* "In Barbara Steele's case, much like Marilyn Monroe who is viewed through the lens of a sex symbol, bestowing the title of Scream Queen might be an honor considered by her passionate fan base, but it can also be a curse for an actress of formidable intelligence, acutely cerebral and worthy of an established movie career. Steele's otherworldly beauty has been objectified by the genre that embraced her uniqueness yet her acting skill never led her to become an idolized Hollywood star, a beloved character actor, or a mainstream celebrity. Somehow she metamorphosed into a figure of fantasy and myth, chained to an archetype and recreated as an icon. One thing's for sure, she has no competition for her unique style and mesmerizing sorcery, though there are many other genre superstars that are true, I would never dismiss that. Barbara Steele is the ultimate enchantress. Queen of shadows and the divine who suffer eternally. [The Last Drive In]"
Born on 29 December 1937 in Birkenhead, Cheshire, Barbara [Winifred] Steele studied art at the Chelsea Art School and in Paris at the Sorbonne, even as she worked in film. Signed by the Rank Organisation while still an art student, she began appearing in minor film and TV roles in the late 1950s. Her contract was sold to 20th Century Fox in 1960,* and soon thereafter she abandoned her contract for Italy, where she became famous primarily for her numerous, mostly Gothic horror movies, including some a wasted life faves. By 1969, she was married to the American screenwriter James Poe (4 Oct 1921 – 24 Jan 1980) and living in California. The couple had one child, Jonathan, and divorced in 1973 (some sources say 1978). Her acting jobs became less and her parts smaller, and she began producing television projects — highly successful ones. She hasn't been seen onscreen in a "real" film since 2014.
* "[When] Rank sold her contract to 20th Century Fox, [...] she was off to America. Upon arriving in Los Angeles, she later wrote, 'I [was] greeted by a coterie of people on the steamy tarmac – one of them holding a stricken-looking black panther on a leash from one hand and an electric prong in the other. I was obliged to stand there, holding the leash of this creature for their welcoming publicity shots, implying that this was some kind of image they decided to have of me.' Little did she know that this was to be the good part of her Hollywood sojourn. [awfi]"
And now, enjoy Part VIII of our typically meandering and all-over-the-place career review of a true Babe of Yesteryear and Scream Queen extraordinaire.
Also go here:
Night Gallery: The Sins of the Fathers
(1972, dir. Jeannot Szwarc)
While the details of the casting process are unknown, it would seem likely that Barbara Steele's status as a Gothic scream queen undoubtedly played a role in her being cast in one of the Night Gallery's "most medieval" stories.
TV spot for
Night Gallery:
We don't usually look at television series, but for a show like Night Gallery (which ran from 1970 to '73, if you exclude the original pilot that was broadcasted in 1969*) we're willing to make an exception. An anthology television series originally on NBC and hosted by the great Rod Serling (25 Dec 1924 – 28 June 1975), the tales featured tended to be more on the macabre and supernatural side than what was usually found on his far more respected and culturally influential TV series, Twilight Zone (1959 – 1964). Serling, as the host of Night Gallery, would introduce the episodes in a darkened gallery, in front of a painting visually related to the tale to come, saying something along the lines of...
"Good evening, and welcome to a private showing of two paintings, displayed here for the first time. Each is a collector's item in its own way — not because of any special artistic quality, but because each captures on a canvas, suspended in time and space, a frozen moment of a nightmare."
* Interesting trivia about Night Gallery: 22-year-old Steven Spielberg made his directorial debut with the segment Eyes, starring Joan "No More Wire Coat Hangers!" Crawford, in the three-segment pilot TV film that aired 8 November 1969. The painting to her episode is directly above.
The painting above, also by Tom Wright, is one of the two Night Gallery paintings of 21st episode of second season, which aired 23 February 1972. It goes to the first 30-minute segment, The Sins of the Fathers; the second story of the two-segment episode is You Can't Get Help Like that Anymore (painting below). Throughout the show's entire run, Tom Wright (a.k.a. Thomas J. Wright) painted all the paintings used to introduce each story.
While You Can't Get Help Like that Anymore is an original story written by Rod Serling, The Sins of the Fathers is based on a short story by the award-winning British Malaya-born author "Christianna Brand", otherwise known as Mary Christianna Lewis (née Milne; 17 Dec 1907 – 11 Mar 1988). The teleplay itself was a rare horror project for scriptwriter Halsted Welles (29 Dec 1906 – 24 Jan 1990). French-born director Jeannot Szwarc (21 Nov 1937 – 14 Jan 2025), likewise a man usually entrenched in TV productions, did eventually go on to direct a few fun turkeys, like Supergirl (1984 / trailer) and Jaws II (1978 / trailer), and a few lowbrow favorites, like the anti-classic Bug (1975 / trailer below) and the exploiter with a message, Extreme Close-Up (1973)
Bug (1975):
"Anton LaVey specifically called out this episode. [...] It's probably the most memorable Night Gallery episode. It has no blood, no special effects and just mood and theatrical acting by all. It just plain works. [B&S About Movies]"
The plot, totally scraped from the detailed description found at David Juhl: In plague- and famine-filled Wales during the Middle Ages, the well-to-do the Widow Craighill (Barbara Steele) sends her dwarf servant (Michael Dunn [20 Oct 1934 – 29 Aug 1973] of The Mutations [1974], Murders in the Rue Morgue [1971 / trailer, with Herbert Lom] and more) to procure the services of a 'sin-eater' to take on lifetime worth of sins of her dead husband so that he may go to heaven. But all seem to be ill, dead, or otherwise engaged. At the home of sin-eater Mr. Evans, who is ill, Mrs Evans (Geraldine Page [22 Nov 1924 – 13 Jun 1987] of The Bride [1985 / trailer] & What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice [1969 / trailer]) convinces the youthful, starving son, Ian (Richard Thomas of Cactus in the Snow [1971, with Karen Smith], You'll Like My Mother [1972 / trailer] and Battle Beyond the Stars [1980 / trailer]), to go instead and fake it, explaining how. He does so, believably and to the full satisfaction of Widow Craighill and mourners, secretly stuffing his pockets with the food meant for the sin-eating fest. Returning home, his mother takes the delicious-looking food — bacon, rare beef, fresh fruits and vegetables and bread heavy with butter — from him, telling him to wait for a moment as she goes into the father's room. Ian walks in and sees that his father has died while he was gone. His mother says that he may eat, but only after he has cleansed his father of his sins and we fade to black as Ian screams in the agony of eating his sin-eater father's years of collected sins..."
Over at Medium, Patrick J Mullen says, "I find most of the Night Gallery horror segments to be sort of horror-lite. They're horror in the sense that they're filled with fixtures of the genre — gothic sets, ghosts, etc., but that's about it. [Sins of Our Fathers] is an exception. This is a hard-hitting segment, and perhaps the best [...] not to have been written by Rod Serling. [...] I'd definitely call this segment unsettling, and it is incredibly effective. All the performances are solid, especially Richard Thomas, who knocks it out of the park."
And, as a wasted life does believe in equal opportunity, a voice of dissent: "God help us, another segment described by Rod Serling's Night Gallery: An After-hours Tour as 'considered by many the show's finest hour.' There's the first clue — it is 30 minutes long, but feels like an hour. [...] Unfortunately, someone had the bright idea of taking horror babe Barbara Steele and dressing her in a burka like Heather Graham in Outer Limits. [Genre Snaps]"
Caged Heat
(1974, writ. & dir. Jonathan Demme)
We looked at this trash classic last year on 17 April 2024 in Part XX of our extensive Babes of Yesteryear look at all the noteworthy women found in Russ Meyer's masterpiece, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970 / trailer below), because of the presence of Erica Gavin. To cannibalize what we wrote there...
Beyond the Valley of the Dolls:
Prior to this Caged Heat, future A-level filmmaker Jonathan Demme (22 Feb 1944 – 26 Apr 2017) had produced and co-scripted two films for Roger Corman, Joe Viola's Angels Hard as They Come (1971 / trailer) and Viola's The Hot Box (1972 / trailer), and also done some uncredited direction on two films, Fly Me (1973, see Dick Miller) and, supposedly, on Wolf Rilla's The Secrets of a Door-to-Door Salesman a.k.a. Naughty Wives (1973 / complete movie), but Caged Heat is his true feature-film directorial debut. Caged Heat has a truly droolable cast of cult sirens, led by the horror icon Barbara Steele as the main female baddy, the prison superintendent McQueen, and Erica Gavin as the film's main identification figure.
"Movie geek Jonathan Demme [...] found Steele on Sunset Boulevard, where she'd just bought a slinky dress for a party and was wondering idly why second-rate imitations of herself like Martine Beswick (though she was too well brought up to refer to Beswick that way) always got to wear such sexy, fabulous costumes, while she wound up costumed in 'a series of ghastly flannel nightgowns'. He offered her the part of a lesbian warden, complete with a fantasy sequence in which she was decked out in a top hat and fishnet stockings. [AWJF]"
Caged Heat:
"This film is considered to be the one that made WIP movies a genre. The name of it speaks for itself, so you won't be disappointed with what you see. The picture features seductive Barbara Steele (of The Butterfly Room [2012], Sapphire [1959], Castle of Blood [1964] and so much more) performing a wheelchair-bound warden. Apart from this beautiful actress, the movie also offers the audience Erica Gavin, performing the newbie who finds herself facing the mad doctors shock tortures. Moreover, she will have to survive lesbians and even cat fights [...]. Then, the plot keeps twisting, showing us the poor girl again, who after cooperating with another inmate, finally manages to break out. However, afterwards they will come back to bust out their buddies. The plot and acting [...] used to be the model for around 90% of the movies of this genre produced in the '80s. Still, the picture is very promising for each fan of the genre. In other words, the film is a must-have if you are a true WIP collector. [WIP Films]"
Another quick plot description can be had at the very NSFW website erogarga: "Welcome to Connorville Penitentiary, a hellish prison for female inmates run by a cruel warden (Barbara Steele) and lorded over by a depraved doctor (Warren Miller) with a fondness for frontal lobotomies. Smalltime criminal Jacqueline (Erica Gavin) finds herself in the middle of all this madness, quickly teaming up with fellow inmates Maggie ([Evelyn] Juanita Brown of Black Starlet [1974, see Marilyn Joi], Foxy Brown [1974 / trailer] and Willie Dynamite [1974 / trailer]), Belle (Roberta Collins [17 Nov 1944 – 16 Aug 2008] of Tobe Hooper's Eaten Alive [1976], Matt Cimbar's The Witch Who Came from the Sea [1976], Train to Hollywood [1975, see Phyllis Davis], Death Race 2000 [1975, see Dick Miller]; Wonder Women [1973, see Marilyn Joi] and The Roommates [1973, see The Great Uschi]) and Pandora (Ella Reid [15 Jan 1944 – 7 Aug 1999]) to make a break for freedom and to even the score with their sadistic penal masters."
"Audiences expecting another forgettable women's-prison drive-in feature were a bit surprised to find politics and feminism mixed with the usual skin, shocks, and lowbrow humor in this cult film. Female inmates escape the sexual abuse and 'corrective physical therapy' of Connorville Maximum Security Prison, rob a gang of bank robbers, take over the jail, and rescue their friends. Barbara Steele is McQueen, the repressed, crippled, sadistic warden who has a sexy cabaret-number dream. Inmates include Juanita Brown, Roberta Collins, Russ Meyer star Erica Gavin, and Rainbeaux Smith (6 Jun 1955 – 25 Oct 2002). [...] The music, a mixture of moody viola and country harmonica, is by John Cale. Evelyn Purcell, the producer, was the wife of Jonathan Demme, here making his first film. [Psychotronic Encyclopedia]."
"Caged Heat is inspired from start to finish. Granted, Demme is somewhat limited by the requirements of the women's-prison genre. [...] But Demme fashions this material into a loose-but-powerful feminist statement, as Gavin and her mates find ways to help each other on the sly, while steering clear of authorities who handle upstart women by lobotomizing them. Even the villainous Steele is presented as a victim of the system, handicapped both literally and metaphorically. Beyond the theme, though, Caged Heat's style is striking. Demme and cinematographer Tak Fujimoto move the camera frequently and dynamically, and use expressionistic lighting to accentuate the movie's multiple dream sequences. John Cale's minimalist violin-and-harmonica score creates a mood halfway between 'down home' and 'fever dream,' while Demme's script works in dirty jokes and multiple absurdist touches, like the greenish slop the inmates are forced to eat for their meals. Altogether, this is more art than trash, and though [Roger] Corman had no mandate to produce masterpieces, he stood apart from others of his ilk in that he didn't mind his employees showing off their genius, so long as they did it cheaply and turned a profit. [AV Club]"
Years later, Caged Heat suddenly got followed by two in-name-only sequels, Cirio H. Santiago's Caged Heat II: Stripped of Freedom (1994 / trailer) and Aaron Osborne's Caged Heat 3000 (1995). Neither are a cultural highpoint.
Caged Heat 3000:
The Space-Watch Murders
(1975, dir. Unknown)
Considering that this was a TV movie for ABC Late Night Mysteries, it's almost unbelievably that The Space-Watch Murders is not only Barbara Steele's possibly most obscure American project but also, apparently, a lost movie: since its last broadcast (supposedly in 1978), it has disappeared. (So: check your mama's attic.) The badge above was apparently used on some of the costumes of the TV movie.
Online sources often credit the deceased raconteur Howard Rayfiel a.k.a. Howard Rayfield (6 Jan 1929 – 9 Nov 2020) as the director, but he was active as a producer & scriptwriter & lawyer & martini lover, and not as a film director. If he did actually direct this TV movie, which he is known to have written, then it would be his only known directorial project. (Perhaps his autobiography Where the Hell Is Desilu? How to Fail in Hollywood without Really Trying would shed some light here, but unluckily we don't have a copy of the tome.) We would assume, seeing that this shot-on-video production (made at a time was video was still learning to walk) was a Paramount production, that the project may have been made during his period that "he served as counsel to two divisions of Paramount Pictures, a consultant to that company and unofficial ombudsman for many of its employees" [Legacy.com] — but that is pure conjecture.
The Screaming Skull (1958):
The picture below was found at Tapatalk, where they write "FX guru Greg Jein is shown putting finishing touches on a space station model used for The Space-Watch Murders. The article doesn't say much else about the movie other than the fact that this space station model re-used sections of the Valley Forge spaceship constructed for Doug Trumbull's Silent Running (1972 / trailer) some years before."
The plot, as found at TV Guide: "In this sci-fi mystery set in deep space, crew members aboard an intergalactic spaceship suddenly begin vanishing until only one crewman remains. Investigators look into to the incident to determine the reasons why."
Our online search did find a screenshot of a possibly prescient review by David Bianculli (again at Tapatalk) in which he says: "On the other hand, certain programs [...] ought to be pre-empted. A sterling example is The Space-Watch Murders [...]. Sam Groom and Tisha Sterling (I said it was a sterling example) star in this very funny science fiction story that isn't supposed to be funny at all. The best thing about this travesty is that it was videotaped, not filmed, so the tape cane be erased and put to some better purpose at a later date. [...]" (And erase it, it appears, someone did!)
Shivers
(1975, writ. & dir. David Cronenberg)
Written under the title Orgy of the Blood Parasites but filmed under the title The Parasite Murders, in the US it was retitled They Came from Within. Cronenberg's third feature-length film (Shivers was preceded by the arty Crimes of the Future [1970 / trailer] — which Cronenberg himself re-envisioned as Crimes of the Future [trailer] in 2022 — and Stereo [1969 / trailer]), if perhaps the first one to be released as a "real" movie and to truly gain international attention (good and bad) and do some notable business at the box office. Indeed, when released in Canada, despite being shredded by the critics and possibly assisted by the scandal — as the "exploitation film" was funded by the Canadian government's film fund, its shocking nature led to Parliamentary discussions — Shivers became one of the highest-grossing English-language Canadian films of all time.
Young Cronenberg talking to a TV Dudhead about Shivers:
According to the AWJF, "David Cronenberg tracked [Barbara Steele] down and asked her to play a sophisticated lesbian [named Betts] in his first feature, They Came from Within / Shivers (1975); she didn't want to, but he won her over with marigolds, music, wine and the promise that she'd only have to work five days."
Shivers features a scene that is one of the closest Barbara Steele has ever come to doing a nude scene: when she's in the pool, her white T-shirt become exceedingly translucent. The movie, like so many of the horror projects that she was (and possibly still is) less than convinced about, and that were less than well received upon their release, Shivers has gone on to become an acknowledged and influential horror classic.
They Came from Within was heavily cut so as to not get an X-rating — it was released at a time when X still mean "adult", as in Midnight Cowboy (1969 / trailer), and not porn, as in Deep Throat (1972 / soundtrack below) — but unlike in Canada, it flopped below the slash.
Deep Throat I (1972) & II (1974):
The plot, as found at 3 Brothers: "We see an older man murdering a young woman in a schoolgirl outfit, disfiguring her corpse, and then committing suicide. The scene's nudity and copious amounts of blood cue us into the B-movie bonafides of the picture. It introduces the picture's main horror concept. We soon learn that the murderer was Dr. Hobbes (Fred Doederlein [24 Apr 1906 – 23 Apr 1985]), who was designing some kind of replacement organs for the Northern Hemisphere Organ Transplant Society (a Cronenbergian name if there ever was one), and that he had transplanted the girl, Annabelle (Cathy Graham), with some parasitic organ that he intended on neutralizing by murdering her. Of course, his plan doesn't work as Annabelle had already spread the parasite to other individuals, including Nick Tudor (Alan Migicovsky), a married businessman living in the tower. The parasite begins to spread and turn the tower's residents into sex-crazed zombies who aggressively seek to have sex with whomever is nearest them in order to pass on the parasite. In essence, Shivers is a zombie picture where the infection is transmitted through an STI parasite that turns people into rapists. [...]"
Trailer to
Shivers:
Over at All Movie, Brian J. Dillard says: "Like George Romero, on whose Night of the Living Dead (1968) this film so successfully riffs, David Cronenberg knew early on how to parlay low production values and genre conventions into artistic strengths. [...] The typical arc of any sci-fi or creature feature is usually an initial shocker followed by slowly escalating suspense and climactic violence. They Came from Within follows that profile, but here, the horror isn't some threat from outer space or Transylvania, but the privileged characters' own postmodern isolation. [...] The slowly paced, almost affectless early scenes depict the high-tech skyscraper as an urban environment divorced from all passion and nature, which makes the queasy special effects and sex-crazed chase sequences all the more delicious. Scream Queen Barbara Steele and Canadian TV actress Susan Petrie were but the first in Cronenberg's long string of stellar leading ladies, but the spotlight here is on the ideas and the action, not the actors. Rarely has a horror film portrayed the ugliness of an era as subtly and unrelentingly as They Came from Within does in its clinical dissection of the empty, high-rise '70s."
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"Later Cronenberg would explore the relationship between humans and technology and the radical possibilities of transcending human evolution by using science to drastically alter our bodies and minds. Shivers however was his first full-length horror feature and instead scrutinized the fragility of the human shell in the first of his 'body horror' trinity. Watch this, Rabid (1977 / trailer) and The Brood (1979 / trailer) back to back for some real head-fuckery although this was by far the wackiest of the three. [A Keeper of the Crimson Quill]"
"The last 20 minutes of Shivers pushes the movie beyond effective, modest horror and into bonafide classic status. With the virus now a full-fledged endemic and the residents freely enacting their darkest sexual desires, Dr. St. Luc (Paul Hampton of Private Duty Nurses [1971 / theme song] and Women of the Prehistoric Planet [1966 / trailer]), [the movie's nominal hero] who looks as though he would blush at anything other than the missionary position, stumbles through the plague-infested Starliner [high-rise], taunted by visions of homosexuality, sadomasochism, pedophilia, and incest. Cronenberg is unsparing and relentless: St. Luc is surely a repressed, obsolete fool clinging to an outdated prurience, but the behavior of the infected residents is unabashedly nightmarish. There's nothing comforting in either direction. [Arthouse Grindhoues]"
While Barbara Steele's wet T-shit scene is noteworthy, it is hardly her most "memorable" scene in the movie. That claim to fame surely belongs to the horrific bathtub scene in which she gets infected by the parasite, and uncomfortable and nausea-inducing scene that even makes men curl their toes — and that has been referenced in movies ranging from Wes Craven's A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984 / trailer) to James Gunn's Slither (2006 / trailer below) to Piranha 3DD (2012). Slither, like Night of the Creeps (1986), also freely borrows Cronenberg's basic parasite idea.
Slither:
For fans of Babes of Yesteryear, another is found in this movie: the oddly unsung beauty of who deserves greater appreciation than she gets: Lynn Lowry, who was first seen in the anti-classic I Drink Your Blood (1971 / trailer), is found in the original The Crazies (1973 / trailer), steals the show in Sugar Cookies (1973 / trailer), and is currently a much in demand "special appearance" in untold horror projects by unknown filmmakers...
Fellini's Casanova
(1976, dir. Federico Fellini)
One of Fellini's most baroque movies, it is also, for Barbara Steele, another important project that got away. Unlike They Shoot Horse, Don't They? (1969, see Part VII), however, Barbara Steele actually took part in Casanova — she played a Venetian alchemist — and shot her scenes. But then, in August 1975, approximately seventy reels of film were stolen from the Technicolor labs in Rome (along with reels of Pasolini's Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom [1975 / trailer] and Damiano Damiani's spaghetti western A Genius, Two Partners and a Dupe [1975 / trailer]), reels that included her scenes. For whatever reason, she was unable to return to reshoot them, so her part was written out of the movie. The movie took about two years longer to finish and release than originally planned.
Trailer to
Fellini's Casanova:
A detailed plot description, as found at Surrender to the Void: "After bedding the lover (Margareth Clementti of Morel's Invention [1974 / Italian trailer]) of a French ambassador, Giacomo Casanova (Donald Sutherland of many a movie more interesting than The Rosary Murders [1987]) is arrested by authorities for heresy and being connected with black magic. Sent to jail, Casanova reminisces about his time when he was having an affair with a rich seamstress and her ailing servant Anna Maria (Clarissa Mary Roll) whom he adored. After escaping prison and eventually leaving his beloved Venice, Casanova seeks refuge in the court of Madam d'Ufre (Cicely Browne of What? [1972 / trailer]) of Paris. He offers his expertise in alchemy to help her transfer her soul to a younger body so she can be reborn as a man. After moving to another court in [sic] a man named Du Bois (Daniel Emilfork [7 Apr 1924 – 17 Oct 2006] of The City of Lost Children [1995 / trailer] and The Devil's Nightmare [1971 / trailer]), he falls in love with Du Bois' lover Henrietta (Tina Aumont [14 Feb 1946 – 28 Oct 2006] of Salon Kitty [1976] and Torso [1973/ trailer]). The two pledge love to each other until he is overcome with emotion at a party as she performed a cello piece and later disappears the morning after. Fleeing to London, Casanova endures humiliating ordeals by the hands of two scheming women. During his suicide attempt, he encounters a mysterious woman (Sandra Elaine Allen [18 Jun 1955 – 13 Aug 2008] of Being Different [1981 / trailer below / full doc]) and two dwarves where he takes temporary refuge in the Frost fair near the Thames. Traveling all over Europe, Casanova arrives at Rome at the home of Lord Talou (John Karlsen [20 Oct 1919 – 5 Jul 2017] of The She-Beast [1966, see Part VI]) where he attends a crazed party as he's forced to compete with a younger man on who can give the woman the most orgasms. Fleeing to Germany where he falls for a scientist named Isabella (Olimipia Carlisi of Equinozi [1971 / scene]), he hopes to have something with her. Instead, he is tricked into participating in an orgy that leaves him overwhelmed as he would later meet his estranged mother (Mary Marquet*) at an opera as the two have a brief conversation. Taking refuge at another court at another castle in Germany, Casanova deals with the lack of respect of young patrons as he romances a mechanical doll named Rosalba (Leda Lojodice). Later dealing with old age as time passes by, Casanova tries to find his place in the world as he becomes a librarian for count as he endures more acts of insults. Notably as he ponders about his old life in the place he once called home."
* Mary Marquet (14 Apr 1895 – 29 Aug 1979) was a successful stage actress in Gay Paris, where she joined Comédie Française in 1923 and became one of its "most revered actress", but was purged from the theatre for collaboration in 1944. She admitted that she — in what can only be described as an act of colossal stupidity — had contacted the Vichy police in 1943 to get them to help stop her son François Marquet (12 Feb 1922 –15 Dec 1943) from joining the Resistance. He then fled to Spain, where he was arrested by the Gestapo and deported to Buchenwald, where he died in December 1943. By 1945, she was back on the stages (but not at Comédie Française, where she was never to return) and, by 1949, on the silver screen again."
Being Different:
The Worldwide Celluloid Massacre rates the movie "Of Some Interest" and says: "Often reminiscent of a Ken Russell biopic, Fellini's take on Casanova's life is grotesquely fantastical and over-the-top. Casanova is acted by Donald Sutherland, who wears a prosthetic nose and chin, sets are purposely fake and over-the-top, the ocean in one famous scene being depicted by black plastic bags, and the whole movie is a series of grotesque sexual adventures and costumes. These adventures include a kinky nun that likes to be watched, a giant 8-foot woman* bathing with dwarves, an insatiable hunchback, an insane old woman, a sexual competition in front of an audience, and the best one: a live female doll. Casanova is depicted as a pathetic, sensitive, insatiable, libertine man who is incapable of real love, a bizarre mechanical statue coming to life every time he has sex, and important highlights of his life are scattered throughout the movie."
* Sandra Elaine Allen (18 Jun 1955 – 13 Aug 2008) of the TV movie Side Show (1981 / full movie), one-time tallest living woman in the world, has a song about her by Split Endz, a group "regarded as the first New Zealand band to gain significant recognition outside of Australasia"...
Hello Sandy Allen (1982):
"Another of Federico Fellini's late-period, garish, gargantuan pieces, Fellini's Casanova moves through its story well enough, but its emphasis on the meaninglessness of its title character's existence, surrounded by highly artificial set pieces [...]. More carnival than carnal, even the sex scenes are fake, with star Donald Sutherland waving his hindquarters wildly in the air. [...] Sutherland seems an odd Casanova, as Fellini makes him pitiable, a figure whose accomplishments add up to nothing, and asks audiences to sit with 155 minutes of it. Still, Fellini was a first-class artist, and as he changes his sequences like rings of a circus, there's always something to see. [Combustible Celluliod]"
Every 70s Movie does not like the movie, not the filmmaker: "Among the iconic directors occupying the highest strata of the world-cinema pantheon, Italian madman Federico Fellini is almost certainly [...] the least interesting. And while one must divide Fellini's work into at least two categories, cerebral art pieces and over-the-top freakouts, it's fair to say that Fellini's style is so extreme in all circumstances that for non-fans, watching Fellini films is like listening to a lunatic rant at top volume. The campy costuming, the grotesque characters, the voluptuous production design, the weird dream sequences — it's all just too much, especially in the director's later years, when he often slipped into self-parody. As a case in point, Fellini's Casanova is an absurdly overlong adaptation of the legendary 18th-century lothario's autobiography. Sprawling over [...] two and a half hours of noisy nonsense Fellini's Casanova contains attempts at many worthwhile things [...]. Alas, co-writer/director Fellini surrounds these thoughtful elements with endless scenes of cartoonish stupidity. The filmmaker's usual gimmicks are present and accounted for (extremely ugly supporting actors, women painted with whorish makeup) [...]."
Nino Rota's theme to
Casanova:
Speaking of "extremely ugly supporting actors", one actress whose footage wasn't stolen but whose part — another tryst with Casanova — was cut from the movie was the extremely acting-challenged and breast-heavy anti-actress known as Chesty Morgan, below from the film, she of the infamous 73-inch bust, a woman never hired for her ability to act. (Indeed, watch her two infamous Doris Wishman movies from 1974, Deadly Weapons [trailer, with Harry Reems] and Double Agent 73 [trailer] to truly experience total thespian inability.) Rialto Report has an interesting two-part podcast with her: The Trails of Chesty Morgen, Breast One & Breast Two.
The poster below, for the German release, was drawn by the great Lutz Peltzer, (1925-2003) who probably made well over 800 posters during his career, including the breast-heavier German posters for Lenzi's Cannibal Ferox (1981, see: Umberto Lenzi Part IV) and Eaten Alive (1980, see: Umberto Lenzi Part IV), and a six-packed Steve McQueen for Nevada Smith (1966, see Edy Williams Part I). Though born in Mannheim, he managed to avoid be conscripted by the National Socialists because he was a citizen of Luxembourg.
The popular version of Casanova:
I Never Promised You a Rose Garden
(1977, dir. Anthony Page)
Another one that was taken away. Way back in 2012, we took a look at this movie in Part I our R.I.P. Career Review of Susan Tyrrell, where we wrote:
Anthony Page is the director of the big-budget and absolutely terrible remake of The Lady Vanishes (1979 / trailer), the film that broke the back of Hammer films; it was 29 years before Hammer returned with the 2008 film Beyond the Rave (trailer).
I Never Promised You a Rose Garden is based on the semi-autobiographical 1964 novel of the same name by Joanne Greenberg (originally published under the pseudonym "Hannah Green"), who doesn't hold a high opinion of the Roger Corman-produced film version because, to quote the Colorado Springs Gazette, "The moviemakers scrubbed out the anti-Semitism because they were terrified [and] the characterization of mental illness stank on ice."
Trailer to
I Never Promised You a Rose Garden:
Film Fanatic offers the following basic synopsis: "A mentally disturbed teenager (Kathleen Quinlan of Event Horizon [1997]) is placed by her concerned parents (Ben Piazza and Lorraine Gary) in an asylum, where she works with a compassionate psychologist (Bibi Andersson) hoping to help her overcome her delusions." Roger Ebert describes the delusions as seeming "to be inspired by the paintings of Frank Frazetta: a race of muscular young people, clothed in furs and feathers, ride giant horses across the desert and want her to join them."
The chanting bongo players of the fantasy scenes are The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo, headed by Danny Elfman. Susan Tyrrell [...] is one of the fellow inmates at the loony bin, as are the late, great Sylvia Sidney and Signe Hasso. The screenplay was supplied by Gavin Lambert and Lewis John Carlino, the latter who directed the decidedly unique and disturbing film The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea (1976 / trailer).
Has nothing to do with the film —
Lynn Anderson's I Beg Your Pardon (I Never Promised You a Rose Garden):
To that which was previously written, we might add that the movie was a rare non B-film from Roger Corman (he was, if you don't know, the founder of New World Pictures, which was a decidedly less respectable studio at the time). As typical of Hollyweird, the film's 16-year-old protagonist is played by a 23-year-old (Ms. Quinlan). The movie features the first credited movie role of, among others, Dennis Quaid (of Movie 43 [2013 / trailer]) and the final acting appearance of Diane Varsi (23 Feb 1938 – 19 Nov 1992), of the grindhouse classics Wild in the Streets (1968 / trailer), Killers Three (1968 / trailer) and Bloody Mama (1970 / trailer). Ben Piazza (30 Jul 1933 – 7 Sept 1991), who played Jay Blake, Ms. Quinlan's daddy in the movie, "died of AIDS-related cancer at the age of 57 in Sherman Oaks, California, and is buried at Forest Lawn Cemetery. [Gay Influence]" He plays a lead in the disturbing grindhouse anti-classic, The Candy Snatchers (1973 / trailer below), which also featured his then-wife Dolores Dorn (3 Mar 1933 – 5 Oct 2019). Around 1973, Ben left Dorn for a man named Wayne Tripp, with whom he remained with until his death.
The Candy Snatchers:
Oh, yes, before we forget: Barbara Steele. She was part of the fantasy word, the character named Idat: "I was supposed to play a goddess. We shot twenty minutes of film on the fantasy sequences, but they were cut because they didn't integrate with the rest of the movie. [AWJF]" So though she appears in the credits, you never see her on screen.
Another version of a famous song —
Eija Merilä sings Luvannut en ruusutarhaa:
So, is a "serious" Roger Corman movie, one awarded three stars by Roger Ebert and that had it screenplay nominated for an Academy Award, of any interest? Well, Every 70s Movie makes it sound interesting: "A lurid psych-ward melodrama [...], I Never Promised You a Rose Garden suffers from schizophrenia, just like its leading character. On one level, the picture is a fairly serious examination of the troubles facing an unbalanced young woman as she seeks to end a cycle of delusions, hysterical episodes, and self-destructive impulses. On another level, the picture is as sensationalistic as an old Sam Fuller flick, because the filmmakers unwisely attempt to depict the imaginary realm that the protagonist visits whenever her mind departs everyday reality. Moreover, the filmmakers' idea of hard-hitting drama skews toward undisciplined actors performing freak-show antics at top volume, with endless repetition the name of the game. Add in nudity and rape scenes, and I Never Promised You a Rose Garden ends up resembling Corman's typical drive-in fare [...]. Thanks to sincere work by leading lady Kathleen Quinlan and supporting actress Bibi Andersson (11 Nov 1935 – 14 Apr 2019), I Never Promised You a Rose Garden isn't completely awful, though it comes close at regular intervals."
From the movie — Susan Tyrrell sings
Singing the Greens:
Up next:
Barbara Steele, Part IX (1978-88)
And now, a public-service announcement from a wasted life:
