ANGEL, ANGEL, DOWN WE GO 1969

In my previous post about the James Cagney / Doris Day film Love Me or Leave Me, my praise for Doris Day's remarkably accomplished, against-type assaying of the dramatically intense role of Jazz-Age songstress Ruth Etting was followed up by a lengthy harangue about stars who play it safe and fail to venture very far beyond the narrow parameters of their carefully crafted images. An extremely talented actress and singer, Day's choice of film roles certainly helped sustain her career (she worked that fresh-faced, girl-next-door thing well into middle age). But in sticking so closely to type, there's no denying that the sugary-sweet sameness of so many of the characters she played hardly tapped into her obvious versatility and dramatic range. Doris Day is so effective in playing a not-so-nice character that it led me to further lament the perceived cultural loss of her having turned down the role of Mrs. Robinson (that sexually predatory, chain-smoking alcoholic) in Mike Nichols' The Graduate.

Of course, all this tsk-tsking about the failure of image-conscious Hollywood stars to take creative risks is a stance nurtured exclusively by memories of those instances where said risks actually paid off. Eternal ingénue Audrey Hepburn performed best in her career as a disillusioned wife in Stanley Donen's sophisticated Two For the Road (1967). And perennial sex-kitten Ann-Margret's moving portrayal of an aging party girl in Carnal Knowledge (1971) was so unexpected it garnered her an Oscar nomination.

My guess is that this was Jennifer Jones' mantra throughout
 the entire filming of Angel, Angel Down We Go

What tends to fade from memory are the far more plentiful instances wherein actors, in a sincere attempt to break from type, inflict untold damage to years of hard-won legitimacy and respect by taking on thankless roles that end up making them look more ridiculous than courageous.
One such doozy of a miscalculation is the aptly titled Angel, Angel, Down We Go, a film that sees Oscar-winner and member of old-school Hollywood royalty Jennifer Jones extend herself so far out on a wobbly limb that the only trajectory can be downward.

Angel, Angel, Down We Go is a marvelously loopy artifact from the age of culture-clash psychedelia, and a primo example of that weird transitional period in motion picture history (roughly 1966 through 1970) when it appeared at times as though Hollywood had completely lost its mind. How else to explain the green-lighting of a film that casts classy Jennifer Jones as a former porn star unhappily married to a gay industrialist (Charles Aidman); saddle her with an unwanted, overweight teenage daughter (Holly Near); and has her seduced by a Jim Morrison-esque rock star (Jordan Christopher)?

Released by American International Pictures (the Drive-In exhibitor's best friend) and penned by the same writer who delivered the 1968 sleeper hit Wild in the Streets; Angel, Angel, Down We Go is an exercise in youth-rebellion exploitation that didn't pay off back in 1969 but reaps considerable dividends today for being an astonishingly weird product of a time when Hollywood was seriously grasping at creative straws.

Jennifer Jones as Astrid Steele

Jordan Christopher as Bogart Peter Stuyvesant

Holly Near as Tara Nicole Steele

Charles Aidman as William Gardiner Steele

Rock star/mogul/cult leader Bogart Peter Stuyvesant ("My mother went into labor pains during a Bogart flick...she almost dropped me in the lobby!") first deflowers, then insinuates himself into the life of the unloved, overweight debutante, Tara Nicole Steele. Stuyvesant and his motley band of sky-diving cultists (an uncomfortable-looking Lou Rawls; obligatory pregnant flower child, Davey Davidson; and an underutilized but probably just-happy-not-to-be-wearing-monkey-makeup, Roddy McDowall) see in Tara a symbol of overindulged American excess. In her decadent parents, they see the personification of older-generation corruption and greed. 

Bogart Peter Stuyvesant & Co. have plans for this family, but beyond, perhaps, talking them to death, it's difficult to know just what the endgame is for the seriously unhinged young man. We know it has something to do with youth rebellion, but as to what form that rebellion is supposed to take, your guess is as good as mine. "You're insane!" people keep shouting at him, as though we hadn't noticed.
All I know is that along the way, Bogart sings a passel of pop/rock songs written by the Oscar-nominated songwriting team of Cynthia Weil and Barry Mann (Somewhere Out There), spouts a lot of anti-establishment gibberish, and in the end, winds up seducing mom, dad, and daughter. Not necessarily in that order.

"We say hip, hooray, hip. hip hooray for fat!"
The newly liberated Tara dances to Bogart's ode to corpulence: "The Fat Song." Barely considered chubby by today's Big-Gulp, Super-Size standards, 19-year-old Holly Near, making her film debut, gained five pounds for the role (the studio asked for 20). 

Angel, Angel, Down We Go is the screenwriting/directing debut of Yale graduate (so much for higher education) Robert Thom. Thom adapted the screenplay from an unproduced 1961 play he wrote for his wife Janice Rule. Yale's resume as a screenwriter is a mixed bag representing the good: All the Fine Young Cannibals: the bad: The Legend of Lylah Clare: and the unseen (by me) Death Race 2000. In speaking of what he intended with this film he explained he saw Angel Angel Down We Go as: "A far-out version of a  'The Green Hat'  (Michael Arlens) kind of play about a wild girl heading for destruction…a present-day type of F. Scott Fitzgerald heroine." (Source: Jennifer Jones: The Life and Films by Paul Green).

That it was adapted from a play certainly explains the film's talkiness (you've never encountered a lippier group of flower children in your life), but the rest of that quote is a bit of a stretch. Anyone detecting even a note of F. Scott Fitzgerald in this monumentally disjointed morass has likely gone the way of Zelda. Angel, Angel, Down We Go was Robert Thom's debut/swansong as a director.

Pills with an alcohol chaser accompany Jennifer Jones' explanation for why she named her daughter Tara. Meanwhile, David O. Selznick (Jones' recently-deceased real-life hubby and Gone With the Wind producer) can be heard spinning in his grave.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

The economic power of the newly-emboldened youth audience of the late '60s really threw old-guard Hollywood for a loop. Long out-of-touch and more concerned with capitalizing on the counterculture zeitgeist than trying to understand it; Hollywood during this period produced some of the oddest, most out-there films in the annals of cinema history. Angel, Angel, Down We Go is an unholy marriage of studio system aesthetics trying to pass itself off as an underground, college campus youth-rebellion flick. 

The result is a work of pandering insincerity that manages to alienate two potential audiences in one swing. Young people, the movie's principal target audience, must have found it "challenging" to have a movie about the morally corrupt over-30 set try to pass off 40-year-old Roddy McDowall and 35-year-old, receding-hairlined Lou Rawls as agents of an impending youth revolution. And the older movie-going public, those old enough to know and appreciate the name Jennifer Jones, must certainly have gone into apoplexy when confronted with so much profanity, drugs, sex, and bad rock music.

The Mild Bunch
(L.to R.) Soul singer Lou Rawls makes his embarrassing film debut as Joe. Jordan Christopher fronted the rock group "The Wild Ones" and was married to Sybil Burton (Richard's ex) at the time. Holly Near is a well-known folk singer and activist. As pregnant "teen" Anna Livia, Davey Davidson is known to fans of the sitcom Hazel, as Nancy, Mr. B's virginal niece. Roddy McDowall, as Santoro, was friends with director Robert Thom and must have owed him a favor.

For fans of bizarre cinema, however, all of the above are merely ingredients that went into creating one of the most obscenely entertaining train wrecks from a major studio. The kind of film that could not have been made at any other time in cinema history. Get a load of this dialogue:

Jennifer Jones shouting at her husband- "Oh, you're out of your Chinese skull!" (He's not Chinese.)

Jennifer Jones playing the truth game- "I made 30 stag films and never faked an orgasm!"

Jennifer Jones to her masseuse- "Stop it, Hopkins, you're hurting me. You're a bloody, sadistic dyke!" 

Jennifer Jones in a moment of self-reflection- "In my heart of hearts, I'm a sexual clam."

Jennifer Jones rebuffing the advances of the man who just bedded her daughter- "There's a word for you, but I don't think I even know what it is."

Yes, Miss Jones has the lion's share of the film's quotably bad dialogue. However, she delivers it with so much gusto and bite, one wonders if perhaps she thought she was appearing in another absurdist hoot like John Huston's Beat the Devil (1954). Unfortunately for her, Robert Thom is no Truman Capote.

Only in the Sixties 
My favorite film of five-time Oscar nominee Jennifer Jones is Madame Bovary (1949). Who would guess that 20 years later, the 49-year-old actress would appear in a film requiring she rest her head near the crotch of a 26-year-old, naked balladeer?

PERFORMANCES

Jennifer Jones in Angel, Angel, Down We Go is less an instance of against-type casting so much as it is "What the hell was she thinking?" casting. If you can get over the shock of seeing the star of The Song of Bernadette wallowing in the sordid gutter of sex and drugs exploitation, you can catch glimpses of a sensitive performance that never had a chance. She's particularly good in a scene where her character revisits the Santa Monica Pier cotton candy stand she worked at as a girl. Alas, the quiet moments in this film aren't allowed to last too long. 

The ever-refined Astrid Steele responds to her daughter complimenting
 her on being "The most beautiful woman in the world."

Watching an actress as good as Jennifer Jones in a film as crude and intentionally vulgar as this, you never get a chance to applaud her "bravery" in breaking out of her Selznick-Shell. Why? Because not only is the film so far beneath her, but you're never quite sure whether she's in on the joke. Her participation feels a little like it's part of a secret put-down, and you feel a little embarrassed for her. Angel, Angel, Down We Go joins the ranks of the many Hollywood films from this era that made it their business to present former leading ladies of the silver screen in as unflattering a light as possible: Lana Turner, The Big Cube (1969) / Eleanor Parker, Eye of the Cat (1969) / Rita Hayworth, The Naked Zoo (1970) / Miriam Hopkins, Savage Intruder (1970), and Mae West, Myra Breckinridge (1970).

"The Biggest Mother of Them All!"
Astrid builds up a head of indignant steam listening to Bogart's newest insult composition, the sprightly ditty, "Mother Lover." In the meantime, Tara nervously waits for the shit to hit the fan.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

One of the niftier byproducts of Hollywood's embracing of the economic potential of the sexual revolution was the industry's fascination with homosexuality, bisexuality, and narratives in which opportunistic young men sleep their way through entire families (Entertaining Mr. Sloane - 1970, Something for Everyone -1970, Teorema -1968). As I first saw Angel, Angel, Down We Go when it came out in 1969 and I was just 12 years old, what made the biggest impression on me, and contributed to my seeing it at least three times that summer, was the surprising amount of male nudity. It's one of those rare exploitation films where the women remain dressed and the guys doff their clothes left and right. The movie made absolutely no sense to me then (nor now, for that matter), but with all that male skin on parade, who was I to complain?

How can you hate a film whose first four minutes feature a girl's voiceover narration praising her perfect parents, only to have the idealized father appear in the shower with a young man! 

The ever-game Roddy McDowall shows that his celebrated boyish charm didn't stop at the neck. Co-star Lou Rawls threatened to walk off the production when asked to appear nude, telling the director to take it or leave it - "I worked ten years to get where I am, and I'm not going to destroy that image in 10 minutes."

After seducing the daughter and the mother, Bogart  (Jordan Christopher, bottom tier)
 literally takes the place of Mr. Steele's previous boy-toy (top tier, actor unknown).

THE STUFF OF DREAMS
Filmed in February of 1968, Angel, Angel, Down We Go was released in August of 1969, the same month as the Manson murders. This was the film's title when I saw it at San Francisco's Embassy Theater in early 1970 on a double bill with Easy Rider (2 New Youth Hits! the marquee read). A year or so later, I'd heard it was redubbed Cult of the Damned and re-released in a tasteless effort to capitalize on the film's eerie similarities to the Manson case, whose trial was underway. 

Jordan Christopher was just one of several actors (among them Christopher Jones and Michael Parks) that tried hard to work a James Dean vibe in late '60s exploitation films

A bomb under either title, Angel, Angel, Down We Go, has more or less disappeared into what some might call well-deserved obscurity. But for those with a taste for the bizarre, a taste for the jaw-droppingly weird, a taste for the clumsy collision of old Hollywood and the shape of things to come…well, Angel, Angel, Down We Go is a psychedelic mind trip well worth taking.

Much of Angel, Angel, Down We Go was shot at a Beverly Hills mansion that once belonged to Marion Davies. 

Literally high on drugs, Tara finds she can't get down from the ceiling
(I told you this movie was weird).

NAME DROPPER'S CORNER

In the mid-'90s, I worked as a personal fitness trainer for the late Jennifer Jones. She had developed a lingering back problem from hoisting a little girl up and down many flights of stairs in The Towering Inferno (1974 ) and she worked out 5 days a week to keep strong and stay in shape. I remember her as an extremely gracious lady with a wonderful sense of humor and terrific discipline when it came to exercise. 

She lived in a high style not at all dissimilar to the character she played in this film (her home was a veritable museum of priceless art. She had a round-the-clock staff of security guards. And she had her hair done every day, her personal hairdresser usually arriving as I was departing). After working with her for some time, I found the courage to tell her that Angel, Angel, Down We Go was the first film of hers I'd ever seen. Laughing, her response to me was, "I'm sorry to hear that. I'm afraid I might owe you an apology." When I said that it inspired me to see her other films, told me, "I'm glad of that. But I hope you've forgotten about it...I certainly have."

As much as I wanted to bring the subject up again over the next few months (I wanted to know what everyone wants to know when they see this movie, "What possessed you?"), I nevertheless erred on the side of caution and kept my mouth shut on the topic. It felt like the polite and professional thing to do, but it certainly did nothing for satisfying my film-geek curiosity.

The reviews are in!

Copyright © Ken Anderson    2009 - 2013

LORD LOVE A DUCK 1966

Amongst the glut of socially satirical black comedies that came out of Hollywood in the post-Kennedy years, Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove (1963) has the respect, and Tony Richardson’s The Loved One has the classy pedigree (a screenplay by Terry Southern and Christopher Isherwood adapted from an Evelyn Waugh novel). But the only one I find to be even remotely funny is George Axelrod’s strenuously off-beat (and unrelentingly hilarious) skewering of '60s Southern California culture Lord Love a Duck.

Thier obvious filmic merits aside, I just personally have no taste for Strangelove’s brand of paranoiac political lunacy, nor do I find much that amuses me in The Loved One’s theater of the grotesque lampooning of the Los Angeles funeral industry (although I do adore Anjanette Comer's performance and Rod Steiger’s Mr. Joyboy has to be seen to be believed). In all aspects relating both to my peculiar sense of humor and uniquely twisted world-view, Lord Love a Duck (an expression of surprised bemusement much like, “I’ll be damned!” or Fred Mertz’s exasperated, “For corn’s sake!”) hits me where I live. Choosing for its satirical targets the idiosyncrasies of '60s American pop-culture that are near and dear to my kitsch-loving heart (celebrity worship, youth culture, beach party movies, consumerism, the California school system, pop-psychiatry, religious attitudes about sex…and that's just for starters), Lord Love a Duck is virtually made-to-order for a guy of my retro-centric sensibilities. Of course, what really pays dividends when a satire is as perceptive and acerbically witty as Lord Love a Duck (adapted from a 1961 book I haven't read by Al Kine) is that you can look at it some forty-plus years later and marvel at how the jokes still hit home and maintain their relevance because people (God love 'em) really don't change all that much.

Tuesday Weld as Barbara Ann Greene

Roddy McDowall as Alan Musgrave

Ruth Gordon as Stella Bernard

Lola Albright as Marie Greene

Lord Love a Duck is a sun-baked Faustian farce about Southern California teen Barbara Ann Greene (Weld), one-time Head Cheerleader and most popular girl at Longfellow High School, now facing an uncertain future of dreaded anonymity as a senior at the ultra-modern Consolidated High. The day before school is to start, Barbara meets the mysterious Alan Musgrave (McDowall), a transfer student from Irving High School with a checkered past. Calling himself Mollymauk (the name of an albatross-like bird, a replica of which Alan has hanging from his keychain as a kind of hypnosis charm) Alan professes to have the ability to make all of Barbara’s deepest desires come true…she need only give voice to them.

"Barbara Ann. Whose deepest and most heartfelt yearnings express, with a kind of touching lyricism, the total vulgarity of our time."  
Change the name and this 47-year-old quote could apply to anyone who has ever appeared on American Idol, America's Got Talent, The Bachelor...or any reality TV show today.

As it turns out, there is indeed something awful about Alan, especially in the way he goes about (without benefit of making explicit either motivation or method) seeing to it that each and every one of Barbara Ann’s tinpot dreams come true. Unfortunately, in the grand tradition of fairy tales and aphorisms that warn “Be careful what you wish for, for you will surely get it,” Barbara Ann’s dreams consistently fail to measure up to her expectations. A lamentable realization for the not-very-bright baton-twirler, one compounded by the fact that the undisclosed “cost” of each wish (a sacrificial disaster or tragedy befalling someone in Barbara Ann's orbit) seems to escalate exponentially.

High school "fast girl" Sally Grace (the marvelous Lynn Carey, right) humiliates Barbara Ann into joining the Cashmere Sweater Club ("All you need are  twelve cashmere sweaters to join!") when she makes mocking reference to Barbara Ann's sweater being made of the moth-proof, rust-proof, fireproof chemical Acrison Silipolatex.

If at the start it looks as though the selfless Alan is but a tool to be used by the self-interested Barbara Ann to achieve her ambitions, toward the end it begins to dawn that perhaps Alan is harboring a secret agenda of his own and it's in fact Barbra Ann who's been the dupe. (Alan, like an asexual Myra Breckinridge, appears to be on some kind of personal crusade to dismantle and subvert the fabric of American culture one myth at a time.)
Lord Love a Duck not only uses its fairy-tale structure as a framework on which to hang a broad array of satirical jokes and sight gags, but as a device to dispense with anything resembling world-as-we-know-it realism. A scathing, surreal, jet-black comedy baked under a smoggy Southern California sun, Lord Love a Duck is a film I only recently discovered (thanks again, TCM!) but has fast become one my favorites.

The Devil You Say?: Mollymauk vs Pazuzu
Above, Barbara Ann signs a Faustian "pact" in cement with Alan (Mollymauk) Musgrave, a possibly Satanic character who represents himself with a drawing of a creature that looks alarmingly like the evil demon Pazuzu, replicated in poster-paint and clay by a pre-possession Linda Blair (below) in The Exorcist (1973)

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

As I commented upon in an earlier post about Peter Bogdanovich’s What’s Up, Doc?, I don’t really understand comedy well enough to know why it sometimes works and why at others, it falls flat on its face. Satire, in particular, seems a peculiarly dicey realm, given how important a role the establishment of tone and balance plays into the comedy payoff. If the world presented is too lunatic, there’s no reality in which to ground the humor and everything just comes off as silly. Lord Love a Duck wins points by giving Los Angeles and '60s pop-culture (and its already built-in absurdities) just enough rope of verisimilitude with which to hang itself. 

Lord Love a Duck's Drive-In Church (presided over by Rev. Phillip Neuhauser and his wife "Butch") spoofs the real-life Garden Grove Community Drive-In Church of former televangelist Robert Schuller (The Crystal Cathedral) which opened in Orange County in 1961.

Alan and Barbara Ann A-Go-Go
The teenage Beach Party movies of the '60s are a major target of Lord Love a Duck's scorn. The fictional titles of which don't sound very different from the real thing: Bikini Vampire, I Was a Teenage Bikini Vampire, I Married a Teenage Bikini Vampire, The Thing That Ate Bikini Beach, Cold War Bikini, Bikini Countdown, and Bikini Widow.

PERFORMANCES

Actors, both comic and dramatic, attest that comedy is infinitely harder than drama, and I’m inclined to agree. I’m guilty as the next person of devaluing good comedic performances (Gene Wilder should have won an Oscar by now), but that can’t be said of my assessment of Lord Love a Duck, a film which succeeds largely due of its very talented and funny cast. While I’m less fond of Roddy McDowall in this (during this time in his career he seemed to be giving the exact same performance from film to film) Lola Albright and especially Tuesday Weld (doing her best work EVER) are pure gold. Albright brings unexpected pathos to her role as Barbara Ann’s promiscuous, cocktail waitress mother (“Honey, you know I never go out with a married man on the first date!”). Her brief yet memorably tragi-comic performance has a heartbreaking poignancy to it.

Under less than favorable circumstances, uptight society matron Stella Bernard (Gordon) meets Marie (Albright), the alcoholic mother of potential daughter-in-law, Barbara Ann.

Long one of Hollywood’s most underrated talents—her career hampered by an I-dare-you-to take-me-seriously name and a baby doll voice—Lord Love a Duck’s happiest surprise is Tuesday Weld (not really a surprise, actually. She’s splendid in the 1974 TV-movie, Reflections ofMurder, and brilliantly ups the ante on playing maladjusted cheerleaders in 1968’s chilling Pretty Poison). Lord Love a Duck showcases Weld’s talents as a truly gifted comedienne and affords her the opportunity to show what a nuanced dramatic actress she can be when given the right material.

It's a pity that Lord Love a Duck was so ignored on release. Weld is remarkable in it. In this scene in which Barbara Ann discloses to Alan her deepest desires, she humanizes and gives depth to a character that in less talented hands would be a one-dimensional cartoon.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY
Every film that sets out to offend (as most black comedies do) needs at least one setpiece moment of sublime vulgarity. Lord Love A Duck boasts an irresistibly over-the-top shopping spree for cashmere sweaters that erupts into a father/daughter consumer orgy.The screwball/suggestive colors of the sweaters provide as many laughs as the incestuously orgasmic reactions they elicit from Barbara Ann's father: Grape Yum-Yum, Banana Beige, Lemon Meringue, Pink Put-On, Papaya Surprise, Periwinkle Pussycat, Turquoise Trouble, Midnight A-Go-Go, and Peach Put-down. At this point in the film I was aware that I liked Lord Love A Duck, but after this scene, I knew I LOVED it. This sequence is the absolute best in mainstream cinema weirdness!

The inimitably demented Max Showalter (as Howard Greene) is the more than appreciative audience for Barbara Ann's hysterical impromptu fashion show.

I could go about Lord Love a Duck's many other merits, but in the interest of space, let me call attention to the top-notch turns by Ruth Gordon, Harvey Korman, martin West, and Donald Murphy.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

Lord Love a Duck was promoted with the tagline “An act of pure aggression,” but truth in fact; it’s mostly an act of pure cantankerousness. For all its outrageousness, at its core it’s a middle-aged, middle-class diatribe by the older generation (those more amenable to the comedy styles of Alan Sherman, Ernie Kovacs, Steve Allen, or Sid Caesar) against America’s burgeoning youth movement. A movement that was swiftly rendering director/ writer George Alexelrod’s patented brand of "tired businessman" comedy (The Seven Year Itch, Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? How to Murder Your Wife) old-fashioned, if not obsolete.

1965 Playboy Playmate of the year, Jo Collins, is really a hoot as Kitten, the bored Beach Party movie starlet whose dialogue consists entirely of variations on the sole retort she has for anything said to her by producer/sugar daddy, T. Harrison Belmont: "Oh, Harry...you're such a drag!" 

Forty three years-old at the time this film was made, Axelrod was well past the age of distrust for the teenybopper set, and one can almost taste his vitriolic annoyance at what had become of his world of martinis, big bosoms, and smirky sex jokes. All of which probably accounts for why I find Lord Love a Duck to be so terribly funny. There's a really pissed-off, old fart sensibility behind it all that gives each satiric barb a particularly acrid sting not possible were the film coming from a place of affection. Or even understanding, for that matter. I guess that's something I can relate to.

If you’re among those who are of the mindset that we currently live in an age of smart phones and increasingly not-so smart  people, then the hedonistic, amoral, anti-intelligence, youth-centric world lampooned in Lord Love a Duck provides irrefutable and entertaining evidence of the fact that we didn't just arrive at this state of affairs overnight. It’s a course we've been headed on for quite some time.

"Talk to me. Just tell Mollywauk."

Copyright © Ken Anderson

EVIL UNDER THE SUN 1982

Of the many films adapted from the Hercule Poirot mystery novels of Agatha Christie, I definitely consider 1974s Murder on the Orient Express to be the most elegant, effective, and classiest of the lot (that cast!). But when it comes to which Poirot film distinguishes itself in my memory as the wittiest and the most consistently entertaining, none can hold a magnifying glass to 1982s Evil Under the Sun. Striking the perfect balance between deliberate camp and the appropriate-for-the-period sophisticated light touch of a 1930s Thin Man movie, Evil Under the Sun is an unflaggingly charming little murder mystery whose many gifts (visually, narratively, and dramatically) become even more pronounced with repeat viewings.

Peter Ustinov as Hercule Poirot

Maggie Smith as Daphne Castle

Diana Rigg as Arlena Marshall

Roddy McDowall as Rex Brewster

James Mason as Odell Gardener

Sylvia Miles as Myra Gardener

 A suitably chi-chi tone is set from the start thanks to a credits sequence comprised of Hugh Casson’s stylishly character-based watercolor sketches accompanied by sweepingly lush orchestrated arrangements of Cole Porter standards. It should be noted here that the outstanding musical score (arranged and conducted by John Lanchbery) is very nearly my favorite thing about Evil Under the Sun and practically functions as another character in the proceedings. Happily, the soundtrack album is available on iTunes.

Evil Under the Sun doesn’t deviate from the usual tried-and-true Agatha Christie setup: An assemblage of well-heeled characters with hidden agendas and interwoven alliances finding themselves circumstantially confined to a picturesque locale where a murder has taken place. The cast, budget, locale, and designated sleuth may change (either Hercule Poirot, or Jane Marple), but everything else about the Christie formula is as reliable and religiously adhered-to as the plot of a Beach Party move.

Bathing Beauty
Monsieur Poirot prepares for une baignade dans la mer

And beach parties are an apt reference, for you see, Evil Under the Sun gives us a Hercule Poirot on holiday. A working holiday in any case, as the eccentrically fastidious detective is dispatched to a tony island resort owned by former courtesan Daphne Castle (Maggie Smith) to investigate a simple insurance fraud that (of course) turns into a puzzling case of whodunit. Gathered this season for fun in the sun is a gaggle of guests, all of whom share an unpleasant past association.
There’s fey columnist Rex Brewster (McDowall); bickering and boorish theatrical producers, Myra and Odell Gardener (Sylvia Miles &James Mason); ill-matched newlyweds Christine and Patrick Redfern (Jane Birkin & Nicholas Clay); disgruntled industrialist Horace Blatt (Colin Blakely); and, most ostentatiously, abrasive Broadway star Arlena Marshall (Diana Rigg) with her new husband (Denis Quilley) and reluctant stepdaughter (Emily Hone) in tow.

Hotel proprietress Daphne Caste (Smith) and guest Sir Horace Blatt (Colin Blakely) react to yet another Poirot eccentricity

While the mystery at hand is puzzling enough, with red herrings more plentiful than pebbles on the beach; the particulars of what follows in Evil Under the Sun are of less consequence than the flair with which they are presented. Screenwriter Anthony Shaffer (Sleuth, The Wicker Man) has fashioned a delightfully witty script of clever wordplay, colorful characters, and ceaseless bitchiness.
Director Guy Hamilton, who I felt seriously botched the 1980 Miss Marple film The Mirror Crack’d, redeems himself rather stupendously with Evil Under the Sun, seizing on every opportunity for highlighting the character-based humor and conflict. His direction displays exactly the sort of zest and deftness of pacing missing from that earlier film. Granted, Hamilton is greatly assisted this time out by a cast of accomplished, largely British actors surrendering themselves to creating distinctly vivid characters while sticking to the genre's demand to remain a tightly blended ensemble piece.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

There's something I find very funny in this collection of testy and ill-tempered society folks trying in vain to relax on their vacation. In a way, each is out of their element (none more so than the seasick prone, non-athletic Poirot), and the strain shows in the All About Eve exchanges and edgy interactions.

Rex Brewster attempts to get the Gardeners to talk about their recent flop:
Rex: "Would either of you care to comment on that?"
Odell- "Why don't you go and play with yourself?"
Myra- "Excessively."
Rex - "Is coarseness a substitute for wit? I ask myself."

And if you're going to have a script crammed with catty dialog, you couldn't ask for it to be delivered by better actors than those twin masters of the articulate put-down; Diana Rigg and Maggie Smith.

Arlena- "Linda, do stop standing there like a cough-drop and say hello to Monsieur Poirot!"

Daphne- "I hope you haven't come here to practice your sleuthing games on my guests. They've all got far too many skeletons in their cupboards to join in with enthusiasm."

PERFORMANCES

The cast assembled for Evil Under the Sun is not only one of the strongest of the Agatha Christie series (it's Ustinov's second go-round as Poirot and he pretty much makes the role his own in this outing), but, stylistically speaking, it's wonderful how they all manage to be on the same page and hit the same notes throughout. The cast plays it serious enough to make the drama work, yet succeed in sustaining an air of caricature and cocktail party flippancy that is so deliciously amusing and makes Evil Under the Sun a delight from start to finish. 
Years before I became a Downton Abbey addict, I've worshiped at the altar of Maggie Smith; an actress who has always had a singular way of getting words to do her personal bidding. That she is so good is no surprise; that she upstages even the well-cured hamminess of Ustinov is miraculous. Bad girls are always good fun, and the ever-classy Diana Rigg sinks her teeth into her über-bitch role with assurance.

Nicholas Clay and Jane Birkin are excellent as a mismatched couple

I was taken by surprise by how much Sylvia Miles made me laugh. Giving an unsubtle performance to say the least, Miles is nevertheless perfectly cast as the Ugly American in a film loaded with Brits (Lauren Bacall served the same function in Murder on the Orient Express). And the pairing of this vulgarian with the genteel and distinguished James Mason is really inspired. Their scenes together smack of an urbane George an Martha, or perhaps they give a glimpse of what Lolita's Humbert Humbert's life might have been had Charlott Haze not had that nasty accident.

The happiest, biggest surprise for me is Roddy McDowall. An actor who has literally given the same one-note, non-performance in film after film for years, at last decides to create a distinguishable character, and he's marvelous. His Rex Brewster has the attitude of Rex Reed, the body language of Noel Coward, and the voice of Tallulah Bankhead. It's as if after all those years in the closet, McDowall could only let loose by playing an openly gay character in a film. He's the best I've ever seen him.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

As a movie fan who's also a fan of the male physique, I can't tell you how weary I've grown of the decades-long tradition of mainstream films always representing the heterosexual male gaze. It's a given that if a camera is going to focus on a comely face, appealing chest, desirable derriere, or long leg; those body parts will belong to a woman, and the surrogate eye of the camera, that of the male. Let's go back to the Beach Party reference made earlier. Here's an entire genre of film that never missed an opportunity to train a camera lens on a wiggling female butt or heaving bikini top, yet never considered that there were those in the audience (women, gays, guys OK with their masculinity) who might want a close-up of Frankie Avalon's behind for a change. No such luck. The heterosexual male gaze was all that counted.
When one happens to come across that rare film that keeps its female stars clothed and trades the cheesecake for beefcake, attention must be paid. My hat is off to Evil Under the Sun for providing so much memorable footage of the handsome physique of actor Nicholas Clay (a fave since Excalibur) in nothing but a barely-there swimsuit. I've seen Evil Under the Sun at least 10 times over the years. Five of those times I'm afraid were strictly so as to take another look at Nicolas Clay's ample derriere. Vive la différence!

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

There's no way to talk about Evil Under the Sun without making mention of the wryly outrageous costumes by Anthony Powell (101 Dalmatians), the only man who can design clothes with a punch line. Seemingly taking his inspiration from a Wonder Bread wrapper, Powell's whimsical creations are the physical embodiment of the arch wit and self-aware humor of the film.

Sylvia Miles sports a black & white ensemble (check the gloves!) worthy of
Cruella De Vil

I first saw Evil Under the Sun at a theater when it opened in 1982. During certain scenes the audience laughed so loud and long that you couldn't hear the dialog for long stretches. I thought the film was going to be a big hit, but it's seldom spoken of today and only rarely shows up on cable TV. As I said, it remains my favorite of the Agatha Christie films and is definitely worth discovering if you've never had the pleasure. Certainly if only to see a pre-Downton Abbey Maggie Smith continuing to lay waste to the unwary. 


THE AUTOGRAPH FILES:

I got this autograph of Maggie Smith  when she was in L.A. making "Hook"

The late actor Nicholas Clay is not very well-known, but apparently very well-liked:
 Random Ramblings,Thoughts & Fiction has a great Nicholas Clay post HERE
Another good post on Nicholas Clay can be found at Poseidon's Underworld HERE

Copyright © Ken Anderson