Las Vegas Schlock

Here's a link to three brief writeups on Vegas-set B-movies I did for my day job at the Vegas Seven. There's the Mamie Van Doren 50s heist flick, Guns, Girls and Gangsters. Then a piece of absolute crap from the 80s, a tale of showgirls turned mercenary commandos, Hell Squad. Finally, a little 90's indie downerdom, Speedway Junky, in which a runaway hits Vegas, gets rolled and becomes a hustler.

Want to go for the gold standard of bad movies? Enjoy a timeline of how Showgirls went from hype to flop to cult classic. Of course, if you like movies that are actually good, here's an oral history of the shooting of Casino. And, finally, you can take the Vegas movie quiz.

Daughter of Horror

I have watched a lot of movies that make no sense. However, i cannot recall one more bewildering than Daughter of Horror.

 

 A bizzarro horror-noir-expressionist-surrealist mishmosh, Daughter of Horror--also known as Dementia--is a late 50s silent film about a schizophrenic beatnik chick. It's basically one long dream sequence with a lot of jazz clubs and sweaty, creepy guys and a weird fixation on knives and cigars. It is the sole film credit of many of the people involved. That is probably a good thing.

While Daughter of Horror is a silent film, it does not lack for sound. The music is by avant-garde composer George Antheil (who also helped Hedy Lamarr invent the cellphone) with wordless melisma by Marni Nixon (who also did the vocals for Natalie Wood in West Side Story and Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady), doing an excellent impression of a Theremin. There's also a brief digression into a basement jazz club featuring Shorty Rogers and his Giants. And, occasionally, we get some truly bombastic narration courtesy of none other than Ed McMahon.

In fact, that's the first thing we get: An underexposed image of the sweaty visage of a young Ed, looming in a field of "stars" and intoning, "Let me take you into the mind of a woman who is mad! This is a place where there is no love, no hope... in the pulsing, throbbing world of the insane mind, where only nightmares are real, nightmares of the Daughter of Horror!" 

If you thought the opening of Howling II: Your Sister Is a Werewolf was a low-rent ripoff of Night of the Hunter, it has nothing on Daughter of Horror. 

Our heroine--she looks kind of like a cross between Leslie Caron and  Rachel Maddow in beat girl drag--awakens in a seedy hotel room and finds her two totem objects in a drawer: A groovy medallion necklace and an ominously large switchblade. She wanders out, past a bruised, sobbing woman, a guy being hauled away by the cops and a handful of rubberneckers. Out on the streets of Venice Beach, Beatnik Chick runs into "MYSTERIOUS STABBING"--oh, for the pre-Buzzfeed days of the totally opaque headline. The newspaper is being waved by a little person because, well, as Peter Dinklage himself once said, "The only place I've seen dwarves in dreams is in stupid movies like this! "Oh make it weird, put a dwarf in it!"

Some drunks grab, her, some guy beats up the drunks, some other guy summons her over to a car where another guy--a sort of Orson Welles and Jack Black hybrid--flashes his wallet. Beatnik Chick gets into the back of the car with him... wait? She's a hooker? A hooker in a suit and a turtleneck with no lipstick?

Beatnik Chick swings between laughing hysterically and laughing psychotically, a pattern she will continue throughout the movie. It's not that Beatnik Chick is out of fucks to give: She never had any to start with.

They go to the first of a series of nightclubs that we will wander into during the course of Daughter of Horror. It's a pretty good way to kill time: Nightclub montage. It's more interesting than the extended scenes of Beatnik Chick staring into a mirror or looking intensely at various objects or running down the street pursued by the spotlight of paranoia--or maybe it's the cops, who can tell?

Over the sound of horns and leers of the Creepy John, the over-the-top tones of Ed McMahon are heard: "The pulse of the neon lights, like a hammer at your brain! Tormenting you, haunting you! Forcing you to think, forcing you to remember your guilt, your horror!" And now we head into a flashback--well, i mean, kind of a flashback, given that this is the dream of a crazy person, so it's hard to tell. But anyway, some guy with a bodega-robbery stocking over his face leads her to a graveyard and then we see some kind of re-enactment of her childhood amidst the tombstones...

Dad smacks daughter (of horror), mom cheats on dad, dad shoots mom, daughter stabs dad. Boom.

Post-flashback, Beatnik Chick and Creepy John go to his apartment, which is in some kind of huge office building with giant stairs. He has a grand piano and a full bar but what really compels his attention is an enormous plate of greasy chicken wings. He scarfs wings, scarfs wings, scarfs wings, ignoring the increasingly agitated murderess sitting about six feet away.

Yeah, he gets his, as does any cigar-smoking man of girth who gets handsy with the Daughter of Horror. In some ways--delusional, intermittently catatonic heroine who represses shit and stabs people--Daughter of Horror is also like a D-grade proto-Repulsion. I wonder if Polanski ever saw it.

Anyway, after killing him, Beatnik Chick realizes he's grabbed her medallion as she pushed him (and his money) out of the window of his skyscraper (Take that, Ayn Rand! Emma Goldman and Diane Di Prima all the way!) She has to get it back! Thus we have the dismemberment, more faceless men, more Venice at night, more jazz club montage, more Beatnik Chick hysteria, more Ed McMahon: "The face of your first victim! Pursuing you relentlessly through your haunted dreams! Hunting you mercilessly through the twisted corridors of your tortured mind!"

Daughter of Horror is an inexplicable flick. One cannot figure out why it was made or how or by who. It's also reminiscent of the movies my college roommates used to make for their film schools--not the final project, but the projects they had to turn in a few times a year, which were inevitably underplanned and then stuffed with random surrealism and excessive portentiousness as some kind of feeble compensation. And, like here, all of the shots went on too long--when one is planning a student film or cable access TV show, one tends to be surprised at how quickly everything goes on screen. You thought something would take 90 seconds, it takes 30. If you're a pro, you know that already and plan, or you find a way to make something happen for that 90 seconds. If not, you just let that damn shot drag on three times as long as it should.

Still, there is something to be said for Daughter of Horror's unique brand of insanity and bargain-basement surrealism. It would make a fine TV backdrop for any Halloween party--actually, it's the film the teenagers were watching in the original version of The Blob when the blob invaded the movie theater. It's a B-movie's B-movie: That should tell you something about Daughter of Horror.

Attack of the 50 Foot Woman

Yeah, you'd figure I'd dig this one.

Attack of the 50 Foot Woman. Made in a week for something in the neighborhood of 70 grand. Yea and verily, it is a high example of 50s drive-in camp.

We open with a guy sitting at a desk doing a "newscast" for KRKR TV-- you know you're in good hands when a movie opens with someone talking at a desk, whether it be a fake newscaster or clap doctor or priest or Criswell. He talks about a "strange red fireball" seen in the sky. And where there are strange red fireballs, giant bald aliens cannot be far behind...

Cut to a honky tonk where couples are dancing to the jukebox and a guy is cuddling with a chick in spaghetti straps. Within about 60 seconds we find out she is not his wife, his wife drinks too much and has been "in the nuthouse" and girlfriend wants to help drive wife back into nuthouse or whack her, whatever because, as he says, wife is rich and "Community property only works for women, baby." Well, fuck you Mr. MRA. And fuck you too, Boo Boo Kitty.

 

Cut to next scene. A woman is driving a convertible through the desert, she stops and starts screaming. Then a giant hairy "hand" reaches down and menaces her, she gets out of the car, screams more, flees.

She runs back, informs the sheriff, who rounds up some deputies to go half-heartedly look in the desert for the giant hairy hand. "As long as she's paying most of the taxes around here, we play along with her." 

So, everyone knows and snickers about Honey--no, really, that's her name--except the woman whose husband and money she's using. As was once said in another film, "They're all gonna laugh at you!" And we know how that turned out...

"Go back to Tony's and that broad you were with."

"Now, you pulled a boner tonight and you know it... You're gonna flip your lid one too many times."

"You're gonna flirt with another woman one too many times." 

She calls him a gigolo and a parasite and, geez, if that's all he is, he ought to be a damn sight better looking.

A psychiatrist tells Harry The Ugly Gigolo that Rich Crazy Wife might be going nuts again because she swears she saw "a satellite" and a "thirty-foot giant." Rich Crazy Wife comes down in a crazy outfit (That probably cost a lot of money. I think it's from Etro.) On the TV, a newscaster is making snarky comments about Rich Crazy Wife being, well, a rich crazy wife. At her insistence, they all go out into the desert to look for it. The giant reappears and Ugly Gigolo runs away screaming, as Rich Crazy Wife is picked up and carried off screaming.

Sheriff and scientist go out into the desert to see if they can find proof that something is actually happening, because i guess the fact that Nancy--let's call Rich Crazy Wife by her name, however briefly--was found on an inaccessible roof and is now radioactive and glowing isn't proof enough that some shit has gone down. (But does it qualify as legitimate rape?) They find an alien spaceship full of peculiar objects. Well, actually it's more like a shack with some tinfoil and magnifying glasses in it, but anyway...

Meanwhile, back at the house, a pair of doctors talk about how Nancy was okay until she got married. Then, as one says, "When women reach a certain age, mother nature sometimes overworks their frustrations to the point of irrationalism." No, because the fact that she married a lying, cheating, whoring, money-sucking, trying-to-convince-you-you're-crazy husband had nothing to do with it. Jesus, people, even if you're not going to respect a woman, can't you at least respect a 50 Foot Woman?

Nancy keeps hollering for Ugly Gigolo, Ugly Gigolo refuses to leave the bar and Boo Boo Kitty. They keep shooting her up with massive downs to keep her quiet. "Tell the nurse: More morphine!" (Because, really, nothing soothes heartbreak like opiates. It's the one damn realistic thing in this flick.) But, eventually, chains can no longer bind her and, to quote Freddie Mercury, she's "got to break free."

"I know where my husband is! He's with that woman! I'll find him!"

Oh, yes, motherfuckers: It's ass-kicking time. And so the 50 Foot Woman sets off toward town and the sleazy motel/roadhouse to do some stomping and squashing.

Unspoiler alert: At no point does she go-go Godzilla on a freeway full of cars as depicted in the poster. She mostly just walks around the desert. Geez, it's not that hard to build a small city and lots of fun to stomp it...

"She'll tear up the whole town until she finds Harry!"

"Yeah, and then she'll tear up Harry!"

And what of it? Either way, Harry suffers the vengeance of the woman he has totally fucked over and attempted to murder; the only difference is whether a bunch of innocent people buy it first. This seems like a no-brainer to me but, of course, what do i know? Maybe the schmuck sheriff envies his PUA ass.

She hauls him away, as he implores her to put him down and "Kill Honey!" instead. Yeah, nice guy, willing to give up anyone to save his own worthless ass. Totally see why you're sacrificing the whole town for him. Did he fuck you too?

Attack of the 50 Foot Woman is cheap and ridiculous, barely two steps above Ed Wood territory. But it has stuck around, getting remakes and revisions, as well as inspiring a fair amount of artwork and a surprising number of fashion photo shoots. It's a ridiculous movie, but it's short and has its own cheap-ass charm. Maybe it's something about all of those giant paper-mache hands...

The Damned Don't Cry!

The antihero may be a modern icon, but long before we had Tony Soprano, Walter White or Don Draper, we had Joan Crawford. Sure, she was ostensibly Lane Bellamy, Jenny Stewart or Myra Hudson but, really, she was Joan Fucking Crawford. She became the star of a series of Cinderella stories where there's no fairy godmother, just Joan being her own wicked witch, magicking herself from downtrodden to divadom. The Damned Don't Cry! is one such tale.

The criminal milieu and hardboiled characters also place it at the edge of noir, while the rags-to-riches, plain-to-fancy plant it as a classic women's picture. The Damned Don't Cry! contains many classic Crawford tropes, from the opening ditching of the small town to the noble self-sacrificing finale. In between, there's plenty of what you go to Joan Crawford for: Modeling designer fashions, dining in fancy restaurants, laughing at threats and, more than anything, slapping people around and telling motherfuckers off.

So, we open with a body being dumped in the desert. It's the corpse of George Castleman, an infamous gangster. When the police visit his stunning mid-century home, they find a series of home movies of "the fabulous woman who chose to call herself Lorna Hansen Forbes."

They go to her stunning mid-century home and find a large bloodstain on the carpet but no Lorna. It seems she is the "widow of Wyoming oil magnate, Denver socialite, Texas heiress" or... something. It begins to occur to everyone that they actually have no idea who she is or where she came from.

But the lady and her mink are driving to a shack in the middle of nowhere, where she is angrily received by some hostile old people who live their lives in an intense state of chiaroscuro. "Darling of cafe society" Lorna Hansen Forbes is really slag from nowheresville Ethel Whitehead and it's flashback time. Crawford puts up with her backwater town and worthless husband, her cramped house and her mean dad, but when her little boy gets run over by a truck, well, there ain't no point in staying. And so, the trademark Joan Crawford "I'm blowing this burg" moment comes...

(Hey, at least she gets out, Bette Davis spends all of Beyond the Forest being far more vicious than Joan and she never gets beyond the train station.)

Anyway, Joan heads for the big city, turns down a job as a maid, gets a gig at a cigar stand, flashes the seams in her nylons and winds up with one of those Garment District fashion house dress-modeling gigs where you show off the necklines and the peplums and make nice with out-of-town buyers. (Think Dorothy Parker's "Big Blonde.")

But, of course, our girl is better than this. She latches onto a meek accountant and, somehow through her Joan Crawford superpowers, turns him into a well-paid accountant for the mob within about six hours. Sure, he doesn't like the idea, but if he wants a slice of Crawford, he's gotta pay up for the pie.  

But, of course, all of this is just a way for Joan Crawford to cuddle up to the head gangster, George Castleman. Like Barbara Stanwyck in Baby Face or Jean Harlow in Red-Headed Woman, our heroine sees each man as just another rung to climb.

But Castleman thinks that the lady needs a little polishing...

Maybe it's not him doing that to you. Maybe it's the hat.

Thus, he recruits an aging, addled society lady to oversee Ethel Whitehead's transformation (via a year in Paris) into the wealthy and glamorous Lorna Hansen Forbes, thrower of fabulous parties and wearer of fabulous gowns, a doll worthy of such a classy guy as himself. It's all simply fine, a stone cold gas -- until Castleman begins having issues with rival gangster, Nick Prenta, and figures that the best way to keep an eye on him his send this swank dame to the West Coast to, ah... make nice.

This is where it becomes clear that The Damned Don't Cry! is based on the saga of Virgina Hill and her relationship with Bugsy Siegel, although Hill's actual story is far more interesting than what is -- or could be -- portrayed here...

... the original was quite a dish herself...

And so Joan Crawford sets herself up in a mansion in Beverly Hills and sets her sights on landing her gangster... well, the gangster her gangster has sent her after. And so she goes to the casino and looks all over...

Of course, Nick is a cocky asshole with no class but he reeks of testosterone. (And check out that head of hair!) Lorna is at first irked, but soon hooked. She forgets about her gangster back home, forgets about the spying she's supposed to be doing and the information she's supposed to be supplying...

I'm not kidding about the glorious real estate: Frank Sinatra's Palm Springs home, Twin Palms, was used as Nick's house and doesn't Joan have a fabulous time swanning around in it...

Of course, this is the world of Joan Crawford, baby, where the good times never last, but we roll with the punches. And, well, punches are something that might happen when the first gangster finds out about the second gangster. I mean, he told you to fuck him, he didn't tell you to like it.

The Damned Don't Cry! is definitely on the post-zenith side of Joan's career (and i'm not even talking about the first or second zenith, i'm talking about after Mildred Pierce, even) but it still has a bit of that old-school flash and Joan is still 100% a movie star, if not quite still the femme fatale she once was. But, with its curious mix of low-down plot and high-class finish, The Damned Don't Cry! is entertaining enough...