Showing posts with label Perry King. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Perry King. Show all posts

Friday, July 31, 2015

THE POSSESSION OF JOEL DELANEY 1972

An urban classist xenophobist socioeconomic commentary supernatural occult suspense thriller 

One big reason I adore the films of the 1970s so much is that at no other time in the history of motion pictures can one find so many mainstream films that are just so off-the-chart, batshit crazy. For reasons both cultural and industry-related, it was a freer, more risk-taking time, resulting in a slew of exhilaratingly oddball feature films wholly deserving of the attribution, “Only in the '70s!”
Shirley MacLaine as Norah Benson
Perry King as Joel Delaney
Miriam Colon as Veronica
Lovelady Powell as Erika Lorenz
Edmundo Rivera Alvarez as Don Pedro
Barbara Trentham as Sherry Talbot
When I was a teen, San Francisco’s Market Street was the weekend movie-going destination for me and my friends. The bustling commercial boulevard was lined with one movie house after another offering a staggering selection to choose from, virtually all double or triple features, at kid-friendly matinee prices ($.75 cents). Memorable for the elaborate, hyperbole-laden promotional displays and cutouts featured in the glass cases that flanked the ticket booths of their recessed outer lobbies, most were second-run movie theaters like The Embassy (with its Ten-O-Win wheel cash giveaways) and The Strand. Others, like The Warfield and The Crest, were full-on grindhouses showcasing the best in exploitation movies: kung-fu action films, westerns, blaxploitation, and those inexplicably popular Doberman movies.

I first became aware of the occult thriller The Possession of Joel Delaney, while walking on Market Street one Saturday in 1972 and being stopped in my tracks by the sight of this arresting poster staring out at me from out of a theater’s “Coming Soon” display case:
I still have this poster, which I purchased back in 1974
Gadzooks! What a cool poster!
Not only was I seized by the eye-catching graphic and provocative tagline, but here was a genre film (I was very much into scary movies at the time) headlined by an Oscar-nominated, A-list actress, whose name was commonly associated with light comedies, musicals, and the occasional serious drama. I was stoked!

Always peripherally aware of Shirley MacLaine growing up, I was never what you’d call a fan. I remember she always seemed to be impersonating Asians in her movies (My Geisha -1962 / Gambit -1966), and while I thought she was funny enough in froth like Ask Any Girl (1959) and All in a Night’s Work (1961), her being so consistently cast as the object of sexual desire confused me. Was she supposed to be sexy? Sexy and funny was a rare combination back in the Phyllis Diller, Carol Burnett, Totie Fields era, when in order to be considered funny, women were encouraged to be the opposite of sexually appealing). So, while MacLaine always exuded a kind of pert and personable screen personality, my inability to pigeonhole her into an easily recognizable "type" meant that her rare kind of versatility was lost on me and didn't register very strongly

That indifference changed in 1969 when I fell in love with MacLaine in Sweet Charity, after which she became a lasting favorite. So much so that I subsequently made it my business to catch up with many of her earlier films on The Late Show, and even willingly subjected myself to her short-lived, fairly awful, 1971 TV series Shirley’s World.
Worlds Apart
African tribal masks, divested of their spiritual and cultural significance, are mere
decorative objects d'art in this swank Manhattan Penthouse

So, when did I see The Possession of Joel Delaney? I didn’t.

That is to say, I didn’t get to see it when I really wanted to: when I was 14 years old, impressionable, and easily scared. When this darkly intense, exceptionally creepy little thriller could have really done a number on my head. No, I saw The Possession of Joel Delaney it was in the early 1980s at a revival theater. And happily, all that time hadn't prevented this unusual, atmospheric film from still packing quite a wallop.

What played into my not seeing this film in my teens was my still-existent habit of repeat-watching movies I enjoy. 1972 saw the release of Cabaret, The Godfather, What’s Up, Doc?, Lady Sings the Blues, The Poseidon Adventure, The Getaway, and Sleuth. All faves I saw numerous times, always telling myself I’d get around to seeing Shirley MacLaine’s film “next weekend....” Well, when a film performs as poorly at the boxoffice as did The Possession of Joel Delaney, “next weekend” is over before you know it. I snoozed and I lost.
But the wait was worth it.
Wealthy divorcee Norah Benson (MacLaine) lives an insular, privileged life in the Upper East Side Manhattan apartment she shares with her two pre-teen children, Peter and Carrie (David Elliot & Lisa Kohane). When not lording despotically over Puerto Rican domestic, Veronica (Mariam Colon), Norah dotes obsessively and possessively over her aimless younger brother, Joel (King). Much to Norah’s chagrin, Joel, whose social principles are very much at odds with those of his sister, has denounced the advantages of their family’s wealth.

Instead, he has chosen to live in a shabby apartment in the East Village given to him by his friend, Tonio Perez. Tonio is a young man unknown to the somewhat snobbish Norah, and the fact that Norah would likely disapprove seems to factor a bit in Joel's attachment to him -“He’s just about the only close friend I ever had. He stands for everything Norah hates.”
After Joel suffers a violent episode that lands him in Bellevue (a physical assault he has no recollection of committing), Norah, suspecting drug use, insists he move in with her (It’ll be just like old times, Joel. We’ll have such fun together!”) and see family friend and psychiatrist, Ericka Lorenz (Lovelady Powell).
"Joel, why do you live down there with those people?"
Norah's children, Carrie (Lisa Kohane) and Peter (David Elliot) listen in as Norah
 racistly obsesses over Joel's whereabouts 

While Norah’s almost incestuous preoccupation with her brother is appeased by their new living arrangement, Joel’s own behavior grows increasingly uncharacteristic and erratic. Dangerously so. He erupts in outbursts of Spanish profanities, afterward claiming he doesn't even speak the language. He grows possessive and sexually violent with his girlfriend, Sherry (Trentham), behaves inappropriately with his sister and nephews, and overall appears to be unduly influenced by his inexplicably close friendship with Perez. Not helping matters in the least is the fact that Perez is suspected by police to be involved in a rash of beheadings in Central Park.
Tonio Perez (Jose Fernandez) shares Joel's contempt for the upper classes.
They also share a deep-rooted resentment of women they perceive to be dominating

Without divulging more of the plot than the film’s own title affirms, suffice it to say that on the topic of living arrangements, Joel’s body can be said to have become an involuntary sublet to a particularly twisted homicidal maniac.
On the way to its tense, almost unwatchably disturbing climax, The Possession of Joel Delaney reveals itself to be a fairly riveting mix of suspense and social commentary.
Both a worthy offspring of Rosemary’s Baby’s religion-as-cult urban horror and a fittingly grisly (albeit comparatively subdued) exorcism precursor to 1973s game-changer, The Exorcist.
Urban Jungle

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM
In an earlier essay on the classic film Rosemary’s Baby, I observed how so many of my favorite horror films are those which derive from or reflect upon the anxieties and tensions of the time. These films, serving as shrouded emotional outlets, allow for the safe venting of fears hidden deep within the collective psyche. Fears usually rendered inaccessible by virtue of their immediacy. Taking the position that all horror films are in some way socially revealing, The Possession of Joel Delaney then provides an ideal time-capsule glimpse into urban race/class tensions of the 1970s.  
From a humanist perspective, New York City during this time was a real-life horror story and something of a socio-economic nightmare. The city—destitute, decaying, dangerous under the weight of political, economic, and racial tensions too labyrinthine to go into here—was on the brink of collapse. 
Hispanic Panic
Norah's excursion to Spanish Harlem results in a full-throttle attack of xenophobia

While white flight, labor unions, and classism contributed to the wealth divide pitting the haves against the have-nots; the close confines of the city, coupled with the great disparity in the quality of life experienced by its ethnic populations, fed urban fear amongst New York's privileged whites. Specifically in regard to the city’s Puerto Rican population, which increased following “The Great Migration” of the '50s.
The squalor of '70s-era New York has played a role, both significant and superficial, in American movies as diverse as: Diary of a Mad Housewife (1970), The Out-of-Towners (1970),  Little Murders (1970), The Panic in Needle Park (1971),  Klute (1971), and MacLaine's own 1971 drama, Desperate Characters, which plays something like a prequel to this film. But The Possession of Joel Delaney (so gritty Travis Bickle could have been the cinematographer) is the first film to put classist race-fear and the city’s socioeconomic divide in service of the horror genre.
In this film about spirit possession, Christian beliefs are replaced by the voodoo-like rituals of Puerto Rican Santeria. Norah finds her skepticism challenged in this harrowing exorcism scene

PERFORMANCES
As probably everybody knows by now, author William Peter Blatty wrote the character of Chris MacNeil in his novel The Exorcist for and about his neighbor, Shirley MacLaine. Reagan was sketchily based on MacLaine's daughter, Sachi (although, contrary to what her mother claims, Sachi denies the blurry photo of a girl on the cover of the hardback is her). MacLaine was offered the opportunity to play herself in the film version, but being as she was then under contract to Sir Lew Grade—producer of this film, her TV series, and Desperate Characters—she had to decline the role which ultimately went to Ellen Burstyn and won her an Oscar nomination.

More's the pity, for if her performance in The Possession of Joel Delaney is any indication of what she would have delivered as Linda Blair's mom, she'd really have given the devil his due.
MacLaine is the emotional lynchpin in The Possession of Joel Delaney, and her performance is one of my favorites. There's an art to playing an unsympathetic lead character, and MacLaine finds that narrow line between off-putting and compelling and walks it like a tightrope. She really is outstanding, and the film belongs to her. I especially like the ease with which she inhabits all sides of her character; the good, the bad, and the slightly icky.
Simpatico Siblings
In his first major feature film role, Perry King, who at times resembles, alternately, Jodie Foster and Bridget Fonda, is fine when called upon to mercurially shift from nice guy to nut case.


THE STUFF OF FANTASY
No matter how clever or provocative the framework upon which the premise of a horror film is draped, the proof of any good thriller is if it works. And this one does. The Possession of Joel Delaney is, to paraphrase Clifford Odets, a cookie full of arsenic and a vitriol valentine to urban class conflict. All balanced precariously between being the realization of a racist’s worst nightmare and an ethnic-culture revenge fantasy.
Alas, it's a balance the film, for all its effectiveness as a spellbindingly claustrophobic chiller, is not completely successful in maintaining.
Warhol star Pat Ast has a brief bit as a Bellevue patient appreciative of Norah's fur coat

A movie fashioned as an indictment of classism and race-fear runs the same risk as a film designed to condemn sexism or violence against women: if not handled delicately, said film can wind up actually BEING the very thing it attempts to excoriate. For example, on initial release, Bryan Forbes’ brilliant The Stepford Wives (1973) was misinterpreted as being sexist, in spite of the entire thrust of the narrative being a sendup of the absurdity of sexism. 
In spite of frequent attempts to present Norah's regressive, racist attitudes in the most negative light possible, The Possession of Joel Delaney is considered by many to be unappetizingly racist in its depiction of Puerto Ricans as mysterious and inherently dangerous “others.”
A valid point, but one I attribute more to flaws in direction than in the film itself. For the most part, the events of The Possession of Joel Delaney are seen from the perspective of Norah Benson, a character we know to be the worst kind of upper-class effete (To Joel: “Look, I’m not naïve. I know there’s poverty around, but one doesn’t have to seek it out. I don’t have to and you don’t have to either”).
The Possession of Joel Delaney would have benefitted from more scenes like this one where Norah seeks assistance from her maid, Veronica. The deferential domestic is revealed to be a self-assured woman wise to the realities of class disparity.

Had the film remained true to this initial setup and presented events as unfolding exclusively from Norah’s narrow-minded point of view, The Possession of Joel Delaney, in my judgment, could have achieved what I think it set out to do: to show that Norah’s fear and mistrust of Puerto Ricans is a barrier between her fully comprehending (or taking seriously) what is happening to her brother.

Unfortunately, The Possession of Joel Delaney occasionally drops the subjective perspective and shifts to the omniscient eye of the observer. We're shown things Norah would never be privy to (Joel's psychiatric sessions, his aggressive treatment of his girlfriend, his staking out his psychiatrist's apartment). Since the depiction of Puerto Ricans as threatening, impenetrably mysterious "others" doesn't change, the point of view of the entire film morphs into that of a character we have been shown to be, at best, a casual racist.
It's obvious to me this isn't what the filmmakers were going for at all (in fact, quite the opposite) but a failure to understand narrative perspective plays havoc with The Possession of Joel Delaney's socially conscious intentions.
Ramona Stewart's 1970 novel was adapted for the screen by the late African-American writer/
producer/actor, Matthew Robinson (in collaboration with Irene Kamp). Robinson was one of the original developers and producers of Sesame Street, appearing onscreen as the character, Gordon, and giving voice to the puppet, Roosevelt Franklin. Robinson later went on to write the Moms Mabley film Amazing Grace (1974) and was a writer and producer on The Cosby Show for seven years. He's the father of actress Holly Robinson-Pete.
Rounding out this "R"-rated film's curious, Sesame Street connection, The Possession of Joel Delaney has a score written by Academy Award-nominee, Joe (It's Not Easy Being Green) Raposo. Composer for The Great Muppet Caper,  TV's Sesame Street, and The Electric Company.
If anyone has a problem with this movie, it usually has to do with its concluding fifteen minutes.
Even as much as I like this movie, I'm not always up to rewatching it to the end.
Excessive to some, unnecessarily cruel to others, it's a fine example of how disturbing a film can be without having to resort to gore.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS
The failure of The Possession of Joel Delaney to add much depth or dimension to its ethnic characters prevents its social-commentary subtext from registering with the same impact as its authentically conveyed race-fear. But the film’s inability to land its target doesn’t stop me from admiring that it took the shot in the first place. 

Where The Possession of Joel Delaney hits the jackpot is in being a totally out-there, risk-takingly offbeat occult thriller, with the soul of a '70s art film.
Flirting with everything from incest to insanity; white guilt to wealth privilege; the socioeconomic roots of violence and the willful impressionability of culture—The Possession of Joel Delaney is worth checking out for anyone interested in seeing what horror with something on its mind looks like.



BONUS MATERIAL
The Possession of Joel Delaney - Complete film - on YouTube



THE AUTOGRAPH FILE
Perry King - 1981
From when I worked at Crown Books on Sunset Blvd
.

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2015

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

ANDY WARHOL'S BAD 1977



Back in my dating days, I had what I call my "Taste Test Films" (two such films, in fact: Robert Altman's 3 Women and Andy Warhol's BAD). These are films for which my appreciation is so intensely personal and self-defining that I used them as a gauge in determining the compatibility of my tastes with those of potential partners I felt I might be getting serious about. Both films are so completely my aesthetic, humor, and world view, I reasoned that if someone didn't "get" these movies and their appeal to me, they likely wouldn't "get" or understand me, either. Similarly, if you were the kind of guy who appreciated the idiosyncratic allure of these films (spanning the rather broad spectrum between acute human empathy to outrageous, misanthropic black comedy), it was a pretty safe bet that you'd be my kind of fella.
3 Women is such a thoughtful, intriguing film that most anyone I was interested in was likely to find something to like in it, but Andy Warhol's BAD (directed by Jed Johnson, but a delirious mash-up of those camp/trash geniuses, John Waters and Paul Morrissey) was definitely the litmus test.
Carroll Baker as Hazel Aiken
Perry King as L.T.
Susan Tyrrell as Mary Aiken
Charles McGregor as Detective Hughes
Bridgid Polk as Estelle
Hard-as-nails Queens housewife Hazel Aiken (a perpetually pissed-off Carroll Baker) operates an electrolysis business ("Six-Hundred and Fifty hairs an hour!") out of the home she shares with her ailing mother; ineffectual, unemployed husband; and whiny daughter-in-law (Susan Tyrrell) and grandson. To make ends meet and subsidize her cache of furs, jewelry, and perfumes, Hazel also runs a dial-up, all-girl hit squad. The dispassionate efficiency of her bloody all-female enterprise is compromised when circumstance necessitates the reluctant taking on of a slow-witted punk (Perry King).


WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM
Strange as it may seem, Andy Warhol's BAD reminds me of a simpler, gentler time in America. Back when there was really such a thing as a "counter-culture"; back when movies designated as "underground" or "independent" actually were; and back when standards of morality and decency were observed by enough members of the population that they could be burlesqued in a film like this. Today we live in a country where ignorance is rewarded (thank you, Jersey Shore), bad behavior is commonplace (Arnold "The Sperminator" Schwarzenegger), and nobody denounces the hamburger for posing as steak (calling all Kardashians). Andy Warhol's BAD, once thought outrageously offensive enough to warrant an X-rating, is positively quaint and remarkably moral in comparison. You can't poke fun at tacky, suburban aspirations towards upper-class chic in a world that can't distinguish class from trash.
French Provincial Luxury- Hazel, enjoying the fruits of her labor
Viewing this film feels like having front-row seats to the end of an era. You just can't make a film like this anymore. When the lowbrow and sleazy becomes the cultural standard, there's nothing left to satirize. It used to be that you had to seek out underground films from Warhol or John Waters to enjoy comically amateurish performances and flat, monotone line readings. Now, you need look no further than the multimillion-dollar multiplex crowd-pleasers from Michael Bay and Vin Diesel. Andy Warhol's BAD tries very hard to be nasty and mean-spirited - the ever-present TV is forever spewing out bad news, people perform the most heinous atrocities without batting an eye - but the entire film is kinder and more humane than any 10 minutes of The Bachelor.

Hit-girls, Marsha (l.) and Glenda (r.) flank the misanthropic Estelle as she plots revenge on a neighbor.
Estelle: "I'm telling you, people stink. All they do is eat, fuck, and watch TV!"
Marsha: "I know. The more you smell, the more they stink."
Estelle: What's that supposed to mean?"

PERFORMANCES
To her credit, Carroll Baker held no illusions about Andy Warhol's BAD providing her with any kind of American film comeback (It was her first American film since leaving the country in 1965). Quoted as recently as June of 2011 on working on the film:
"It had nothing to do with film-making, it had nothing to do with any other experience I ever had. It was like working on the moon. But he (Warhol) wanted me, he cast me in it, I wanted to do it, and it was such a big hit in Europe."     Carroll Baker  New Journey Journal

Baker's level-headedness serves her well in Andy Warhol's BAD, for she creates in Hazel Aiken (the role was originally offered to America's Ethel Mertz, actress Vivian Vance) one of cinema's most memorably twisted villains. Devilishly deadpan in her single-minded belief that she is just doing what has to be done ("I like to help people!"), if Beaver Cleaver's mom was an avaricious sociopath, she'd be something like Hazel. A woman so lacking in decency she cheerily accepts calls in her kitchen for contract killings and views Polaroids of gruesome slayings as if they were vacation slides. The only remotely competent person amongst a menagerie of slackers and oddballs, Hazel's near-constant exasperation finds amusing subtext in Carroll Baker; an Academy Award-nominated, Method actress, working alongside Warhol's "actors"... many of whom sound as if they learned their lines phonetically.
(Substantiating my theory that big budgets sap the imagination of indie-filmmakers, John Waters, with a budget more than ten times that of Andy Warhol's BAD, mined similar material in 1994's Serial Mom, but it wasn't half as funny.)
Mary - "What kind of a grandmother are you? Having baby-killers in the house with a baby? She'd kill any baby!"
Hazel - (Indignant) "She would not! She only does what she's paid to do. You wouldn't pay her, so she wouldn't do it!"
Mary - "You're crazy! You're really not all there!"

THE STUFF OF FANTASY
All-girl hit squads were a camp/pulp staple of 70s exploitation flicks (and, my personal fave—the 1967 James Bond spoof, Casino Royale) but the women in Andy Warhol's BAD are something else again. These girls don't kill for kinky thrills, they seem to do it just because they're bored. Funniest by far are Marsha and Glenda (real-life sisters Maria & Geraldine Smith): the Laverne & Shirley of Murder Incorporated. Armed with thick New York accents and a canny sense of comic timing, their scenes are among the sharpest and off-the-chart hilarious in the film.
Dressed to Kill
Looking like models in a Laura Mars photoshoot, Marsha (brandishing the stiletto) and Glenda lie in wait for their next victim.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS
Andy Warhol's BAD is a darkly comedic satire on the banality of evil; a topic that's fascinated me since Rosemary's Baby (1968) posed the provocative notion that a harmless group of elderly New Yorkers could unleash the living Devil into the world. We movie fans find it reassuring when our monsters can be  easily identified—usually as crazily hateful maniacs and criminally unbalanced psychopaths. Perhaps that's because it's so unsettling in real-life to be offered evidence on a daily basis (most of which we prefer to ignore) that unspeakable evil is often perpetrated by the so-called "normal" members of our society.
Hazel Aiken's cockeyed ethical standards, which are played for absurdist laughs (a proud capitalist, she willingly kills man, woman, or child for a fee, but draws the line at vulgar language and keeping stolen property in her home), underline what is so scary about most truly evil people: they consider themselves to be the most normal of all.
All In A Day's Work
Amidst the trappings of middle-class domesticity, Hazel gets a call for another contract killing
Hazel, with all her pragmatic speeches about personal responsibility, work ethics, and doing what has to be done because nobody else will do it, reminds me a lot (too much, actually) of the fear-goading political candidates, flag-waving radio commentators, and defenders of family values who cloak themselves in "normalcy" to rationalize philosophies of hate.
The 1965 film The Loved One, which satirized the L.A. funeral industry, was promoted with the slogan "The motion picture with something to offend everyone!"  Twelve years later, Andy Warhol's BAD promoted itself with the New York Post review quote: "A picture with something to offend absolutely everybody." The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Hazel - "You're really sensitive, aren't you? Well, I can't afford the luxury to be sensitive because I have to do everything myself!"
I find it interesting to note that today, neither of these films, which had their battles with the censors and were met with much hand-wringing over the declining state of the world, is really very offensive at all. Indeed, in failing to in any way glamorize the lives and behaviors of its principals, Andy Warhol's BAD is, as I've indicated above, very moral in its view of the world. It presents the characters as the bottom-feeders they are, and even throws a bone of hope to the audience when the lunkhead, played so nicely by Perry King, reveals that as bad as he is, he isn't prepared to do anything for money. 
What's ironic are the number of safe, family-friendly entertainments of yesteryear (classic films, Warner Bros. cartoons, TV sitcoms) that, due to blithely accepted attitudes of sexism and racism, I consider to be blisteringly offensive today. (One example: an entire episode of the "feminist" 60s sitcom That Girl actually attempts to extract laughs from the far-from-hilarious plot point of a husband breaking the jaw of his loudmouth wife with an ashtray.)
Talk about the banality of evil.
"Looks aren't everything."
Oh, and for the record, both of my "Taste Test" films have been officially retired. I showed them to a fellow I was dating who not only loved them as I did, but, on a single viewing, opened my eyes to insights and jokes contained in both films that I had never seen before. Understandably, I couldn't let a guy like that go. That was 16 years ago going on 17, and we still get a kick out of re-watching these films together. Even after all these years, we can make each other laugh just by uttering the raging Estelle epithet: "O'Reilly O'Crapface."

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2011

Friday, July 15, 2011

THE WILD PARTY 1975

It's a common practice in movie star autobiographies to blame one's career stasis on rigid typecasting imposed by myopic producers and a narrow-minded public. Hypothesizing extravagantly (while never having to actually make good on the assertion), said movie star diverts attention away from a monochromatic body of work by insisting that the untapped wellspring of versatility and range that lies deep within them has been grossly overlooked & underutilized.

Which brings us to the topic of the magnificent Raquel Welch. She, of course, was the reigning, uncontested cinema sex siren of the '60s and '70s, but, like many a sex symbol before and after, Welch spent a great deal of her offscreen time publicly venting her frustration at not being taken seriously as an actress. Finally, in 1974, Ms. Welch's long-held ambition was realized when an offer came from the burgeoning art-house team of Merchant/Ivory (A Room with A View, Howard's End) to star in their film adaptation of Joseph Moncure March's 1928 blank-verse poem of jazz-age debauchery: The Wild Party.
Raquel Welch is Queenie
James Coco is Jolly Grimm
Perry King is Dale Sword
Tiffany Bolling is Kate, Queenie's best friend and the girlfriend of matinee idol Dale Sword.
David Duke is James Morrison, Jolly's film editor and the author/narrator of the poem "The Wild Party"

With the film's locale switched from Manhattan to early sound-era Hollywood and the narrative tweaked to suggest the notorious Fatty Arbuckle scandal of 1921, The Wild Party casts Raquel Welch as Queenie, a former vaudeville dancer, now the ornamental mistress/punching bag of mercurial silent screen comic, Jolly Grimm (James Coco). Once the king of Hollywood, Grimm is in a career decline brought on by too much booze and too many bad films. So in a pathetic, last-gasp effort to resuscitate his flagging career, Grimm throws a lavish bash at his Hollywood mansion to launch his already-dated comeback vehicle, "Brother Jasper" - a misguided comedy biopic about Franciscan Brother Junipero Serra.

The Wild Party takes place over the course of an increasingly desperate 24-hour period fraught with unheeded dark omens (Hollywood power couple Mary Pickford & Douglas Fairbanks just happen to be throwing a party that same night) and humiliating setbacks. Tensions ultimately reach the boiling point with the arrival of a Valentino-like matinee idol (Perry King) who catches Queenie's eye...and vice versa.

The film jumps in and out of voiceover narration and straight-to-the-camera, fourth-wall-breaking exposition, using the March poem to provide backstory for the events occurring onscreen (the poem, in rhythm and language, lamentably recalls the doggerel poetry of Bonnie Parker in Bonnie & Clyde). In fact, abrupt shifts in tone become something of a leitmotif in The Wild Party due to the film trying to be many things (drama, tragedy, comedy, romance, musical) yet failing to arrive at a single stylistic method by which to make any of them work.
 Raquel Welch fans were dismayed to find The Wild Party was more of a somber character melodrama than the sensual frolic its title promised. Those who anticipated an art film from the Merchant/Ivory team were thrown by the exploitation-film cheesiness of its original US release edit.

Happily, a movie doesn't have to be good for me to like it; it just can't be bad. So what's a bad film? A bad movie is one bereft of ideas or a point of view. A lazy creation that panders to the obvious & coddles the established. It's a demographic-driven, corporate-committee product designed to fill seats, sell merchandise, and reap profits...period. On the other hand, a movie like The Wild Party at least has...flaws and all...something on its mind, something it wants to express, and is inspired by a creative impulse. So I find it difficult to dismiss it entirely out of hand. My experience has been that if one searches hard enough, you're likely to find tiny flashes of brilliance and imagination in movies that (putting it in the most charitable terms), on the surface, appear to have fallen far short of their ambitions.
In one of the film's many musical sequences, Queenie steals her best friend's date (that's Tiffany Bolling boiling in the background) while dancing into our hearts performing "The Herbert Hoover Drag"

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM
Though too stylistically discordant to be considered a really good film, The Wild Party is nonetheless very entertaining simply because the core dramatic construct of its plot (the one they should have focused on) is so effective. A  palpable sense of emotional jeopardy and conflict is forged in having a socially innocuous event like a Hollywood party occasion the bringing together of several disparate, desperate characters with at-odds desires.
The Wild Party is built on a dramatically provocative premise, but the screenplay and a good many of the performances have a naïf quality about them which prevents the film from saying anything really significant about the moral decay that lies beneath Hollywood's glamorous image of itself. I think John Byrum's Inserts, a small, forgotten film about pre-sound Hollywood also released in 1975, is the decadent, despairing image of lost fame and hopeless desperation that The Wild Party sought to be.
The Party Finally Gets Wild
Sunday Morning Blues

PERFORMANCES
By rights, the role of Queenie should have been Raquel Welch's turnaround role, like They Shoot Horses, Don't They? was for Jane Fonda, or Carnal Knowledge for Ann-Margret. It's a great part affording the actress several introspective monologues, a broad range of emotions to play, and even an opportunity to sing and dance. And in portraying a wounded character whose great beauty has proved both a blessing and a curse, Welch even gets to mine that "blurs-the-line-between-fantasy-and-reality" quality that audiences usually eat up.
Well, as much as I'd love to report that Welch rises to the occasion in The Wild Party (it is her best screen performance, but I think that might be faint praise), she elicits from me a response similar to the one I have when I see an Ali MacGraw movie: I get angry and frustrated that she doesn't try harder.

Sure, Welch is let down by a weak script that has her talking about her feelings more than showing them. Still, after so many years of claiming that she had never been given a chance to "show her stuff," dramatically speaking, Welch should have nailed her characterization despite the poor writing. Unfortunately, in place of a sustained performance, we see brief flashes that are so good they only leave you wondering what could have been possible had she really let herself go. 
Drama Queen: Raquel gets serious

One characterization problem that stands out for me is that there's just no vulgarity to Raquel Welch's Queenie. Without a touch of crass earthiness to offset her incredible beauty (think Sophia Loren), Welch's Queenie comes across as far too self-assured and lacking in the kind of vulnerability that would have made her character touchingly tragic. Instead of being the kind of raucous, life-of-the-party that would captivate a manic-depressive like Jolly, Welch's Queenie is far too regal. 
There's an awkward self-consciousness to her attempts at appearing carefree or tough (the scene where she threatens to hit Coco over the head with an art-deco clock is so embarrassingly amateurish that it looks like an outtake that somehow made it into the movie) that rob her character of any real depth. I really wanted to buy Welch in the role, and she has it in her to be better than she's allowed herself to be onscreen. But here, I think she needed a stronger, more talented director or she simply needed to give herself permission to let go and trust.
Queenie- "He was the first guy that ever asked me what I thought."
My favorite scene: The dynamics of Queenie & Jolly's entire relationship are captured in this sweet sequence that takes place at a breakfast table. It didn't appear in the film's original cut and yet it's the most fully actualized scene in the entire film.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY
It's perversely fascinating to me that The Wild Party (which already has its hands full just being a drama) is also a musical! The songs, by the over-extended Walter Marks (composer of that enduring Sammy Davis, Jr. anthem, "I've Gotta Be Me!" Marks also makes his debut as a screenwriter with "The Wild Party" ) are a mixed bag. Too frequently, they kill the mood or render poorly-staged scenes comical, but I have a soft spot for song and dance, so the silly musical numbers are among my favorite parts of the film.
Raquel performs "Singapore Sally" atop a bar in a truly bizarre dress designed by then-boyfriend Ron Talsky. The bartender in the mandarin collar is none other than gay porn auteur ("Mechanic on Booty") & John Travolta PR headache, Paul Barresi - whom I had the pleasure of appearing with (as a dance extra) in that forgettable Jamie Lee Curtis aerobics epic, Perfect.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS
The Wild Party was just one of the many period film releases that came out during the nostalgia craze of the '70s ( Paper Moon, The Great GatsbyThe Day of the Locust ).  I was a teenager working as an usher at the Alhambra Theater in San Francisco when The Wild Party premiered, so with near-empty houses daily, I got to watch the film many times.
From the That-Dress-Gets-Out-More-Than-I-Do files: A consequence of my seeing The Wild Party so many times was noticing that a gown worn by an extra in that film (top photo), was the same gown first worn by Julie Andrews in the 1968 movie musical, Star! (below).

Even in its butchered, American-International Pictures form, I enjoyed the film very much, although it never engaged me very deeply on an emotional level. A better film, I think, than the multimillion-dollar GatsbyThe Wild Party is beautifully shot and, if not involving, certainly intriguing in its employment of cringe comedy for dramatic effect. It's fascinating to see the film now, some 36 years later, with the "director's cut" version of The Wild Party available on DVD. With footage restored and re-edited, The Wild Party is a significantly different and improved film than the one I saw back in 1975.
And even if it still falls shy of being what I would call a really "good" film and didn't provide Ms. Welch with the breakthrough role I wish it had, I can't complain. After all, Raquel Welch being Raquel Welch isn't all that bad.

AUTOGRAPH FILES:
James Coco autograph from 1980. Signed at Crown Books on Sunset Blvd. 


Copyright © Ken Anderson   2009 - 2011