Turner Classic Movies this month is scheduling each day with an all-day tribute to a different star. On August 4ththey are devoting the day to Ruth Roman, the husky-voiced, sexy, character actress who was always better than most of the movies she was in. But one of my personal sleaze favorites of hers was Look in Any Window, which will be shown on TCM at 6:30 PM (EST), and you should drop everything to watch it. After all, it stars teen heartthrob (at the time) Paul Anka as a pervert peeping Tom. What could be better than that?
Look in Any Window was made the height of movies that supposedly ripped the lid off the swinging, alcohol-fueled, hypocritical life of suburban couples at the time. And it was the only film directed by William Alland, a popular producer of sci-fi hits like Creature from the Black Lagoon, It Came from Outer Space and This Island Earth. But starring the teen pop singer of Puppy Love as a troubled adolescent who sneaks around the neighborhood at night looking in bedroom windows must have been a shock to Anka’s bobby-socks-wearing fans at the time. It’s doubtful the sordid story of a scopophiliac could have overtaken the box office of other films released that year like West Side Story, The Guns of Navarone, Lover Come Back and The Absent-Minded Professor.
Ruth Roman plays Jackie Fowler, a boozy, frustrated woman married to an-out-of-work lush (Alex Nicol). She is having a torrid affair with the neighbor Gareth Lowell (Jack Cassidy), while Gareth’s wife (Carole Mathews) turns a blind eye to her husband’s philandering. Jackie’s neglected son is Craig (Paul Anka), who sneaks out at night and peeps in bedroom windows, wearing a Halloween mask as a disguise. The neighbors are up in arms about the deviant voyeur, and organize vigilante mobs to try and capture him.
But meanwhile, the drunken pool parties continue with parents knocking back martinis while lustfully ogling their friends’ spouses.
Anka tries his best. They get him out of his shirt often enough to titillate his legion of fans. It’s easy to see why many teen singers at the time like Fabian and Bobby Rydell wanted to transition to movies like Elvis, but Paul Anka’s choices like this one and Girl’s Town, the riotous howler starring Mamie Van Doren, didn’t quite catapult him to film super stardom.
But there’s something so satisfying and sleazy about this movie that I have been raving about it to friends for years. It did come out on a less-than-spectacular-looking DVD, but seeing this trashy wonder on Turner Classic Movies is my idea of a way to beat the heat.
