The winsome & sultry Lauren Bacallsteps out of character as a screen legend, noir goddess & trend-setting icon…
To Have and Have Not (1944), The Big Sleep (1946), Key Largo (1948) Dark Passage (1947) Young Man with A Horn (1950) Designing Women (1957) and so much more!
… And embarks on a role as the icy cold psychologist/Animal Behavioral Researcher, and a Praying Mantis that Dr. Edwina Beighley (pronounced Bailey) She’s a female Caligari who has experimented with her dangerous drug on animals as her subjects in Africa, conducting unorthodox experiments now on human subjects, in Shock Treatment (1964)
She’s always griping in her condescending highfalutin way- at the hospital board members that she can’t continue her (exploitative and nefarious) research the way she’d like, driven by her mission she craves money. Using mental patients now, not tigers, to continue her scientific analysis of how certain drugs effect the criminal mind and the resulting catatonia that follows.
A seedy psychological thriller with oddballs and opportunists and one hell of a great cast, wasted?… Maybe, but deliciously fun to watch anyways! The film has its moments and if you’re like me and love a great jaunt into the exploitative- then indulge yourself!
Films like The Snake Pit, Lilith, David and Lisa, ( Bacall was also in a film about an exclusive psychiatric clinic- The Cobweb 1955, and earlier in 1950 she embodied the conflicted Amy North who struggled and studied to become a psychiatrist in Young Man with a Horn)…
… show reversibility of a plot narrative that usually exists in other film genres. The role is interchangeable with the sane and the mad. the outside or insider, which suggests that there is no good outcome or moreover, no clear solution to the film's "˜problem' and that the film's world is veritably unstable with Dr. Edwina Beighley at the center of the disorder!
Cinematographer Sam Leavitt (Anatomy of a Murder 1959, The Defiant Ones 1958) weaves in noirish shadowscapes & creates odd frames where one of the main characters will be relegated to the extreme edge while it allows the camera to focus all its power on the other of the central or peripheral actors/characters, creating the appearance of an off-balanced conversation, that perpetuates the ‘offness’ of the story and its atmosphere…
In a similar vein but far superior social commentary as Sam Fuller's Shock Corridor 1963, it's a story of an actor Dale Nelson (Stuart Whitman) willing to fake insanity and take money to infiltrate a mental hospital in order to get close to a homicidal maniac Martin Ashley (Roddy McDowall) who claims to have burned to cinders, the millions, he has hidden of his victim’s fortune, now buried somewhere on her estate.
“The most dramatic expression of psychiatry as a mechanism of enforcing conformity is seen in the film depictions of ECT (electroconvulsive therapy) or commonly known as electroshock Treatment
in the 1960s and 70s ECT was recast in movie theaters as a torturous, barbaric, medieval practice in which individualistic mental patients were literally shocked into conformity. Vivid depictions of electroshock were depicted in films such as Samuel Fuller's Shock Corridor 1963 and Shock Treatment 1964.”
— Psycho Thrillers: Cinematic explorations of the mysteries of the mind by William Indick.
In fact, anti-conformity is Dale’s method of breaking into the hospital system by railing against conformity in the guise of intellectually and physically disturbing the social order. He smashes the window fronts of a department store.
During Martin Ashley’s (Roddy McDowall) trial for killing and beheading his employer, Dr. Edwina Beighley is the defense’s go-to specialist on mental illness and key witness, their sympathetic psychiatrist who manipulates the court into allowing her to observe him at her State Psychopathic hospital for observation.
On the stand Edwina- “I'm a fellow of the American Psychiatric Society..and the author of two textbooks now in use.-Psychiatry in Relation to Crime and Modern Usages of Hypno-Analysis" At present I'm an assistant medical director at State Psychopathic Hospital."
When asked if she's familiar with the philanthropic organization known as The Townsend Foundation, Townsend is the old woman that Martin decapitated. Edwin answers with swift and self-important confidence…
"More than acquainted as Mr Manning knows for the past several years I've been trying to get a grant from them to expand my research… ( deep sarcastic Bacallesque pause) I'm still trying."
Then the public defender asks if she was present when Mr. Manning suggested that the defendant burnt up more than a million dollars. And does she agree with that accounting of the story…
"No, I don't, the amount of money certainly is unusual but the act of destruction isn't. Martin Ashely is a lonely secretive young man. Desperately in need of understanding friendship. This type of schizophrenic often is"¦ He became convinced that (Amelia Townsend) was an enemy who was using her wealth to destroy his garden and return him to our hospital where he had been a patient merely three years ago. To his disordered mind, the decision was a simple one. Destroy the persecutor and her weapon"¦ her money"¦"
Dr. Edwina Beighley is a cool, manipulative operator who is working on getting Martin a plea of insanity so he’ll be sent to her hospital under her care, that way she can make certain she’s up close and personal with him in order to access his secret… where he hid the fortune.
During Martin’s trial, Mr. Manning who has been an executor of the estate asserts that the old woman was eccentric and hid huge sums of cash in her home, he tells the prosecuting attorney, “I couldn't believe that anyone even a madman could bring himself to burn up more than a million dollars.”
Manning who testifies that the old lady had millions, also despises Dr. Beighley.
After Martin gets sentenced to a mere 90 days for observation. Manning confronts Beighley in the courtroom. "Dr. Beighley I hope you'll feel proud of yourself Dr!" Dr. Edwina Beighley not seeming rattled in the least- "And what is that supposed to mean?"
Manning- " Why did you have to go out of your way to help that faker get away with murder and a million dollars?"Â
She threatens to sue for liability so that she'll collect enough from him, never having to apply for a grant again"¦ He tells her that he's “sick and tired of psychiatrists who try to play god, who tell us our mothers and fathers made us neurotic, and psychotic!”
"Mr. Manning I've gone through analysis, all psychiatrists do, Now I suggest you try it!"
Dr. Edwina Beighley has the warmth of a cobra about to strike the jugular.
This psycho-thriller also stars Stuart Whitman as struggling actor Dale Nelson who is going to be paid $10,000 by Harley Manning (Judson Laire) to impersonate a mentally disturbed man, an incorrigible anti-social bad boy who then purposefully gets arrested for destruction of personal property and disturbing the peace.
IMDb notes that Anthony Perkins wanted the Stuart Whitman role
At the police station- Dale (Stuart Whitman) puts on quite a show as a crazy guy with a wad of cash in his pocket that he refuses to explain how it got there- he won't cooperate and goes off on a tirade that is deliciously absurd…" The disciples of conformity are bleeding from the narrowness of your mind."Â
Manning figures that once Dale gets committed to the state asylum, he can befriend the psychopathic handyman/gardener Martin Ashley (Roddy McDowall with his usual flare for the overly-dramatic, deliciously deliriously overindulgence. ) who is just mad about roses and decapitates his employer Amelia Townsend (Beatrice Grenough) with a pair of garden shears when she interferes with his beloved garden.
Naturally, Dale Nelson succeeds in getting sent to Dr. Beighley’s State Psychopathic Hospital. He even learns about roses and horticulture in order to get close to Martin, hoping he’ll tell him where the money is hidden. Once Dale arrives and is interviewed. Edwina looks him over a bit, and she catches something about his performance, so she has her assistant do a background check on him.
Dale gets Dr. Edwina Beighley to assign him to the garden as his work detail. There Dale finally meets Martin the gardener. At first, he antagonizes him, but soon after they become good friends with a love of flowers in common.
Martin argues about his ability to raise beautiful roses and that he didn't get to see flowers until he was 16. "˜You don't get flowers at the orphanage Mister!… I’m the guy who crossbred the Pinocchio with the Fuselier"¦ and it won the first show at the Pasadena in 1962."
With no intention of trying to cure Martin Ashley of his homicidal criminal nature, Dr. Beighley finally gets him to confess his crime in detail, by subjecting him to hypnosis and pentathol for days where he finally winds up telling her where Mrs Townsend’s money is…
Edwina is rancorous, scornful, and arrogant and by the end of the film, her mania to find the money might either be a sign that she herself is insane or is the catalyst for pushing her off the deep end… Another version of the inmates has taken over the asylum! And Dr. Edwina Beighley might just belong there BUT as the patient and not the doctor"¦.
Edwina eventually finds out that Dale Nelson was paid and is planted in her hospital by her nemesis Haley Manning, who is determined to get her license revoked for her unethical practices.
When she discovers Nelson’s con game, the sadistic Edwina Beighley prescribes electroshock therapy, then injects a concoction of psychotropic drugs into his jugular vein to induce catatonia, causing him "˜horrible twisted images’in order to render him useless and get him out of her hair so she can be the sole keeper of the fortune…
Believe it or not this over-the-top psycho-melodrama was scripted by Sydney Boehm who penned such great noir films as -High Wall 1947, Mystery Street 1950 Side Street 1949, and The Big Heat 1953.
The film also co-stars marvelous character actors who play various archetypal characters, the troubled nymph with a mother complex Carol Lynley as Cynthia Lee Albright’s “Don’t touch me, I don’t like to be touched!”
Olive Deering as Mrs. Mellon-“You're stupid stupid do you hear me stupid.”
Ossie Davis plays Capshaw, who used to be an intern in the hospital and is now one of its residents. Paulene Meyers as Dr. Walden, and Timothy Carey as high-strung and marvelously hulking & nutty as usual.
Shock Corridor &Â Shock Treatment deal with the outside/inside structure which ends with pessimism as the main characters descend into madness"¦
From Part-Time Perverts: Sex, Pop Culture, and Kink Management by Lauren Rosewame she cites Peter Cranford a psychologist during the 1940s who said that for many patients in asylums "The words "˜punish' and "˜shock treatment' were often synonymous"
This is where the narrative and Dr. Edwina Beighley converge on a social truth behind the institutional edifice of mental health"¦
She shows her fellow colleagues the results of her research on a projector. Footage from when she had her own facility where she could use zoo animals in her experiments. On film, she shows a tiger being injected with her drug and how it effects their aggression. She seeks to find out more about the chemistry of the mind.. to solve its mysteries. So that one day… her drug “will control mental illness as well a drug does Diabetes.”
This brings out a great point of the story though it may be accidental since the film seems to be more about sensationalist entertainment than thoughtful reflecting on mental illness the way it was let’s say in Tennessee William’s Suddenly, Last Summer 1959.
In the scene where Edwina shows her footage, and the few scenes where both Capshaw (Ossie Davis) and Dale (Stuart Whitman) are subjected to shock treatment- it makes a strong connection between punishing the patient and the arousal of the sadistically inclined practitioners.
In her autobiography, Bacall refers to Shock Treatment as “truly tacky.” when asked about the film she, commented, “You have no idea what Roddy and I went through making that movie."Â Â Â
Here's what Time Magazine had to say about the film Cinema: Boredom in Bedlam-March 13, 1964 “Shock Treatment is more than a slip, it’s a Freudian pratfall. It makes a shambles of psychiatry and brings the art of film close to idiocy.”
It is definitely not one of Lauren Bacall’s memorable roles, it borders more in the realm of the Grande Dame Guignol films that actresses were becoming famous for in the 60s… Yet, anything Bacall inhabited is like Midus’ golden touch, because she brings an inimitable flavor of sophistication and savvy even if it’s surrounded by trashy lunacy!
Let’s not end on an insane note! Let’s celebrate Lauren Bacall as she really was… an icon.
Headshot of actress Lauren Bacall pictured with her chin resting on her right wrist, USA, circa 1945. (Photo by Archive Photos/Getty Images)
Written and Directed by Robert Thom who is perhaps best known for his Wild In The Streets 1969. For me, the film that really struck a chord was his configuration of childhood abuse in , The Witch Who Came From The Sea 1976 while a little fractured, and slightly queasy in its linear storytelling, was a startling, unsettling, imaginary, and often disturbing piece of work, much thanks to Millie Perkins’performance.
Consider that Thom also wrote the scripts for Bloody Mama 1970,Crazy Mama 1975, and Death Race 2000 (1975). Angel Angel Down We Go is perhaps a psychedelic take on the Rasputin archetype with a modern conflation of the Svengali mystique.
RASPUTIN-Mad Monk, Religious Pilgrim, Elder, Psychic, or Faith Healer?Stick an unkempt beard on him, a shabby coat…the dark piercing eyes say it all…Egomaniac!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The film opens with Tara Nicole revealing to us, through Tara’s childlike imaginings, her childhood, and the mythical parentage by the outre wealthy Steeles, they are as Demi-Gods from Mount Olympus. We see her musings in flashback and via graphic collage work that depicts her life as it was, as it is now, and as it will be.
Astrid Steele, ex-stag film actress, cigarette girl, and all-around whore to the masses. “Whoever said they slept with me, didn’t!”Willie Steele, a closet homosexual and absent father.Gazing into her mirror Tara Nicole Steele. the richest girl in the world recalls her childhood…
Tara Nicole recites a glorified fantasy completely contrary to what her life truly is. She is being sarcastic, she is teasing us with the truth. She is the cultivation of a female monster, whose lack of nurturing, and exposure to abuse and mistreatment has manifested something abhorrent to the world, but mostly to herself, a self-loathing, loveless thing, vulnerable to the dark prince in Bogart Peter Stuyvesant, who will come to the palace and awaken her sleeping rage.
On the surface, A perverse, grotesque fairy tale, about an over-weight heiress whose parents are hypocrites and superficial, living in a psychologically toxic battlefield of emotional turmoil, self-serving, repressed, and angry enough to create a bitter, ugly, and lonely world for their only child, a life Tara cannot live up to, nor can she satisfy the expectations put upon her nor fit into this artificial world.
Enter chaos, enter entropy, enter Bogart Peter Stuyvesant. Tara meets him at her coming out ball, a party was thrown by her mother Astrid, not to celebrate her glorious daughter’s coming of age, but as a showcase for Astrid’s bejeweled necklace that ‘Marie Antoinette wore at her beheading’. An opulent bauble, a shiny thing, a symbol of the empty and idle collectors, wealthy Americans become with their plunder of the poor masses. So the film will inform you over and over again.
A lysergic cinematic (ACID CINEMA) tale about a tragic fat princess who refers to herself as ‘Virgin Americanis.’ Until she sees Bogart gyrating his pelvis in skin-tight leather hip huggers on stage, she nearly swoons at the sight of his crotch. He is singing the film’s theme song, “Angel Angel Down We Go”. The theme is the Fall of The American Empire. The fall of the Steele family, the American Imperialist hypocrites who languish in their wealth, and self-hating misery. Hallucinogenics for the now generation, and booze and pills are still the drug of choice for the breed of uptight Americans.
Is there anti-fat sentiment in the film or is it as offensive as it intends to be so? As Tara represents the spoiled ‘fat’ and languid American Bourgeoisie when Roddy McDowall paws at Tara on the bed and spews out “God is America FAT!” while pawing her like a piece of meat.
“Only the poor know what’s really real. America doesn’t know. America’s FAT baby, good and FAT!… Oh God is America FAT… and Bogart Peter Stuyvesant love’s his country-he’s a patriot!”
