Out on Blu-ray (but unfortunately a PAL disc which you will need an all-region Blu-ray player for) is Station Six-Sahara, a 1963 scorcher of a film starring Baby Doll herself- Carroll Baker. She plays Catherine Star and she and her ex-husband crash their car into a remote oil rig in the Sahara Desert one night. In no time, she is lathering up the swarthy, horny, men working there to fight amongst each other for her affection. Baker is sexy and great in this one, lasciviously eating a peach at the breakfast table just to make one of the workers uptight. Sitting around outside in a bra, and when she is ordered to cover up by the man in charge (Peter van Eyck) she tartly replies, “I don’t like anyone giving me orders. If I wanted to sit out here naked- I’d sit out here naked!” She even takes a nighttime stroll while nude in a white fur coat. As expected, it doesn’t end well.
I saw this film when it opened and years later at Lincoln Center as a selection of one of Martin Scorsese’s favorite movies. When I attended a Chiller Theatre convention I got to meet the sublime Carroll Baker and had her sign a lobby card of Station Six-Sahara for me. When I informed her it was one of Scorsese’s favorites she was pleasantly surprised and delighted.
Baker was a serious member of the Actor’s Studio when she began her career, and was catapulted to stardom with her sly, sexy performance in Baby Doll, based on an original Tennessee Williams screenplay and sardonically directed by Elia Kazan. That giant billboard of Baker sucking her thumb in a crib that loomed over Times Square caused a firestorm of controversy at the time. Especially when it was condemned by the Catholic Church. Baker was unfortunately shoe-horned into a series of sexpot roles in Hollywood melodramas like The Carpetbaggers and Harlow, and one of my all-time favorites- Sylvia. She went for work in Italy in the 1970s where she appeared in some fabulously twisty “giallos” like Orgasmo, So Sweet…So Perverse, A Quiet Place To Kill, The Sweet Body Of Deborah, not to mention the supernatural thriller Baba Yaga. She never receives the credit for how great she is in these films.
But Station Six-Sahara, while cashing in on her sexpot status, is a fascinating film nonetheless. There’s a sweaty, existential quality to it. Scenes with the men squabbling or talking among themselves, while feeling more theatrical and play-like, still have a punch to them. Peter van Eyck is memorable as the haughty head of the crew, forcing the men to play poker with him and undone by Baker’s Catherine, who toys with him like a cat with a ball of twine. Ian Bannen is Fletcher, the rude, crude joker of the pack. He delights in tormenting the uptight Major Macey (Denholm Elliot). He even makes a deal by giving the Major a month’s pay for one of the many letters that he receives, knowing it will make Macey crazy wondering what was in the missive. But for the most part the movie belongs to Baker who haunts the movie with her sexy, throaty, staccato laugh.
This film only showed up on home video in a blurry pan-and-scan video that was unwatchable. To see the movie now on Blu-ray (digitally restored) is to be stunned by the film’s strange, steamy power.
