Suburban Roulette

Adultery with Jiffy-pop hairdos and webbed-weave lawn chairs, all filmed on location in the subdivisions of scenic Wooddale, Illinois.

 Herschell Gordon Lewis made a lot of weird, crappy movies, but Suburban Roulette is a different kind of sordid trash -- basically, it's The Ice Storm, but thirty years earlier on a hundredth of the budget. You know as soon as screen darkness and silence give way to the montage of split-levels and a faux-Sammy Davis Jr. theme song ("Let's swap partners/Here's the game/Subur-ban rou-lette") hit the screen. It gets even better once the ultra-snarky female narration kicks in: "They do things differently in suburbia and it's the differences that make suburbia what it is. Remember: It's Monday morning -- it takes a couple days to get everybody back to the right house."

Suburban Roulette pulls into focus with the Fisher family moving to their new suburban home, in hopes that the change of scenery will do them good--or, as Mr. Fisher tells Mrs. Fisher, "No more booze for me and no more boyfriends for you!" This should always be pronounced with your only child standing directly between the two of you and looking utterly unphased by the discussion.

As you can imagine, that doesn't last long once the Fishers fall in with their neighbors, the Elstons and the Conleys. The Elstons are the real fun couple in the neighborhood: disdainful tramp "Mattress Back Margo" and her husband, leering blond stud Ron. But they've got the only pool in the subdivision and they know how to have a good time. Or, as Margo purrs to Mr. Fisher, "I'd like to invite you to our house next Saturday. I assure you we won't have hamburgers." And so the swinging begins.

Martini-fueled pool parties abound, as Ron starts banging the lacquer-haired Mrs. Fisher in unoccupied bedrooms while Mr. Fisher sweats a lot and passes the time getting wasted with self-loathing lush Fran Conley. Mrs. Conley resembles later-era drinky Judy Garland in full housewife drag, which may be why the Conley's eldest son is already a vicious little queen at age 12. He already snitches Scotch and orders the other children around in games of  "Let's play mommy and daddy... Now I've just come home from work. First you make me a drink, then you make you one."

Mrs. Fisher keeps asking Ron if he loves her. Ron is that guy who you knew was a sleaze, but who you were still attracted to, who'd smoove you and after a few poolside cocktails (or greyhounds and a record collection) you'd find yourself thinking maybe he really liked you after all... 

Afterward, the narrator smirks: "By now Bert is just sober enough to feel sorry for himself" and take a few swings at Mrs. Fisher, rant and then cry, while she pats her disarrayed beehive and rolls her eyes.

Throughout, Mattress-Back Margo hangs around suburban kitchen in showgirl outfits, wears dangling diamante earrings and Liz Taylor coiffures to backyard barbecues, sips her drink, looks bored and humps anything who comes within a three-foot radius. As she points out, "I'm sorry, sometimes my pendulum just swings the wrong way."
"But it never stops swinging, does it?"
"No. It never does."

Vickie Miles aka Allison Lousie Downe, who plays Margo, exudes jaded sexuality -- not surprising, given that her previous films included Bunny Yeager and Blaze Starr, The Beast That Killed Women and Pagan Island, as well as her leading role in Goldilocks and the Three Bares, billed as "the first nudie musical." But it is surprising that this was Downe's last acting role -- previously she had written the screenplays for Lewis' Blood Feast and his brilliant She-Devils on Wheels. A true Renaissance woman. 

This was also the last film of Tony McCabe aka Ron, who died in a car accident shortly after shooting. It's too bad: The guy had some actual talent for making crappy dialogue sound real and a sleazy, amoral character charming and attractive.

It doesn't take long for the Elstons to break out with the toy roulette wheel, the key parties, the blindfolds and begin spouse-swapping in earnest. Then we've got hangovers and a lot of people saying "I have to talk to you." Followed by "All of the beautiful dreams we had, well, they just aren't going to happen. We've got four kids to take care of and we'll never get out of debt." There's bullet bras and boxer shorts on ugly bedspreads, there's strip poker and shag rugs, there's a fistfight under the sprinklers, there's too much other trash to list here.

 Suburban Roulette closes with the title card admonition: "This story is fictitious. If you know of any resemblance to any living person, please keep your mouth shut." I. Wouldn't. Dream. Of. It.

Red Sonja

Brigitte Nielsen. To many, her name is inextricably linked with that of Flavor Flav, like Romeo and Juliet or Marty and Elayne. But back before reality TV and reality TV spinoffs, Comedy Central Roasts and Dr. Drew's rehab of death, she was in the movies. And before Flavor Flav, it was Stallone and Schwarzenegger,  Cobra and Rocky III. Nielsen's acting skills were about equivalent to your average Reagan-era model/actress, i.e. dismal -- but whomever planned her sole starring role was clever enough to realize this and made sure Brigitte spoke mostly in monosyllables and was surrounded by camp. Ladies and gentlemen, i give you Red Sonja!

Big ol' titties, a badass mullet and to see your enemies crushed before you. What else do you need?

Red Sonja, "She-Devil With a Sword" was a Conan spinoff who had her own erratic Marvel series.
Red Sonja the movie opens with a double-whammy of scrolldown exposition and voiceover narration. Sonja is living peacefully in her family cottage somewhere in eastern Europe. A marauding band arrives, led by a  brunette in designer S&M drag. They murder her family and, when the nubile young Sonja spurns the domme's advances -- spurns them so vigorously that queen winds up with a wicked facial scar -- the gang rapes her.

Sonja calls upon the goddess of vengeance and her fairy godmother appears to bestow "a sword arm that has no equal." Seriously: It's a fairy godmother. The Russkie Goddess of Vengeance is a floating, fluty-voiced apparition in tinselly white robes? I think not. These are my people and i'm pretty sure she's a giant screaming bitch in boots with a bottle of poison in one hand, a bottle of vodka in the other and a 12-inch dagger between her teeth. (Trust me: My grandfather and great uncle were from the same area of the world as Red Sonja and they delivered their last family-vengeance-driven beatdown when they were both in their seventies. Speaking of movies and my great-uncle Slim, did i ever tell you that he was a WWII hero who served in the same unit as Samuel Fuller and, hence, traces of Slim and stuff that happened to him can be found in Fuller's masterpiece, The Big Red One? But i digress...)

Cut to another redhead and a bunch of other broads wandering around the Canyon Ranch Spa in schmattes and Versace tiaras, preparing to put some kind of magical glowing rock into a trash compactor. "Oh god of gods, it has become too powerful for us. And we must destroy it before it destroys the world." And then we will all have a massage and a bodyscrub. Of course at the moment all of this is happening, a bunch of  douchetypes in spiky armor are conducting a panty raid on the Spa. ("World destroyer? I want it!" Typical.) After a brawl led by redhead, the douches finally rout the ladies and get the rock. And who's leading them but Queen Gedren -- the same kinky sadistic bitch who presided over the rape n' murder flashbacks earlier, now rocking some gold-studded bondage gear and a sort of crown/facemask combo that is fierrrrrrce!

Seriously, Lady Gaga is pissed she didn't have someone think of it first. And the queen sitting next to her on the divan is sketching it as furiously as he can. Anyway, Arnold Schwarzenegger just happens to be passing by, riding his horse, wearing a tiara and some kind of burgundy loungewear from the Siegfried & Roy Collection. Before he can say "Hey, vat are dose azzholez up to?" redhead takes a crossbow bolt to the back while escaping on the vestal temple zipline. Schwarzenegger knocks off the last few fratboys and agrees to take her to her sister -- none other than Red Sonja.

 Let me clarify here that, in the Conan spinoff, Schwarzenegger, who played Conan, is playing someone called Kalidor. To add to the oddness, evil Queen Gedren is played by Sandahl Bergman, who played Valeria, Conan's badass comrade and eventual girlfriend, in Conan the Barbarian.

Anyway, we cut to Red Sonja herself, in snakeskin bustier, kicking ass in some kind of Asian parking lot, watched by a bunch of cosplay dudes. Sonja wins the battle and just as she is choosing her mighty sword, Conan -- uh, Kalidor shows up just in time to take her to her dying sister. Sister says that Sonja must get the World-Destroyer: "The talisman has terrible powers... in thirteen days, it could destroy the world!" Sonja swears to destroy it. Con--Kalidor offers to aid her but, "I need no man's help!"

Here's where shit goes really south: The entrance of the prince and his retainer whom Sonja rescues from.... oh, does it matter? A miserable asshat of a little boy and his obsequious enabler, you want to slap them both. Every time they appear on the screen. The whole time they appear on the screen. Repeatedly. Brigitte may be wooden, but she's beautiful and seems pleasant enough. These two are a pair of tedious characters played by lousy actors. You know it's a bad gig when Arnold Schwarzenegger is the most emotive/endearing thespian on screen. Red Sonja will not surmount this problem.

On her way to the city of death or evil or darkness or whatever, she passes the Toll Road. Passing the Toll Road involves swordfighting another ginger. Said Ginger is the scruffy-beared, morbidly obese and probably relatively unhygienic leader of the Fishmen  (Wasn't Ginger and the Fishmen the name of a Merseybeat act back in the 60s? Didn't Jimmy Page play on their big single back when he was a studio guitarist for Lulu and Brenda Lee?) He's a total chauvinistic fuckwad and calls her "Wench!" a lot before he gets his. She kills him, takes his keys, but then the Fishmen turn on her. Con--Kalidor shows up just in time to rescue her by whacking a mess of Fishmen (who seem to be second-level fighters at best) and, like Willie Nelson, Red Sonja is on the road again.

She promptly comes across a bunch of RenFaire hippies trying to draw and quarter the tedious child. Which seems a little heavy-handed, even if Little Royal Shitass is the most grating filmic character since Dumb Hick Hippie in Ciao Manhattan! But, naturally, Sonja rides up and frees him -- and even though it turns out the Little Royal Shitass knows martial arts and uses them to beat up a hippie, he's still a miserable turd. Yup, that's how awful this kid is: Used kung fu to whoop a vegan in a ruffled shirt and is still not someone i wanna know.

Queen Gedren stores the talisman/glowing rock of doom in her basement, which was coincidentally also where the Police shot their "Wrapped Around Your Finger" video. Upstairs she's got a sweet throne room with hardwood and marble floors, gothic woodwork, dance floor, ultra-widescreen TV, a full bar and full-time bartender, luxury seating for one and plenty of room for both her girl toy and her pet giant spider.

Queen Gedren uses her giant TV screen not just to watch ancient barbarian porn (It is oddly like the wookie porn from The Star Wars Christmas Special -- which, just for the record, does not hold a freakshow candle to the Donny & Marie Star Wars Special.) but to watch Red Sonja, the Little Royal Shitass and the Fat Wimp make their way to her palace. She demands that a can of whoop-ass be opened, but without harming the divinely-ordained warrior bent on her death: "I want that beauty here with me. See that she is spared... I do not want a scratch on her!" Good luck.

So, time for the old "monster in the pit" trope. The difference here is that said monster is a rather awesomely steampunk sort of Mecha Loch Ness Monster -- naturally, Con--Kalidor shows up to help them battle it, the same way he's showed up to bail Red Sonja out of every battle she's in. I find this kind of offensive myself, given that she is supposedly unbeatable. The hilarious part is that they whomp away at the thing with plenty of clanging noises and grab on and ride it around but it still takes over five minutes for it to dawn on them that it's not a real lizard. Motherfucker, i saw the rivets in the first twenty seconds! Then Kalidor reveals that he is some High Lord entrusted by the gods to protect the talisman.

Cue Captain & Tennille: "Mullet Love"....

Wait! Not so fast. Miss Sonja has some dating rules: "No man may have me unless he has beaten me in a fair fight." (Yeah, i have the same rule, which is why i haven't gotten laid since the Bush administration.) So, it's time for us to take off our headbands, muss up our mullets and get to the true climactic battle of this movie -- not whether Red Sonja will save the world from destruction, but whether Conan can get into Sonja's box.

I'm an asshole! I interfere with everything!

Well, as you can imagine, Kaliconan beats Brigitte and bangs Brigitte and then we're left to hurry up and defeat evil and save the world and get this all over with. Back at Evil Disco, Queen Gedren's henchman is asking why, why, why she's still doing all of this, they have plenty of gold, they rule everything, so why destroy everything, WHY!? This is a question i would like more henchmen of evil to ask: Really, Mr. Goldfinger? How much more can you use?  Or perhaps ask Mr. Sauron why he needs all of the remaining corners of the universe. No one ever asks the evil who rules the world why it wants more.  Figures it would only happen to an evil woman, which still doesn't explain why no one's buttonholed any of the Kardashians on this issue yet.

Such faithfulness to the source material... well, except for adding all of the annoying and/or patronizing supporting characters and completely rewriting the plot to accommodate them.

Red Sonja was pretty much the high point of Brigitte Nielsen's career. After this she quickly did Rocky III and Beverly Hills Cop III, but soon she was in 976-EVIL II and Chained Heat II, along with some European televison. Then it was bad disco records and reality television and next thing she knew she was dirty dancing with a skeleton wearing a clock around its neck. However, Brigitte is still making shitty movies -- even last year she was singing "Respect" in a beauty salon in a movie titled Eldorado, about which i know little, but have heard things like "embarrassing," "train wreck" and "very, very bad." Sounds promising!

His Kind of Woman

When you think of great teams from the golden age of cinema, you may think of Loy and Powell (Who doesn't adore them?), Rogers and Astaire (Who doesn't enjoy them?), Hepburn and Tracy (neither of whom i've ever particularly liked).  But my favorite may be Robert Mitchum and Jane Russell, two actors that never seemed to give much of a damn about acting. Russell seemed perpetually bemused onscreen -- movie stardom beat the hell out of working in a chiropodist's office, but so would a lot of things. As for Mitchum, his nonchalant savoir-faire is the stuff of legend. The man rolled through freight trains, chain gangs, cowboy movies, weed busts, film noir, endless spread-thighed starlets, Calypso albums, Technicolor blockbusters, fifty-something years of marriage, international superstardom -- all this, half-asleep and completely blase.

His Kind of Woman was their first film together, a kind of screwball noir. It was made at RKO during the Howard Hughes era, back when the mogul was only slightly deranged, but he still made films according to fetish and whim -- and fetish and whim with inexhaustible financial backing can sure drag out production time. Thus, His Kind of Woman took over a year to shoot (Vincent Price apparently threw a swingin' party to mark his first anniversary of being on the set), had two directors, three villains and was stopped about five times for rewriting, recasting and/or reshooting.

It opens a bit slow, with a lot of panning back and forth across maps with droning voiceovers. (It's better than a cheesy montage, but not better than a cartoon plane moving across the big map.) and some guys in suits babbling in front of some ugly art. Then some other guys in ugly suits play cards. All of this happens in low angle shots with heavy chiaroscuro. Finally, Robert Mitchum shows up, trades quips with the diner counterman, beats up some ugly suits, passes out, wakes up, answers phone. "No, I'm not busy. I was just getting ready to take my tie off. Wondering if I should hang myself with it." Naturally, poor Mitchum is getting set up by all the suits. He's being paid off to go hide out in Mexico for a year and... well, he's not sure, but he'll take the money and head south and see what happens. Robert Mitchum is not one to fight fate. Unless it hits him first. Or insults his buddy. Or knocks over a cripple. Or slaps a dame around. But fate (or Jane Greer) totally has to make the first move...

Their meeting is exactly as it should be. Mitchum tinkles the piano while Russel preens in her compact, both feigning obliviousness while putting on a show. He offers her a drink, she announces, "I'm drinking champagne." Mitchum one-ups her by pulling out an already uncorked bottle with a wry grin. Russell one-ups him by pulling out a bottle of her own, raising an eyebrow ever-so-slightly. He shrugs, reaches for the glass, "Where's yours?" She's a singer and, uh,  socialite who just happens to be hanging around this seedy bordertown bar, waiting for a plane out of the country.

Russel was always oddly believable in these jaded woman of the world roles -- one, she seemed like she could take care of herself (Look at her: If she socked a fella in the jaw, it would hurt.) and, two, she seemed to have alternately fended off and absorbed life's slings and arrows with more humor than pathos. And whatever exotic locale you drop Jane in -- Mexico, Macao, Minneapolis -- she's always popular with the locals.

Another pan across maps, this time to Mexico to the most fabulous mid-century tropical resort ever constructed on a soundstage. We will stay at Morro's Lodge, as it is called, for much of the remainder of His Kind of Woman because, frankly, who would want to leave? It's introduced to us in a glorious tracking shot, following two blondes (Look closely! One is Mamie Van Doren back when she was still Joan Olander.) and their sugar daddy up from the beach, then losing them in the lobby, picking them up again in the bar, then losing them again on the dance floor before swinging around to catch Robert Mitchum coming in from the pool.

Everyone's wandering around in Hawaiian-print shorts and wiggle dresses, wanting to play gin rummy or go hunting or have a martini or play chess or sunbathe, surrounded by palm trees and white sands, googie prints and vertical blinds. Even Thurston Howell III himself is in the house!

Mitchum is still wondering why he's here. (So am i, when i remember to.) He skulks around the lobby, has a lot of enigmatic conversations and listens to even more. The avuncular resort host, the jolly guy in the ugly shirt, the newlywed degenerate gamblers, the misanthropic German chess master -- none are what they appear to be.

(Admire the mosaics on the pool deck.) Despite all the noir baroquery, Mitchum weirdly sticks to sipping milk and ginger ale in His Kind of Woman, odd for one of moviedom's and, indeed, humandom's greatest drinkers.
"I'm a professional gambler," he explains to one of the many persons of interest loitering around the Morro.

The response: "Who isn't?"

And, hey! Look! It's Vincent Price! Price plays movie star Mark Cardigan, sometime playmate of Jane Russell. (Yes, those are tailfins on Jane's bodice. And dig the tiki lamp over Price's shoulder.) It's a delightful performance that really powers the second half of the film, rife with with humor, a certain smarmy charm and thespian self-parody. A scene in which he watches himself in his latest hokey epic is especially droll.

We also discover that Jane Russell is no woman of wealth, but rather a lounge singer who is impersonating a member of the leisure class in order to snag a high-class husband. (Career options for women were more limited in those days, when the only way to make a nice life for yourself was to get some guy rich enough to foot the bills to wanna fuck you badly enough that he'll put a ring on it.) The lady was chasing the ham, but now that he's turned up with that wife that he told Jane was "separated" from (like they do), she's rethinking going back to the piano bars and possibly...

....Oh yeah, gurrrrl, i'd be seriously thinking about it too. Anyway, Mitchum is still hanging about amidst the foliage and parabolas, flirting with Russell, smirking at Price, trying to figure out what he's doing South of the Border for this five grand. Eventually he hooks up with some FBI or CIA or IRS agents who are trying to catch the mobster who is trying to steal Mitchum's identity (Aha!) but as soon as that can happen, one of 'em gets whacked and then it's on! Mitch and Price wind up in a beachside shootout with the bad guys -- hack actor Price keeps forgetting he's not in one of his movies, meaning he's alternately impressively cool and totally ridiculous.

Here is where the plot of His Kind of Woman goes completely two-faced. Mitchum bum rushes the mobster's yacht and is quickly overpowered and winds up subject to a series of particularly fetishy tortures at the hands of (identity-thieving mobster) Raymond Burr and chess Nazi and a half-dozen burly muscleman types. (Apparently this series of steam blasting, goon-beating and experimental drug-injecting was one of the things Hughes fixated upon and kept doing and redoing over and over. Makes ya wonder....)

But in the meantime, Vincent Price mounts a slapstick rescue attempt, spouting Shakespeare as a group of bewildered Federales try frantically to row their sinking boat. About the only believable moment is that Price only keeps Russell from joining the effort by tricking her into getting locked in a closet -- because you know she's not the kind of dame to wait around at home and hope for the best.

Eventually Mitchum kicks the shit out of all the villains (Not unrealistic: After over a year of shooting and endless retakes of getting punched in the gut, Mitchum finally snapped one night and completely destroyed the set.) after Price and posse provide a diversion. Evil is dispatched and Bob and Jane are reunited for some final cynical repartee before the final clinch -- she pours the champagne, he irons out the few dollar bills they have between them....

Mitchum was always greatly underrated as an actor. (Check out this old clip of "What's my Line" at 17:00 to observe his Streep- or Williams-level ability to fake a variety of accents.) Charles Laughton (Mitchum's director in Night of the Hunter) once said, "He'd make the best Macbeth of any actor living" and Laughton has a point. Mitchum always played a man manipulated by women into things he would normally find morally reprehensible (well, he still thinks it's wrong, but he's doing it anyway).

A great part of the charm of His Kind of Woman is in its curiously schizophrenic air -- which was surely abetted by its repeated reshoots and bizarre production history. Mitchum inhabits a violent noir film, rife with plot twists and beatdowns. Russell lives in a sort of romantic dramedy, girl torn between posing as an heiress with a wealthy schlub or going back to her life as a singer with the hunky broke guy. And then there's Vincent Price's comedy/parody, with its cast of eccentric characters, self-referential twists and slapstick scenarios. The stories separate, loop back, come together, then split again, all at a fast pace with clever dialogue. Logical? No. Entertaining?  Hell, yes!

Besides, if you ever wanted to see what Vincent Price looks like in the kitchen cooking a chicken, here's your opportunity.