Emotional Support Movies

            Now I am all for the idea that animals can be therapy for damaged souls. I’ve seen moving news segments on how dogs truly help soldiers suffering PTSD. But lately the term “emotional support animal” has devolved because of people abusing the system to get doctors to write prescriptions for their pet chickens, pigs and goats. Recently a woman was removed from a plane in Florida because of her “emotional support” squirrel. It’s bad enough having to sit next to a person on a plane. But now you have to deal with a worried warthog? Who asked for the “barnyard experience” with your airplane ticket?

            My idea of instant comfort is a movie. And there are several I go to immediately when I’m stressed out. I always find that after sitting through any of these they soothe my stressed soul better than a drink or snorting a line of Drano crystals. I’ve asked friends about this practice and many have agreed that there are key films they reach for when they get blue. The great thing of accumulating a collection of films is that you can always pull off the shelf an instant celluloid sedative. Here are the top 10 I always turn to during a crisis.

            Auntie Mame. Rosalind Russell is just sublime in this witty, wonderful comedy. This movie always makes me laugh and warms my heart. I even took a trip to “Mame’s” movie address- “One Beekman Place,” which actually exists.

            Journey To The Center Of The Earth. No, not the stupid 3D one with Brendan Fraser, the 1959 film starring James Mason, Arlene Dahl and Pat Boone (when he was young and cute and not as much of an asshole). I still think it’s a great adventure film, and the minute I hear the ominous rumblings of that glorious score by Bernard Herrmann– I am nine-years-old again.

            The Ghost And Mrs. Muir. Director Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s All About Eve is perfection, but I find myself often revisiting this lovely romantic fantasy starring Gene Tierney as a widowed mother who buys a house with the ghost of the seafaring former owner (Rex Harrison). Once again Bernard Herrmann’s moody, moving score elevates this classic to dizzy heights.

            The Time Machine. Another childhood favorite that I often go to is George Pal‘s 1960 sci-fi adaptation of the H. G. Wells novel with a marvelous Rod Taylor who travels into the future by way of a homemade time machine and finds a destroyed planet ruled by underground-dwelling cannibalistic monsters. Just the sight of a blue-faced, snaggletooth Morlock makes me mental.

            The Band Wagon. When I was young I never liked musicals. They just did nothing for me. But I remember reluctantly going to a revival of The Umbrellas Of Cherbourg in my 30s and was transported. Suddenly I found a great affection for all those glorious MGM musicals like Singin’ In The Rain and especially this Vincente Minnelli-directed treat starring Fred Astaire about the making-of a Broadway musical. With the gorgeous score, delightful co-stars, witty script and that memorable dance in Central Park between Astaire and leggy beauty Cyd Charisse, I am immediately in bliss.

            The Palm Beach Story. Preston Sturges had this incredible moment in time where he turned out a series of peerless comedies that still boggle the mind and leave you breathless with laughter. I can pick any one of his films off the shelf- like the sardonically hilarious The Lady Eve or the sublime Sullivan’s Travels– but this rollicking gem about the misadventures of a wife (Claudette Colbert) separating from her inventor husband (Joel McCrea) just slays me. From the drunken “Ale And Quail” club on the train to the motor-mouth, brassy sister (Mary Astor) of a hapless millionaire (Rudy Vallee)- I am always in heaven for 88 joyful minutes.

            The Best Of Everything. A trashy, 20^th Century Fox melodrama (based on a best-seller by Rona Jaffe) about an ambitious fiction editor (Hope Lange) who lands a job at a prestige publishing house, locks horns with a bitch boss (Joan Crawford, of course) and moves into a Greenwich Village apartment with two co-workers (Suzy Parker and Diane Baker). I don’t know why this one always beats out similar favorites like Peyton Place and the glorious Valley Of The Dolls, but for some reason it always does. I remember being at a dinner party with the delightful Rona Jaffe and I was so tempted to relate how I got one of my favorite blow jobs watching that movie on TV one afternoon in Provincetown. Mercifully I kept my big mouth shut.

            Strange Behavior (aka Dead Kids). I flipped when I saw this insanely good 1981 thriller in a theater at the time, and kept going back repeatedly the first week it played. It’s about a college that is doing weird experiments on teenagers by the mysterious Dr. La Sange and stars the terrific Dan Shor (Wise Blood) who plays the son of the police chief (Michael Murphy), and who signs up for the sinister study. Fiona Lewis is fabulous as Dr. La Sange’s villainous assistant, Louise Fletcher is great as Murphy’s caring girlfriend, Dey Young shines as Shor’s love interest, and there is a memorable moment at a Halloween costume party where everyone breaks into this choreographed dance to Lou Christie’s Lightnin’ Strikes that just makes me berserk.

            Marnie. Alfred Hitchcock is another go-to director, and there isn’t a time when my day could be elevated by re-watching any number of his films. Psycho, Rear Window, Vertigo, North By Northwest, The Birds– are beyond perfection. But why is it that I keep returning to what was considered a misstep by the master director? This chilly tale of a psychologically damaged thief (Tippi Hedren) always flips me out. Maybe it’s the flat affect in Hedren’s performance. Or the unsettling wedding night sexual assault (by husband Sean Connery) that was rumored to be the reason Hitchcock wanted to make the film. Or the wonderful artificial back-drops. And that stunning, symphonic Bernard Herrmann score! All these reasons and more make me revisit this movie repeatedly. I an unreasonably obsessed over it.

            Trog. The last feature film in the career of movie star Joan Crawford is, I reluctantly admit, pretty damn awful. But it always me crazy and I love it dearly. Crawford is laughably sincere as a scientist studying a prehistoric man found in a cave. When she is displaying colors to “Trog” in the lab and says things like, “green, Trog, green…” I fall off the couch, roaring with laughter. No matter how many times I see this mess I am left giddy with joy at its preposterous, wonderful awfulness.   

            Other films that avert suicidal depression include Luchino Visconti’s operatic Senso; the joyful Bye Bye Birdie; any Russ Meyer film- particularly Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls; Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s mesmerizing A Matter Of Life And Death; Jean-Pierre Melville’s exquisite Le Samourai, Pier Paolo Pasolini’s shockingly beautiful Salo; and always- Jim Jarmusch’s twisted romance Only Lovers Left Alive.

But I also go to the bastard children of great directors. Movies that weren’t as acclaimed as the filmmaker’s other film, but ones I love dearly. Like Billy Wilder’s rueful The Private Life Of Sherlock Holmes; Nicholas Ray’s haunting On Dangerous Ground; Spike Lee’s exuberant School Daze; Roman Polanski’s wildly perverse The Tenant; Robert Altman’s heartbreaking Thieves Like Us; John Huston’s bleak but beautiful Fat City, the feverishly surreal Fellini Satyricon; Ken Russell’s misunderstood musical The Boy Friend; Francois Truffaut’s emotionally devastating  The Woman Next Door; Sam Fuller’s impossibly bizarre The Naked Kiss; Robert Aldrich’s unhinged The Legend Of Lylah Clare.

And, God forgive me, any Ma & Pa Kettle film.

Alright, I admit it, many of those films represent my “emotional support squirrel on a plane.”