Cool Cinema Trash

This is the story of the dreamers and the schemers, the hustlers and the hopefuls, the free-loaders and the phonies, the fakers and the famous, all fighting for the highest possible award!

There’s nothing Hollywood likes more than to expose the seedy underbelly of the entertainment industry. The dark sides of the music business, the fashion and literary worlds have all been examined under the cinematic microscope. But nothing can quite compare to when Hollywood turns the camera upon itself. The results are almost always guaranteed to be bad movie bliss. Trash classics like The Lonely Lady (1983), The Carpetbaggers (1964), The Star (1952), and The Legend of Lylah Clare (1968) have all made their mark in this dubious dramatic subgenre, but none can quite compare to the deliciously bad, all-star fiasco that is The Oscar (1966).

What it’s all about: While sitting in the audience on Hollywood’s biggest night, Hymie Kelly (an unlikely Tony Bennett) remembers the good ole days spent with pal Frankie Fane (Stephen Boyd). “It was all for one and one for all… you, me and Laurel.” Laurel (Jill St. John) was the proverbial stripper with a heart of gold, Frankie was her fast talking “spieler”, and Hymie was their sad sack tag-a-long. Talk about a third wheel.

Frankie roughs up a club owner who tries to cheat the trio out of their cut of an evenings profit. Before they can make it to the county line, they’re hauled in by the corpulently corrupt local sheriff, Broderick Crawford. “Now, if you’re lookin’ for a bruise,” he warns Frankie while slurping down a carton of ice cream, “Keep scratchin’.” Booked on trumped up prostitution charges, they must sell Laurel’s car to post bail.

They make it to New York by “bus and thumb” where Laurel auditions for gravelly Ed Begley. She lands the dancing gig. While she’s busy working, Frankie and Hymie go to a “swingin’ party in the Village”. It’s there that Frankie meets the impossibly chic Kay Bergdahl (Elke Sommer).

“Are you a tourist or a native?” he asks.

“Take one from column A and two from column B,” Sommers purrs in her German accent, “you get an eggroll either way.”

Their conversation grows increasingly existential and ridiculous as she continues, “I’m not the kind of woman who uses sex as a release, or even as a weapon.”

“You free thinkers confuse me.”

“I am the end result of everything I’ve ever learned, all I ever hope to be and all the experiences I’ve ever had.”

“You make my head hurt with all the poetry.”

All this before they’ve even introduced themselves.

Laurel is understandably upset that loverboy has been two-timing her, so she kicks freeloading Frankie to the curb. Hymie explains the laughably Freudian reason for Frankie’s behavior (a slutty mom and suicidal dad) which prompts Laurel to deliver a teary soliloquy. “I wanted a kid. I always wanted a kid… and what rotten stinking luck that it’s gonna be Frankie’s kid!”

With a job schlepping bolts of fabric in the garment district, Frankie continues to pursue designer Kay with even more priceless bad movie dialogue, “I’ll show you the big town. We’ll have Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island too.”

“How very lyrical.”

One evening, Kay delivers some costumes to the theatre and Frankie stays to watch the rehearsal. When a choreographed fight doesn’t meet his standards, Frankie hops on stage and shows them how it’s done.

Chi-chi producer Sophie Cantaro (Eleanor Parker) likes his “youthful exuberance” and is inexplicably impressed when he purposefully chews the scenery during a meeting in a theater row restaurant. She “trains” him and puts him in a show. It’s not long before they’re on their way to Hollywood where Sophie and “Kappy” the agent (Milton Berle) talk the head of Galaxy Pictures (Joseph Cotton) into signing Frankie.

“It was a new world and he needed a friend alongside,” Hymie narrates, “I came, I saw and he conquered.”

As his new PR man, Hymie moves into Frankie’s pad and offhandedly mentions that Laurel is dead.

In a date set up by the studio, Frankie takes out a snooty starlet (Jean Hale). “You can put your suave masculine charm in escrow for the night,” she warns, but on the red carpet he shows her who’s really the boss.

The years pass and Frankie becomes the hottest actor in the business. “The parts got bigger and Frankie was hooked. Like a junkie shooting purest quicksilver into his veins, Frankie got turned on to the wildest narcotic known to mortal man… success.” While at a chi chi nightclub, Frankie chats up gossip queen Hedda Hopper before abandoning his date for Kay, who now works at the same studio as Frankie.

She tries to resist him, but Frankie plays it suave and takes her to his boat, which is aptly named Miss Kay B. While on board, he insists he has more to offer her now, but she’s not buying what he’s selling. “So what, you haven’t changed. It’s that seed of rot inside of you which makes you what you are. You represent everything I loathe.”

“You mean everything you love.”

After striking out with Kay, Frankie heads into the arms of Sophie, who’s just as good as Kay at making melodramatic declarations wrapped up in a pretty bow of purple prose. “You’re some sort of fog that comes drifting in here at night and out again in the morning. You go after what you want and in some men it’s admirable, in you it’s unclean.”

Frankie runs into an old actor friend (Peter Lawford) at a local restaurant and receives an uncomfortable glimpse of what his future may hold when he learns that his pal is all washed up and working as the matre ‘d.

Kay agrees to a trip to Tijuana when Frankie gets her a job working with Edith Head. Not only does the legendary designer make a rare onscreen appearance in The Oscar, but she would later be nominated for a real life statuette for designing the costumes in the film.

Fame follows Frankie wherever he goes, even south of the border. At a bullfight, obnoxious American couple Barney and Trish (Ernest Borgnine and Edie Adams) talk Frankie and Kay into witnessing their quickie Mexican divorce. This inexplicably gets Frankie in the mood. After planting some truly unappetizing kisses on Kay, they get hitched. Marriage doesn’t curb Frankie’s tomcatting ways and Kay soon becomes unsatisfied and bitter. Despite the fact that she lounges around in barely-there negligees, Frankie spurns his wife’s advances, leaving poor Kay to bemoan her fate, “In no time at all I’ve been typecast as the nagging, shrewish hausfrau.”

Things aren’t so great at the studio either. Frankie’s films start to loose money and the studio doesn’t pick up the option on his contract. “Frankie couldn’t face reality because he’d lost touch with it,” Hymie informs us, “The word was out, he was box office poison.”

Kappy tells him that a TV pilot is his only prospect. “Frankie, winter is coming. Be smart, get out of the cold.” While in the middle of negations for the TV series, Frankie learns that he has been nominated for an Academy Award.

Anxiety haunts Frankie, resulting in the kind of deliciously silly nightmares that can only happen in movies such as this. He’s seen the bottom and nearly lost everything. He’s going to do everything possible to stay on top. He gets Barney the private dick to leak information about his, Hymie’s and Laurel’s checkered pasts, sure that the scandal will garner sympathy from the Oscar voters. “I blew the whistle on myself,” he tells Hymie, “You’re only remembered when you win… and I’m gonna win.”

In the novel on which the film is based, Frankie goes about discrediting each of the other nominees in his bid for Oscar gold. In a stab at vermislitude, the producers of The Oscar decided to use real life celebrities as Frankie’s competition, instead of the fictional characters that appear in the book. Frankie’s self-inflicted scandal simplified the plot and freed up valuable screen time. It also meant that libelous (but completely fictional) claims wouldn’t have to be made against the celebrities who’d lent their names to the project.

A swanky Hollywood party is held in Frankie’s honor and his plan seems to be working, that is until Barney begins to squeeze him for more money. When he asks Kappy for the fifteen grand to pay the blackmail, Kappy gives his biggest client the heave-ho, “Like the snake that sheds it’s skin, Frankie Fane I’m getting rid of you.”

Unable to get the cash and googly-eyed with panic at the thought of losing everything, Frankie turns to his old pal suggesting that they silence Barney for good. Hymie finally draws the line.

Frankie tracks down Trish, who is more than willing to trade information about her ex-husband if it means a way of getting into the picture business, “I scratch your back, you scratch mine.” With the threat of the IRS investigating some hidden assets, Barney backs off.

Hymie returns to the fold one last time. “I never had the guts to tear myself away from you!” Scenery is chewed and fists begin to fly when he finally reveals that Laurel died during the miscarriage of Frankie’s baby.

After a few well-deserved punches, Frankie ends up flat on his back. Even Kay can’t stand the sight of him. “Look at what’s left of you. There isn’t even enough to feel sorry for. Goodbye Frankie and I do hope the Oscar keeps you warm on cold nights.”

We return to where the film began, the big night, where Merle Oberon is about to announce the nominees for best actor. Frankie, along with those he has wronged, wait anxiously as the envelope is opened.

“And the winner is… Frank…”

Frankie begins to stand.

“…Sinatra.”

Frank Sinatra proudly strides to the podium to accept his statuette.

Frankie claps a little too eagerly and grins a little too widely before collapsing back into his seat. His career has disappeared in an instant. Justice has been served… Hollywood style.

In conclusion: By anyone’s standards, The Oscar would be a contender for Cool Cinema Trash status simply by nature of its subject matter. What truly earns it a place in the bad movie pantheon is thanks one man: Stephen Boyd. His performance as unlikable anti-hero Frankie Fane goes beyond mere scenery chewing. With his tough guy accent and wild gesticulations, his performance is like a sledgehammer, there’s absolutely nothing subtle or sympathetic about Frankie Fane. He’s an irredeemable, narcissistic jerk, which only serves to make everyone else in the film look ridiculous since they’re bound by the screenplay to find him charismatic and beguiling.

Inexplicably, The Oscar is not yet available on DVD. Used VHS copies and homemade DVDs (struck from the laserdisc release) can usually be found online. Any efforts to see this bad movie gem will not go unrewarded. If you’re lucky enough to have a copy already, hold onto it, it’s as precious as the little gold statuette itself.

For Jacqueline Susann’s people… Once Is Not Enough.

Based on the novel by Jacqueline Susann, Once is Not Enough (1975) may not be as campy as the previous film adaptations of her best sellers, but scandalous lesbianism, Freudian daddy fixations and a loud-mouthed feminist character that more than resembles the opinionated author herself, means there’s still plenty about it to recommend.

What it’s all about: While his daughter recovers from a near fatal motorcycle accident, down on his luck movie producer Mike Wayne (Kirk Douglas) woos wealthy socialite Deidre Milford Granger (Alexis Smith).

After months of physical therapy in a Swiss clinic, Mike welcomes January (Deborah Raffin) home to New York. As they embrace at the airport, January comments that, “I hope nobody thinks we’re father and daughter. I hope they think you’re a dirty old man and I’m your broad.” They celebrate her return with champagne and caviar as well as a “Welcome Home” message spelled out on the Goodyear blimp.

Mike has another surprise in store and introduces January to Dee, her new mommy.

On a hill in Central Park, January tries to cope with the fact that the man she idolizes has a new woman in his life. “Do you even like her?” she asks.

“It’s difficult not to feel a little something for a woman with all that money, especially when you’re broke,” he tells her, detailing the arrangement he has with Dee. “So, we’re married.”

“You’re married… she’s between divorces.”

January visits her old pal Linda Riggs, “The oldest, the ugliest and the smartest girl at school.” At first she doesn’t recognize her former friend.

Linda quickly recites the laundry list of cosmetic procedures she’s had done. “My navel, I’m proud to say, was untouched.” As played by Brenda Vaccaro, Linda embodies the crass, no nonsense, sexually adventurous modern gal that January aspires to be. Shortly after reuniting with January, Linda proudly drops this feminist bombshell, “I’ve screwed every guy in this organization, literally and figuratively, and I gave the shaft to every woman who stood in my way. Now, at twenty-eight, I am the youngest editor Gloss magazine has ever had.”

Later that night, January agrees to a date with man-about-town David Milford (George Hamilton). After an evening spent at a chi-chi nightclub with the “beautiful people”, David makes his move, “Frankly, I’d love to sleep with you.” January puts a stop to the date immediately.

Linda can’t believe that her friend turned down the biggest stud in town. She soon realizes that the only explanation for January’s strange behavior is that she is (gasp!) a virgin. “You’ve got the guilts, it’s like cheating on Daddy,” she theorizes. The only way for January to cure her unfortunate case of virginity and gain some life experience is to get out from under Mike and Dee’s thumb. Linda gives January a job and gets her an apartment in her building. “It’s lucky for you that you’ve fallen into my hands. I’ll teach you everything – writing, screwing – everything!”

January’s second date with David ends back at his place, an unbelievable Matt Helm-style swingin’ bachelor pad. “I wanted it to look like a bordello,” he tells her as a pair of automated drapes reveal a circular bed.

“You’ve succeeded.”

After the deed is done (“I didn’t know men used hairspray,” she says, trying to run her fingers through his hair) they take a cab back to January’s apartment. “David, I wanted to fall in love with you, I really did,” she explains, “If the music, champagne and a round bed couldn’t do it…” Though romance may not be in the cards for January and David, Dee certainly enjoys her afternoon trysts with reclusive international film star Karla (Melina Mercouri).

Later, January and Linda meet astronaut Hugh Robertson (Gary Conway) and hard-drinking novelist Tom Colt (David Janssen). “Forgive me,” an inebriated Tom flirts, “But I can’t take my eyes off your ass.”

With a pick-up line like that, how could a girl possibly resist? Linda invites the guys home for a nightcap, but Tom only has eyes for the daughter of his mortal enemy, Mike Wayne. While Linda puts the moves on Tom, January innocently asks if there’s any man she won’t sleep with. “If there is, I haven’t met him.” To escape Linda’s clutches, Tom climbs out the window and up the fire escape to January’s apartment, where he entertains her with drunken platitudes and a semi-respectable kiss. A sappy lovers montage soon details their May/December romance, though taking into account the tremendous age gap (and our heroine’s name) perhaps it should be reclassified as a January/December romance.

The affair creates a rift between January and her father. Mike can’t understand what she sees in the guy. “I’m not looking for a wonderful guy like David, I’m looking for a terrible man like my father.”

“I hate what that man’s done to you.”

“And I’m not exactly crazy about what Dee’s done to you.”

Linda subjects January to some dime-store psychoanalysis, theorizing that her relationship with Tom Colt is simply a result of January’s daddy fixation. “I would be a lot healthier if you just got it over with and went to bed with your father. Why don’t you ask him?”

Linda’s prognosis is right on the money, but without the sexual tension between father and daughter there’d be no movie, so January and Tom head off to the Hamptons for a romantic weekend. Though January tries everything she can think of, it soon becomes clear that Tom has some… well, performance issues. But after a glimpse of January soaping up in the shower, Tom has no trouble rising to the occasion. “That’s the first time I’ve made it in years,” he tells her as they bask in the afterglow of their love. He then proceeds to tell January that, despite the loveless arrangement he has with his wife, he has no intention of getting a divorce.

When Tom is asked to adapt one of his books for the movies, it’s off to Hollywood they go. Their happiness is short lived when Mike bursts in on them and beats the hell out of Tom. Mike insists that January leave Tom and join him and Dee in Palm Beach.

While cleaning his bloodied face, Tom forces January to choose, “I’ve always had a hunch I was just a replacement, now I’ll know… It’s me or daddy, not both of us.”

As Mike flies back to Florida alone, he considers what he’ll have to do to win back January’s love and respect. The first order of business is divorcing Dee. “I married you and I lost her,” he explains as they make the civilized arrangements for the annulment of their marriage.

While in the middle of a mundane lovers quarrel with Tom, January receives word that the charted plane carrying Dee and her father has crashed. Linda, always the epitome of decorum, gripes, “I hate funerals, they depress the hell out of me.”

After dealing with her father’s death and inheriting a sizable chunk of Dee’s fortune, January learns that Tom has returned to New York without bothering to get in touch with her. In a crowded bar Tom gives her the brush off, “You gave a middle-aged guy his last pretense of being a stud.”

“We did have something special didn’t we?”

“We did once.”

“Well, once is not enough.”

Heartbroken, January returns to her apartment to find an inconsolable Linda. “First he laid me,” she wails after sleeping with her publisher, “and then he fired me! He said that I was a great lay but that I was a lousy editor!”

After calming her frazzled friend, January goes for a walk and considers the men that she has loved and lost. Cue the montage of happy moments with Tom. But those moments quickly fade to memories of the only man she ever truly loved, her father. A heavenly choir sings the sappy theme song as scenes from earlier in the film are replayed. The movie ends abruptly with January placidly walking through the pre-dawn city streets.

In conclusion: Author Jacqueline Susann was often involved (to varying degrees) with the page-to-screen adaptations of her best sellers, but it was no secret that she was seldom satisfied with the changes Hollywood made to her books. While Valley of the Dolls (1967) and The Love Machine (1971) remain true to the spirit of their source material, there were several cuts and alterations made for the big screen. Though Susann visited the set of Once is Not Enough, she was too ill to shoot a cameo (as she did for the previous two films) and passed away before the film’s premiere. It’s unlikely that she would have enjoyed this adaptation either. Several key subplots and character motivations were truncated, including that of the Karla character. In the film, Karla remains an enigma, appearing in only one scene. In the book, it is explained that Karla uses the money and expensive gifts from her many lovers to care for a handicapped daughter that she has kept secret for decades.

The end of the story was also changed. But as unsatisfying as the end of the film is, the alterations may have been for the better. In the book, after dealing with the death of her father, January gets high, participates in an orgy and tries to jump out a window. She then drives to the beach and disappears, the victim of a bad acid trip, a daddy induced seaside suicide or an alien abduction, it’s unclear which. Susann intentionally left the ending ambiguous, though it bears more than a passing resemblance to the ending of Yargo, a sci-fi novel that Susann had penned several years earlier. The manuscript for Yargo, which was quite unlike the glitzy tell-alls she was famous for, was discovered after her death and published posthumously.

Despite the end result, Once is Not Enough has perhaps the best cinematic pedigree of all the Susann adaptations. The legendary Kirk Douglas certainly adds to the patina of quality, as well as direction by Academy Award winner Guy Green. Green directed the Sidney Poitier film A Patch of Blue (1965) as well as the Yvette Mimeiux melodramas (and Cool Cinema Trash favorites) Light in the Piazza (1962) and Diamond Head (1963). The script was by Oscar winner Julius J. Epstein, the man who penned Casablanca (1945). Brenda Vaccaro, who isn’t usually high on the list of critically lauded actresses, won a Golden Globe for her role in Once is Not Enough. But even more shocking is that she got an Oscar nomination as well!

The waiting is over… The Love Machine is on the screen!

With elevator musak as her back-up, Dionne Warwick sings the theme song to The Love Machine (1971). As John Phillip Law walks through the streets of New York, the lyrics helpfully spell out his character’s psychological profile, “Where the winter winds have blown — Walks a man called Robin Stone — He will always walk alone”.

What it’s all about: A newscaster for the local IBC affiliate, it’s clear that Robin Stone (the love machine of the title) won’t be winning an Emmy anytime soon when he introduces a human interest story on spring fashion. “What’s it been like in New York today? Well, we’ve had our share of assorted disasters,” Like this movie perhaps? “and yet we’ve had our bright moments too.”

More musak accompanies a montage of designer outfits courtesy of Moss Mabry. It boggles the mind that clothes so ridiculously awful could have ever been considered fashionable. Robin flirts with a pretty blonde model in an onscreen interview. When he asks her name, ingénue Jodi Wexler replies, “Amanda…just Amanda, that’s all there is.”

“That’s all you need.” Clearly bowled over by his sparkling wit, Amanda goes home with Robin and sleeps with him.

When she attempts to leave in the middle of the night he smacks her around. “When you sleep with me, you stay with me. You don’t leave. Nobody leaves me. Nobody.”

The next day, while covering her bruises with make-up, Amanda tells photographer and gay confidant Jerry Nelson (David Hemmings with an awful beard) of her fabulous evening with Robin. “I can handle men so beautifully when I’m not involved. It’s different when you care. I’m in love with him Jerry.”

In a meeting with network president Greg Austin (Robert Ryan) Robin is promoted to anchor the evening news as well as run IBC’s news division. Office tramp and publicity gal Ethel Evans (Maureen Arthur), whose first entrance is appropriately preceded by the sound of a flushing toilet, suggests that Robin get some new publicity photos.

“Jerry Nelson will take care of that. Trouble is he only wants to shoot me in the nude.”

“Maybe I could hold the flashbulb.” she quips. He turns her down, making Ethel the only woman in the movie that he doesn’t sleep with.

As he rockets up the corporate ladder, Robin puts the brakes on his relationship with Amanda. When she gives him an ankh pinky ring he asks, “What comes next, a little gold leash?” Soon he’s back to his womanizing ways while Amanda receives the cold shoulder.

Convinced that his glossy news programs will make more money, Robin begins to make sweeping changes to the network schedule, much to the chagrin of programming head Danton Miller (Jackie Cooper). Determined to prove him wrong with some big ratings, Danton gives borscht belt comic Christie Lane (Shecky Greene) his own low-brow variety show.

As the spokesmodel for the show’s sponsor, Amanda stars in a commercial wearing a red vinyl trench coat trimmed with feathers. The ad is filled with psycadelic lighting and video effects as well as some more memorable Mabry fashions. “From Faberge, the fragrance of Amanda.”

“Xanadu,” Amanda whispers at the camera. Is that supposed to be the name of the perfume? The commercial is so vague and artsy it’s impossible to tell.

At an after party, Robin shows up with another girl. Distraught, Amanda agrees to go home with Christie Lane. With his new show a success, Christie promises to give Amanda anything she wants. What she wants is Robin Stone.

Unable to keep it in his pants, Robin unwisely beds Judith Austin (Dyan Cannon) his boss’s wife. While they’re screwing around, Greg has a heart attack. With her husband in intensive care, Judith has power of attorney. She decides that Robin will run the network while she and Greg are in Europe during his recovery.

Amanda’s toxic relationship with Robin has finally become too much to bear, she flips out and Jerry later finds her dead of an overdose.

With his good girl dead, Christie Lane sets his sights on bad girl Ethel Evans. When he questions her principles Ethel sums up her ideals with this simple statement. “When I ball a guy it’s because I dig him.” Imagine that catchphrase on bumper stickers across America.

After Robin hears of Amanda’s suicide he goes on a drinking binge and picks up a hooker in Times Square. When “Amazon woman” takes off her brunette wig revealing long, blonde, Amanda-like hair he’s turned off by the resemblance and changes his mind. When she questions his masculinity Robin flies into a rage and beats the crap out of her.

Worried about his friend, Jerry attempts to get to the root of the problem. “I know that what happened to Amanda must have had a terrible effect on you. Why in God’s name did you have to go out and beat up a hooker?”

Law finally musters up a certain degree of emotion and answers, “I don’t know. I honestly don’t know.” In exchange for an alibi, Jerry asks Robin for a personally inscribed slave bracelet.

A slave bracelet? How very chic… well, chic for 1971.

Greg and Judith return from Europe. She’d like to resume her extramarital affair but Robin brushes her off like all the rest. Late one night she finds him frolicking with not one, but two girls in the shower. Deciding to get mad and get even, Judith sets fire to his bed.

When Greg wants to resume his presidency of the network, Robin throws a Diva fit. “I’ve been calling every shot around here for a long time. I’m not going to start asking your permission for every move I make. If that’s what you want, get yourself a boy.”

The action then shifts to the West coast. Robin runs into Judith at the Hotel Bel-Air. Deciding it’s in his best interest to make amends, he invites Judith to accompany him to a party that Jerry and his boyfriend are throwing. Later that night after all the guests have left, Judith finds Jerry’s special bracelet. After reading the inscription, she plans to use the gossip that Jerry and Robin are lovers to exact her revenge.

“I’m gonna see to it that you are totally unemployed, off the network, out of television completely and I’m the one that can do it. Oh boy, won’t the scandal sheets love knowing about the two of you.”

Jerry shuts her up with a well deserved bitch slap and, in an attempt to get the bracelet back, a hilarious fight breaks out. Kicking, biting and hair pulling. As they chase Judith around the house every prop and piece of furniture becomes a projectile weapon. Not even the Three Stooges could’ve come up with something this zany.

All the ruckus brings the police to their door and everyone is hauled down to the Beverly Hills Police Department. When they’re released they go their separate ways, including Robin who walks away… alone.

Suddenly, in what looks like leftover footage from the start of the movie, Robin is walking along New York’s lower east side. Did he walk all the way back to the east coast? Did he lose his job? Is he working for a new network? Fox News perhaps?

The end credits roll as Dionne Warwick starts up with that theme song again.

Robin Stone… he’s moving on…

In conclusion: Author Jacqueline Susann was quite unhappy with The Love Machine despite the fact that she agreed to a cameo and her husband also produced the movie. She disliked most of the casting choices with the exception of Shecky Greene and Robert Ryan.

Three weeks into shooting The Love Machine, original leading man Brain Kelly (TV’s Flipper) had to be replaced after a serious motorcycle accident. Production resumed when Law was miscast in the part of Robin Stone. His wooden screen presence wasn’t helped by the fact that the studio wouldn’t pay for new costumes. Law, who was several inches taller than Kelly, had to wear his ill-fitting suits.

Poor mama. She stood in the way of a $3,000,000 inheritance. So they spoiled her medicine with the big cube. Poor, poor mama.

Less than a decade after such career highlights as Imitation of Life (1959) and Portrait in Black (1960) Lana Turner headlined The Big Cube (1969) a silly, trippy, LSD-soaked tale that tries to mix classic Hollywood melodrama (familiar territory for Turner) and the swingin’ sexed-up drug culture of the late 1960’s. The result is a colorfully spectacular mess, making it a savory treat for bad movie connoisseurs.

What it’s all about: It may seem like you’ve put the wrong disc into your DVD player, but the scenes from the low-rent historical epic in the opening moments of The Big Cube are merely the closing night of a play featuring glamorous stage star Adriana Roman (Lana Turner). After taking her final bows, she announces that she is “saying good-bye to the theatre forever” in order to marry wealthy business tycoon Charles Winthrop (Dan O’Herlihy).

After the groovy opening credits (featuring the muzak-style theme “Lean on Me”) you may think that Turner has already begun to partake in the mind-altering drug referenced in the film’s title. It’s the only logical explanation for her awkward performance in a scene where her character tells her husband-to-be that she’s worried how his teenage daughter will handle their impending nuptials.

Lisa Winthrop (Karin Mossberg) can’t stand her new stepmother. With her perfectly coiffed blonde hair and pretty pink party dress, Lisa looks to be the perfect all-American suburban debutante, but in an odd juxtaposition, actress Mossberg makes no attempt to hide her thick European accent. Her best friend Bibi (Pamela Rodgers) is of little help. “Sweetness, baby, float with the tide,” she suggests. “Let’s call half a dozen guys and have an orgy.”

Adriana tries to bond with Lisa after the civil ceremony. “We’re going to be the best of friends,” she insists, “we have the same good taste in men.”

That taste is put into question when Lisa starts hanging out with Johnny Allen (George Chakiris) and his thrill-seeking beatnik friends. Their first excursion is to club Le Trip, the kind of kinky, psychedelic dance club that only exists in movies from the 1960’s. “Sugar, in beer?” Lisa questions as all the hep cats start dropping The Big Cube.

A mysterious woman called the Queen Bee arrives with a muscular escort. Lalo (Carlos East) one of Johnny’s artist pals, wants revenge on the muscle head for some imagined indignity. “I’m gonna cube that mother, but good.”

They spike the guy’s beer with a heavy dose of LSD and it isn’t long before a full-scale freak-out ensues. “My face. Don’t steal my face!” the guy shouts as he goes into a psychotically spastic (and enjoyably hilarious) fit.

While investigating the drug-induced death at Le Trip, the police accuse Johnny of making LSD in the college chemistry lab. Kicked out of med school and with no other prospects, Johnny sets about wooing Lisa full-time. He moves in with Lalo, who is preparing for an exhibition of his third-rate artistic renderings. Lisa procures money from her father and buys one of the paintings. To celebrate the sale, Johnny and his dead-beat pals throw a swingin’ party at Lisa’s place. Bibi entertains the crowd with a strip tease and drops her top just as Lisa’s father arrives home. Everyone is thrown out and a family fight ensues, the argument ending with Lisa receiving a slap from her father.

“She turned my father against me,” Lisa complains to Johnny, “And now they’re trying to keep me away from you.”

In the next scene, Adriana washes ashore and we find out (after an amusingly stylized flashback) that she is the only survivor of a storm at sea. When she finally awakens in the hospital, she is given the tragic news that her husband has drowned.

At the reading of the will, Lisa is awarded a trust fund. One million dollars will be hers on her 25th birthday or, if she chooses to marry, she will receive the funds immediately. The only condition is that Adriana must approve of her choice of husband. Adriana does not approve of Johnny.

With dollar signs in his eyes, Johnny continues to manipulate Lisa, “I don’t give a damn about the money or anything. What gets me is everybody gushing about poor Adriana. If it was my father she’d killed, I’d make her pay for it.”

Their weapon of choice? Sleeping pills laced with LSD.

Voices and vivid psychedelic colors begin to haunt Adriana’s sleep. “A nightmare, pure and simple,” offers playwright and friend Frederick Lonsdale (Richard Egan).

Lisa suggests she and Adriana spend more quality time together. While on a drive to the coast, Adriana (under the influence of her tainted medication) has another freak-out. Johnny appears on the side of the road and, with Lisa’s help, drags Adriana towards a cliff. With colors whirling and lights flashing, she manages to escape, but no one believes that Lisa and Johnny tried to kill her. Her psychiatrist thinks her wild stories are simply the result of hysterical grief—a widow unable to deal with the death of her husband.

Lisa, who is feeling guilty about gaslighting her stepmother, agrees to put Adriana through the ringer one last time. On a particularly dark and stormy night, Adriana takes a sleeping pill and immediately begins tripping. A tape-recorded message (You killed my father. You’re going to die.) helps push Adriana to the brink of insanity. Colors and patterns dance across Adriana’s chi-chi bedroom set as images of Johnny beckon her to jump from the balcony. Lisa keeps her from jumping, but the damage is already done.

Adriana’s trip was so severe that she can’t recall her past (including her marriage to Charles or his death) and must be institutionalized. “Maybe there’s no perfect murder,” Johnny muses, “but I think we figured the perfect freakout.”

Once Adriana is legally declared incompetent, Johnny and Lisa get hitched in a bikini-clad backyard blowout. Lisa is shocked when Johnny suggests a four-way on their wedding night and kicks him out when he calls her, “a square, a cube, a jerk”.

Lisa tells Frederick the whole sorted scheme. Determined to help Adriana, he comes up with the most outrageously cockamamie scheme in cinema history. “Suppose she relived the part of her life she’s trying to forget?” To cure Adriana of her acid-induced amnesia, he plans to, “Write a play based on her experiences, then convince Adriana to play herself.”

At a read through of the play, Frederick and Lisa watch expectantly as Adriana performs a monologue from the play in which her character wistfully reminisces about her husband who was killed in a shipwreck. Adriana doesn’t crack. As rehearsals continue, she gets occasional flashes of her former life, but continues to work all the way up until opening night.

As Adriana performs the movie we’ve been watching for an appreciative audience, Lisa frets backstage, “She has no reaction at all. It’s useless. It’s not going to work!”

As Adriana begins the third act, you’d think she would’ve figured something out by now. She’s performing on a set that’s an exact replica of her own bedroom! Desperate, Frederick decides to pull out all the stops. As the psychedelic stage effects begin, he plays the same tape recording Lisa and Johnny used to push her over the edge: You killed my father. You’re going to die.

Turner really chews the scenery as Adriana relives her freak-out and finally remembers her past. Lisa shatters all sense of verisimilitude and takes the place of the stage actress playing her. “It was Johnny and me. It was us,” she confesses. “With drugs… We did it.”

Upon hearing this, Adriana lets loose with a particularly memorable bitch slap and then shrieks, “Oh, my God. I’m not mad. I’m not mad!” The audience applauds wildly as the curtain comes down. Meanwhile, Johnny has hit rock bottom with a little help from the Queen Bee. He pours an entire vial of LSD into a bowl of sugar cubes and begins to pop them like candy. Vivid colors and images of death haunt him as be begins a fatal acid trip.

With Frederick and Lisa as her escorts, Adriana exits the theatre surrounded by appreciative fans and enthusiastic members of the press. For an actress, this is perhaps the ultimate happily ever after. She gives a queenly wave as her chauffeur driven car pulls away.

In conclusion: Lana Turner always strived to look her very best onscreen. As with many actresses of Turner’s era, the veneer of Hollywood glamour was helped along with diffused lighting and careful costume choices. In The Big Cube, there’s plenty of soft-focus to keep Lana looking her best, but some of the outrageous costumes by Travilla are truly a sight to behold. In one scene Lana appears in an ornate gold caftan. But as unflattering as some of the gowns are, they can’t compare to the towering hairpieces she burdened with. The various curls, braids and bouffants look all the more ridiculous since none of them come close to matching Turners own blonde hair.

The Big Cube marked one of Lana Turner’s final starring roles. It may seem like an inauspicious way to wrap-up a Hollywood career, but several other leading ladies were making similarly themed projects around the same time. Academy award winner Jennifer Jones was featured in Angel, Angel, Down We Go (1969) and two-time Oscar winner Shelley Winters played the mother of twenty-something tyrant Christopher Jones in Wild in the Streets (1968).

George Chakiris won Oscar gold in 1961 for West Side Story, but after The Big Cube, the majority of his roles came from television guest appearances.