Could it be... Madame Satan?!

One of my favorite things in life is to discover a cinematic gem that makes me ooh and aah and forget the popcorn in my lap. And courtesy of BAM's MGM Musical Festival, I was seduced by Madame Satan (1930).

Cecil B. DeMille is usually remembered for his biblical epics with lots of costumes, sets for days, and special effects that make the wrath of God plausible- and fun! So when I saw that he directed this very early sound musical romantic comedy, I was intrigued.

Madame Satan starts out like a lot of romantic comedy movies from the era. Angela (Kay Johnson) discovers her husband Bob (Reginald Denny) has a chippie named Trixie on the side (notorious I'll Cry Tomorrow songbird Lillian "Butterfingers" Roth). After Ang's maid sings her a song about fighting for love (I think that's what it was about. It was very hard to make it out through the sound snow of the old recording), she goes to Trix's sex-den to confront her.

The film becomes a clumsy bedroom farce of mistaken identities, locked doors, and women hidden under sheets. It was at this point that I thought, "Is this really a DeMille film? I haven't seen a single loincloth yet." There is none of the grandness that DeMille was legendary for- and the camerawork was basic static framing- with people literally walking into frame rather than the heavy sound camera moving. I was feeling duped. But the DeMilleness was about to begin.

Ang decides to battle for Bob's affections on Trixie's level and follows the couple to a masquerade ball being held on- wait for it- A ZEPPELIN! From this moment on, consider my mind blown. The party scene is one long bacchanal of over-the-topness.

From the decco design of the blimp, to the outlandish costumes, to the Denishawn-esque ode to electricity dance break, the rest of this movie creates a pre-Depression fantasy world that I was practically leaping from my seat to be part of.

The silly plot of Ang pretending to be a masked French seductress named Madame Satan to regain Bob's love is luckily overshadowed by the feathers, fans, and wigs of costume designer Adrian. The costumes are dreams made reality with whimsy fighting gravity at every turn. You have never seen costumes like this in your life- unless it is in another Adrian film.

DeMille's style arises with gliding tracking and point-of-view shots that make the dirigible feel like an entire world unto itself. When a thunderstorm strikes the airship the special effects are harrowing- turning what was a night of music and dancing into The Poseidon Adventure in the sky. The shots of the garishly dressed passengers leaping from the decks with parachutes are dreamlike and gorgeous with the double print technology teetering between reality and fantasy. Here is DeMille giving us the bang for our cinema buck.

There are probably lots of reasons for why this film's two parts are so disparate. Perhaps it is meant to support Ang/Madame Satan's duality and the two separate worlds of marriage and sexual freedom. Maybe DeMille was cleverly showing the limitations of the new sound film and its possibilities in the same movie. Or maybe it was just that it was only his second talkie. Whatever the reason, the second half of the film makes Madame Satan unforgettable.

BAM's tuneful festival continues this weekend with Vincente Minnelli's iconic musical Meet Me in St. Louis (1944). There's not a blimp- but there is a trolley.

Bitches with a 'W'.

For the next two weeks BAM is showing an interesting festival called Witches' Brew that features movies about our favorite necromancers. Highlights include The Blair Witch Project (1999), Suspiria (1977), The Wicker Man (1973), and Bell, Book and Candle (1958). There are also some '90's witch movies that have gained cult status for being exceedingly ridiculous- but I'd rather watch all 8 seasons of Bewitched than ten minutes of Hocus Pocus (1993).

One witch movie in particular holds a very dark and terrified place in my heart. When I was a kid, KSHB-TV Channel 41 out of Kansas City had a latenight classic horror movie show called "Creature Feature". Hosted by tongue-in-undead-cheek Crematia Mortem (Roberta Solomon), the show introduced me and my siblings to the world of cheesy horror movies like The Blob (1958), The Curse of the Werewolf (1961), and Scars of Dracula (1970). While we found ourselves laughing at most of the movies rather than hiding under the blankets, one movie haunted my young mind.

Black Sunday (1960) is an Italian horror movie directed by genre maestro Mario Bava that was originally called The Mask of Satan. It was the mask that really got under my skin- mainly because the flashbacks to the witch-burnings of the Middle Ages showed condemned witches not only burned at the stake- but masks with big spikes in the inside were hammered onto their heads. It sounded like terrible torture for people who I guess deserved it- but I'd heard that sometimes the good Christian folk of the Middle Ages burned people at the stake for crimes as awful as being left-handed. I was left-handed. And that mask looked very uncomfortable.

Fast forward to the 19th Century when lovely Katia Vajda (scream queen Barbara Steele) comes back to her ancestral home to find out that she is the reincarnation of her witch-y ancestor. The proof is in the painting hanging in the castle showing that the two look exactly alike... well except for the big puncture wounds in her ancestor's face from having a mask pounded onto her grill. There's a creepy, maze-filled castle, a zombie brother who rides around in a ghostly carriage, and Barbara Steele with pits in her face that would discourage the best Proactiv Formula.

I can't explain why this movie terrified me. Maybe it was the extreme hatred of a group of people. Burning alive wasn't enough. They had to hammer masks onto their faces. Who does that?! Maybe it was seeing those witches rise from the grave, yank those masks off their faces and work really hard to punish descendants for crimes of the past.

Maybe it was the creepy zombie brother who looked like Prince Valiant with a bad case of acne. Whatever it was, it scared the bejeesus out of me. The minute I went to sleep that night I immediately plunged into Bava's shadow-filled, badly-dubbed world and could not escape the clammy, grasping hands of those pock-marked witches. I rose screaming from my bed and ran across the house to my parents' room.

But my nightmare only intensified as I ran right into my nude mother getting ready to join my father in the shower. I can't remember ever seeing my mother naked before. I probably had- but my Freudian brain had carefully shielded me from it. Now as I tried to awaken from a terrifying dream with spiky masks and pert-breasted zombies, I stood face-to-face with my naked mother... and I screamed even louder. I ran back to my room and closed the door, shooting under my covers and rolling up into a fetal position. My mother (who thankfully had put on a bathrobe) came in to try and soothe me, but the damage had been done. I would now forever equate the naked female form with witchcraft, spiky masks, and cheap, Italian horror movies.

BAM is showing Black Sunday today. Go see it- but don't go with your mother.