Kitten with a Whip (1964)

Kitten with a Whip is a very underrated 1964 juvenile delinquent melodrama which was a perfect star vehicle for the always awesome Ann-Margret.

David Stratton (John Forsythe) is a rising politician with senatorial aspirations. His wife and daughter are out of town at the moment. That doesn’t mean David has been up to no good while they’ve been away. David’s idea of a wild time is a round of golf. And with his political ambitions he is ultra-sensitive to even the slightest breath of scandal (this was 1964). So he’s a little bit disturbed one morning when he glances into his five-year-old daughter’s bedroom and finds a 17-year-old girl fast asleep in the bed. A very attractive blonde 17-year-old girl in a torn nightdress. The girl is Jody (Ann-Margret) and she has a good explanation. She had to run away from home because her mother’s drunken boyfriend tried to get her into bed and being a good girl and being very protective of her virtue well naturally she had to get away. It was just pure good luck that she found David’s front door open. Well actually it was a window and she had to break in but she was really scared and what else could a poor innocent girl do?

For a politician David is rather naïve. He swallows Jody’s story hook, line and sinker. Of course he will try to help the poor girl. He buys her a new dress, gives her some money and puts her on a bus. He’s now feeling very pleased with himself. He handled the situation adroitly and he helped a damsel in distress.

So it comes as a shock some time later in the golf club when he sees the TV news and discovers that Jody actually broke out of Juvenile Hall after stabbing the matron (who may well die). Still he can console himself with the thought that Jody is now on a bus so it’s not his problem. Therefore it’s more than disconcerting when he gets back home and there’s Jody, clad only in a bath towel. Of course she has another really good explanation ready to go. David’s not falling for her line this time. He’s going to call the police. At least that what he intends to do until Jody informs him that if he does she’s going to cry rape.

At this point David starts to know how a trapped animal feels. Jody is an adorable kitten but she’s holding the whip and she won’t hesitate to use it.

David’s problems have only just begun. He’s about to take a roller-coaster ride and there’s no getting off. Jody’s friends turn up, there’s a knifing and eventually the crazy circus that David’s life has become ends up in Tijuana where the roller-coaster is going to stop but will there be any survivors?

Writer-director Douglas Heyes is better remembered for his television work. He was responsible for some of the best episodes of The Twilight Zone. The film was shot in black-and-white which works, nicely enhancing the B-movie feel.

While this is a juvenile delinquent movie it’s not one of those ultra-cheap Z-grade movies of that genre that enjoyed such a vogue in the 50s. Kitten with a Whip is a lot more slick and polished. It was made by Universal with a reasonable budget. It’s an odd hybrid - it has the camp and even kitsch qualities of a typical juvenile delinquent movie combined with high production values and a very good cast.

The first half of the movie is high camp outrageousness and it’s also very funny. There is some dazzlingly bizarre dialogue. Then the game becomes more dangerous. It’s still outrageously camp but with more and more of a film noir sense of impending doom. But you can never be sure if it’s going to end in tragedy or farce.

Kitten with a Whip is based on Wade Miller’s 1959 novel of the same title which I reviewed here.

Some elements of the novel certainly had to be softened for the film version. In the book David sleeps with Jody and there’s always a touch of lust mixed with his bewilderment and mounting horror of the train wreck that Jody is making of his life. That element is eliminated in the film. An aspiring senator having sex with an under-age girl was not something you were going to get away with in a major studio production in 1964. The surprising thing is that apart from that the movie is a reasonably faithful adaptation and even the ending is pretty close to the feel of the book’s ending.

John Forsythe was a good casting choice. He plays David as a decent kind of guy who’s a bit of a stick-in-the-mud and a bit naïve. Forsythe nicely captures David’s sheer bewilderment. He’s like a deer caught in the headlights. He has never met a girl like Jody and didn’t even know such girls existed. He has absolutely no idea what to do. We can’t really despise him. He’s too fundamentally decent. But we can’t quite respect him - he’s too helpless. Forsythe’s performance might seem stilted and colourless to some but he’s playing a guy whose whole life is stilted. He’s a politician. He’s as phoney as Jody.

Ann-Margret pulls out all the stops. She was a competent actress but not exactly subtle. Fortunately subtlety is not required here. What she does manage to do is to make Jody convincingly complex and unpredictable. Jody doesn’t have enough self-awareness to be truly evil. She’s more like a wild animal, frightening because she herself doesn’t know what she’s going to do next, or why. But there is an edge of cruelty. She’s a wild animal but with enough human cunning to be much more dangerous. And she has zero capacity for comprehending the harm she can do. She’s a cat playing with a mouse and David is the mouse.

Critics have generally entirely missed the point of Ann-Margret’s performance. They have complained that while it’s fun it’s too histrionic and artificial and fails to be convincingly real. But that is exactly the point of it. Jody has no understanding whatsoever of real human emotions. All she can do is mimic actual feelings. Jody emotes the way she sees people in movies and on TV emote. She is entirely artificial. We do eventually realise that there’s a real person in there somewhere but Jody herself never realises this. Jody can’t tell the truth because she doesn’t know what it is. She can’t project real feelings because she’s never developed any. She just switches back and forth from one rôle to another, from one piece of make-believe to another. Ann-Margret captures this perfectly. I doubt if any other actress could have played this rôle. They would almost certainly have made the mistake of trying to be real. Ann-Margret does not make that mistake. She is histrionic and artificial but it’s not bad acting, it’s the right acting for the part. Whether this was consciously her intention or whether it was just pure luck doesn’t matter. Her performance is perfect.

Kitten with a Whip is deliriously over-the-top but while it’s often dismissed as a so-bad-it’s-good movie that’s not quite fair. It’s consciously and deliberately over-the-top but that’s the only way it was going to work. Had it tried to play things straight it could have been a dreary Social Problem movie instead of the delightful feast of fun and kitsch with a dash of noir that it turned out to be. It’s obviously a must-see for Ann-Margret fans but it’s also amazingly entertaining. Highly recommended.

Demetrius and the Gladiators (1954)

Demetrius and the Gladiators, released in 1954, was a kind of sequel to 20th Century-Fox’s first Cinemascope epic, The Robe. It has a slightly different flavour compared to that film. Demetrius and the Gladiators adds more action and it also adds a generous helping of rather perverse sexuality.

Demetrius (Victor Mature) is a Greek Christian who has been entrusted by the Apostle Peter with the keeping of the robe worn by Christ. Peter and Demetrius are careful to emphasise that the robe has a purely symbolic importance although there are others who will attribute magical powers to it.



Claudius (Barry Jones), the uncle of the emperor Caligula (Jay Robinson), convinces the emperor that the robe holds the secret of eternal life. Claudius has probably to some extent accidentally misunderstood the significance of the robe to the Christians but he also sees it as a way to curry favour with an emperor who is increasingly unstable, capricious and vicious. Caligula, who is already halfway to convincing himself that he is a god, now wants to get hold of the robe very badly. The emperor’s desire to possess the robe will land Demetrius in hot water.

In fact it lands Demetrius in Claudius’s gladiatorial school. As the head trainer of gladiators, Strabo (Ernest Borgnine), tells the latest batch of prisoners sentenced to the arena, it is not necessarily a death sentence. Strabo himself had been sentenced to the arena and succeeded in winning his freedom. For a Christian however who takes the Ten Commandments seriously (and literally) and who is therefore unwilling to kill it certainly is little more than a death sentence.



Demetrius makes an unlikely friend among the gladiators, the Nubian Glycon (William Marshall). As fate would have it Demetrius finds himself matched against Glycon, which means that one of them will have to die. There is but one chance - if they provide a good enough fight the emperor might be persuaded to spare the loser’s life.

The arena will change Demetrius’s life. It will bring him into contact with the notoriously debauched Messalina (Susan Hayward), the wife of Claudius. It will also lead him to question his Christian beliefs. Demetrius’s appearance in the arena will also have unexpected indirect consequences for Caligula, Claudius and Messalina.



Victor Mature is an actor that I find myself more and more impressed by. In epics such as this he managed to be both entertaining and sincere and his performance works very nicely. Susan Hayward has great fun (as you would expect from an actress who was never afraid of going over the top) as the wicked Messalina. Jay Robinson does well as the insane Caligula, making the emperor both creepy and menacing. Ernest Borgnine impresses as well while Barry Jones does a more than adequate job as Claudius, a man who in spite of unfavourable first impressions turns out to have more substance than expected. William Marshall has (as always) the necessary dignity for the role of Glycon, an ex-king reduced to fighting in the arena.

The weak link, as so often, is Michael Rennie. He gives a characteristic overly earnest and irritatingly smug performance as Peter.

With the competent Delmer Daves as director Demetrius and the Gladiators is surprisingly successful at combining action and spectacle with a Christian message which the movie delivers without being too heavy-handed.



The Region 4 DVD offers a reasonably adequate transfer but no extras.

Demetrius and the Gladiators is fine entertainment. It manages to be rather more than merely an exercise in camp (although fans of high camp will certainly find much to enjoy). Recommended.

The Egyptian (1954)

A 1950s Hollywood epic set in ancient Egypt and starring Victor Mature, Gene Tierney and Jean Simmons - now that has to be fun. And The Egyptian does not disappoint.

The Egyptian of the title is a doctor named Sinuhe (played by Edmund Purdom). We see him at the beginning of the film as an old man in exile and his story is told in flashback. He was once young and idealistic, burning with a desire to bring the benefits of modern medicine (and in the 14th century BC Egyptian medicine was most definitely at the cutting edge) to the poor. His father is a doctor as well, but he’s not his real father. As a baby Sinuhe was found floating in the Nile in a small reed basket, this being a common method of disposing of unwanted babies.

Sinuhe has an unlikely friend, a rambunctious but good-natured brawler named Horemheb (Victor Mature). Horemheb’s fondest ambition is to serve in Pharaoh’s Guard but since he is merely the son of a humble cheese-maker this ambition seems unlikely to be fulfilled.

Then fate steps in. Sinuhe and Horemheb are hunting lions in their chariot when they come across what appears to be a crazed holy man. They save this unfortunate from becoming dinner for a hungry lion.

It turns out the man really is a crazed holy man, but he also happens to be the pharaoh, the notorious Akhenaten. In saving him they laid hands on him, which is a capital offence. Luckily Akhenaten takes a dim view of hallowed traditions and he not only allows them to live, he rewards them. Horemheb will indeed serve in Pharaoh’s Guard, while Sinuhe will become part-time official physician to Pharaoh’s family.

Fate however is about to step in again, in the form of a woman. Nefer is beautiful and glamorous and Sinuhe is captivated by her. He will do anything for her. Sinuhe’s judgment is very poor when it comes to women. He has a nice girl, Merit (Jean Simmons), who is crazy about him but he is obsessed by Nefer. Nefer is a courtesan but she is also a very dangerous woman who enjoys seducing and corrupting innocent young men.

And Sinuhe is well and truly corrupted. His parents will pay the price for his fatal obsession and Sinuhe himself will be reduced to despair and forced to flee Egypt.

Sinuhe travels the known world and his fame as a physician grows. He is on a quest for redemption and slowly he is rebuilding his life and his self-respect. But fate is not yet finished wit him. It will lead him back to Egypt, and his life will once more be entwined with the lives of Horemheb, Merit and Akhenaten. Akhenaten’s religious innovations and his mystical belief in the virtues of turning the other cheek will lead Egypt to the brink of ruin and Sinuhe will be faced with a terrible dilemma.

It’s all outrageously melodramatic and very camp, just as you’d expect from a 1954 Hollywood costume epic, but this movie has some surprising features. The moral dilemmas are real and they’re complex. Sinuhe is basically a good man but with serious moral weaknesses. Akhenaten is almost saintly but he is also a catastrophically bad ruler. Horemheb proves to be very ambitious indeed but his ambitions lead him on a path that will prove to be Egypt’s salvation. And Akhenaten’s sister Baketamon (Gene Tierney) is also motivated both by personal ambition and a desire to save her country from destruction.

The most morally challenged characters end up doing the most good while the most virtuous characters do an immense amount of mischief. Ruling a kingdom and conducting international relations require common sense and hard-headedness more than they require goodness. This kind of moral ambiguity is very unexpected in this type of movie.

Equally surprising is the very open and non-judgmental treatment of the issue of the illegitimate son of Sinuhe and Merit.

The acting tends towards the melodramatic, but that goes with the territory. Edmund Purdom is rather on the dull side. Victor Mature is enormous fun. Gene Tierney isn’t given enough to do but she does have a few great scenes and her performance is on balance the best of any of the cast members. Michael Wilding is annoyingly other-worldly and mystically woolly-headed but it’s a performance that suits the character. Jean Simmons is solid as always and even Peter Ustinov (as Sinuhe’s dishonest but faithful servant) is less irritating than usual.

Needless to say it’s visually impressive although the use of process shots and matte paintings is very obvious. Personally I don’t mind that - I think the obvious artificiality works in the movie’s favour, making it a kind of fable.

And the very idea of making a movie about the infamous heretic pharaoh is incredibly cool. Akhenaten’s religious reforms did not survive him but they’re extremely interesting. He was in effect trying to replace the established religion of the country with a new monotheistic faith. Had he succeeded he’d be known as one of the great religious leaders of history.

The Egyptian is a strange mix of melodrama and profundity and while it’s an uneasy mix it makes for one of the more intriguing Hollywood movies of the 50s. And it’s wonderfully entertaining. It’s unusual enough to qualify as a must-see movie in its own eccentric way.

Bounty’s Region 4 DVD lacks extras but it’s a lovely transfer and it’s in the proper Cinemascope aspect ratio.

Harlow (1965)

They just don’t make movie trash the way they used to. Hollywood still makes bad movies but today they make boring bad movies. In the 50s and 60s they made gloriously entertaining trash epics like Harlow (1965).

It’s supposed to be a biopic about Jean Harlow. In fact it’s mostly fiction. I presume they were worried about being sued and so the names of just about everything have been changed. Not just the people, but even the names of the studios and the movies she made. The manner of her death has been changed and in the movie she has one disastrous marriage. In real life she was married three times.

So it’s best to simply accept the movie as fiction, as a movie about a star like Jean Harlow. The movie’s approach to the material is sensationalistic, lurid and breathless. And vehemently high camp. Not that I have a problem with any of those things. Fortunately it doesn’t take half measures. It goes wildly over-the-top and succeeds through sheer excess and bad taste.

Carroll Baker plays Harlow and she’s the movie’s single biggest strength. Baker is sexy enough and outrageous enough in her own right to get away with the role. I’ve never understood why Baker didn’t have a more successful career in Hollywood. She’s a whirlwind of misdirected sexual energy, and rather like other notable roles Baker played (such as the title role in Elia Kazan’s Baby Doll) she’s a delirious mixture of innocence and wantonness.

Mike Connors is better than you might expect as a male star who pends most of the movie trying to persuade Harlow to marry him. Red Buttons can be an annoying actor but as her devoted agent he’s well cast. Angela Lansbury and Raf Vallone overact amusingly as her appalling parents. As depicted in this movie her mother is a sex-crazed matron who has married a reckless but good-looking gigolo.

The key character is Paul Bern, played by Peter Lawford. In this biopic Paul Bern is the first husband of a virginal Harlow. In reality he was her second husband but the marriage was every bit as catastrophic, culminating in Bern’s suicide shortly afterwards, presumably unable to deal with his inability to consummate the marriage. For the movie version of Paul Bern the shame of being married to Hollywood’s number one sex goddess and being unable to perform in bed is too much.

And it’s just too much for Harlow, in this movie presented as a woman who has saved herself for marriage and then realises she might as well have not bothered.

Director Gordon Douglas had an interesting career and handles his task pretty well. Apart from Carroll Baker the movie’s other big asset is its visual style. Everything is too bright, too colourful, too garish, too brightly lit, too glossy and too shiny and in thoroughly deplorable taste. This is total kitsch overload. And it works perfectly. It’s Hollywood given the full Hollywood treatment. The sets are like temples dedicated to the gods of camp.

Olive Films have gained the right to release quite a few previously unavailable Paramount movies like this one. There are no extras whatsoever but the transfer is superb.

If you can’t disregard the fact that the movie gets just about everything about Harlow’s life wrong you’re probably well advised to skip this one. But if you can, and if you’re in the mood for trash on the epic scale just lie back and enjoy. Harlow is very highly recommended.

Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1957)

Frank Tashlin had a major hit in 1956 with The Girl Can’t Help It so making another film the following year with star Jayne Mansfield must have seemed like a great idea. And it was. In fact Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? is possibly even better than The Girl Can’t Help It.

Rockwell Hunter (Tony Randall) is a Madison Avenue advertising man. He’s a fair way down the pecking order. He writes lyrics for singing commercials but his boss is convinced that singing commercials have had their day. In fact he is convinced that the agency has had its day since it’s on the verge of losing its biggest account, the Stay-Put Lipstick account. That means Rockwell Hunter will soon be out of a job, unless he can come up with a sensational idea.

And he does. His teenage daughter is president of the local branch of the Rita Marlowe Fan Club. Rita Marlowe (Jayne Mansfield) being the biggest movie star of the moment. Rita’s second most spectacular assets are her famous kissable lips, so a campaign featuring her might well save the agency and Rockwell’s job. Of course the difficulty is that Rita is currently in hiding in New York, but Rockwell’s teenage daughter happens to know where she is. But will she agree to be the Stay-Put Lipstick girl?



As it happens, at the exact moment Rockwell walks into her hotel suite Rita Marlowe needs a man desperately. She needs a man to make her boyfriend Bobo (Mickey Hargitay, soon to become Jayne Mansfield’s real-life husband) jealous. Bobo is the star of a jungle boy TV series, but he walked out on her, and nobody can walk out on Rita Marlowe. So, in exchange for her doing the lipstick campaign, Rockwell pretends to be her new love. This turns out to be a rather exhausting occupation. Apart from the fact that after kissing Rita Marlowe’s famous kissable lips he really needs a week in intensive care there’s the added hazard of Rita’s fans who now pursue him in the street believing him to be the world’s greatest lover.

There’s also the problem of the nice girl at the office Rockwell is intending to marry. Rockwell, or Rock as he is no universally known in keeping with his world’s greatest lover reputation, is now internationally famous as Rita’s Lover Doll.



Rock has now achieved success. Not only has he saved the agency and gained a vice-presidency, he has achieved the goal that he has always dreamed of - the key to the executive washroom, the ultimate symbol of success. But strangely enough, success isn’t what he expected. And he discovers that success isn’t the guarantee of happiness for anyone. Even the owner of the agency, Irving La Salle Jr himself, has found success to be a disappointment. He just wanted to grow prize roses. Could it be that success is not all it’s cracked up to be?

What makes writer-director Tashlin’s satire work so well is that while he is appalled by the vulgarity of Madison Avenue he is also clearly fascinated by it. He has a love-hate relationship with popular culture and with America in the 50s. But even the hate part of the equation is untainted by vindictiveness. And the love part is a string as the hate part. He doesn’t hate his characters. They’re all quite nice people. They’re living crazy lives, but they’re not monsters.



Tashlin started out in the film business making cartons and he has an extraordinary knack for capturing a cartoon feel in his live-action feature films. It’s not just the garish colours and the general zaniness, it’s the way he structures his visual gags. And given the right subject matter, as in Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? and The Girl Can’t Help It, it’s an approach that works superbly.

Tony Randall is perfect casting and handles his role every bit as well as you’d expect. He considered this movie to be the funniest he ever made. Joan Blondell and Henry Jones provide great support.



But it’s Jayne Mansfield who steals the picture. Her talent may have been a very limited one, but within those narrow limits she had few equals as a comic actress. She plays Rita like a cartoon character which of course is exactly what Tashlin wants. And of course she’s also essentially playing herself, or an exaggerated version of herself (arguably she spent her whole life playing an exaggerated version of herself).

Very few film-makers captured the feel of the 50s as sublimely as Frank Tashlin. Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? is very funny and it’s a delight from start to finish.

Beyond the Forest (1949)

If you’re a lover of camp and you haven’t yet seen Bette Davis’s 1949 film Beyond the Forest then all I can say is that you have missed out on one of the most awesomely camp extravaganzas in cinematic history. It’s often listed as a film noir although it’s perhaps better described as a noirish melodrama.

The plot is not just pure melodrama. It’s hyper-melodrama. Bette Davis is Rosa Moline. Rosa lives in Loyalton, a small town that is dominated by the local timber mill. She’s married to Dr Lewis Moline (Joseph Cotten), a dedicated small-town doctor who is love and admired by the townsfolk. The townsfolk do not love and admire Rosa. She disturbs them. Disturbs them deeply. She doesn’t like small-town life. She doesn’t like baking. Or children. Or square dancing. Or any of the normal activities of the good citizens of Loyalton. Most of all Rosa does not like the good citizens of Loyalton. Not like is perhaps not quite the correct expression. It would be more accurate to say that she loathes and despises them, and she makes no attempt to hide her contempt.

Rosa was always different. Her dreams were not dreams of domestic bliss in Loyalton. She dreamed of escape to Chicago. Escape to anywhere.

Living in Loyalton is bad enough, but Lewis Moline makes Rosa’s life intolerable. He’s a do-gooder. He doesn’t expect his patients to pay him if they can’t afford it. As a consequence he is not a rich man. More to the point, Rosa is not the wife of a rich man. And she very much wants to be.

She has a candidate in mind. Neil Latimer is a millionaire businessman who owns an enormous hunting lodge on the nearby lake, and Rosa has already managed to attract his interest. In fact she’s started an on-and-off affair with him. But what she wants is to marry him.

The movie starts with an inquest into a fatal shooting, with Rosa apparently the chief suspect. At this stage we have no idea of the identity of the victim. This will be revealed in an extended flashback sequence that occupies most of the movie’s running time.

Bette Davis gives one of the most outrageously over-the-top performances of her career. Given that her career includes so many outrageously over-the-top performances I realise that’s quite a claim, but it’s a claim I stand by. It’s not just her performance that is extraordinary. She was a decade too old for the role, and she has her hair dyed jet black. Her appearance is truly bizarre. Somehow though these things end up counting in her favour. It’s obvious that Rosa, despite her scheming and her breath-taking ruthlessness, has no hope whatever of realising her dreams, that any chance she might have had of doing so is long gone. As a result the viewer cannot help feeling sorry for her. She’s a tragedy waiting to happen.

King Vidor directed the movie, and he did so in an overwrought and wildly melodramatic style. Combined with the subject matter and Davis’s acting what you end up with is massive camp overkill. Davis and Vidor though are not afraid of being melodramatic, they are not afraid of going too far, and the results are splendidly entertaining. King Vidor had by this time been directing for three-and-a-half decades so he knew a thing or two about making movies. There’s no question that the excessiveness of this picture was a conscious choice, and with a story like this one it was arguably the only valid choice.

Joseph Cotten’s understated acting style proves a perfect foil for Davis. Ruth Roman provides additional fun as Rosa’s perpetually rebellious housemaid.

The final sequence involving the train is a tour-de-force of movie melodrama.

Sadly this movie is unavailable on DVD but being a Warner Brothers production it turns up on TCM in Australia from time to time and I assume it gets screened on TCM in the US at various times as well. It’s a movie not to be missed by fans of cinematic excess, and most certainly not to be missed by fans of Bette Davis. As the original poster for the film so aptly put it, nobody’s as good as Bette when she’s bad.

Salome (1953)

You might think that a 1953 Hollywood movie about Salome, with Rita Hayworth in the title role, is going to be pure 1950 Hollywood kitsch. And of course you’d be dead right. Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing depends on how you feel about kitschy 1950s Hollywood epics. Personally I think the kitschier they are the better, and Salome is about as kitsch as you can get. And it has Charles Laughton as Herod!

To say that the screenwriters have taken liberties with the biblical story would be an understatement. For starters they’ve made Salome a good girl. She’s just a sweet all-American small-town girl with a weakness for handsome hunky Romans. Her first love affair with a good-looking Roman guy with bright prospects (he’s the nephew of the emperor) gets her banished from Rome by the Emperor Tiberius. She was sent to Rome by her mom Herodias in order to keep her away from her stepfather Herod.

After her banishment she returns home to Galilee on the same galley that is bringing the new Roman governor Pontius Pilate, and his second-in-command and old military buddy Claudius (Stewart Granger). Salome has sworn off handsome Romans, but she can’t help taking a bit of a shine to Claudius. Her arrival in Galilee is a bit of a shock. There’s a madman named John the Baptist preaching against her mother Herodias (Judith Anderson), accusing her and her husband the tetrarch Herod (he wasn’t really a king, unlike his father Herod the Great) of all manner of moral wickedness. And she soon discovers that Claudius has become a follower of the Baptist.

Herod won’t take action against this crazy preacher because of a prophecy, but Herodias has her own plans to dispose of him, plans that involve her daughter.

You might think that making Salome a pure good-hearted girl sounds like a really dumb idea. And it is. It’s not as if Rita Hayworth couldn’t play a vamp so making her an innocent really does qualify as a bizarre decision. Her Dance of the Seven Veils demonstrates her potential for vampiness but sadly that’s the only chance she gets to be vampy.

But if you’re worried that all the perversity has been drained from the story you needn’t despair. Charles Laughton is on hand, and he provides the much-needed sleaze factor as Salome’s lascivious step-dad. And Judith Anderson, as you might expect, makes Herodias delightfully evil and perverse.

The religious elements are handled in the ham-fisted way you expect in a 50s Hollywood epic, with Alan Badel giving an awesomely atrocious performance as John the Baptist. Maurice Shwartz renders him able assistance, delivering an excruciatingly cringe-inducing performance as Herod’s chief religious adviser. And yes, there’s tacky choir music whenever a Significant Religious Moment occurs. Connoisseurs of bad taste are faced with an embarrassment of riches in this film.

Stewart Granger is somewhat wasted, not getting to do any of the swashbuckling heroics at which he excelled. Rita Hayworth tries her best, but as with many of her 1950s films she’s saddled with such awful dialogue and her role is so underwritten and ill-conceived that it’s an uphill battle for her. Really she does remarkably well given the incredible lameness of the script.

It goes without saying that even screenwriting deficiencies on this impressive scale don’t trouble Charles Laughton. The same can be said for Judith Anderson. You can’t keep a good ham down, and these two chew every available piece of scenery and manage to make what could have been a truly dire movie-going experience into a camp triumph.

There’s no way you can argue that this is anything but a bad movie, but if you approach it in the right frame of mind it’s highly entertaining epic trash. I enjoyed it anyway.

Zee and Co. (1972)

Zee and Co. (released in the US as X, Y and Zee) comes from what I think of as the classic high camp phase of Elizabeth Taylor’s career. In this period she made a series of outrageous movies such as Boom! and Secret Ceremony, movies that were generally regarded with disdain by critics.

Personally I adore them, and Zee and Co. fits in perfectly with the over-the-top hysteria that characterised these movies.

Elizabeth Taylor is Zee, married to architect Robert Blakeley (Michael Caine). Their marriage is stormy and unconventional, and it’s about to get even more turbulent when Robert catches sight of Stella (Susannah York) at a party. He’s instantly attracted to her, something that doesn’t fail to attract the notice of Zee. Not that she minds all that much if Robert sleeps with Stella. They’ve both obviously had quite a few affairs on the side, and just as obviously they make no attempt whatsoever to be secretive about their extramarital dalliances. But Zee senses (correctly) that this has the potential to be more than just an affair. Robert can have sex with other women if he wants to, but falling in love with them is definitely not acceptable.

And falling in love is exactly what Robert and Stella proceed to do. Zee reacts in what appears to be her normal way - with bitchiness gradually escalating to hysteria. Poor Stella is quite out of her depth. When Zee discovers that Stella has a deep dark secret hidden in her past (a lesbian passion for one of the nuns at her school) she closes in for the kill.

Elizabeth Taylor dominates the movie, as she dominated every movie se ever made. She’s gloriously excessive and wickedly funny. She projects an overwhelming sexuality and an even more overwhelming emotional neediness, and although she pushes her characterisation almost to the point of grotesqueness she remains glamorous in an extravagantly sleazy way.

Michael Caine is equally good. He plays Robert as a man who’d like to think of himself as cool and always in control but underneath he’s as much out of control as Zee is. His outbursts of violent rage are frightening in their intensity.

Susannah York is always in danger of being overwhelmed by the bravura performances of the other two leads but she’s also very impressive in a much more subtle way. The interplay between these three characters is explosive.

In its day this movie was considered pretty risque (at least by the standards of mainstream major-studio releases), mainly because of the lesbian overtones.

This is very much a movie for lovers of camp, and for Elizabeth Taylor fans. If (like me) you fit into both those categories you’ll have a wonderful time with it. If you don’t fit into either category you’ll probably be left wondering what the hell the makers of this picture were thinking. Personally I loved it.

The Region 2 DVD looks terrific. I believe it’s also been released in the new series of Columbia DVD-Rs.

Magnificent Obsession (1954)

Even by the standards of Douglas Sirk’s 1950s Hollywood movies Magnificent Obsession is an outrageous concoction. Based on a novel by Lloyd C. Douglas, a novel described by Sirk as trash, it may well be the ultimate in cinematic high camp.

Rock Hudson is wealthy playboy Bob Merrick who is injured testing his high-powered speedboat. The resuscitator used to save his life belonged to a saintly doctor with a heart condition, and just at the moment the machine was being used to save Merrick’s life the saintly doctor has a heart attack and dies, so saving Merrick’s life has cost him his life. The saintly doctor’s wife Helen (Jane Wyman) and daughter Joyce and his faithful nurse (Agnes Moorehead) blame Merrick for his selfish hedonistic lifestyle. Merrick is consumed with guilt, and while trying to make amends he falls in love with the doctor’s widow. Unfortunately he is the unwitting cause of another accident, an accident that costs Helen her sight.

But all this was somehow destined to be, and it leads Merrick to local artist Edward Randolph (Otto Kruger). It turns out that Randolph and the saintly doctor both followed the same semi-mystical cult, a cult based on service, self-sacrifice and huge quantities of smarmy self-satisfaction. Randolph assures him that this philosophy will become a “magnificent obsession” for him as well. Merrick changes his ways and becomes a dedicated doctor, but what he really wants is Helen’s love. Fate has a surprise in store for him, when all the threads of his life will converge.

Reading some of the online reviews of this movie I’m staggered that so many people have so spectacularly missed the point of this movie, and really believe Sirk expects us to take all this at face value. The outrageous use of unlikely coincidences, the weird cultism, the truckloads of saccharine sentimentality, the cloying acting styles of Hudson and Wyman, the bizarrely over-ripe performance of Otto Kruger, the chocolate box visual style - apparently none of these things was enough to indicate that perhaps Sirk’s intentions were ironic. And the music! More strings and angelic choir voices than you’ve ever heard in one movie!

But of course this is also melodrama. Not a movie with melodramatic tendencies, but pure melodrama and it adhere rigidly to the rules of melodrama. There are no coincidences in melodrama - it’s all the inevitable working out of one’s fate. Merrick and the saintly doctor have their encounter with death at the exact same moment because Fate (or possibly a Higher Power) has ordained it. And Merrick had at one time been studying to become a doctor, so it’s no accident that the man whose life intersects his at this fateful moment is a doctor. And Edward Randolph is a painter, also no coincidence. As a painter he is a creator, so is he ideally suited to being an emissary (or possibly even an avatar) of an All Powerful Unseen Creator. And the last thing you want in melodrama is for the actors to attempt anything resembling real acting - these are not real people, they are stock characters, and they’re meant to be played as stock characters. There’s the Selfish Playboy, the Faithful Nurse, the Devoted Wife, etc. Whether by accident or design Sirk found himself with the ideal cast for his purposes.

While the essence of the classical Hollywood cinema is the suspension of disbelief, the appearance of reality, in melodrama you’re not supposed to suspend your disbelief. You’re supposed to be aware of the story telling structure. And that’s the way this movie works.

In its own way it’s even more over-the-top than Written on the Wind. The weird Oprah-like cultism adds a delightfully strange touch. It’s lush, gorgeous, campy and magnificent, and I adored it.

White Cargo (1942)

Poor Hedy Lamarr. The Viennese actress was signed by MGM largely on the strength of her exotic beauty and on the notoriety engendered by her nude scenes in her first European movie, Ekstase, made in 1933. But MGM didn’t seem to know what do with her other than putting her in roles that traded on her exoticism. And roles like Tondelayo in White Cargo were not exactly going to enhance any actress’s reputation.

I’m actually quite fond of lust and madness in the tropics movies, and White Cargo does have a certain camp appeal.

Walter Pidgeon is Witzel, the district officer and manager of a rubber plantation in a British colony somewhere in Africa in 1910. Witzel, his assistant, a drunken doctor and a slightly dotty missionary are the only four white men within a radius of hundreds of miles. There are no white women at all. Witzel has been growing steadily more bad-tempered nd cynical with each passing year, and his mood is not improved by the uselessness of the assistants sent out to him from Britain. Within a couple of years they invariably crack up, while he is left to do everything.

There are the usual hazards of life in the tropics, such as poisonous snakes, crocodiles and fever. But the biggest hazard of all is Tondelayo. This beautiful but unscrupulous half-caste woman has at various times shared her favours with every white man unlucky enough to find himself in this distant outpost of empire, and she has left them all either insane or hopelessly embittered. When Witzel’s new assistant Langford arrives, it is only a matter of time before he attracts the attentions of Tondelayo. He falls for her very hard indeed, and even agrees to marry her! Naturally though Tondelayo does not prove to be a satisfactory wife, and Langford lives to regret his marriage.

With a movie both as politically incorrect and as silly as this one there’s really no point in being offended by the outrageous racism and misogyny. You can either switch it off, or enjoy it for its camp value, and be amused by just how outrageously racist and misogynist it gets. There is for example the relief of the missionary when he discovers that Tondelayo is not really half black after all, but of Egyptian ancestry. So he can marry her to Langford without the shame of marrying a white man to a black woman! Or there’s the scene where Tondelayo complains that after five months of marriage Langford has not beaten her once, and she implies that their sex life would be considerably improved if he did. I’m not sure how the Production Code Authority let that one slip through, although I have the awful feeling that they simply assumed that such behaviour towards a black woman would be perfectly normal.

The biggest of the movie’s problems is that Tondelayo is portrayed as both evil and childishly simple. Apart from its offensiveness it makes her character very uninteresting.

Hedy Lamarr is given no chance at all to act, but she’s given ample opportunities to be sexy, and you have to give her credit for being able to make the idea of making a cup of tea for a man sound really really dirty!

But 1940s Hollywood jungle movies are all politically incorrect, and the only way to enjoy any of them is as camp entertainment. If you can do that, then White Cargo can be very amusing.