Confessions of an Opium Eater (1962)

"There is no poison in a green snake's 

mouth as in a woman's heart."

Our fevered delirium of a tale begins along the foggy Pacific coast somewhere near San Francisco, circa 1902, where just offshore, the crew of a Chinese junk hastily works to offload their latest shipment via a large cargo net. But the reluctant cargo in question is strictly human: oriental women, kidnapped and brought to America to be sold, at auction, for opium. 

Rendezvousing with another, smaller boat, these human traffickers then brutally dump those women over the side, onto the other ship's deck, without much thought for their fragile “merchandise.” Seems they weren't as sneaky as they thought as a coast guard frigate is rapidly closing in. And after a brief exchange of fire, the junk takes a direct hit and explodes. No apparent survivors. 

Meanwhile, on the other, undetected vessel, the shanghaied prisoners are hastily chained together and rowed ashore. But once they reach the beach, these slavers are then bushwhacked by another group of armed men. Now, while the captives try to escape during the confusion and bloodshed, at this point, we’re not really sure if this is a rescue or just an attempt to hijack the merchandise. Either way, one of the girls, whom we’ll come to know as Lotus (Kim), almost escapes by hiding in the surrounding dunes. But she’s soon spotted and chased down by one of the bad guys, who is in turn intercepted by the apparent leader of that second faction.

Thus, Lotus continues to flee away from the beach as those two fight, with the slaver eventually winning out. But as he turns his lecherous attention back on the girl, in the first of many bizarre left turns, Lotus is suddenly saved by the timely intervention of a white stallion, who rears up and angrily knocks the evildoer off a cliff! (Which concludes in a rather spectacular dummy death plunge.) Okay, so, I think, maybe, the color of the wild horse was to show this second group were actually the good guys as the slavers are routed and this does, indeed, prove to be a rescue. But then the original buyers finally show up for the expected delivery and gun down the victors. Thus, most of the girls are recaptured but at least Lotus is safe -- for now, he typed ominously...

Our scene then shifts to San Francisco, Chinatown, where the local constabulary are hurriedly cordoning off that section of the city and won't allow anyone to enter. And we soon find out why, through a plot-specific newsie, who reveals a Tong War is about to erupt between those who run the human auctions and those who oppose them.

Enter Gilbert De Quincey (Price), mercenary for hire, dope-addict, and amateur philosopher. Ignoring the barricades, De Quincey dodges a dive-bombing seagull, which then falls dead at his feet, as he cautiously enters this no man’s land, making his way along the deserted, wind-swept streets until he reaches his destination: an antique shop owned by his contact, Chin Foon (Ahn). Here, De Quincey reveals his tattoo of the Moon Serpent to gain entrance, signifying that he and Chin Foon are both loyal to Ling Tang, who rules Chinatown with the money and opium he rakes in by holding those unwilling bridal auctions.

A mysterious recluse, no one knows for sure how old Ling Tang really is. In fact, no one has actually seen the man for over a decade. Meaning we have ourselves a secretive ancient warlord, who runs a hidden base of operations somewhere beneath the streets of Chinatown, opium wars, fighting tongs, missing women, and now an Anglo adventurer who’s about to get mired into something that’s way, way, way over his head. And is all of this brewing trouble in little China starting to sound kinda familiar to everyone else..?

When the creative tandem of Jack Pollexfen and Aubrey Wisberg's sci-fi film, The Man from Planet X (1951), managed a modest profit, they immediately wanted to strike again while the box-office fires were still hot. And to help launch their next feature, the post-apocalyptic Captive Women (1952), they brought in a third party to help finance it; a fella by the name of Albert Zugsmith.

Now, as a filmmaking entrepreneur, Zugsmith was kind of a gold-plated enigma, wrapped-up in a soiled toilet paper conundrum. Born in 1910, after college, with a law degree tucked in his back pocket, Zugsmith went to work for a newspaper. Starting out as a cub reporter, the man quickly moved his way up through the ranks and by 1935 started his own paper, The Daily World, in his native Atlantic City, where he served as managing editor and publisher. And by 1939, Zugsmith started brokering sales for media properties -- newspapers, radio networks, and, eventually, television stations, making millions off of those commissions.

Thus, as his fortune grew on that front, Zugsmith was also still practicing law. And in 1947, he was famously approached by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster to represent them in a landmark creative rights lawsuit against National Periodical Publications (DC Comics) over profits generated by their creations, Superman and Superboy. Here, Zugsmith would win a split decision in the year-long trial, losing out on The Man of Steel claim due to some fine print in a work for hire contract, but proved the publisher had no legal claim on Superboy. Despite this setback, Siegel and Shuster would continue their fight for creator’s rights and would eventually settle the matter out of court in 1975.

Thus and lo, by the time the 1950s rolled around, Zugsmith had two things on his mind: one, that ton of money currently burning a hole in his pocket; and two, always a film buff, a burning desire to get into the motion picture business. And after Pollexfen and Wisberg gave him an in with Captive Women -- the three would form American Pictures Corporation together, Zugsmith went solo on his next feature; a paranoid Cold War hysteria piece for Columbia called Invasion U.S.A. (1952) -- and in hindsight, his version of America being overrun by Communist paratroopers was pretty-damned hysterical.

Then, after a few more genre pictures for APC -- Sword of Venus (1953), Port Sinister (1953), Zugsmith was lured over to Universal International, where he set his sights a little higher with Douglas Sirk’s Written on the Wind (1956) and a couple of really solid noir pieces -- The Tattered Dress (1957) and Slaughter on 10th Avenue (1957). But at the same time, Zugsmith was also backing Jack Arnold's sci-fi classic, The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957), and The Girl in the Kremlin (1957), where Zsa Zsa Gabor was mankind's last hope against Uncle Joe Stalin's new reign of terror (-- by apparently shaving every woman bald for … reasons).

Also around this time, Zugsmith was dabbling with a few ideas of his own. And while filming the western Man in the Shadow (1957), the producer gave one of his stars -- and favorite drinking buddy, Orson Welles, a script for an unrealized project of his called Badge of Evil, which eventually morphed into Touch of Evil (1958), which turned out to be one of the last American films Welles would direct, as no other studio would touch him.

Suddenly a hot commodity, MGM soon came calling with a six-picture deal, resulting in a string of drug-addled juvenile delinquent pictures, including the seminal High School Confidential (1958), Girls Town (1959) and The Beat Generation (1959), for which lawyer Zugsmith managed to secure the copyright on the term “Beat Generation'' before Jack Kerouac and John Holmes knew what hit them. All three films also featured Zugsmith's new favorite starlet, Mamie Van Doren, and the producer wasn’t done with her yet.

See, as was his schizophrenic nature, the producer followed these exploitation pieces up with a couple of hormone-fueled goofball comedies -- College Confidential (1960), where Steve Allen subs in for Dr. Alfred Kinsey to unlock the not-so-secret sex-life of college coeds, and the completely hair-brained Sex-Kittens Go to College (1960), where Van Doren plays a Two-Gun-Toting-Tassel-Twirler from Tallahassee, who’s trying to escape her past as a stripper by becoming a college professor who likes to discharge firearms in public as not to draw attention to herself. There's also a refrigerator-box robot and a monkey banging on a typewriter (-- I'm gonna assume he's working on the script); and then Uncle Fester showed up; and John Carradine dances the Charleston; and I think I just saw Vampira; and oddly enough, Conway Twitty was there, too, summing it all up in song.

Anyhoo, wanting to push things even further, Zugsmith's next sex-farce, The Private Lives of Adam and Eve (1960), which he co-directed with star Mickey Rooney, was condemned by The Catholic League of Decency. And after that kiss of death, the major studios stopped calling. This was too bad, as the movie’s pretty harmless -- even for the time of its release. And if it had to be condemned, at least denounce it for being too silly -- not for being blasphemous. I mean, I ask you, How blasphemous could it really be to have Martin Milner and Van Doren running around in a plastic version of the Garden of Eden in their birthday suits while Rooney's devil tempts them with an intoxicating apple, amIright? And then came Dondi (1961), based on a popular syndicated cartoon strip, which proved to be both a critical and box office disaster -- and its reputation as one of the worst films ever made was well earned indeed.

Zugsmith was fairly washed-up after that back to back, two-punch fiasco, but he still had one more feature left in him for Allied Artists before he went full-bore into the burgeoning Nudie-Cutie and sexploitation scene with things like The Incredible Sex Revolution (1966), Psychedelic Sexualis (1966), and Two Roses and a Golden Rod (1969). And luckily for us, this last hurrah was Confessions of an Opium Eater (1962) -- released on TV as Souls for Sale; a bizarre, almost avant-garde exploitation piece that Zugsmith had firing on all cylinders from the get-go, which just gets weirder and weirder the deeper our protagonist gets into the underbelly of Chinatown.

Hired by Ruby Lo (Ho), Ling Tang’s second in command, De Quincey was brought in as some hired muscle to help quash the rebellious factions and recover one of those girls lost at the beach -- the prized girl in question being Lotus. Now, De Quincey finds Ruby Lo at the funeral of George Wah (Loo). Turns out Wah was a crusading newspaper editor who constantly spoke out against these illegal auctions; and he apparently did more than just write about them, too, as we recognize his memorial photo and realize it was Wah who got killed at the beach while trying to save Lotus.

Curious as to why she's attending the funeral of her enemy, Ruby Lo explains with an old Chinese proverb; and it almost makes sense in a “keep your enemies close but your friends closer” frame, but with the way she keeps evading De Quincey's questions about Wah, you also sense there was something more intimate between those two that, well, wanted to make love and not war. Too late now, and still waiting for a straight answer, just as our bickering duo set foot outside the funeral home, the Dragon Flag is dropped -- the signal that the Tong War is now on like Donkey Kong; and as all hell breaks loose around them, Ruby Lo ducks into a passage and then slams the metal door shut behind her, leaving De Quincey to fend for himself.

Dodging the violence as best he can, our boy makes his way to the Chinatown Gazette where George Wah worked. Inside, De Quincey finds a secret room where Wah's people have hidden Lotus. Suddenly, a sizable chunk of Ling Tang's tong breaks in and finds them. Unexpectedly, considering who hired him, De Quincey grabs the girl and they escape to the sewers via another secret passageway. (And which side was he on again?) But those foot soldiers soon catch up and they snatch the girl back, while De Quincey is clobbered over the head.

Left for dead, our protagonist eventually wakes up, suspended in the air, hanging from a hook snagged by his coat collar. Not appreciating being treated like a side of beef, De Quincey is soon joined by Chin Foon and a mysterious masked man, who accuse him of treachery. Technically, Foon has little room to talk on that subject, as he reveals his allegiance to George Wah. Seems Foon also knew that Wah had hired an old gun-running friend of his to help break-up Ling Tang's stranglehold on Chinatown -- a friend who looks and acts just like our boy. Here, when De Quincey admits to playing both sides to double his money, Chin Foon and his silent partner vanish in a puff of smoke.

After managing to free himself, De Quincey soon discovers he's somewhere in the rat’s nest of catacombs beneath Chinatown. And a strange place it is, too, as the man explores further and stumbles upon a chamber of suspended bamboo cages filled with three half-starved women. As to why? Well, it seems that if a husband grows tired of his wife and doesn’t want her ghost haunting him forever, in lieu of killing her, all he has to do is lock them in one of these cages, let them starve to death, and then his conscience is clear thanks to this morbid technicality. One of the three was already dead, but De Quincey frees Lo Tsen (Kido) and Baby Doll (Moray), a dwarf who tires of her husbands quickly, after they agree to show him where the auctions take place.

Led to a warehouse, as the girls distract the guards, De Quincey finds Lotus inside, suspended in another cage. But the Mongol guards return and chase him off before he can free her. Finding refuge in a bathroom -- that's not just any bathroom, where, as the toilet triggers a secret panel that leads straight into an opium den, De Quincey buys himself a pipe, lights up, and then drifts off to la-la land.

We’re then treated to an extended montage of twisted imagery meant to represent the power and influence of the poppy -- represented by a bunch of stock monster footage from almost all of American International Picture's back catalogue. (No. Honest! I saw the Voodoo Woman, the Viking Women's Sea Serpent, a Saucer Man's hand, Bert I. Gordon's Giant Spider, the Screaming Skull and a whole lot more.) And then the film starts to get really weird (-- as if it wasn't weird enough already?!), when De Quincey suddenly wakes up and finds himself surrounded by Ling Tang's men.

Still under the influence of the opium, a bizarre, and eerily silent slow-motion chase scene ensues as he tries to get away. Now, I'm gonna get more into this sequence later in the wrap-up, but for now: let's just say De Quincey doesn’t make it, is once more subdued, and awakens in the presence of Ruby Lo, who reveals that she, too, has been playing both sides. Apparently, while she was embezzling money and munitions from Ling Tang, she was also having a torrid love affair with George Wah. As she’s monologuing, De Quincey almost escapes her clutches but, as usual, only winds up knocked unconscious again.

This time he wakes up in one of those suspended cages with Baby Doll; both under the guard of some giggling idiot and his royally pissed off cat, who reveals the prisoner's gloomy fate by sliding a panel open, revealing a tank of water, where a drowned woman silently floats, a massive stone tied around her neck. (I had assumed this was Lo Tsen -- until she shows up later during the climax.) Laughing boy then torments them further by opening another peek-hole, revealing the latest bridal auction is about to take place just on the other side of the wall.

Then, as the festivities begin, we get to watch a bunch of old men hoot and ogle over a cache of nubile young women, who they force to dance before they'll open the bidding. This provocative display also provides enough of a distraction for De Quincey, who manages to kill the guard, allowing him and Baby Doll to escape. Once free, they immediately head for Ruby Lo’s secret stash -- along with her stolen loot, her vault is full of fireworks, munitions, gunpowder, and, for some reason, a trussed up Lo Tsen. After freeing the girl, De Quincey breaks open one of those kegs and begins to spread the black powder all over the rest of the explosives.

Meanwhile, back at the auction, one of the old coots gets a little too curious about the latest lot, tugs on her hair, and discovers the girl is bald. This triggers a massive snit amongst the buyers over the merchandise being damaged and they all demand to see Ling Tang -- for only his personal assurance will prove this auction was on the level. And so, for the first time in ten years, Ling Tang finally makes a public appearance. With his elderly features hidden behind a mask, he calms everyone down and introduces Lotus -- the prized lot of the auction. This quiets the crowd, the bidding starts, and the old badger who doesn’t like bald women had the highest bid until it's discovered the packaged opium he planned to use as payment was phony.

With that, the old man removes his disguise, revealing he was really George Wah -- back from the dead! At almost the exact same moment, De Quincey blows the explosives in the vault. Turns out he and Wah had the whole thing planned out this way from the beginning (... riiiiiight). And as Ling Tang’s compound goes up in smoke, Wah, Lotus, De Quincey, Lo Tsen and Baby Doll regroup and escape to the war-torn streets. Too exposed and soon surrounded, with their only chance to get away safely being through the sewers, our band scurries down the nearest manhole but, alas, Lo Tsen and Baby Doll are killed bringing up the rear.

Once in the sewer proper, Ling Tang himself confronts them. Now, the sharp eye will notice that Ling Tang is sporting a rather nice pair of pumps as he and De Quincey tangle, allowing Wah and Lotus to escape. As their struggle intensifies, De Quincey knocks the mask off, revealing that Ling Tang was really Ruby Lo this whole time! Seems the old guy actually died ten years ago and she just assumed his role. 

After that revelation, they both fall into the drainage water and are swept away by the current, locked in each other’s embrace. And as they tumble off toward the unknown, De Quincey ponders whether his current predicament was fate, destiny, or just another drug-induced dream.

You know, by the end credits of Confessions of an Opium Eater, you, as a viewer, might just be confessing to having hit the pipe yourself a few times. It’s that weird. And wonderful. Wonderfully weird. And this contact high can honestly be traced all the way back to the film’s source material.

Based loosely on Thomas De Quincey’s autobiographical book of the same name, this tale first saw print in serialized form in London Magazine, running from September through October, 1821. And though it was originally published “anonymously” in the periodical, when it was released in book format as Confession of an Opium Eater in 1822 De Quincey finally put his name on it. A laudanum (opium) addict himself, De Quincey broke his story down into two parts: The Pleasures of Opium, dealing with the factors that led to his addiction and the welcome escape the drug provided, while the second, The Pains of Opium, dealt with the price to be paid for the same narcotic addiction -- insomnia, nightmares, frightening visions, and physical deterioration.

“The sense of space, and in the end, the sense of time, were both powerfully affected,” said De Quincey about his time under the influence. “Buildings, landscapes, were exhibited in proportions so vast as the bodily eye is not fitted to conceive. Space swelled, and was amplified to an extent of unutterable infinity. This, however, did not disturb me so much as the vast expansion of time; I sometimes seemed to have lived for 70 or 100 years in one night; nay, sometimes had feelings representative of a millennium passed in that time, or, however, of a duration far beyond the limits of any human experience.”

And while the book was popular and made De Quincey both rich and famous, his vivid prose was criticized from the very beginning by his detractors for glamorizing the use of opium. Somewhat ironically, his seminal work was also considered a clinical document on the drug. Or as Judson Lyon put it in his biography of De Quincey, “Since there was little systematic study of narcotics until long after his death, De Quincey's account assumed an authoritative status and actually dominated the scientific and public views of the effects of opium for several generations."

Now, as a wise-cracking robot once noted on Mystery Science Theater 3000, in reference to Village of the Giants (1965) allegedly mutating out of the H.G. Wells’ novel, Food of the Gods, Zugsmith’s Confessions of an Opium Eater was based on De Quincey’s book in that “they were both written in English.” Scripted by Zugsmith regular Robert Hill -- Female on the Beach (1955), Raw Edge (1956), the film dropped the source author's first-hand account of a narcotic addiction and traded it in for some straight-out pulp adventure instead with a heaping dose of the “Yellow Peril” on top, as Hill apparently broke into a fortune cookie factory and then scotch-taped all those little pieces of paper together for the majority of his dialogue.

Marketed as a horror movie by Allied Artists, Confessions of an Opium Eater was, indeed, more of an action-adventure yarn straight out of the old Republic serials, while maintaining the tenuous of threads to the source material by making Gilbert De Quincey the great, great grandson of the author. Now, with that Yellow Peril taint, I fully realize this film promotes some pretty rotten stereotypes; but if you can manage to keep all of that in historical context the only real problem I had with the film was that ending. It seemed a bit contrived with the double-revelation and was kinda disappointing after such a great build up, where being forced to really pay attention as to who was double-crossing who goes all for naught. 

Zugsmith would serve as both producer and director on the film, and he kept the action moving well enough. And to help keep him on course, his crew was littered with many other notable genre veterans. Behind the camera, Joseph Biroc -- The Killer that Stalked New York (1950), 13 Ghosts (1960), made everything stark, dark or murky, making it hard to keep your bearings; couple that with Eugene Lourie’s -- The Colossus of New York (1957), The Giant Behemoth (1959), cheap but effective art direction on all those secret passages and death-traps and Albert Glasser’s -- Beginning of the End (1957), The Amazing Colossal Man (1957), eerie electronic score, which was once more cranked up to about eleven, their efforts more than overcompensate for Hill’s shaky, misdirecting script, resulting in something rather unique that is hard to explain let alone define.

I honestly wouldn’t know where to begin to try and decipher all the strange imagery and symbolism that permeates this film. I mean, What was that white horse all about? And the dead seagull? Or that whole kite thing? (You'll know it when you see it.) But the best and most jolting stream of images comes during De Quincey's attempted getaway while under the phantasmagorical influence of the opium. 

Here, Glasser’s sinister score suddenly drops out, and after a slow-motion roof-top chase, a talking bird is shot, which detonates in a cloud of feathers, and then brace yourselves for the scene in the butcher’s shop and the decapitated boar’s head. Again, What in the good-god-hell was that all about?!

I’m also convinced Confessions of an Opium Eater had at least some influence on John Carpenter’s Big Trouble in Little China (1986). And this is not a slight, nor should it be construed as a knock for theft on Carpenter's film. No sir. I enjoyed the heck out of that movie, too, but there are just far too many similarities to deny the obvious, right down to the earnest but completely in-over-his-head hero.

As a proto-Jack Burton, Vincent Price does seem a bit out of place as an action hero, but he handles it rather deftly -- hell, anything the guy does is good; and he would do it again a couple years later in The Last Man on Earth (1964), which I still contend was the best adaptation of Richard Matheson's pulp-classic, I Am Legend. Linda Ho was equally great as the vicious Ruby Lo, as was Yvonne Moray as the pithy Baby Doll. The rest of the cast -- Richard Loo, Phillip Ahn, June Kyoto Lu, Caroline Kido, were all fine but their characters were sold short by that script as filmed.

I first encountered Confessions of an Opium Eater some thirty years ago, as Souls for Sale, when it brought up the rear of an overnight triple-feature on TNT with The Giant Behemoth and The Hypnotic Eye (1960) -- back in the glory days of Monstervision and 100% Weird. And while it has since made the digital leap through the Warner Archive, I still have that VHS tape and treat it like a museum piece; a reminder of how awesome the SuperStations used to be instead of the infomercial whores they are now. Still, I am thankful and will always be grateful to the network for introducing me to this bona fide gonzo classic, and I encourage you all to catch up with it, too, as soon as possible.

Originally published on April 28, 2000, at 3B Theater.

Confessions of an Opium Eater / Souls for Sale (1962) Photoplay :: Allied Artists / P: Albert Zugsmith / AP: Robert Hill / D: Albert Zugsmith / W: Robert Hill, Thomas De Quincey (novel) / C: Joseph Biroc / E: Robert Eisen, Roy Livingston / M: Albert Glasser / S: Vincent Price, Linda Ho, Richard Loo, June Kim, Philip Ahn, Caroline Kido

Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (1988)

"No, really, I'm okay."

Karen Carpenter had always considered herself a drummer first, who also just happened to sing a little. And despite decades worth of jokes on this notion, apparently her skills with the sticks were bona fide -- I mean, if Buddy Rich says so, then that's good enough for me. And after a move from New Haven, Connecticut, to Downey, California, in 1964, 14-year old Karen managed to earn her way into her brother’s band, The Richard Carpenter Trio, as a drummer. Thereafter, the group managed to win a Battle of the Bands at the Hollywood Bowl in 1966 with a cover of “The Girl from Ipanema," which got them signed by RCA; but that went nowhere fast when their instrumental demo didn’t pass muster.

But then, according to legend, it was at a late night jam-session in the garage studio of John Bettis, where brother Richard was set to accompany an auditioning trumpet player, when Bettis encouraged Karen, who had tagged along on a lark, to take a turn at the mic. And when she finished her song, Bettis was blown away by her contralto voice, saying, “Never mind the trumpet player, this chubby little girl can sing!”

Richard agreed and began arranging music to highlight his sister’s soulful vocals, which she sang from behind her drums, and Karen soon became the centerpiece of their performances for gigs at the Whisky a Go-Go and several local televised specials. For while Richard wrote and arranged their music, it was Karen’s voice that would be The Carpenter’s sonic signature that fueled their rocket to stardom, as their easy listening muzak helped ease the country into the 1970s after the turbulence of the prior decade.

This mellowization began when the duo was signed by Herb Alpert for A&M Records, who released their first album as The Carpenters in 1969, which subsequently flopped. Their second album, however, buoyed by the hit singles “Close to You” and “We’ve Only Just Begun,” was a smashing success, earning the siblings two Grammy Awards and made them millionaires. But just as things started to click for the Carpenters, the tragic end was already beginning.

At a petite 5’4” Karen was often obscured by her drum-kit; and so, with her brother and their management’s encouragement, the reluctant singer abandoned her drum kit and moved to the front of the stage and the glaring spotlight. And while some critics were savage over the easy-listening, anesthetizing music they produced, others loved them (-- Tricky Dick Nixon included). But even with the praise came comments about the chubby and cherubic lead singer with the voice that sounded like hot caramel melting ice cream if such a thing made a sound because that is what Karen Carpenter sounded like. Wait … What? No. Really. She did.

Anyhoo, these kinds of comments took a cumulative toll on the singer. And between them, her well-meaning but overbearing parents (-- the singer lived at home until she was 26), and her micro-managing (-- and Quaalude-addicted) brother, Karen took control of the only thing she could: her food intake. 

Carpenter had begun a rigorous diet regimen in 1966 after Bettis’ remarks sowed the seeds for her anorexia nervosa -- that included the clandestine use of laxatives, thyroid medications, and ipecacs, which eventually saw her weight drop to dangerous levels by 1975 -- in a sense reducing herself by half, going from 145 to 77-pounds. Audiences hardly recognized the skeletal husk that now took the stage. Things got so bad several tour dates had to be cancelled, and then The Carpenters stopped touring altogether in 1978 when an obviously ill Karen swooned during a performance at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.

After, reeling from a disastrous marriage and an experimental solo album -- a futile attempt to break out of that cookie-cutter mold her family insisted she maintain that was ultimately shelved by the studio, Karen sought out medical help for what turned out to be a then very little heard of form of mental illness and was officially diagnosed with an eating disorder. But despite her attempts at therapy, the singer only lost more weight and was eventually hospitalized in 1982 with an irregular heartbeat due to her abuse of purging medications.

Force fed through an intravenous drip, Carpenter rapidly put on weight, putting more strain on her malfunctioning heart. And this over-simplified telling of this tale reached its tragic conclusion in February, 1983, when her mother found Karen collapsed in her bedroom. She was taken to the hospital in full cardiac arrest and was pronounced dead 20-minutes later.

Coming four years after her death, fledgling filmmaker Todd Haynes released Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (1987), an experimental short-film he made as a grad-student that has garnered itself quite the dubious reputation since its debut, earning itself a lofty perch on the Cult Movie status board. I’d heard and read about this docudrama for years but had yet to see it, which is next to impossible (-- and we’ll get to why that is in a second). And so, I wasn’t sure what to expect when I finally sat down and watched this 43-minute treatise on the rise and fall of a mega-musician as interpreted by Barbie and Ken dolls; something flippant, maybe; perhaps a mean-spirited poke-in-the-eye on this vanilla muzak pop-star. 

But I can tell you what I didn’t expect was a sobering, empathetic, and sometimes moving indictment on the horrors of body image dysfunction and the mental fragmentation that leads to self-destruction – or in this case, a disturbing act of self-consumption. To make this point, the use of dolls seems rather silly on the surface but you don’t have to dig very far to see what Haynes was trying to do with them – and he succeeds more often than not, as he deftly pokes holes in celebrity worship and mass-consumerism.

On the technical side, the dolls, the hand-crafted props, and the dollhouse setting they inhabit are absolutely mesmerizing in scale and in the execution of the story -- credited to Haynes and Cynthia Schneider. “It is a Lifetime movie on lithium,” said Britt Hayes in her review of Superstar for Birth. Movies. Death. “A short film that slips between dreamy clarity and nightmarish surrealism, which confronts us with the superficiality of pop-culture and the commoditization of women's bodies." And it’s unnerving to watch as Karen’s worsening condition is brought across by the subtle whittling away of the face and arms of the doll used to represent her. And how her disease made Karen “a fascist to her own body; both the dictator and the emaciated victim of this internal governance.” 

Admittedly, some of the sympathy for Karen is due to the truly brutal portrayal of the rest of her family. Her parents, Harold and Agnes, weren’t necessarily bad people in a classic sense, more misguided, blind-eyed and enabling, without really realizing it. Thus, Haynes saves most of the venom for Richard, portrayed as a self-righteous control-freak of the highest order, who is more concerned about “their” career than his sister’s health; epitomized by a scene where he berates Karen for, essentially, ruining everything after her declining health costs them several gigs.

The film itself begins at the end, with the discovery of Karen in her bedroom, dead, while the haunting chords of “Superstar” virally enters your eardrums; a mix of live-action material and puppeteering that comes off as an ersatz and morbidly brain-damaged Sesame Street sketch. It then flashes back to the beginning to tell this tale of woe in a series of vignettes that covers the meteoric rise of The Carpenters and the cost it wrought over the years. "I'm great," "I'm fine," "No, really, I'm okay," says our Karen surrogate, a haunting refrain as she’s slowly whittled away, trapped in these tiny, sterile and claustrophobic surroundings. And while the film is sympathetic to the plight of our protagonist, it’s still very, very exploitative. 

As it plays out, I cannot even begin to comment on the authenticity of this tale the filmmaker is telling. The line between what is true and what is a dramatic liberty is definitely blurred. His medium of choice also comes dangerously close to fetishizing things. Also, Haynes employs a ton of bizarre, Luis Buñuel-inspired subliminal cuts between his set-pieces to shots of empty Ex-Lax boxes, dolls spanking each other, and war atrocity footage, including several terrifying flashes of skeletal corpses being heaped into a mass grave at some concentration camp.

Now, one of the most effective sets of transition sequences involves a bathroom scale, spinning like the world’s most ruthless roulette wheel, landing on an even deadlier lower number with each cut and spin. The least effective is the constant use of text-boxes with black type that often gets lost in the background, which is doubly frustrating because I was honestly interested in what the movie was trying to say. 

As is, Haynes is walking a fine line between satire and a very sick joke but, somehow, manages to accomplish both. It’s like a lot of The Carpenter’s music, really: bubblegum pop on the surface, but emotionally jagged and raw underneath that is strangely addictive. 

Upon its release, Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story was a minor art-house hit, was shown at several film festivals, and even earned a spot in the Museum of Modern Art’s film archive. Other parties, however, were less enthused. Rumor has it that Mattel, the makers of Barbie, were contemplating a lawsuit against Haynes over the abuse of their IP but Richard Carpenter beat them to the punch. 

After seeing the film, Richard was furious over the portrayal of his family – and in particular, a heated scene where Karen lays a veiled threat that he was a homosexual. (If you listen to the tracks where Richard sings, there is a very pronounced lisp; and one would hope Haynes had more evidence than that to make such a blind accusation.) Carpenter eventually sued Haynes over copyright infringement for the use of several of The Carpenter’s songs that the filmmaker never bothered to get the license for. And after Carpenter won that lawsuit, all copies of the film were to be recalled and destroyed, making it illegal to buy, sell, or own a copy of the movie. But the film lived on, via bootlegs and would occasionally pop up on streaming sites, where I finally caught up to it on YouTube.

But this dark and twisted tale wasn’t done yet. Apparently, a legitimate bio-pic on Karen Carpenter had been kicking around since her untimely passing in 1983, but it had never been made because no script could meet Richard Carpenter’s approval. And when he finally signed off on the telefilm, The Karen Carpenter Story (1989), his demands of constant rewrites to de-villainize their parents resulted in a whitewashed piece of fluff that also teetered on the brink of full-blown incestual necrophilia. 

For, according to star Cynthia Gibb, who played Karen, Richard insisted she wear Karen’s original clothing and use her make-up, which he supplied, and that she lose the required weight in order to fit into them. Once this transformation was complete, he essentially stalked her throughout the production. And when he wasn’t doing that, he was off in some corner, on his knees, praying for Karen to forgive him.

Richard, meanwhile, claims the film was a disaster and regrets ever agreeing to it. There was talk that Richard would play himself in the film, but this was thankfully nixed for Mitchell Anderson according to the production crew, who claimed the surviving musician was an over-sensitive, pain in the ass. And this inability to let go skewed the film, robbing it of any real dramatic punch. Why? Well, as Hayes so brilliantly put it, “Karen Carpenter died in 1983. She remains frozen in time, as unreal and haunting now as she was then. She cannot get worse, but she cannot get better; her death allows her to remain in arrested development, just as her family wanted, in a state of suspended animation just like a plastic doll.”

Now, I’ve seen both bio-films, and I honestly think Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story is the more ingenious; a true mind-f@ck of a movie that is definitely worth a spin. And while Haynes would go on to make fictionalized big-screen adaptations of glam-rock icon David Bowie with Velvet Goldmine (1998) and a multiple-personality take on Bob Dylan in I’m Not There (2007), neither can hold a candle to his first superstar bio-pic. 

Originally posted on December 15, 2015 at Micro-Brewed Reviews.

Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (1988) Iced Tea Productions / P: Todd Haynes, Cynthia Schneider / D: Todd Haynes / W: Todd Haynes, Cynthia Schneider / C: Barry Ellsworth / E: Todd Haynes, Cynthia Schneider / S: Merrill Gruver, Michael Edwards, Melissa Brown, Rob LaBelle, Gwen Kraus

So Evil, So Young (1961)

"Now, if you obey the rules, your time at Wilsham will pass 

swiftly and pleasantly. If not, well, it can be ... disagreeable."

We begin in media criminal mischief as two young women stealthily move through the British palatial estate they just broke into. Now, the mastermind behind this two person operation is Lucy Owens (Britton), who used to work at this house as a maid. Thus, she not only knows where the wall safe is hidden, and what valuables are secreted within, but her constant snooping allowed her to secure the combination as well. And while her agitated accomplice, Claire (Swanson), thinks they should just forget the whole thing and get out before they’re caught, Lucy assures the owners are gone on vacation as she pops open the safe and removes all the valuable jewelry.

Alas, Lucy forgot to take into account the other hired help as the family butler stumbles upon the crime scene still in progress, who sees Lucy but not Claire, who in turn manages to sneak up from behind and conk him over the head without ever being seen, rendering him unconscious. The girls then flee the premises with the loot. 

Realizing full well the butler saw and recognized her, Lucy knows she’s in trouble and will most likely spend more time in the juvenile reformatory when she is inevitably caught. For this was not her first criminal rodeo. But, ever the conniver, she decides to salvage this caper as best she can by giving all the jewelry to the unidentifiable Claire -- save for one piece, a diamond bracelet, who is then instructed to hide the rest of the stash until Lucy serves out her sentence. By then, things should’ve cooled off enough and they can divvy it up, cash in, and finally enjoy the spoils of their endeavor.

From there, the girls split up and we follow Lucy as she makes her way to a local social club, where her kinda-sorta boyfriend, Tommy Harris (Charlesworth), is playing in the band, entertaining a gathered mass of teens. Well, at least Lucy wishes Tommy was her boyfriend. Here, Sam (Warren), the club’s owner, who is well aware of her feelings, rather gleefully points out to Lucy that Tommy appears to only have eyes for another girl, Anne Turner (Ireland), who also just arrived.

And while Lucy tries to play this all off as nothing, saying she never cared about Tommy anyway, it’s obvious this development has the girl seething with a jealous anger -- and all of it directed at Anne, even though she claims they’re friends. In fact, says the ever-scheming Lucy, they were just out together. 

Meanwhile, after his set ends, Tommy joins Anne at her table and they share a kiss. Worried that she wasn’t going to show up at all, Tommy gets an apology for her tardiness. Seems Anne went on another one of her long solitary walks and lost track of time. But, as these two start to make up for that lost time, Lucy clandestinely moves to the coat check room, where she slips that stolen bracelet into Anne’s coat pocket.

Thus, the following morning, Anne and her widower father (Longdon) are a little surprised when the police show up at their front door. Seems the butler identified Lucy as expected, but then Lucy in turn falsely identified Anne as not only her accomplice but the ringleader of the break-in. 

Lucy also claimed Anne is currently in possession of all the stolen loot. Anne, of course, denies this. Unfortunately for her, the inspector has a search warrant, which turns up that missing bracelet. And with that damning piece of evidence, I’m guessing Anne Turner is really regretting that long, solitary, alibi-less walk she took the night before right about now... 

After World War II ended, where brother Harry Lee served with distinction as a tank commander in the North Africa and Italian campaigns, earning a Medal of Valor, and brother Edward J. served as a prosecuting attorney for the U.S. Army at the Nuremberg war crime trials, the Danzinger brothers opened a sound studio in their native New York City, which specialized in dubbing over foreign film imports. Soon expanding their operations into film production, their inaugural feature was Jigsaw (1949), where crusading reporter Franchot Tone tries to prove an immigrant shopkeeper’s suicide was actually a murder committed by a secret sect of Neo-Nazis.

Now, the Danzinger’s follow up feature, the ‘slightly’ exploitative So Young, So Bad (1950), was a balls-out screed on the horrors hidden behind the walls of a girl’s reformatory school. Walls psychiatrist Paul Henreid and nurse Catherine McLeod want to tear down to expose the abuses committed by the sadistic headmistress played by Grace Coppin. Walls that also contained a young Anne Francis and Rita Moreno, who both get their jail-bait on and cat-fighting claws out something fierce before getting blasted by a fire-hose when the inevitable riot breaks out. 

And after producing two more features -- Edward G. Ulmer’s St. Benny the Dip (1951) and Babes in Baghdad (1952), the Danzingers pulled up stakes and moved to England, where they continued to make low-budget features, utilizing a lot of black-listed American expatriates, and hoped to break into television, starting with the series, Calling Scotland Yard. At the time, screenwriter Brian Clemens, who would go on to create the seminal British TV series, The Avengers, started working for the Danzingers, who later recalled he was often charged with writing screenplays to match still standing sets from someone else’s production to help save costs.

Now, while the majority of their theatrical output at this time was nothing more than combined and re-edited episodes of Calling Scotland Yard and The Vise, the Danzingers did manage a few original features like the cheap but effective Devil Girl from Mars (1954) and Satellite in the Sky (1956). And with the profits generated by these five to ten day wonders, the brothers bought a decommissioned airplane manufacturing plant in Hertfordshire, converted the hangars into sound stages, and rechristened it New Elstree Studios in 1956, where they really started cranking stuff out -- though still on the cheap. Or as actor Christoper Lee put it in a later interview, “If a [Danzinger] picture went on for more than three days, the film would be well in excess of its budget!” 

Regardless of these limited funds, between 1956 and 1963, Danzinger Productions Ltd. would produce over 140 bottom bills and six TV-series. And one of those features, of course, was So Evil, So Young (1961), which, obviously, was a not-so-stealth remake of So Young, So Bad. Directed by Godfrey Grayson -- Dr. Morelle: The Case of the Missing Heiress (1949), The Spider's Web (1960), and written by the Danzingers' stock screenwriter, Mark Grantham, who tried to muddy the waters a bit by incorporating elements from a couple of his earlier screenplays for Man Accused (1959), where a man, wrongly convicted of murder, breaks out of prison to find the real killers, and Sentenced for Life (1960), where a son works to exonerate his imprisoned father over false espionage charges.

In So Evil, So Young, Lucy Owens’ vindictive plan to frame Anne Turner is two-fold: first, by implicating Anne, Claire will stay in the clear and the loot they stole will still be waiting for her once she’s served her time; and secondly, this will torpedo Anne’s relationship with Tommy and show that bloody interloper what happens when she dares to try and steal her man away. 

A harsh lesson, indeed, as with the assault on the butler on top of the theft charges, with no alibi to speak of, Anne is sentenced to three years at the Wilsham Reformatory School for Girls. And from there, despite the tweaking, the plot really doesn’t stray a whole lot from your standard good girl gone bad / women in prison formula -- only this one kinda comes off a little too wholesome, given that title and the surrounding circumstances. Sort of. (More on this in a sec.)

Still, in short order, Anne has a bullseye painted on her back by the head matron, Miss Smith (Pollock), a vile combination of Evelyn Harper and Nurse Ratchet -- which will make a lot more sense if you’ve seen Caged (1950) and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975), characters portrayed beautifully by Hope Emerson and Louise Fletcher, respectively. And while the disciplinarian Smith prefers the stick over the carrot when dealing with her charges, the headmistress (Haythorne) is a reformer, explaining why there are no bars anywhere in the building or walls surrounding it. And while she does take a liking to Anne, who serves as her secretary since the girl had been one before winding up in here, she doesn’t believe her protests of innocence or how she was framed by Lucy, a familiar face at Wilsham.

Thus, stuck between Smith and Lucy, who has plenty of friends on the inside to back her up, life at Wilsham is pure hell for poor Anne, who always gets caught finishing the fights her adversary started, landing her more often than not in what passes for solitary confinement in this institution. Luckily, Anne finds a friend and ally in an older inmate named Marie (Whittingham), who is up for parole soon. And with her help, the wronged girl soon learns the rules -- the most important being to never snitch on a fellow inmate, because snitches get stitches. 

Alas, to celebrate Marie’s impending parole, which at long last came through, the inmates of her dormitory decide to hold a clandestine going away party for her, which included stealing some sweets from the commissary. But they are caught in the act by Smith, who takes a perverse pleasure in telling Marie this violation will most likely negate her release and add another year to her sentence. And the already unstable Marie is so distraught over this development, she commits suicide by hanging herself.

This would prove the last straw for several inmates, including Lucy, who leads the charge to beat the hell out of Smith, whom the girls blame for Marie’s death. Only Anne abstains from joining in on the resulting riot, even going so far as to free another matron, trussed up and taken hostage during the chaos that is eventually curbed. 

But once order is restored, Anne refuses to name the ringleaders of the riot and demands to be punished just like everyone else, earning the respect of several others, including one particular inmate who has proof that Lucy framed her for that robbery: the name of her real accomplice, Claire, and the name of the pawnbroker where Lucy will most likely hoc the jewelry.

Armed with this information, Anne engineers a jailbreak to get that crucial piece of evidence to her father and Tommy, who were already hot on Claire's trail due to the obscene amount of money she'd been throwing around town lately. But will Anne succeed? Or will the battered but ever watchful Smith catch her in the act? Or, most likely of all, will Lucy once more screw Anne over and rat her out?

Well, to answer, despite the seedy subject matter, the overall tenor of that cumulative stiff-lipped English temperament we've encountered thus far is a pretty big clue as to how So Evil, So Young was destined to end. Yup, there are no fire-hoses employed here, but when you chuck in that bold and brassy British Technicolor, which really snaps and pops, along with that absolutely bug-nuts xylophone-heavy spaz-jazz score, which really pops and snaps, it gives this film such a prim ‘n’ proper weirdness that kinda glosses over the absence of the usual exploitative sleaze you’d expect to see in a girl’s reform school vehicle like this one. So much so, one can’t help but giggle at all the bitch-slapping cat-fights and boggle at one of the most pleasant prison riots you will ever encounter on film. 

Thus, it should come as a surprise to no one when Anne manages to get the name of the pawnbroker to Tommy, whom they refer to as Dear Old Moran (Diamont). She then turns herself in. And while her sentence is extended over her escape, Tommy is able to connect Claire to Moran and several pieces of the missing jewelry, who then turns this all over to the police. And when they bring Claire in for questioning, she’s surprised to see Lucy there, too, who was also brought in for more questioning. Here, Lucy still insists Anne was her partner --  until the inspector reveals Claire had already pawned-off all the jewelry to the unwitting Moran and burned through most of the cash. And with no honor among thieves, we are entreated to one last cat-fight as Lucy and Claire go at it like a couple of hellcats. And with that, Anne is exonerated and leaves the reformatory behind, pardon in hand, and rushes into the waiting arms of her father and Tommy. 

These days, Jill Ireland is mostly known for being Mrs. Charles Bronson, who co-starred in numerous films together -- The Mechanic (1972), Hard Times (1975), and From Noon Till Three (1976) among others, but she already had a steady acting career, and another husband, long before those two first met. Ireland's showbiz vocation actually began in 1955 as a dancer in Michael Powell’s Oh, Rosalinda! (1955), and then her big break came two years later when she landed a role in Hell Divers (1957) opposite Stanley Baker, Herbert Lom, and Sean Connery. Here, she also met and fell in love with another co-star, David McCallum.

McCallum and Ireland would marry soon after, and then the couple moved to the United States around 1964 so McCallum could star as Ilya Kuryakin opposite Robert Vaughn’s Napoleon Solo on The Man from U.N.C.L.E. TV-series. Ireland would also appear on several episodes of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and landed a recurring role as Marian Starett on the short-lived series, Shane, which was loosely based on the movie starring Alan Ladd. More TV work followed, including guest-starring stints on Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, My Favorite Martian, and most notably for her solo shot on Star Trek, where she played Leila Kalomi, the one and only woman Mr. Spock ever loved, in This Side of Paradise.

It was while on location with her husband for The Great Escape (1963) when Ireland first met Bronson, who was one of McCallum’s many co-stars in that mega-blockbuster. The couple would divorce in 1967, and Ireland and Bronson would marry less than one year later; so, I think we can extrapolate from there on what happened in the interim. Anyhoo, after a couple of brief scenes together in Villa Rides (1968) and London Affair (1970), which made Bronson a huge star in Europe, the two would finally officially co-star together in the French film, Rider on the Rain (1970). And over the next 17-years, the couple would star in 13 films together; the last being Assassination (1987). Ireland would pass away three years later in 1990 after a long fight with cancer. 

So Evil, So Young was a rare top-bill for Ireland. And while she's fine, the rest of the cast is a bit of a wash with two notable exceptions: Ellen Pollock, whose limp, cane, streaked hair, and taciturn speech brings to mind a German gulag commandant. Of course, before the film wraps, she is shown the door. Defiant to the end, Miss Smith quits instead of accepting a suspension over her unbecoming conduct that resulted in Marie’s suicide. The other is Jocelyn Britton, who positively excels as the conniving Lucy Owens. This would be her only feature; and aside from a brief run on the William Hartnell era of Doctor Who, Britton’s acting career never seemed to spark, which is too bad because, if I'm being honest, she kinda acts circles around her headlining co-star here.

Again, So Evil, So Young will hold no real surprises for those familiar with this subgenre of cheap exploitation pictures. And those that aren’t, well, it’s still pretty weak sauce. However, you can’t underestimate the impact of that hard candy coating slathered all over this colorful nonsense. As a B-picture, it barely breaks an hour and, hell, there are a lot worse things you could do for an hour and 17 minutes, right? 

Originally posted on January 16, 2012, at Micro-Brewed Reviews.

So Evil, So Young (1961) Danziger Productions Ltd. :: United Artists / P: Edward J. Danziger, Harry Lee Danziger / AP: Brian Taylor / D: Godfrey Grayson / W: Mark Grantham / C: James Wilson / E: Desmond Saunders / M: Tony Crombie, Bill LeSage / S: Jill Ireland, Jocelyn Britton, John Charlesworth, Ellen Pollock, Joan Haythorne, Sheila Whittingham, Bernice Swanson, John Longden, Otto Diamant, C. Denier Warren