Some say that spring is a time for love. Frankly I’m more inclined to agree with whoever said love is a form of mental illness. Love doesn’t mean “never having to say you’re sorry”. It means having to say you’re sorry every day for the rest of your fucking life. And the act of falling in love is so terrifying, embarrassing and appalling you’d be safer robbing a convenience store with a chocolate gun. I blame movies for encouraging romance in the first place. We’ve all been swept up in the on-screen love scenes starring Humphrey Bogart & Lauren Bacall, Cary Grant & Ingrid Bergman, Clark Gable & Vivian Leigh, Sally Hawkins and the Gill Man in The Shape Of Water. We should pay more heed to the less than successful movie pairings to sober us to the painful reality. Here are what I consider ten movies with the most ludicrous lovers ever to implode on the silver screen.
Bunny O’Hare (1971). Ernest Borgnine and Bette Davis rob banks dressed like hippies (mostly for Davis to send money to her ungrateful children). Whatever audience this movie was aimed at, it never reached them. And the punch line of the film, in which Davis responds to a query about her kids (“Fuck ‘em.” she says) was bleeped out, which the actress later endlessly bitched about to the press. Thankfully, we’re spared shots of Borgnine pounding Bette Davis beneath the sheets but the mere thought of their coupling should effectively keep your penis even more flaccid then your antidepressants already do.
Sextette (1978). On the subject of geezers, Mae West shot this remake of her stage play when she was well into her eighties. She plays movie queen Marlo Manners, on a London honeymoon with her sixth husband (future James Bond Timothy Dalton). In a film peppered with cameos by Ringo Starr, Tony Curtis and Alice Cooper, Mae totters in and out of frame muttering double-entendres like: “the British are coming”. This is akin to watching your grandmother at a gangbang.
Yes, Giorgio (1982). This love story stars lardass opera star Luciano Pavarotti as a singer on tour in America who falls for a throat specialist (Kathryn Harrold). “Please Don’t Sit On Me!” should have been the tag line.
Staircase (1969). Rex Harrison and Richard Burton play two aging homosexual hairdressers in London who are so nelly and self-loathing it’s enough to make gay people “come in”.
Moment By Moment (1978). Lily Tomlin plays a wealthy Marin county matron who falls for a beach boy drifter named “Strip” (John Travolta, whose career really took a dive after this). The film is so wrong headed, it’s as fascinating as it is inadvertently hilarious, like when Tomlin encourages Travolta to disrobe and get into her hot tub. She calls out: “Oh Strip….”
Phaedra (1962). In this laughable version of the Greek myth Melina Mercouri is the new wife of a shipping magnate who gets the hots for her stepson (a scrawny young Anthony Perkins). When Perkins drives off a cliff in his sports car, he actually cries out: “Go girl…”
Sincerely Yours (1955). Warner Brothers failed to transform Liberace into a leading man when they remade The Man Who Played God, about a pianist who loses his hearing. “It’s no use- I’m stone deaf” Liberace lisps. His on-screen romances with Dorothy Malone and Joanne Drue are- how should I put this kindly?- pretty gay.
Change Of Habit (1969) Speaking of Marys- Mary Tyler Moore plays a plucky nun in the ghetto who falls for guitar-playing, inner-city doctor (Elvis Presley) and has to decide whether to shed her habit at a Hootenanny in this howler.
Rhinestone (1984). Cartoonishly top-heavy Dolly Parton bets that she can turn a NYC cabbie (played by a marbles-in-his mouth Sylvester Stallone) into a singing star in this agonizingly unfunny stinker. Fantasizing about the two of them is a little like imagining slabs of beef colliding on hooks in a freezer.
Swept Away (2001). Yes, it really was that bad. This unnecessary remake of the Lina Wertmuller film about a rich bitch and a sailor shipwrecked on an island starred a violently irritating Madonna as well as Adriano Giannini, the cute son of the original film’s star. Madonna telegraphs every gesture and each line reading is flat and grating. Her body is so muscular and lean you don’t want to fuck her, you want to pound nails with her.