Dinah East

Some movies take a little while to draw you in. My favorite example is Lola, a moody piece of sixties French pseudo-new wave cinema that seems bogged down in subtitled conversations about inanities and long shots of a seaside resort town. But somehow 45 minutes in, you realize you are fully absorbed in these people's lives and when the mandatory melancholy resolution occurs, your heart just breaks.

Naturellement, it's unnecessary to point out that Dinah East is not a work of art on a par with Jacques Demy's debut film. But the two movies do share a certain slow start that turns to fascination. But if Lola does it by building mood and character, Dinah East does it with sheer D-movie chutzpah. And a hell of a lot of full-frontal male nudity.

 Yes, nudity. And lots of it. Dinah East took the early-seventies trends for genderfuck films and old-Hollywood nostalgia and spent a few thousand dollars to maximize on them. Released in the same month as legendary trainwreck Myra Breckenridge, Dinah East tells the story of a fifties movie queen who, while she may really be a queen, ain't no woman. As happens in Tootsie, Dinah can't get a job as Chuck (or whatever her name originally was -- they don't say), so she comes back in drag and immediately becomes a star. The saga of Dinah's life and loves is told in flashback, which cuts back on costs for renting old-fashioned costumes (and allows for lots of tinkly fairybell noises to indicate a drift into the past) but also allows for a jaw-dropping gay bar scene. 

Why, yes, that is a pantsless man in pirate drag gyrating in a cage while a sailor watches.
And a Lawrence Welk bubble machine.

The movie not only wallows in the "she was really a man" cliche, but also throws around the "was really gay" trope not only for Dinah's paramours, but her best buddy, a costume designer played by Warhol superstar and Dali playmate Ultra Violet.

 Every female she sees immediately takes her top off, but it just makes Edith Head sad.

Dinah also somehow winds up with an adopted son, which i suppose could be some kind of reference to Joan Crawford or Loretta Young, but is really just an excuse to get some young tail in for the chicken hawks, as he does not materialize in the plot until he is of legal ogling age.

A not insignificant problem is simply that Dinah is not a very convincing drag queen. She still looks like a boy in a dress. I mean, no one is expecting Carmen Carrera-level fish-serving, but more polish was definitely needed. The outfits are not nearly over-the-top enough, which may be because they belonged to the producer, who was a biological female and apparently didn't realize that a little something extra requires a little something extra. And the wigs just suck.

See what i mean? Bitch looks like Nellie Oleson!

I wonder if they couldn't have helped matters by getting a better queen (Candy Darling, perhaps) but i also get the feeling that someone's boyfriend helped finance this project. Most of the actors have this as their sole credit -- granted, many came from "the stage," but the emotive skill indicates that perhaps said stage might have been the Gaiety Burlesque.

Boy? Girl? Whatever. The casting couch is the same for everyone, sweet cheeks...

Still, the barrage of increasingly melodramatic plot twists, bad acting and atrocious dialogue gradually builds into some truly engaging entertainment -- even if its engaging on a MST3K level. Dinah East is pretty ridiculous, but it's actually more amusing -- and subversive -- than many flicks that have more cult cred.

Maleficent

I reviewed the revisionist fairytale flick for the Las Vegan. If you've ever had a desire to groove on a bunch of CGI fairies while Angelina Jolie swoops around like some unholy hybrid of Bette Davis and Batman, here's your chance....

Suspiria

Suspiria is a film possessed by beauty and terror like a Baudelaire poem; it frightens and it enchants, often at the same time. It has some of the most gorgeous visuals ever committed to film; it also has some of the most violent, macabre death scenes ever to make you shrink in your seat and squeeze your eyes shut. 

It's a fairytale and a fashion spread. It's maggots and razor wire.

Suspiria's storyline is simple enough and has been used by countless novels and movies -- wide-eyed naif arrives in creepy house and must solve its mystery -- a suitably slender plot to be draped in director Dario Argento's couture embellishments. Our heroine is played by Jessica Harper, whom you may recognize from Phantom of the Paradise and who is the newest (American) student at a prestigious European ballet academy. She arrives in the middle of an apocalyptic thunderstorm -- the shock of the climate-controlled, ultramodern airport cutting to the torrential downpour of olde Mitteleuropa is just the first abrupt surprise Suspiria will offer.

She arrives at the school and is turned away. But as she gets back into her taxi, she witnesses a young woman fleeing the building, shouting something urgent yet unintelligble; we follow her as she runs through a dark, rain-lashed forest -- the first of many haunting images in Suspiria that you will recognize from its imitation in other, inferior films.

Making a significant contribution to the creepiness is the legendary soundtrack by Italian prog-rock outfit Goblin, an unsettling blend of whispers, echoes, percussion and synthesizers. Soon after, we get our first spectacular set and our first spectacular death. Suspiria focuses not on gore or shock, but a sort of heightened atmosphere, like the climax of an operatic aria or nervous breakdown -- making the gore and the shock that much more powerful when they hit.

In the daytime, Our Heroine returns to the school. There's been a murder, a disappearance and everyone seems quite hostile to the newcomer. But forget the bad vibes and dig the look! Throughout the film, the set design is a dream/nightmare version of the art nouveau retro looks of the 70's.

Serving as Suspiria's Head Witch -- erm, Bitch -- in Charge is old-school noir starlet Joan Bennett, carrying on the grand tradition of aging Hollywood legends playing the heavy in Eurosleaze horror flicks. Also in the girls' school cliche department, we have her assistant, your standard Germanic battleaxe.

Nope, nothing but friendly faces and warm welcomes here!

The rest of the girls at the school can best be described as "Mean Girls." If their Pre-Raphaelite on 'Ludes looks don't quite match their childish dialogue and behavior, it's because Argento (and co-author Daria Nicolodi) wrote the screenplay of Suspiria for pre-teens. However, back then no one would finance a horror movie that involved terrorizing children (back then), so they cast older, but didn't change the dialogue.

This also might help explain why Suspiria defies the trope of women in slasher movies buying it because of their rampant sexuality. Typically, as soon as a girl takes her top off, or skinny-dips with her boyfriend, or even thinks of going all the way, she gets the chainsaw/machete/rusty scythe. But not here: No one gets laid at Madame's. You can put it on the fact that a European ballet academy is simply classier than an American summer camp and the fact that Our Heroine is much closer to a Keane painting than a Playboy centerfold. But, again, it also means that the movie has to build its pre-kill tension through subtler means than trying to make sure the audience has a Hollywood loaf before the bloody axe swings.

And so here we have all of the ingredients for paranoia. Alone in a foreign country. At the mercy of some imperious diva who keeps coming up with reasons why you owe her money. A square-jawed old dyke who keeps checking you out. A bunch of bitches who hate you. An unnerving blind guy, a menacing retard  and a freaky little boy that keep popping up around every corner of this creepy, creaky mansion whose color palette seems inspired by blood.

Ballerinas keep dying, mysterious things keep happening, the eerie factor doubles, triples, quadruples -- you know you're in a seriously spooky netherworld when Udo Kier appears as a calm oasis of logic. Udo Kier! The weird German guy who is usually drenched in blood or trying to get hustlers to do diaper cosplay! And then, of course, there's the maggots.  And the razor wire...

Unlike many horror movies, Suspiria holds up to this day -- its dreamlike atmosphere remains hypnotic and timeless and its shocks are still potent. Some nitwit is planning on a remake, as though anyone could possibly equal, much less improve upon this film. There is only one remake i approve of, and that is the Suspiria-themed bar in Tokyo. Can we get one in Vegas? Please?

The Angry Red Planet

... also known as the movie with the BatRatSpiderCrab. You know the BatRatSpiderCrab? From the cover of Walk Among Us? The Misfits album? The best Misfits album?

"20 Eyes?" "Astro Zombies?" Jeez... Anyway, that's not the only important thing about The Angry Red Planet. It's also been held up as a fine example of how low budgets and untested ideas can make films better rather than worse. The Angry Red Planet was made in 10 days for $200,000. This meant that, rather than buying the best fake monster 1959 had to offer, they designed this truly disconcerting animated creature. It also meant that, having no money for fancy locations or props, they had to use "Cinemagic" and thus wound up with the Mars scenes in a bizarre, red-tinted, semi-solarized effect.

Both things turned out to improve the film and make it unique. Other than that it's just another cheapo Cold War-era space flick with sets that look like old IBM offices (with semi-sized mainframes) and proof that wince-inducing chauvinism even applied to female astronauts.

"Hey, let's chow!"

"Coming up!" 

"You know, I can't say that I recommend spacesuits for beautiful young dolls. 

What happened to all your lovely curves?" 

The Angry Red Planet opens with a rocket crashing in the desert and accompanying extravaganza of stock footage. A bunch of guys in hazmat suits and fedoras (apparently a fedora also protects against radiation) find two dead guys, an unconscious guy with a bunch of spreading green slime on his arm and a catatonic redhead. (Must've been quite a party.) All the tapes have been erased, so no one knows what happened, what the slime is, why those guys are dead or how it all went wrong. The only way to illuminate this otherwise totally "boring, routine" trip to Mars  is to get redhead to snap out of it. And so the flashbacks begin...

So, here we have our crew: Bearded Science Guy, Blue-Collar Schlub, Dr. Redhead, and Colonel Rock Chesthair, whose spacesuits are unbuttoned halfway to the navel, the better to show off his manly pelt. Also: Behold, the slick technology of future space travel!

"Well? Shall we go out and claim the planet in the name of Brooklyn?"

And so the "rocket" lands on "Mars." Dr. Redhead sees a monster in the window and screams. The boys disregard her as a "hysterical female" and she agrees. We now are given to understand that, despite the blase attitude, it's the first trip to this unknown world. Regardless, mankind's first trip to Mars will entail less caution than used when camping in the backyard. Everyone goes outside to creepy red space landscape; Dr.  Redhead wanders off by herself and is almost immediately attacked by a giant monster space vagina. Fortunately, Col. Douche Manpelt comes to the rescue.

Yup, just walk right into the carnivorous plant. And, for an encore, take a machete to some 'tree" that turns out to be BatRatSpiderCrab legs. Because you didn't look up. Seriously, if this was the best NASA had to offer, it's a good thing we curtailed space travel. We're talking about a bunch of  "scientists" that make Shaggy from Scooby-Doo look like Neil DeGrasse Tyson.

Ummm... no, but I can make a martini.

They manage to hold off the BatRatSpiderCrab with the help of Blue Collar Schlub's freeze ray. Then the Four Stooges (Fun fact: The only other use of "Cinemagic" was in The Three Stooges in Orbit.) flee through the hostile red atmosphere and manage not to get eaten on their way back to the ship. Once there, they discover that the kooky Martian atmosphere blocks radio waves and, thus, they have no way to contact Earth and a meteor that crossed their path earlier has damaged a number of instruments.

Regardless, Col. Butch Fuzzypecs ain't even thinking about turning back. They are staying the full five days, dammit! In fact, they're gonna get on a little rubber raft and make their way across a giant still lake to a hallucinatory city. Another brilliant damn decision. I mean, given how many times during this movie they've been attacked by giant monsters and barely survived... what could possibly go wrong?

As you can imagine, they run into more monsters and those monsters start kicking some serious human ass. Col. Macho Mann and Dr. Redhead manage to return home, but with a creeping green slime and carrying one of those ominous messages superior alien races like to lay on earthlings.

The Angry Red Planet is a little annoying with that ham-handed "Look, its that little woman thinkin' she's all science-y" stuff we saw in Queen of Outer Space. It think it's some kind of overcompensation for the idea of women doctors and scientists, even in a future fantasy world. (Archaic and antiquated i know, but also part of the 2014 Republican platform.) In other realistically-set movies of the era -- Butterfield 8, His Kind of Woman, to name two that will link you back to my site -- you don't hear the constant reminders that women are emotional and not good at thinking stuff.

Still, The Angry Red Planet has what you want in a 50's sci-fi flick: Cheesy "space" sets, wooden dialogue, a bachelor-pad soundtrack and, of course, monsters.

AHHHH!!! HAUNT MY NIGHTMARES FOREVER!!! AHHHH!!!

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..