Elke and Joan
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For Ms. Sommer, we go back to the halcyon days of 1962 and one of her first films that's only now being released on tape. The movie is Sweet Ecstasy and, in its day, it was one hot little number. Now, it would be hard pressed to merit a PG-13 rating and that's fine because the primary appeal is nostalgic. Set on the Riviera, it's about a young fellow who falls in with a bunch of liberated "swingers" and then must decide whether he's going to devote himself to true love with a shy girl or to cheap thrills with Elke. The guys in the group are existential hepcats who rip around the Cote d'Azur in sports cars and wear really tight pants. That side of the film is a sort of Miami Vice prototype with references to Rebel Without a Cause. But who cares about them?
The real star is Elke. More specifically, it's Elke's wig, an incredible quasi-bouffant cascading platinum blonde accoutrement that shimmers and glows, even in black and white, and seems almost to have a life of its own. The wig even manages to upstage its wearer during the interpretive dance routine where she also wears a pushup top, hip-huggers and trowelled-on cateye makeup. The moment is a milestone of early '60s exploitation.
We go back to 1952 for Sudden Fear, one of Joan Crawford's best, albeit screwiest films noirs. In it, she plays Myra Hudson, wealthy heiress and successful Broadway playwright. For her newest work to be a hit, she knows that it needs precisely the right actor in the lead. She dictates that "he has to be the kind of charmboy that makes every woman in the audience sit right up and go 'Umph!' the moment he walks on that stage." Unfortunately for aspiring young Lester Blaine (Jack Palance) who's just been cast in the role, Myra doesn't think that he's the right charmboy and has him fired. Then he shows up on the train with her back to San Francisco. They talk, they have a drink and pretty soon she's sits right up and goes "Umph!"
Throughout, the industrial-strength overacting matches the baroque plotting. You really do expect Ms. Crawford to blurt out "No More Wire Hangers!" at any moment. The real point of the film, though, comes in the last thirty minutes. The extended conclusion is an essentially silent sequence, accomplished without dialogue. Director David Miller and cinematographer Charles B. Lang stage a complicated midnight chase through backstreets and alleys of San Francisco that will make you forget all the silliness that preceded it.
