To sleep, perchance to dream.
Enjoy!
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Embracing the Melodrama Part III #3: More (dir by Barbet Schroeder)
More is such a film of the 60s that you can almost get a contact high from watching it.
It’s not just that the film was released in 1969. After all, there were a lot of films released in 1969 that don’t, in any way, feel like they belong in the 60s. (Just consider two of 1969’s Best Picture nominees, Anne of the Thousand Days and Hello, Dolly.) However, More is a film that seems to include every single thing that we think of when we think about the late 60s.
Drugs? Check.
Hitchhiking? Check.
Petty crime? Check.
Ennui? Check.
Weirdly out-of-place political bullshit? Check.
A fatalistic ending that suggests that nothing really matters? Check and double check.
More tells the story of a young German named Stefan (Klaus Grunberg). Stefan has just wrapped up his mathematics studies and now, he’s intent on exploring Europe and experiencing life! The first time we see Stefan, he’s hitchhiking and not having much luck. No one really wants to pick up Stefan and I really can’t blame them. Stefan is an incredibly boring character and Grunberg gives a remarkably dull performance in the lead role. Unfortunately, Stefan also narrates his story. I usually don’t like narrators in general but they especially get on my nerves whenever they appear in a movie that was made between 1966 and 1970.
Anyway, Stefan finally finds himself in Paris. He befriends Charlie (Michel Chanderil), who is a petty thief and who takes the naive Stefan under his wing. The movie picks up a bit whenever Charlie is on screen, largely because Chanderil has more screen presence than Grunberg. As I watched Charlie teach Stefan how to steal, I found myself wishing that the whole film could have been about Charlie.
But no. We’re stuck with boring old Stefan. Stefan eventually meets an American girl named Estelle (Mismy Farmer). Now, if Stefan was a fan of Godard, he would undoubtedly have seen Breathless and he would know better than to run off with an American girl. But, because Stefan is a dullard, he instead decides that he loves Estelle. When Estelle heads off for Ibiza, Stefan follows.
In Ibiza, Estelle is living with an enigmatic German named Dr. Wolf (Heinz Engelmann). Dr. Wolf is a former (and, it’s implied, current) Nazi. Stefan wins her away from Dr. Wolf. Stefan thinks that he’s rescuing her but Estelle really doesn’t seem to care one way or the other. Estelle introduces Stefan to the world of drugs and Stefan is soon hooked on heroin.
And it just goes on from there.
More probably could have probably been a really good film if Stefan wasn’t such a dull protagonist or if Grunberg had been in the least bit compelling in the lead role. From the minute I first saw him hitchhiking, my reaction was, “I do not care about this person” and that was pretty much the way I felt throughout the entire film.
The film does have its good points. The cinematographer was Nestor Almendros so Ibiza looks amazing and Pink Floyd provides an appropriately moody score. Mimsy Farmer, an American actress who later appeared in some of the best gialli to come out of Italy, is perfectly cast as the self-centered and casually destructive Estelle. But all the good points can’t make up for the film’s slow pace and Grunberg’s charisma-free performance.
More is probably best viewed as a cultural artifact. I’m a history nerd and I’m always fascinated by films like More that, regardless of their overall quality, are such obvious works of their time. More may reek of stale weed but watching it is definitely a chance to experience the 60s.
Film Review: Enemy Gold (dir by Christian Drew Sidaris)
The 1993 film, Enemy Gold, actually gets off to a promising start, with a series of scenes that take place during the Civil War. Men in gray uniforms wander through the woods, looking for a place to hide their gold.
Now, you’ll notice that I said that it was a promising start. I didn’t necessarily say it was a good start. To be honest, when I first saw the soldiers, I thought they were supposed to be Civil War reenactors. The haircuts, the facial hair, even the relatively cleanliness of the uniforms; nothing that we see really suggests that we’ve been transported back to the 1860s.
That said, I’m a history nerd and I’ve always been fascinated with the Civil War. Even if it’s a totally unconvincing recreation, I’m always interested in seeing a movie about the period. I was even more interested when I discovered that the film’s Confederates were supposed to be members of Quantrill’s Raiders. William Quantrill was one of the more infamous sociopaths to come out of the Civil War and many of the famous outlaws of the Old West served with Quantrill. There’s always been rumors that, before he was killed by Union forces, Quantrill hid his gold in Texas. That rumors rests at the heart of Enemy Gold.
Of course, it takes a while to get around the gold. After the Civil War-set prologue, Enemy Gold jumps to the 1990s. A group of secret agents are preparing to attack a bunch of drug smugglers. One of the agents is played by an actor named Bruce Penhall, who previously played special agent Bruce Christian in the last few Andy Sidaris films. Despite the fact that Enemy Gold was directed by Sidaris’s son, Christian Drew Sidaris, it’s quickly established that Bruce Penhall is not playing Bruce Christian in this film. Instead, he’s playing Chris Cannon, a character who is exactly the same as Bruce Christian except that Cannon’s jokes are even worse than Christian’s. His two colleagues are named Mark Austin (Mark Barriere) and Suzi Midnite (Suzi Simpson).
(I was once tempted to change my name to Lisa Marie Midnite. I might still do it if I ever have to flee the country.)
Anyway, Chris, Mark, and Suzi manage to take down the drug smugglers. Great job, right? Wrong. It turns out that their boss, Dickson (Alan Abew), doesn’t appreciate them or their extreme methods. Dickson tells them that they’re suspended!
The three agents aren’t that upset about being suspended, though. It just means more time to hang out and maybe even go into the woods and search for Quantrill’s gold!
However, it turns out that they’re not the only ones who want the gold. An evil drug dealer, Santiago (Rodrigo Obregon), wants the gold and he’s hired a deadly assassin named Jewel Panther (Julie Strain) to help him get it. In case you were wondering why Dickson is such a jerk, it probably has something to do with the fact that he’s secretly working for Santiago!
Soon, everyone is in the woods, getting naked, and blowing stuff up. It’s a typical Sidaris film, right down to the reoccurring cast members and the terrible jokes. Actually, I take that back. The jokes in Enemy Gold are even worse than the typical Sidaris jokes.
A typical exchange from Enemy Gold:
“What’s up?”
“I am.”
I probably would have enjoyed Enemy Gold is the action had remained in the 19th century. The Civil War scenes may not have been convincing but at least they were dealing with an interesting period of time. Instead, the action jumped to the early 90s and the film got bogged down with drug smugglers and stuff like that.
Along with just being a generally dumb movie, Enemy Gold lacks the self-awareness that made films like Hard Ticket To Hawaii and Malibu Express somewhat enjoyable. The two best things about the film are Rodrigo Obregon and Julie Strain, who go totally overboard as the villains and provide the type of performances that a film like this needs. (At times, Obregon reminded me of Tommy Wiseau.) By contrast, our three heroes are remarkably dull.
If you’re a fan of stuff blowing up and Civil War trivia, Enemy Gold might occasionally hold your interest. Roberto Obregon, Otherwise, this is a film that you won’t regret missing.
Book Review: The Spy Who Loved Me by Ian Fleming
First published in 1962, The Spy Who Loved Me is easily the most controversial of all of Ian Fleming’s Bond novels.
The Spy Who Loved Me was not the first of the Bond novels to keep James Bond off-stage for the majority of the story. From Russia With Love, one of the best of Fleming’s novels, keeps 007 offstage until about halfway through the book. The difference is that, even before he makes his first appearance, everyone else in From Russia With Love is obsessed with Bond. As well, From Russia With Love dealt with a world that Fleming knew well, the world of international intelligence operations.
The Spy Who Loved Me, on the other hand, is mostly about a young Canadian woman named Vivienne Michel who spends most of the novel discussing her background until, eventually, she finds herself being held prisoner by two cartoonish American gangsters named — I kid you not — Sluggsy and Horror. Fortunately, James Bond eventually shows up and rescues her. Vivienne not only narrates the novel but Ian Fleming even gave her co-writing credit on the title page.
In the book’s prologue, Fleming explains:
I found what follows lying on my desk one morning. As you will see, it appears to be the first person story of a young woman, evidently beautiful and not unskilled in the arts of love. According to her story, she appears to have been involved, both perilously and romantically, with the same James Bond whose secret service exploits I myself have written from time to time. With the manuscript was a note signed ‘Vivienne Michel’ assuring me that what she had written was ‘purest truth and from the depths of her heart’. I was interested in this view of James Bond, through the wrong end of the telescope so to speak, and after obtaining clearance for certain minor infringements of the Official Secrets Act I have much pleasure in sponsoring its publication.
So, The Spy Who Loved Me is a bit of an experiment. That Fleming often grew tired of Bond as a character is well-documented. Not only did Fleming have to come up with a new adventure every year but Bond himself couldn’t change from being who he had been since the early 50s, a serious-minded civil servant who occasionally saved the world. With this book, Fleming largely used Bond as a plot device, a deus ex machina.
Instead, the novel is dominated by Vivienne. Oddly, for someone who wants to tell us all about James Bond, Vivienne spends a good deal of time focusing on her life before she ended up at that hotel. We find out about her first boyfriend, an insincere British boy named Derek and also about her second boyfriend, an autocratic German named Karl. The scenes with Derek and Karl almost feel like a parody of the coming-of-age genre. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t compelling scenes to be found in The Spy Who Loved Me. Fleming was too good of a storyteller for anything that he wrote not to have some sort of value. But, at the same time, it’s still obvious that the story is being written by a British man in his 50s who is trying really, really hard to sound like a Canadian woman in her 20s.
And then — oh my God! Sluggsy and Horror show up! I’m sorry but there’s no way that you can take anyone named either Sluggsy or Horror seriously. They are, without a doubt, the weakest villains since Diamonds are Forever gave us the Spang Brothers.
On the plus side, Horror did apparently inspire Jaws, the henchman played by Richard Kiel in the film versions of both this book and Moonraker. And, even if the experiment didn’t quite work, it’s still interesting to see Bond through someone else’s eyes.
Fleming was so dissatisfied with this novel that, when he sold the film rights, he specifically required that the film not use any material from the book. While The Spy Who Loved Me may not be Fleming’s strongest work, he would follow it up with the last great Bond novel, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.
We’ll look at that one tomorrow.
Music Video Of The Day: Upside Down (and I Fall) by Jakalope (2006, dir by Lisa Mann)
For today’s music video of the day, how about another video from my favorite Canadian group, Jakalope?
This video was directed by Lisa Mann, who also directed Jakalope’s previous videos, Go Away, Feel It, and Pretty Life.
Enjoy!
Embracing The Melodrama Part III #2: Common Law Wife (dir by Eric Sayers and Larry Buchanan)
Welcome to Serenity, Texas!
Serenity is the setting for the 1963 film, Common Law Wife. It’s a small country town, one with a modest downtown and a quaintly innocent feel to it. As soon as the movie started, I recognized Serenity and that’s not just because I’m a Texan. No, I recognized it because Common Law Wife was filmed in Forney, Texas. Forney is known as being the “antique capital of Texas” and apparently, it hasn’t changed much over the past 55 years. I always like seeing old films that were made locally, even if they’re held in as little regard as Common Law Wife.
Just as small Texas towns rarely ever changed, the same can be said for the way that exploitation and grindhouse films were advertised. Just look at the poster at the top of this review. Judging from the poster, you would think that this film is not only dealing with the most important issue ever but that it’s also a realistic look at what it means to be a common law wife.
“You don’t have to say ‘I DO’ to be married!” the poster shouts, “Do you know the law in your state? Are you a common law wife? If you’re not old enough for marriage, you should not see this movie.”
On top of that, we’ve got the scales of justice and a key for a room at the State Line Motel. Nothing good ever happens at a State Line Motel!
Of course, the film itself has very little to do with anything to be found on the poster. Don’t get me wrong. There is a common law marriage in the film. Rich, old Shugfoot Rainey (George Edgley) has lived with Linda (Anabelle Weenick) for so long that they are now legally considered to be married. Linda and Shug have the type of relationship where Shug keeps himself entertained by throwing darts at Linda’s head. However, Shug now wants Linda to move out of his house. His niece, a stripper named Baby Doll (Lacey Kelly) is moving from New Orleans to Serenity and she’s going to need a place to live. Shug wants Baby Doll. Baby Doll wants Shug’s money. Unfortunately, for her, Linda also wants Shug’s money.
While Shug tries to get Linda to move out, Baby Doll gets to know all of the other men in Serenity. Fortunately, there aren’t many of them. There’s the sheriff and then there’s a moonshiner. It turns out that Shug loves his moonshine so what better way to get rid of him than to serve him some poisoned moonshine? Shug is just dumb enough to fall for Baby Doll’s act but not Linda. It all leads to an appropriately fatalistic ending.
As in the case of many grindhouse film, the story behind Common Law Wife is more interesting than the story that appears on screen. In 1960, the notorious Texas-based director Larry Buchanan started to work on a film called Swamp Rose. For whatever reason, Swamp Rose was abandoned but, three years later, a director named Eric Sayers shot some additional footage and mashed it to together with Buchanan’s footage. The end result was Common Law Wife. The majority of the footage is taken from Swamp Rose but all of the dialogue was overdubbed to change Swamp Rose‘s plot. Whereas the Sayers footage is bleak and harshly lit, the Swamp Rose footage is notably grainy. Obviously, it makes for a disjointed viewing viewing experience, though it’s really not as disjointed as any other movie that Buchanan was involved with over the course of his long career.
Common Law Wife is currently available of YouTube. Even by the standards of Larry Buchanan, it’s definitely a lesser film but if you’re a fan of grindhouse and exploitation films — especially ones that have a hillbilly feel to them — you might get a laugh or two from it.
Tomorrow, we continue to embrace the melodrama with the 1968 drug epic, More!
Film Review: Fit To Kill (dir by Andy Sidaris)
1993’s Fit To Kill opens with the most incompetent secret agents in the world on a training exercise in the desert. All of the Andy Sidaris regulars are present. There’s Donna (Dona Speir). There’s Nicole (Roberta Vasquez). Bruce (Bruce Penhall) and Shane (Michael Shane) are still with the organization, despite the fact that, over the course of four films, neither one of them has really added much to the mix. For some reason, these agents still don’t know better than to hide whenever they see a remote control helicopter. Seeing as how every Andy Sidaris film features someone being blown up by either a remote control helicopter or remote control boat, you would think that these experienced government agents would no longer be shocked when it happened.
Anyway, we quickly go through all of the usual Sidaris stuff. There’s a meeting in a hot tub. The team’s boss, Lucas (Tony Peck), shows up and acts like a prick. Coded messages are still being sent out via the Hawaiian radio station. Shane Abilene still can’t shoot a gun to save his life. Eventually, the film gets around to revealing the latest mission.
Chang (Aki Aleong) is the owner of a valuable Russian diamond. As he explains in a flashback that’s full of stock footage, the diamond was originally stolen by a Nazi general. On his deathbed, the general gave the diamond to Chang. And really, in defense of Sidaris, it must be said that the flashbacks are actually handled fairly well. Maybe the flashbacks were Sidaris’s attempt to show that he actually could be a good director when he felt like it. Anyway, Chang is planning on returning the diamond to the Russian ambassador (Rodrigo Oberon) during an official ceremony. The problem is that the diamond is extremely valuable and, as a result, certain international criminals want to steal it.
Criminals like Martin Kane!
That’s right. Martin Kane is back and he’s again played by RJ Moore. Just as in Hard Hunted, RJ Moore is handsome, stylish, and charismatic. RJ was the son of Roger Moore and, when he shows up wearing a tuxedo, it’s hard not to regret that RJ never got a chance to play James Bond. Kane is determined to steal the diamond but it turns out that he’s motivated by more than just pure greed. What’s this!? A complex character in an Andy Sidaris film? Believe it or not, it’s true. And Moore gives a good performance in the film, perhaps the best performance to ever show up in a Sidaris film.
If Moore gives the best performance in the film, he’s closely followed by Julie Strain, who plays Blu Steele. Blu Steele is the mercenary/assassin who is hired by Kane to steal the diamond. However, Blu Steele has schemes of her own. Strain, to her credit, appears to understand the exact type of movie that she’s been cast in and she responds with a totally over-the-top performance. Both she and Moore are so memorably berserk that Donna, Roberta, Bruce, and Shane are even more forgettable than usual.
Fit To Kill is stupid but entertaining. The plot makes no sense and the dialogue is full of the usual bad puns and regrettable jokes. Still, it’s entertainingly stupid, thanks to Moore and Strain. Plus, there’s a scene in which two hitmen get into a passionate debate about whether Homer Simpson’s a better actor than Fred Flintstone.
Of course, it all ends with a hot tub party. The Fast and the Furious franchise has Vin Diesel saying grace before everyone eats. Andy Sidaris films have hot tub parties.
Book Review: Thunderball by Ian Fleming
After the publication of Goldfinger in 1959, Ian Fleming’s next installment in the adventures of James Bond would be a short story collection, 1960’s For Your Eyes Only. It would not be until 1961 that another Bond novel would be published.
That novel was Thunderball.
Thunderball originally began life as a screenplay. In 1959, Ian Fleming met with producer Kevin McClory to discuss the possibility of McClory producing a Bond film. Working with McClory, Fleming developed not only the basic storyline of Thunderball but also created the villains who, in the 60s, would replace the Russians as being Bond’s main villains. It was while working with McClory that Fleming first created both SPECTRE and its enigmatic leader, Ernst Stavro Blofeld.
Ultimately, Fleming and McClory had a falling out, putting a temporary end to McClory’s plans to produce the first James Bond film. Instead, the first Bond film would be produced by Harry Saltzman and Albert Broccoli and Fleming would turn the screenplay into a novel. This led to problems when McClory and screenwriter Jack Wittingham sued Fleming, claiming that they owned the rights to Thunderball’s story. As a result of a settlement, McClory won the right to produce the eventual film version of Thunderball, with Broccoli and Saltzman received executive producer credits.
McClory would later claim that, as the producer of Thunderball, he had the right to produce other James Bond films as well. This led to several years of lawsuits, during which time McClory remade Thunderball as Never Say Never Again. Reportedly, he was trying to raise money for a third remake when he died in 2006. (Later, the McClory estate would sell the rights to Thunderball, SPECTRE, and Blofeld to MGM. The end result was SPECTRE, a film that totally wasted one of Fleming’s most intriguing villains.)
Reading Thunderball, it’s easy to see that Fleming was thinking in terms of cinema when he came up with the story. Most of the action takes place in the always photogenic Bahamas. There are lengthy action scenes, involving planes being hijacked and underwater combat. The storyline, which features two atomic missiles being stolen by SPECTRE’s Emilio Largo, is tailor-made for the movies.
Thunderball even starts with a lengthy prologue, the type that should be familiar to anyone who has seen any of the Bond films. M sends Bond to a health spa, where Bond ends up getting targeted by an international criminal named Count Lippe. The health spa scenes are among the most enjoyable in the book. Not only is Bond forced to drop all of his “bad” habits but afterward, he actually discovers that he does feel healthier and more active. Soon, he becomes a bit of a health fanatic and gets on the nerves of almost everyone who works with him with all of his “good” habits. It’s easy to imagine that Fleming was having a little bit of fun at the expense of all the critics who claimed that Bond was somehow a bad role model. Of course, by the next novel, Bond was back to all of his old habits.
As for the rest of Thunderball, this was a book that I wanted to like more than I actually did. After Bond gets finished at the health spa, he gets sent to the Bahamas track down the missiles and it becomes a rather standard thriller. It doesn’t take long for Bond to both figure out that Emilo Largo stole the missiles and to seduce Largo’s mistress, Domino. Felix Leiter makes another welcome appearance but, on the whole, it all feels rather slow and uninspired.
However, Thunderball will always be an important work in the Bond canon because it introduced the world to Blofeld. Though Bond and Blofeld never meet (that would have to wait for later novels), the book’s best chapters deal with Blofeld’s background and the way he manages SPECTRE. As is typical of many of Fleming’s villains, Blofeld is described as being someone who does not drink, does not smoke, and who has no interest in sex. A reoccurring theme in all of Fleming’s Bond novels is that a man with a certain amount of minor vices is far more trustworthy than a man with none. It’s a good thing that Bond eventually recovers from going to that health spa because otherwise, he never would have been able to defeat SPECTRE’s nefarious schemes.
Fleming would follow Thunderball with one of his most controversial novels, The Spy Who Loved Me. We’ll look at that one tomorrow!
Music Video of the Day: Hitchock Blonde by Laeticia de Valer (2015, dir by J. Antonio)
According to TimeandDate.com, today is Alfred Hitchcock Day!
I’m not sure why March 12th would be considered Alfred Hitchcock Day, seeing as how Alfred Hitchcock was born in August of 1899 and passed away in April of 1980. But no matter! It’s always a good day for Hitchcock!
So, in honor of Alfred Hitchcock Day, today’s music video of the day is Laeticia de Valer’s Hitchcock Blonde!
Enjoy!
Embracing the Melodrama Part III #1: No Down Payment (dir by Martin Ritt)
Back in 2014 and 2015, I did a series of reviews that I called Embracing the Melodrama, in which I reviewed some of the best (and worst) melodramas ever made. All together, I reviewed 186 films as a part of Embracing the Melodrama, everything from Sunrise to Reefer Madness to The Towering Inferno to Cocaine: One Man’s Seduction. I had so much fun doing it that I’ve decided to do it again.
No, don’t worry. I’m not going to attempt to review 186 films this time. Instead, for Embracing The Melodrama Part III, I am going to limit myself to reviewing 8 films. I’ll be posting one Embracing the Melodrama review a day, from now until next Sunday.
Let’s kick things off with 1957’s No Down Payment, a film about life in … THE SUBURBS!
(cue dramatic music)
The suburbs!
Is there any place in America that’s more dramatic? Is it any wonder that, since the early 50s, films have regularly been using the suburbs as an example of everything that’s apparently wrong with America? Every year sees at least one major film about how terrible life is in the suburbs. Last year, for instance, George Clooney directed a film called Suburbicon, which was regularly cited as a possible Oscar contender before it was released and everyone was reminded of the fact that George Clooney is a terrible director. That said, I can understand why filmmakers continue to be drawn to the suburbs. Secret affairs. Dangerous drugs. Duplicitous children. Fractured families. Barbecuing alcoholics. Undercover occultists. You can find them all in the suburbs!
No Down Payment opens with David (Jeffrey Hunter) and Jean Martin (Patricia Owens) driving down a California highway and looking at the billboards that dot the landscape. Every billboard advertises a new community, inviting people to make a new and better life away from the crowded city. David and Jean smile, amused by how blatant all of the ads are. That’s when they see the billboard that’s advertising their new home:
Sunrise Hill Estates
A Better Place For Better Living
Soon, David and Jean are moving into their new home and meeting their new neighbors. It turns out that most of the houses in Sunrise Hill Estates are available for “no down payment” and the majority of the residents are struggling financially. Though David may look at all of his neighbors and say, “Looks like everybody here is living a wonderful life,” the truth is something far different.
(If David’s line sound a bit too on the nose and obvious, that’s because almost all of the dialogue in No Down Payment was too on the nose and obvious. As a side note, “on the nose” is an extremely strange expression.)
David’s neighbors include:
Herm Kreitzer (Pat Hingle) and his wife, Betty (Barbara Rush). Herm owns an appliance store and sits on the town council. Herm is gruff but likable. He’s the leader of his neighborhood and he welcomes the Martins with a backyard party. Herm’s employee, Iko (Aki Aleong), wants to move to Sunrise Hill but no one is willing to give him a reference because he’s not white.
Troy Boone (Cameron Mitchell) and his wife, Leola (Joanne Woodward). We know that Troy is going to be trouble because he’s played by Cameron Mitchell. We know that we’re going to like Leola because she’s played by Joanne Woodward. Troy’s an auto mechanic and a veteran. He wants to be appointed the chief of police but the town is reluctant to hire him because he doesn’t have a college education. Leola wants to have a child but Troy says that they can’t even think about that until he has a good job.
And then there’s Jerry Flagg (Tony Randall) and his wife, Isabelle (Sheree North). Jerry is a used car salesman and he’s also a drunk. Jerry spends most of the movie hitting on other women and embarrassing Isabelle. Jerry has no impulse control and, as a result, he’s heavily in debt. His only hope is that he can convince a family to buy an expensive car that they really don’t need. When last I checked, that’s what a used car salesman is supposed to do.
The film deals with a lot of issues — prejudice, sexism, economic insecurity — that are still relevant today. Unfortunately, the film itself is a bit slow and what was shocking in the 50s seems rather jejune today. Watching the film, you get the feeling that, as with many films of the 50s, all of the interesting stuff is happening off-screen. That said, the film has an interesting cast. Jeffrey Hunter and Patricia Owens are a bit dull as the Martins but then you’ve got their neighbors! Any film that features Cameron Mitchell glowering can’t be all bad but the best performance comes from Tony Randall, who is memorably sleazy and desperate as Jerry Flagg. For a fun experiment, watch this film right before watching Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?
Tomorrow, we’ll continue to embrace the melodrama with 1961’s Common Law Wife!
Through the Shattered Lens 