THE GROUP 1966

The generic Hollywood “woman’s film,” those melodramatic, get-out-your-handkerchiefs – style weepies that were once Joan Crawford’s and Bette Davis’ stock in trade, underwent a colorful (that is to say, increasingly explicit) transformation during the '50s and '60s. Reflecting the changing role of women in American culture, the once romance-centric genre transmogrified into the multi-character, hand-wringing, career-girl soap operas of the sort typified by Rona Jaffe’s water cooler drama The Best of Everything (1956), in which Joan Crawford’s stock '40s shopgirl character gets an executive upgrade, and that deservedly iconic ode to Broadway, booze, and barbiturates, Valleyof the Dolls (1967).

Jessica Walter (Lucille Bluth on my favorite TV show, Arrested Development) looks "Joan Crawford fabulous" and almost walks away with the film as Libby, the least sympathetic but most dynamic member of The Group

These films dramatized, in highly glamorized fashion, the challenges facing women as they strove to balance love, friendship, and the pursuit of their dreams while navigating the patriarchally hostile waters of the American workforce. Always purporting to “blow the lid off” one taboo subject or another (in George Cukor’s The Chapman Report it was the sex lives of suburban housewives) these films offered at most a cursory nod to female independence before reverting to type and getting back to the business of subtly endorsing traditional gender roles.

Valley of the Dolls, in its exquisite awfulness, remains the gold standard by which every “sex and soap” women’s film is and should be compared. But one of my favorite forgotten examples of the genre that managed to fall through the cracks due to past unavailability (it had a brief VHS life [Thanks, Poseidon3!], was never released on Laserdisc, but is currently available on made-to-order DVD) is Sidney Lumet’s lively screen adaptation of Mary McCarthy’s 1963 bestselling novel, The Group. 

Eight is Enough
The sparkling cast of up-and-comers that comprise The Group

I don’t know who first coined the phrase “superior soap opera” but the term categorically applies to this expensively mounted, surprisingly well-acted tale of the interweaving lives of eight friends—graduates of Vassar College, Class of ’33— as each sets out to make her mark on the world. The experiences of these economically and psychologically diverse heroines reflect, in microcosm, the emergent state of (white) American womanhood in the mid-20^th century. Specifically, the Roosevelt Administration years from The Great Depression through to the earliest days of the outbreak of WW II.
As each woman embarks on the journey of realizing the American Dream that their wealth, position, and privilege have practically guaranteed them, they discover that life outside the protective bubble of college and "The Group" poses considerably greater challenges. 

With a cast of eight beautiful women all falling histrionically in and out of love, bedrooms, and careers, The Group basically takes the usual all-girl triad formula of The Pleasure Seekers and Three Coins in the Fountain (along with the aforementioned The Best of Everything and Valley of the Dolls) and merely ratchets up the stakes by moving it into territory first blazed by Clare Boothe Luce in The Women. All of which is sheer Nirvana for fans of camp cinema and movies about high-born women brought to low circumstances, but a headache for studio publicity departments and folks seeking economic ways of recounting the plot and summarizing the characters.  

The challenge presented in having to promote a film with an ensemble cast of relative unknowns is revealed in the giggle-inducing tone adopted by the film’s ad campaign; the copy of which I’ll borrow to briefly introduce the members of The Group:

Lakey: The Mona Lisa of the smoking-room…for women only!

Dottie: Thin women are more sensual. The nerve endings are closer to the surface.

Priss: She fell in love and lived to be an “experiment.”

Polly: No money…no glamour…no defenses…poor Cinderella.

Kay: The “outsider” at an Ivy League Ball.

Pokey: Skin plumped full of oysters…money, money, money…yum, yum, yum!

Libby: A big scar on her face called a mouth.

Helena: Many women do without sex, and thrive on it.

If I remember correctly, most, if not all of these lines come directly from the novel (a terrific read, I might add) and several are even repeated in the film. How anyone was able to resist such sleazily salacious come-ons is beyond me, but The Group didn’t fare too well at the boxoffice at the time and slipped quietly into obscurity after that. My guess is that it’s because the film at its core wasn’t really as trashy as its hard-sell. Well, more’s the pity, for The Group, by benefit of its remarkable cast and director Sidney Lumet’s deft handling of the wide-sweeping plot, is a step above the usual glossy soap opera.

Dottie (Joan Hackett) loses her virginity to emotionally remote artist Dick Brown (Richard Mulligan). In real life, Hackett & Mulligan were married from 1966 to 1973. They appeared together in a 1971 episode of  Love, American Style

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

As a fan of both Robert Altman’s trademark ensemble opuses and movies with overdressed women dramatically suffering in opulent surroundings, there isn’t really much to dislike about The Group. Touching on everything from politics, birth-control, lesbianism, marriage, mental illness, spousal abuse, adultery, childbirth, alcoholism, and date-rape (all in the course of 2 ½ hours) The Group has a lot of field to cover. Director Sidney Lumet (The Pawnbroker, Network, Dog Day Afternoon) keeps things moving at a rapid-fire pace that adds spark to the light comedy (Jessica Walter is a hoot as a bitchily gabby gossip) and tension to the drama. If the expeditious pacing of the story spares The Group from ever being plodding or dull, it's fair to say it also occasionally undercuts the film’s overall emotional impact. The commitment to brevity that results in Joan Hackett’s character disappearing for a protracted time in the middle of the film is a considerable flaw as far as I'm concerned, but at least it’s a flaw born of an attempt to tighten the sprawling narrative. 

An example of Sidney Lumet's masterful framing and use of space in The Group 

I generally just like the propulsive feel of The Group's visual style. I can’t remember when I’ve seen a movie that handled the staging and filming of group scenes better or to greater effect; nor can I recall a cleverer employment of cinematic devices to provide plot exposition. In rewatching the film, my attention is drawn to the many subtle character interactions and small details (like the financially-struggling Kay always wearing the same hat to every wedding) easily overlooked on first viewing due to the film’s quick cutting and Lumet’s skillful use of the foregrounds and backgrounds to relay information.

When I think of what I like about The Group, the conclusion I always arrive at is, what’s not to like?

The telephone features prominently in The Group not only as a means by which the friends stay in contact but as a handy device to relate plot exposition

PERFORMANCES

If you’ve ever harbored the notion that a film like, say, Valley of the Dolls would have been “better” with real actresses in the roles (sorry Patty Duke), watching The Group should pretty much lay that fantasy to rest. The cast assembled for The Group couldn’t be more accomplished or better-suited to their roles, but even they can’t surmount a screenplay or a basic story construct so plot-driven. The mere volume and frequency of crises and conflict in films like these reduce even exemplary performances (Hackett, Knight, Pettet, and Hartman) to “best of” moments.

Sidney Lumet cast his father, Baruch Lumet in the small role of Mr. Schneider, Polly's paternal neighbor

A standout, both appearance and character-wise, is Jessica Walter, who either annoys or enchants in a showy role that is essentially Rosalind Russell in The Women. Also very good is the highly appealing Shirley Knight. My personal favorite, however, is Joan Hackett (making her film debut along with Bergen and Pettet) whom I never tire of watching and who never seems to hit a false note.

60s lesbians were always portrayed as severe, vaguely predatory types who stood around giving each other knowing looks under arched eyebrows. Here, an admittedly outclassed Candice Bergen introduces her sorority sisters to her "friend" the Baroness (Lidia Prochnicka)

Before I finish, special mention must be made of the men in The Group. True to the genre, the men are a pretty odious bunch. Almost to a man they are characterized as weak, bigoted, manipulative, oppressive, brutalizing, or womanizing. Some all at the same time. This is of course to be expected and goes with the soap opera territory. What surprises me most is that there isn’t a single looker in the bunch. I know it’s a matter of taste and I'm taking into account that perhaps in 1966 these guys passed for handsome (so what was Paul Newman?); but to a most distracting degree, the men at the center of The Group are like a grandmother’s wish-list of desirable males. Hal Holbrook? Larry Hagman? Richard Mulligan? James Broderick? The film features such a parade of sexless, daddy-fixation types that after a while I actually started to take it as some kind of personal affront. Valley of the Dolls suffered from the same malady.

No, this isn't an image of Polly (Shirley Knight) and her father. This is Gus (Hal Holbrook) the patently implausible object of desire of two gorgeous women and one unseen wife in The Group

THE STUFF OF DREAMS
My older sister (whom I credit/blame for a good deal of my love of bad movies) got me to watch The Group on TV with her when I was a kid. A protofeminist if ever there was one, she tended to gravitate towards movies with female protagonists but lamented the fact that a great majority of these films tended to be vaguely masochistic soaps and cheesy exploitation films. 

The Group was Elizabeth Hartman's follow-up to her Oscar-nominated film debut in A Patch of Blue. As Priss, she's cast again as a victim of an oppressive relative, this time a husband.
 Sloan (her physician husband, following a miscarriage): "We'll, we can't have this again, Priss. Worst possible advertisement for a pediatrician!"

My sister (who was drawn to the bitchiness of the Libby character but identified with the self-sacrificing nobility of Polly) enjoyed the camp fun to be had at the expense of the fancy clothes, elaborate hairstyles, and frankly unsympathetic milieu of the privileged classes; but what she also responded to, and in turn helped me to appreciate, was what the film was trying to say about the challenges of maturity. The idealized vision of the world (and oneself) one can safely harbor while sheltered within the walls of youth and academia can take quite a beating when confronted by the disappointments and compromises of the real world. Is a person really failing in life if they put to rest youthful dreams in hopes of achieving some unforeseen, yet perhaps more authentic, realization of fulfillment? And how much pain does one cause oneself clinging to idealized illusions of "potential" and entitled success...all the while ignoring the possibility for happiness dressed in humbler clothing? 

Have to hand it to my sister...if she could find that kind of insight within a glossy potboiler like this, I'd say I learned about the value of "bad" films at the feet of a master.

In a role rendered considerably smaller in the film than  in the book, Carrie Nye has at least one memorable scene as Norine, a low-income Vassar classmate and outsider excluded from The Group 

Now, I’m not going to make out like The Group is some kind of profound, unacknowledged classic, but in light of what women's films have become over the years (they proudly proclaim themselves "chick flicks" and celebrate shopping as a valid expression of female empowerment), and in our current boomerang culture that doesn't encourage young people to seek and accept struggle as an integral part of the growing-up process; well...let's just say that there's something to be said for a 46-year-old guilty-pleasure movie that comes across as more progressive and perceptive in 2012 than it did in the year of its original release.

Halcyon Days
Helena's scandalous painting of The Group (that's Helena as the satyress)

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2012

SPARKLE 1976

Perhaps it's because I'm too old to know precisely what a Jordin Sparks is (it's not, as initially presumed, a small town in Virginia, but a recording artist). Still, I had no idea there was to be a remake of this cult-worthy 1976 Irene Cara film (slated to star said Ms. Sparks) until I began to do a little Internet research for this post.

Maybe this is a harbinger of some kind of covert Hollywood covenant to redo the entire Irene Cara oeuvre (we've already had a reboot of The Electric Company and a limp remake of Fame). If so, I'm going to seriously lose it if somebody announces a remake of 1985s Certain Fury—itself a kind of a gender-flip remake of Sidney Poitier's The Defiant Ones—which featured Oscar winners Tatum O'Neal and Irene Cara as a pair of mismatched ex-cons handcuffed to one another. (I kid you not.)

So now there's to be a remake of Sparkle…

If Hollywood is so concerned about piracy, you'd think they might first start "in-house" and set an example by ceasing this endless plundering of their own past successes and begin to cultivate a little originality. But I digress.

Sparkle. The place and time is Harlem/1958. The girl-group plotline evokes The Supremes and all they represent as conflicting symbols of Black upward mobility and crossover success. The small-time show-biz milieu of Harlem jazz clubs and the seedy R&B/soul circuit pay homage to the Black roots of rock & roll. And the songs prefigure the emergent voices of inner-city youth and the beginnings of the Civil Rights Movement.

Irene Cara as Sparkle Williams

Lonette McKee as Sister Williams 

Dwan Smith as Dolores Williams

Philip Michael Thomas as Stix Warren 

Dorian Harewood as Levi Brown

Sparkle is a '50s girl group take on the oft-told show-biz saga of gifted performers from humble beginnings who discover, only too late, that the road to fame is paved with heartbreak and tragedy. "I want the big time!" conveniently asserts beautiful, self-assured, and headed-for-certain-trouble Sister Williams (Lonette McKee), one-third of the gospel-singing Williams sisters, consisting of woke, budding Black-Power radical, Delores Williams (Dwan Smith); and sweet-natured, self-effacing Sparkle Williams (Irene Cara)…i.e., the obvious heroine of the film.

With the help of neighborhood pals Stix (Philip Michael Thomas), a dreamer who longs to write songs, and Levi (Dorian Harewood), always on the hustle, this trio of starry-eyed schoolgirls dub themselves "Sister & the Sisters" and become virtual overnight sensations in a neighborhood nightclub.

But of course, since Sparkle is both a cautionary tale on the price of fame and a morality play on the importance of integrity, things go wrong in a big hurry. Cue in the drug abuse, dashed hopes, heartbreak, death, racketeering, and familial discord. Will Stix ever realize his dreams of becoming a songwriter? Will the tragedies visited upon Sparkle instill a newfound maturity in her singing? If you don't know the answers to these questions, you've likely never seen a rags to riches show-biz movie before.

Soul Sisters

Those looking to Sparkle for gritty, '70s-type urban realism will have to look elsewhere. Although released in the same year as Taxi Driver, Sparkle is more of a direct descendant of those old Judy Garland/Mickey Rooney "Let's put on a show!" musicals, crossed with the inner-city slum dramas Warner Bros. specialized in during the '30s. Like Rocky, another film released in 1976, Sparkle is really just an updated old movie.

In fact, Sparkle's melodramatic, ultimately uplifting, plotline and virtually all-blast cast recall the heyday of the "Race Film." ("Race films" being independent motion pictures made between 1915 and 1950 that were created exclusively for, and frequently by, African-Americans. In the days of segregation, these films, popular in African-American neighborhoods across the country, featured all-Black casts and were the first movies to portray African-Americans in heroic and lead roles central to the plot.)

Sparkle's backlot depiction of Harlem, populated with characters going by the names "Stix," "Satin," and "Tune-Ann," harken back to The Harlem Tuff Kids (Black cinema's answer to The Bowery Boys), a pack of late 1930s comic delinquents with names like "Icky," "Stinky," and "Shadow."

Brownstone Socializing: (l. to r.) Levi, Dolores, Sister, Stix, & Sparkle

I wonder if the online commenters criticizing the so-called silly names of Sparkle's characters have the same problem with Grease's "Putzie," "Doody," & "Frenchy"; or Laverne & Shirley's "Squiggy"?

The '70s were certainly boom years for Blacks in film, but by 1976, I personally had grown weary of the decade's pimp & prostitute /Kung Fu-Badass Blaxploitation overkill. The fascination all those sassy Black female crime-fighters and morally dubious Super-Flys held for the white suburban male teens who filled the local theaters where these films played (was Quentin Tarantino among them?) was lost on me. Nor was I much fonder of the parade of noble slave dramas which seemed to represent the only other alternative view of Black life Hollywood seemed interested in exploring.

With '70s America deep in the throes of a nostalgia craze that romanticized the past as a simpler, gentler time (tellingly, devoid of people of color): The Summer of '42, The Last Picture Show, American Graffiti, The Way We Were—the arrival of Sparkle on the scene felt like a small kind of miracle and a very welcome change of pace. The screenplay's approach to the material may have been a tad trite, the direction amateurish and ill-serving of its young cast, but Sparkle gave Black kids (the film was rated PG) a nostalgic taste of their own history for a change. It's not a perfect film, but even with the clichés stacked higher and higher with each scene, I find something irresistibly likable and naively charming about Sparkle.

Sparkle is at its best when it stops propelling its predictable plot forward and pauses long enough to provide keen-eyed details of African-American life in the late '50s. Growing up in a household with four sisters, I recall very well the Sunday evening ritual of hair straightening with a hot comb.  

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

As a fan of musicals, Sparkle's primary appeal for me has always been Curtis Mayfield's catchy musical score and the sleek, '60s girl-group choreography of Lester Wilson. Mayfield's songs are pop/funk, '70s-style riffs on the early R&B/Soul sound of Motown, while Wilson's choreography captures the stylized, often witty, gesture/posing dance style that became an identifying staple of girl-group performances for years.
The songs, as sung by the film's cast, are all so well-performed that there was an outcry from fans when the soundtrack album for Sparkle was released, with Aretha Franklin taking over the vocals exclusively. Although I've read conflicting accounts over the years as to the whys of this decision, and while I personally prefer the film's cast interpretation of the songs, one has to imagine that, to the studio, the financial prospects of an Aretha Franklin album must have appeared a great deal more lucrative than that of a soundtrack album to a modest film with no stars in its cast.

Choreographer Charles "Cholly" Atkins
Exclusive Motown choreographer whose routines for musical acts like The Supremes and The Temptations were the inspiration for Lester Wilson's work in Sparkle

PERFORMANCES

Although the delectably fresh-faced Irene Cara emerged the bigger star in later years as actress, recording artist, and Academy Award-winning songwriter (for "Flashdance…what a Feeling"), it's Lonette McKee who gives my favorite performance in Sparkle. She is so electrifyingly good that the temperature of the film drops several degrees for every minute that she's off-screen. A more intuitive director than Sam O'Steen (editor of Rosemary's Baby, making his feature film directorial debut) might have sensed how strongly the prolonged absence of the film's most dimensional and dynamic character would have on Sparkle's overall impact. Indeed, had Lonette McKee been given the opportunity to be the kind of dominant presence in the film as she is in the lives of her sisters, I think the audience would have found itself mourning her absence along with the characters on the screen. McKee's sad eyes and nicely rendered tough-girl stance carry with them a kind of authentic emotional gravitas. Without McKee, Sparkle becomes a little too light for its own good.

Mary Alice as Effie Williams

On the subject of meeting her daughter's new suitor, small-time gangster Satin Struthers (Tony King)-
Effie: "He's just gonna drag you to the gutter with him."

Sister: "The gutter? How can you say that? He's as big-time as you can get."

Effie: "I've lived in Harlem all my life…I know a rat when I see one."

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

In the impressive array of talent (both young and veteran) that appear in cameo and bit roles, Sparkle pays homage to pioneer African-American entertainers:

Veteran comic actor Don Bexley (best known as Bubba on the TV show Sanford & Son) appears in Sparkle as a the raunchy emcee for the Simmons Hall amateur contest

Legendary comic Timmie Rogers as the M.C. of the Shan-Doo Club where Sisters & The Sisters make their debut.
Back in the days when African-American comics habitually appeared in blackface, spoke in dialect, and wore sloppy clothes; Rogers was the first to appear in a tuxedo, as himself, and daring to speak directly to white audiences (a practice unprecedented in Black comics during the 40s ).
He was my father's favorite stand-up comedian.

Tony Award-winning choreographer Michael Peters (Dreamgirls) also created the iconic dances for Michael Jackson's Thriller and Beat It music videos. In Sparkle, he appears as an outrageous R&B singer in the style of Screamin' Jay Hawkins

The performer shown briefly in Sparkle, portraying a singer in the mode of Ruth Brown and LaVern Baker, is Renn Woods. Woods portrayed Dorothy in the 1976 National Tour of The Wiz and appeared in the films Hair and  Xanadu

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

Sparkle is set in the late '50s, but the film's footing is too unsure for me to be sure whether the fact that it plays like a movie literally made in the 1950s is wholly intentional. If I have any complaint, it's that Sparkle's plot is so determined to get to where it needs to go that it rushes the characters along. Nevertheless, the film is a lot of engaging fun in its small, slice-of-life moments. The mother ironing in the living room; the kids having to change out of their "school clothes" when they come home; the ever-present neighbor lady who constantly butts into other people's business; the young men sporting "conk" hairstyles (relaxed-hair pompadours).

Black American Graffiti
 As earlier stated, Sparkle is at its best when just showing us glimpses of life in late-'50s Harlem

All of the above are more compelling than the straight-as-an-arrow course that Sparkle's conventional rags-to-riches storyline  races us through (I've seen the film many times and I'm still unclear as to how long the girls get to enjoy their success before things start to go wrong. It feels like a week.) Watching Sparkle - written by Joel Schumacher and Howard Rosenman - I'm left with the feeling that it would be a much better film had the characters and their behavior been allowed to move the plot forward...not the other way around. Too bad. The people populating Sparkle seem like folks I would be interested in getting to know better. I just wish they'd been fleshed out a bit more.

Where Sparkle's footing feels more assured is in its atmospheric depiction of the squalid glamour of the Harlem nightclub scene. These sequences and the attendant musical numbers give the film the kind of moody grit lacking in the screenplay. Cinematographer Bruce Surtees (Night Moves, Lenny) paints Sparkle with a dark, Gordon Willis-like palette of claustrophobic shadows which make for some of the most atmospherically seedy nightclub sequences since Cabaret.

(This is one seriously DARK movie; almost unwatchably so on VHS. Now with HDTV and digitally remastered DVD, Sparkle looks better than ever. I recall reading that this was due to the cinematographer's inexperience with lighting people of color.)

Sparkle was released in 1976. The same year as The Omen, King Kong, A Star is Born, Family Plot, and Marathon Man; all films with advertising budgets that probably exceeded Sparkle's entire production costs. I stood in lines to see each of the above films, but I was practically the only person in the San Francisco theater where I first saw Sparkle. As a PG-rated, small-scale period musical drama with a Black cast of virtual unknowns and but a few easily-exploitable elements (no kung-fu mamas or jive-talkin' daddies to promote); a film as atypical as Sparkle was a hard sell in the '70s market.

I have no idea if Sparkle was successful enough to ever show a profit, but I've read that it has become something of a cult classic over the years. I certainly hope so. Because, flawed as it is, Sparkle is a rarity. Not only in being a female-centric Black film, but the first to dramatize the formation of an R&B girl group, using the formative years of the African-American music scene as a narrative backdrop. Since no film before this had ever tackled the subject matter, it's my guess that in some small way Sparkle went on to inspire the 1981 Broadway musical Dreamgirls. 

Although the current track record for remakes is pretty shabby, I'm going to keep an open mind about the Sparkle remake and wish it well. If nothing else, it's sure to bring more attention to the original.

ADDENDUM: January 20, 2014
Watched the 2012 remake of Sparkle on DVD. Because this is a blog devoted to movies I love, perhaps the kindest thing I can say about the remake is that, by comparison, it makes the original look like a classic on every count. I actually couldn't believe how weak an effort it was. I loved seeing Whitney Houston but was dismayed by the fact that with $17 million and thirty-plus years of advanced motion picture technology, they couldn't produce a film with even a fraction of the competence of a low-budget feature from the '70s. A seriously depressing endeavor on so many fronts.


AUTOGRAPH FILES: signatures of Phillip Michael Thomas and Lonette McKee I got way back in 1978 and 1980, respectively.

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2012

FIVE DESPERATE WOMEN 1971

This camp-tastic treasure from my culturally misspent youth is high on retro '70s fashions, bitchy dialogue, and TV-movie grade thrills.

Imagine, if you will, Mary McCarthy’s sorority sister soaper The Group, crossed with Friday the 13th, add a bit of Charlie's Angels glamour (Aaron Spelling is also this film's producer), and toss a 1960s Ross Hunter "women in peril" melodrama into the mix, and you've got a pretty good idea of what’s in store for you with Five Desperate Women (who can resist that title?). A minor entry in the beloved ABC Movie of the Week anthology series of made-for-TV movies that proliferated during the 1970s. The series produced a slew of amazingly durable motion pictures over the course of its seven years on the air, among them: Trilogy of Terror, Duel, Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, So Awful About Allan, Bad Ronald, and Reflections of Murder.
These 90-minute movies, especially the thrillers, were ALWAYS the talk of my junior-high schoolyard the following day, and I recall, at age 13, Five Desperate Women being a particular favorite – its high regard aided considerably by our being too young and lacking in life experience to take much notice of the film’s timeworn clichés and obvious plotting.

Joan Hackett as Dorian

Julie Sommars as Mary Grace

Denise Nicholas as Joy

Stefanie Powers as Gloria

Anjanette Comer as Lucy

Five school chums, all graduates of Brindley, a tony private women’s college in the East, gather for a five year reunion at a remote beach house on an island with no neighbors, no transportation and no phones. Armed only with their outsized hair, over-accessorized '70s fashions, and outré Samsonite® luggage (not a wheel or designer label in sight), the friends are a virtual Who's Who of 70's television. There's sweet and mousy Julie Sommars (The Governor and J.J.) suffering a bad case of the guilts about leaving her controlling, mentally ill mother behind; incessantly gum-chewing wallflower Joan Hackett (a '70s TV movie staple, treading water a bit, having made her 1966 film debut in The Group in a very similar role); self-reliant, black-power call girl Denise Nicholas (Room 222); big-haired, big city cynic, Stefanie Powers (The Girl from U.N.C.L.E.); and dipsomaniacal southern belle Anjanette Comer (who would work again with this film's director, Ted Post, in the 1973 cult oddity The Baby).

A weekend of rest, relaxation, and rehashing the past is on the agenda for the five diverse and high-strung women, whose only other companions on the island resort are the creepily geeky charter boat captain (Bradford Dillman), and the all-business, cloyingly sincere caretaker (Robert Conrad). Oh yes, and a homicidal maniac has recently escaped from a nearby mental institution—all secluded areas have nearby mental institutions—and is stalking the grounds.

Thus, the mystery is set. Or at least one of them. The biggest one being how these five women ever became friends in the first place. Once everybody starts airing their dirty laundry and copping to the fact that none of their lives has turned out the way they had planned, the women waste little time in spending the bulk of their reunion time bitchily sniping at each other. A condition only exacerbated by frayed nerves and zero survival skills once the presence (not the identity) of the killer becomes known and the women have to learn to rely upon one another.

"Special Guest Star" Robert Conrad as Michael Wylie

Bradford Dillman as Jim Meeker

The men don't behave much better. Short, stocky, Eveready Battery spokesman/Battle of the Network Stars beefcake Robert Conrad, can't stop playing "Knock it off...I dare you!" with tall and lanky Bradford Dillman long enough to be of much help to anyone, let alone a house full of defenseless women burdened with an overabundance of hair care products and a shortage of locks on the doors. The men don't trust one another, the women barely get along, and a killer is loose. How it all end?
Viewed today, Five Desperate Women incites so many giggles at its own expense that it challenges one to imagine how it was ever conceived as a serious thriller, but I must say, as an adolescent I found this movie to be VERY gripping and terrifically suspenseful. So much for the discerning tastes of youth.

The unintentional laughs start early with a scene in which put-upon rich girl Mary Grace is emotionally battered by the passive-aggressive ventriloquist act engaged in by her silent mother and loudmouthed nurse. Hot on the heels of this comes the dockside reunion of the giggly sorority sisters wherein they sing a school song and southern-fried sot Lucy, drops racist hints about affirmative-action charity case Joy, not really being “One of us….”

The Wild, Wild West's Robert Conrad, who previously appeared with co-star Stefanie Powers in the unforgettable Palm Springs Weekend (1963), gets chummy with sweet-natured Julie Sommars. Most people recall Sommars from the TV show, Matlock, but she first caught my attention in the terrific comedy, The Pad and How to Use It (1966)

Once the women are ensconced on the island and the outbreaks of temperament erupt as regularly and abruptly as the outbreaks of violence, Five Desperate Women - clocking in at a brisk 75 minutes -  moves along so quickly one scarcely minds the minimal drama and by-the-numbers thriller plotting. What does catch the attention is the risible dialogue (statement:“I buried the dog." Response: “[cheerily] Thank you!”); not-so-surprising personal revelations; and a screenplay (written by three men) which can’t think of a way to build tension without having five fully grown, college-educated women carry on like sheltered adolescents at a summer camp.

Perpetually helpless, scared, and often absurdly overdressed (for her "escape" Denise Nicholas' character chooses an ensemble that features a cloche hat, midi vest jacket, hoop earrings big enough to throw a grapefruit through, and knee-high boots), these women quiver and quake while waiting to be victimized. They do traditional horror movie "girly" things like trip over brambles while running for their lives, demonstrating remarkably bad aim while throwing objects to ward of an assailant, and wandering off to dark places alone. They all but run around in circles, shrieking and flapping their arms. Being terrified is one thing, but these women - surrounded by fireplace pokers and butcher knives – never once resort to grabbing some common household item for self-defense (OK, at one point one of them grabs a shoe...but you see what I mean).

Posing for a fashion shoot? No, in this shot Denise Nicholas and Stefanie Powers are reacting to a grisly murder

Five Desperate Women moves at breakneck speed toward its not-wholly-unforeseen conclusion and the reveal of the killer's identity… a finale that finds one of the women being strangled while her friends have hysterics from the sidelines screaming at the manic to “Stop!” (that always works) for a good 30 seconds before it occurs to any of them that it might be a good idea to come to her aid.

If what I've written thus far has given the impression that Five Desperate Women is a film to be avoided, let me correct that error now. With apologies to TCM, Five Desperate Women is one of The Essentials: one of those rare, miraculous little films that exists simultaneously within the realm of good and bad. A film that pays countless entertainment dividends whether taken seriously (for all it's faults, it's actually better than most of what is being released in the horror/suspense genre these days) or viewed as retro camp.


WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM
As stated before, Five Desperate Women is basically your average woman-in-peril suspense thriller - only taken to the fifth power. There’s literally nothing here you haven’t seen a dozen times before in movies about a mad killer on the loose in an isolated setting, the only difference: instead of one hysterical would-be victim, you have five. One might imagine this would lead to five times the suspense, but mostly it just translates to five times the screaming hysterics. Which is fine by me.

I'm not exactly feelin' it from Ms. Powers in this shot

PERFORMANCES
The late Joan Hackett as the forlorn Dorian is my absolute favorite in the film, but if, like me, you're already a fan of her work, you'll note unfortunate echoes of similar roles she played in The Last of Shelia, The Group, Reflections of Murder, and another college reunion TV movie, Class of '63. It's not that Hackett isn't excellent, no, she always is; it's just that she was horribly typecast throughout most of her career and directors rarely could see her as anything but the mousy, retiring victim. She was Oscar-nominated and won a Golden Globe for one of my least favorite of her performances, the vainglorious socialite friend of Marsha Mason in Only When I Laugh (1981), but at least she was cast against type. Her rarely exploited gift for physical comedy can be seen to delightful effect in 1969's Support Your Local Sheriff , a film for which I really think she deserved a nomination.

What really saves Five Desperate Women from complete TV-movie mediocrity is the masterstroke casting of two of the most splendidly idiosyncratic actresses of the '70s together in the same film. Joan Hackett is sensational, but Anjanette Comer (so great in The Loved One and  The Appaloosa) almost steals the film as the skittish southern belle Lucy.


THE STUFF OF FANTASY
Five Desperate Women is a video catalog of all things '70s. You won't care a whit who the mad killer is because your eyes will be popping out of your head from the fashion parade of mod MOD MOD fashions and positively enormous hairdos. You'll see minis, midis, maxis, hot pants, knickers, boots, huge studded belts, chokers, fringe, and halter tops. And lest we forget the boys, we have Robert Conrad traipsing about in his by-now-trademark ridiculously tight, bun-hugging pants and overstretched, pec-tacular T-shirts.

Smokin' & Drinkin' and Everything but Thinkin'
One of the retro pleasures of this film is witnessing how much carefree smoking and drinking goes on

THE STUFF OF DREAMS
Two favorite films from my youth that are infinitely better than Five Desperate Women but nevertheless always remind me of this TV movie are: Five Gates to Hell (1959), a war film about of a group of army nurses having to fend off a hoard of Indochinese guerrillas; and John Ford's last film Seven Women (1966), about the female residents of a Chinese mission facing off Mongol bandits (featuring a kick-ass performance by Anne Bancroft). Although these "women banding together" movies  never developed into an actual action film sub-genre, they are both notable and enjoyable for providing narratives in which women not only propel the plot, but play characters whose actions are instrumental to their own survival.

Male-centric war movies and westerns always tend to bore me because of their reliance on archetypal macho posturing and one-note, stiff-jawed heroics. The need for male characters to always depict strength and assurance so as to perpetuate society's narrow definition of masculinity has resulted in one woefully monotonous, action-oriented thriller after another. Conversely, female characters are allowed (sometimes to a fault, as this film demonstrates) the dimensionality of being able to display the gamut of human emotions, from weakness to bravery, in the carrying out of heroic acts...something I always find more engrossing than stoic fearlessness in the face of all.
 Five Desperate Women goes overboard in having the women characters evince too much in the way of unfettered emotionalism (something I again must lay at the feet of the male screenwriters) , but at least it's a film in which the women eventually have to fend for themselves and are responsible for their own rescue. It looks awfully silly now, but back in 1971, the same year Helen Reddy's I Am Woman first came on the scene, Five Desperate Women (to a 13-year-old who hadn't yet discovered the self-sufficient tough cookies of '40s film noir) looked very much like a women's lib twist on the traditional suspense thriller.

Though we don't smoke and we don't drink

And though our hearts are pure

There's something about a rich man 

That's better than a poor

Rich fathers send your only sons

Rich mothers send us your pearls

Though he may be your joy

Still he's only a boy

'Til he's been with a Brindley girl

Copyright © Ken Anderson