|
Between psychedelic guitars and soap-operatic organs, the new pleasure dome. L.A. the Big Nipple, as Bertolucci would say, it receives the small-town rock band with a kaleidoscopic montage and promptly engulfs them. The warbling ingénue (Dolly Read) in the eye of the countercultural storm, "a contact high," the music-industry vampire (John Lazar) is her guide. Bandmates both vivacious (Marcia McBroom) and depressive (Cynthia Myers), one hooks up with a law student (Harrison Page) and the other with the fashion doyenne (Erica Gavin), meanwhile their manager (David Gurian) is catnip to the squealing porn lioness (Edy Williams). "You're a groovy boy. I'd like to strap you on sometime." Russ Meyer in the mainstream studio like the bull in the china shop, just the anvil and hammer needed for the fads and fantasies of the Sixties-Seventies carrefour. A continuous soiree with places for the pretty-boy gigolo (Michael Blodgett) and the "heavyweight philosopher" (James Iglehart), edited like a seizure and bartendered by Martin Bormann in hiding. "The oft-times nightmare world of show business" (cf. Aldrich's The Legend of Lylah Clare), Roger Ebert earns his Pulitzer with the funniest script in town. The Old Guard is the family attorney (Duncan McLeod) flaccid in black socks by the starlet's bed, elsewhere the pugilist offers a Baudelairean elegy for the moment: "That's the trouble with people today. All uptight about tomorrow. Hanging onto yesterday." A grand cartoon of the zeitgeist, a seedy reactionary's view of pop hedonism, a perfect spectacle for Meyer's gift of superabundance. The shift from orgy to bloodbath (with a tessitura comprising "The Sorcerer's Apprentice," "Stranger in Paradise," and the 20th-Century Fox fanfare) builds to a mock-miracle and a mock-moral. "Today really isn't your night, is it, pussycat?" The punchline is from The Palm Beach Story. With Phyllis Davis, Charles Napier, and Henry Rowland.
--- Fernando F. Croce |