Wicked, Wicked (1973): Part Two.

When we last left you all in Part One of our Two Part look at Richard Bare’s Wicked, Wicked (1973), we discussed Bare’s new process of DUO-VISION, which he brazenly declared would revolutionize the movie business the same way the advent of color and sound and CinemScope had before it.

Well, lets just say so far the verdict is still out on that as we catch up on our little psycho-drama, where a mad killer is running loose in the palatial Grandview Hotel, picking off Blondes at random. And while we already know who is doing the killing, and why, we still don’t know what the killer was doing with all those dead bodies?

Now, we get our answer to that question quick enough. But first, after the attempt on Lisa’s life, Stewart, the hotel’s chief of security -- and Lisa’s ex-husband, calls in the police, who arrive in the form of Sgt. Ramsey.

And while Stewart (Bailey) believes Lisa’s case ties in directly with the other three missing women, Ramsey (Brady) doesn’t buy this. Seems he already has a prime suspect in mind -- in the form of the familiar looking Lassiter (Byrnes), the hotel's lecherous pool boy, and believes the motive for the attack was larceny, not murder.

Meanwhile, with Ramsey officially taking over Lisa’s case, Simmons (Bowen), the hotel’s fussbudget manager, reassigns Stewart to two other chores: one, the eviction of the delinquent Mrs. Karadyne (Sherwood), which he summarily ignores; and two, resolve a recent theft of a massive amount of salt and vinegar from the hotel's kitchen larder.

And here, when ex-cop Stewart calls in a favor to an old friend at the crime lab, asking what a person would do with that much salt and vinegar, the answer he gets involves, well, what are they trying to pickle and preserve, which Stewart immediately writes off as a lame attempt at humor.

But truthfully, I think we just got our answer as to what Gant (Roberts) did with all those bodies. Which is confirmed when one screen cuts away to him mixing up some homemade embalming fluid and another has him disposing of some extracted blood by flushing it down the hotel’s plumbing. Later, we see him consulting a book on taxidermy while stitching something together, which the film isn’t quite ready to reveal -- yet. A fate that may yet befall Lisa (Bolling).

Thus, as Ramsey focuses on Lassiter, Stewart keeps digging around, unearthing several more clues that lead him back to Gant, who’s failed to show up for work and pulled a disappearing act; at least according to Fenley (O’Connel), his elderly supervisor, who has been looking for him all day with no luck. 

And since he’s a no show, Fenley takes over spotlight duties for Lisa’s next performance, which ends prematurely when the already nervous singer bails after only one number, feeling as if she was being watched by the same man who attacked her.

On that front, she proves clairvoyant as Gant was indeed watching her perform from one of his many peep holes. Then, despite her manager’s insistence that she get back on stage, Stewart steps in and escorts the distraught Lisa back to her room -- just in time for the masked Gant to sneak in and ambush her. Only this time, the blade hits the mark!

But! Turns out the woman coming out of the bathroom was not Lisa but some poor maid, whose screams alert Stewart. Apparently, he had invited Lisa into his suite for a nightcap, which was located (rather conveniently) right across the hall from Lisa’s room.

Thus, Stewart and the masked killer run into each other in the hall. 

But after a brief dust up over the knife, Gant gets the upper hand and once more escapes. But while Lisa was saved, the poor maid wasn’t so lucky.

Now with two witnesses and a dead body, the case has blown wide open, much to Simmons’ distress. Even Ramsey is coming around on Stewart’s theory on multiple murder; and how that didn’t fit Lassiter’s usual modus operandi, who was wanted in connection with several hotel robberies up and down the coast.

But when Ramsey tried to arrest him, this led to a daring escape and car chase that wound up with Lassiter critically injured and in the hospital. (More on this rather ridiculous interlude in a second.)

Lisa, meanwhile, has had enough and is ready to bail out on her bandmates until Stewart talks her into staying, offering to watch her body personally. They also switch her to the more secure presidential suite, where the couple finally find that old spark and consummate their reconciliation with a metaphorical sex montage for the ages. (Again, more on this nonsense in a second. Man, this film has got a lot of explaining to do.)

After the Teddy Roosevelt approved deed is done, Stewart leaves Lisa in the secured room and joins Fenley, who’s rounded up the master blueprints for the Grandview, which they hope to use to help flush out the killer.

And while they do discover several rat-nest peepholes, and solve how he knew what room each victim stayed in, they fail to find Gant’s super-secret hideout. But here, Fenley discovers those plans weren’t up to date and they both agree to try again once he rounds up the newest ones.

Then, by mere chance, Stewart spots Gant, who was drawn out by all the noise they were making looking for him. Stewart gives chase but loses him again, again, when Gant seeks refuge in Mrs. Karadyne’s suite.

She takes the boy in, realizes he's in trouble, and then lies to Stewart when he knocks on her door. After he’s gone, Mrs. Karadyne tries to console the distraught Gant, who is soon overcome by another flashback of the seductress taunting him.

Here, he suffers another psychotic break, confuses memory with reality, and attacks the old woman and chokes her out.

As we ponder the fate of Mrs. Karadyne and her pet pigeon, whom Gant never liked, we cut to later in the evening, just as Lisa finishes her last number. After, she was hoping Stewart would join her in another *ahem* “Charge up San Juan Hill,” but he can’t, baby, he’s got to find Gant. But her lover says not to worry, her suite is under constant electronic surveillance, so she will be safe and sound until he can return.

One room over, Fenley is monitoring all the listening devices planted in the presidential suite, where Lisa is currently taking a shower. Stewart then leaves Fenley there to keep tabs on Lisa, takes the newer plans, and sets out to find Gant.

Unknown to either of them, Gant was listening in the whole time and quickly severs all the wires to the mics in Lisa’s suite.

With her now isolated, Gant uses a dumbwaiter that runs between his secret lair and the presidential suite and lowers himself down. Once inside, he silently stalks to the bed, where Lisa is sleeping, raises the knife, and then starts hacking her to pieces.

But Lisa’s amazing streak of luck continues because, apparently, she either heard Gant coming or was so paranoid about the killer that she threw her pillows under the blankets to make it look like someone was sleeping there.

When Gant discovers this ruse, he starts to panic at first -- and then he has to hide when Stewart and Freley start pounding on the door. See, Stewart had no luck with those new plans either and soon returned to the surveillance room, where he noticed all the power had been cut to the receivers.

Meanwhile, Gant doesn’t realize that Lisa is mere inches away from him, hiding in the dark, too. And when he finally discovers her, he quickly overpowers the girl, bundles her into the dumbwaiter, and hauls her back up to his super-secret villain lair.

Back in the suite, Stewart has finally busted his way in but finds no trace of Lisa. But Freley finds the access to the dumbwaiter, which is now jammed up and useless. He then finally remembers there was an old ballroom built on the roof of the hotel that was shutdown and abandoned after it was determined the structure couldn’t hold the weight of all those people.

That has to be where Gant has been hiding out, he concludes. All well and good, only the old fart can’t remember how to access it!

Up in the very same abandoned ballroom, when Gant realizes that Lisa is no longer wearing the blonde wig, he hesitates with his blade. Lisa then uses this confusion, reminding him that she was his friend, remember? How they had that chat, you know, after I yelled at you about your incompetence running the spotlight. Yeah! You seemed so nice, she says, and someone that nice could never kill anybody, right?

But Lisa’s psychological tactics backfire, and rather spectacularly, as Gant then reveals his macabre menagerie: 

Not three dead bodies, but five! Five human bodies all embalmed and stitched back together and wired down in evocative poses. Would a nice person do this, he asks?

Gant then shows what happens to the so-called friends who betray him, and moves a spare spotlight to reveal the fate of Mrs. Karadyne, who’s been trussed up and secured to a makeshift guillotine. (We saw what happened to her pigeon a bit earlier, crucified against a support beam.) 

As the captive woman screams past her gag, Gant cuts the rope, releasing the blade, which chops off the old woman’s head.

Downstairs, the cavalry has arrived in the form of Ramsey and about a half-dozen uniformed officers, who quickly join Stewart and Freley up in the rafters as they desperately try to find Gant and Lisa before it's too late.

Stewart finds them first, followed quickly by Ramsey, who then force Gant, holding Lisa as a human shield, deeper into the dark recesses of the ballroom. When they finally have him cornered, Gant kicks out a boarded-up window and threatens he will jump and take Lisa with him unless they both back off.

Here, Stewart manages to signal the trailing Freley to shine that spotlight into Gant’s face. Temporarily blinded, Stewart is able to wrest Lisa away from him.

But when Gant still threatens to jump, this is where the film turns from delightfully morbid to patently ridiculous as Ramsey tries to use some reverse psychology on the killer, encouraging him to jump with one breath, and then saying he’s too chicken to do it with the next.

Go ahead and jump, Ramsey says. OK, Gant replies, and then hurls himself out the window, where he plummets to his doom, as a warped version of Lisa’s signature tune plays until he is impaled on a rod iron fence below, bringing our little psychodrama to a jaw-dropping conclusion.

Well, almost.

See, as the press arrives in force and the bodies are removed, we find out three of those corpses were the trio of missing guests as assumed, a fourth was a woman everyone thought had drowned in the nearby Pacific, and the fifth, well, hell, who knows.

And in a bit of an unsuspected twist, not only is Simmons relieved at being able to remove the late Mrs. Karadyne from the books, but turns out the morbid public are booking rooms in droves to stay at the same hotel where the phantom killer struck six times.

Meanwhile, that daffy organist, who’s been banging away at the keyboard from the very beginning of our tale, finally abandons her post and bustles off into the busy lobby, where Stewart rescues Lisa from a mob of reporters, wanting her opinion on whether or not Gant was the Zodiac Killer.

But just when it appears these two kids might get back together, Stewart admits it will never work. She has her career to think about after all. And with all this free publicity, it should be a huge one at that. And so, he lets her go as if it were meant to be.

No worries, though. He’s still got that cashier from the gift shop to rough ride up San Juan Hill, if you know what I mean. And as a wise man once said, I think you do. Which finally brings us to the end of this diplopia-induced bilge of absolute balderdash.

When Bare and Orr first brought their murder mystery with a twist to MGM, the fabled studio was all in on the new gimmick, with plans to release the movie as two separate films to be shown by two interlocked projectors; kinda like the way Cinerama started with three interlocked projectors until the advent of Panavision -- “the one camera Cinerama” -- removed the headache of synching them up and eliminated the resulting matte lines.

This is evidenced by the film’s theatrical trailer, which began with a brief history lesson on the advancements of projected film, with the narrator bellowing, “First it was color, then sound. Then 3D, and CinemaScope. Now, the most exciting new story-telling technique in film history: Anamorphic DUO-VISION; a new film experience!”

To me, the trailer gives everything away EXCEPT how the gimmick works. For while you won’t need cumbersome glasses to see the effect, assured the narrator, “this spectacular new technique does require special equipment, so we can’t show you scenes in DUO-VISION, but you will see TWICE the ACTION, TWICE the EXCITEMENT!”

But as a release date loomed, when the two-projector system proved to be both cost prohibitive and would limit the release window due to the majority of theaters being unable to handle the dual format, the decision was made to just squeeze both images onto one strip of 35mm film.

In his commentary on the film for Trailers from Hell (September 19, 2013), Mick Garris noted, “The big selling point for MGM’s release of Wicked, Wicked was DUO-VISION. And they claimed this spectacular new process would revolutionize Hollywood. The trailer says you needed special projection equipment to show it, but this was all bullshit,” said Garris.

“It’s just an anamorphic widescreen movie with a line down the middle. And on either side of that line you have two different shots. Sometimes their coverage for the same scene. Sometimes it's seeing something going on in one place. Sometimes it’s seeing something going on in another place at the same time.”

Here, Garris also touched on an urban legend surrounding the film, where DUO-VISION didn’t enter the picture until Wicked, Wicked was well into production.

“There are people who believe it was shot as a standard film but it was so leaden that they needed to jazz it up a little,” said Garris. “The whole idea was apparently inspired by Brian de Palma’s Sisters (1972), which used plentiful split-screens.”

This line of thinking was corroborated somewhat by star Tiffany Bolling in an interview with Kris Gilpin (Temple of Schlock, June 17, 2009), only Bolling sourced it to a different film. “[The producers] had seen Woodstock (1970) and they thought, ‘What a great idea,’ we can do an active and passive screen, and you can see what somebody’s thinking in a room and have the killer coming up to kill her.”

Meanwhile, when casting the film, Bare and Orr wanted relative unknowns for the marquee, perhaps hoping that would add some doubt and tension on who would survive their hotel stays -- or perhaps it was just another cost-cutting measure.

David Bailey had served eight years in the Air Force before taking up acting as a profession. He had appeared in guest spots on several TV-series in the late 1960s, and had starred in the Franco Giraldi Spaghetti Western Up the MacGregors! (alias 7 donne per i MacGregor, 1967), a sequel to Seven Guns for the MacGregors (alias Sette pistole per i MacGregor, 1966), where Bailey replaced Robert Woods as the head of the MacGregor clan.

He also appeared in the obscure Blaxploitation thriller / think piece Change of Mind (1969), where a white man’s brain is implanted in a black man’s skull. And right after the release of Wicked, Wicked, Bailey landed a recurring role on the daytime soap opera Another World, where he played Dr. Russ Matthews from 1973 until 1989.

But before all of that, where the virile Bailey really made his money was working in commercials, which included a famously risque TV spot for Mitchum deodorant, where a half-naked Bailey lounged in bed and sang the praises of the product’s longevity at fighting B.O.

Apparently, Bare saw this commercial, tracked the actor down, and invited him to California for an interview, where he offered him the role of Rick Stewart almost immediately.

Bailey does fine as the house detective charged with unraveling the mystery of the disappearing guests. He comes off affable enough, even likable, though the script does him no favors at all, saddling him with some terrible dialogue that he had to share with his co-star Bolling.

The daughter of noted jazz pianist Roy Krall and singer Bettie Bolling, Tiffany Bolling began singing in coffee houses in her native Santa Monica at the age of 16. She was signed by Canyon Records in 1970, who released her sole album, Tiffany, which included the modest anti-war hit “Thank God the War is Over” and a cover of the Beatles “Let it Be.”

Concurrently, Bolling was trying to break out as an actress, too. She made her debut with a bit part as a hotel camera girl in the highly recommended Tony Rome (1967), which starred Frank Sinatra as the title detective. And according to Bolling, who was either 18 or 20 at the time, depending on the source, Sinatra took her under his wing in more ways than one.

“I probably shouldn’t say it, but I think we’re all old enough now,” said Bolling (Gilpin, 2009). “But yeah, we were very involved. He’s a king. He bought me all kinds of beautiful things, and I kind of just didn’t treat him very nicely. I mean, I think he’s a great guy. I got involved with him, but ended up leaving the relationship.”

As to why, “I fell in love with an out-of-work actor, so I left this possible potential huge career with this fabulous human being for this [other guy],” said Bolling. “But you know, when you’re eighteen-years-old, you don’t know what’s going on. You just want to go for compulsivity, so to speak. Not too many people do.”

But with Sinatra’s influence, Bolling was signed to a contract at 20th Century Fox, which led to a plum role in the progressive TV-series The New People (1969-1970), where a group of multi-ethnic teenagers wind up marooned on a deserted island. Presumed dead and left on their own, they try to form a new kind of civilization.

The Omaha World Herald (October 12, 1969).

Said Bolling (Gilpin, 2009), “I mean, I got lucky. I got lucky with one picture with Sinatra, and he helped me greatly when I came [out of it with a] contract to Fox because of this dumb little role I’d had in one of his movies.”

Bolling would also be cast in Triangle (1970), where she played a student who has feelings for her older teacher (Paul Richards), takes some LSD, and unwittingly winds up in an orgy, which, according to Erich Kuersten (Acidemic, July 29, 2012), wasn’t nearly as exciting as all that sounds, as the film resulted in a tale of “longing and cluelessness and a very weird road that Triangle seems scared to pick a lane and drive on, which makes for a turgid, irritating time.”

She would fare better in The Marriage of a Young Stockbroker (1971), co-starring Richard Benjamin. “He was great, it was absolutely great,” said Bolling (Gilpin, 2009). “He’s funny too, and his wife is great, Paula Prentiss. I remember we had a cast party, she and I were laughing, just belly-laughing in the ladies room. We spent most of the evening in the ladies room, sitting on the floor, just talking and joking.”

But while she had fun, Bolling feared the film permanently typecasted her. “Once again, that pigeonholed me; the pretty blonde with no bra on and the tan body,” said Bolling. “And I invented that wet look -- it was me that first had that wet t-shirt look; that wet see-through look; nobody had done it yet, so…”

Technically, I think Joy Harmon beat her to that particular punch in Cool Hand Luke (1967). Regardless, these risque scenes soon drew the attention of Hugh Hefner, who would feature Bolling in the April, 1972, issue of Playboy Magazine -- a decision Bolling would soon come to regret.

“Oh, it was the worst experience of my life,” Bolling told Gilpin. “I didn’t get paid a penny. They told me it would be great for my career, and I didn’t know the difference; this was all a party for me.”

The Kane Republican (September 15, 1969).

Bolling would later admit she had a severe substance abuse problem at the time, and had a cocaine habit that probably would’ve gotten her killed if she hadn’t found Jesus and decided to sober up. And in hindsight, she makes no bones over the mistakes that were made.

“That was at a time during my career when I was doing cocaine, and I really didn’t know what I was doing. I’d snort up before I’d go to work because it was so … weird. I was very angry about the way my career had gone in the industry, the way things had gone, and what I’d been faced with, and the opportunities that I had and had not been given.”

And with this type of typecasting, “I fell into the category of the pretty blonde sex kitten who has no brains or whatever. It hurt me a lot; and then I got very angry about it; and then I started doing B-movies because nobody was hiring me for anything that was worthy or decent. And wanting to work as an actor, just saying, Hey, I want to work; I don’t want to do this stuff, but I need to pay my rent.”

The B-movies Bolling was referring to were Bonnie’s Kids (1972), The Candy Snatchers (1973) and The Centerfold Girls (1974), where Bolling, combined with her recent Playboy spread, became somewhat of a low-budget sex symbol. (In his commentary, Garris admitted the only reason he went to see Wicked, Wicked was just to see Bolling.)

“They were all awful,” said Bolling. “They were all pretty awful.” I would disagree, and say one was actually pretty great, while the other two definitely qualify as awful on whatever level you choose.

Bonnie’s Kids, easily the best of the lot, sees Bolling teaming up with Robin Mattson as a pair of sisters on the lam after stealing a sizable chunk of money from their sleazy uncle. And the film’s director, Arthur Marks, “perfectly captured the very exploitation essence of the grimy and galvanizing decade of the 1970s,” according to Cool Ass Cinema (August 20, 2010).

“It's got the violence, it's got the sex, it's got the nudity, it's got the savagery, unsavory and cold blooded characters commonplace in the best the decade had to offer. It's got everything but over the top gore, but it doesn't need it. There's many other movies that are far more extreme, but this movie does everything right.”

As for The Candy Snatchers, well, I reviewed it on the Mothership back in 2005, which we cleaned up and republished here, and haven’t seen it since.

Written and directed by Guerdon Trueblood, the film itself follows a trio of losers (Bolling, Brad David and Vince Martorano), who kidnap and bury their victim alive (Susan Sennet) but her philandering stepfather (Ben Piazza) won’t pay the ransom because he’s about to take all the family money and run off with his mistress.

There’s also a side plot about an autistic kid and his abusive parents, who finds the burial site, only he can’t communicate where it is. Which all leads to a truly sadistic bummer of an ending that will leave you in the need of a cleansing shower. They definitely don't make them like that one anymore. And whether or not that's a good thing or a bad thing is up to the individual viewer.

And frankly, The Centerfold Girls wasn’t much better. An ersatz anthology, we follow a depraved religious fanatic (Andrew Prine) out to punish the women who posed naked in a girly magazine. Bolling stars in the third segment, who manages to turn the table on her stalker in what turned out to be a rather cathartic meta-moment for the actress.

“From what I remember [about that film], it had a lot to do with me being able to release how I really felt in my personal life,” said Bolling (Gilpin, 2008). “And so I remember this one scene at the very end where I had the knife and just before I stabbed him to death, I just blurted out this -- this bellow, this primal scream. It was just … golly, this life is shitty right now. Who am I? I’m 23 years old, and I don’t understand what it is. I remember that was like a primal scream for me. It was a horrendous time.”

In between all of that Bolling did sign on to co-star in Wicked, Wicked for MGM. And while (barely) a notch above the B-movies she was currently embroiled in, Bolling found the big studio feature equally unfulfilling with the lone bright spot being her role required her to sing.

“First of all, it was done very poorly,” said Bolling (Gilpin, 2009). “Wicked, Wicked was done very cheap, they didn’t have a whole lot of hip ideas, and it was pretty well straight across. But I loved singing in the movie. One of the opportunities I really love is being able to sing in film. So I’m thankful that I was able to sing.”

Bolling did have a lovely voice, and she really sang from her guts, let it fly, and sold the hell out of whatever she was singing as her character strutted around on stage, belting out the tunes “I’ll Be Myself” and the titular “Wicked, Wicked.”

These songs were arranged by Philip Springer with lyrics by Irwin Levine. Springer is probably best remembered for composing the Christmas novelty song “Santa Baby,” and Levine wrote such hits as “This Diamond Ring” for Gary Lewis, “I Woke Up in Love this Morning” for The Partridge Family, and “Knock Three Times” and “Tie a Yellow Ribbon” for Tony Orlando, explaining how these songs from Wicked, Wicked tended to act like a Ceti Eel that stayed with you for weeks once you’ve been exposed and they’ve bored their way into your brain.

It’s strange, when you watch Bolling perform, it brings to mind Ida Lupino in Road House (1949), where she played a similar lounge lizard, who sounds shaky at first glance but has you hooked by the end. And with Springer’s jaunty arrangements, and the scramble of words Levine throws in, you kinda scratch your head at Bolling’s performance, thinking, well, she’s not very good, but then the singer finds another gear -- and suddenly, I’ll be damned, you’ll be humming “Wicked Wicked” for the rest of the week. Like I said, weird.

I think the first time I ever encountered Bolling was when she played the villainous Spider Lady in an Electra Woman and Dyna Girl segment for The Kroft Supershow (1976). And believe me, in that costume, she left quite the impression.

She would get to sing again in The Wild Party (1975), where she had a dust-up with co-star Raquel Welch. But, well, who didn’t? And then Bolling would close out the 1970s starring opposite William Shatner in the nature’s revenge epic, Kingdom of the Spiders (1977). Said Bolling (Gilpin, 2009), “I felt so bad for those poor spiders, because they were all so innocent, bless their hearts.” She’s not wrong, as the film is a bit of an arachnid atrocity picture.

Sadly, you can kind of sense that cloud of cocaine powder following Bolling around the hotel in Wicked, Wicked, like Pig Pen from the Peanuts gang.

There’s a flickering splutter of chemistry between her and Bailey that, again, was not helped out at all by the script. With dated lines like “Don’t bring that jazz down on me, man,” Bare treats their romance and possible reconciliation as if the film were a failed TV pilot, taking an abrupt left turn right before the credits rolled to set up the further weekly romantic adventures of Rick Stewart, Hotel Detective.

As for their other Wicked, Wicked co-star, “We knew exactly what we wanted in the role of the killer,” said Orr in another press release (The Napa Valley Register, May 5, 1973). “We needed intensity and passion as well as innocence, a combination of qualities we found to be rare among the many, many young actors we interviewed.”

After serving as a medic in Vietnam, Randolph “Randy” Roberts decided to try his hand at acting and enrolled at the School of Performing Arts in San Diego. But he had only managed a spot as a background extra in an episode of Banacek (1972-1974) before going to an audition for Wicked, Wicked. Apparently, Roberts was there to read for the part of the lifeguard, but instead, Orr and Bare saw just what they needed for the more substantial role.

Said Orr (ibid), “It’s impossible to believe that this is Randy’s first motion picture. Although he has performed extensively before live audiences in summer stock, his experience in front of a camera is very limited. Yet he has a presence that reveals itself on film that I have found to be very rare.”

The Napa Valley Register (March 3, 1973).

Bare would agree with this assessment, saying (ibid) “There are many difficult scenes in which Randy, as the psychotic killer, must wordlessly and subtly express his progression from naive handyman to crazed killer in a matter of seconds. With all this Randolph has still managed to make his character sympathetic.”

I can’t argue with any of that.

There’s a few token attempts early in the film to hide the killer’s identity by having Roberts’ Jason Gant always disguising himself as a masked bellhop to throw suspicion on several others; but it's almost impossible not to peg him as the killer from the jump given his creepy, voyeuristic tendencies as he clandestinely spies on the other guests through countless spider-holes.

His sexually-abused origins at the hands of his foster mom are sufficiently squicky, but his endgame is rather confusing. It's never really explained why he was embalming and keeping all those corpses other than the fact that, well, this is what Norman Bates did, so, he should, too.

I think he was trying to recreate his idea of an ideal mother, which might’ve been more clear if he had stitched together just one body from the parts of all his other victims.

Still, the sight of all five women stuffed and mounted makes for a rather grisly tableaux for the climax. (I’m just not sure where the guillotine came from?) And the one bit of intended comedy that actually works is when Gant tries to flush all the extracted blood down the hotel’s sewer system, which backfired out of a sink and right into an unsuspecting maid’s face.

Bare's film also serves as a time-capsule of earth-tone decor and questionable fashion statements -- I recall one particular scene where a band member's shirt blended in perfectly with the wallpaper. Seriously, all you could see was his cheesy porn 'stache and rockin' proto-mullet.

The band was credited as Kirk Bates and the Leaves of Grass. (Pretty sure that was Bates with the shirt and ‘stache). Further investigation showed this was a local San Diego cover band, who haunted clubs like Ledbetters, the Neutral Grounds, Harvey Wallhangers, where the restrooms were marked as Bangers or Bangees (classy), and “the red velveteen haven” of the Palais 500 back in the 1970s.

Further digging shows they released one single from Ranwood records, which included “I’m Alone” and “Gotta Move Along.” Alas, I could find no trace of MGM ever releasing a soundtrack album for the film. More's the pity.

To round out the cast, Bare and Orr dipped into their own production histories of 77 Sunset Strip and SurfSide 6 with Edd “Kookie” Byrnes as the lecherous Lassiter and Diane McBain as our introductory victim / Janet Leigh surrogate.

Also along for the ride were Madeleine Sherwood as the dotty Gloria Swanson clone, who has plenty of dastardly secrets of her own before she literally loses her head; Arthur O'Connell as Gant’s supervisor / shelf-worn comedy relief; and genre veteran Scott Brady as perhaps the world's worst detective, whose hostage negotiation skills are both terrible and hilarious.

Meanwhile, as Bare and Schreyer tried to get a handle on the duel film in the editing room, six weeks quickly turned into sixteen weeks, which then doubled to 32 weeks before they were finally able to come up with a rough cut of Wicked, Wicked.

Given the trying circumstances, they did a commendable job of making it all work with a few minor hiccups and only a couple of jarring mishaps:

First and foremost, there’s a scene where Stewart and Lisa are in her room after her second near miss with the killer, when he offers they should go and get a drink at the hotel bar. We then cut to an empty bar, but then, between blinks, the characters magically appear! I had to rewind and watch this three times to confirm this glaring gaffe. But it was still there. Every time.

There's also several instances of editing as a defensive driving course when some of those flashback montages quickly got out of hand -- especially the scene where Detective Ramsey recounts his rather spectacular attempt to arrest Lassiter; which starts with somebody cannonballing out a hotel window and ends with a spectacular car crash that was pilfered outright from Butterfield 8 (1960) -- all that was missing was Elizabeth Taylor behind the wheel.

And then there’s that sex scene. Holy crap, that sex scene between Stewart and Lisa, where Bare and Schreyer throw in shots of fireworks, a cannon firing off, roiling waves crashing against the rocks, forked lighting, church bells ringing, and not one, but two different version of Teddy Roosevelt leading the Rough Riders up San Juan Hill -- (they were staying the Roosevelt suite, get it?), which is then capped off with a nuclear detonation in case we didn’t get it. 

Watch and boggle, Fellow Programs. It's all you can do.

It should also be mentioned that despite the advertising Wicked, Wicked was not shown entirely in DUO-VISION. No, I would say about 80-percent uses the split screen, while the rest runs without it. A few establishing shots come to mind without the gimmick. And it seems whenever Gant gets his murder on we switch to only a single viewpoint. Or the shot where Gant discovers Lisa was hiding in the dark right beside him.

Bare would claim he only did this in a few scenes to punch up the shock value, like the revelation of the corpse quintet. That, or he didn’t have any coverage that would fit the other screen. Who can say for sure.

When the film was finally set for release in April, 1973, after nearly a year in production, critical reaction was surprisingly mixed.

The Los Angeles Times (April 25, 1973).

At an early press screening, Nancy Anderson of the Copley News Service (May 14, 1973), recalled how co-star Edd Byrnes reassured the critic by slipping into the seat beside her and whispering, “If it gets too scary, you can hold my hand.” Well, she said, “It got so scary I started to slip into his lap.”

But Jack Zink of the Fort Lauderdale News (May 5, 1973) found Wicked, Wicked to be a “gruesomely hilarious thriller” and felt “two images are almost too many [for] a motion picture which puts you through an emotional wringer, battering you with macabre comedy and heaping new horrors upon old ones,” said Zink.

The Palladium Item (May 13, 1973).

“In the moments of suspense, DUO-VISION is terrifically effective as we watch the killer planning his next murder while the victim is unknowingly occupied in her suite … The concept almost totally eliminates the need for cluttering exposition and time wasted in setting up a scene. As a result, the pace seems fast and at times frenetic, more frenetic than it could possibly be without such an advantage.”

Meanwhile, Leon Fleming of The Lubbock Avalanche-Journal (June 28, 1973) felt “despite the fact that they seem to have had trouble deciding whether to come up with a camp comedy or a gruesome little horror movie, the makers of Wicked, Wicked nonetheless have managed to turn out an entertaining film. Comedy, not black but rather dark gray, is the result,” reported Fleming.

The Grand Island Independent  (September 13, 1973).

“Wicked, Wicked was filmed in a process which MGM calls DUO-VISION, which is simply a split-screen technique,” said Fleming. “The device can be disconcerting at times, like trying to watch two circus rings simultaneously. However, the technique is effective … [and] the film should be seen with tongue-in-cheek, the same spirit in which it was created.”

And Roger Greenspun of The New York Times (June 14, 1973) felt what distinguished Wicked, Wicked from the other recent tales of psychopathic killers, for good or ill, was its gimmick:

“Obviously, a big hotel full of rooms and corridors is a natural for multiple-screen projection," said Greenspun. "But not quite so obviously, the effect of such projection is to defuse the action. When you can see both the distant, stalking killer and his intended victim at the same time you have more activity but less anticipation -- and consequently less suspense. And the lifting of suspense, which in most such movies functions as an annoying burden upon the audience, is a very real advantage.”

Thus and so, "Wicked, Wicked" emerges as an oddly pleasant movie about which there is not too much good to say,” admitted Greenspun. “Everybody is likable -- even the killer, who, like most amateur embalmers in movies for the last 10 years, owes a bit to Hitchcock's Norman Bates. And everybody is at least professionally competent.”

The San Francisco Examiner (April 22, 1973).

But Ronald Butler of The Tulsa World (May 13, 1973) found nothing competent or amusing about the film at all. “DUO-VISION is an interesting idea, but Wicked, Wicked isn’t a very interesting example of it. The picture, a very poor man’s Psycho, is a suspense thriller notable mostly for its amateurish acting and a concept that’s been worn out for years now. Also, it tries to be a spoof of the genre as well as an addition to it, and it fails on both counts,” said Butler.

“DUO-VISION was director Bare’s idea and boils down to glorified split-screen,” Butler continued. “In the hands of a master like Alfred Hitchcock, DUO-VISION could result in a gripping, fresh film experience. But in the hands of an unimaginative writer-director like Bare, and acted under his inadequate direction by a poor cast, DUO-VISION’s potential is wasted.”

The Detroit Free Press (April 18, 1973).

And you know you’re in trouble when Kevin Thomas of The Los Angeles Times (April 26, 1973), the patron saint of genre films, thinks your movie is an absolute stinker:

“No wonder Metro is assuring us that special glasses won’t be needed for Wicked, Wicked, the first film in DUO-VISION. That’s because there's absolutely nothing three-dimensional about this wretched little suspenser -- either in characters or its process, which turns out to be nothing more than the ancient device, the split-screen. Consequently, all DUO-VISION accomplishes is to give the viewer two terrible pictures for the price of one,” said Thomas.

The Evening News (June 19, 1973).

“In short, the plot’s as old as the glorious Hotel del Coronado where the film was shot -- so old writer-producer-director Richard Bare wouldn’t have dared make it without the split-screen gimmickry," said Thomas. "The viewer is constantly having to decide which side to concentrate on but soon discovers that neither image is really worthy of their attention. France’s Abel Gance used a triptych screen way back in 1925 for his legendary Napoleon and recently Richard Fleischer used multi-split screen effectively in The Boston Strangler. But Bare uses his split screen incessantly whether there is any good reason to do so or not.”

As for me, I think the film’s downfall cannot be placed on the DUO-VISION gimmick nor the acting or cast, who never lacked for enthusiasm -- misguided or not. No. The blame for Wicked, Wicked’s myriad failings lay at the feet of Bare's bare script, which betrays them all and just wasn't up to the task to pull the scheme off properly. This is what ultimately scuttled the film.

One can even use Bare’s own metaphor of traveling down a highway, using the two lanes as his split screen, one lane a horror film, the other lane a self-aware parody -- neither of which Bare would fully commit to. Thus, as he kept the film straddling the center-line, hedging his bets by making the film gruesome, but not too gruesome; and morbid, but not too morbid; and graphic, but not too graphic, results in a frustrating tonal whiplash as the film refuses to pick a lane and stick with it.

Now, there were a couple of instances of some janky edits involving a few scenes that promised a little more when it came to the bloodletting but ultimately fizzled. There’s a jarring cut when Mrs. Karadyne loses her head. And there’s another one, during the climax, where the fleeing Gant bumps into one of his macabre mannequins, which promises the head falling off and one of the arms becoming detached -- but we only get to see the aftermath of his shoddy workmanship.

Editor’s Note: As we prepared to publish Part Two of this review, my YouTube algorithm saw fit to present a video courtesy of HauntFreak13 of vital importance titled Wicked, Wicked (1973) Archive Release ISSUES that was first posted back in April, 2020, which included info that I felt needed to be shoehorned in -- no matter how clumsily.

In the opening text preamble, the video states: “A few years ago, Warner Bros released a Warner Archive restoration of the 1973 film Wicked, Wicked. As far as clarity goes, it’s a great release. However, there are several issues, mostly the deletion of several snippets, resulting in horribly edited audio."

Images courtesy of HauntFreak13.

The video then does a visual comparison between the original theatrical version of Wicked, Wicked and the Archive release, which showed that there were indeed cuts made to all those scenes I mentioned above plus three more that I failed to detect. 

Sure enough, audiences did get to see Mrs. Karadyne’s head being lopped off back in 1973. And not only does Gant accidentally knock the head off of one of his mounted mannequins, but he then picks the dismembered cranium up and throws it at his pursuers during the climax!

Images courtesy of HauntFreak13. 

As for what I missed or failed to detect, apparently, when Gant killed Dolores at the beginning, the amount of stabbing and expended blood shown has been greatly reduced. 

And then, when the killer attempted to clandestinely roll her body away on the trolley, not only was her bloodied arm exposed from underneath the tablecloth but her ENTIRE severed arm falls off the trolley and onto the floor, where it lays in the hallway until the killer plucks it out of sight just as more guests wander into the scene, none the wiser. 

Images courtesy of HauntFreak13. 

And lastly, they removed a quick crash-zoom on Gant's impaled body after his fall onto the fence; complete with a quick adjustment on the jib that implies we're watching his pierced body sliding down the spire until it finally settles.

Originally, I thought maybe the MPAA was to blame for this, and how Bare and Orr wanted to keep their film at a PG rating for a wider audience. This was false and I have no idea why the Archive excluded them.

Images courtesy of HauntFreak13. 

Whatever version you happen to see, I will say this: the one thing Wicked, Wicked could never be accused of was being boring. 

This thing moves at a breakneck pace, which barely gives a sensory overloaded audience time to process anything. Again, was this a tactic to skim over the film’s shortcomings? That’s me shrugging right now. And those (alleged) MPAA cuts and Bare’s injection of all that gallows humor is the only thing keeping Wicked, Wicked from being in the same conversation with Blood and Lace (1971) as one of the sickest PG films to ever get released.

Thus, Wicked, Wicked is pretty laughable, and downright hysterical in spots. But it also gets surprisingly morbid and twisted, especially when we get into the killer's head and the sexual abuse endured by our villain; and how it set him down this homicidal path, which led to his morbid collecting hobby and what he currently has squirreled away in the hotel's attic. And that ending ... Oh, lord, that ending.

Now, I honestly think DUO-VISION had some potential beyond being a novelty stunt to get butts into theater seats. As nearly all those critics noted, it can be quite effective with its multiple viewpoints. The process also works great as a lie detector, allowing the audience to see the real truth while characters spin their lies, give false truths, or offer shaky alibis.

Wicked, Wicked was also one of the earliest films to realize the full potential of Stereophonic Sound, using it to their advantage by enhancing DUO-VISION even more by splitting the soundtrack down the middle, too, with sounds emitting from either the left or right theater speakers depending upon which side held the dominant action.

Where DUO-VISION starts to break down, however, is when one screen is occupied by obvious filler -- what Zink referred to as “very tacky contrivances” -- that went well beyond that batty organist.

Still, both Bare and Orr had faith in the process. “I believe the idea can be applied to other stories, if the right one can be found,” said Orr (Thomas, 1972). “What you need is something like Day of the Jackal (1973), in which two or more plots are going on at the same time.”

Ergo, Bare and Orr had a couple of follow up features in the works that would also be shot in the DUO-VISION format. One was called Mayday! Mayday!, which involved murder on an ocean liner; the other was The October Incident, which centered around a plot to assassinate Fidel Castro.

Alas, audiences weren’t all that enamored with DUO-VISION, and when Wicked, Wicked fizzled, fizzled at the box-office, these planned follow ups were quickly scrapped, scrapped.

In the aftermath, Bare would claim this failure wasn't really his or the film's fault but due to a lack of publicity, caused by the cost-cutting of MGM’s CEO Kirk Kerkorian, who, at the time, was leeching the majority of the studio’s money away from film productions and funneling it into Las Vegas to build his new mega-casino.

Another likely reason the format was scrapped was due to the film’s split-screen gimmick posing a major problem for TV syndication. Once Wicked, Wicked finished its theatrical run, (I assume) it had to cut it down to showing only half of the film for the old 4:3 format. (My god, imagine the attempt to pan ‘n’ scan this thing!?)

I could find no trace of a VHS release, but I honestly wouldn’t mind seeing a version of the broadcast cut (-- TV listings show it made the rounds in 1980 and 1985 --) just to confirm how inexplicable the film would be without the benefit of the split-screen, which also explains why you won’t find the film on Bolling’s resume.

“Yeah,” said Bolling (Gilpin, 2009). “They can’t do anything with it; they can’t put it on home video, because you can’t see it on TV, the screen is so small, so it totally was a bust.”

Thus, the film had kinda been off the radar and been wallowing in relative obscurity ever since its initial release back in ‘73. And as another part of the fossil record when it comes to Slasher movies, more people probably need to see it.

I first caught Wicked, Wicked on TCM’s Underground, which showed it in DUO-VISION and the proper aspect ratio back in 2008, where I kinda got hooked by its awfulsomeness and have been spreading the word ever since. I honestly can’t remember if TCM showed the pared down version or not. I think I still have the tape I recorded it on but, alas, my last working VCR finally gave up the ghost about two years ago.

And as of 2014, it was officially released digitally by the Warner Archive in the same format. So, the film is out there (-- truncated though it may be); and if you have the chance do take a look at Wicked, Wicked. It is a kooky, one of a kind piece of ... something ... that is well worth your time and effort to see at least once. And only once -- unless you’re a weirdo like me.

Originally posted on October 24, 2024, at Micro-Brewed Reviews.

Wicked, Wicked (1973) United National Productions :: MGM / EP: William T. Orr / P: Richard L. Bare / D: Richard L. Bare / W: Richard L. Bare / C: Frederick Gately / E: John F. Schreyer / M: Philip Springer / S: David Bailey, Tiffany Bolling, Randolph Roberts, Scott Brady, Edd Byrnes, Roger Bowen, Madeleine Sherwood, Diane McBain