Category: Directors and Filmmakers

BUtterfield 8 (1960) Part II “I don’t suppose that anybody would think that she was a good person but strangely enough she was. On the surface she was all sex and devil may care yet everything in her was struggling toward respectability,and she never gave up trying”


Gloria’s little red sports car pulls up in front of a row of lovely houses. She gets out, and Ligg tells her “That’s where I was born” There’s snow on the ground, and you can hear the wind howling around them. Ligg tells her his father “was an inventor…can you think of anything more useless in a small town like this?” she says “Not if he invented a way to get out”

“He was certain I’d go a long way in this world.” Gloria says”And you did, didn’t you?…the head of a big chemical company”

“I’m just another hired hand, the company belongs to my wife’s family…My wife is a fact that I can’t avoid…she’s the center of a huge spider web of family, money, country clubs, and childish time killing employments, all into at once” Gloria touches his lips with her leather gloved hand to hush the words that are aching him and they embrace in front of an elderly couple walking by looking shocked.

Gloria’s mother and Francis are sitting at the table drinking coffee and playing cards. Annie seems distracted. She mixes up her cards, “what did I play” Francis says “Your heart and I can hear yours pounding across the table”Annie apologizes and says she’ll pay better attention.

Fannie says “I’d rather you put your troubles out and put them on the table” “I don’t want to burden you with them” “So what am I your friend for…your money?…or maybe I wanna steal your husband” She continues “Look you think I don’t that you haven’t heard from your daughter in 6 days” Annie looks upset “she’s never done such a thing before without calling.”

Annie slaps the cards down on the table and gets up.”Something terrible must have happened” Fannie says “Now why does it have to be bad, there are good things that happen too ya know” “Francis look you’re my best friend but I can’t talk to you frankly” “Why not?” “There are things you don’t know about and shouldn’t…nobody should, “Francis says “Yes they should,” Annie tells her “No her father died when she was so little…I only wish she had a father who was wise enough and strong enough to keep her on the right path” (yet again an example of patriarchal rule giving governance) Annie looks out the window. “once there was a man I almost married…(she looks visibly shaken)

“The Major, Major Hartley” she starts to cry a little “Somehow or other Gloria didn’t like him” We see Annie’s profile, Francis listening “it might have been good if I had” Francis walks over and puts a comforting hand on her shoulder and in a stern voice says “Annie, Gloria’s a good girl, don’t worry about her”

Annie cries out “But you always say such impolite things to her” “I say the same thing to everybody, I’m a born critic…there’s bad in everything, but there’s good too…her good far outweighs the bad” Fannie is one person aside from Steve and Happy who sees the virtue and kindness in Gloria.

“Oh if she was as bad as she pretends, you wouldn’t have heard from her in 6 years.” Annie asks “Do you mind if I kiss you?”Fannie grabs her with a big wide hug “You do and I’ll spread a big ugly rumor all around the neighborhood.

Crossfade

While Gloria and Ligg are walking together on a pier Liggett uncovers his old rust bucket of a Yacht, and the two go inside the cabin to spend some romantic time together.

Emily Liggett is sitting in bed reading. Her mother Mrs Jescott played by the gritty Carmen Mathews enters the room. “You should be in bed. And you shouldn’t be in bed, alone” She sits down and says that she wants to tell Emily about the family. “We’ve had sacrifice and cowardice, honor and infidelity, courage, love, deception, confusion, brilliance, tragedy”

Now seated across from her mother as an equal, Emily is more assertive “Mother if there’s anything wrong with Wes we brought it about” she explains “Instead of my living his life, we brought him here to ours, and we handed him a big gift wrapped package and said, here, here’s your life don’t bother to live it yourself…you even presented him with a meaningless job, all title and no work.”

“One day he woke up with energy to burn…and he started burning it, but in all the wrong directions…liquor, women, defiance and the more he did it the more he had to go on doing it to justify it.”

Emily’s mother says “But you’re not running a mission for lost egos” “Mother I’m running a marriage, not just through the good days but through the bad days too. Some day Wes is going to find himself.

(Gloria is also on a journey of self-discovery yet still considered a tramp while Wes doing all the same things is going to find himself),and when he does his wife will be there waiting for him. Gloria only awaits loneliness and a terrible end.

Back in NYC Gloria and Liggett are walking arm and arm down the busy city sidewalk. Gloria sees a leather attache case and stops in to buy it for Steve’s birthday.

Gloria calls over to “Liggett, I’m going to have to leave you today and go see Steve” he says “Now Look” she says “I know, you’re with me kid remember” Gloria asks the clerk if what she called in the other day was ready yet. The clerk goes and gets it. Gloria hands Liggett a small gift-wrapped package. It’s a sterling silver lighter with the inscription BU8 on it.

He smiles and kisses her. “Gloria there’s something I have to tell you” She looks deeply into his eyes, “you act like a man who’s expecting his wife back in town.” ” How did you know?” she says “I always knew…someday,” She says thank you for not calling me, honey and babe and doll face anymore,” he says “I couldn’t I don’t think of you like that anymore”

Crossfade

The little Yorkie sitting atop a pillow like a princess on Annie’s couch. She comes into the apartment and calls out “Mama.” Seconds later her mother walks in puts the packages down and runs over to hug her daughter. “Mama I want to tell you what I’ve been doing” nervously “No dear, you don’t have to” “I’ve been with a man a whole week. Her mother gets up shaking her head disturbed “No”, Gloria says “let me tell you the truth for once in my life” her mother pleads ” no please, please, please”crying and turning away, Gloria goes after to her.

“Mama, we both know what kind of a girl I’ve been, we both know it” Her mother screams and covers her ears, shaking,”no I don’t want to hear about it”Gloria tries to grab her mother’s hands away from her ears, so she has to listen. She shakes her “Mama you have to!… unless I can be honest with you about yesterday, how can you believe me today?” “believe what?!”

“I am different, Mama I am different, yesterday it was men, a whole world full of men,” her mother says”let me go you’re hurting me, you’re hurting me!” Gloria begs, shouting “Mama face it, I was the slut of all time!” Her mother slaps her in the face. There is a sudden silence. A moment’s pause in the midst of crisis. Gloria looked so much more authentic, “if only you’d done that before…long ago…every time I came home all soaked through with gin.” Annie is sobbing, turns, and faces the wall “I’m sorry” she weakly speaks out.

Gloria touches her “It’s not your fault Mama, it never has been, it was in me…but it isn’t there anymore. It’s no longer just men for me, there’s only one man, one, just one…maybe it’s too late for marriage, but it’s not too late for love…now by some miracle, I’m like everybody else.” Annie is facing her daughter now. “I’m in love…you can look at me mama, without wishing I’d never been born” they hug.

Mildred Dunnock is remarkable as Gloria’s fragile yet caring mother

Fade to black

Gloria shows up at her psychiatrist’s office. Dr. Treadman says”Don’t try to analyze me, you don’t have the training” She comes back cleverly “Not in books perhaps”

“Dr Treadman are you hard of hearing?… I’ve been trying to tell you something…I don’t need you anymore!” he looks skeptical” I have no problems anymore…I’m in love, I am in love…I am really in love” He says that he’s delighted to hear it. Gloria gets up, shakes his hand, and thanks him for everything.

He calls to her “Gloria, Gloria while it is possible that sometimes love can solve many things, love is not so simple that you can rely on it as a complete solution, so if it isn’t all that you hoped it would be…if it doesn’t work out, don’t hesitate to come back…quickly.”

She looks back at him confidently “But it will work out, I’m gonna make it work” he calls over to her again as she is walking out of his office. ” but if it doesn’t”” but it will, it has to”

Crossfade

Gloria knocks on Steve’s door, he opens the door she kisses his cheek wishing him a happy birthday, holding flowers and his present. Norma’s on the phone. Gloria is snuggling all over him, kisses him trying to get him in trouble while Norma’s on the phone.

“what are you trying to do to me?” he says laughing, she says “oh you drive me wild with desire,” he asks “Gloria where’ve you been all this time?”I’ve been chained to the wall of a sanitarium trying to keep away from you”Steve has to leave to meet up with Norma.

Gloria follows him over to the closet. And sees the fur coat. Liggett’s wife is coming back to town today, “The coat, oh the coat, what am I going to do?” She runs out of Steve’s with the fur.

Short scene.

Just as Gloria is walking towards the doorman to Liggett’s apartment building with his wife’s fur, Emily Liggett gets out of a limo wearing another fur coat. The doorman greets Mrs. Liggett, and Gloria is stopped in her tracks. She runs back to her little red sports car with the coat, gets in, and starts crying.

Crossfade

Emily is sitting at her dressing table doing her nails. Wes gives her a kiss and welcomes her home. She thanks him and acts surprised at the gesture. She tells him that “there’s a certain aliveness about you” She tells him her mink is missing. He says maybe she left it out on Long Island. But she’s checked it’s not there.

He tells her he’s been home the whole time and nobody else has been there. Then he looks down at the cigarette lighter. He leaves the room, and she runs after him calling Wes. She wants to call the police, but he grabs the phone from her. “the cheap publicity and all” they argue for a bit. “let me do it my way shall we, without your mother!”

Liggett is at a bar, asking if the bartender knows Gloria. “you don’t have to describe her to me Mr. Liggett, I’d know her with my eyes closed, on the bottom of a coal mine, during the eclipse of the sun” She hasn’t been in for over a week.”Without her this place is dead, she’s like cat nip to every cat in town”

He goes to the next bar. two men approach him and ask where he’s been. Then they say Gloria’s the kind of business they wouldn’t mind having again. One man puts his arm around Liggett, “Oh come on Liggett come on Gloria, ha sure, she’s she’s frantic isn’t she like a rocket right off the earth…mother I’d have left home for that…she’s got a traveling hitch, she’s like a flea hop hop hop from one dog to another, bites ya and she’s gone, she picks ya up and she drops you” Ligg looks worried, angry, the man raises a glass and says “well welcome to the fraternity we meet once a year at Yankee Stadium”

Ligg walks out and is on the phone now. “Now listen Butterfield 8 I’ve called her hundreds of times, (desperate) I’m her closest friend, you’ve got to tell me where she is, it’s a matter of life and death.(frustrated about to blow) you’re liars all of you liars fiends and liars now tell me!” he slams the phone down.

We see Gloria driving the red sports car and being pulled over by flashing police lights. Tells her to take it easy, don’t drive away her troubles. Tomorrow the sun will come up again just like it did today. She’s at Happy’s now. Happy brings her a plate of cookies. She’s telling Gloria a story about an actress trying to get a part in the show.

Trying to get in solid with the director.”Two days later or should I say two nights later, she was in, but solid, yeah with the director with his cousin, She was so busy getting in solid with every Tom, Dick and Harry and his uncle George that she wouldn’t recognize a producer if she found one right under her pillow…So time passes and our heroine is very big, yeah but not in the theater oh no, in all the wrong places…in 500 little black books…and 28 divorce cases, 2 police blotters, and in one restraining sheet in the psychopathic ward in Bellevue. Yeah, she hit it big, from a size 12 dress to a size 44. She went from looking like an Orchid to a face like a pan of worms and all because she said with only a rag a bone a hank of hair. I will move the world my way”

Happy sees that Gloria is sullen. She grabs her arm and tells her “Hey you live it, you kick up your heels, you grab everything you can get, you light the candle from one end to the other as they say…and then one day, you too can be the proud proprietor of a very heavily mortgage rolled side brick brothel, you’ll wish you were dead.” Happy eats a cookie looking down and disgusted with her life.

crossfade

Liggett is with his wife Emily sitting at the breakfast table. He gets up and pours vodka into his orange juice glass, “Don’t worry Emily it’s not alcoholism it’s just a kind of medicine”

He says he can’t he has to go out and look for her fur coat. She wonders why he feels so personally responsible for it. “Wes is there anything I can do?” he says  ” When I come back with that coat which I will, I want you to throw me out” he takes his drink, and the scene ends.

Gloria’s mother is needle-pointing “Sorry I didn’t come home last night I spent the night in a motel, Annie looks worried but Gloria laughs “Alone” I had some thinking to do, then she passes a mirror and takes a hard look at her reflection. I saw a woman, utterly proper, utterly conventional, utterly beautiful.

Then she stares at herself in the mirror again. Annie says “You’re beautiful too dear,” She says “I have a face, and that’s not the kind of beauty I mean,” Her mother asks “What kind of beauty?” “The kind that comes from self-respect I guess, it shines” Her mother answers “I’ve seen that kind…it takes a lifetime to find,” Gloria says “I”m going to find it”Mom says “I think you will”

“Butterfield 8 called. Mr Liggett says he has to see you, it’s a matter of life and death.” Now Liggett’s sitting at a bar table, he’s already drunk. Gloria walks in holding his wife’s coat. He sees her and takes a long look. She looks back at him. He sees the coat. “so you did take it!”

“Yes and I’m sorry Liggett, may I sit down?” he says “That’s up to you Honey” The waiter comes by asking if she’d like to order, but Ligg says “No the lady’s not going to order” Gloria gives him the coat. “why did you bother to bring it back?” “because it isn’t mine” he throws it down and erupts quietly,” because you’re scared you mean…cause you to know I’m not like one of those ordinary Joe’s you take for a sleigh ride…because you know while I’m might have given you the world, I’d tear your head off if you’ve stolen as much as a nickel from me, isn’t that it?” she quietly shakes her head and says “no.”

He drunkenly says “So you pick up the man when you want, and drop him like a bomb,” he drops his glass. it breaks, “When you want…people don’t mean anything to you, do they?, the way they feel in here ( he points to his heart) not down where you live” she cries “I care about some people,” he says  “for an hour, or a day, or a week, til you’ve had your kicks, then you slither off to the next one.”

She is so visibly struck silent “I’ll talk to you tomorrow” he grabs her arm very violently, “there isn’t going to be any tomorrow… and for once somebody’s going to drop you, and go ahead try that heel trick again the one you use that gets the boys hot…I ought to break this arm right out of your shoulder” she says “May I say something to you” “Sure honey, babe, doll face, kid…say something sexy, something that always got the boys straight for the hotel” He’s still gripping her wrist, imploding.

Gloria reasons”You can’t have everything in life, be grateful for the few things you do get, no matter where they come from.” she’s holding it together, and he lets go of her arm “The pornographic philosopher….now you just sit there like a good tramp should until I get out of your sight…I can’t stomach being seen in public with you”

He’s creating a scene in the bar. Gloria picks up the coat and says “Liggett” he snaps “Don’t you dare mention my name in public again…( he gets closer up to her face and yells ) You’re a joke, a dirty joke from one end of this town to the other”

A man comes over to try and quiet Liggett, Liggett gets violent and the man punches him til he staggers off. Gloria runs after him with the fur.

They’re sitting in her little red car now. She tries to help him out of the car, but he shoves her away. Emily looks out the window at just the right moment and sees him getting out of Gloria’s car. Gloria gets out of the car and hands him the fur. He says, “For something like this you want me to give this back to my wife after something like you has touched it”!

He throws it back at her. Emily tears up at the window. He walks into the building and tells Emily to leave him alone. “Do you want a doctor?” Wes says “Yes and tell him to bring me something to make me unconscious before I can think.”

Gloria shows up at Steve’s. They’re in total darkness at first. Then Steve thrusts the room into the light. She’s wearing the fur “Ask me about the coat, Steve, ask me.”

“I see you still have it” “Because it’s mine..every skin…every thread…every hair…is mine….(she gasps for air) and you know why?… because I earned it, pretty good pay for one week…a thousand dollars in fur a day” She yanks it off her body.

Steve says “I take it Liggett couldn’t make it?” She says that’s not the important thing, the important thing is “I took money…you know what that makes me” She breaks down and sobs and hugs Steve. She says “Let me cry , let me cry like all the times I should have and never could”

She throws herself face down sobbing on Steve’s bed. He pats her back and she says Steve I have to tell you something” he says I know about you Gloria,” she says “You don’t know this…nobody knows this, except a certain man somewhere who I’d like to think of as standing in the middle of a lake filled with burning gasoline…she pauses and cries please listen…”

“I was 13, my father was dead, all older men seemed like fathers to me, but I wanted one of my own…to sit in his lap…and to hug him…and have him say I was beautiful.” She turns to Steve and asks “Do you remember Major Hartley? Steve remembers. “Major Hartley my mother’s friend, came down to Grand Central Station one day to pick me up from summer camp, Mother was away visiting. He took me home…he let me sit on his lap. he let me hug him…he told me I was beautiful.”

“He stayed in that house for one week, and taught me more about evil than any 13-year-old girl in the world knew” Steve quietly says don’t don’t. She turns to him viciously asserting “You haven’t heard the worst of it yet” She says with a smile and a defiant yet self-deprecating tone, “I loved it!!!!!…every awful moment of it, I loved…” screeching out the words”that’s your Gloria Steve, that’s your darling Gloria…I made a way of life out of it, the deep shame of it didn’t hit me til it was too late. I couldn’t go back to 13 again.”

She looks up a bare trace of light on her face, “I had one chance to stop it, one last chance, and I threw it all away for 32 animals sewn together in a coat.” She’s crying into her hands. Steve goes to her, “It’s not all over…you have another chance. She says it doesn’t matter where she goes. But Steve tells her it matters a great deal what she does. “You got to decide what you’re going to do next, I do too, stay here tonight” She sadly kisses his cheek “Thank you Steve”

Crossfade

Liggett’s in bed smoking, and Emily asks “Anything you need Wes” He says  “A divorce” he’s a failure as a husband and a failure as a man. She doesn’t want the divorce “Wes I love you.”

“I know you do and that makes the divorce all the more necessary…because I can’t go on disappointing you.” She asks “Do you love her, that woman you were with?” “I seem to” “but you fought with her and sent her away in a rage” “Yes I did, I was sick because I was afraid I was going to lose her…and I hated her unreasonably because I couldn’t stand the thought of losing her…just as you hate me now. Emily runs out of the room crying.

Gloria is back with her mother holding the dog, “I just called Butterfield 8 and told them to shut off the service and to send me a bill as soon as I have an address in Boston will you forward it to me?”

Fannie is there Gloria’s mother says “Yes dear I will” “take care of Mama Mrs. Thurber “Oh I got plans for her, my cousin Harry” “Oh Francis” “I’m a born matchmaker” Gloria pipes in ” at 10 percent of course,” Fannie say “naturally…look I don’t want to be a nosy neighbor but why Boston?” “Well that’s where the pilgrims made a fresh start, if it’s good enough for them I guess I can take it”Fannie replies “Can Boston take you?”

Mother asks ‘what will you do in Boston dear?” “Well, I’ll buy a paper, look up the want ads, same as any girl without a job,” Fannie says wearing Emily’s fur coat, “look before we start crying let’s get the luggage into the car…looking in the mirror, ah this is as close as I’ll ever get to heaven,” Gloria asks “Do you like it Mrs Thurber?” “Course not I’m only faint from not eating in three days” “It’s yours”

Fannie looks shocked”no” Annie is smiling, and Gloria says “Wear it in good health” “Oh no you can’t bribe me with this…I could never say a mean word about you as long as I live, I’d die of boredom ” “Well then just keep it warm for me” She turns to her mother “Goodbye mama” They hug very preciously and Annie says “I don’t want you to go, I have a feeling you’ll never come back” “I never will come back Mama, but I’ll send for you as soon as I can” she kisses her on the cheek, then kisses the little dog on the head.

Now Liggett is on the phone, “Did she leave any forwarding address?… Now look this is the most important telephone call of my life…you must tell me, please…Boston? You’re certain…thank you Butterfield 8, thanks”

Joe’s Barber Shop, a Gulf gas station, cars speeding fast on the road, he’s driving to find her. He stops the car, he sees the little red sports car outside a brick diner. She’s sitting at a table. She looks stunned. He says “Don’t be frightened Gloria, please…I can only think of one apology…will you marry me?… I’ve arranged for a divorce, wait for me, and in time, I’ll make you forget every word I uttered last night” “You can’t….I’m left with those words…I’m branded with them, but thank you for asking me to marry you…if only you’d done it yesterday it might have meant something, but not today.

“I only did what I did last night because you were so much in my blood that I exploded” “But you were right last night, no man could marry me and not keep remembering, you, you’d have to explode at my life..past and present, you couldn’t help but explode” Oh Gloria I can think of a dozen apologies” Oh I know, and I accept, but then look at all the thousand of explosions ahead and the thousand apologies and a thousand acceptances until we” he grabs her hand and kisses it, crying holding in his mouth. “til we both get so disgusted” he whispers “I love you I love you” And I love you…it’s no use it’s no damn use”

He wants to go over to Happy’s to be alone and talk ” If I get in a room with you, together, alone, I know what’ll happen, it’ll be the same thing all over again” Look Gloria, we started this whole thing together, we’re obligated to solve it together, please” She tilts her head she’s weakening.

Happy greets Liggett and says “Oh you brought another weary traveler. Hi Honey, welcome home”. Happy keeps talking, and Liggett gets impatient. ”Happy give me the key” Gloria is gripping the steering wheel of the car, hesitating to go into the motel room. Suddenly Gloria speeds away, and Liggett goes after her.

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She’s racing the engine as fast as it will go. She gets onto the thruway, he’s in pursuit. She goes faster, looks behind her to see him following, and realizes too late that she’s hit a detour. Gloria skids off the road, and we see and hear a scream in the little red car as it goes off the cliff and smashes down into rocks. The horn stuck blaring. Liggett looks over at the wreck then the police show up, they are putting a stretcher in the back of an ambulance. Liggett is just standing there. A cop comes over “You saw the accident?” “Yes” Your name please” “Weston Liggett 10 -38 10th Avenue NYC.

The cop says “I stopped that same girl 2 nights ago for speeding, I wish I had put her in jail” Then another cop comes over “I haven’t made her name yet chief” “Her name is Gloria Wandrous” “You knew her?” the cops look at each other baffled.

crossfade

Liggett returns home, “You’re going to read about it in the newspapers tomorrow Emily, the family name your picture, my picture, everything, I’m sorry”

“Wes I don’t understand what’s happened tell me” “She’s dead…she lived for an hour unconscious but she’s dead,” Emily asks “who that girl?”  “Yes, terrible, automobile accident, she was trying to get away from me, I’m sorry, so sorry”

He says solemnly “I don’t suppose that anybody would think that she was a good person but strangely enough she was. On the surface, she was all sex and devil may care yet everything in her was struggling toward respectability , and she never gave up trying”.

He jerks forward in a gust of anguish then turns to Emily, “I’m going out looking for my pride, alone, when I find it, if you’re here, I’ll come back and we’ll see if it still has any value to either of us” he walks out the door. The strings start dramatically, we are left with  Emily standing in the apartment for a second before the screen goes black.

The End

Elizabeth Taylor rightfully won an Academy Award for this role. A woman cannot afford to be an individual who is sexually adventurous otherwise she is labeled a whore. Thus she is reviled by the very men who are themselves sexually active and ultimately she must be deconstructed and destroyed.

Gloria is also under a doctor’s care for this. Another factor in a woman having a strong sexual identity is that it is associated with a mentally ill pathology. Francis Farmer was lobotomized for this. Not many decades ago women were thrown into jail or Psych wards for this.

While men are heralded as being part of a Fraternity, a brotherhood of users, exploiters, and objectifiers. They are viewed as heroic and successful. They affirm their masculinity. While women, lose their self-worth and become dehumanized and shunned.

Gloria’s downward spiral was inevitable because she needed the outside agency of other sympathetic characters to find the good that is buried deep within her, when in fact it was obvious that she was a good person.

She is already a very dynamic, delightful, loving, and free-spirited individual, something to be honored and not reviled.

As in The Naked Kiss (1964), we see a double standard of male /female expectations.

Sam Fuller’s The Naked Kiss (1965): Part I: “There’ll be no later, this town is clean”

A woman’s sexuality is something to be feared, and judged, and also used as a weapon as it applies to the undoing of male power over logic. The theme of Madonna vs Whore syndrome, where she can’t be both, not able to exist in this world with this dual role she must be destroyed in order to be set free from the stain of her sexual nature. Kelly had to leave Grantville, and Gloria had to die horribly in a car crash, in order to destroy the sexual desire she both embodied and projected.

From “The Dread of Difference: Gender and the Horror Film” edited by Barry Keith Grant

Page 35 “Horror and the Monstrous -Feminine An Imaginary Abjection” by Barbara Creed

“All human societies have a conception of the monstrous-feminine, of what it is about a woman that is shocking, terrifying, horrific, abject. Classical mythology also was populated with gendered monsters, many of which were female. The Medusa with her “evil eyes” head of writhing serpents” -Barbara Creed

page 36 “It is not by accident that Freud linked the sight of Medusa’s to the equally horrifying sight of the mother’s genitals, for the concept of the monstrous- feminine, as constructed within and by a patriarchal and phallocentric ideology, is related intimately to the problem of sexual difference and castration.” In 1922 Freud argued that “Medusa’s head takes the place of the female’s genitals. If we accept Freud’s interpretation we can see that the Perseus myth is mediated by a narrative about the difference of female sexuality as a difference which is grounded in monstrousness  and which invokes castration anxiety in the male spectator.” -Barbara Creed

Remember when Liggett tells Gloria that she should go slither away, making a reference to her as a serpent? Liggett is also emotionally castrated by his relationship with his wife and mother-in-law.

The Hideous Sun Demon (1959) Reptilian pants monster by day

Since we’re having a major blizzard here on the eastern seaboard, I thought it appropriate to spread a little sunshine in your day! I’d like to share a film that is a “guilty pleasure” of mine.

I love 1950s sci-fi/ horror. There are some films that share equal parts of the genres. The Hideous Sun Demon is one of those atomic-age scare films.

The Hideous Sun Demon (1959) alternative titles Blood on His Lips, Terror From the Sun(  more fitting for people who look like worn-out saddles from too much sun worshiping and tanning bedtime), and The Sun Demon. Directed and Produced by Robert Clarke and Screenplay by E.S.Seeley Jr.

Stars Robert Clarke, Patricia Manning, Nan Peterson, and Patrick Whyte. In keeping with the theme of shapes shifting and transformation films such as werewolves and large cat people.

This film is about a reptilian conversion whenever Dr Gilbert McKenna played by director Clarke himself is exposed to the light of day, the sun. Normally films that evoke fear are set in shadowing night, with beasties lurking in the darkness. Sun Demon depicts the horror and fears in broad daylight, the theme of the monster transformed by the moonlight is actually now inverted, to become a tale of fearing the bright landscape of the day.

On a much more subtle level or perhaps not so subtle considering it is well known of Dr McKenna’s drinking problem. the film can be taken as a cautionary tale about addiction. Now, Dr. Gilbert McKenna happens to also be an atomic scientist who deals with the dreaded radioactive materials. So combining this highly dangerous practice with a highly self-destructive habit makes for a disastrous result. Dr. McKenna causes an accident in his lab, which sets off a chain reaction of exposure to a strange kind of radiation exposure. He literally becomes allergic to the sunlight and when at the mercy of the big old fireball in the sky, he becomes a scaly monstrosity.

Trying to help Gil out are his associates Ann Russell played by Patricia Manning and Dr. Frederick Buckell(Patrick Whyte). They insist on Gil staying out of the sunlight until they can find a specialist who can treat him for radiation poisoning. Unfortunately, Gil has a very strong will and drive to do things his own way, after all, he is an addict.

He goes out one evening and finds a nightclub singer Trudy Osborne ( Nan Peterson)and they start up a little fling on the beach, which leaves Gil exposed to the sun the next morning.

Ann is in love with Gil, but Gil doesn’t seem to notice at all. Because Gil is oblivious to Ann’s feelings, he sneaks out while she is taking care of him. He goes back to find the sleazy Trudy and yet again he’s caught out in the sunlight. This time, once he’s transformed into the scaly demon he winds up killing a gangster named Georgia who happens to be Trudy’s ex-boyfriend.

Inevitably Gil is chased by the police and falls to his death from a high tower.

The fact that Gil is a willful participant in turning into this demon, suggests that it is the subject of addiction and choice that the film is relating to us. Gil could have remained inside during the day to protect himself and others from what he might become, but his urges created a compulsion that ultimately was his downfall.

I can’t take credit for the use of the phrase Pants Monster. Here is the link to their hilarious site!

http://pantsmonsters.blogspot.com/

 

Sam Fuller’s The Naked Kiss: Part III “Tell me where is the blue bird of happiness found?”

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. 

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.

Continue reading “Sam Fuller’s The Naked Kiss: Part III “Tell me where is the blue bird of happiness found?”” →

Sam Fuller’s The Naked Kiss:Part II “I washed my face clean the morning I woke up in your bedroom”

The Naked Kiss (1965) Part II

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 Grey snaps 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.”

The Naked Kiss (1964) Directed by Samuel Fuller Shown (left of center): Constance Towers

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.

Fuller’s gusts of brutal cinema vérité are as shocking and confrontational. Candy lies there humiliated, pulling the money out of her mouth, looking destroyed by Kelly’s assault. This powerful businesswoman who runs an entire stable of what she calls”Bimbies” will not take this lying down!

Continued in Part III

Sam Fuller’s The Naked Kiss (1965): Part I: “There’ll be no later, this town is clean”

The Naked Kiss (1965) Shock and Shame, the story of a Night Girl.

Directed by the maverick auteur Samuel Fuller, with a screenplay by Fuller and black, gray, and white shades in the striking cinematography by Stanley Cortez

-(The Magnificent Ambersons 1942, Since you Went Away 1944, The Night of the Hunter 1955, Shock Corridor 1961), Cortez creates a sense of space that is almost surreal and disconnected from the outside world. The Naked Kiss stars Constance Towers as Kelly, Anthony Eisley as Griff, Michael Dante as Grant, Marie Devereux as Buff, Patsy Kelly as Mac, and one of my favorite unsung actresses Virginia Grey (The Women 1939, All The Heaven Allows 1955, Crime of Passion 1956, Backstreet 1961) as Candy.

Let me say that this is one of my favorite films. I think that it’s such a bold concoction of visual style, specific alienation that we as spectators experience along with Kelly our female Protagonist. The undercurrent of sexual pathology of a perverse nature and raw energy that fuels some crude reactionary moments on film. Normally I wouldn’t write about the ending of a film so as not to ruin it for the viewer, yet Constance Tower’s remarkable performance and Fuller’s raw cinematic veritae must be experienced, the story will not lose anything by my relating it here. I actually consider this part of my Women in Peril series, but more aptly put, it’s a womanhood in peril film.

Samuel Fuller’s B post-noir films are not like anyone else’s. Fuller’s work is often confrontational and visceral considered the kinkiest of all the B post-noir auteurs. Naked Kiss is his most potent work alongside his noir masterpiece Pickup on South Street (1953) starring Richard Widmark and Thelma Ritter as Moe Williams.


Alain Silver and James Ursini’s Film Noir Reader 2 “Fuller’s Naked Kiss “boldly offers a different kind of descriptive pause. Fuller takes on Patriarchy and directly assaults the spectator with a bizarre opening”

In their book they inform us that Fuller actually attached a camera to actor Monte Mansfield who plays Kelly’s pimp Farlunde, the guy she pummels in his swanky apartment right from the tip of the film. He has shaved off her hair and in retaliation she takes her primal vengeance out on his, beating him with her purse and high heels. Kelly only takes the money owed to her. The scene already prepares us, and what is created is an off-kilter and disorienting mood. The opening of The Naked Kiss is perhaps for me one of the most audacious beginnings to any cinematic work. It sort of punches you right in the face along with Farlunde.

The greater theme of the film is its narrative of women’s role within society. In a way not unlike Elia Kazan, Fuller has created a sociological framework, to lay out questions of what womanhood, as well as motherhood, means discursively. While at the end of the film, Kelly is relegitimized as being a savior and not a whore, she is still not allowed to live amongst the clean town’s people. She is still an outsider. Silver and Ursini also correctly bring out in their noir reader the fact that the context of the film is a “discursive-based attack on men and how they define women as well as the limits they place on them”. Also notable is the displaced female rage that only became better articulated later on with feminists during the 60s and 70s.

It reminds me while watching television’s soap opera junk food Peyton Place with its pillory that sits prominently in the middle of the town square as a reminder of New England Puritanical morals and the lurking hypocrisy in the shadows of quiet provincial values, that warn girls to beware of giving away their virtue. Betty Anderson (Barbara Parkins) learns this when she is condemned as the archetypal whore, the tainted girl who gave up her purity to a boy during a summer fling and then was thrown away like autumn trash. The pillory stands in the middle of the town, 200 years prior a woman like Betty had her head shaved bald, was locked in the pillory to be mocked, and then was driven out by the good town folk of Peyton Place. Much like Kelly who we first meet at the shocking opening of the film (one reason The Naked Kiss is such a uniquely memorable excursion for me) is completely bald and striking back at the man who took her hair, her power away.

The Naked Kiss written, directed, and produced by Sam Fuller, opens wide like a steel trap, with Constance Towers as Kelly viciously beats up a pimp Farlunde in his swanky apartment, smashing away at him with her handbag. Hitting his face and neck, it’s like watching a brutal choreographed dance. Fuller creates this wavering movement to give us a sense of the dizzying brutality. Farlunde begs “I’m drunk Kelly please,” “Enough Kelly please.” The savage jazz riffs underscore the bashing. Her wig comes flying off, and now we see a bald Kelly still attacking the man relentlessly. The jazz is coherent with the hyperactive saxophone.

Stripped of her hair looking like a mannequin (perhaps to show us Kelly as an “object”) she beats him till he staggers to the floor, spraying seltzer water in his face. He’s wasted by the beating, she rifles through his pockets and grabs some cash from his wallet. “Eight hundred dollars… you parasite… I’m taking only what’s coming to me.” She starts counting out bills, throwing them down upon his chest, “Fifty, sixty, seventy-five… I’m not rolling you, you drunken leech, I’m only taking the seventy-five dollars that’s coming to me.”

She crumples up her share, shoves it into her bra, and kicks him while he’s lying there. She stares at us like we’re her mirror. Gratified she puts her wig back on and the title rolls, The Naked Kiss. Sam Fuller’s story of alienation, gender subjugation, and the question of immorality and deviant sexual pathology, opens up in a big way.

The Paul Dunlop score becomes more dreamy, with melodramatic strings and Kelly brushing her wig. getting it right. The credits roll and Kelly are applying her eye pencil transforming herself back into a woman and not a bloodthirsty she-devil. Now the blush is applied, the music fades back into the jazz number and we see Farlunde knocked out, lying on the floor. The saxophone is hurling trills at us, Kelly grabs a photograph down from a collection of beauties and she starts tearing it up to pieces, throwing them on the ground, the Farlunde stirs, coughs a bit, and starts to get up, Kelly slams the door.

As he starts picking up the debris Kelly has left in her wake he puts crumpled-up bills on top of a calendar and we see the date July 4, 1961. A quick cut, flash forward to a banner in the street touting August 12, 1963, and the melodramatic music is serenading us again. The camera pulls out for a wider angle, we can see the entire banner now, it reads 2 years later. August 12, 1963 Fashion Show for Handicapped Children Grantville Orthopedic Medical Center

The top of a bus moving through the street, a parked car, a mostly empty street, with a few people crossing it, and mulling about. This is the suggestion of a quiet, quaint American town.

Then a car horn toots, 3 men standing outside a Bus Depot, Griff (Anthony Eisley) says “Ten bucks, that right Mike?” Mike says “Why spend your own money on that punk?” Griff turns to the young man and says while stuffing it in his pocket “Here’s your ticket” smiles at him and shoves some money into his pocket as well. All the time the young man is looking down as if ashamed. He says “Thanks a lot Griff… I’ll pay you back.” Griff looks at him sternly, “I’m giving you a break, cause your brother was in my outfit… I don’t want to see you in this town again.” The young man looks down again.

Then a Greyhound bus pulls over to the curb. We see the marquee of the movie theater is playing Shock Corridor, a nod to Fuller’s other psychologically wrenching film about a newspaper reporter going undercover in a lunatic asylum, only to become one of the patients.

Continue reading “Sam Fuller’s The Naked Kiss (1965): Part I: “There’ll be no later, this town is clean”” →

The Maze (1953) Of Highlands and Amphibians

The Maze (1953)William Cameron Menzies directed and was responsible for the art design of The Maze which had its theatrical release in 3D. You’ll actually live it! the film hails.

William Cameron Menzies is known for his visually oneiric classic sci-fi films with dreamlike landscapes.The fantastical (Invaders From Mars)(1953), Things To Come)and the uncredited  director of Duel In The Sun and The Thief of Bagdad, and the epic Gone With The Wind)


Dan Ullman’s screenplay gives us some atmospheric scenes that are compelling to watch and although at times The Maze seems prosaic and downright laughable, It’s been a guilty pleasure of mine for years and I think it’s a charming little chiller from the ’50s due to its originality and Menze’s art design. Plus I enjoy watching Michael Pate, always looking like his underwear is on too tight for his gingerbread men.

Richard Carlson (It Came From Outer Space, Creature From The Black Lagoon)plays Gerald MacTeam, a Baronet and next in line to reign at Craven Castle after his Uncle Samuel dies. The isolated and dreaded Craven Castle has held a mystique about it for centuries, up there in the highlands of Scotland, where an ancient curse hangs over the MacTeam clan.

Aunt Edith(Katherine Emery) spends some time narrating the tale to us as if telling us a bedtime story or fairytale.

Gerald is engaged to Kitty Murray(Veronica Hurst). At the beginning of The Maze, we find Gerald and Kitty regaling their engagement in Canne, with Kitty’s Aunt Edith, played by Katherine Emery(Isle of The Dead). Suddenly Gerald receives an urgent telegram telling him to come to Craven Castle immediately, although he has just told the women, that he had not been there in years.

Gerald leaves abruptly with the promise that he’ll contact Kitty once he’s settled. But weeks go by with no contact from Gerald. Her telegrams have all been delivered but there is still no answer from her fiance for several weeks.

Aunt Edith guides Kitty that Gerald’s silence is his answer. But Kitty is determined to find out why Gerald hasn’t contacted her. She’s worried that he’s in trouble, reading the announcement in the newspaper that his Uncle Samuel has passed away at age 45, Kitty insists that she and Aunt Edith go to Scotland to help Gerald who must be in terrible shape not to answer her telegrams.

Kitty is relentless and irritating throughout the film. You don’t admire her determination, rather you resent her ignoring Gerald’s wishes, and not respecting his privacy once they arrive. Prying and questioning all the rules of the MacTeam family. Gerald coldly tells her to leave, yet she insinuates herself into the situation, against his wishes. Kitty even has the audacity to invite their friends to the castle without Gerald knowing about it.

The male servants try everything they can at thwarting Kitty’s inquisitiveness. One of the maids has quit, because she wandered into the maze and was horrified. Gerald insists that from now on, William is to hire only male help.

When Kitty and Aunt Edith arrive at Craven Castle cloaked in the foggy Highland mist, they are greeted by the stoic and stern William played by Michael Pate(The Killer is Loose, Curse of the Undead, an interesting vampire western).

When Kitty sees the changes in Gerald, who looks like he’s aged 20 years, with hair turned white on the sides and his face frozen in a stony expression, she’s shocked. Gerald is furious that she’s come to the castle. He had written Edith specifically telling them that he is releasing Kitty from the engagement. That if he were to leave the castle, it would mean certain death. This line of the note is scratched out in pencil, but Kitty erases it and reads what he has written. This only propels Kitty’s prowess to see her fiance even more. Aunt Edith goes along unwillingly yet for moral support.

Gerald insists that they leave in the morning, putting them in adjoining rooms. Aunt Edith had been forewarned about the strange rules of the castle, but Kitty is unnerved when they are locked in at night. She sees a light under the door, and we hear a strange slithering, dragging noise as it passes by her room. This does not discourage her, she finds a secret passageway to a lookout and watches as a light moves along the maze in the dark. She tells Aunt Edith that something is going on and begs Aunt Edith who merely has the sniffles to feign illness so that they can stay a bit longer to investigate.

The curious rules, the rubber matting on the floors, the steps that are more like platforms, the strange sounds, and lights, and the drastic change in Gerald’s demeanor all work on the spirit of Kitty’s curiosity to find out the truth.

Kitty conspires to send a telegram to her friends in London, one a doctor friend Burt Dilling (John Dodsworth), and invites him and Hillary Brooke as Peggy Lord and another couple to come to the castle under the guise of them stopping by while touring the Scottish countryside. All this is a ruse to get Dr. Burt Dilling to check in on his friend Gerald.

William and the other servants are mysterious and steadfast in their protection of the secret of the MacTeam legacy and why Gerald has turned his back on his modern life, and engagement to the beautiful Kitty. Now the secret of Craven Castle and what lurks in The Maze unfolds in vintage 50’s campy style. The Maze is a lot of fun, it rekindles that childhood memory of being shocked at the time, now it’s just wonderful to watch Richard Carlson a great mainstay of the genre play the tormented Gerald who must now take up the mantle of the family legacy.

There is a bit of Lovecraftian theme to The Maze which seldom translates well enough on screen yet does give this film enough of an eerie quality, in retrospect.

And Cryptozoologists will have a ball at the climax of the film. I only wish I could have seen it in its 3 Dimensional glory!

They Live By Night (1948) Part Two “A woman is sort of like a dog”

They Live By Night (1948) Part One “This boy and girl were never properly introduced to the world”

It’s the first 10 minutes of They Live By Night that sets the stage for our ill-fated lovers. When Keechie comes out to the barn to get water, Bowie follows her, rattles some chains to make noise, and then he slumps down against the wall. When the headlights of a car startle him, he begins to whisper a little ritualistic number-counting verse to himself, a way to calm himself. Perhaps something he picked up in jail. Bowie is 23 years old and spent 7 years of it on the prison farm where he met Chickamaw and T-Dub.

He tells Keechie that he doesn’t really know how to talk to a woman. The old man Mobley shows up in a car with a woman. It’s Mattie, wife of T-Dubs brother still in jail trying to get paroled. Mobley is soused and nearly crashes the car, but smashes some crates and tires and damages the front tire. Mattie gets out complaining about the drive there, and the drunken fool who picked her up. “That’s the best you can send?”

They go into the cabin and leave Bowie and Keechie still in the barn. Keechie asks Bowie if he likes his old man. He says “Not much.” Then Bowie asks if it’s true that her Ma ran off, and she answers yes. He tells her his ma ran off with a guy who ran a pool hall. His Pa used to take him there. He relates to her a story of how one night, there was an argument, but there is usually an argument centered around a game of pool. This time his Pa raised his cue but the other guy had a gun. His Pa turned to him like he was trying to say something, his face went white like he was going to cry. “The blood running into his eyes” Then Ma went to live with the guy who killed him.

Here the backstory lays the groundwork for the couple, who never had a chance to live a normal life, with decent parents who could raise them with a moral code.

She asks why Bowie would run with men like T-Dub and Chickamaw, her uncle “lives for trouble” and is “wild” Bowie keeps a newspaper clipping in his pocket about a guy convicted of murder just like him, who had no due process of the law. The Supreme Court said, “Let that man out!” Bowie fantasizes about running away to Mexico. Dreams are all he has.

This is what Bowie is living for, the day he can afford the Lawyer in Tulsa, who can overturn his conviction and he can get himself “squared around” a significant phrase that will come back at the end of the film. The idea is that these young people are fueled by the desire to belong to the right side of society. Bowie and Keechie start to develop an obvious attraction to each other.

Mattie takes an instant dislike to Bowie and tells Keechie that he’s Jail Bait.

Chickamaw and T-Dub want to pull a big job in Zelton Texas, rob a bank. Bowie agrees to be the driver of the getaway car.

The day before the robbery, we see a large street clock, Bowie looks at it, always asking what time it is. He’s sitting in the car, we hear a train whistle blow. Then Bowie cases the bank. He purchases a beautiful woman’s watch for Keechie at the Zelton Jewelry Store. He doesn’t have smaller bills with him so the jewelry store owner will have to take him over to the bank to break the large bills.

T-Dub and Bowie return to the house where Mattie and Chickamaw are. T-Dub asks Mattie what’s going on. It appears there might be a sexual relationship between the pair. Chickamaw says “How long does a woman wait for one man?” Mattie gets upset “Listen you crumby one-eyed nut” T-Dub goes to slap Mattie but Chickamaw grabs him, and Mattie smashes a mirror. Bowie is spooked and says “That’s 7 years!” is there an emphasis on his superstition because he is uneducated and from a lower class?

 

On the day of the bank robbery, the same train whistle blows, the clock is standing in the same spot outside the bank, and Bowie is in the car waiting for the two men to give the signal, when the jeweler recognized Bowie and tried to strike up a conversation with him. When Bowie keeps telling him to “get away” and he doesn’t stop talking, Bowie pushed the man to the ground and he hits his head.

All 3 men are in the getaway car now, fleeing the robbery, back on the wide expanses of open land. Blue Grass music is playing on the radio. They pull off the road. Chickamaw pulls out a gas can and sets the robbery car ablaze. The radio starts to die out as the car is consumed by the flames until it sounds like a dying doo hickey.

They drop T-Dub off and Chickamaw says, they can start struttin’ and the one thing Bowie has to learn “is to look and act like other people.” Again we see the emphasis on trying to fit into normal society. They buy fancy clothes and new cars. On the way back to the house, an old jalopy cuts off Bowie and they crash the car. A police officer comes over to question them about how fast they were going and requests that they come along with him, and Chickamaw calls him “friend” and then shoots him.

Chickamaw takes Bowie, who’s sprained his back in the crash, to his brother’s place so Keechie can take care of him. Old man Mobley starts complaining about having to close the station, but Chickamaw says not to worry and shoves a wad of cash in Keechies blouse pocket. Her uncle Chickamaw has a very unhealthy boundary around his niece. He leers at her a good deal of the time and objectifies her, by calling her the girl instead of his niece. When Keechie hands the money over to her father, the old man says, “Girl that’s more money I’ve seen since we collected on that fire we had.” He takes the money, and we know that he’ll blow all of it on booze later on.

Bowie is laying face down on the bed. Keechie takes her hair down and starts brushing it. The first sign that she is embracing her sexuality, her womanhood, amidst this band of dirty thugs, her father included. Bowie awakens and is framed on screen behind a wrought iron bed, that looks like the bars of a jail. Noir characters are often trapped by framing.

Bowie asks Keechie “Who’s your fella…other girls have ’em?” she says “I don’t know what other girls have.” She rubs his back down with something, and the wind in the telephone wires from out the highway, makes an eerie noise outside. Bowie asks if she ever thinks about leaving town, most girls would want to go, again she says “I don’t know what most girls want.” Keechie has been so sheltered from the world. He tells her that he has lots of money now from the robbery, but this offends Keechie. He doesn’t mean to offend her, but she replies, “I’d do this for a dog.” Then he tells her to look in the side pocket of his shirt. She takes out the package and finds the watch he bought for her. She mentions that there is no clock in the cabin, though she wants to set the watch to the right time. Perhaps people who live outside of society have no sense of belonging so need to track the hours of the day. That’s the sense I got from all the references to time and why it was so important for Bowie and Keechie to know what time it was.

He puts the watch on her. She says she never saw any sense in having a fella, then asks him if he’s trying to say that he should be her fella. He says “I guess maybe it is.” This is a very sweet moment for the two of them. She tells him to stay until morning, by then her drunken father will have shot off his mouth all over town, so he’ll need to get away. She’ll go with him.

They leave on a bus. A baby crying incessantly, on a seat next to Bowie, but the mother could care less about quieting the child. They stop for coffee and notice a flashing neon sign Marriages Performed. The waitress pours more coffee and interjects, Hawkins class B, organ music, and everything for $20. She says the way people pop in and out of there you’d think they’re getting dog licenses. At that point, Bowie tries to tell Keechie that he’s no good for her. He’ll always be a black sheep. and she tells him “The only thing black about you is your eyelashes.” She saw the goodness in him from the beginning. After complaining about how awful that wedding place is, he asks her to marry him and they get off the bus, and enter Hawkins, to be married. The old man running the quicky ceremony says to Bowie “You don’t think much about the way I marry people” “I sure don’t” “Me neither but you gotta give people what they want.” Then he sells them a car and heads off for their honeymoon, at Lamberts Inn where they take a room all the way at the end, from Mr Vines and his little son Alvin. They set up a house there. And life seems quiet and “normal” like other people.

In the meantime, old man Mobley goes to the police and tells them about Bowie, kidnapping his daughter. Tells them where they can find him. “That boy belongs in the electric chair, and I’d like to be the one to pull the switch!”

Bowie asks Keechie about “these women who don’t wait for their men” and she gives him her philosophy. “Those women don’t love…woman only loves once. I guess a woman is sort of like a dog, a bad dog would take things from anybody, and he’ll bite anybody who tries to pet him. There was a man back up home, and after he died, his dog wouldn’t eat or do anything, and he died too.”

Chickamaw shows up “Aint you shacked up nice and cozy,” He asks for alcohol, but since there wasn’t any, he asks for candy and starts munching on it. Tells Bowie the newspapers are “plastered with his face.” Every time some dingbat robs a filling station, they say it’s “Bowie the Kid”, the Zelton bandit. “You’d have to have wings to be every place they say you did.”

Chickamaw and T-Dub are out of money and now want to pull another job. ” kid we got a bank in Cedars, just itching to be charged” Bowie offers half his loot from the Zelton robbery but Chickamaw strongarms him into coming along. “you know that’s friendly, real friendly…you aint gonna be handing me out no two bits at a time for ice cream cones, that doe you got where’d you get it?! working the shoe store, it takes 3 to pull a trick and you’re number 3, even if the papers say you’re number one.” T-Dub tells him later on that they took him out of jail over other men. Keechie is furious with Bowie for going along.

After the bank job, Chickamaw is gets righteously riled. T-Dub got killed during the bank robbery. Chickamaw tells Bowie that it “rips his guts out” All the papers do is talk about Bowie the Kid. He wants Bowie to stop for a drink, but Bowie refuses, Chickamaw grabs a pipe from the back seat and tries to hit him with it. Bowie orders him to get out of the car.

Bowie returns home that night to Keechie. “I guess you heard over the radio” “I heard T-Dub’s dead, Chickamaw was killed breaking into a liquor store…they say it runs in threes.”

She tells him she’s going to have a baby, no matter what. Bowie says “That’s right, he’ll have to take his chances just like us.”

They go out for the day and walk around the park like other “real people”, Bowie talks about going to Mexico again. they go out for supper and dancing.

A drunk stumbles into Keechie, so they decide to leave, but Keechie asks Bowie to get her some cigarettes. While in the bathroom getting the pack of cigarettes from the machine, a man crouches behind him and says “Bowie the kid” pulls the gun away from Bowie “Papers say you carry a .45” Bowie comes back “Papers say a lot of things.” The man tells him “We want you to leave town tonight, we don’t want any trigger-happy hillbillies around.”

There are no safe places for Bowie and Keechie to belong. They’re too innocent for the thugs like Chickamaw and T-Dub, yet they’re perceived as hicks by a whole other hierarchy of criminals. They Live By Night really is a story about human suffering and class disparity.

When the couple realizes that the plumber who came to fix the busted pipes in their place has recognized Bowie, they flee their little home and head out for the Prairie Plaza Hotel, a piece of property that Bowie remembers Mattie owns. Mattie is not happy to see Bowie, even though she finds out that Keechie’s ill and pregnant, unknown to the young couple, she turns them in to the police in exchange for her husband finally getting paroled.

Bowie goes back to the man who married them, asking about getting help to flee to Mexico, but the old man tells him that he’s a thief just like Bowie, but he won’t sell him “hope” when there ain’t any. Bowie realizes that there just isn’t a place in the world for “people like us.”

Note: the use of the metaphor of dogs is used a lot in the film– as obedience, faithfulness, and submissiveness. loyalty.

I won’t spoil the climax of They Live By Night, it is a poetic masterpiece of director Nicholas Ray

 

They Live By Night (1948) Part One “This boy and girl were never properly introduced to the world”

They Live By Night (1948) Directed by the great Nicholas Ray. Ray was responsible for one of my all-time favorite films with Bogie and Gloria Grahame, In A Lonely Place (1950), and he also gave us On Dangerous Ground (1952), Rebel Without A Cause, and Joan Crawford in Johnny Guitar.

They Live By Night is an adaptation by Nicholas Ray from the Novel “Thieves Like Us” by Edward Anderson. Produced by John Houseman.

Farley Granger plays Bowie, Cathy O’Donnell is the simple girl Keechie, Howard Da Silva is the ruthless”one-eyed “Chickamaw, Jay C.Flippen is T-Dub, and all three men make up the band of criminals responsible for robbing “charging “banks, across Texas. Will Wright plays old man Mobley a drunk (Ben Weaver, cantankerous store owner in The Andy Griffith Show) Helen Craig, plays Mattie who is married to T-Dub’s brother who is stuck in jail, having difficulty getting paroled.

“This boy and this girl were never properly introduced to the world we live in…

To tell their story…


Ray uses open vistas, the cars driving through open expanses of land, not the often dominating skyscrapers, or closely cropped staircases and framed structural shadows. yet a certain desolation permeates the screen. Textually and thematically, They Live By Night breaks away from the urban milieu and plants itself in the rural countryside, in contrast to other darker noir environs.

This is yet another RKO excursion into the noir realm that they became well known for.  RKO had been one of the original production studios from the Golden Age of Hollywood. Val Lewton had done his low-budget yet groundbreaking horror collection(I Walked With A Zombie, Bedlam, Cat People, Isle Of The Dead) while at RKO.

There is a sentimentality and romanticism surrounding our two lead actors, the young couple project innocent victims, who were just born into a bad station in life. We get the sense that had they have been given another set of circumstances in another place, their lives would have been so far contrasting to the lives they’re leading because Bowie and Keechie are both essentially good people. We also see the very plain and feral Keechie blossom into her sexuality, as Bowie awakens this primal undercurrent that’s been subverted by her sheltered existence.

The certain outcome they faced, was always inevitable because they never had a chance to rise above the choices they’d been given.

There is so much of the narrative focused on what “other people normally do”, “to be like everybody else”. Our two young figures are trapped in a world, not of their own making.

Though most of the story is set in the rural countryside, which opens up the environment from the usual claustrophobic city scenes and defies the familiar mechanism of darkness, They Live By Night has an oppressive sensibility that makes the film a dark piece. The protagonist Bowie is still closed in by his situation.

Another departure from the more commonly seen protagonists with rough exteriors like Richard Conte, Robert Ryan and Charles McGraw, Farley Granger exudes a sexual ambiguity. Granger’s characters (Rope (1948), Strangers on A Train (1951), Side Street (1950)) have often been morally weak and susceptible to crime, not able to hold off temptation. He projects a sullenness, a softness that makes him appear the noir victim.


The divergence of the gentle souled Bowie with the cutthroat ruthlessness of his two treacherous partners in crime, set up the combustible dynamic that threatens Bowie’s safety from the outset.

As the lush and poignant music opens, it creates an unusual mood for us, not the typically hard-edged jazz thematic score we’re used to hearing with dark noir offerings. They Live By Night starts by serenading the sweet embraces of Farley Granger’s Bowie and O’Donell’s naive Keechie. The musical strings become threatening and the Titles roll as an old jalopy is driving eclipsed by the words They Live By Night.

It’s the 30s and two jalopies are speeding furiously down a desolate road. We see Bowie toss his shirt out of the car, and four men in the car, spin off the side of the road stirring up a dirt cloud, as they stop the car.

“I knew that tire had to go,” a farmer they’ve kidnapped says to Bowie sitting in the back seat. 2 men step outside of the car holding guns, one of them, Chickamaw wearing a hat says “You talk too much” The dusty isolation frames the men like a gray wilderness.

Chickamaw jerks the farmer out of the car as he begs, “Please mister please.” At first, Chickamaw holds a rifle up to his face as if threatening to shoot, instead he is forced to the ground out of our view, obscured by the car but we hear Chickamaw pounding on the farmer.  The music is serious, the horns play brutal tones, and then we see a concerned expression come over Bowie watching from his viewpoint, startled at the brutality he is witnessing. We get a glimpse of humanity in one of the 3 thieves.

We can’t see but we hear “Smack, smack” like pops and bones breaking. The picture, the photograph we see is so filthy, the environment itself so angry, like the dirt could devour all the men whole.

They toss the beaten man into the back of the car and Chickamaw says “Now what” T Dub replies “Now we gotta get to that brother of yours and get to that doe you got stashed away.”

The 3 men leave on foot we get an aerial view of them walking in the tall grass passing a billboard sign that says “Cosmo Nifties.” Bowie falls and grabs his foot. “How far we gotta go?” “About 10, 15 miles.” Bowie’s foot appears injured. The two other men tell him to hide out in the bushes beneath the billboard and that they’ll be back for him at night. They tell him to “take it easy son,” he says “I’ll take it easy. I gotta lawyer in Tulsa to see.”

It is night now. The Cosmo Nifties sign bares a sultry-haired beauty with a flower in her hair, the sign shapeshifts on the screen into a fence. Bowie is peaking through the fence, and a little scrappy dog comes into the scene, Bowie sits back down the little approaches him for food. But he suddenly sees headlights of a car approaching. he looks through the fence again. The fence, he is fenced in. We hear the twinkling song of night crickets, a truck pulls up and stops, the breaks screeching to a halt.

Bowie steps out from behind the fence, and we hear the truck trying to be started but stalling. The dog is following him. He asks the driver, “you having trouble?” a voice shaded by the dark and a hat answer back. it is the soft comeback of a female voice, this is Keechie.
“Could be” he asks “Who are you?  Do you live around here?” The crickets serenade the two veiled in shadow. Again the only two words she utters are “Could be.”

“You haven’t had a couple of visitors have you?” ” That wouldn’t be a sore foot making you limp would it?” “Could be” she says “I got some other stuff to pick up, get in or we’ll both get pneumonia” Her profile is solemn, and she looks down at the steering wheel.

She gets the car started and now her face is lit a little more, we can see she’s very plain, but very pretty, he comes around the side and starts to get into the car. A train whistle sings in the background. He looks at her “They sure took their sweet time sending for me”

Bowie asks “Who are you?” “they sent this for you, get in.” They arrive at a shabby place, in the car only the edges of their faces show light, like crescent moons, the rest is pure darkness surrounding them. They are staring at each other, she tells him “I’ll take that stuff, you go around the shed, through the trees, a cabin back there.”

He knocks on the door to the cabin, there are several men inside, one smoking a cigar opens it up to greet him with a smirk. Chickamaw says “Look who’s here” T-Dub sitting down counting money, says “Hello son,” Chickamaw says “You took your time gettin’ here… what are you and the gal been doin’, swimmin’?” “Say hello to Mobley, Chickamaw’s brother,” the old man says, ” I told you she’d find him… she’s a weasel that daughter of mine” “Sorry we had to keep you waiting son…had to be that way” Chickamaw gives Bowie a new shirt and says “here kid this’ll fit a lot better over that bandage.” He takes it, still very silent, Chickamaw slightly admonishing him says “You’re welcome.”

T-Dub, asks old man Mobley, “A thousand dollars, is that enough for a used car?” “Could be, you can’t tell though, the way things are…” They are interrupted by a sound outside, he says, “Oh that’d be my daughter.” T-Dub rises to his feet and says ” Hello Miss Keechie.” Bowie puts on his clean shirt and looks up at her, holding groceries, a surprised expression, as she too looks back at him curiously.

T-Dub looks at Chickamaw and gestures that he wants some of the cash, so he starts shuffling money through his thumb and fingers to hand to the old man, “That’s five hundred more, that’s fifteen hundred for the car… can’t have you coming back in no rattle trap, not for this trip.” Bowie with food in his mouth says “Fifteen hundred bucks for a second-hand car?” T-Dub says “That’s right” Bowie comes back. “That’s worse than robbing a bank!” but T-Dub explains “They’re thieves just like us” (meaning old man Mobley and his daughter Keechie).

T-Dub sits and faces the old man Chickamaw, “Now don’t forget the clothes, and tell Mattie the first big doe goes to getting her man out of jail.. tell her that or she won’t come.” “I’ll tell her for sure… well so long fellars… I’ll try to get back here with Mattie before tomorrow night.” Chickamaw says to his brother the old man Mobley, “Say big brother stay sober” he puts his hat on and answers “Me?…oh I won’t touch a drop, not a drop” he says resentfully. T-Dub still sitting down says, “Of course, he won’t, we take care of our friends Mobley” The old man cries out “I know, I know that T-Dub, he turns to Keechie and asks if she’ll take care of the station, then says “so long.”

Chickamaw says, “Take care of the station he says, he hasn’t done a lick of work in his life…that brother of mine.” Close up we now see that his right eye is hazed over and blind. He starts grinning and laughing, “Did you catch the look on his face?”…more laughter, “he’s still trying to figure out where I had that doe hid.” He laughs even more sardonically.

Keechie looks so worried. We hear a noise, Bowie is fiddling with the small stove, she goes towards him and says, “Can’t you make that stove work?” but as she starts to move, Chickamaw grabs her by the arm. “He’d a grab you too wouldn’t he?” T-Dub says, “You show ’em how Miss Keechie” “That’s one machine he don’t know nothing about..” Bowie hands her a clean cloth and says “Here”, she smiles a little and says “Thanks.”

T-Dub says, “That boy’s some gallant eh Miss Keechie?” and Chickamaw says “Yeah, he’s got a soft heart…” takes the cigar out of his mouth, “and a head to match”

Keechie says “his head looks alright to me” She gets up and walks away.

Bowie says “That little girl don’t think any too much of what’s me I tell you.”

Chickamaw relates “Her ma was just the same way, always acting like she was the Queen of Romania!” just then Keechie steps back from behind the heavy floral curtain that partitions the room. Bowie asks curiously “Keechie’s ma?” Chickamaw tells him “Yeah, you know what she did?…she ran off with a fella, now they’re running a medicine show” Keechie throws down what she was holding and walks back through the partition.

Fade to Black

T-Dub says “No matter how, I tell you we’re short…we need another thousand dollars” Chickamaw replies while looking at a newspaper “Hey we’re in it… Prison Farm break, the escape of 3 lifers was announced today by Warden E K Lardub (of some such name) the fugitives have captured a farmer in their flight”, then Chickamaw gets angry and slams down the paper. T-Dub picks it up and continues to read, “Elmo One Eyed Mobley” aka (Chickamaw) mumbles and paces, “It’s always one-eyed something.”

T-Dub reading “RT Waters, farmer of Akota, gave a description of the 3 men who commandeered his car at the point of a gun.” Chickamaw pipes in still pacing with the cigar in his mouth, “I shoulda blast his head off with that gun.”

T-Dub sees that there’s a dance at a dance hall that used to be Chickamaw’s old stomping ground, he gets the idea that there would be enough for the take there to be a small cushion for the big Zelton job they’re planning on.

Chickamaw picks up the paper from the table and says, “Sunday night, yeah that…” Then he pauses, “That one eye!…they didn’t’ print a very big piece about us either.” T-Dub says “Don’t wish it was more than just 2 lines..newspapers raise more heat than anything Chickamaw In a few days, they’ll really have somethin’ to print about us?” Bowie says “Yeah” and Chickamaw continues, “3 boys like us, we could charge any bank in the country, any bank!, how many have you knocked off T-Dub?” “Enough,” Chickamaw says to Bowie “You’re in luck kid, you’re traveling with real people“ T-Dub puts his hand on Bowie’s shoulder, and Chickamaw says “It takes 3 to charge a bank…and we’re the 3 mosquitas.”

“We move fast” looking deep into Bowie’s face. “Can you take it? “me?” “You!” “Sure.”

Bowie “I can rib myself up to anything,” Chickamaw says “Maybe. You ribbed yourself up once to killin’ a man didn’t ya?” Keechie walks into the room just then and looks faintly startled, and disappointed, Bowie stares at her concerned, and ashamed, Chickamaw asks again “Didn’t ya?” then Bowie breaks his gaze away from Keechie and looks up at Chickamaw and says “Yeah… I sure did” then looks back at Keechie who now looks down at the floor and walks out of the room.

It’s the first 10 minutes of They Live By Night that sets the stage for our ill-fated lovers.

To be continued in Part II…

They Live By Night (1948) Part Two “A woman is sort of like a dog”

The Narrow Margin 1952: Nobody likes a fat man

The Narrow Margin (1952) Directed by Richard Fleischer and starring Charles McGraw plays the sandy graveled voice of Detective Sgt. Walter Brown who’s reluctantly been chosen to escort a mob widow to the grand jury hearing in Los Angeles by train.

In the process of picking up Mrs. Frankie Neal, in Chicago, Walter’s partner is shot and killed in the darkly lit stairwell by a mysterious assassin played by Peter Virgo, the ruthless Densel, who wears a fur-trimmed coat.  This only causes Walter to further resent the woman he’s been charged to protect and see to it that she makes it to the trial to testify against the mob.

This noir film has a lot of familiar elements, gangsters, the train ride, the detective’s dilemma – as the die-hard cop fends off the criminal elements that surround him, and the wrong man/woman trope. The mobsters, Vincent Yost, Densel, and Joseph Kemp want to get hold of a valuable list of names that Frankie’s widow will bring to trial. Yost tries to bribe Det. Walter Brown, but he’s an honest cop who can’t be taken in.

The Narrow Margin also stars Marie Windsor as Mrs. Frankie Neal’s widow and Jaqueline White as the respectable Ann Sinclair, a classy woman, and mother,  traveling on the train with her little boy Tommy and their nanny.

Ann gets caught in the cross hairs of the intrigue when the gangsters mistakenly take Ann for Frankie’s widow. The majority of the film takes place on the train heading for Los Angeles. Don Beddoe plays Det. Sgt. Gus Forbes, “the fat man” who keeps getting in the way of Walter. He repeats the self-abasing proverb “Nobody likes a fat man” as he lumbers his way through the narrow passageways of the train en route to L.A.

Frankie’s widow Mrs. Neal is an obnoxious loud-mouthed dame, who doesn’t want to play by the rules and blasts her record player even after Walter warns her to hide out in the train compartment that the thugs think is empty. Marie Windsor reminds me a bit of the wonderfully quirky Ileana Douglas (Goodfellas, Six Feet Under, Cape Fear 1991). Douglas is the granddaughter of the great actor Melvyn Douglas. The fabulous actress isn’t a stranger to film noir, having appeared in some of the most underrated films of the genre, Force of Evil 1948 with John Garfield, The Sniper 1952, City that Never Sleeps 1953, and what I consider to be one of the top ten film noirs of all time, Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing 1956. Windsor is perhaps at her best in the role of the conniving Sherri Peatty who beats the spirit of her husband George (Elisha Cook) until he’s desperate to pull a heist that goes terribly wrong.

Walter: Sister I’ve known some pretty hard cases in my time, you make em all look like putty. You’re not talkin’ about a sack of gum drops gonna get smashed. You’re talkin’ about a dame’s life.You make think it’s funny for a woman with a kid to stop a bullet for ya, but I’m not laughing.

Frankie’s widow: Really well I don’t care, she got twins, you talk like you’d rather I got the bullet who’s side are you on anyhow?

Walter: Listen Jingle Jaw nothin’s happened to you yet has it?

Frankie’s widow: No, well it better not.

Walter: Well then shut up!

Impact: (1949) “This is for me and Irene sucker”

Impact (1949) Directed by Arthur Lubin Impact stars Brian Donlevy as Walter Williams a wealthy San Fransisco businessman who thinks his wife Irene played by Helen Walker ( great as the dark dominating force Lilith in Nightmare Alley) is truly the adoring woman she pretends to be. Here’s a great article from Movie Morlocks about the unsung talent of sexy Helen Walker.

Movie Morlocks.com a TCM site

Irene Gives her husband monogrammed shirts with his initials and calls him softy. She so adept at delivering the saccharine flattery of a doting wife. Unknown to the misguided Walter, she’s done the same monogram initials bit for her lover Tony Barrett as Jim Torrence a ruthless opportunist who has no hesitation in harming Walter to get what he wants.

Jim utters the iconic words from the film that reverberates in Walter’s head once he awakens from the nightmare, “This is for me and Irene sucker” just before he smashes the tire iron down upon Walter’s head.

Before the married couple are supposed to leave on a trip, Irene sets Walter up by feigning illness therefore not feeling well enough to travel with him. Instead, she sends her lover who is pretending to be her cousin Jim Torrence to meet up with Walter so he can give Jim a lift. Jim plans on bumping Walter off along the roadside and meeting up with Irene later at a Hotel under assumed names.

In a moment of sheer fatalistic retribution while speeding away from the crime scene Jim Torrance dies in a horrible head-on collision with a truck, which burns his body beyond recognition. After hitting Walter on the head with a tire iron he viciously throws him down the side of a cliff and leaves him for dead.

But Walter awakens bloodied and dazed climbs onto the back of a Bekins truck and winds up in Larkspur Idaho where he takes a job as a mechanic working for a war widow, the exquisite Ella Raines as Marsha Peters. Ella is even sylph-like in her greasy mechanic’s jumpsuit and cap.

Walter is hired at the gas station using a fake name, and while Marsha is beloved in the community she is not a very good mechanic so Walter takes over for three months, living as a roomer at Marsha’s kindly mother’s home. Walter becomes part of the community, as a volunteer fireman, and starts to relish leaving the big city life behind and the double-crossing wife Irene for this quaint existence in Larkspur.

Walter is assumed to be dead, which is all over the newsprint and later his wife Irene is sent to jail accused of plotting his murder, being hounded by Lt.Quincy played by Charles Coburn.

Walter reads the news, anticipating his revenge now with Irene sentenced to death, and he and Marsha begin to develop feelings for each other. When Walter tells the truth to Marsha..she insists that he do the right thing and go back to San Fransisco and show that he’s still alive.

Ironically, the police then believe the yarn that Irene spins that it was Walter who murdered her lover and not the other way around. Now Marsha and Lt Quincy must track down Su Lin, the William’s maid played by Anna May Wong who isn’t sure if her testimony would either help or hurt the kindly Walter Williams.

While Impact has some of the essential elements of a noir film, it works really well as a MeloNoir, the merging of melodrama and noir together. Brian Donlevy gives a great performance as the paragon betrayed patsy by his ruthless wife Irene. Helen Walker is icy as ever and Ellen is just gorgeous sitting on the stoop in Larkspur.

The Narrator starts off the tone of the film by saying  Impact, the force with which two lives come together. Sometimes for good, sometimes for evil.


Visit this revised piece that covers Impact in more detail.

https://thelastdrivein.com/2021/11/27/31-flavors-of-noir-on-the-fringe-to-lure-you-in-part-2/