|
"...Leaves a Taste of Evil!" Spooner, MO, between the ranch and the whorehouse stumbles the middle-aged "city boy" with a past (John Furlong). At the farm the earthy maiden (Antoinette Christiani) with her abusive husband (Hal Hooper) and feeble-hearted uncle (Stuart Lancaster), twin Daisy Maes at the cathouse, one mute (Rena Horten) and the other raucous (Lorna Maitland). The fire-breathing missionary (Frank Bolger) compares it to Sodom and Gomorrah, and there's the rustic Vulcan's net. After an overture of absences (disembodied hands, feet, wheels), a fulminating Russ Meyer cascade on Faulknerian themes, "with the comb up and blood in its eye." (The silent strumpet's name plays like a joke on incongruous Nordic models until you recall The Hamlet.) The town is eager to hate, a bit of gossip is enough to get the stranger and the wife shunned, spurious salvation meanwhile strikes the vile drunkard "like electric lights turned in my innards." California dreamin' for the tentative good couple, who enjoy a roll in the meadow just so that it can later be rhymed with a rape in the swamp. A tale of water in the desert to point up the Great Depression backdrop, Clarabelle in the river ("I guess ya gotta have one of them, whatcha call 'em? Bathing suits!") plus an offhand Bonnard with Eula by the barnyard tub. Much vehement material drawn from Tobacco Road and Johnny Belinda and The Fugitive Kind, all building to the remarkable moment when "Shall We Gather at the River" yields to the two patriarchs tumbling together into the open grave. "Can't you have your fun without busting up the whole house?" The coda's Publilius Syrus quote is to be taken in the uproarious spirit of the rest. With Princess Livingston, Sam Hanna, Lee Ballard, and Nick Wolcuff. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |