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

KITTEN WITH A WHIP 1964

Ann-Margret in her 1994 memoir, “My Story”:

“My performance in ‘Kitten’ was so gritty and intense audiences were confused. They preferred me as the innocent sweetheart in ‘Birdie’ (Bye, Bye Birdie). The same problem frustrated Elvis; people didn’t want us to change.”

Not so much…

Allow me to qualify the above quotation:

“My performance in ‘Kitten’ was so gritty and intense audiences were confused”

Only if by “gritty and intense” she means “artificial and hyperactive.” 

“They preferred me as the innocent sweetheart in ‘Birdie.’”

We preferred something resembling recognizable human behavior.

“The same problem frustrated Elvis; people didn’t want us to change.”

Diversity was not exactly their strongest suit. Ann-Margret didn’t really begin acting in film until “Carnal Knowledge” in 1971. 

I’m a major, MAJOR fan of Ann-Margret. Like most people my age, the first time I ever laid eyes on her was in Bye Bye Birdie (1963). The staggeringly eye-popping image of her sashaying towards us in a skintight dress (ever-present wind machine blowing her orange mane) in a limitless blue void, singing the title song …well, it launched a thousand puberties.

In this and every subsequent film of hers in the 60s, Ann-Margret mined a paradoxically wholesome/smutty glamour of dizzyingly kinetic female hypersexuality of the sort I’ve literally never seen before or since. Bouncing about the screen in impossibly high heels, wiggling her rump, undulating her bosom, and tossing her hair about in absolute abandon; Ann-Margret was in-your-face, aggressively sexy. She was also resoundingly camp. Cross an over-the-top female impersonator with Lola Falana and Joey Heatherton on speed, and you’re still not likely to get an appreciation of the full-tilt atomic sex-bomb that was '60s-era Ann-Margret.

Energy and star quality personified, Ann-Margret, unlike the sex symbols of the 50s, wasn’t coy about her allure. Indeed, she seemed to so revel in her vivacious (voracious?) sex appeal and took so much bawdy pleasure in her own body that she never seemed to need anyone else. What man could keep up with her?  Outside of Elvis Presley in Viva Las Vegas (1964), no other male co-star ever looked like they could spend an evening with Ann-Margret and come out alive.

As much as I took delight in watching Ann-Margret on screen and on her TV specials, I have to admit that I never quite knew if she was putting us on or not. Her brand of femininity was so far out on a limb that I could never tell if this was Ann-Margret engaging in a subtle form of self-parody (like Mae West), or did she really believe in her exaggerated, tigress/vamp act?

This ambiguity is somewhat cruelly exploited in Kitten with a Whip: one of a rash of black & white, low-budget films released in the early 60s that attempted to capture the gritty neo-realism of Something Wild (1961) or UK’s The Leather Boys; but instead fell into the chasm of B-movie exploitation, exemplified by films like Who Killed Teddy Bear?(1965) and Lady in a Cage (1966). Kitten with a Whip was made in 1964, but it feels like a late '50s Mamie Van Doren castoff.

Ann-Margret as Jody Dru

John Forsythe as David Stratton

Peter Brown as Ron

Diane Sayer as Midge

Skip Ward as Buck

17 year-old Jody Dru, nee Dvorak (Ann-Margret), escapes from a girl’s detention center and seeks refuge in a darkened, apparently vacant, suburban home. Come morning, Jody discovers the residence to belong to aspiring State Senator David Stratton (Forsythe) whose estranged wife and daughter are away. Certain he’s being set up for a political scandal, Stratton decides to call the police but changes his mind after hearing Jody’s tale of abuse and neglect. Resolving instead to help her reverse her fortunes, Stratton offers Jody his assistance only to discover that there is clearly more to this voluptuous teen than meets the eye. What follows is a black comedy of errors crossed with a juvenile delinquent cautionary tale as the woodenly sincere Stratton attempts to extricate himself from the escalating mess his life becomes after crossing paths with the auburn-haired minx.

Relax and enjoy the rear-screen projection

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

With its nervously percussive, espresso bongo jazz soundtrack; Saul Bass-inspired titles; and stark, almost nourish, photography; there’s the nagging sense that Kitten with a Whip is trying to say something deep about teen disaffection in the age of The Bomb. Fortunately for us, director /screenwriter Douglas Heyes’ preference for sleaze over sermons makes certain that Stanley Kramer isn't likely to suffer any sleepless nights. 

Kitten with a Whip is an overheated, flagrantly gynophobic, suburban nightmare about middle-class normalcy turned upside-down by a bi-polar teenage sociopath in French heels. Ergo, it’s an awful lot of fun.

Everything in this film—emotions, dialog, and dramatic situations—are ratcheted up to such absurdly shrill levels that it feels like you’re watching flash cards. Nothing substantive is allowed to land and take root. Like the animated cartoon that plays in the background of one scene, Kitten with a Whip doesn’t allow for the dust to settle between explosions. As soon as one disaster is felled, a new one pops up to take its place. 

All the above would certainly disqualify this film from most people’s must-see lists, but as a fan of the brilliant Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965), I find Kitten with a Whip to be a similar thrill ride. Bad girls are always more fun, and as “Kitten” defies being taken seriously, it’s easy to sit back and wallow in its naïve lewdness. There are countless laughs to be had (some even intentional!).

Jody don't take no mess!

PERFORMANCES

Kitten with a Whip was Ann-Margret’s first “dramatic” role following her star-making turn in Bye Bye Birdie (her manager even turned down Cat Ballou for this film. He was later fired). Sandwiched between Viva Las Vegas and The Pleasure Seekers, Kitten with a Whip was to be the film to show off her range and versatility. Alas, it did anything but. 

There’s a kind of bad acting that is boring to watch and painful to subject yourself to (evident most reliably in testosterone-laden action films), but Ann-Margret’s performance in Kitten with a Whip is so electrifyingly awful, you can’t take your eyes off of her.

If there’s anything jarring about her efforts (she wins us over by being photogenic and histrionically agitated at all times) it’s that Ann-Margret trying to be “real” seems phonier than anything you've ever encountered. It’s like she’s never seen real human behavior and has no idea of how to convey emotions except in the broadest strokes possible.

Hers is a strenuous, muscular, performance that decimates everything and everyone else in the film (particularly the stupendously inexpressive and monumentally dull John Forsythe), but it’s the only life the film has. Giving it everything she’s got, Ann-Margret purrs, writhes, gnashes her teeth, pops her eyes, leers, pouts, and glowers;  all in bas-relief, indicating and telegraphing like she’s in a silent movie. She’s magnificent in a "I can't believe my eyes!" kind of way. (Ken Russell would harness Ann-Margret’s ferocity more capably in 1975s Tommy.)

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

As the film’s star, it’s only fitting that Ann-Margret is blessed with the lion’s share of Kitten with a Whip’s colorful (and comical) dialog.

 Jody: “Ooooh! Everything’s so creamy! Kill me quick, I never had it so good!”

Jody:  “How come you think you’re such a smoky something when you’re so nothing painted blue?”

Jody: “Hands off, Buster! Don’t you ever bruise me, David. God knows what I might do to you if you ever bruise me.”

Jody: “You’re gonna think I have an awfully dirty mind David, I change it so often.”

Jody: “You follow all this? You live behind walls here, man. Where I come from it’s outer space.”

Jody: “Put it down! You poke that finger at that dial, mister, and that's when I start screaming rape!"

Jody: “Look, I’m only a girl…I panic!” 

Jody's not that kind of girl

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

Folks who don’t enjoy camp humor or lack a taste for cult films with reputations built on their shortcomings, may find this post bewildering; does he hate Ann-Margret, does he like her? What gives?

As I stated from the start, I’m really pretty much mad about Ann-Margret, but I’m not one of those fans who needs to take an-all-or-nothing stance about a performer. She's developed into a phenomenal actress over the years, but some of her early performances are painful to watch. I'm the first to admit that she's outstanding in both Carnal Knowledge and Tommy...but I'm not about to let my affection for this gorgeous lady excuse embarrassments like Made in Paris or The Swinger (although its title sequence alone is worth the price of a rental). I admire Ann-Margret because she is a dynamo, a hard worker, and is genuinely, truly talented. And like Cher, she’s one of those stars whose career has spanned decades and innumerable shifts in tastes and trends. The two are such survivors they’re likely to be the only things left standing after Armageddon.

One of the things I most like about Ann-Margret is her ability to be “good” even when she’s awful. And by that, I mean I admire her commitment. She may give a bad performance in Kitten With a Whip, but you'd have to look far to find a poor performance done with such conviction. She's giving 100% and then some. The results may be artistically uneven, but when accessed by standards of professionalism, dedication, and sheer hard work, she really delivers. I can’t help but admire that... even as I’m looking at some of her acting choices and wondering “What was she thinking?”

The whiny crybabies of today who drop out of Broadway plays because they’ve eaten bad sushi,  or deliver half-assed hosting performances on Academy Awards telecasts because they disagree with the script…well, they could take a lesson.  

Oh, and for the record:  Fans didn’t stay away from Kitten with a Whip because they didn’t like seeing Ann-Margret acting bad; they stayed away because didn’t like seeing Ann-Margret acting badly.

In a review for the 1968 musical Star!, Pauline Kael observed of British stage personality, Gertrude Lawrence: "She was what drag queens want to be."
I can't think of a sentence that better encapsulates Ann-Margret's uniquely enduring charm.

...for the literal-minded.
(I swear, this is a legitimate piece of promotional artwork for the film!!)

Copyright © Ken Anderson

INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS 1978

Smart movies are hard to come by. Smart remakes…near impossible. Why?

Well, maybe it’s because Hollywood’s attitude towards remakes is built on a kind of Catch-22 logic: If a film is poorly made and flops at the boxoffice—precisely the type of film, one would assume, to best benefit from being remade—Hollywood won’t touch it. However, if a film is accomplished and financially successful (leaning towards classic-status), superfluous existence aside, Hollywood can’t seem to wait to get a crack at churning out a remake.

Wholly motivated by a studio’s desire to repeat an earlier triumph and capitalize on brand recognition without having to break a sweat, most remakes are cynical, dumbed-down affairs tricked-up with new technology and a paucity of inspiration. The lazier, more arrogant cousin of the sequel, remakes (which, by definition, presume an improvement over the original) have been responsible for some of the most painful moviegoing experiences I’ve ever had; e.g., The Stepford Wives (2004), The Haunting (1999), and The Women (2008). Just to name a few.

Yet, as if to prove the rule by exception, every now and then, when a remake is inspired by an idea rather than an accountant’s ledger, the results can be surprising, fresh, even transcendent. Such is the case with Phillip Kaufman’s shrewd and remarkably effective remake of the 1956 sci-fi/horror classic, Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

Donald Sutherland as Matthew Bennell

Brooke Adams as Elizabeth Driscoll

Jeff Goldblum as Jack Bellicec

Veronica Cartwright as Nancy Bellicec

Leonard Nimoy as Dr. David Kibner

The original Don Siegel film was a little B-movie masterpiece of paranoia and dread which, intentionally or not, tapped into America’s ambivalence to post-war conformity and anxiety over the anti-communist panic of McCarthyism. Staying true to the core story line of the original, Kaufman’s remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (a deliciously pulpy title I’m glad the remake didn't abandon) is about an invasion of plant-like organisms from space that duplicate and replace human life—sans emotions. Life continues as before, the sole casualty (and ultimate tragedy) being a loss of personality and individuality.

The timeless appeal of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (it’s been remade at least two other times) may have a lot to do with the fact that we’re a culture which clings to the notion of individuality in the abstract, yet values conformity in the concrete. Even a cursory glimpse at the “comments” section of any Internet news site reveals that tolerance for opposing points of views and ways of life is not exactly America’s strong suit. Yet that doesn’t stop each of us from harboring, deep within our democratic bosoms, the romantic belief that we honor, above all else, the individual’s right to be just that: an individual.

What's HE doing here?
Robert Duvall's unbilled cameo as an unidentified priest  suspiciously eyeing Brooke Adams
as she picks one of the flowers that figure so significantly in the plot, was appropriately mysterious
enough to seriously unsettle 1978 audiences when the film premiered

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

What makes this Invasion of the Body Snatchers such a chilling delight is how acutely, and with such perceptive wit, it captures the mood and preoccupations of a particular point and place in time, and uses it to breathe fresh life into a familiar horror tale. The late Ira Levin (with both Rosemary’s Baby and The Stepford Wives) was a master at this sort of thing: creating tension out of tapping into the core anxieties lying at the center of a shifting cultural climate.

Instead of the small town setting of the original, the 1978 film makes the most of its “Me Decade” angst and takes place in that most defiantly individualistic of American cities; San Francisco. Which is, conceptually speaking, perfection personified. Where better to rage a war against conformity than a city which prides itself on being a haven for the eccentric, the unique, and the idiosyncratic.

San Francisco's Transamerica Pyramid
Throughout the film, shots are composed that juxtapose the unique elements of San Francisco's
unique "personality" with the threat of impending dehumanization and a loss of individuality

For those too young to have experienced the '70s firsthand, Invasion of the Body Snatchers is an affectionate, but nonetheless spot-on, skewering of a certain West Coast sensibility. I was attending an arts college in San Francisco in 1978, and this film captures the feel of the time so authentically, it tweaks serious pangs of nostalgia every time I watch it. Seriously, most of the people I attended class with at The San Francisco Art Institute were like the characters played by Cartwright and Goldblum. 

The San Francisco of Invasion of The Body Snatchers is the post-"hippie movement" San Francisco when the aging, free-love crowd had to make room for the navel-gazing yuppie. It was an age of alternatives: alternative medicine, alternative religion and alternative thinking. The media was full of cults, causes, conspiracy theories, est training, and best-selling pop psychologists. Communal living and fighting for social causes was replaced by pride in ownership (restored Victorian apartments became symbols of yuppie affluence) and a reverence for privacy and personal space (as exemplified by the high-tech stereo headphones worn by the character, Geoffrey). Ecology buttons replaced peace signs, and a 1973 book titled “The Sound of Music and Plants” by Dorothy Retallck (detailing the effects of music on plant growth…a point referenced humorously in the film) was just part of a larger exaltation of urban plant life and vegetation in general.

As in all times of social realignment, unacknowledged social anxiety and unease is part of the adaptive cultural landscape. It makes sense to me that in a city as welcoming of change as San Francisco, the perceptive observer might also notice a distinct edginess and uncertainty behind the city's composed veneer of blissed-out broad-mindedness.

This barely perceptible nervousness is precisely what director Phillip Kaufman and screenwriter W.D. Richter seize on in Invasion of the Body Snatchers to provide a contemporary kick to the sci-fi, body-switching horror. The threat appears to come from deep space, but when it comes down to it, what’s most frightening about the whole body-snatching idea is the possibility that what we most cling to in an interdependent way among friends and loved ones (our individuality), is what is least valued about us from a societal perspective. 

It hardly feels unintentional that the pod people taking over San Francisco are undetectable precisely because of their behavioral similarity to the urban professionals whose infiltration had been threatening the city’s loosey goosey vibe since the early '70s. Nor are we meant to ascertain unequivocally whether or not the psychobabble of Leonard Nimoy’s paperback psychologist is pod-talk or just the new language of the New-Age.

PERFORMANCES

It always puzzles me the way so many directors of horror and suspense films overlook the obvious fact that the effectiveness of any horror film rests in whatever investment the audience has in the fate of the protagonists. Take time to flesh out the characters and there’s no telling how far an audience will go with your premise.

This is especially true with a film whose plot pivots on that intangible quality known as “humanity.” Invasion of the Body Snatchers appears to have been cast with an eye towards emphasizing the idiosyncrasies of its stars, and it makes a world of difference in how we respond to all the genre trappings of chases, close calls, and suspicious red herrings. Donald Sutherland, sporting the same curly locks from 1973's Don’t Look Now, has always been a kind of goofy, off-beat leading man. He’s not the lantern-jawed, hero type, so he comes off a believably strong, yet vulnerable enough for you never to be quite sure if he’s up to the task at hand.

 Brooke Adams is one of my favorite underrated actresses. She was among a small group of intelligent, distinctive actresses (like Geneviève Bujold) the '70s produced and then discarded when audience tastes turned to bland prettiness. Not anybody's idea of a cookie-cutter actress, Adams establishes herself and her character almost immediately. And in much the same way (and to similar effect) as Paula Prentiss' uniqueness is used in The Stepford Wives; the threat of Adams' distinctiveness being lost to flatlining conformity is made all the more acute by the casting. 

As good as Adams and Sutherland are (and Adams is amazing), the prizes have to go to Jeff Goldblum and Angela Cartwright. As just kind of couple you’d expect to find in San Francisco (they run a mud-bath establishment; he’s a poet, she’s one of those espousers of crackpot theories who nevertheless always sounds more sane than the people around her). They are a hilarious and touching pair, and I daresay that without their contribution, as excellent a film as Invasion of the Body Snatchers is, it wouldn’t soar the way it does.

And let’s not leave out Leonard Nimoy. I’ve never been a fan of Star Trek and no doubt I have a minimal awareness of his gifts as an actor, but I must say his role as the infuriatingly logical psychologist is an inspired bit of casting. Audiences were never likely to shed their image of him as Spock, so I like that the film intentionally makes use of our predisposed sense of him in a way that doesn’t intrude, but rather enhances.

A trade paper ad promoting Veronica Cartwright for Academy Award consideration

THE STUFF  OF FANTASY

Missed Opportunity or Cultural Sensitivity?

Perhaps it’s a sign of Kaufman’s good taste, but as a gay man, I find it hard to imagine how a film about human cloning set in San Francisco could resist the impulse to include a scene on Castro Street; home of the “Castro Street Clone.” For the uninitiated, The Castro is a gay district in San Francisco where (at least during the '70s) free-thinking gay men willfully abandoned all personal individuality so as to look identical to one another. Sporting identical mustaches, haircuts, clothing, and physiques, the Castro Street Clone was a city mainstay, as identifiable and generic to San Francisco as the Transamerica building. To poke fun at a subculture's need to unify by obliterating differences seems right in line with what the film sought to lampoon.

And yet, thinking back, I recall with great sadness that Invasion of the Body Snatchers was released about a month after the murder of openly-gay San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk, and the murder of Mayor George Moscone. Under these circumstances there would have been no place in the film for a reference of this nature. I might have this wrong, but I even seem to remember that a jokey line of dialog Donald Sutherland speaks to psychologist Nimoy (“The Mayor’s a patient of yours, isn’t he?”) may have been temporarily cut out of sensitivity.

In any event, it was strange watching a movie with so many scenes taking place at its City Hall. San Francisco felt like a very scary place at the time, and, as one might imagine, that tragic real-life event—auguring a mounting intolerance and conservatism in the city known for its liberalism—only made watching Invasion of the Body Snatchers an even more unsettling experience than it already was.

"It was like the whole city had changed overnight."

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

I don’t know if director Phillip Kaufman is an admirer of Roman Polanski, but Invasion of the Body Snatchers is a film I’m certain Polanski would appreciate. From the very first frames there is attention paid to establishing an atmosphere of ever-escalating paranoia and claustrophobia. Every shot contains something—whether in the foreground or distance—which supports these themes. Plants are in almost every shot, sometimes crowding the frame creating a small space of activity for the actors. There’s a brilliant sense of danger taking place beyond the confines of the story we’re witnessing. People are seen running in the distance, every window seems to have someone staring out of it. The tension grows to the point that even banal human rituals like flossing take on an ominous air (Elizabeth’s boyfriend is seen flossing in an early scene, later at a secret meeting in Union Square Donald Sutherland’s character passes a man flossing in public). 

Of course, it’s wonderful that all this ambiance is piled on and we’re left to fill in many of the blanks ourselves. The act of which engages us even further and pulls us into the story.

I've always liked how Sutherland's shattered windshield (result of a run in with disgruntled restaurant staff) never gets repaired and offers us a view of a city fractured. Reminds me of how Polanski has Jack Nicholson spend the lion's share of Chinatown with a huge bandage on his nose. Its incongruity and hint of unexpected violence is unsettling.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers has the most amusingly witty and dark screenplay. Here are just a smattering of my favorite lines:

Jack: "Of course it's a conspiracy"
Matthew: "What is?"
Jack: "Everything!"

Nancy: (recoiling from a lifesize pod replica of her husband) "Jack, don't touch it! You don't know where it's been!"

Jack: "Who are you calling?"
Matthew: "Washington."
Jack: "What...the CIA? The FBI? They're pods already!"

Nancy: "Well, why not a 'space flower'? Why do we always expect metal ships?"
Jack: "I've never expected metal ships."

After Rosemary’s Baby, which, to me, is the best horror/suspense film ever made, I have to count Invasion of the Body Snatchers as one of the most consistently scary (and fun) thrillers I’ve ever seen. It delivers as drama, black comedy, sci-fi, and horror.  

Although set in a marvelously evoked '70s San Francisco, the film is so smart that it remains a relevant nightmare-inducer even after all these years.

Today, with all the pierced, body-inked, automatons walking around with their earbuds buried in their brains, eyes trained on texting fingers, with nary a moment of eye-contact or human interaction passed between them, we might be ripe for another remake. But I think we’d better hurry up. From what I’m seeing there’s not a lot of individuality left to be fearful of losing.

Copyright © Ken Anderson

SUDDENLY, LAST SUMMER 1959

Watching Suddenly, Last Summer (adapted for the screen by Gore Vidal and Tennessee Williams from Williams'1958 play), it's hard not to think about the frequency with which homosexuality=death themes crop up in Tennessee Williams' works, and to wonder to what extent some gay artists have been subtly complicit in perpetuating damaging social perceptions of homosexuality. 

           

In 1937 New Orleans (a year necessary perhaps to emphasize the infancy of lobotomy surgery, but not at all evident in the '50s-style clothes, hairdos, and make-up on display), super-rich widow Violet Venable seeks to secure— through not-so-subtle bribery—the services of groundbreaking psychosurgeon John Cukrowicz. Her objective is to have the doctor perform a lobotomy on her beautiful niece, Catherine, who apparently went insane the previous summer after witnessing the death of Mrs. Venable's adult son, Sebastian.

Lady's Very Hungry Today
"The Venus Fly-Trap, a devouring organism aptly named for the goddess of love."

The mysterious particulars of Sebastian's death, life, and the reason behind Mrs. Venable's wish to silence her niece make up the narrative body of Suddenly, Last Summer. A film whose overarching Freudianism (intentionally or not) parallels closet homosexuality with everything from pedophilia and mother fixation to sociopathology and flesh-eating prehistoric monsters. 

Elizabeth Taylor as Catherine Holly

Katharine Hepburn as Mrs.Violet Venable

Montgomery Clift as Dr. John Cukrowicz

If Tennessee Williams' views on same-sex relations are unremittingly bleak, I suppose one can't overlook the fact that Williams (of whom nothing I've read biographically would indicate a familiarity with love or happiness to any sizable degree) was nothing if not a product of his repressed, shame-based time. Raised in that bastion of open-mindedness, the American South, Williams (1911- 1983) had his most significant commercial successes during the '40s and '50s, a time when balanced/loving depictions of homosexuality would likely have resulted in his professional ostracism, if not incarceration. It's a certainty that audiences at that time had no interest in seeing homosexuality portrayed as anything other than deviant aberration. But there's no ignoring Williams' willing participation in promoting this perspective. This despite Tennessee Williams being one of the few "out" public figures I can recall from my youth.

Expressly acknowledged queer characters appear in only a handful of this prolific playwright's body of work: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Skipper, who commits suicide); A Streetcar Named Desire (Blanche's husband Allan, also a suicide); and this, Suddenly, Last Summer (Sebastian, murdered and cannibalized). But wouldn't you know it? They're the works that have had the greatest longevity. (Tennessee Williams didn't initiate popular culture's tiresomely persistent association of homosexuality with death. In Lillian Hellman's 1934 play, The Children's Hour, a character's mere suspicion that she might be a lesbian is enough to induce her to hang herself.)

There are those who believe it's folly to look at old movies through a contemporary prism. I personally think that it's essential to keep in mind the cultural context and social time frame of films; but I also believe that all true art endures. And as such, one of the important challenges facing any creative work to which the term "art" is to be applied is its ability to withstand the critical application of changing cultural sensibilities.

Mercedes McCambridge (Giant) and Gary Raymond ( Look Back in Anger)
as Violet Venable's poor relations

 Suddenly, Last Summer (my favorite of all the films adapted from Tennessee Williams' plays) passes the test because its antipathetic attitude towards homosexuality merely mirrors the film's more prominent themes of nihilism. NOBODY in a Tennessee Williams film is ever having much fun. It goes with the territory.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

In an unfavorable review of Suddenly, Last Summer in The New York Times, critic Bosley Crowther denounced the film for its talkiness. A valid point, perhaps, for 1959. But in today's "Era of the Inarticulate," the euphuistic language of Suddenly, Last Summer is like an oasis in a desert.

"The dinosaurs are vegetarian… that's why they became extinct. They were just too gentle for their size. And then the carnivorous creatures, the ones that eat flesh...the killers… inherited the earth. But then they always do, don't they?"

"Life is a thief. Life steals everything."

"Most people's lives...what are they but trails of debris? Each day more debris, more debris. Long, long trails of debris with nothing to clean it all up but death."  

"Mr. Venable was a good man, but dull to the point of genius."

"Of course God is cruel. No, we've always known about Him. The savage face he shows to people and the fierce things he shouts. That's all we ever really see or hear of him now. Nobody seems to know why."

Sebastian's empty book of poetry

  

PERFORMANCES

My admiration for Elizabeth Taylor is well documented in the blog posts for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Reflections in a Golden Eye. The real surprise for me here is how much I was impressed by Katharine Hepburn. Never one of my favorite actresses, here all of her starchy mannerisms and stylistic affectations have been put to fine service in helping to flesh out the marvelously complex character of Violet Venable. As the domineering, cold-hearted mother who is willing to go to monstrous lengths to protect the reputation of her son, Hepburn could have easily played the brittle, icy card exclusively and her performance would still have been a marvel. What she does that really blows me away is convey, through wounded, frightened looks and a barely-perceived sense of grasping desperation; her character's achingly lonely, desolate life. In the film's final moments, when it becomes clear that the obsessive, stifling love of Mrs. Venable's life never loved her at all, her character's complete and absolute despondency is heartbreaking.

The Goddess from the Machine

Katharine Hepburn's entrance in the film has to be one of the great screen entrances of all time. Descending from the ceiling in an ornate, cage-like elevator, Mrs. Venable addresses the surgeon she has summoned to her home: 

 "The Emperor of Byzantium, when he received people in audience, had a throne which during the conversation would rise mysteriously in the air to the consternation of the visitors. But as we are living in a democracy I reverse the procedure; I don't rise, I come down."

It's very nearly my favorite moment in the film.

  

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

When I was small, I remember my older sister telling me that Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift were really the same person, and scenes and photos of them together were accomplished through split-screen special effects, like on The Patty Duke Show. For a while, I actually believed her… although now it occurs to me that I never asked which of the two was the original article.

In the three films they made together (A Place in the Sun, Raintree County, and Suddenly, Last Summer) the dark, strikingly similar beauty of Taylor and Clift always insinuated a kind of spiritual kinship between their characters. A quality used to deeply empathetic effect in Suddenly, Last Summer. When Catherine first meets the doctor, we immediately sense (as does Catherine) that there is something the two share that makes it possible for him to so quickly allay her fear and apprehension.

 It also doesn't hurt that the duality of Taylor and Clift provides subtle subtext to Mrs. Venable's frequent assertions that her son Sebastian (so taken with Catherine's exploitable beauty) would have been "charmed" by the young doctor. Although we never see the much-discussed Sebastian, Mrs. Venable is quick to note of Dr. Cukrowicz "You're very like him," and "Your eyes, so like his." 

(When informed that the word Cukrowicz is the Polish word for sugar, Mrs. Venable wastes no time in referring to the physician as Dr. Sugar; although from her tone it's impossible to ascertain if it's said in a friendly or mocking manner.)

The image of queerness Tennessee Williams presents in Suddenly, Last Summer may be grotesque to an almost preposterous degree, but I happen to like how it fits with the film's themes of duality and displacement. In this context, homosexuality is the ultimate attraction of self. As manifest by the self-loathing poet, Sebastian, the allure of the similar (similar dark beauty, similar refined tastes, similar pitiless view of humanity) is a hunger unfulfilled. Named for the martyred saint whose portrait dominates his studio, Sebastian's face is never shown, but we know his clothes perfectly fit his male cousin George, and that George (equally as dark as Dr. Cukrowicz and his sister, Catherine) looks from the back, remarkably like Sebastian.

Recurrent Imagery
Angel of Death statue first appearing in Sebastian's nightmarish garden (above) 
reappears on the hill in Cabeza de Lobo (Wolf's Head) where Sebastian meets his fate 

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

I really love the structure of Suddenly, Last Summer. On first viewing, it's a puzzlingly bizarre Freudian murder mystery that grows increasingly dark and perverse as it leisurely wends its way towards its satisfyingly astonishing payoff. On repeat visits, the enjoyment derived from Suddenly, Last Summer comes from the many fascinating existential questions the film poses about God, humanity, and the nature of evil.

People frequently look to nature and, upon witnessing the brutal dance of carnage and death in the animal world, defend its neutrality. It's the cycle of life; it can't be characterized as evil because animals only kill out of hunger and a will to survive. Throughout all of nature (plant life: the carnivorous fly-trap; animal life: Mrs. Venable's witnessing of the sea turtles devoured by carnivorous birds) unspeakable violence, brutality, and the strong feeding on the weak, is accepted as random, blameless, and part of natural law.

Witness to The God of Carnage

Suddenly, Last Summer sets forth the provocative suggestion that man is just a sophisticated, complex animal. As primitive as the plants in Sebastian's nightmare garden. The hungers that drive man may be more complex, but are they just as elemental and necessary to survival as those of any carnivorous plant or four-legged beast? If man has a base hunger for love, a fear of loneliness and a need for human physical contact... aren't the feeding of these hungers simply natural acts, no less elemental than the will to survive? Should man engage in barbaric acts of cruelty and violence to feed these needs, could it be possible that God can be looking down upon it all with the same blameless neutrality we ascribe to nature? Suddenly, Last Summer is an allegorical rumination on the disquieting interchangeably of the words "devour" and "use" for the word "love."

Suddenly, Last Summer            The Day of the Locust

That Tennessee Williams and Gore Vidal do such an eloquent job dramatizing such intriguing philosophical concepts is one reason why I'm able to (begrudgingly) overlook the patina of homophobia calcifying along the film's edges. 

But perhaps if I'm really being honest with myself, the one reason, above all others, for Suddenly, Last Summer remaining an all-time, lasting favorite-  it is the absolutely breathtaking Elizabeth Taylor

...the last of the great movie stars.

Copyright © Ken Anderson 2009 - 2012