Mandalay

Mandalay is a relic of Hollywood's pre-code era, back when you could get away with shit like adultery and blasphemy and abortion and drugs and theft and whoring and murder and saying things like "toilet" and "double bed."

The the Hays Code came along and you had to be punished or repent, preferably both. But, before then, we had movies like Mandalay, where our heroine lives in sin, becomes a prostitute... and continues from there.

During the 30s, Kay Francis was on the covers of all of the movie magazines, but she's relatively forgotten today.  It's too bad: While many of her films don't hold up over time, she does. Her demeanor is low-key and, if anything, she underacts, but she serves glamour like no one's business. Francis wears clothes like Dietrich or Dovima.

Not only can she make the most tricky of outfits seem like something she just threw on, she also has the grace and savoir-faire that could make a backless sequinned gown seem occasion-appropriate to a PTA meeting. I mean, it makes perfect sense that Kay Francis would pay a visit to the police station while wearing a floor-length white gown, a hat with a two-foot brim and a fan that unfurls to about a yard wide.

So, we open with Kay--here Tanya Borodoff--on a boat with Ricardo Cortez, her no-good, gun-running lover. He may look great in a white linen suit, but he's a terminal loser who can't pull off a deal. But Kay worships the ground he walks upon....

I believe it was Bessie Smith who said that there's nothing as dangerous as a man who knows how much you love him. It may not have been her words but, regardless, truer ones were never spoken. As Kay Francis is about to learn....

So Sleazebag Boyfriend takes Kay to the Jardin d' Orient nightclub in Rangoon, where he introduces her around to a variety of shady characters, including Nick, who owns the joint and the Countess, who's the resident hostess/madam, as well as some leering old guys in tuxedos. Then Sleazebag trades Kay Francis to Nick for a few cases of machine guns. That's an ammosexual for ya: Whether it's 20 grade-school kids or the woman you love, nothing's quite as important....

Kay sulks and hunger strikes, albeit in a lovely room with a gorgeous carved bed. Then the Countess gives her some wise advice..

Kay Francis decides to do precisely that, making a killer entrance into the Jardin d'Orient that lets everyone know who's the most precious piece of ass in all of Asia--fuck, perhaps the entire Eastern hemisphere...

We then get a too-brief montage of Kay Francis changing outfits, accepting gifts, drinking cocktails and playing torch songs--okay, the same torch song, over and over--on the piano for an adoring audience of men.

Kay Francis is now calling herself "Spot White" for reasons i'm unsure of--Because she always wears white? Because she's one of the few white chicks working the club? Because she's a White Russian? Because she drinks White Russians? No matter.

She gets hauled down to the police station, prompting a fantastic scene in which an utterly blase Kay Francis not only doesn't get deported, but winds up sashaying away with 10,000 of the police chief's rupees to buy herself out of the Jardin d'Orient with enough left over for a nice cabin on the next boat to Mandalay and a new wardrobe of ladylike white clothes. Kay Francis was apparently applying the "if i wear all white, i will look less trampy" philosophy long before Lana Turner in The Postman Always Rings  Twice...

Of course, as she's unpacking, she drops her framed photo of Sleazeball Boyfriend--Wait, why did she have that? I've been known to forgive a man anything (twice) but even i would give the Soviet wiped-from-history treatment to anyone who sold me into prostitution. Anyway, she cuts herself on the glass and the cabin boy runs to the bar and gets a doctor there to come look at it and, woohoo, meet cute. Well, kind of. It doesn't take long before he reveals that he's an alcoholic who once operated drunk and killed someone, so he's going off to some colony where everyone has the plague so he can do penance and probably die. She, of course, hears this and immediately wants to come with him....

“We’re two wrecked people. We need each other.”

But wait! Guess who else is on the boat? Why, Sleazeball Boyfriend, of course. He sneaks into Kay Francis' cabin, but she brushes him off. Although first she stares meaningfully at the bottle of wound cleaner or whatever the doctor left her, helpfully labeled  POISON in big letters. But then it seems Sleazeball Boyfriend disappears--having taken the bottle of POISON and fallen/jumped/was pushed off the boat. Everyone suspects Kay Francis of murder...

 

... but then they find not only Sleazeball Boyfriend's suicide note, but a note someone had sent warning him that the cops were waiting for him in Mandalay. Phew! But then Sleazeball Boyfriend returns! he just faked his own death and, well, if it almost got her arrested for murder, that's oke, toots! He's also heard how successful Kay Francis was peddling it and he has this great idea that they'll open up their own whorehouse. Then he can quit running guns and just pimp her out full-time...

... and Kay Francis thinks, "You know, everybody believes this guy is already dead." What will  Kay
Francis do?

As the great Bebe Zahara Benet once said, "I give face, face, face..." 

Mandalay is just over an hour long, which is fine by me: There's no bullshit subplots, no droning on with dialogue, no stupid twists to pad out the running time. It also seems like a film that could have starred Marlene Dietrich--white Russian adventuress who becomes queen of a Far East brothel and then avenges herself on the man who wronged her... it's kind of like Shanghai Express meets Dishonored. Hell, Mandalay even has Warner Oland white slave-ing Kay Francis two years after he attempted to do the same with Dietrich in Express. There's also more than a touch of The Shangahi Gesture here as well....

As for Kay Francis herself, she once said, "When I die, I want to be cremated so that no sign of my existence is left on this earth. I can't wait to be forgotten." Francis was always underwhelmed by fame--it seems she never really intended to be an actress but, sort of wandered into it on a combination of beauty, style and being in the right place at the right time. Francis' interests were chiefly men, booze and travel and she saw movie stardom as a way to get away with it--not unlike those two other legendary existential beauties, Ava Gardner or Louise Brooks. While she may not be quite as iconic as those ladies, Kay Francis is still worth another look...

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.

The Naked Kiss

 The Naked Kiss grabs you right away with one of the three best opening sequences in all of cinema -- the other two being Touch of Evil and Shakes the Clown. 

Yes, the legendary bald hooker beatdown. It's a doozy. And while it's over-the-top and attention-grabbing, it also sets the right tone. It tells you that The Naked Kiss is going to be very weird and also that our heroine is utterly fearless and, while her morals may be questionable, her ethics are incorruptible... 

It's an opening very typical of the film's director. Samuel Fuller may have used some of exploitation's tools, but it was always in service of a higher, idealistic message -- a stance that is something of a holdover from his early days as a tabloid crime reporter. Come for the leggy babes, explosions and fistfights; stay for the lessons about racial equality, women's rights, political corruption and social justice.

Kelly, played by Constance Towers, puts her hair back on and puts herself back together. We next see her three years later, getting off a Greyhound bus in Grantville. (This was back when people with monogrammed luggage took Greyhound buses.) Kelly is a "champagne saleswoman" now and a man quickly chats her up and samples her wares.

"Angel Foam goes down like liquid gold, and it comes on like slow dynamite.
For the man of taste... If you can afford it."

Unfortunately, said gentleman is Griff, a local cop. He has no problem with her hooking, just not in his precinct. He suggests that Kelly pack up her booze and her box and head for Del Mar Falls, "a wide open town." He even gives her a reference to the Del Mar whorehouse, Candy's, and offers to, erm, visit once she's settled there. She quotes Goethe and calls him a hypocrite. He has no idea what she's talking about on either count.

Then Kelly has some kind of Come Ta Jeezuz Moment and decides to give up hooking, rent a room from a lovable old lady and start working with disabled children. She dresses them up as pirates. It's insane. The weird dream sequences of kids running around shrieking "I have legs! I have legs!" and the surreal scene where they all sing...

Griff goes to find Kelly out at Candy's, where he knows all the girls and the Head Bitch in Charge is none other than Virginia Grey, pal of Lana Turner and  paramour of Clark Gable and a broad whose career extended from playing Little Eva in Uncle Tom's Cabin in 1927 to guesting on episodes of Love, American Style in 1973.

 

 

He doesn't find Kelly, but he does find Edy Williams (of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls) among the bon-bons. He apparently sent her to Candy's as well, after finding her in a bus station. So he's a cop, but he procures women for the whorehouse across the river. Nice.

When he does find Kelly in the little crip's ward, he is pissed. Yeah, most cops would be glad to see a hooker reform, but not this guy. I'm guessing he was supposed to get a finder's fee from Virginia Grey. And, of course, now Kelly is free to say no to him and his sorry-ass dick.

 "I'm trying your side of the fence now. Is there a law against it?
Is there anything wrong with that?"

 "You'll have a problems breaking in those little girls to walk the streets on crutches." [smack]

Kelly does eventually make it across the river, but not to work. Nope. It seems that a young nurse she works with is being lured into the world's oldest profession by Virginia Grey and Kelly. Ain't. Having. It.

She has a heart-to-heart with the lass about what hooking is really like (and it ain't Pretty Woman). Then she dresses up in her chic-est little black dress and heads out to kick ass and take names.

Meanwhile, we also meet Grant, scion of Grantville, boss of Grant Mill, benefactor of Grant Hospital, and buddy of Griff. International playboy, local philanthropist and all-around totally awesome guy. Really.

He takes a shine to Kelly and the two sit on his leopard-print sofa in his mansion, listening to Beethoven and watching home movies... not the kind you're thinking. Of Venice. Or at least the ones he shows Kelly are of Venice. I suspect there are others stashed somewhere, yet to be revealed. The man does have a leopard-print sofa, after all...

Griff wants to marry Kelly. But she hesitates, concerned about her, ah, prior career. She should be thinking more about the fact that he's a rich creep with a leopard-print sofa. And here comes the plot twist!

Having a dark past that keeps coming back to haunt her is another way in which Kelly is like one of those doomed, damaged noir heroes played by Robert Mitchum or John Garfield, especially when she says things like, "I was a broken down piece of machinery. Nothing but the buck, the bed and the bottle for the rest of my life." That's some Bukowski shit right there.

The Naked Kiss was made in 1964 and, while Kelly's maquillage, girdle and stilettoes plant her in the Kennedy era, the film, the script, and its independent, fearless, badass heroine could be moved ten years ahead to the days of Watergate without changing anything but the aesthetics. Kelly may be a whore, but she's the only person who won't sell out.

If i'm giving away less than i usually do about The Naked Kiss, it's because it's simply one of those movies that i think everyone needs to see. Let's just say that Kelly's ending is happy, although less "women's movie happy," than "hero of a western" happy. As well it should be: Kelly buys no one's bullshit. And she ain't going to sell it to us either.

Olga's Girls

Olga's Girls is a sexploitation classic that played 42nd Street back when 42nd Street had real entertainment. It's a vintage black-and-white roughie obviously shot in someone's suburban home, starring a motley assortment of B-girls and strippers. It's got writing, direction and production values that make Doris Wishman look like Steven Spielberg. The post-dubbed soundtrack features some of the most hilarious lurid-yet-deadpan narration in bad movie history and the visuals are tawdry ladies in tacky lingerie being menaced by the cartoonish sadist, Olga. "Olga's prime business was narcotics and vice."

Olga is a sort of trainer/madam/enforcer for the mob -- whatever job title goes with keeping a half-dozen junkie hookers in your basement and doling out various forms of "discipline." Whenever any of the girls gives backtalk or steals or snitches or spills tea, Olga puts on her "cape of persuasion," which is a sort of pleather hairdresser's smock and heads for the dungeon. Which is just the basement. But they've got a kitchen chair and some stuff from the toolbench in the garage -- vises, pliers, wire brushes.

Yup, I think that even may be some boxes of Christmas decorations and old rug piled up in the background.

Olga will remind underground film fans of the legendary Mary Woronov (of Chelsea Girls and  Rock n' Roll High School), who clearly nicked some of her schtick from Olga. The lead domme is played in fittingly fierce style by Audrey Campbell, an icy, imperious diva who likes putting the hurt on people. The rest of the cast are a random bunch of decal-eyed skanks with collapsing beehives and dope habits. A pimp in a navy blue suit sells her the hussies in pairs. (Olga's Girls has plenty of girl-on-girl action, both in catfight and softcore forms.) Apparently you can buy a hooker for $250. And that's not rental: That's outright ownership. Seems like a deal even at 1964 prices.

 "Last names are seldom used in the business of white slavery."

And so we begin a rather dreary round of shooting up and bondage, shooting up and bondage, shooting up and bondage. Without the narration, it would be utterly unbearable. With the narration, it's kind of funny.

 

"Susie wanted to go main line and asked Colette to give her the needle. Susie was well-liked."

"I've run other houses for prostitutes before and I've handled narcotics,
but I've never had this type of trouble before."

"It'll take a little time, but I'll teach them! Tramps, lousy tramps, every one!"

"Dope cannot be manufactured locally. It is imported, smuggled in its raw state.
The wholesalers must get their supplies from their headquarters, either in Moscow or Peking."

"She had to find out who the informer was.
The Syndicate was beginning to put pressure on her and the set-up."

"Approximately 43% of all narcotics users in the United States
are located here in New York City...."

"...the FBI is convinced beyond doubt that the spread of narcotics addiction is in line
with the spread and growth of Communism here in  New York and elsewhere in the United States. Dope addiction is on the rise and can be definitely traced to Soviet Russia and
Chinese Communist agents working underground here."

Olga's Girls is not the kind of film one actually sits down and watches. You put it on in the background for the visual weirdness, or make snarky comments about it, or go to the kitchen and shift trays of cupcakes in and out of the oven. But it is, if nothing else, an excellent example of vintage fetish and sleaze, exactly the kind of thing that made the Deuce the Deuce..