Last word on summer trash delights .... Before we return to the art house and more middle-brow entertainment how about another look back at some of those
trash classics reviewed here? Call them what you will: Bad Movies We
Love, The Great Bad Movies, Trash Classics or Guilty Pleasures, there is
still a whole lot of fun to be gleaned from re-running crazy flicks
like: 
MAMBO - 1954 meller set in Italy, where Shelley Winters has the hots for Silvana Mangano, who dances up a storm. Shelley runs into a truck ....
SYLVIA - Carroll Baker is the poetess investigated in this 1965 hoot by George Maharis for sleazy Peter Lawford, cue lots of cameos by Viveca Lindfors, Joanne Dru, Edmond O'Brien, Aldo Ray and a scary drag queen.
LOVE HAS MANY FACES - the best of the Lana melodramas? Lana is glazed in Acaculpo, with beach boy gigolos including Hugh O'Brien in speedos, while Ruth Roman pays for what she wants .....
A HOUSE IS NOT A HOME - Shelley again in this 64 sudser about a famous madam in 20s New York - the gals lounge around in evening dresses and make prostitution look easy
THE REVOLT OF MAMIE STOVER - Jane Russell, sensational, is the hard-boiled gal buying up wartime Hawaii, while Agnes Moorehead is the even more hard-boiled blonde madam running that cat house ..... 1956 treat.
GO NAKED IN THE WORLD - Gina Lollobrigida is another high-living working girl in this 1960 expose - but BUTTERFIELD 8 got all the kudos
THE PRODIGAL - the most hilarious of the biblicals, this 1955 one has Lana in the barely there outfits as the pagan priestess tormenting Edmund Purdom, who wrestles with a stuffed vulture, Lana takes a tumble when the slaves revolt ....
THE SINGING NUN - MGM must have thought another nun film would clean up in 1966 after Julie's success - this though is hilariously awful as Sister Debbie Reynolds plays her guitar and gives up wordly success to look after babies in Africa - see it and hoot.
WHERE LOVE HAS GONE - enjoyable tosh with Susan and Bette snarling at each other in 1964, camp probably doesn't get much better than this, with horrible fashions, no period detail and wooden male leads. More Joe Levine garbage.
VALLEY OF THE DOLLS - this knows it is trash and all the better for it, THE trash clas
sic?
those girls Barbara Parkins, Patty Duke as Neely O'Hara, Sharon Tate,
and Susan's Helen Lawson and that catfight in the ladies room ...... we
cherish every awful wonderful moment.
A QUIET PLACE IN THE COUNTRY - as I say in my review (trash label) "any film that begins with Franco Nero in his underwear tied to a chair while Vanessa Redgrave removes her panties and begins to chew his nipples can't be all bad ...." this 1969 arty euro-drek is well worth a look.
THE LOVE MACHINE - maybe the one I love to hate the most - this 1971 flick is an absolute scream: John Philip Law as the hollow heel, David Hemmings camping it up as the gay photographer (sending up BLOW-UP perhaps), Dyan Cannon yelling "fag" at everyone - more lurid trash from Jacqueline Suzann.
Of course there are also more 'guilty pleasures' I love like WALK ON THE WILD SIDE and THE CARPETBAGGERS - movies which know and wallow in their trashiness, and those delirious sudsers like Anouk's JUSTINE and Susan Hayward's STOLEN HOURS, ADA, BACK STREET, I THANK A FOOL, and Romy's awful MY LOVER MY SON, and Burton's terrible BLUEBEARD, a howler from 1972 ...
and the two I despise: THE OSCAR and the Carroll Baker HARLOW. For me there is nothing to enjoy in these, they are made with such contempt for the audience, and the would-be sleaze is laughable.
Check out the reviews and enjoy at Trash or labels on any of the above: Lana, Shelley, Susan, Debbie, Gina, Silvana, Vanessa, Franco, Anouk, Jean Sorel, Carroll Baker etc ......
No comments:
Post a Comment