So says Inspector Wim Wenders (not his real name) as he crashes an abandoned shagging palace, hot on the trail of some kind of HIGH-CLASS NONCE RING. For this is the sleazy world of Italian giallo, and in particular the particularly sleazy WHAT HAVE THEY DONE TO YOUR DAUGHTERS, directed in brisk yet salacious fashion by Massimo Dalamano, the 1974 follow-up to WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO SOLANGE? (Between the two entries in the WHAT? series, Dalamano gave us a cop thriller which appears to be called WHO IS A BIGGER BASTARD THAN INSPECTOR CLIFF? Shadowplay salutes him!)

WHYDTS sticks in my mind, years after seeing it, for a scene where a coroner is asked how a young girl has died, and he wordlessly produces an X-ray of her pelvis with a giant kitchen knife sticking up it. Blast of organ music, cut to the grieving parents in church at her funeral. The combination of sex, violence, religion and sheer showbiz vulgarity seemed to encapsulate everything that's queasily life-denying yet compelling about gialli.

WHTDTYD is similarly compact with grue and deviance, following a series of meat cleaver murders committed to cover up a high school prostitution ring. Of course it's all handled with the Bressonian subtlety we've come to expect of Italian soft-porn psycho-thrillers -- the scene where Inspector Wim finds a series of soiled plastic bags packed in the boot of an abandoned car, yanks one out, and sends a severed head spinning across the tarmac is particularly restrained. The victim's wronged wife, come to identify the body, savagely demands to see the whole thing (meticulously reassembled by forensic nerds) so she can gloat --

But then, when she does see it, she's NOT KEEN.

Meanwhile, Damano, a former cinematographer (A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS), prominently features a series of attractive lamps in scene after scene. Cinema is light, he's telling us. In amongst this squalor and mayhem, there is yet grace and illumination. Then he shows us a schoolgirl pulling her panties on in leering closeup.

The thing is oddly compulsive, with an eccentric score by Stelvio Cipriano (Morricone did the first film, also eccentrically) that's fast in the slow bits and slow in the fast bits. There's nice use of wide-angle lens distortion as the killer (motorcycle courier with big chopper) barges about. There's a peeping tom with an orange face. There's Farley Granger, slumming it briefly. There's Mario Adorf as a troubled policeman -- he once played a serial killer himself, in a terrific film, Robert Siodmak's MIDNIGHT AND THE DEVIL COMES -- a serial killer in Nazi Germany! And there are quirks: attempting to dismember the glamorous assistant D.A. in an elevator, the ruthless assassin is interrupted by a little old man shouting "Stop that!" and, perhaps suddenly embarrassed about his crime spree, runs away.

It's stupid little things like that that actually add realism.

Channel 4, home of the cut-price movie matinee, has been showing afternoon films all week starring that AXIOM OF CINEMA, Joan Collins. Two of them had solid auteur credentials, if we can allow the use of the a-word, so I checked them out. That's Shadowplay -- faithfully watching Joan Collins movies, so you don't have to.

ESTHER AND THE KING has the double-whammy of being directed (and produced, and co-written) by mighty eye-patch wearing wild man Raoul Walsh, and photographed by Mario Bava. I'd caught glimpses of this movie and I'm a sucker for Bava's trademark Disneyland Blue, which is on display in nearly all this movie's interiors. Word has it that Walsh liked Bava'swork so much he delegated most of of E&TK to him. It's certainly a film that has more in common with Bava's KNIVES OF THE AVENGER or HERCULES IN THE HAUNTED WORLD than it does with WHITE HEAT or GENTLEMAN JIM. Since Bava's primary focus is the visual, when given his head as a cinematographer he can really subsume a film into his style, becoming its auteur by default (I still don't like that word, but you know what I mean -- the person with the unifying vision). And since energy was always a big part of the Walsh approach, and there's far less of that in his later work, there is a void to be filled.

(Late-period Walsh is unlikely to win the consideration lately awarded to late Hawks, Ford or Lang. Persons hoping to admire Walsh in his Mature Phase are recommended to sit through THE SHERIFF OF FRACTURED JAW, a Western of Damaged Brain uniting Kenneth More [British cinema's perennial "decent bloke"] with Jayne Mansfield [I.Q. of a genius but she kept it off the screen] and then give the whole thing up as a bad job.)

Bava fills the void with mind-frazzling candy colours, seen to best advantage in the film's numerous palace entertainments, starring dancing girls in revealing tunics, or unconvincingly miming Nubian singers -- the voice is THAT WOMAN who does all the Ennio Morricone wailing. While it doesn't quite slide into the autistic trance-state of Howard Hughes' SON OF SINBAD, which stops the "plot" for a belly-dance every 3 frames (David Bordwell would break his clicker trying to keep score), giving new meaning to the phrase "navel-gazing", this is still a film more interested in bringing on the next dance number than in sorting out Judeo-Persian politics -- and who can blame it? Even in Channel 4's lamentably cropped 16:9 version, these scenes have a wondrous lustre and pop, as fleshy Italian chorines writhe and stagger. 

A classic Bava shot: symmetrical framing, asymmetrical and unmotivated coloured lighting on the lions.

Of course, Bava wasn't hugely interested in performance, and I know you'll shudder in terror as you read this, but Joan Collins is the best actor in ESTHER AND THE KING. There, I've said it. Such a thing exists -- a film where Joan stands supreme, talent-wise, if only because she's surrounded by an unbeatable selection of human planks, lugs, stiffs and dolts. The camp harem commandant is the closest thing to a characterisation on offer (eunuch = homosexual in E&TK's schema).

Joan's scenes in the harem are among the most amusing. She starts the film in fine form, attempting random bursts of American accent and doing truly extraordinary things with her face while everybody around her is trying to act. In closeup she's more subdued, having presumably been fed the Hedy Lamarr dictum on how to look beautiful: "Just stand still and look stupid." This, Joan can do.

The Persian shagging-palace is depicted herein as a less austere version of the famous Rank Charm School, where the real-life Joan, along with Barbara Steele and Julie Christie, was educated in deportment, enunciation and, well, charm. This fine institution is satirised in Lauder and Gilliat's LADY GODIVA RIDES AGAIN, a film in which Joan has an uncredited cameo, along with half the British film industry ("Laughable term!" says Alistair Sim). The school's graduates were trained in disguising any traces of a working class accent (the late Stratford Johns took great satisfaction in telling me how "common" the Collins sisters were back in the early '50s), walking with a book balanced atop their heads, and getting out of cars without revealing their underwear to the photographers (not yet known as paparazzi) -- would that today's celebs boasted such a skill-set!

Gorgeous lifelike colour by Deluxe!

Joan gets sent to finishing school all over again in THE GIRL ON THE RED VELVET SWING, a true-crime story directed by Richard Fleischer. Fleischer did a stupendous job with (working backwards) 10 RILLINGTON PLACE (the Christie murders, very accurate), THE BOSTON STRANGLER (heavily fictionalised) and a very decent job on COMPULSION (Leopold & Loeb, quasi-accurate as far as it goes). This movie climaxes act 2 with a scandalous homicide, but it isn't primarily a crime film, more of a woman's picture (red drapes behind the credit sequence) and Joan is the woman whose picture it is.

Ray Milland is Stanford White, America's greatest architect of the gilded age. Farley Granger is the spoiled and possibly psychotic Harry Thaw. Joan is Floradora Girl Evelyn Nesbitt, who throws herself at the married Milland ("She's a stupid slut," pronounced Fiona, and I believe there was a hint of disapproval in her tone) before allowing herself to be wooed by Granger.

Things the movie omits to tell us: White was carrying on with lots of other chorus girls too; he may have drugged their champagne in order to date-rape them; Thaw was a coke fiend; he had a fondness for beating women with a dog whip; Nesbitt became impregnated by John Barrymore; her abortion was procured at a finishing school run by the mother of Cecil B DeMille.

In the movie, Joan's abortion is instead a nervous breakdown (I guess the logic is, "We need something shameful but not sexual"), presented in a series of lap dissolves as she tosses in her delirium: montage=mental illness. Producer and co-screenwriter Charles Brackett (working with Walter Reisch, previously his collaborator on NINOTCHKA) struggles to get any dramatic fire going. Joan is remarkably good-ish in this -- she must have devolved a bit between GIRL and ESTHER. 20th Century Fox had planned to cast Marilyn Monroe, but she was on suspension. Ray Milland is always reliable, but can't really be outstanding in the part as written. Granger has the flashiest role but he can't quite make a show-stopper out of it, he's not really that kind of actor. Brad Dourif had the role in RAGTIME, and he's a much better idea.

At the film's "climax", Joan must sway a jury single-handedly, with a testimony so powerful that they are forced to acquit a man arrested for publicly shooting an old guy in the face, in the crowded theatre of Madison Square Garden, while shouting "He ruined my wife!" (In the real-life case, nobody could say for sure whether it was "wife" or "life". A minor point -- the guy was still dead.)

DIGRESSION: Now, I've seen Joan in the witness box FOR REAL, and I have to say, she wasn't thatcompelling. This was when she attempted to follow her sister Jacqui into the world of best-selling bonkbuster novels, and was sued by her publisher for the return of her six-figure advance after she failed to provide them with sufficiently publishable dross (a sample:"'Don't call me your little cabbage,' she said savagely. 'I'm nobody's cabbage.'"). Joan, her head inserted into wig styled like freshly whipped soufflé, made a poor witness, mainly because she seemed too profoundly THICK to understand when she was being asked a question, of that she was expected to answer. But in fairness to her, this may have been a deliberate strategy -- her best chance of winning the case (she won) was in proving that the publishers got exactly what they deserved when they asked her to knock up a couple of novels. Skeptics may wonder whether Joan is a good enough actress to fool an entire courtroom, but I remind you: she was playing the part of a dumb actress. "Stand still and look stupid" may be equally good advice for the witness box.

DIGRESSION ON DIGRESSION: The best movie star courtroom scene played for real was that of Lana Turner, defending her daughter for knifing well-endowed gangster Johnny Stompanato to death. She gave a real Lana Turner performance, completely artificial from beginning to end and completely convincing to everybody concerned.

END OF DIGRESSIONS: Fleischer's direction only takes off during the scene when Millandfinally gets Collins on his swing. With dizzying, nauseating POV shots, Fleischer shows her ascending to the ceiling and attempting to kick holes in the skylight. We get a glimpse of the campy wallow in bad taste this film could have been if Fleischer had been allowed to report the true story and play to Joan's strengths. The Fleischer of MANDINGO could have had a ball with that.

The movie needs more SUBTLE FORESHADOWING, like the skulls, screen right.

Alfred Hitchcock, Vanity Fair cover, March 2008

For Vanity Fair's 14th annual Hollywood Issue they took 21 of the finest actors working today, plus 4 of Vanity Fair's best photographers to recreate some of the most iconic images of film.

Read the rest of this article to see the Vanity Fair version side by side with the original Hitchcock image.

Click on the name of the film to find out more via imdb.com, click on the image to see a larger version, or the actors name below the image to go to the page on the Vanity Fair website.

All images remain the copyright of either Vanity Fair, the photograhers or the Movie Studio that produced the original film.

Phillip(Farley Granger) och Brandon (John Dall) stryper sin klasskompis (för att de tycker han är en underlägsen människa), gömmer honom i en kista i lägenheten och bjuder sen hem hans föräldrar och några till på en fest för att öka spänningen. Vilka idioter! Phillip börjar bli darrig, en av gästerna börjar lägga näsan i blöt och spänningen är olidlig. Ingenting i filmen tyder på att Phillip och Brandon bara är vänner. De gör allt tillsammans, tycks bo tillsammans, ska resa bort tillsammans; de är väldigt intima och har en passion mellan sig som slår gnistor. Ingen frågar dem om kärleksintressen trots att ett annat triangeldrama utspelar sig. Det känns som alla vet att de två är ett kärlekspar men ingen säger något. Phillip säger kärleksfulla saker som "You frightened me. You always have. From the very first day in prep school. Part of your... charm, I suppose." och så kollar de erotiskt på varandra och Phillip suckar och kollar ned. Senare säger han "You just astound me, as always!" Brandon hjälper honom t.o.m. att ta av sig handskarna och han gör det med så mjuka rörelser som om han skulle ta av dem från en skör docka. Alltid de djuriska blickarna mellan dem - de grälar som ett gift par, men kärleken finns ändå kvar. Hitchcock-filmen är ett mästerverk i alla avseenden!/Imdb/

/Johnny
Recensionen är tillägnad Fred som gillar onda bögar.

Tennisproffset Guy Haines (Farley Granger) blir uppraggad på tåget av stalkern Bruno (Robert Walker) som föreslår att de kan ingå en pakt där de dödar varandras fiender - helt vattentätt. Guy skrattar bort det, kliver av tåget och glömmer bort det. Några dagar senare är hans fru död. Hon vägrade skilja sig så att han kunde gifta om sig med sin nya flickvän Anne och han hade pratat illa om henne på tåget med främlingen. Stalkern dyker upp utanför Guys hem och börjar kräva att han ska betala tillbaka mordet genom att skjuta hans pappa.

Bruno är en ganska tydligt homosexuell karaktär. För det första är han helt besatt av Guy, läser allt om honom i tidningar och ger honom kåta blickar. För det andra så har han en nära relation till sin mamma (homosymbolism enligt vissa) och har inga relationer till andra kvinnor. En annan tolkning skulle vara att han helt enkelt bara är en socialt störd psykopat, men det var väl ungefär samma sak på 50-talet./imdb/

/Johnny

I've tiptoed around Nicholas Ray's movies for ages: I love the stuff I've seen, particularly Johnny Guitar and In a Lonely Place, but I haven't seen a lot - something about the burden of expectations... But when Ray's first feature, They Live By Night, was recently made available on DVD, I took a chance. It looks like an easy one, part of a cheapo double feature with Side Street, but the film is a revelation. An absolutely devastating noir starring Farley Granger and Cathy O'Donnell as Bowie and Keechie, the eponymous lovers on the lam, They Live By Night highlights in particular what a great director of actors Ray was, right off the bat. He's no slouch with the visuals either: often noted for his expressive use of camera and color, here Ray works us over in black and white, following the misbegotten couple from the first bated breath of romance to its last gasp.

Our first vision of Keechie is not a flattering one – she's not the prettiest girl an escaped con's ever fallen in love with and, strikingly, she's not wearing any make-up (it's incredible how unaccustomed one is to seeing a very plain girl in a movie). But Bowie is bewitched - he's unaccustomed to seeing girls at all; locked up since he was 16, he fairly explodes with feeling for her. Keechie can’t keep her fondness for him hidden either, despite her misgivings about his criminal life.

Unfortunately, that criminal life is hovering dangerously close to the would-be couple in the thuggish persons of T-Dub and Chicamaw, the two heavies who broke him out of prison: they need him for bank jobs, and call in their IOU with more than just the threat of violence. The couple try to shake them, hopping a bus and, in a fittingly tawdry yet somehow hopeful setting, marrying; but Bowie's past is not so easily escapable, and the shadow it casts soon begins to darken the emotional landscape. Driving at night, sleeping in the day, Bowie and Keechie are always hiding, cramped, fearful. They share a real tenderness for one another, but every moment of happiness is followed by a bleak reminder of their untenable situation.

O'Donnell is amazing. Her face is the emotional center of the film, and it's one of the most expressive in movies - Keechie is a teenager in love, and every change, every nuance of adolescent feeling, dances across that face. Granger, too, is perfectly cast, though not quite the actor O'Donnell is. His Bowie is a naif, awkward and emotionally overwhelmed, obviously doomed - the original, maybe, of James Dean's rebel. The rest of the cast is just as strong: Howard Da Silva as the one-eyed Chicamaw, all uncontrollable fury and lust; Jay C. Flippen as T-Dub, the more frightening for being so in control; and Helen Craig, who, in an almost-impossible situation herself, acts - heart-breakingly - to make our lovers' situation actually impossible.

With They Live by Night, Ray arrived fully formed, shining a light into the dark places he'd be going for the rest of his career. Ray practically created cool by directing Dean's performance in Rebel Without a Cause. Yet the popular reading of Dean as cool is a mistake – his cool exists, obviously, but Ray was fascinated with its flipside: the facade when it crumbles, our inability to control our inner lives, the impossibility of escaping our raw emotional selves. Think Joan Crawford and Mercedes McCambridge in Johnny Guitar; Dean and Sal Mineo in Rebel; even Humphrey Bogart loses his temper in In a Lonely Place. They Live by Night is Ray's first American tragedy, and with such strength of style, story-telling efficiency and powerful direction of performance, it may rank as his best.