Mahagony

Do you know where you're going to?

No, really, do you have a single clue?

That dress does nothing for you.

Do you know?

Seriously. Because i am completely lost here...

Ah, Mahogany, what a confused movie you are. Are you about feminism? Black empowerment? Class disparity? The perils of success? The shallowness of the fashion world? Or are you just a muddled vanity project based around Diana Ross' lust for glamour and Berry Gordy's lust for Diana Ross?

However, Mahogany opens far from the world of champagne and runways. Diana Ross lives in Chicago, specifically and pointedly in the ghetto but she loves dresses. She works as an assistant to the buyer in a department store by day and goes to design school at night. Walking home one evening, she is accosted by Lando Calrissian -- sorry, Billy Dee Williams -- a community activist.

It takes a special man to rock a turtleneck. Billy Dee Williams is that man.

Lando Calrissian hollers at Diana Ross about how she should care about gentrification through his bullhorn, she tells him to get bent. They meet again later, him still with the megaphone, her still with the attitude. She pours milk into his holler-horn, he thinks a bunch of construction workers did it, he gets into a fight, gets arrested, she bails him out with a bad check and they start dating. So that's how you get a man. And here i've been making with the cheeseburgers and the blowjobs when all i really needed to do was get a guy beaten up and arrested. Silly me. (Silly me, because i've known this for some time and i still keep doing it wrong.)

Meanwhile, Diana Ross is getting shit at design school...

... but Diana Ross ignores Tim Gunn's critique, as she is focused on becoming the sort of designer whose work will involve the words "Kabuki finale." And, of course, being Lando Calrissian's main lady, which involves going to sweet arcades (Arcades with air hockey and chandeliers!) and walking around looking at abandoned buildings and graffiti, talking about life, the universe and everything. (Add in a vodka gimlet or two and it's pretty much my dream date.)

Life seems to be rolling along until...

Hey! It's Crazy Anthony Perkins!

Crazy Anthony Perkins is a famous fashion photographer who has come to shoot clothes at the store where Diana Ross toils thanklessly for her bitch of a boss. Crazy Anthony Perkins doesn't like any of the skanks they have recruited as models and throws a big ol' famous fashion photographer hissy -- but then he sees Diana Ross and her he likes. (Sort of like Funny Face but... so not like Funny Face. Because those clothes were beautiful and Diana Ross ain't no black Audrey Hepburn. We all know that Lupita Nyong'o is black Audrey Hepburn, but that's really not relevant here...)

Then, Diana Ross and Lando Calrissian have a fight and justthen Crazy Anthony Curtis calls and invites Diana Ross to come model in Rome. 

In a rare moment of non-foolishness, she hops on that plane. Crazy Anthony Perkins' apartment has a shrine to Crystal, his last model. He even calls it "my shrine." No, couldn't possibly be any hazards in getting involved with this guy...

He then dubs Diana Ross "Mahogany" because "I give all of my creations the name of inanimate objects." (Nope, not a warning sign at all.) For towering hairdos, flowing chiffon and general ridiculousness, the "high fashion" montages in Mahogany are up there with the "Gillian Girl" commercials from Valley of the Dolls. And this is probably a good place to state that i enjoy both film for the same reason: Camp melodrama with costumes. I suppose you could also look at both movies as attempts to update the women's film for the feminist era -- updates which seemed to consist of making the career world seem even more fabulous and renouncing it even more difficult...

Naturally, Diana Ross becomes a supermodel with all the Euro-style partying down, huffing high-end dope and hanging with royalty while rocking fabulous outfits that entails. Much of the super-'70s "high fashion" was actually designed by Ross herself and, Jesus, it is terrible. Although on the scale of questionable decisions made by Berry Gordy because he was blinded by Diana Ross' magic box, it's really not that bad... compared to ignoring Marvin Gaye's career, destroying Florence Ballard and letting one of the greatest record labels of all time devolve into a train wreck. The unfortunate part is that there are some great clothes in Mahogany and Ross is stunning in them -- they're just not the ones she did. It's a little weird when the Bob Mackie designs are the restrained, classy looks in the picture.

Lando Calrissian tries to win Diana Ross back, but she is in too deep, y'all. Instead Diana fails to complete the act with Crazy Anthony Perkins, the insinuation that he's a repressed closet case who winds up hating all of his models because he can't get it up. (When you consider that Anthony Perkins actually was a homosexual by all reports, but then was happily married for twenty years to Berry Berenson, sister of supermodel Marisa Berenson --  well, weirdly appropriate.) 

 So Crazy Anthony Perkins goes really crazy and he and Diana Ross have a car accident, the most fabulous car accident since The Bad and the Beautiful. Classy Old Italian Count appears and carries Diana Ross off to his castle where not only will she recover from her injuries, but she will finally create her fashion line with his full backing. But does this make her happy?

Of course not. Diana Ross goes full diva fit, shrieking impossible demands at terrified underlings. But the runway show does come off -- you decide whether it should have or not. You can also amuse yourself by imagining the exact tone of voice Nina Garcia would use to question "the taste level" and what kind of insults Michael Kors would throw her way...

She looks like a slutty TGI Friday's hostess going to a NASA launch in Liberace's trash bag!

She's a smacked-out Ukranian shut-in wearing Merlin's bathrobe at Donna Summer's funeral!

She looks like an anorexic Sumo wrestler that went to a Bukkake party and rolled in Tang!

Amazingly, these kooky ensembles are well-received. But all Miss Ross can think of is Lando Calrissian's words: "You said they'd be left in the city under my supervision!" Whoops, sorry. Actually it was "Success ain't nothing without someone you love to share it with!" And you know what happens next...

Like so many women's movies of the past, our heroine fights tooth and nail for the career that she desires in a field she loves ... only to realize it's not nearly important as doing that special guy's laundry. And there is no way a lady can do laundry and have a career, so that paycheck, business card and self-worth that's not based solely on relationships with other people have got to go, y'all!

Actually, Mahogany is somewhat similar to Made in Paris, a '60s flick in which Ann-Margret rises to the top of the fashion world, only to give it all up for the right suburban station wagon (No, really, they drive a damn wood-paneled station wagon down the Champs-Elysees and she actually goes for it!). Except, of course, Made in Paris' ersatz Diors were way more chic than Mahogany's raised-by-wolves idea of high fashion and Ann-Margret is infinitely more endearing than Diana Ross. And more believable: Miss Ross deciding her career means nothing is about as likely as Rush Limbaugh joining the NOW and the NAACP. On the same day.

 

Oh, yes. Truly this is a woman devoid of personal ambition.

Although, upon reviewing Miss Ross' design portfolio, perhaps the lesson of Mahogany is to know when you're really, really bad at what you do and should just quit, go back to your hometown and get married... although we all know that wedded bliss with a community activist from Chicago will never lead a girl to a life of fabulous designer gowns.

Wild at Heart

Perhaps you're wondering how the work of David Lynch qualifies as the Craptacular... 

After all, Blue Velvet is amongst the finest films made by anyone, ever, classic or modern, American or foreign, indie or studio. No argument there. Eraserhead is a work of divine madness, Mulholland Drive is a haunting piece of cinema that turns on itself like a Mobius strip, Twin Peaks was the precursor of today's dark, narrative-heavy television series. Of course, there is some genuine crap in the output (Lost Highway). But Wild at Heart is Lynch's best attempt at drive-in cheese, whether he (or the jury that gave it the Palme d'Or at Cannes) knows it or not. 

And it has Nicholas Cage. The role of Sailor Ripley helped focus Cage's ass-kicking, snakeskin-wearing, pseudo-Elvis persona... for good or for ill. (Gotta love how he tells everyone that his beloved snakeskin jacket is "a symbol of my individuality and my belief in personal freedom.") I believe we can also add Wild at Heart to the (very) long list of films Quentin Tarantino has cribbed from.

So, the film opens with flames, guitars and action-movie punching sounds. We go straight to Nicholas Cage beating some guy to death in the Los Angeles Biltmore Hotel. (It says it's somewhere in the Carolinas, but i've drank at the Biltmore and stayed at the Biltmore and i know it's the goddamn Biltmore.) Since he could have stopped at the beating part and left off the "to death" and it was in front of about 100 people, he goes to prison. This distresses his girlfriend, Lula, played by Laura Dern. But it delights her mother, Marietta Fortune, played by Dern's mother Diane Ladd -- not as much as it would have delighted her if Sailor had been the loser in that battle (as was her intent), but it brings a fuschia-glossed smile to her pancaked face nonetheless.

Wild at Heart then flashes forward 22 months and 18 days when Sailor is released into the waiting arms -- and bitchin convertible -- of Lula. The two fuck and talk, the first of many rounds of fucking and talking in this film. They go to a bar where they flail around to some speed metal until Sailor stops the band to sing the Elvis ballad, "Love Me" to Lula. Then it's back to the hotel for more fucking and talking, during which the two decide to break Sailor's parole and point that convertible west.

However, Lula's mama is still pissed and figures she'll take another crack at getting Sailor whacked, sending her boyfriend Harry Dean Stanton to take care of the killin'. Like a job you send Harry Dean Stanton to do is gonna get done. The man has played many, many roles but damned few of them were fellows you'd describe as "go-getters"...

Let us also point out here that Diane Ladd has a remarkable series of wigs and pseduo-Dynasty prom dresses to aid in her demented overacting. But, of course, it's probably hard to figure out what is "too much" when you're acting in a David Lynch film.

Yeah. So that's basically your setup. Crazy young lovers on a road trip pursued by a series of weird, inexplicable villains. Like all Lynch films, Wild at Heart has plenty of odd supporting character turns. The most incredible is, of course, Crispin Glover as Cousin Dell. His narrative technically adds nothing to the story and is simply another of Lula's post-coital tales but, oh, is it bizarre. Cockroaches in underpants.'Nuff said.

Really, i kind of feel like it was stuck in when they realized Wild at Heart just wasn't weird enough. So, they cut out the torture-snuff scene and added Crispin Hellion Glover. I can tell you which one disturbs me more...

Then we have a phantasmagorcial scene of a roadside nighttime car crash with Sherilyn Fenn as a crash victim. The barrage of bad news, ugly accidents and evil mojo that our idealistic young lovers run up against is a recurring motif in this film.Another recurring motif is The Wizard of Oz, which feels a little forced, especially when we have Diane Ladd in full Wicked Witch of the West drag flying alongside Sailor and Lula's Eldorado. Be subtle, Mr. Lynch: Use the flying monkeys.

More plot-crucial, there's Willem Dafoe -- and some really ghastly prosthetic teeth -- providing another of his unhinged turns as Bobby Peru, a creep whom Sailor and Lula hang out with when they decide to strand themselves in Big Tuna, Texas.

Yep, that's a face you can trust. A face that you would have no problem with taking advice from, a face you would get drunk with, a face you would allow to fondle the mother of your child. The face of a man whose hare-brained, low-return criminal schemes you would certainly want to involve yourself in.

Is Wild at Heart a crucial entry in the David Lynch canon? Not really (although it is essential to understanding the evolution of Nicholas Cage). It's got plot holes you could run a fleet of semis through and still have room for a freight train. It's got way too much hotel-room soliloquy not not enough of the not-quite-our-planet otherworldly weirdness that characterizes Lynch's best work.

 It's oddly by-the-wayside in his filmogrpahy now, given the tumultuous reception it received at release -- though that perhaps had more to do with  Lynch's Twin Peaks-era cultural high-tide than the quality of Wild at Heart itself. But it's an entirely watchable film and perhaps the less-overtly Lynchian quality has something to do with that.

The Quick and the Dead

You gotta hand it to Sharon Stone. Right after Basic Instinct, she could have done any movie she wanted. And so she said, "Make a Clint Eastwood spaghetti western starring me as The Man With No Name and  directed by the guy who did Evil Dead." Ballsy. A flop, but ballsy. And that's why i have a soft spot for The Quick and the Dead: It's what i would have done if i were in her position.

Another thing we gotta hand to La Stone and this is something the money men could have believed in if they could have forseen it: For The Quick and the Dead, Stone insisted on Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe as her co-stars. Both were on the verge of megastardom: Leo two years from Titanic and Unca Russ five out from Gladiator. Of course, Stone's choices of leading man weren't always so ace: See Billy Baldwin and Sylvester Stallone....

So, it's the classic western setup: Small town terrorized by evil town-running dude and his gang of henchmen. Said evil town-running dude is played by Gene Hackman in a shocking piece of stunt casting. I mean, he never plays roles like that...

Anyway, HackMan -- in what i assume is an attempt to increase the local tourist trade -- hosts an annual gun battle. They've got brackets and everything. La Stone aka "The Lady" signs up, along with the usual western movie suspects: Hired gun, tubercular pistolero,Texas braggart, angry Native American, several drunks and the unwashed rapist. And here we also have DiCaprio as cocky sharpshooter "The Kid," aka HackMan's son, as well as Crowe aka "The Preacher," a former gunslinger who has seen the error of his ways.

Stone appears and immediately steals someone's gold, knocks down a saloon manager who says the only place she can get a room is at the whorehouse, tells a gambler to play with himself, tells the convict he needs a bath and is nice to the blind shoeshine boy. It is a world of ridiculous machismo and the men seem less disturbed by the fact that Stone might shoot them than that she is utterly unimpressed with their bullshit. Just stands there, mutely appraising your sorry ass and finding you seriously wanting.

When they won't let her in the contest, she manages to simultaneously show off her pistol skills and save Crowe from a barroom lynching, earning them both a place in the brackets. Did i mention that at one point, she smacks an obnoxious and abusive little boy in the face? Love. Huh.

Yet it's also clear  that Stone isn't quite the heartless killer she pretends to be and is, indeed, slightly overwhelmed by these cold-blooded faceoffs. There's some heavy-handed childhood flashback sequences but they only spell out what she intelligently hints at -- that her silent bravado often hides the fact that she is confused and somewhat frightened by what's going on. For example: In her first faceoff, she is initially nervous, then resolute, then shocked and then covers it all by sticking her tongue down DiCaprio's throat and running off to get shitfaced on cheap whiskey. This is actually pretty much how i lived my life in NYC in the 90s, actually...

More gunfights, more deaths, more threats greeted by mute disdain. Stone gets dressed up in ladydrag to have dinner with HackMan but inexplicably doesn't whack him when she has the chance. And she does a bit much moaning and crying and doubting, although at least she does it in private. In public, she follows the wise edict that when you don't know what to say or do, do and say nothing and let others ascribe profundity to it. (Again: What i would have done in her position.)  You can bet that unwashed rapist is gonna get his though....

As far as our co-stars, Crowe manages to carry of pacifist badass and you can imagine his agent's phone ringing off the damn hook afterward -- hey, this was the 90s, phones still had hooks and Russel Crowe was still hot. Interestingly, there apparently was a scene where he gets in on with Stone that didn't make the final cut. (I can see Stone knowing damn well that it wouldn't, but insisting on shooting it anyway. I'm surprised she even had them put film in the camera.) DiCaprio is annoying but, well, he's supposed to be.

(I have contemplated how much less DiCaprio we'd have to deal with if River Phoenix hadn't died. Both were Oscar-nominated at an early age, but Phoenix was the better actor. And i think of his Gatsby and it makes me sad: Few actors have had the gift for evoking the longing of the outsider that River Phoenix did and i believe his Gatsby would have been the rare filmic portrayal that actually adds something to the literary character. Especially if they'd gotten it fully right and had Charlize Theron as Daisy. But i digress...)

 

 The main problem with The Quick and the Dead is that it's kind of hard for the movie to go anywhere. We're stuck with a series of high-noon gunfights building up to the inevitable faceoff between HackMan and La Stone. In the meanwhile, DiCaprio is arrogant, Crowe is noble, HackMan is a fucking dick and all the other archtypes do as is expected of them.

Sam Raimi's light-yet-violent touch shows up in the propensity for people having sunlight or smoke or small shadowbox-like views seen through the bullet holes just put in them. But The Quick and the Dead could stand a bit more of his trademark goofiness. (Although Crowe does throw down some rather Ash in Evil Dead moves in the climactic gunfight.)

 Still, it's an entertaining film with a bit of humor, a few good performances and a nice twist on the genre. Johnny Guitar, Cat Ballou and Westward the Women were all feminine takes on the western, but they significantly change western conventions to accommodate the ladies: With Freudian catfighting,with the delicate-female-turned-tough plotline, with a sisterhood road movie. But in The Quick and the Dead, it's straight up classic western tropes except for the fact that it changes the gender of the mysterious stranger set on vengeance. Sometimes the small changes are the most radical of all...

Theatre of Blood

Oh, the ham of it all!

Theatre of Blood was apparently one of Vincent Price's favorites of his (over 100) movies and i can see why. It's got everything that an actor enjoys: Multiple roles, varied accents, death scenes, murders, vengeance and the opportunity to play eight Shakespearean characters, down to the makeup and the monologues. This literary twist is another factor that sets Theatre of Blood from other hack horror flicks: The use of Shakespeare adds both substance and style and the Bard is handled with wit and dignity, albeit an off-kilter variety.

Theatre of Blood is a tale of murder (and revenge) most foul. Its murders may be based on Shakespeare, but its real theatrical roots are in the Jacobean Revenge Tragedy and the Grand Guignol (Sorry, my time at NYU art school popping up there...). Like the British theatre genre of the 1500s, Theatre of Blood has a taste for bloody violence, complicated Rube Goldberg-like vengeance plots that involve family members and no one left alive onstage. With the French Guignol of the 1900s, it shares a taste for black humor, cultural references, elaborately staged deaths and no one left alive onstage. Highbrow art in a lowbrown format, mixed with comedy, horror and camp: How can we not be entertained?

Price plays Edward Kendal Sheridan Lionheart, a pompous actor who refuses to do anything but Shakespeare.  When he fails to win the Critics' Circle Award for Best Actor of the Season 1970, he commits suicide... or does he?

Lionheart is survived by his daughter, played by Diana Rigg. At the time, she was between The Avengers & On Her Majesty's Secret Service and Hedda Gabler & The Orestia. Why is she slumming here? Well the same reason as Vincent Price: Fun for an actor, disguises, Shakespeare. And, i'm sure it was also an asset to be working with Mr. Price, whom she described as "an absolutely adorable man." He was also known for making his co-stars delicious gourmet meals for on-set lunch. And then they'd go back to hamming it up...

But Edward Lionheart is not dead! He's just crazy! And he decides to inflict his revenge upon those that hath scorned him. One by one, he kills each theatre critic in the manner of  a death from a Shakespeare play: The strangling from Othello, the mass stabbing from Julius Caesar, the cook-your-children-in-a-pie-and-eat-them of Titus Andronicus, and many, many more!

Of course, being an actor, Lionheart cannot function in solitude. So he recruits about a dozen way-far-gone winos -- actually, they seem to be drinking a mixture of grape Faygo and Everclear -- who serve as cheering audience, supporting cast and production assistants, as well as the occasional henchman, factotum or Doppleganger.

He also has a less-incoherent helper, a young man tricked out in Roger Daltrey hair, Robert Redford mustache and Peter Fonda sunglasses. It's still unclear how Lionheart manages to arrange his elaborate plots, which require not only undisturbed use of an abandoned theatre, but the bankroll and connections to arrange for complete film shoots, entire fencing schools, bone-cutting saws, police vehicles and suchlike.

All of the "He's not dead!" and revenge-death-as-literary-tribute in Theatre of Blood may seem reminiscent of Price's The Abominable Dr. Phibes (made two years earlier) and indeed it is. Although this movie kills critics instead of doctors with Shakespeare plays rather than Biblical plagues. Said critics are played by nine British character actors who naturally also fall into the film's spirit of scenery-chewing. (One of them, Coral Browne, married Price after filming ended.)

 

While considered a bit of schlock in its time, Theatre of Blood has become more appreciated over the years as a great piece of camp and a tour de force for a beloved star.. The movie has been the subject of book and articles, had screenings at the British Film Institute, a stage version and, of course, action figures and coffee mugs. Always with the action figures and coffee mugs...