LIPSTICK 1976

Spoiler Alert: Crucial plot points are revealed in the interest of critical analysis and discussion

Lipstick is a dramatized exposé and social critique on the serious topic of rape in the same way that Mommie Dearest is a dramatized exposé and social critique on the serious topic of child abuse.  

For all its purported noble intentions and "socially conscious" pre-release hype, Lipstick, a slick, high-concept dramatic thriller with a whopper of an identity crisis, is a film that can’t seem to avoid having its motives called into question. Since its release, Lipstick has suffered a public perception problem arising out of the cacophonous dissonance struck by the seriousness of its subject matter contrasted with the profound superficiality of its treatment. 

Poised to be the first major motion picture to thoughtfully address the dual victimization women face in cases of sexual assault—the crime itself and, later, the "victim blaming" judicial system—Lipstick hoped to provoke the kind of cultural controversy and heated social conversations sparked by Martin Scorsese’s then recently-released Taxi Driver. But the only dialogue Lipstick prompted was widespread criticism for what many saw as a tasteless attempt to exploit a serious issue by using “social relevance” as a smokescreen for a routine rape-and-revenge flick. 

And, indeed, audiences—unpersuaded by the film’s $3.5 million budget; team of legal technical advisors; and Oscar-adjacent pedigree…its cast included an Academy Award-winner (Anne Bancroft) and nominee (Chris Sarandon [Dog Day Afternoon]), its crew, Oscar-nominated cinematographer Bill Butler [One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest])—recognized Lipstick for what it was: an exploitation B-movie in A-list clothing.

Corner of Sunset and Larrabee

Logo design by Sandy Dvore

Producer Dino De Laurentiis, who scored a major hit with the Charles Bronson vigilante thriller Death Wish in 1974, hoped to land another jackpot with Lipstick. A movie that instead proved that you can take the exploitation fick out of the grindhouse, but you can't take the grindhouse out of the exploitation flick.  

Critics (those wholly unacquainted with feminism, anyway) were quick to label Lipstick "A feminist Death Wish," while a bemused public, tasked with trying to make sense of a film so clearly at cross-purposes with itself, fractioned off into two distinct camps. 

One camp comprised exploitation movie fans who enthusiastically embraced Lipstick's post-Billy Jack /neo-Taxi Driver zeitgeist and cheered the film's extravagant tawdriness and outrageously contrived (and outrageously satisfying) violent ending. 

Though perhaps unintentional, Lipstick's hyperfocus on model Margaux Hemingway's beauty somewhat clouded (if not outright contradicted) the film's determining theme that rape is an act of violence and control, not desire and sexual attraction  

The second camp was individuals who detected in Lipstick’s advance publicity and early plot synopsis, similarities to the real-life legal cases of Joan Little and Inez Garcia—two women at the center of two headline-making, mid-’70s court trials in which the rape victim killed her assailant—and hoped the film would be an illuminating examination of the thorny issue of violence and victim’s rights. This was the group most disappointed and offended by Lipstick, voicing the common head-scratcher complaint/query: who thought it was a good idea to make a glossy, glamorous movie about rape?

Since American culture holds the not wholly inaccurate perception that the wealthy and beautiful are shielded from life's harsh realities, I think Lipstick sought to dramatize that no woman or girl is invulnerable to the threat of violent sexual assault. But somehow, that message didn't really land. 

"The built-in sensuality of the film medium presents a permanent dilemma: A director, even with good intentions, can hardly help turning a beautiful woman into a sex object, and there is always the danger that what starts out as an exposé becomes exploitation." 

Molly Haskell, in her 1974 book "From Reverence to Rape: the Treatment of Women in the Movies."

Of course, there was a third camp—the word "camp" being particularly germane in this instance—who saw in Lipstick's earnest self-seriousness and heedless vulgarity a true cult film in the making. Normally, lovers of Bad Taste Cinema would have to look to the films of Andy Warhol, John Waters, or Russ Meyer to find a more preposterous co-mingling of haute couture, gratuitous nudity, sweaty-palmed villainy, flared nostril acting, and off-putting violence. 

Not this time. If it can be said that Lipstick is in any way successful, I contend that it truly triumphs as an unintentional trash classic and an early contender for the title ascribed to Andy Warhol’s BAD the following year: “A picture with something to offend absolutely everybody.”

Whose Gaze Is It, Anyway?
Mr. Stuart cools his cobblers while making an obscene music phone call

In telling its story, Lipstick plays fast and loose with just whose perspective we're afforded. In the early part of the film, the camera's gaze is more sympathetic to the rapist's experience. Evident in how the brutal assault is shot and edited in ways protective of the assailant's modesty, yet never missing an opportunity to expose the victim's nudity in a sometimes startlingly crass tableau. 

Were Lipstick even a marginally better-made film, I think I’d find it too disturbing (or offensive) to sit through. So I take it as a kind of mercy that it’s a movie that lavishes appreciably more imagination and care on its modeling sequences and fabulous disco synth soundtrack (by French composer Michel Polnareff) than on the darker implications of its central drama.  It’s clear Lipstick strives for “ripped from today’s headlines” realism, but its melodramatic tone almost dares you to take it seriously. 

Margaux Hemingway as Chris McCormick

Chris Sarandon as Gordon Stewart

Mariel Hemingway as Kathy McCormick

Anne Bancroft as Carla Bondi

Perry King as Steve Edison

In a reversal of the standard ‘70s practice of made-for-TV movies borrowing the plotlines of then-current feature films, Lipstick’s plot has much in common with the groundbreaking 1974 TV movie A Case of Rape. Both films dramatizing how a woman’s thwarted efforts to put her rapist behind bars expose a judicial system that instead puts the victim’s life and sexual history on trial. But where the Emmy-nominated Elizabeth Montgomery TV film opts for a somber tone of social realism, Lipstick’s unsubtle approach prioritizes shock. 

In a choice that seems to go against everything this film pretends to be about, screenwriter David Rayfiel gives Chris a brother who's a brother…or rather, a priest (played by John Bennett Perry, father of the late Matthew Perry). Given the size and inconsequence of the role, his presence feels like a tacked-on, tone-deaf signifier of  Chris' virtue. The sexist "good girl" -"bad girl" moralizing behind antiquated rape laws is what this movie is supposed to be denouncing...not perpetuating.

Story: Model Chris McCormick (Margaux) agrees to meet with her 14-year-old kid sister Kathy’s (Margaux’s own 14-year-old kid sister Mariel) favorite teacher, Gordon Stuart (Sarandon), to listen to his experimental music compositions. Stuart ends up sexually assaulting Chris, but when charged with the crime, he convinces the court that it was consensual rough sex initiated by the sexually jaded plaintiff. 

In the wake of the court’s Not Guilty verdict, Chris suffers losses both personal and professional. When Mr. Stuart targets Kathy in a second assault, big sister is forced to take matters into her own hands.

Despite Lipstick’s pervading tone of reality-challenged sensationalism, it does manage to make the occasional hamfisted point or two. Either by using Bancroft’s legal prosecutor character as a rape-statistics mouthpiece, or via the whittling down of complex issues into gratuitous setpiece moments calculated to provoke maximum audience outrage and catharsis. 

But as a representative dramatization of what a distressing percentage of women go through, Lipstick is both too specific and too far-fetched to resonate as any sort of larger, relatable social indictment. Even the most obvious angle of social commentary available to the film—using the profession of modeling to explore the role that media and advertising play in perpetuating and normalizing rape culture—proves to be an opportunity largely squandered.

In an act of guerilla programming, filmmaker Martha Coolidge (Rambling Rose, Valley Girl, Introducing Dorothy Dandridge) released her debut feature Not a Pretty Picture—a sensitive semi-documentary about date rape—in New York on Wednesday, March 31, 1976…just two days before Lipstick opened in theaters on Friday, April 2nd. Though not widely seen then, critics hailed it for being, in execution, all that Lipstick sold itself to be. 

Directed by Lamont Johnson (That Certain Summer—1972) and written by David Rayfiel (Three Days of the Condor—1975), Lipstick was released in a surge of social relevance and pop culture topicality. The latter, courtesy of Margaux Hemingway, the 6-foot supermodel and granddaughter of Ernest Hemingway whose then-ubiquitousness (appearing on the cover of  Time and landing a million-dollar contract with Fabergé Cosmetics, all in less than a year) made worthwhile the gamble of handing over the lead role in a major motion picture to an acting neophyte.

I Found A Million Dollar Babe

Cringe ads like these, promoting the dominance of the male gaze and implied proprietary physical access to women's bodies, were very common in the '70s. It was my hope that part of Lipstick’s agenda included exploring the role advertising plays in rape culture and normalizing the casual objectification of women.  

Lipstick first came to my attention when I saw the movie's lip-shaped logo featured in a full-page teaser trade ad in Variety. Combining two of my favorite things—movies with one-word titles and movies with catchy slogans—I had no idea what any of it meant, but I was all in. 

I took it as a hopeful omen that many of my recent favorites were movies with symbolic, single-word titles: Nashville, Smile, Shampoo. Plus, in a '70s movie landscape overcrowded with buddy films and male-centric stories, Lipstick felt like a signal heralding an emergence of more movies about women and featuring stronger female characters.

The courtroom scenes never rise above Perry Mason-level familiarity, and the terrible case Bancroft's prosecuting attorney mounts will have you screaming at the screen. Performance-wise, it's hard to tell if Bancroft is overacting or just seems that way next to the TV-scale performances of her co-stars. 

What really boosted my enthusiasm was when I learned that Lipstick was to open in San Francisco at MY theater! Which is to say, the movie theater where I’d been employed since high school--The Alhambra Theater on Polk Street. The once spacious Alhambra had been divided into two smaller theaters in 1974, and Lipstick was slated to replace Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore in Alhambra #1 (after a staggering 13 months!), while Alhambra #2 turned things into an unofficial Chris Sarandon Film Festival by hosting Dog Day Afternoon.   

The only downside to this terrific news was my awareness of the Alhambra being a neighborhood movie theater (sister theater to the first-run Regency on Van Ness), and as a result, we rarely ever got the movies that the studios had confidence in. 

I’m not sure if the fault lies with the actor, director, or simply how the role was written, but given that the reality for many women is that rapists look like the average guy-next-door, it does the film no favors to have Sarandon's character be a weird, twitchy, Norman Bates type. At our first glimpse of him, he's so obviously off-the-rails that we question Chris' judgment in letting her little sister near him in the first place.  

With a dash of trepidation now introduced to my otherwise unbridled sense of anticipation, I was reluctant to see Lipstick in the usual manner of theater ushers…in out-of-sequence bits and pieces while standing in the back of the theater with a flashlight. Craving the full, uninterrupted Lipstick experience, I went on opening night (on my day off) and sat in a sparsely populated, virtually all (gay) male audience. The porno theater vibe of the experience was hard to ignore. 

After its first week of release, Paramount knew it had a bomb on its hands. Marketing went from understated to alarmist, with newspaper ads in major cities disclosing local rape statistics over increasingly violent imagery

Lipstick had been booked into the Alhambra for a month, but there was no way it could survive four weeks as a solo. After the first week, Lipstick was paired with Straw Dogs (1971), then Chinatown (1974), and finally Once is Not Enough (1975).

I think I went into Lipstick expecting something perhaps along the lines of Klute…a gritty crime story built around a character study of a woman. I was way off. I sat through Lipstick twice that night, liking it more the second time when I surrendered to it being the schlock exploitationer it was. And while it was not the movie I had hoped it would be, it was somehow both better and worse than I could ever have imagined.

And if you think that sentence sounds convoluted and paradoxical, well, say hello to the two words that perhaps best describe Lipstick.

Vogue meets International Male

Handsome Perry King has little to do as Chris' semi-supportive boyfriend with the blown dry hair and dubious mustache.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM 

As a lifetime devotee of so-bad-they’re-good movies, and confirmed aficionado of Cinema de Strange, virtually everything I love about Lipstick stems from its outré luridness. It's so trashy! It’s like a Sidney Sheldon potboiler crossed with an Italian Giallo. And as Lipstick’s alluring but superficial gloss isn’t offset by anything more substantive in the way of writing, acting, or characters, none of it actually feels tethered to reality. Too much of Lipstick’s rape & revenge plot feels engineered to provide a visceral experience, not a contemplative one.

Dressed to Kill

What can you say about a movie whose apogee and nadir is the blissfully baroque image of a beautiful, statuesque model, lacquered and coiffed, racing through the parking lot of the Pacific Design Center in a glittering red evening gown while brandishing a rifle? It’s got Ken Russell written all over it.

It’s important that I not be too dismissive of Lipstick, for though it was a commercial and critical flop (one critic called it a “Tower of Trash”), Lipstick actually did influence rape laws in California. In late 1976, the California Legislature passed a resolution that prohibited the mention of a rape victim’s sexual history from being brought up in court. It was named The Margaux Hemingway Resolution No. 109 in her honor. 

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

That Lipstick is a triumph of style is nowhere more evident than in the superb title sequence, which, for me, is alone worth the price of admission. The film’s opening 3 ½ minute model photoshoot economically combines a chic, music video-style credits sequence with the subtle (the first and only time that word can be applied to anything related to this movie) establishment of Lipstick’s undeveloped subthemes regarding the normalized dehumanization at the core of sexism and misogyny. 

We see a woman, passive and silent, attended to by a phalanx of men devoted to enhancing her appearance. Often using the language of seduction (tellingly, the only female voice present is dismissed summarily). We're left to ask ourselves. is the woman we’re watching being glorified or objectified? 

It's practically documentary: Margaux Hemingway is photographed by the man who launched her modeling career, Francesco Scavullo. Also present are Scavullo's assistant and life partner, Sean Byrnes,  Way Bandy (makeup), and Harry King (hair). The only fictional addition is actress Catherine McLeod playing an ad agency executive. 

PERFORMANCES

Though ill-served by a script that conceived her character as almost entirely reactive, I like Margaux Hemingway in Lipstick and never thought she was as bad as the critics made out. True, she doesn’t have much range, but she has an appealing presence and earthiness that might have been showcased to better advantage with a director more protective of her limitations (you don’t keep cutting to reaction shots of someone with so little variance in expression). Still, if you compare Margaux’s performance in this, her first movie to, say, Raquel Welch in her 13th feature film…1969s Flareup (which shares with Lipstick a similar “A woman’s outrage, a woman’s revenge!” dramatic arc), Margaux comes off looking like Liv Ullmann.

Everything that was said and written about Mariel Hemingway stealing the movie out from under everyone is quite accurate. As the most authentically realized character in the film, her performance is remarkable in its naturalness and sensitivity. When the failure of Lipstick signaled the end of  Margaux's lucky streak, the accolades Mariel received created a rift between the sisters. Margaux was quoted as saying: “She ended up stealing the movie and deserved the acclaim, but I was upset. Because it was as if people were tired of me and gave her the attention.”

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

I can't say whether Lipstick is simply a timepiece that stands as evidence of an era when no one batted an eye that a team of men would craft a movie about rape without the creative input of even a single woman, or if it's a movie that deserves credit simply for drawing attention to a topic few major films were even willing to tackle. For me, part of its lingering legacy is the sad, meta intersection of reality and fantasy that comes with the participation of the two Hemingway sisters and all that we now know that we couldn’t have known then.

Cover Girls
Cover: An item placed in front of something to protect or conceal

It's discomfiting to watch a film about rape/sexual abuse that stars siblings who themselves faced issues concerning mental health, body image, eating disorders, alcohol and drug abuse, and sexual abuse.  

Margaux Hemingway died of an overdose on July 1, 1996, at the age of 42. Mariel became a successful  Oscar-nominated actress (Manhattan - 1979) and is currently a tireless advocate for mental health.

Lipstick co-stars Mariel Hemingway and Chris Sarandon went on to work together in three other films: Road Ends, 1997; Perfume, 2001; and above, a Canadian film adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's Little Men, 1998.

BONUS MATERIAL

Lipstick's fabulous opening sequence. 

From Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow Up (1966) to Faye Dunaway stopping traffic in Eyes of Laura Mars (1978) fashion shoots in movies have always been a favorite of mine. 

Francesco Scavullo

Copyright © Ken Anderson      2009 - 2024

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

Clip from "The Possession of Joel Delaney"  1972

THE AUTOGRAPH FILE

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

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2015

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