In my eternal quest to find the diamonds at the bottom of cinema’s cesspool, I’ve made some interesting discoveries. For instance, I’ve found that many famous actresses who continued to perform into their autumn years valiantly took on any work they could get, even if the choices weren’t in their best interest. How else can you explain Joan Crawford signing on to do Trog; Bette Davis’s appearance in Wicked Stepmother; Agnes Moorehead in Dear Dead Delilah? These “later” films fascinate me. Books on cult movies often neglect them, so I feel it my duty to rescue these bizarre nuggets from the sewer of memory. Sadly, only one of the movies below is available on DVD. Savage Intruder– under the title Hollywood Horror House but the transfer is muddy and it looks like a VHS dupe. But this week according to Diabolik the company Code Red is putting out Mama’s Dirty Girls on Blu-ray!
Mama’s Dirty Girls (1974). Film noir femme fatale Gloria Grahame, nicknamed “the blonde with the novocaine lips” also starred in The Big Heat, The Bad And The Beautiful and In A Lonely Place. Here she plays a sleazy mom, who, with her buxom daughters, roam the country marrying and murdering men for their money. Unfortunately, their new male target turns the tables by trying to bump them off for cash. Directed by John Hayes and released on video by Trans World, this took me years to track down, but it was worth it. The film’s theme song includes these lyrics: “I know a lady who acts real shady/She’s got two daughters who part the waters/And if they come around, you better just leave town/ Watch out for Mama’s dirty girls/They’re going to get you!”
Road To Salina (1971). Gorgeous WWII pin up and Gilda star Rita Hayworth made this oddball psychological drama in which she runs a roadside gas station/cafe and mistakes a drifter (Robert Walker Jr.) for her long, lost, son. He goes along with it but finds it weird when his “sister” (Mimsy Farmer) recognizes him. Soon brother and sister are playing “doctor” every afternoon in the back bedroom. This one’s got lots of full-frontal nudity, an incest theme, and Rita doing the frug with Ed Begley. She even sniffs at a joint (but doesn’t inhale). “You smell bad” and “I love you.” are some of the loony exchanges between Farmer and Walker.
Persecution (1974) (aka The Graveyard or The Terror Of Sheba). Sexy MGM star Lana Turner (The Postman Always Rings Twice) who once boasted: “I liked the boys and the boys liked me!” cranked out some pretty weird films in her later years. The Big Cube (1969) in which her daughter and drug dealer boyfriend slip her LSD and Bittersweet Love (1976) a cockeyed melodrama about a young couple who fall in love, marry, and then find out they’re brother and sister. In Persecution, a British horror film, Turner plays a rich, rotten, old matron who walks with a cane, wears pants suits, and spends years gleefully tormenting her son David (Ralph Bates of Dr. Jekyll And Sister Hyde fame) while lavishing her love on a litter of cats all named Sheba. When one of the Shebas kills David’s wife and son, sonny drowns Mom in a bowl of cat’s milk. Now, is that any way to treat Madame X?
Savage Intruder (1968). Miriam Hopkins (Becky Sharp), the 30’s film star who played bitchy southern belles and sparred on and off-screen with Bette Davis in several films (Old Acquaintance, The Old Maid), made her final film appearance in this demented shocker about a reclusive movie star living in a creepy mansion a la Sunset Boulevard who takes in a sexy but psychotic new assistant- Vic (David Garfield). The actor is a ringer for his famous actor father John Garfield. Vic keeps a suitcase full of weapons, has psychedelic flashbacks, and beheads members of the staff. There’s a wild Hollywood party with midgets and drugs, former Three Stooges star Joe Besser plays a Hollywood tour guide, and Hopkins even flashes an elderly tit in one scene.
Run Home, Slow (1965). Mercedes McCambridge (Giant, Johnny Guitar, Linda Blair’s devil voice in The Exorcist) starred in this weird existential western in which she wore full cowboy drag and straggled across the desert with a mule and a motley band of murderous bank robbers called the Hagen family. There’s mortally wounded Ritt (Gary Kent), demented hunchback brother Kirby (Allan Richards) and Ritt’s dim-witted blonde wife Julie (Linda Gaye Scott) who twirls a torn, broken, parasol. Directed by Tim Sullivan (a pseudonym for Ted Brenner), with a musical score by Frank Zappa, this movie cries out for rediscovery. If only to experience the scene which features the hunchback making love to Julie next to their mule’s dead carcass while Zappa’s lyrical, offbeat, score swells in the background.