Double Takes: ‘Flesh for Frankenstein’ (1973) ★★★ / ‘Blood for Dracula’ (1974) ★★ ½

Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein 
(a.k.a. Flesh for Frankenstein) fucks
life in the gallbladder.

My fascination with these two movies dates to the very early 1980s, when I lived in Clovis, Calif., and the movies were still known as Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein (in 3-D!) and Andy Warhol’s Dracula, which is how the Tower Theatre in neighboring Fresno advertised them. Though I saw a lot of movies at the Tower, Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein and Dracula would have to wait. I was 14 and both movies were rated X. The indifferent box office cashier probably wouldn’t stop me from buying a ticket, but there was no getting past my parents.

I finally got to see Andy Warhol’s take on Frankenstein and Dracula 20-plus years later, when Netflix was still renting discs through the mail. By this time the movies were known as Flesh for Frankenstein and Blood for Dracula. Warhol had little to do with the making of either film, but director Paul Morrissey and star Joe Dallesandro were part of Warhol’s Factory so I guess that was enough to justify sticking the pop artist’s name on them. That said, the two movies have more in common with earlier Warhol-produced movies—specifically Flesh, Trash and Heat, all directed by Morrissey—than they do with either Mary Shelley’s or Bram Stoker’s novels. They have even more in common with each other. In addition to sharing Morrissey and Dallesandro, both movies star the late Udo Kier, feature Arno Jürging, and contain healthy amounts of sex, nudity and blood, albeit not enough to justify an X rating.

In Frankenstein, Baron Frakenstein (Kier, making up for the monotone performances of his cast mates by doing all of the acting) is trying desperately to create his own zombie army, starting with two beautiful re-animated corpses. Judging his male monster inadequate, Frankenstein and his devoted assistant Otto (Jürging, almost as unhinged as Kier) go in search of a man with a perfect “nasum” and insatiable sex drive, thinking they found him in the form of handsome field hand Sacha (Srdjan Zelenovic, whose acting style suggests he might be an actual zombie). Frank and Otto ambush Sacha and his friend Nicholas (Dallesandro) as the pair are returning home from a brothel, whereupon Otto snips off Sacha’s head with a pair a giant pruning shears, a scene that would’ve been funnier had Jürging not slowly brandished the shears at the camera in service to 3-D.

While Frankenstein is drawn to Sacha’s nose, his sister/wife Katrin (Dollar store Zsa Zsa Monique Van Vooren) is all about Nicholas’s dick, promoting the horny farm hand to house servant. Nicholas’s duties include more than fucking Katrin, however, which causes problems when Nicholas finds himself serving dinner to Baron Frank’s monsters, one of whom has the head of his missing friend. Nicholas, understandably, has questions.

You’ll have questions, too, but it’s probably best not to spend too much time pondering them as this Hammer Film-by-way-of-the Deuce has little interest in answering them. Among some of Flesh for Frankenstein’s highlights: Otto licking the sutures of the female monster (Dalila Di Lazzaro); foreplay between Nicholas and Katrin during which Van Vooren loudly slurps on Dallesandro’s armpit; and Baron Frankenstein fucking an open incision in his female monster’s torso, declaring post orgasm: “To know death, Otto, you have to fuck life in the gallbladder!” 

Dracula is out for blood, but it’s 
Joe Dallesandro who gets the virgins.

The lunacy continues in Blood for Dracula, with Kier, looking like a parody of Rudolph Valentino, as the titular vampire. At the start of the film, Count Dracula is convinced by his manservant Anton (Jürging again) to leave Transylvania for Italy to find “wer-jun” blood, believing virgins will be more plentiful in the largely Catholic country. (Did I mention these movies are pretty funny?) Upon arrival in Italy, Anton hears of the di Fiore family, who have four unmarried daughters. “I’m sure they are religious,” a tavern patron tells Anton. “They have a very nice house.”

Il Marchese and La Marchesa di Fiore (Vittorio De Sica and Maxime McKendry respectively) are more than happy to host the count and hope he will marry one of their eligible daughters, Saphiria (Milena Vukotic) or Rubinia (Stefania Casini). Their oldest daughter, Esmeralda (Milena Vukotic), is considered past her prime, and their youngest, Perla (Silvia Dionisio), is only 14 and therefore too young for marriage, even in 1920s Italy and in a film that features an uncredited cameo from Roman Polanski. Unbeknownst to their parents, Saphiria and Rubinia said goodbye to their hymens long ago as both women have been fucking the estate’s Marxist handyman Mario (Dallesandro). Why is Mario a Marxist? Well, that’s like asking why an obvious Brooklynite is working on an Italian estate. Just go with it.

Though it contains a fair amount of bloodshed, Blood for Dracula is closer to being softcore porn, with more simulated humping than Flesh for Frankenstein. Dracula is technically the better made of the two films, with better cinematography and slightly better acting, although Morrisey’s and Pat Hackett’s script is inconsistent with its vampire lore (Dracula has no problem walking in sunlight, but complains that his room at the di Fiore estate is too bright). Dallesandro is a block of wood in both films, but he’s more effective in Dracula, if only because he’s better at bad guy roles and Mario, despite being the protagonist, isn’t exactly a good guy (he rapes Perla to save her from Dracula). Kier took it up to 11 in Frankenstein and he saw no reason to dial it down for Dracula, though Jürging’s performance as Anton, with his bug-eyed facial expressions and mangled line readings (“The only thing to do left is pack your personal belongings”) threatens to eclipse him.

Though I like both movies for their campiness, deadpan humor and featuring a naked Joe Dallesandro, I prefer Flesh for Frankenstein. A lot of it comes down to pacing. I wouldn’t describe Frankenstein’s 94-minute runtime as tight, but its pacing problems are not as profoundly felt as they are during Dracula’s overlong 106 minutes. Another tiebreaker: we only get a glimpse of Dallesandro’s shaft in Blood for Dracula, but he goes full frontal in Flesh for Frankenstein. Is the percentage of naked Dallesandro enough to make a movie worth watching? Yes, most definitely.

Double Takes: ‘Taekwondo’ (2016) ★★ / ‘Horseplay’ (2022) ★★

Argentinian director Marco Berger
takes his time developing a central
relationship in Taekwondo.

You won’t have to wait long to see naked men in Taekwondo and Horseplay, two very similar movies from Argentinian writer-director Marco Berger. A penis is shown within the first 10 minutes of Taekwondo; within the first 12 of Horseplay. You’ll have to wait considerably longer for a story to present itself.

Both movies are about a group a young, clothing-averse men who spend their school vacation at a friend’s house. All the men are straight. Or are they? Though the movies share the same synopsis, they are not identical. For starters, in Taekwondo Berger’s camera frequently lingers on his cast’s crotches while the director is more into showcasing the asses of his Horseplay cast, particularly the one attached to actor Bruno Giganti (in fairness, Giganti’s ass is almost reason alone to watch Horseplay).

But there are other differences. In Taekwondo, the men are younger (very late teens to very early twenties), slightly less rowdy and a little more likeable. They’re staying at the one-time health spa owned by the family of their host, Fer (Lucas Papa). The place is kind of shabby, but it’s got plenty of room and no parental supervision. Joining the group of mutual friends is one outsider, Germán (Gabriel Epstein), Fer’s friend from his Taekwondo class. Germán is shy, a bit bookish (he’s shown reading Catcher in the Rye and Patrick Suskind’s Perfume) and very cute in a barely legal sort of way. He’s also gay, though he’s only out to his weed dealer, who is also gay. Germán has a crush on Fer (short for Fernando) and thinks Fer might feel the same about him—if Fer is gay, that is. It’ll take Germán and the audience the film’s entire runtime to find out.

A story takes even longer to develop in
Marco Berger's 2022 follow-up Horseplay
(a.k.a. Los Agitadores)

Six years later, Berger made Horseplay, in which a group of men in their mid-twenties—almost all of whom are assholes—spend their Christmas break at the more luxurious villa belonging to Artur’s (Iván Masliah) family. This gathering is a lot raunchier, with the guys graphically talking about their sexual exploits, pranking each other, and taking photos of each other in lewd poses. Poli (Franco de la Puente) is the lone gay guy, uncomfortable amongst all this toxic masculinity. Another guy at the villa, Andy (Agustín Machta) knows Poli’s secret, and while he doesn’t identify as gay he’s super horny and not opposed to using Poli’s available orifices to get off. But Andy makes clear he could never be in a relationship with a man. He’d much rather join Nico (Giganti and his scene-stealing ass) for a three-way with woman they met online.

Taekwondo is gentler and ultimately more romantic (and for me, more enjoyable), while Horseplay has a much darker, almost nihilistic tone that nevertheless leaves you unprepared for its shocking ending. I didn’t hate either movie, but both tested my patience. Berger’s slow, elliptical storytelling can work well when he’s focusing on two or three characters, as he did in the far superior film The Blonde One (starring one of Taekwondo’s actors, Gaston Re), but it’s not as easy to appreciate when he’s seemingly unfocused on 10-15. You’ll spend much of Taekwondo’s and Horseplay’s respective runtimes watching guys sleeping (in their skivvies or in the nude), swimming, trimming their toenails, getting high, eating, playing video games, reading, taking showers, sitting on the toilet, watching videos on their phones, and just sitting around shooting the shit, before a narrative—or at least a point—ever presents itself. If that sounds kind of dull, that’s because it is, but at least you’ll have plenty of nice scenery to look at as the two movies slowly approach their respective climaxes.

Double Takes: ‘Minx’ (2022-2023) ★★★ ½ / ‘Spread’ (2024) ★★

Minx, a show about a magazine that
features pictures of penises, ended up
being cancelled by dicks—twice.

Feminists and pornography have long had a contentious relationship, especially during porn’s “Golden Age” of the 1970s and ’80s, so wouldn’t it be funny if a staunch feminist found herself working in the very industry she abhors?

If we’re talking about the recent series Minx, the answer is a resounding yes. In this twice-cancelled series, idealistic Vassar grad Joyce Prigger (well-played by the wonderfully named Ophelia Lovibond) thinks readers of the early 1970s would be eager to read her feminist magazine, The Matriarchy Awakens. Unfortunately for her, the publishers she pitches it to aren’t—except one, Doug Renetti (Jake Johnson, also excellent), who runs Bottom Dollar Publishing, producer of skin mags with titles like Lusty Lesbos, Giant Juggs and Feet Feet Feet. He just wants a few changes, in writing style (“When I read it, I feel like a fucking teacher is yelling at me.”) and, most importantly, incorporating photos of naked men. Joyce balks, but her older sister Shelly (Lennon Parham) convinces her to take advantage of the opportunity, reminding her that it’s unrealistic to expect everything she wants. And so, The Matriarchy Awakens gets watered down into a cross between Ms. Magazine Lite and Playgirl: Minx.

Despite having plenty of lube, the Bottom Dollar office/studio is not a well-oiled machine, the operation only loosely supervised by Doug, with his assistant (and sometimes girlfriend) Tina (Idara Victor) frequently stepping in to reign in the chaos. Joyce learns her staff is comprised mostly of Bambi (Jessica Lowe), a nude model now working as “centerfold coordinator” (“I made it up. Doesn’t it sound fancy?”), and Richie (Oscar Montoya), the company’s make-up artist and sole gay male employee, as Minx’s photographer (“[N]one of the other guys want to shoot wieners,” Bambi explains).

Though it’s tempting to dismiss the show as Diane and Sam Make a Porno Mag, Minx has more going for it than that. Joyce struggles to reconcile her feminist ideals (and intellectual snobbery) with the business of selling skin mags, reluctantly accepting she’s becoming the face of sex positive feminism. Doug is cool when controversy makes Minx a best seller, but its high profile also attracts the attention of a Phyllis Schlafly-type city commissioner (Amy Landecker), though what nearly finishes his company is a “Men’s Rights” protest that turns violent. Meanwhile, Richie begins to feel he’s betraying his own community photographing models for the female gaze when Minx owes part of its success to gay readers. And Shelly and her husband Lenny (Rich Sommer) decide to take full advantage of changing mores to spice up their sex life, i.e., they become swingers.

I wanted to watch Minx when it first premiered on HBO Max, but before I could get around to it the show, which had been renewed for a second season, was abruptly cancelled and yanked from the platform. Starz came to the rescue, only to cancel it as well. Then the series landed on Tubi, America’s dumping ground for discarded content. But the series was abandoned way too soon and fully deserved a third season. As it is, viewers will be left wanting to know if Minx will be wrestled away from Constance (Elizabeth Perkins, who became Stockard Channing when we weren’t looking), the wealthy businesswoman who gradually takes over the magazine in season two; if Bambi joins the People’s Temple; and if show runners will ever realize they could audition some ambitious porn stars to do guest spots as Minx centerfolds instead of relying so heavily on prosthetic dicks. Sadly, we’ll never know.

Spread is better than one might expect,
but it’s hardly worth your (or Harvey
 Keitel’s) time.

Staying on Tubi, we go from an unwanted sit-com set in the swinging ’70s to an unasked-for “Tubi Original” movie set in the present day. Spread is about a struggling young journalist, Ruby (Elizabeth Gillies), who, out of desperation, takes a temp job at the floundering skin magazine/Hustler riff, the titular Spread, only to become invested in saving the magazine from being shut down. (Her big solution: introducing the editorial staff to the existence of social media. In the 2020s.)

Speaking of taking jobs out of desperation, Spread is run by Frank, played by HARVEY KEITEL! Yes, regularly-cast-by-Martin Scorsese-and-Quentin Tarantino Harvey Keitel. In a Tubi Original. It’s not easy getting old in Hollywood…

In fairness, while Spread is no Taxi Driver or Pulp Fiction, it’s better than one would expect of a Tubi Original. Its production values are at the higher end of mid, and all actors give professional performances if not necessarily likable ones. As one might expect, Keitel gives the most nuanced performance, actually managing to pull at my diseased heartstrings, though the tear he brought to my eye might have had more to do with my thinking of how sad it is that Harvey Keitel is accepting roles in Tubi Originals than the plight of his character. Gillies also gets a special shout-out, her performance reminiscent of a Mean Girls era (a.k.a. pre-trainwreck) Lindsay Lohan.

But while Spread is better made than expected, it fails as a comedy. Spread doesn’t set a high bar for itself, so I guess it’s not surprising it mines laughs from raunchy vocabulary words like analingus and from dildos (writer Buffy Charlet and/or director Ellie Kanner find the mere existence of sex toys hilarious). Those jokes are too obvious to pass up. Less forgivable is Spread reducing its characters to caricatures. Ruby describes herself as a feminist, though her commitment to the cause doesn’t go much deeper than putting a “Feminist as Fuck” sticker on her cubicle. What Ruby is, really, is an entitled white girl, appalled that she must take a job she feels is beneath her when she should be working at The Sophisticate, this movie’s fictional stand-in for Vanity Fair.

Yet Ruby is easier to warm up to than other characters, who are either assholes for the sake of being assholes, like editorial assistant Leslie (Bryan Craig), a gel-bombed douchebag who appears to have wandered in from giving nerds wedgies in a different movie, or simply goofy/weird, like Nelson (Blake Harrison), the socially awkward IT guy, and Prudence (Teri Polo), the flighty receptionist. Only David Allan Pearson as Hank, the too-old-for-this-shit editor of the Pussy Quest page, got a genuine laugh out of me.

Minx succeeds by focusing on its characters as they navigate the changing world of the early 1970s. Spread, on the other hand, has little to say, preferring to task its lead with re-organizing the office dildo closet because aren’t dildos funny? Unfortunately for Spread, not nearly enough.

Double Takes: ‘Nighthawks’ (1978) ★★★ / ‘Strip Jack Naked: Nighthawks 2’ (1991) ★★★

Being gay sure seemed sexier when I was in the closet. Not that I regret coming out—Lord knows, I stayed in the closet far longer than I should have—but I when I finally did it seemed, I dunno, anticlimactic. Oh, there were tears shed by my family, with assurances that they would love me “even if you were a child molester.” (Pro tip: if someone comes out to you, please don’t ever tell them this, no matter how well meaning.) This I was prepared for and considered it the price of entry. Having paid it, I was ready for all the sexy fun promised by the Falcon and Kristen Bjorn videos I’d watched. Instead, I discovered that living as an out gay man was just as mundane as living as a straight man.

I might have been better prepared if I had watched Ron Peck’s 1978 film Nighthawks instead of all those Falcon and Kristen Bjorn videos. The movie follows Jim (Ken Robertson, delivering the film’s most natural performance), a young-ish schoolteacher who spends his nights prowling London’s gay clubs for fresh cock. That lurid premise is amplified by the film’s grainy cinematography and unpolished acting that gives Nighthawks the aesthetics of a ’70s porno flick.  

The well-built Robertson’s nude scenes notwithstanding, Nighthawks isn’t all that lurid or sexy. Peck and his collaborator Paul Hallam are more concerned with capturing the awkward moments before and after Jim’s hookups, how in each instance either Jim or his Mr. Right Now make it plain that they hope this one night might lead to something more, even as they have an eye peeled for Mr. More Right. The movie perfectly captures the quiet desperation of being rejected, as when Jim waits hours in a pub for his cutest hookup to arrive for a second date, refusing to believe he’s been stood up. Yet Jim is shown to be equally callous when the hard-on is in the other man’s pants.

The film also nicely captures the delicate dance gay men of the time had to maintain between their private and professional lives. Jim is careful to drop his tricks off a block away from their jobs the next morning. Even though several of his colleagues know he’s gay, Jim tries to be discreet at his job—until near the film’s end, when one of his students asks if he is “bent.” Jim, fed up with having to hide his true self, tells the student he is, then proceeds to answer all his students’ follow-up questions, no matter how offensive. Surprisingly, he is not fired for doing so, only reprimanded, suggesting that 1978 London was still better than present-day Florida.

Nighthawks may be a significant movie, but it is not exactly an entertaining one. At nearly two-hours, this plotless film often rambles and is frequently boring, with several scenes that left me wondering if the movie had a point. There are scenes of Jim just standing in nightclubs, his eyes darting around, scoping out potential tricks, that go on for several minutes—minutes made more excruciating by Nighthawks’ atrocious ersatz disco soundtrack. 

Peck’s 1991 follow-up Strip Jack Naked: Nighthawks 2 isn’t a sequel so much as a personal essay mixed with a making-of documentary, with some bonus footage of naked men wandering around for no apparent reason other than shoehorning in some prurient content. The movie features several scenes cut from the original film (among Peck’s revelations is that the initial cut of Nighthawks was nearly three and a half hours long), and in showing them you begin to see the potential for a better edit than what was ultimately released. I, for one, would’ve gladly sacrificed one of Jim’s morning after scenes for the scene in which he goes home with a man who wants to play rough as the scene illustrates the darker side of hooking up. Then again, since this scene is explicitly sexual it may have been cut for censorship reasons. 

More compelling are Peck’s reflections on growing up queer, including a schoolboy crush gone wrong, coming out, and navigating gay life in the 1970s, when he was always on the hunt for sex but secretly hoping to find Mr. Right. “And when I thought I came close, I saw another who I thought would take me closer, and another, and another. And many a time he’d give me the slip after one night…or turn down the offer of a drink or a cigarette with a smile before walking away, as [I] did [myself] to so many others.”

Perhaps more relatable to today’s audiences are Peck’s recounting of the election of Margaret Thatcher and her government’s attack against civil liberties, specifically those regarding the LGBTQ community. The emergence of HIV-AIDS in the 1980s only added fuel to the homophobic fire. “Across the media, gay now equaled AIDS,” Peck observes. He does end Strip Jack Naked on a hopeful note, because one had reason to be hopeful in the 1990s. Not so sure about 2024.

Double Takes: ‘The Louisiana Hussy’ (1959) ★★ / ‘Desire in the Dust’ (1960) ★★★½

Great title, so-so movie.

I love a good, sweaty Southern melodrama, and I can love a bad one even more. Books and movies about horny Southern belles, hunky rednecks, conniving good ol’ boys and scheming trailer tramps always pique my interest, so I was immediately drawn to these two movies from the Eisenhower era that promise all sorts of sordid shenanigans in the Deep South.

I knew I had to see The Louisiana Hussy the moment I discovered it streaming on Tubi. Its title made it all but mandatory. Nan Peterson, who sort of resembles a pre-plastic surgery Melanie Griffith, plays the titular hussy, and she causes plenty of trouble when she arrives in the bayou shanty town known as the Pit. Well, she doesn’t so much arrive as she’s brought there by brothers Jacques and Pierre (Peter Coe and Robert Richards, respectively) when they find her in the woods, unconscious after having been thrown from a horse. She comes to long enough to give her name as Minette Lanier and accuse Jacques of stealing her jewelry, before returning to a state of semi-consciousness.

The plot synopsis on Tubi says that Minette “sows discord” between the two brothers, which is only partially true (Tubi also describes New Orleans as “a small bayou town,” so maybe don’t put too much stock in their synopses.) Jacques was already pissed at Pierre for marrying Lili (Betty Lynn, before she joined the cast of The Andy Griffith Show as Thelma Lou), whom he had the hots for, but Minette just makes things worse. First, she seduces Pierre—on his wedding night no less—then, when he starts getting too suspicious about her past, she runs to Jacques, claiming Pierre forced himself on her, only to belie that accusation by promptly fucking Jacques. Jacques, the big lunk smiling for the first time in the movie, is now firmly on Team Minette, and is none too happy when Pierre relays Doc Opie’s (Tyler McVey) discovery that the real Minette Lanier committed suicide in nearby Grange Hill. Jacques’ refusal to believe him spurs Pierre and Lili (who never learns of her husband’s cheating with the hussy) to take their pontoon boat across the bayou to Grange Hill to find out just who the fuck is this woman claiming to be Minette Lanier. 

Pierre and Lili not only find out the backstory of the Pit’s visiting vixen, but they also uncover why The Louisiana Hussy isn’t quite working as a movie: the interesting part—a sexy young woman ingratiating herself into the lives of a wealthy couple, seducing the husband and driving his wife to suicide—is a mere subplot, told in flashback. The hussy of Grange Hill doesn’t sound like a woman who would be content to hang out among the poor folk of the Pit, even if she is screwing its two most attractive men (pickings are slim in the Pit, OK?), but this inconsistency is of no concern to screenwriters Charles Lang and William Rowland. Their movie is about Jacques and Pierre; the hussy is just a device to titillate audiences.

Director Lee “Roll’em” Sholem, as befitting his nickname, keeps things moving along at brisk pace, continuity be damned (Peterson is wearing flats when leaving one location, but arrives at her destination wearing high heels), delivering a few grindhouse thrills along the way, including a daring-for-its-time skinny dipping scene. But for all the movie’s efforts to appeal to audiences’ prurient interests, The Louisiana Hussy never lives up to the awesomeness of its title.

20th Century Fox transformed Harry
Whittington’s 1956 pulp novel into
a very sweaty Southern melodrama.

1960’s Desire in the Dust, also set in Louisiana, is not only better, but sweatier, too. Seriously, almost every shirt actor Ken Scott wears in this movie is sopping wet. Scott plays Lonnie Wilson, the hunky son of sharecropper Zuba (Douglas Fowley, who’s sweaty and dirty). At the movie’s opening, Lonnie is returning home after doing time for killing the youngest son of town big wig Col. Marquand (Raymond Burr, wearing dry suits but frequently wiping perspiration from his scowling face) when driving drunk. Newspaperman Luke Connett (Edward Binns) has his suspicions Lonnie was wrongly convicted, but Lonnie has more pressing issues than confirming Luke’s hunches, specifically the issue pressing up against the zipper of his pants. “After six years of goin’ without it ain’t likely he’s gonna like to be sittin’ around chatting with us,” Zuba tells his oldest daughter Maude (Margaret Field, Sally’s mom) after Lonnie drives away in the family Jeep on his first night home.

Marquand’s blonde bombshell daughter, Melinda (Martha Hyer, giving a performance that should appeal to Morgan Fairchild fans), is the woman who relieves Lonnie’s six-year case of blue balls (I can’t believe he served his entire sentence without once messing around with a cellmate, but such things weren’t acknowledged in 1960). Lonnie’s post-nut bliss is quickly dashed when he learns Melinda has married Dr. Ned Thomas (Brett Halsey). “I waited six years for you!” Lonnie rages. “You had no choice,” Melinda smirks. Melinda is content to keep Lonnie as a side piece, but Lonnie doesn’t want to share. But can he get his revenge before Marquand—with the help of Sheriff Wheaton (Kelly Thordson, also very sweaty)—silences him for good?

At the movie’s outer edges are Marquand’s mentally unbalanced wife (Joan Bennett), who refuses to believe her youngest son is dead and goes ballistic whenever her nurse (Irene Ryan, better known as Granny from The Beverly Hillbillies) tells her the truth; Paul Marquand (Jack Ging), who is basically the Eric Trump of his family; and Cass (Anne Helm), Lonnie’s little sister, who’s having an affair with Paul but getting impatient for him to stand up to his domineering dad and marry her.

Desire in the Dust benefits from a strong cast (Burr, Scott, Hyer and Fowley are all great in their roles), and William F. Claxton’s direction is solid if not exactly distinctive. The movie’s greatest strength, though, is respecting Harry Whittington’s 1956 novel on which it’s based. It’s not 100% faithful, but it’s close enough to where I’d say the movie is just as good as the book. Some aspects of the movie are a bit icky, however, and by icky, I mean incestuous. Marquand and Melinda’s interactions often suggest they are lovers rather than father and daughter, and Lonnie leers upon seeing his little sister Cass for the first time in six years, all but saying he’d like to tap that. Not sure if the suggestion of incest is meant to play into Deep South tropes or not, but it’s definitely there. It should also be pointed out that each movie features exactly one (1) Black person and they are servants to their movie’s respective wealthy characters, which just doesn’t reflect the population of either movie’s setting, though this very much reflects the time in which these movies were made.

Its uncomfortable familial interactions and unrealistic racial representation aside, I love Desire in the Dust and credit it with introducing me to the work of Harry Whittington. The only thing that would make it even better is if it had been made in the mid-1960s by Russ Meyer. Unfortunately, Desire in the Dust is not available for streaming or on Blu-ray. However, if you’re not too picky about video quality, there's a perfectly watchable copy here.

Double Takes: ‘The House of Usher’ (1989) ★★ / (2006) ★

OK, I was wrong.

A couple years ago, when I reviewed a selection of David DeCoteau movies, I advised readers to skip DeCoteau’s very gay and very bad Edgar Allen Poe’s The House of Usher and try their luck with two other schlocky versions, one from 1989, the other from 2006, speculating that both movies look “like they deliver the fun kind of bad DeCoteau didn’t.”

They do not, though director Alan Birkinshaw’s The House of Usher (1989), comes close. In this one, Molly (Romy Walthall, billed as Romy Windsor) and her fiancée Ryan (Rufus Swart) are vacationing in London when they get an invitation to visit Ryan’s heretofore unknown uncle, Roderick Usher. But on the way to visit Uncle Rod, Ryan swerves into a tree to avoid two children in the middle of the road (why, yes, they are ghosts; how did you ever guess?) Ryan’s injured, so Molly goes to get help, by chance stumbling up to the Usher mansion, where Clive the asshole butler (Norman Coombes) assures her that he’ll make sure Ryan gets the medical assistance he needs. Meanwhile, why doesn’t she have a cup of tea and a lie down upstairs before dinner with the master of the house?

When Molly finally meets Roderick (Oliver Reed), she’s assured that Ryan is in the hospital but unable to receive visitors just yet. Though Molly has her doubts, she agrees to stay put. However, it seems no amount of drugged tea—served regularly by Clive’s miserable wife (Anne Stradi)—will keep Molly in her room. As she explores the titular House of Usher, discovering, among other things, another member of the Usher clan (Donald Pleasence) kept locked away in the attic, Molly begins to suspect Uncle Rod might have sinister intentions.

This version of Usher has some things going for it. There are a few—very few—noteworthy set pieces, including a hand forced into a meat grinder fake-out and a character getting his dick gnawed-off by a rat; plus, Reed and, especially, Pleasence raise the bar considerably. Unfortunately, we spend most of our time with Walthall, whose performance seems better suited for a movie entitled Sorority Beach Party than a Gothic horror. In fact, the movie’s whole tone is off, like Birkinshaw and screenwriter Michael J. Murray had initially conceived this adaption of Poe’s story as a horror comedy but couldn’t think up any jokes—good or bad—before filming began. Yet, the movie is still filmed like a comedy, as brightly lit as a Disney Channel sit-com and with tacky sets that look as if they were hastily painted for a haunted house attraction at a high school Halloween fair. And the less said about the ending, which is as infuriating as it is nonsensical, the better.

But at least 1989’s Usher has some entertainment value. Not so director Hayley Cloake’s 2006 adaptation, which clocks in at a mere 81 minutes yet feels twice as long. This time out, our doomed heroine is Roderick Usher’s ex-girlfriend from college, Jill (pouty blonde Izabella Miko), who travels to the Usher estate upon learning of the death of Roderick’s sister—and Jill’s best friend—Madeline. Though the stern, Mrs. Danvers-esque housekeeper Mrs. Thatcher (Beth Grant) is less than welcoming, Jill sticks around after Maddy’s funeral, rekindling her romance with the charmless Roderick (a monotone Austin Nichols). Jill puts up with Mrs. Thatcher’s cock-blocking and her beau’s nightly sessions in a sensory deprivation tank to treat his neurasthenia, but it’s only upon discovering that the Usher family tree is a straight line that she begins to reconsider her relationship to the brooding Roderick.

Cloake’s movie may be a bit more competently made than DeCoteau’s Usher, but it isn’t any better; it’s just straighter. The movie’s most inspired elements—mixing in bits of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca into the story; the incest twist—are wasted, as are most of the actors. Miko fares best, though I’m not sure if that’s testament to her acting skill so much as she’s just given more of a character to play than her co-stars. An actor who should have stolen this movie was Grant, a prolific character actor who usually makes a big impression in small roles. Grant frequently appears in comedies, so I was looking forward to seeing what she did with a more serious role. Not much, it turns out. It’s not her fault, though; it’s screenwriter Collin Chang’s. And if you’re thinking of checking this one out to ogle Miko or Nichols, don’t bother. Though rated R, this Usher only offers a few shots of Miko in panties and skimpy top and a near-subliminal shot of Nichols’ pubes. At least DeCoteau had the courtesy to appeal his audience’s prurient interests, albeit clumsily. Despite the curb appeal of her movie’s cast, Cloake’s The House of Usher is strictly a teardown property.

Double Takes: 'Madame Claude' (1977) ★★½ / (2021) ★★★

Before the Mayflower Madam, and well before the Hollywood Madam, there was Madame Claude, who in her 1960s and ’70s heyday reportedly supplied women for John F. Kennedy and the Shah of Iran. All three women got their stories told in made-for-TV movies, but only Madame Claude (real name Fernande Grudet) merited a feature.

Unfortunately for Grudet, that theatrical film, 1977’s Madame Claude, was directed by Just Jaeckin, the same man who gave the world Emmanuelle. While Jaeckin does provide some biographical details about the Parisienne madam (excellently portrayed by Françoise Fabian), such as her acting as a police informant in exchange for police protection, he primarily uses her as a framing device for setting up a series of softcore sex scenes. The movie seems more focused on the character David Evans (Murray Head, post-Sunday Bloody Sunday and pre-“One Night in Bangkok”), a sleazy photographer being used by police to get incriminating snapshots of Mme. Claude’s girls with their clients. Another story thread focuses on Elizabeth (a better-than-usual Dayle Haddon), the madam’s newest recruit who is alternately too headstrong to tolerate the controlling madam’s bullshit, yet too naïve to realize she’ll never be more than a whore to her clients. The movie also features Robert Webber as a JFK stand-in and Klaus Kinski as a hedonistic business tycoon (don’t worry, neither of them get naked).

As one might expect from fashion photographer-turned-erotic filmmaker Jaeckin, Madame Claude looks great and it has a few spirited sex scenes, but the movie’s tone is all over the place, bouncing from frothy sex romp to sexy drama to political thriller. The movie is further hampered by its disjointed narrative, which is often hard to follow. Only Fabian’s performance as the steely Claude gives the movie any real dramatic weight. Jaeckin may have been going for something a little more substantial than his previous softcore outings, but ultimately the movie is less Klute with a French accent and more akin to The Happy Hooker Goes to Washington remade as a French drama.

Madame Claude did spawn a 1981sequel, Madame Claude 2, directed by François Mimet, though its a.k.a., Intimate Moments, is more fitting as it has even less to do with the infamous madam than the first movie. It’s pure Skinemax trash. No, Mme. Grudet didn’t get a proper biopic until Sylvie Verheyde’s Madame Claude landed on Netflix last year.

Verheyde’s film is more serious—way more—than exploitative, and its story is structured more like a traditional biopic, making it easier to follow than Jaeckin’s film, though viewers still need to be fast on their feet to keep up with some of the political machinations. The titular madame is played by Karole Rocher, and while her acting is fine, I thought her portrayal reduced Mme. Claude to little more than a neurotic bitch—you know, the kind you see in almost every other French melodrama. (I don’t know if this portrayal is more accurate, but it's certainly less interesting.) Fabian’s performance showed a woman who was always in control, while Rocher’s madam is frequently throwing tantrums and breaking shit like she’s on The Real Housewives of Marais. She’s also colder than any street pimp. After one of her girls returns from a date all bruised and bloody, the madam blithely tells her, “It’s nothing. A nice shower, a good night’s sleep, and that’s the end of it.”

Unlike Jaeckin’s film, which never looks like it’s taking place in a time other than the mid-’70s, Verheyde’s Madame Claude pays more attention to period detail. Still, there are anachronisms, primarily with the character Sidonie (Garrance Marillier), who is sort of this movie’s Elizabeth, if Elizabeth was a wealthy girl with daddy issues. Sidonie is always smoking 120s, even in the scenes set in the late 1960s, when that length of cigarette wasn’t introduced until the early ’70s. Worse, Sidonie’s look never, ever changes. Whether it’s the 1960s or 1990s, Sidonie always looks like a 20-something woman with the exact same hairstyle. This oversight is pretty fucking glaring considering that the movie takes great pains to make sure 1990s-era Mme. Claude looks like she’s in her 70s. The movie also can’t escape its cheapness, with much of it being shot on cramped sets, giving it an overall claustrophobic feel. Madame Claude 2021 may be leagues above Call Me: The Rise and Fall of Heidi Fleiss, but it’s still a made-for-TV movie.

For all its flaws, I think Verheyde’s movie is the better biopic, which is why I’m giving it a half-star more. However, I think Jaeckin’s brand of highbrow Eurotrash is the more interesting watch.