Buh-Bye 2016!

I don't think I'm overstating it when I say that 2016 was a super-huge dick this year. When 2016 wasn't chopping down what felt like an inordinate amount of classic film notables like Alan Rickman, Marni Nixon, Haskell Wexler, Gene Wilder, and the double-whammy of Carrie Fisher, and Debbie Reynolds, it was busily shooting up nightclubs, and saddling us with the tacky, infantile reign of one Donald J. Trump.

Like many of you, I often find solace from the cold, hard world in the flickering of an old movie, so to insure that you start 2017 off right, here are my Top 5 Films I Saw in 2016:



The Boys in the Band (1970)

For years I had been hearing about this movie. Whether lauded or reviled, Boys is seen as a landmark in gay film history. Adapted from the stageplay, it chronicles the goings-on in a New York apartment when a group of gay friends gather together to celebrate a birthday. Like an all-gay Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, booze and pot cause the party to spiral out-of-control, and when an old friend of the host's shows up, secrets (and the host) come out.

This may not sound like much of a plot now, but in 1970, gay issues were just starting to be discussed in national forums. The Stonewall Riots of 1968 ignited a public movement and gays and lesbians were not going to be quiet anymore. Boys works so well because while that spirit of revolution is evident in the film, the underbelly of shame and masculine overcompensation are still there- reminding us that coming out of the closet is only the first step in a long march to equality and acceptance from others and ourselves.

While some have been critical of the gay stereotypes and the fetishization of gay life as tragedy portrayed in the film, (director William Friedkin would court gay controversy again in his movie Cruising (1980)), I was surprised how timely this film felt. Issues of femininity, self-loathing, and how to define gay couples are still active debates in our culture.

I've heard scathing ripostes about looks and love like the ones between Michael and Donald at many a party from people who weren't even alive when the film came out. This movie could be made today, and with a cast that would include Matt Bomer, Neil Patrick Harris, Jim Parsons, Chris Colfer, Tituss Burgess and Drew Droege, people would go see it.

The only thing absent is the haunting presence of AIDS, which wouldn't make national headlines for another ten years. Five of the original cast members would succumb to the dreaded disease, however- a bitter reminder how AIDS would shape the gay community for decades to come.

We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011)

When Tilda Swinton isn't in a fight with Maragret Cho about Asian invisibility in Hollywood, she is one of the most interesting actresses in film today. Like a more punk version of Cate Blanchett, Swinton adds beautiful complexity to her roles making us feel the emotional immediacy of her characters' dilemmas. Swinton's dilemma in Kevin is gut-wrenching and everytime some jackass commits some heinous act of barbarity in the world, I think of this film and Swinton's desperate, empty gaze.

I wrote about Kevin after recuperating from the flu, but I've never recovered from this movie.

Repulsion (1965)

If you're thinking of staying in alone this New Year's, read my review of Repulsion and get out of your apartment before the walls start sprouting arms. Roman Polanski is a master of psychological horror, and Repulsion set the stage for his later masterwork on women losing it in apartments, Rosemary's Baby (1968).

Two for the Road (1967)

New Year's is all about the passage of time, and no film handles time and our memory of it quite like Two for the Road. Many people like this movie for its refreshing leads Albert Finney and Audrey Hepburn, but I was really taken away by director Stanley Donen's editing, which made the concept of life seem so fleeting and circular. It's important in these times to remember a life is more than just this moment- so instead of dreading Trump's next tweet, read my review of Two for the Road.

Madame Satan (1930)

This New Year's I hope you have a great party full of friends and wine and little nibbly bits- but I guarantee no matter how fabulous your party, it won't compare with the dirigible masquerade party in Cecil B. DeMille's Madame Satan. I can't stop thinking of the sheer decadence and visual over-stimulation of the last half of this movie. It's like an Adrian costume collection disaster movie. What better way to ring out the old than by pushing it out of a blimp?

To all my Lance's Werthwhile readers, I wish you the most movie-filled 2017!

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.

Top 5 Camp Classics!

It's the 60th Anniversary of The Ten Commandments and TCM Big Screen Classics is celebrating by releasing the film in theaters March 20th and 23rd. I'm going to celebrate by including the movie on my Top 5 Camp Classics List!

Camp movies, it might be said, are all in the eye of the beholder. The films included can be everything from drag farce, to epic misfires, to schlocky horror. Not everyone agrees that certain films are camp, and definitions can be a little hazy. But I'm going to take a crack at it anyway.

Successful camp often comes from a film that was produced very seriously- overly so to the point that it feels like "too much." This results in films that are failing so badly at their intended reactions that we find ourselves laughing at them. For me, true camp (with the exception of genre genius John Waters) is not made on purpose. It's the product of a director and/or actors who are not aware how their film is being received by the audience. In other words, camp is one of the most rare of genres because these gems of thwarted expectations are totally accidental.

Here are my Top 5 Camp Classics:

1. The Ten Commandments (1956)

Cecil B. DeMille made EPICS! From as early as the silent era, DeMille made big budget films that included casts of thousands and massive sets- some of which were so large, they were just left in the desert where they were built. DeMille's great ability was to create films that were so extravagant, they had to be seen to be believed. The studios were happy to indulge his cinematic flamboyance because in the '50's, a DeMille film was an event that could compete with the television- the biggest threat to the movie business at that time. And there was no bigger story for DeMille to tell than the story of Moses.

DeMille pulled out all the stops. He spent $13 million dollars on the production (that's $130 mill in today's dollars), shot on location in the Sinai, and a cast a vast army of actors led by: Charlton Heston, Yul Brynner, Anne Baxter, Edward G. Robinson, Yvonne De Carlo, Nina Foch, Cedric Hardwicke, Judith Anderson, and Vincent Price.

One look at the cast, and you can see why this serious epic has become a delightful piece of high camp. It's a who's-who of scenery chewers, each one greater at hamming it up than the next. And the bible-inspired dialogue thuds deliciously off of their tongues.

"You will be king of Egypt, and I will be your footstool!"

"Where's your Moses now?"

"Oh Moses, Moses, why of all men did I fall in love with a prince of fools?"

The lines can't be delivered with a straight face- but they are- desperately so. With its eye-popping costumes, sets, and special effects, the film is like a fabulous biblical theme park- it's so ridiculously gaudy, we can't wait to ride it again and again.
The Ten Commandments was a huge hit at the box office, currently ranking 6th in all-time box office receipts (adjusted for inflation). Ironically, Hollywood wised-up and sold its movies to television, and The Ten Commandments became an Easter staple in living rooms around the country. But nothing beats watching hirsute Chuck Heston part the Red Sea on the big screen.

Oh The Ten Commandments, you stubborn, splendid, adorable fool!

2. Female Trouble (1974)

As mentioned in my intro, John Waters is one of those rare directors who makes camp films on purpose. Much of this stems from The Pope of Trash's desire to poke convention in the eye with a handheld camera. With his muse Divine (Harris Glen Milstead's mascara-ed alter ego) Waters became the king of a whole new genre of underground cinema. His first shot at filthy stardom came with 1972's Pink Flamingos where he shocked viewers with a singing a-hole (no, not Ted Nugent- an actual a-hole that lip-synced)  and Divine eating dog crap on camera. Two years later, Waters applied his special brand of perversity to the story of juvenile delinquent Dawn Davenport (Divine).

From the first moment we see Dawn tramping around the Christmas tree hollering about cha-cha heels we know this girl is no good. So it comes as no surprise that Dawn rebels against marriage and motherhood by becoming a famous murder artist. Along with Divine, Waters' cast of regulars includes Mink Stole as Divine's obnoxiously twitchy daughter Taffy, porcine Edith Massey as the loud-mouthed-crammed-into-her-costume Aunt Ida, and David Lochary and Mary Vivian Pierce as fashionista perverts The Dashers.

Waters has no interest in conforming to film standards in order to tell a story or draw us into a make-believe world. The five cent budget, dialogue improvisation, handheld camerawork, and performers who don't look or act like actors leave the audience not with the idea that we've seen a film- but the most fucked-up home movie ever made. Waters would later clean-up his filmmaking and score a mainstream hit with Hairspray (1988), but I prefer my Waters dirty.

3. Lady in a Cage (1964)

Olivia de Havilland is one of the most memorable actresses of the studio system who starred in such great films as Gone With the Wind (1939), and The Heiress (1949). But by 1964, de Havilland did what many older actresses like Bette David and Joan Crawford did to make a quick buck- she starred in a low-budget horror movie. 

Lady in a Cage starts off with a strange, Saul Bass-esque montage of images- a young black girl rolling her roller skate over a passed out drunk, a dead dog lying in the street, people necking while an evangelist preaches over the radio about an anti-Satan missile. Mrs. Cornelia Hilyard (de Havilland) lives in a house along a busy street. But the calm and quiet of her "looks bigger-on-the-inside" home screens out the noisy outside world. Corny (that's what I like to call her) broke a hip recently and now has to get around with a cane, and an elevator. Yes, you heard right, an elevator.

To go from her bedroom to the living room, Corny has to get into an elevator that feels like it takes 20 minutes to go down one floor. She doesn't mind. She takes along her transistor radio and patiently waits to descend. But today is a bad day for Corny. Her gay son who lives with her has left for the weekend to commit suicide and due to a freak accident with a garbage truck out back, the power to Corny's house is knocked out- while she's suspended over the ground floor in her elevator.

And if that isn't bad enough, a group of drug-addled hippies (led by a young and very hairy James Caan) find out she's trapped and come to rob her home and create general mayhem. The plot is ludicrous, and for a good portion of the film you have to keep yourself from screaming, "JUST JUMP!!!" at the screen- but there's de Havilland. The poise and stature of this regal lady rises above the film and endows it with a gravitas it doesn't truly deserve.

When Corny decides to fight back with a war cry of, "Welcome to the Stone Age!" you abandon all logic and go along with her. I think this film is trying to make a commentary on how the chaos of the Sixties was invading our personal lives- but you'll be too busy watching De Havilland try to knock a phone off the hook with a homemade Grab-It to care.

4. Mommie Dearest (1981)

I have a love/hate relationship with Mommie Dearest. I mean, it's the film that effectively destroyed Joan Crawford's cinematic image forever, and I can't forgive it for that. But God it's fun to watch.

Faye Dunaway stars as Joan Crawford- or at least Dunaway's version of Joan Crawford. In Dunaway's hands, Crawford becomes a glamorous gorgon- a woman who is meticulously in control of everything around her- including her image. Whether she's jogging, putting on elbow cream, or chopping down rose bushes, Dunaway uses the dramatic gestures and voice of an ACTRESS to depict Crawford. Dunaway was obsessed with this role- to the point she felt that Crawford was haunting her. The line between actress and role feels frayed, as if Dunaway didn't just play Crawford but became her.

But is this what Crawford was really like? Even Christina Crawford whose book started this whole mess announced after seeing the movie, "That's not my mother." While Crawford had major difficulty differentiating between public and private, the idea that she was Mildred Pierce behind closed doors is hard to swallow- no matter how enthralling it might be to imagine. Whether Dunaway captures the real Crawford is hardly the point, though. What she does is create a fascinating caricature that is endlessly entertaining in its rejection of reality for grand explosions of love and anger and wire hanger frustration.

This film is a perfect example of accidental camp. The film was released as a serious drama addressing child abuse. But the crowds of gay men cackling at Dunaway's every line soon made it apparent that the audience was seeing it as something else.

5. Valley of the Dolls (1967)

What could possibly happen to three, attractive young women who meet in New York on their way to fame and fortune in the entertainment biz? In the hands of writer Jacqueline Susann, plenty. Based on the wildly successful novel, the film version of Valley of the Dolls follows Anne (Barbara Parkins), Neely (Patty Duke), and Jennifer (the late Sharon Tate) as they attempt to make it in this biz we call show. Successes and failures both professional and private abound and no one makes it out without substance abuse issues.

Along the way Broadway legend Helen Lawson (played by Queen of the scenery-chewers Susan Hayward) stands as a bitchy moral compass, a survivor who turns wig catastrophes into victory laps.

Valley of the Dolls has always been over-the-top, and it is that quality that turns this cinematic soap opera into camp. Over time, the film's desire to shock its audience has only increased that campiness. The sensationalism of drug abuse, sex scandals, homosexuality, and naked pictures turns into laughs as the culture we live in now accepts these aspects of the Hollywood story as de rigeur. The recently reported re-make seems silly to me. What are these girls going to do to shock a modern audience? Get an abortion on live television... on the moon? Part of the joy of this film is the kitsch of the Sixties, that like a fine wine will continue to improve with age. There's no need to make any new bottles of it.

So those are my favorite camp films. What are yours?