze, the sadness shared with a child, as he watches Dusty crying. Sympathetic.
Now nurses and orderlies are bringing in the children one by one. And a record begins to spin. Kip the little boy wearing the First Mate pirate hat begins to sing this song which has an eerily tragic poignancy.
“Mommy dear, tell me please, is the world really round” Another little boy takes it from there, “Tell me where, is the bluebird of happiness found” Now a little girl sings “Tell me why is the sky up above so blue” now they all sing in unison “and when you were a child, did your mommy tell you?”
All of the children standing like wounded soldiers with their hats and crutches singing this sad little song together. The song creates an element of melancholy, and pathos in the film. It’s the children asking the question where is happiness?
The children are a diverse group of races, the spirit of these children fuels the film’s angst and alienation, for they are like castaways in a world that is perfect, while they are broken and striving to be whole.
“What becomes of the sun when it falls in the sea” “And who lights it again, as bright as can be” Together they sing again “Tell me why can’t I fly without wings through the sky” Back to Kip who sadly sings “tell me why mommy dear…are there tears in your eyes?”
Now Kelly joins in as an answer to the song’s questions singing “Little one, little one, yes the world’s really round, and the bluebird you search for is surely is found… and the sky up above is so blue and clear (the staff including Mac is watching Kelly serenade the children they are so sullen, yet proud) so that you’d see the bluebird if it should come near… and the sun doesn’t fall in the sea out of sight, all it does is make way for the moon’s pretty light… and if children could fly there’d be no need for birds… and I cry little ones cause I’m touched by your words.”
The children surrounding Kelly sing the song together, she has left a mark on them, she has found a different way to have worth, and she sees herself through these child’s eyes. They are ultimately truly innocent, yet they are the ones who don’t objectify Kelly.
“Tell me please Mommy dear is it true the world’s round, I will search, round the world til the bluebird is found” Then Kelly sings “Little one there’s no need to wander too far, for what you really seek is right here where you are.”
Griff and Grant are walking out of a building. Grant has asked Griff to be the best man at the wedding but Griff can’t fake how miserable he is. Grant tells him to get it off his chest. Bunny comes running over to Grant with her dolly and he picks her up and spins her around. Griff is still visibly upset, holding his cigarette and frowning. Bunny congratulates Uncle Grant on his wedding, and he kisses her cheek, she beams a smile half filled with baby teeth.
Now in the classroom back at the hospital, the children are getting a spelling lesson. Kelly is fixing Kip’s shoelace. Griff knocks on the window glass to get Kelly’s attention. Through the glass panel in the door, we see them talking seriously again a frame within a frame, symbolizing the entrapment of both characters who are stuck by their roles. They move into an empty room so they can continue to talk.
The scene opens with Griff sitting at the bar in Candy Ala Cart’s girlie establishment with “bonbon” girls dressed sort of like hat-check Playboy bunnies, wearing fuzzy hearts on their heads instead of rabbit ears. The girl behind the bar says “Hello Griff” and he says “Hello Marshmallow”Swing music is playing on the jukebox. “Say Griff I can earn more from the refined types than the ones who work in this rat hole…I’ll put Grantville on the map” Griff turns to her “You will, you really think you can?” he says sarcastically, which goes above Marshmallow’s head. “well sure, how can I lose with John ‘Law’ on my team.” another scantly clad girl comes over to Griff and touches his face,
Griff condemns prostitution in his town, but he frequents Candy’s club as a customer, as well as procuring girls right off the bus for Candy’s stable. That would make him pimp by proxy right?
There is a brazen double standard being perpetrated here. Women were objectified, then women were reviled. Even the use of nicknames for the call girls in Candy’s stable is demeaning and denigrating. Hat Rack, for instance, something you’d hang an item on. It dehumanizes these women. Candy even refers to Hat Rack clashing with her “upholstery.”Later on, Kelly is called “new stuff”
The other girl asks “Are you sure you don’t want a bonbon Griff?” just then an older woman Candy dressed in a long sequined gown walks over. “Get back to the stable,” she says in a sandy voice that’s been abraded by years of smoking, reaches over and grabs Griff’s face and kisses his cheek. Marshmallow, tells Candy “he’s not buying your chocolates, Candy.”
Candy played salty by Virginia Greysnaps back “Go earn your money, check the stock.” “Who you looking for Griff?” “Kelly,” she asks “Kelly?…no Kelly here, do I know him?”“Well, I sent her here.”Candy looks slightly perturbed, “another female?” “A pro and she’s got class.” “Well, we could use a little class in this shop.”
“Just get a look at my bonbons, they’re all a broken-down flock of bimbos, all except Hat Rack.” Griff seems surprised, “Hat Rack?” “the name suits her alright, there ain’t a customer here that doesn’t want to hang his fedora on her.” Candy calls over to the tall girl. “Hey Hat Rack, come over here.” “Did I do something wrong?” asking in an ultra-feminine tone. The beautiful brunette realizes that it’s Griff at the bar, “Oh Griff! How are you, Griff?” She puts on an even more seductively whispery voice, “So glad to see you again.” He looks confused “Do we know each other?” “We met in a park in Grantville, near the fountain…on a Thursday?” Pouting she adds “Don’t you remember me?” Then a smile breaks free.
“Oh sure you came in by bus… (Sound Familiar?) sure I remember.” “It was very kind of you to recommend me to Candy… I just love selling bonbons.” Griff says “You were a platinum blond” as he puts his hands on her tray, Candy pulls him away and says “Well she was, but the color clashed with my upholstery, I made her go back to her own natural peasant color.”
Then Candy points and tells Hat Rack “The customer in the booth has a sweet tooth.”“Are you going to stick around for a while Griff?” Candy interjects strongly “The customer!” Hat Rack bends over and kisses Griff on the cheek, walks away, and says “Bonbon sir?” Candy says “Boy you sure pick ’em Griff.” Pleased with himself he says “I sure can” Candy asks “Then why did that hangdog look when you found out that this Kelly didn’t show?” He stays silent, and she says “How about a snort in the office?” He looks at her with a gaze that means something else, and tells her “I’m not thirsty.”
We know from before that when Griff uses the expression thirsty it is what he uses to mean “wanting sex” He used the same term with Kelly in the beginning. Candy gestures with her hand as if to say, she’s disappointed but whatever. Apparently Griff in the past has sampled some of Candy as well.
Back at Miss Josephine’s “Paris…have you been to those places?” looking at beautiful garments in her suitcase Kelly says no, but the old woman says “But these are originals…ultra ultra expensive.”The trunk with the K on the side, is almost like Kelly’s own scarlet A. After all, she is a marked woman, like Hawthorne’s Hester Prynne.
“What about that factory outside of town?” “Oh, I’m afraid there’s no job opening at Grant Mill.” “Grant” Kelly says “Grant this, Grant that.” Her hair pulled up in a lovely classic bun, and looking through her wardrobe “he seems to own everything around here.” “His great great grandfather founded this town.” “JL Grant is our most famous citizen.”
Here is the developing back story of the founded patriarchy in Grantville. The old woman continues, “Everybody calls him Grant”Kelly says “JL Grant, yes I’ve read about him, international playboy, chateau in Normandy, Villa along the Riviera, private Yacht in Monte Carlo, societies most eligible bachelor.”Josephine comes back “he’s a hard worker Miss Kelly… he’s no playboy, his very name is a synonym for charity… he’s got the biggest heart in the world. Why he built our hospital… he built the Orthopedic Medical Center and sponsors it all by himself. And it’s open to all handicapped children, with no racial or religious barriers.” Miss Josephine equates Grant’s kindness with his fame and outward appearance, and reasons he’s beneficent. Kelly starts to contemplate what the old woman is saying. She asks “Handicapped children?” Josephine says “It’s a haven of hope for those angels, so little, so helpless and so pitifully crippled.”
Cross fade from Kelly’s face to a single chiaroscuro shot of a nurse’s shadow, the central focal point is now on an empty wheelchair. Two nurses come into focus, the formidable Patsy Kelly (Rosemary’s Baby) as Nurse Mac, says in that broiled steak voice of hers “One more operation and that baby will have straight feet.”
They continue to walk and talk about the various children in the hospital, then we see an office with a nurse seated at a desk. Griff is standing.“That Kelly is some woman Griff” Nurse Mac comes into the room.“One day she walked in here out of nowhere and “Mac chimes in “I’ll fill in lover boy with all the facts June.” Griff turns to face her. He says “Hello Mac, Dusty, where is this new nurse’s aide I’ve been hearing about?” Mac says “You Too?!”
Mac takes Griff for a walk down the corridor. Tells him that “she came out of the clouds one night, without a single reference” There are several allusions to angels in this film. Is Kelly a Whore or a Madonna? How do we perceive her character, how does she perceive herself? How do the townspeople distinguish her? Is she a whore because she is beautiful? or is she an angel because she is beautiful. The messages are mixed.
Nurse Mac tells him that she hired Kelly on the spot. He thought orthopedics called for specialized training. He’s obviously upset that she didn’t take the job at Candy’s. Mac tells him that “it does, some people are born to write books, symphonies, paint pictures, build bridges, but (Mac holds up her hand to the sky), she was born to handle children with crutches and babies in braces.” He looks visibly skeptical “Sounds like one of those sweet Florence Nightingales.”
Griff is clearly fixed on objectifying Kelly as a fallen, marked woman with no potential to be a woman of quality. There is a patriarchal hypocrisy in this town, where the most influential man is actually a despicable pedophile and has most of the power. Kelly who is truly virtuous and compassionate is labeled a pariah even though the men who judge her are the very people who simultaneously use her, without taking responsibility for their own participation.
“Ha, Kelly she’s tough, runs her ward like a pirate ship… she makes Captain Bly look like a sissy.”Now we see framed in the scene from the knees down, the boy Kip is slowly walking with crutches along the floor. On-screen we study the child walking for several seconds, and then we see Kelly’s legs. Full screenshot now, the boy stands stiff in front of Kelly dressed in a nurses aide uniform. Kip drops to the ground. Kelly asks to see him touch his toes. Griff and Mac are watching them from the doorway. Kip is trying to touch his toes. He says “They’re too far away.”He takes a deep sigh and tries again and does it! Kelly seems so relieved. Kip looks at her smiling with pride. Griff is hiding behind the door watching all this in secret.
Crossfade Kelly is sitting at a table with a toy sailing ship. We hear Griff speaking off-screen “That’s a new low, using crippled kids to front your trade” Kelly insists “I quit my trade” He grabs her arm,” You’ll have a problem breaking in those little girls to walk the streets on crutches” Kelly looks disgusted with this accusation and slaps Griff in the face. “I washed my face clean the morning I woke up in your bedroom.”
He says to her contemptuously “You got morals in my room?” She shakes her head reviling him “You had nothing to do with it…Nothing!…it was your mirror.” Griff says “You must have taken a long look.”She asserts “It was the longest look of my life…I saw a broken down piece of machinery.” Here Kelly herself objectifies her body as something that other people utilize. She continues “Nothing but the buck, the bed, and the bottle for the rest of my life…that’s what I saw!”
He turns away, “A hooker moving in with the town virgin, what an act.” He is so indignant “How much did you score honey?…how much did you tap at the hospital?” his hands in his pockets looking down at her like trash. “How much Angel Foam did you peddle?” Kelly’s furious “Oh you ask, you ask the doctors if I made a play for any one of them, ask them!… You were the only buyer I had in this town and my last one.”
“Are you coming with me or I am going to talk to Mac myself.” She grabs his arm and pleads “Look Griff, I’m trying your side of the fence, is there a law against it, is there anything wrong with it?” All Griff says is “Your face might fool a lot of these people, but not your body.”
Griff slams her with “Your body’s your only passport.” Kelly says “You’re right” instead of defending herself. She says “I can renew a passport, but I can’t renew my body…or my face” She shakes her head, tears in her eyes,” Or my health, oh look Griff I’m trying to change, please help me” she beseeches him. “Give me a break.”
Fade To Black
Kelly is telling the children the story of the White Swan Queen who wishes to be transformed into a woman. The film is predicated on the notion of transformation/redemption.
Kelly is surrounded by children dressed up in costumes. She’s telling them a story of the White Swan, a story about wishing to be turned into something else. This is what lies at the core of and is the veritable crux of The Naked Kiss.
Kip, is fantasizing about doing cartwheels outside with Kelly. He is shouting “I have legs, I have legs.” We see a daydream sequence, every little girl and boy running as if they had no handicap. The idea of handicap is a metaphor for Kelly’s past. The film equates her being a prostitute with having an affliction, an illness, or an abnormality. That question is put to us again, towards the end of the film.
Fade To Black
Now at Grant’s house. This is a very short scene introducing us to Grant. Griff is there, Grant has just come back from traveling. His servant Barney has been given a gift. It’s a skull, used as a drinking cup from some ancient city. A rather bizarre item to give his servant. Barney seems uncomfortable with it as well. Grant asks if everything is set up for the party tonight, Griff and Grant go to make themselves a drink, and we Fade To Black
Fade in with a long shot. Kelly’s in a beautiful long black gown at the hospital. The camera views her from a distance, rows of wheelchairs lined along the walls. Kelly is framed in darkness with a single band of light along the floor, like a runway. She pushes a wheelchair up against the wall. Then she walks over to an infant sucking on a bottle. She strokes the baby’s hair so gently, looking upon her with a maternal gaze, then gently touches her little foot in a cast, in traction. The baby looks up at her. We keep seeing glimpses of mothering in Kelly.
Cross Fade is now at Grant’s party. Grant is quoting something in Italian, to a room filled with the elite socialites of the town, he says “This means, All things by gentleness may be made smooth”
Nurse Mac and Kelly arrive, and then Grant focuses his gaze on Kelly, he sees something in her. Their eyes meet. We hear romantic strings, something is stirring. Griff looks up, the camera closes in on Kelly’s face, then Griff’s. The sensual motif of horns is there to remind us who Kelly really is. Kelly looks stopped in her tracks by Griff’s expression.
But we switch back to Grant and Kelly exchanging pleasant looks with each other. The romantic strings play once again. Mac hugs Grant and introduces Kelly to him by saying, she wants him to meet the lady that’s making history with orthopedics. He tells her everybody calls him Grant. Then Griff pipes in “And everybody calls her Kelly”obviously annoyed that she is at the party. Griff spells it “K E double L Y” A dig about their sexual interlude.
Griff still looks so bottled up with anger. Grant hands Kelly a package and tells her it’s something she might like from Venice. It’s blown glass. He tells her it’s Venetian 17th century.” “From Venice?” Kelly is very impressed by his breeding, and worldliness. This is something that has been brewing in her all along. The desire for a life with finer things. Grant has an almost childlike exuberance. He is not an archetypal masculine/male figure at all. Not a naivete, yet an icy calculating kind of assumed innocence.
Cross Fade, we see a reel-to-reel analog tape machine ( I get excited I can’t help it, I’m a musician) the music on the tape is playing once again Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata the camera pans to a bust of Beethoven, and then we see Grant and Kelly lying back on a leopard print sofa, taking in the beauty of Beethoven’s piece. eyes closed. Grant is waxing poetic about the moonlight and Beethoven’s hands playing the sonata. “he carved that sonata out of moonlight” Grant is wearing a silk ascot. There is something so plasticine about his appearance.
Kelly asks “Was he in love when he wrote it?” “Yes” “Did he marry her?”“No, he never found the wife he was looking for” “How do you know he was looking for a wife?” “What man isn’t…a sweetheart is a bottle of wine, a wife is a wine bottle” Kelly turns and faces Grant “Did Goethe write that?” “Baudelaires (Flowers of Evil)” “Beethoven and Goethe were good friends”
Kelly sits up, Grant smiling and says “Griff doesn’t go for Beethoven” Kelly spurts out “Griff is tone deaf” Grant looks over at her “How did you know?” “Well, I…I watched his face when we were singing the other night” Grant looks away from her, and smiles again “You sang very well” she says “I was happy” Grant spouts some more verse, “Happiness was born a twin” Kelly turns to him, leaning on her arm, “Lord Byron”Grant looks over to her as if surprised and she says “my favorite poet.” Grant has been trying to impress Kelly with his knowledge of literature, art, and music.
He sits up “Kelly you baffle me, intellect is seldom a feature of physical beauty” Grant is surprised Kelly is “a woman”, a “beautiful woman” who possesses an intellect and understanding of culture.
Grant continues “And that makes you a remarkable woman…the most interesting contradiction I’ve met in years, with a love of poetry, rare in this age of missiles…”
“Would you like to visit where Byron wrote many of his famous sonnets?” “Venice?” “I’m going to take you there right now. He shows her a movie projector with a travel reel from Venice and men in gondolas and fishing boats. They sit and watch the movies which Grant took from a gondola. He turns to her and says don’t you hear the man in the gondola singing? He tells her “If you pretend hard enough and if you listen hard enough, you can hear his fine Italian voice.”
Pretend is an active verb for the characters in The Naked Kiss, no one is what they seem to be. It comes down to image, embodiment, perception, class, and gender.
She has been taken under Grant’s childlike spell. She smiles and we see her as she imagines the tenor voice singing Santa Lucia. Her desire to inhabit a world with culture and refinement blinds her to Grant’s true identity. She escapes into a daydream where a man in a gondola is rowing she and Grant are lying on silken pillows. Flower petals are falling on her, as they flow through the canals of Venice, and Grant is making love to her.
For Kelly, Grant is symbolic of worthiness, success, and virtue. This is perpetuated by the town which is rooted in these beliefs. Grant is powerful and well-bred, so he must be the epitome of integrity and virtue. She wakes from the dream her hands on Grant’s shoulders, we see now that they are kissing on the couch.
For a brief moment of clarity, she pushes him slightly away, something in her gut reveals his true nature. She has the most curious stare on her face, she senses a tinge of the unnatural. Her hands and fingers splayed like claws on either side of his face. He looks confused. She studies his face. There is a prolonged pause while we hear the travel reel clicking in the background. She’s breathing uncomfortably, and Grant is looking more concerned. His gaze turns almost dark.
Ultimately she dismisses her intuition and gives way. A smile comes over her face, and then Grant’s darkness begins to clear up. Her right hand holding his head now. He goes back in for an embrace, and the camera stops on Kelly’s long legs, her shoes have come off, set against the leopard skin fabric of the couch. We’re left with the movie projector’s blaring lights in our eyes as it spins off its reel. We are blinded and so now unfortunately is Kelly.
Back at the hospital, the children are singing Old MacDonald. Kelly and the nurse Buff played by Marie Devereux are bathing 2 of the kids. Buff tells Kelly that the job is for the birds.“I’m not like you Kelly, I don’t got steel in my veins…I get sick just looking at these poor little babies, let alone handling them…I’m gonna quit, I’m gonna quit this job” she starts to cry, “it’s gonna hurt Griff, it’s gonna hurt Griff bad” Kelly asks “why Griff?” “he’s been like a father to me, ever since mine was killed in Korea…Griff got me this job, and he’s so damn proud of me.”
All the women in this town, need approval from these men, in particular Grant and Griff, as paternal and alpha male figures that Grantville sets up. Kelly tells Josephine that she’s worried about Buff.
Now we see Kelly pacing in her bedroom, in her nightgown. We hear a woman’s heels clicking outside. Kelly goes to the window and whispers “The door’s open Buff” In this scene Kelly is lit like an angel by the window light. Her white crepe gown flowed like wings, a huge divergence from the opening shot of her in black sexy underwear and shaved bald head. Like a mannequin, like an object. Like sexual “machinery” as she referred to herself earlier on.
Buff is wearing the lame’ gown that Kelly gave her, she grabs a box from downstairs as if it’s a tray and mimics the words “Would you care for a bonbon”Then she ascends the stairs to Kelly’s bedroom.
She enters Kelly’s room and tells her that she made $25 tonight, throws her bag on the bed, and shows Kelly the money. Kelly looks disapprovingly at Buff. “where’d you get that money?” A woman gave it to me” Kelly steps closer to Buff “What woman?”“Candy she runs a club across the river” “What’s the $25 for?” “It’s an advance, I’m gonna be a bonbon” Kelly gets angry and shouts “Take off my dress”, she spins Buff around, and starts grabbing at the zipper “I paid $350 for that dress, I’ll take it off myself” she then tells Buff, “those bon bon’s aren’t just there to serve drinks you know,” Buff says “I know” Kelly spins her around to face her, then smacks Buff and she falls onto the bed. Buff starts to sob. Kelly says “you had that coming to you” but Buff says, “Candy says I could make $300 a week.”
Now Kelly sits on the bed next to her and relates to her the hard facts of being a call girl “alright…go ahead…you know what’s different about the first night…?…nothing…nothing except it lasts forever that’s all. You’ll be sleeping on the skin of a nightmare for the rest of your life. You’re a beautiful girl Buff, young, oh, they’ll outbid each other for you ( Buff smiles)you’ll get compliments, clothes, cash. You’ll meet men you live on…and men who live on you ( now Buff frowns ) and those are the only men you’ll meet. And after a steady grind of making every john feel at home…you’ll become a block of ice.”
“And if you do happen to melt a little, you’ll get slipped a tip behind Candy’s back. You’ll be every man’s wife-in-law and no man’s wife. Well, your world with Candy will become so warped that you’ll hate all men…and you’ll hate yourself because you’ll become a social problem…a medical problem…a mental problem…and a despicable failure as a woman.”
Samuel Fuller’s film is very hard on women’s primacy and sexual freedom to choose what they do with their own bodies. If you can get passed the judgemental attitude from all sides of the picture, you’ll find an interesting character study of the early 1960s cinema. It would have been better to see Kelly more empowered and less self-deprecating.
Dressed in simple black Kelly shows up at Candy’s. A fight breaks out between one of the bonbon girls and Marshmallow, over a john. Candy rises from her seat the sequined madame of the joint and walks over to Kelly. She introduces herself and then circles around Kelly like she’s surveying merchandise. Candy says “Griff told me about you.” Then Candy asks where she’s been coasting. Kelly says she’ll tell her in her office. When one of the johns grabs Kelly, a bonbon comes over and says “Listen new Stuff” he’s my john exclusively after she hits him over the head with her tray. Candy remarks that he’s the 3rd guy she’s cold-cocked with a karate punch and laughs.
Candy starts to tell Kelly to sit down to talk business, but Kelly sucker punches Candy with her handbag. She’s good at that, remember Farlunde the pimp in the opening scene. She keeps the onslaught going, bashing Candy with her bag, til Candy falls down on the couch. Kelly keeps hitting her, smashing the lamp. Candy pleads “Cut it out”Kelly puts her knee on Candy’s chest and forces Candy’s mouth open. She counts the money like Buff did, reciting as she shoves the bills into Candy’s open mouth. “Ten, ten, and five…now you stay away from Buff” and Kelly hits her in the face one last time.