“The Picture that unmasks society’s secrets. Jail Bait: the story of boy-crazy girl and gun-crazy guy. The most feared of our modern underworld—men who hate the law and abuse even those they love. See the siren-screaming, gun-blazing thriller, Jail Bait.”
“The Violent Years. See what happens behind locked doors of a pajama party! Teenage killers fearing no law! Thrill Girls of the highway! Girl gang terrorists! Untamed girls of the pack-gang! Adolescent gangsters taking their thrills unashamed! Terrifying realism clawing at your unbelieving mind! See The Violent Years.”
It’s Showtime!
Bride of the Monster was Ed Wood‘s most financially successful work, which of course isn’t saying much. It’s success may lie in its attempts to meet mainstream genre expectations, and the fact that it’s Wood’s only film to actually feature a star performance from Bela Lugosi. (In Glen or Glenda, Lugosi was a bizarre narrator. Plan 9 from Outer Space infamously used a few seconds of Lugosi footage, shot mere days before his death, making it a brief, posthumous non-performance which many Lugosi filmographies don’t even list). Rather than pursuing his own twisted muse, Wood, a Lugosi fanboy, attempts to fulfill what he imagines 1955 audiences want from a film starring Bela Lugosi, and therefore Bride of the Monster doesn’t reach the levels of inspired lunacy of the pair’s other collaborations. However, Ed Wood can only be Ed Wood and, in his defense, he’s deprived of good taste—which numerous artists have rightly observed is the enemy of great art. Wood made some of the greatest naïve art of all time. Thankfully, Bride of the Monster was produced before booze, poverty, and obsessive kinkiness grabbed poor Eddie by the throat and took him down, which means it’s charming as hell. Adding to its goofy grace is Lugosi’s last starring performance (he had what amounted to a mute cameo in Reginald Le Borg’s The Black Sleep in 1956), which features a beautifully mangled speech that serves as an almost perfect swan song for the horror star.
Lugosi fans (and they are legion, or at least once were) are hardly apt to admit it, but their object of adulation was one of the genre’s worst actors, due in no small part to his clear disdain for the English language and astoundingly poor career choices. With damned few exceptions (notably, Ygor in Son of Frankenstein), he was a one-note performer. Even Lon Chaney, Jr. had more range (although according to peers and biographers, both actors were a tad slow on the uptake Continue reading 1955 DRIVE-IN DOUBLE FEATURE: BRIDE OF THE MONSTER AND PHANTOM FROM 10,000 LEAGUES→
This is the introductory entry in a new series covering movies that originally played in drive-in-cinema double bills across the country.
One of the first drive-in theaters premiered in Camden, New Jersey in 1933. The venue’s popularity reached its zenith from the 1950s to the early 1980s. Still, the 1940s was also a robust decade for the drive-in, which specialized in low budget B-films, especially horror and science fiction. The setting was also unique in that drive-ins continued to screen films from the 30 and 40s all the way until the late 70s. For a more extended discussion, see my article Cinema Under The Stars.
Coming Attraction! Black Dragons!
“Suicide or murder in the shadow of a nation’s capitol? The screen’s master of horror, Bela Lugosi has the answer to this mysterious death. Lugosi as the madman on a mission of vengeance, vengeance against 6 men who plot the destruction of a nation at war.”
Coming Attraction…
“Ominous footsteps in the night foreshadow terrifying death. By Day… A Man Of Honor. By Night… A Beast Of Horror. Bela Lugosi. The Invisible Ghost.”
It’s Showtime!
Brides are dying at the altar, and somebody’s responsible. Before being forever robbed of the opportunity to lose her virginity, each bride was given an mysterious orchid—with a scent. Whoever heard of an orchid with a scent? Maybe it’s a clue. Another clue might be that the same undertaker shows up at every crime scene—and he looks just like Dracula. Odd, too, that all of the brides’ corpses vanish! Luana Walters steals the entire film as the spunky reporter giving Lois Lane a run for her money.
Bela’s got a bitch of a wife, too (Elizabeth Russell, from Cat People). She hates aging but, somehow, the blood of virgin brides acts like botox for her. Bela, being a mad doctor, injects it. He’s got a pair of henchman, too: Frank Moran (who’s kind of a precursor to Tor Johnson‘s hulking brute in Bride of the Monster) and dwarf Angelo Rossito (from Freaks).
The movie has an imbecilic charm, but it never quite reaches the sap level of PRC’s The Devil Bat (1940) or Lugosi’s work with Ed Wood.
“Show starts in 10 minutes! We will now have an intermission time before starting our next show!”
“Get the item that adds to your personal comfort. Cigarettes? Here they are! Get the kind you prefer and enjoy them thoroughly; all the most popular brands.”
“Ice cream bars! It’s the handy way to enjoy smooth, rich, creamy ice cream. Get some!”
“Crisp, flavorful fish sandwiches. Gold and brown and crunchy outside and tender and juicy inside for a snack or a meal. ”
“It’s Showtime!”
1944 babes are disappearing along Laurel Road after stopping at Nicholas’ gas station. Nicholas (George Zucco) is in cahoots with the henchmen Toby (John Carradine) and Grego (Pat McKee) who in turn work for crazy doc Marlow (Bela). Doc has a wife who has been a zombie for twenty plus years and he believes, if he gets the right girl, that a voodoo ceremony will unzombify his beloved. Toby and Grego are, ahem, a tad feebleminded, which makes Doc’s job harder. There’s a also a pesky fiancee and some really cool voodoo robes. There isn’t scare one, but it’s a tacky variation of The Corpse Vanishes and has the good sense to be even more senseless.
Although The Corpse Vanishes ( directed by Wallace Fox) was made in 1942, it was double billed two years later for the drive-in-circuit with Voodoo Man (directed by William Beaudine). Both movies are part of Lugosi’s infamous “Monogram Nine.” For the unenlightened, this was a poverty row horror series produced by Sam Katzmann, starring the already faded Dracula actor in some of the most inept movies made. Voodoo Man is the last of the infamous Monogram Nine.
“Please remember to replace the speaker on the mast when you leave the theater. Thanks for being with us this evening. We hope that in some small way we have been able to add to your comfort, pleasure, and relaxation.”
Both films are available on a Legends double feature DVD with vintage drive-in ads, trailers, and countdowns. Olive Films has recently released Voodoo Man on Blu-ray in a pristine transfer.
PLOT: With the help of 400 pound maid Griselda, suburban housewife Peggy accidentally murders her deceptively bucolic husband and goes on the lam. A cop directs the fugitives toward a Pleasure Island for criminals called Mortville. Things go south with the village’s fascistic matriarch, until there’s a mutiny in the ramshackle town.
BACKGROUND:
Divine was originally intended for the role of Mole McHenry (eventually played by Susan Lowe), but could not back out of an alternate commitment. Desperate Living is the only film Waters made during Divine’s lifetime in which the hefty transvestite did not appear.
Waters did not cast regular David Lochary for the film due to the latter’s drug use. Lochary died soon after Desperate Living was released, either from a PCP overdose or from bleeding to death during an accident that occurred while he was tripping on PCP (reports differ).
The tagline was “It isn’t very pretty”—a radical understatement.
Budgeted at $65,000, this was Waters’ most expensive film to date. 1974’s Female Troublehad a budget of $25,000, while 1972’s Pink Flamingos cost a mere $10,000.
The extras of Mortville were homeless residents from the Baltimore skid row, bused in for a single day’s shoot.
According to Waters, lesbian groups in Boston protested the film, forcing its cancellation in Beantown.
INDELIBLE IMAGE: The opening credit scene of a dead rat served on expensive china, salted, and eaten at a swank dinner party. It sets the table for what’s to come.
THREE WEIRD THINGS: Cross-dressing cop; toddler in the fridge; scissors self-castration
WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: Waters outdoes Multiple Maniacs‘ “cavalcade of perversion” in this grunge fairy tale that includes systematic lesbianism, cross-dressing, odious hippie sex scenes, cannibalism, necrophilia, bat rabies, copious facial warts, and gap-toothed queen Edith Massey sexually serviced by leather-bound Nazis.
Opening credits for Desperate Living
COMMENTS: The finale in John Waters’ “Trash Trilogy,” Desperate Living is the most mean-spirited of his films, so much so that even Waters himself has claimed that he went too far with it (he criticized himself for not including a normal protagonist to offset Mortville’s outlaw denizens). Desperate Living, however, is a rogue burlesque with Waters at his most consciously surreal. Indeed, this is what Surrealism is supposed to be: provocative, revolting anarchy. Its première only lacked an actual riot, which is what the original Surrealists repeatedly aimed for (Luis Buñuel reportedly took a pistol to the movement’s early events, preparing to whip rioters with it). After Pink Flamingos and Female Trouble, the midnight circuit knew what to expect of Waters, and were perhaps too pacifistic to wreak havoc.
Waters’ posthumous self-disgust with Desperate Living is understandable, and explains his eventual move to nostalgia with Hairspray (1988). Despite, or perhaps even because of, Desperate Living‘s descent into a kitsch Gehenna, Waters inched towards becoming a more multi-faceted filmmaker after this (as much as he could while still remaining John Waters). Actually, sentimentality had always been an essential part of his Waters’ diet, having worshiped at such diverse altars as William Castle, Busby Berkeley (surprisingly to some), and The Wizard Of Oz as well as Doris Wishman, Russ Meyer and Herschell Gordon Lewis. There’s not even a sliver of that vital part of himself here, however. Rather, Waters retains a brilliantly narrow focus that expanded and buttressed the rotten punk fortress he had been shrewdly building for a dozen years.
In hindsight, we can see Desperate Living as Waters’ personal query. “It’s a fairytale for fucked-up children,” he once said. Visually, the film verifies that assessment, with the psychedelic sets of Mortville ((Fabulously designed by Vincent Peranio, who also was responsible for cooking the rat)) evoking ludicrous adolescent nightmares. There’s also the derelict hippie commune, the type of which we can imagine being constructed for the childlike followers of Charles Manson. Fauvist paintings, along with portraits of dictators Adolf Hitler and Idi Amin, decorate the plywood castle walls of Queen Carolotta. It’s the most ferociously idealistic of Waters’ films, but also the angriest. Self-proclaimed dystopian films are run-of-the-mill—and, given the current climate, we will undoubtedly see a renewed wave of the genre—but the pessimism of Desperate Living is internally authentic and, like Tod Browning before him, Waters’ ongoing obsession for crime aligns him with camp outcasts.
A film about desperation, Desperate Living is aptly named; a summation of everything Waters had been navigating toward. Having reached an apex here, possibly unwittingly, it becomes the filmmaker’s shrill, skid marked tightie-whitie. And we can locate the pulse of Waters’ sympathies; although here, that pulse was ultimately too faint, missing the puritan heart of Divine (no, that’s not a typo) and the sibling center of Lochary. Their absence casts a callous pall over the film. The initial takeaway is something akin to Freaks (1932), but without the redemptive postlude. It’s Waters’ most rewarding challenge, which apparently he can’t revisit. For those willing, Desperate Living has the potential to produce a maniacal euphoria. It’s far less offensive than the moralistic platitudes being bandied about in cinema (and culture) with the sincerity of a hypocritical shrug. Waters’ finale to his trash trilogy is not merely what Surrealism is supposed to be about; it’s a cinematic obligation.
G. Smalley adds: I actually disagree with those (including Waters himself) who think this is his “least joyous” (again, Waters’ words) film. Waters is certainly kinder to his actors here; in Pink Flamingos he asked them to do things he shouldn’t have, whether they were willing or not. (Although a couple of Desperate Living‘s scenes involving children just cross the line into irresponsible filmmaking, at least no chickens were killed, no friends go down on each other, and no one eats feces). No one can suggest that Peggy Gravel is a nastier character than Female Trouble‘s Dawn Davenport; Peggy at least has the excuse of mental illness. There are no jokes in Desperate Living crueler than the Marble’s scheme in Flamingos to rape and impregnate runaway girls and sell their children, or than Trouble‘s subplot where Edith Massey is caged in a birdhouse, only to have Divine cut off her hand. Nor could there be; Waters quickly found the limit of what he could achieve via shock in Pink Flamingos, and spent the rest of the “Trash Trilogy” refining his aesthetic to make it less shocking and more witty. Female Trouble does this by introducing an actual plot and focused satire. Desperate Living buffers its cruelties with the unreal fairy-tale plot, the gaudy production design, and, most importantly, with Waters’ best dialogue writing. Lines like “I don’t want no white man looking at my Tampax!,” ” Look at those disgusting trees, stealing my oxygen!,” and the exquisitely ironic ““I have never found the antics of deviants to be one bit amusing” are so ludicrous, and delivered with such hysteria, that they’re impossible to take seriously. Waters uses his camp ear to transform misanthropic harangues from the merely hateful into the realm of the transcendently droll—he takes the piss out of his own nihilist impulses. And Desperate Living drips with these maliciously delicious mal mots. The fact that this is Waters’ funniest movie makes it, to me, his most joyous film. I don’t think Waters stopped making shock films after Desperate Living because he had gone too far, but because he had finally gotten the formula just right. There was nowhere left to go; it was time to try a new challenge.
DVD INFO: The unrated New Line DVD (buy) is out of print but readily available. It contains the trailer and a commentary by Waters and Liz Renay (recorded separately). Waters is, as always, charming, and the aging Renay retains a saucy, offbeat charisma that makes it easy to understand why the director cast her.
Desperate Living is also available in the New Line editions packaged together with Polyester in the collectible “John Waters Collection #2” (buy) and the rare and expensive 8-disc “Very Crudely Yours, John Waters” set (buy) (where it appears alongside Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble, Polyester, Hairspray, A Dirty Shame, Pecker, and a disc of extra features).
Desperate Living is also available to rent or buy on-demand (courtesy of current rights-holder Warner Brothers).
Desperate Living is not currently available on Blu-ray, but with Warners holding the rights and the Criterion Collection expressing interest in canonizing Waters with their recent restoration and release of Multiple Maniacs, there is hope that it may someday join the high-def ranks.
UPDATE 6/22/2026
The Criterion prediction finally came true, many years later. The label has released a remastered Desperate Living on Blu-ray (buy) or Blu-ray + 4K UHD (buy). Extras include a recycled commentary track from Waters and Liz Renay (R.I.P.); an Italian dub (!); new interviews with Waters, Susan Lowe, Mary Vivian Pearce, Mink Stole, and production designer Vincent Peranio; a location tour; and of course, a booklet with essay.
FEATURING: Olivia Newton-John, Michael Beck, Gene Kelly, Matt Lattanzi, James Sloyan
PLOT: Sonny Malone is a gifted artist reduced to designing album covers, but when he meets former big band leader Danny McGuire, the duo join forces with an Olympian muse open a roller disco club.
WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: Xanadu is campy, kitschy and appalling, but it’s not weird. It’s just one of the last death rattles of the disco era.
COMMENTS: La La Land may have revived the movie musical, which has been on life support for decades because of flops like Xanadu. This film spawned a soundtrack album (deliriously overproduced by the Electric Light Orchestra’s Jeff Lynne) that was a monster hit in 1980, spawning five top 20 singles. The movie itself, however, bombed, and rightfully so. It’s inoffensive, embarrassing piffle. Made on a big budget, Xanadu still looks cheap, and director Robert Greenwald , who later made The Burning Bed and several progressive-minded documentaries, doesn’t really seem to know how to stage musical numbers, despite choreography from Kenny Ortega (High School Musical). Michael Beck, fresh off the macho action classic The Warriors, looks embarrassed (he never starred in a movie again), and poor 68-year-old Gene Kelly makes his unfortunate farewell to musicals in this dud. Olivia Newton-John is beautiful but cannot act—although she was much better in Grease—-while director Don Bluth (An American Tail) contributes a weak animated segment.
Practically all memory of the film vanishes right after you’ve seen it. Xanadu is sort of a remake of the indifferently received 1947 Rita Hayworth musical Down to Earth, while Kelly also played a character named Danny McGuire in the 1944’s Cover Girl opposite Hayworth. Either of those films has to better than Xanadu, which only Newton-John may still remember fondly: the young Danny McGuire is played in flashback by dancer-actor Matt Lattanzi, who later became her husband. No amount of fake glitter and flash can salvage this Lattanzi-Newton John family album, however: the climactic musical number involves a series of revolving stages that reminded me of the old Disneyland show “America Sings”. I’d rather sit through “America Sings” again. In fact, those who want to experience Xanadu should listen to the soundtrack album (featuring Newton John, ELO, Cliff Richard, and the Tubes) instead of slumbering through this decidedly non-weird musical relic of the Studio 54 era.
Someone apparently had pleasant, perhaps drug-induced memories of the picture, because in 2007 Xanadu was adapted into a modestly produced Broadway musical (starring “30 Rock”‘s Cheyenne Jackson) that was nominated for a few Tony awards. In the end, Xanadu may be recalled chiefly as being part of the “great”—or awful—disco musical trend of 1980, which also gave us the infamous Village People vehicle Can’t Stop the Music. Anecdotally, unfortunate moviegoer John J.B. Wilson saw both films at a 99-cent double feature and came up with the idea of the Razzie awards, “honoring” the year’s worst films, which are still held today. At least Xanadu has better songs than Can’t Stop the Music.
“God gave him a calling in life, and that was to make pornography.”–George Kuchar on Curt McDowell
DIRECTED BY: Curt McDowell
FEATURING: Marion Eaton, Melinda McDowell, Moira Benson, Mookie Blodgett, Ken Scudder, Rick Johnson, Maggie Pyle, George Kuchar
PLOT: On a dark and stormy night in the Nebraska hinterlands, several individuals on the road end up taking shelter at “Prairie Blossom”, an old dark house that is the dominion of alcoholic matron Gert Hammond (Eaton). Everyone present has secrets and obsessions that are brought to light, and pair off in various combinations for sexual liaisons. The group also finds itself trapped inside the house by a gorilla rampaging outside.
BACKGROUND:
Producers John Thomas (who briefly appeared as country singer Simon Cassidy) and Charles Thomas were film students of Thundercrack! actor/writer George Kuchar, classmates of director Curt McDowell, and heirs to a fortune from the Burger Chef fast food chain, which they used to fund the movie. They also provided a rooms in their home for the shoot.
George Kuchar was a legend in the underground film industry, making hundred of short, campy avant-garde films together with his twin brother Mike. Noteworthy titles include Sins of the Fleshapoids and Hold Me While I’m Naked (both from 1966).
Actress Melinda McDowell was director Curt McDowell’s sister.
Kuchar and McDowell were rumored to be lovers.
The movie was shot for $9,000 and $40,000 in deferred costs.
Buck Henry used his clout as a judge to set up a (scandalous) screening at the 1976 Los Angeles Film Festival.
The original negatives disappeared and only five 16mm prints of the film were struck. One print was seized by Canadian authorities and three had been edited in an ineffectual attempt to make the film more marketable. The badly-damaged but uncut fifth print was primarily utilized for the transfer of the 40th anniversary Blu-ray release by Synapse Films.
El Rob Hubbard’s ((Fun Fact: actress “Maggie Pyle” and her husband (one of the crew members) were my landlords for a short time in San Francisco in the early 90’s.)) Staff Pick for a Certified Weird movie.
INDELIBLE IMAGE: Among the various obvious (and mainly pornographic) images to choose from, the one that sums up the spirit of Thundercrack! is the publicity photo of Gert and Bing in a melodramatic clinch—Bing in a wedding dress, Gert staring off into the horizon. It’s iconic, yet subversive, and pretty much encapsulates the film’s mood.
THREE WEIRD THINGS: Versatile cucumbers; pickled husbands; amorous bipeds
WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: The collision of several elements: the lurid melodramatics along with the hardcore action, the visual stylization and the complex wordplay, all combine to make a film much more engaging and—dare I say it—innocent than one would expect from a mid 1970s hardcore sex parody film. Or, is it a parody film with porno elements? You decide…
Brief scene from Thundercrack!
COMMENTS: “What the heck is going on here—some sort of communal therapy group? Is that what this is?!!”—Bing
Lugosi fans (and they are legion, or at least once were) are hardly apt to admit it, but their object of adulation was one of the genre’s worst actors, due in no small part to his clear disdain for the English language and astoundingly poor career choices. With damned few exceptions (notably, Ygor in Son of Frankenstein), he was a one-note performer. Even Lon Chaney, Jr. had more range (although according to peers and biographers, both actors were a tad slow on the uptake Continue reading 1955 DRIVE-IN DOUBLE FEATURE: BRIDE OF THE MONSTER AND PHANTOM FROM 10,000 LEAGUES 
Bela’s got a bitch of a wife, too (Elizabeth Russell, from 
1944 babes are disappearing along Laurel Road after stopping at Nicholas’ gas station. Nicholas (George Zucco) is in cahoots with the henchmen Toby (
– Waters’ memoirs outline his bad taste philosophy
) is out of print but readily available. It contains the trailer and a commentary by Waters and Liz Renay (recorded separately). Waters is, as always, charming, and the aging Renay retains a saucy, offbeat charisma that makes it easy to understand why the director cast her.
) and the rare and expensive 8-disc “Very Crudely Yours, John Waters” set (
) (where it appears alongside Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble, Polyester, Hairspray, A Dirty Shame, Pecker, and a disc of extra features).
(courtesy of current rights-holder Warner Brothers).![Desperate Living (The Criterion Collection) [4K UHD]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51TLT2UeiOL._SL500_.jpg)
