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And speaking of Diana Rigg, it's typical that the starlets of the British B-horror movie would end up playing fabulous soap hags.
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And so I did.
It does look like a gritty crime version of a Jacqueline Susann story, but to simply label it as "sleaze" wouldn't do this movie justice.
The movie has a great start: a beautiful intro theme, followed by Sal Mineo touching his almost naked body, a sequence that - even by today's movie standards - looks remarkably erotic, followed by an hysterical staircase moment that made me laugh out loud.
So far, so good.
I'm not a movie expert by any means, and maybe I've been reading too much into it, but I felt overwhelmed by the depiction of the American zeitgeist in the 1960s.
The perversion, corruption and desctruction of beauty that clashes with the prosperity and wholesomeness that America always seemed to have aspired.
Or maybe the glorification of that decay, or a satirical approach of that glorification...I don't know.
I wouldn't say that this a complete new concept, Grace Metalious had already confronted America with their wicked sins, but when those sins are materialized through the commercialization of the adult industry it becomes a slightly different thing.
This movie appears to pinpoint that transition period since the cop character still represents the old-school camp that deems that very industry as a sickness, an invasion of perverse aliens.
But oddly enough it made Lawrence, the predator character, more human and likeable.
Great music and dance scenes, but when Sal Mineo starts to shake his most appealing hips so well displayed in those tight pants, it kind of becomes something else.
Combined with the dialogue before that, it reminded me the old tribes in Africa and how they used to "dance the Devil out of their system".
In the chase sequence at the end of the movie I expected Sal Mineo to run into the world of Technicolor - Rocky meets Taxi Driver.
I'm probably getting facts wrong here so maybe my impression of this movie doesn't make sense at all. I can only say what this movie did to me, and I liked it very, very much.
Excellent performances throughout, something worth mentioning, I think.
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Oh, yes. It straddles that gaping psychic chasm between the (as I always phrase it) sacred pre-apocalyptic doom of the early-'60s and the unprotected post-apocalyptic doom of the late-'60s, the movie giving the viewer much more of a sense of the shabby deterioration of the inner cities in the mid-'60s (where sex shops and their wares were popping up next to Tiffany's) in a way Hollywood studio films almost never would at the time.
I love those period street montages.
And I agree that the film itself isn't "sleazy" even if the situations are, but that's the word everyone uses, be it praise or criticism, for it.
If WHO KILLED TEDDY BEAR is indeed sleazy, then it's exactly what cinema sleaze should be.
Oh, and Elaine Stritch is bitchy hoot. In other words, her usual self. (Maybe she's the "hag"!) But how did Jan "he-ate-my-dead-wife" Murray wind up in this thing?? But I guess his casual decimation fits.
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I feel I've learned more from this than from an entire season of THE DEUCE.
Yes I thought she was the one you mentioned in your earlier post, the "horror" being replaced with "abuse-disguised-as-kindness" when she tried to seduce Norah.
The scene afterwards when Norah tells her to leave is fantastic. And indeed, the "hag" vengefully accuses her of imagining things (because she didn't get what she wanted).
I "recognised" Juliet Prowse eventhough I hadn't seen her in anything else before. Does she look like another actress, from the 70s or 80s perhaps?
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Stritch, an icon, plays the boss.
I initially referred to Jan Murray as the possible "hag" (to shoe-horn this movie into this thread without having to start a brand new topic on it) but Jan is actually a guy -- the lumpy cop, Dave, who "aids" Juliet Prowse.
Does she look like Toni Tennille a wee bit, as in The Captain and?
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Hmm, I was thinking of an actress who, like Tess Harper, usually does supporting roles (grandmother, judge etc). I can see her but I don't remember her name...or is it Louise Fletcher? But she's not exacly a Juliet look-alike. Well, never mind. It's just that my first reaction was: oh, it's her!
Unless, for some bizarre reason, I remember her guest appearance in Murder She Wrote!
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Diana Dors was only 40+ when she did this, so maybe it doesn't qualify:
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I guess there are only questionable "horrors" in this 1947 noir, but there are at least two hags -- Barbara Stanwyck and Dame Judith Anderson (who naturally hate each other)!
It's pretty good. It's also Kirk Douglas' first picture.
It's pretty good. It's also Kirk Douglas' first picture.
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Not bad for a movie debut, not bad at all!
It kinda looks like the The Colbys staircase.
And now it makes perfect sense to me that Constance had killed her mother, the cold and haughty Bostonian aristocrat Eloise Waterman Colby.
Constance was in love with the beautiful but underaged prince Galen, and when his father King Sergei found out he raped her. "What you need is a real man!"
She hoped her mother would help her with the abortion, but Eloise, a devoted Catholic, was having none of it.
After a few months they travelled to Spain, and they returned with Andrew Colby's new "son". Eloise instructed Constance to treat Phillip like a brother and she was not allowed to interfere with his upbringing.
As long as Eloise was mistress of the Colby residence there was nothing Constance could do. And so she plotted a murder, together with Cecil. The death of the Colby matriarch would make his father and brother Jason weak, a perfect opportunity to muscle his way to the top of Colby Enterprises.
But Cecil betrayed the deal, got his "brother" hooked on drugs and booze, and when he told him that he was a bastard, Phillip ran away. A war in a foreign country was better than living in a glamorous and opulent vipers nest.
And I'm convinced that Sable would have found in THE COLBYS season 3. Something she could use against Jason if he would continue his relationship with Frankie.
What Sable doesn't know is that Zach has been watching her every move, so it's very possible that he is also going to discover the dastardly Colby history.
It would be the THE COLBYS' answer to "Roger Grimes". Only bigger, and better.
Flashforward to the season 3 cliffhanger: a dead body washes ashore, it's...oh my god, it's Bliss Colby! What the hell happened?
It's not Bliss, but her look-alike!
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How covid-19 happened:
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They killed teddy bear!
What a bizarre, let's-throw-everything-into-the-mix movie. The set pieces are awesome, Christopher/Hansel is a young Adam Carrington and Shelley Winters is Kate Torrance.
But with a different ending.
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WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO AUNT ALICE? (1969) with Geraldine Page and Ruth Gordon...
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Ruth Roman can.
This is such an amazing movie, it's glorious seventies pulp with a dash of perversion, and yet there's also something bittersweet about it.
I love it.
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I don't think I had ever seen Debbie Reynolds in a movie. At some point I stopped caring about the "thriller" aspect because the characters/performances were interesting enough.
Apparently, some of the lesbian-themed scenes didn't make the final cut, but sometimes it's better to use a little bit imagination.
The scenery doesn't look particularly convincing, but the interior of handsome Dennis Weaver's mansion looks fabulous (oh, and that sexy Texan accent!)
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Hm, I'm not sure if it qualifies as hag horror, but it was in the hagsploitation list of an IMDB user. It had some nice camera work but overall I think it was badly written and badly acted (Zsa Zsa was the best of the lot - go figure - but that's because she didn't get much screentime).
It was such a drag I even dozed off a few times, and when I reached the end of the movie I had already stopped caring who-had-done-what during that fateful night.
Best parts: the hawk tries to attack Susan Gordon, and also the young girl's Electra complex - but since that happened in the last few minutes they didn't have to expand on that. Very clever (but no fun).
I wonder if Fallon Carrington had said something similar after her mother had left...