Play It Again--Meandering Movie Madness

Since not enough readers visit my side columns, a few friend's urged me to re-play this particular work of nuttiness, originally written last year for my Pretty Poison column (which you should read if only to understand why I look like a tarsier) and place it directly on Sunset Gun's main page. There's a few things I could add to the essay (chiefly my bizarre lust for Andy Griffith and firm belief in his evil, dark side), but I'll leave it as is for now. 

So here goes. And forgive the Dakota Fanning stuff.

Meandering Movie Madness 

I fixate. Be it my propensity towards anxiety attacks, my intense dislike of the grocery store or my wish to re-animate Warren Oates and make him my boyfriend, I'll linger on things far longer than necessary. Especially movies.

Brain loops of the "Lolita La La" song will plague me for days. Kris Krisofferson breaking that kid's T-Rex album in Alice Dosen't Live Here Anymore will skip on continual rewind when I'm listening to Mott the Hoople. I'll sit in a meeting and only think about Ida Lupino singing with that fog voice and tinkling piano keys in Road House, wondering if she ever had sex with Richard Widmark or Cornell Wilde. Robert Blake's face in Lost Highway will flash like hazard lights as I attempt (attempt) to sleep. And then I wonder if he's doing OK and how civil cases are kind of unfair and that Bonnie Lee Bakley was really a bad person anyway. Then I'll wonder what the hell Christian Brando is up to and why in God's name did he date Bakley. Better yet, why did Robert Blake get near her? I'd go out with him...I'm sure she didn't appreciate Electra Glide in Blue like I did.

Anyway, the point of this ("how am I not myself?"--thank you I Heart Huckabees) is some carefully constructed (careful? constructed?) mental movie meandering.

I am obsessed with Alfred Hitchcock's Marnie.

I think to an unhealthy degree. I've seen the film too many times to count. I watched it again tonight.

A psychosexual thriller that's been pegged by many critics as flawed Hitchcock, Tippi Hedren plays the title role, a traumatized woman whose criminal past leads her into the imprisoning, Freudian arms of Mark Rutland (Sean Connery--so wonderfully sleazy as he always should be). Hedren is an independent spirit of sorts (somewhat similar to her Melanie Daniels in The Birds), albeit a frigid, fucked-up head case. She can't stand the color red, she has an unusual bond with her horse and she loves her cold, cold mother to the point of masochism. And that's just the beginning. She's for certain, never had a normal sexual encounter and though she shows flickers of attraction and flirtation, she appears to hate men. Or maybe just all of humanity. She sure hates that bratty little girl dropping in on her mother.

It's hard to blame Marnie, though--men (people) are terrible beasts who've only done her harm (flashback to a very young Bruce Dern fucking with her family). In return she violates them by lying, cheating and stealing without ever giving them the full pleasure of her lovely body. Makes sense. And like Kim Novak's Madeleine/Judy in Vertigo, Marnie is also a magnet for freakish, fetishistic men. Real fetishes. Not that inane whips and chains "Bad Kitty!" dungeon crap you see advertised in the paper. No, this is the kind where you empty out their safe and then end up getting slapped on a cruise ship by some guy who's obsessed with figuring out what the fuck is wrong with you. And almost rapes you. And maybe you (or rather, Marnie) almost wanting it.

Still, there's this feeling that somewhere in Marnie's tangled mind, a ravenous woman could emerge oozing that kind of kinky sexuality only insane girls can provide. This is where the movie gets mad sexy. And probably sick to dwell on. But I can't help it. It's so much more erotic than say...Jessica Simpson washing a car.

Is this Hitchcock's dream? Certainly. His brilliantly warped vision of such highly sexual madness is likely an American dream as well. Right?

Why can't Dan Duryea be alive so I can have sex with him?

Character actor extraordinaire, sexy, sexy sleaze and one of my many odd cinematic objects of lust. A noir icon who dipped into comedy (one of my favorites is his Duke Pastrami gangster in Ball of Fire), the slithery bad boy peppered pictures like Ministry of Fear, The Great Flamarion, Black Angel (where he's a good guy), Larceny (in which he's named the slinky "Silky Randall"), Criss Cross (where he's "Slim Dundee"), Underworld Story, Too Late for Tears and Johnny Stool Pigeon (a never released William Castle crime story that I finally saw during the noir fest this year).

I think my favorite Duryea movies (and this could change) are both by Fritz Lang and both star Edward G. Robinson and Joan Bennett--Scarlet Street in which a fragile Robinson falls for the steely Bennett only to contend with an especially unsavory Duryea and The Woman in the Window where Robinson, again, falls for a portrait of Bennet only to become involved in murder.

Duryea's like the slithery B-list brother to Richard Widmark (especially Widmark's giggling, old lady killer Tommy Udo in Kiss of Death) but that makes him all the more seductive. And I love how he talks. One of the great Duryea lines comes in his first movie--The Little Foxes--in which he memorably mocks a mourner as just "showing off your grief." Mean, but a true statement in many cases. I could close my eyes and simply listen to him talk. Especially in Scarlet Street when he elongates his call to Bennett with "Hellooooo lazylegs." This is so much hotter than any of those dudes taking their shirts off on that ridiculously overrated Desperate Housewives drag. I only wish Dan Duryea could give one of those pussies a good 1950's face slap. He'd never mow Eva Longoria's lawn.

My life felt like a movie. And then I was really scared.

When you're creeping down your hallway wondering just who the hell is attempting to break into your apartment with, likely, the intent to MURDER you—a word of advice: don't have the band Suicide playing on your hi-fi. Alan Vega's disturbed screeching and Martin Rev's creepy droning keyboard turned my real life terror into a bonafide horror movie complete with snarling, dissonant soundtrack.

Dario Argento would have been so proud.

Thankfully the intruder fled. Out the back door.

I hope he doesn’t come back. If so, I'm gonna have to bust out the soundtrack to Annie. Or Oliver! or Jesus Christ Superstar no...that's even scarier. How about the soundtrack to The Good the Bad and the Ugly? Nope, scratch that. I'll just start in on my lust for Lee Van Cleef. And then I'll wonder why he isn't the one trying to break my door down? Did I say Lee Van Cleef equals rape fantasy? I said it now.

I keep watching The Last Waltz. 

I already stated this on my blog but I'll say it again: Robbie Robertson of The Band (AKA "The Hawks") and Richard Ramirez (AKA the "Night Stalker") look like they could be brothers.

I mean this as a supreme compliment to both of them.

Sorry. Richard Ramirez...I mean, Robbie Robertson is hot.

You know Robert De Niro's career might be in trouble when a person like me catches herself excitedly saying—“Oh my God! There’s a new Dakota Fanning film out!”

Obviously, I revere De Niro for Scorsese alone (and The Godfather Part II of course) but this was my breathless utterance when the ridiculous Hide and Seek opened. Yes, I went to the theater just to watch that talented little freak with the annoying name--Dakota. And yes, she stole the whole, stupid show. She even pulls off the beyond trite concept of the creepy kid holding the music box playing “Hush little baby don’t say a word” without a hitch. I'm tempted to buy the stupid thing on DVD.

And OK, I'll admit I just watched Nine Lives and attended the screening of Dreamer (a horse movie! And at 10 in the fucking morning) for Ms. Fanning alone. I told myself it's Kurt Russell, but I know better.

I’m disturbed with myself. To make matters worse, not only have I seen all of Fanning's films, I’ve even seen her little sister’s movie, the awful The Door in the Floor.

I've tempered my disturbance by watching the young Jodie Foster in The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane in which she plays a clever, very adult 13-year old hiding a creepy secret in the cellar. And she gets naked. It's a body double but still...and the movie was PG! That's 1976 for ya.

Wait...how has this tempered my disturbance?

How am I not myself?

Comments

[justanothasucka]

wow you wrote this a year ago? i feel old.

[justanothasucka]

wow you wrote this a year ago? i feel old.

[R.E.]

This is mad brilliant. You are crazy but, in a good way. In a, I want to have lots of sex with you way.

Suicide, Lee Van Cleef, Dan Duryea and Tippi Hedren?

I love you.