For film lovers, there is real excitement concerning the new reconstruction of Erich von Stroheim’s unfinished directorial swan song- Queen Kelly starring Gloria Swanson. With newly discovered material it may be the most complete form to date. And there’s real curiosity about the purported “A.I.” reconstruction of the missing 45-minute original ending of Orson Welles’ The Magnificent Ambersons. But they both pale in comparison beside the new, digitally cleaned-up Blu-ray of the 1974 sleaze masterpiece- Mama’s Dirty Girls from Dark Force Entertainment. The last incarnation of this film on Blu-ray from Code Red was a beat-up, scratchy, faded color print that looked horrible. This is from the original uncut 35mm film negative. It makes me want to trek up to St. Patrick’s Cathedral and bow my head in thankful prayer.
The movie features film noir femme fatale legend Gloria Grahame near the end of her career, and I have a soft spot for many of these exploitation films she made then like The Nesting, Blood and Lace and Mansion of the Doomed. She was nicknamed in Hollywood “the blonde with the novocaine lips” and performed in such classics as The Big Heat, The Bad and The Beautiful, Human Desire and In a Lonely Place. She even played Ado Annie in the film version of Oklahoma! Here she plays a morally bankrupt mother, who, with her buxom daughters, roam the country marrying and murdering men for their money. Unfortunately, their new male target murderously turns the tables on them. Directed by John Hayes (Grave of the Vampire) I never caught this in a theater or drive-in and spent years tracking down a VHS copy released on Trans World. But, boy was it worth it.
The movie begins with Mama Love (Grahame) bumping off her husband after getting him to sign an admission that he tried to rape one of her girls. She and her dutiful daughters slash his wrists in the bathtub, after getting him drunk, to make it look like suicide. When they find that there’s nothing in the will they head north. “A man is just a man, but property is security!” Mama schools her daughters. They stop at a health spa and Mama takes a shine to the owner Harold (Paul Lambert). He has already drowned his last wife and, thinking Mama is loaded, plots to kill her off while she schemes to get rid of him. Meanwhile her daughters are sleeping with the locals. Becky (Candice Rialson), teasing Willy (Joe Tornatore), the slow-witted caretaker/amateur boxer. Addie (Sondra Currie), sleeping with Roy the cop (Christopher Lofton), whose wife Charity (Anneka Di Lorenzo) won’t give him a divorce. So, Addie decides to fix that problem with a knife she stole from the local handyman Paul (Dennis Smith), who is romancing sister Cindy (Mary Stoddard).
“Men were just meat to be used and abused!” was a tag line for the film. “Sultry Sisters in Sin.” Was another. “They fight dirty…they love dirty. Everyone is so deliciously depraved you know this won’t end well. “It’s a hard world for a girl,” Mama explains to Cindy in a rare moment of self-reflection, “and sometimes to survive we gotta play dirty, because, sure as hell, a man will play dirty with us.”
Now let us pause to pay tribute to the late, great Candice Rialson (1951-2006), who played the nasty little sex tease Becky in the film. There really are few B-movie goddesses as great as she was. Blonde, incredibly beautiful, not shy about disrobing on screen, she used her sex appeal on film with a self-assured ferociousness. She appeared and dazzled in such films as Candy Stripe Nurses, the delightfully demented Pets, Chatterbox, Moonshine County Express, not to mention more mainstream films like Winter Kills and The Eiger Sanction. It’s easy to see why Quentin Tarantino fashioned Bridget Fonda’s character in Jackie Brown after her. Joe Dante, who directed Rialson in Hollywood Boulevard, rightfully described her as, “the exploitation movie equivalent of getting Julie Christie.”
The film’s theme song includes these lyrics: “I know a lady who acts real shady/She has two daughters who part the waters/And if they come around, you better just leave town/ Don’t mess with Mama’s dirty girls/They’re going to get you! Mama’s dirty girls/ You won’t expect ‘em!” Cole Porter, eat your heart out.
The website for Dark Force Entertainment was down for a while, but is back up. So, keep on the lookout for this grindhouse great.
