A Gay Man Watches Straight Porn #2: ‘A Place Beyond Shame’

I watched a crappy VHS rip online
(#cheapassqueen), but Vinegar
Syndrome has a pristine DVD available.

I knew the next straight porn film I watched would have to feature Seka, but which one? There were a lot of contenders: Blonde Fire appealed to my love of noir, even if Johnny Wadd wasn’t exactly Philip Marlowe (more of a draw was the trifecta of three porn legends, Seka, John Holmes and director Bob Chinn), and Ultra Flesh, with its vaginal laser beams, looked fun. Prisoner of Paradise—also with Holmes and co-directed by Chinn—was another strong contender. But, at the end of the day, I went with 1980’s A PLACE BEYOND SHAME because of the title. I love the title, which would be perfect for a lurid novel about backwoods debauchery or an early Russ Meyer drive-in movie.

 A Place Beyond Shame likely wasn’t going to be a hardcore take on RM’s Mudhoney, of course, but by this point I was so enamored by the title that I felt compelled to watch it, even if its story was considerably less ambitious than I wanted it to be.

Said story is slight indeed. Seka (or “Seka,” as the star is cast as “herself”) has an acute lack of sex drive—you know, just like Seka. Sex repulses her, in fact. When her suitor in the opening scene, Paul (Don Fernando), makes advances, she tries to put him off. “I’ve got hors d’oeuvres warming in the oven,” she says, trying to escape his embrace. “You’re the tastiest hors d’oeuvres I see,” is Paul’s leering reply. (Three people are credited with writing the script.) Seka tolerates Paul’s roving hands, but she can’t hide her revulsion when he guides her hand to his dick—not that Paul notices. “I’m gonna fuck you,” he pants. Not tonight, he isn’t. Seka angrily pushes him away.

“I said I CAIN’T!” Seka shouts, exposing her Virginia origins. (When I was 14—the time I first learned of Seka’s existence—I thought Seka was Swedish because she was a frequent star of all those Swedish Erotica movies that I saw advertised in various skin mags, not realizing Swedish Erotica was an American brand name. I also thought her name was pronounced See-ka.)

Who can fuck with a boom mic looming overhead?

The following morning Seka calls her friend Diana (Lori Blue), wanting to talk. Diana says she’ll be over in an hour, allowing enough time for the man sitting beside her chair, idly jerking off, to go down on her. “There’s always time for breakfast,” Diana drawls. After her morning sexing, Diana gets dressed in her tightest disco finery (1980 was really just 1979: The Sequel, after all) and visits her frustrated friend.

It turns out Diana had problem similar to Seka’s (“Not a heavy one. I just couldn’t come.”) and she knows a guy who can help. That guy is Michael, played by Paul Thomas. During Seka’s first meeting with him we learn that she’s a computer programmer (I feel cheated that we’re denied scenes of her at work, busily coding). “And you’re here to be reprogrammed,” Michael says. (Three screenwriters, ladies and gentlemen.) He tells Seka that he can help her complete her “book of thoughts.” Translation: he’s a hypnotist. Now if only someone can help Michael get rid of that boom dangling just above his head.

Paul Thomas with special guest star: the boom mic.

While hypnotized, Seka doesn’t relive past experiences but rather, achieves a sort of clairvoyance, seeing events for which she was never present, such as her ex (Ken Scudder) on his honeymoon with another woman, and her mother (Veri Knotty, who made me feel retroactively vindicated by also pronouncing Seka “See-ka”) in a three-way with Mike Horner and Blair Harris.

There is also an extended sequence during which a hypnotized Seka “sees” Jesse Adams as a cowboy getting it on with cowgirl Lysa Thatcher; Diana Holt getting her cooch crushed by Cossack cosplayer Aaron Stuart; and some obligatory girl-on-girl action between Mai Lin and China Leigh, who are later joined, all of a sudden, by Billy Dee. Intercut between these different sex scenes is footage of a Seka, uncontrollably turned-on, stripping off her clothes, turning her butt to the camera and digitally exploring her lower orifices.

TL;DR: A Rant About Scene Length, Unimaginative Filming

This montage of four different sex scenes makes up nearly a quarter of the movie’s 75-minute runtime, which is damn near epic compared to all the movie’s other sex scenes that usually clock in at four minutes. Yes, four minutes! That’s barely enough time to work up a hard-on. Lest you feel cheated, the brevity of the sex scenes is offset by the sheer number of them: a whopping nine, counting that 23-minute montage as one and not counting Seka and Fernando’s abortive attempt at the movie’s opening. Of course, 23 minutes seems stingy by current porn standards, when a single scene can be over 30 minutes long, with at least 20 spent on pounding ass (or pussy, though my experience with current straight porn is limited to my hasty perusal of what’s available on aebn.com). They’re not scenes anymore; they’re gifs. Personally, I find 10-15 minutes per hardcore sex scene a happy medium: long enough to perform a variety of sex acts, but short enough to keep the scene from becoming boring and repetitive.

Speaking of boring and repetitive sex scenes, the aforementioned montage highlights directors Sharon Mitchell and the late Fred Lincoln’s lack of inventiveness in filming them, the pair favoring the alternation between close-ups of faces and close-ups of genitalia. At one point I lost track, as can happen when you check your phone, and couldn’t be sure if the out-of-context cock and pussy on my screen belonged to Adams and Thatcher or Holt and Stuart (Lin, Leigh and Dee were a bit more distinguishable). Sure, the draw of these movies is that they show non-simulated sex, but we want to appreciate the rest of the performers’ bodies, too. I certainly wanted more coverage of a few of the guys—namely Blair Harris, Jesse Adams and Aaron Stuart—but even the women are often little more than disembodied vaginas.

And Now, Back to Our Feature Presentation

The therapist, Michael, having shown remarkable restraint while his patient masturbated a few feet away from where he sat, finally gives Seka the necessary hot meat injection to push her Beyond Shame (a surprisingly underwhelming scene). A cumshot later, Seka is all horned up and ready go out into the world and fuck, starting with a jogger (R.J. Reynolds) she and Diana pick up in the park. (When the jogger responds to Diana’s proposition with, “I’m game!”, I thought he said, “I’m gay!”, which I thought would’ve been a funny twist.*) Seka may be horny, but she’s still apprehensive, having to be coached by Diana when handling the jogger’s member: “Wanna try to suck it? C’mon, it won’t bite you.”

The finale sees Seka having a do-over date with Paul, the newly confident “computer programmer” ordering the young man to get out of his clothes and promising to give him the ride of his life. Once said ride is completed, Seka turns to the camera and says, “Look out world, here I come”—and it’s obvious by her seductive tone how “come” should be spelled.

Look out world!

Sharon, Fred and Seka

A Place Beyond Shame was an early effort for co-directors Lincoln and Mitchell, both better known in 1980 for working in front of the camera (this was Mitchell’s directorial debut). In the 2005 book The Other Hollywood: The Uncensored Oral History of the Porn Film Industry, by Legs McNeil and Jennifer Osborne, Mitchell recounts how she got the money together to make some movies and brought in Lincoln to help her. According to Lincoln, the original plan was to re-shoot a movie Mitchell had started with Vanessa Del Rio (the rushes sucked so the project was scrapped), but none of the original players were available. They had heard about Seka, who was shooting loops at the time, and booked her as the new lead. “[Seka] was very nice, very cool, and I just liked the way she liked to fuck,” Mitchell is quoted in The Other Hollywood. She later adds: “A Place Beyond Shame was Seka’s first movie. I probably made about $35,000 off of it.”

In her interview with the Rialto Report, Seka says Dracula Sucks was her first feature (IMDb lists Love Notes as her first movie but that just may be the first of her movies to be released). In fact, there are a lot of contradictions in the recollections in The Other Hollywood and what Seka herself told the Rialto Report (she wasn’t interviewed by The Other Hollywood authors). Mitchell says she was the one who coached Seka on losing her “horrible Southern accent” and pornographer Roy Karch says it was the late porn star Bill Margold who came up with the name Seka. In her Rialto Report interview, Seka says she took voice and elocution lessons to lose her accent before she ever got into porn and that she got the name Seka from a woman she knew in Las Vegas. Was I to read Seka’s autobiography, Inside Seka, I’m sure I’d encounter even more contradictions, but my to-be-read pile is pretty daunting as it is. Considering that everyone involved is recounting events from decades ago and all have consumed more than their fair share of drugs during that time, it’s best to just take everyone’s account with a grain of salt (or, in the spirit of the Golden Age of Porn, a line of coke).

So, how about the final product? Lincoln and Mitchell did a respectable job (we’ll forgive those boom mic intrusions and sometimes murky lighting, though these aren't issues in the Vinegar Syndrome DVD release), but I didn’t enjoy it as a film as I did Every Inch a Lady. It’s just something to jerk-off to, the work of performers looking for a Plan B, not aspiring filmmakers looking for a creative outlet. (Lincoln directed nearly 350 porn videos before his death in 2013, so the move to directing clearly worked out for him.)  The only thing that makes Shame distinctive is its leading lady. “I’ve never been an actor,” Seka told the Rialto Report, and she’s not—she’s a star, and she’s about the only reason to see Shame. I still love the title, though.

*R.J. Reynolds was bi, with a few gay porn titles— Jockstrap, Joe Gage’s Closed Set—in his filmography. He died in 1987 from an AIDS-related illness at the age of 32. Now I’ve made you sad.

Bulges, Bitches and Bad Wigs

Strip clubs generally don’t do it for me—I find it difficult to objectify someone I’m interacting with—but movies about male strippers are another story. Besides eliminating that pesky direct interaction, movies about male strippers are, with a few notable exceptions, enjoyably ridiculous.

When women strip in movies, they’re often presented as victims or sluts (again, there are notable exceptions). But if a man takes his clothes off for an audience of women—and they’re always women in mainstream movies — he gets a wink and a nudge. Dude, you must be up to your tits in pussy, amiright?

Christopher Atkins shows off his talent.

Rick, an exotic dancer by night and junior college student by day, has easy access to pussy in 1983’s A NIGHT IN HEAVEN. He’s got a girlfriend, sexy redhead Slick (Sandra Beall, whose acting style is best described as Kristen Stewart with wired jaws), but she’s cool with him bedding other women, like the dimwitted blonde neighbor in his trailer park, where he lives with his mother. But when his professor, Faye, whose class he’s failing, shows up at one of his performances—at a club called Heaven, of course—Rick makes it his mission to give her a (hard pounding) F.

Rick is played by early ’80s heartthrob Christopher Atkins, who was sort of like ’70s heartthrob Shaun Cassidy, only with a third of the talent and a 100% more likely to take his clothes off. Being naked with Brooke Shields (and her body double) in The Blue Lagoon put Atkins on the map. He kept his clothes on for musical comedy The Pirate Movie in 1982, though he did sport a skimpy diaper during the song “Pumpin’ Blowin’”(there might be a god, after all…). That Atkins was cast as a stripper was inevitable, though his stripper costume is surprisingly modest, a pair of silver lamé shorts rather than the high-waisted thongs—dad thongs?—of his fellow dancers. Viewers need not give up hope: Atkins goes full Monty later in the movie, when he finally beds his professor, Faye.

Faye is played by Lesley Ann Warren, who is kind of like an insecure Susan Sarandon. Though Heaven is Atkins’ vehicle, and there is potential to develop Rick’s story into one about the struggles of working-class America, this movie primarily belongs to Warren because sometimes it’s best to just accept that you’re dealing with a Playgirl fantasy and nothing more. Faye is all high collars and hand wringing, married to a NASA engineer (Robert Logan), who rides a recumbent bike and who sulks when she doesn’t take a day off from her job at the college so they can mess around (the selfish bitch!). Faye’s dragged to a strip club by her visiting sister, Patsy (a feisty Deborah Rush), and because college boys in silver lamé shorts trump recumbent bikes, her libido is suddenly kicked into high gear. Faye’s timing is off, though. Her husband loses his job and his sex drive just when Faye wants to put some lovin’ on him. Suddenly Rick’s flirtations become harder to ignore, but is he really smitten or is she just another notch in his belt?

A Night in Heaven bombed in theaters, though its soundtrack, featuring Bryan Adams’ hit “Heaven” (Adams’ connection might be problematic now), gained some traction in pop culture. Unsurprisingly, the movie has a gay cult following. Enjoyably dumb and we get to see Christopher Atkins’ cock? How could we resist?

Even dumber is JUST CAN’T GET ENOUGH, a 2002 made-for-Here! TV movie about the rise of Chippendales in the early 1980s and its co-founder Somen Banerjee’s hiring of a hit man to kill choreographer Nick De Noia. The movie is quick to disabuse anyone of the notion that they are about to see a serious account with a title card that reads: What you are about to see pretty much happened. Although most of the names have been changed for legal reasons, we did use a few names of real people who, as a result of their untimely deaths (details to follow), can no longer sue.

But if you’re expecting to see a satirical take on a true crime story, à la To Die For or Bernie, guess again. Just Can’t Get Enough was written and directed by Dave Payne, and Dave Payne, whose credits include Alien Terminator, is no Gus Van Sant or Richard Linklater. What you get is the equivalent of Showgirls with the production values of Behind the Camera: The Unauthorized Story of ‘Dif’rent Strokes’, made slightly less awesome by the fact that Just Can’t Get Enough is self-aware. There is a lot of intentional, if poorly executed, comedy in Just Can’t Get Enough, like when a dancer lands in jail after whipping off his thong (the movie’s one shot of peen) and dry humping a female vice cop, but I also suspect the makers of this movie were hoping to hide this movie’s shittiness under the comedy label. Nice try, but no.

Hilarious.

I’ll give the movie this: the actors cast as Chippendales men do have some pretty hot bodies, especially Jonathan Aube as Chad, the club’s “innocent” host, who I found much more appealing than Christopher Atkins’ in A Night in Heaven. Whatever lustful feelings their bodies inspire is immediately undone by some horrendous wigs, however. A pre-Six Feet Under J.P. Pitoc, as the club’s cokehead emcee Clayton, appears to be wearing Lorraine Bracco’s hair from Goodfellas. At least Aube’s fake mustache isn’t too obvious.

Who wore it best?

A bit more disturbing than the wigs is the racism. Almost every character in this movie is an airhead, but you can subtract 20 extra I.Q. points if that character is a person of color. Banerjee wasn’t an easy guy to love, and he clearly made some questionable decisions, but this movie portrays him as a fucking moron. That actor Shelley Malil was evidently directed to really Apu the fuck out of the role doesn’t help matters. Worse is the Mexican hit man hired to off De Noia. It could be argued that his stupidity is attributable to his heroin addiction, not his nationality, but that’s a weak argument, considering the actor playing him, Alejandro Patiño, plays him like a white actor doing brown face. There is one lone black dancer in this movie’s Chippendales crew, but he’s nothing more than an extra. Considering how other people of color are treated in this movie, I’d say that actor dodged a bullet.

Grrrl!

Most of the acting in the movie ranges from barely passable to offensive, but Peter Nevargic as Nick De Noia deserves a special shout out, not for being especially skilled but for best embodying the campiness that the filmmakers claim they’re going for. Wearing over-sized aviator glasses and a Members Only jacket, Nevargic minces into every scene, teeth bared, ready to bite into every line. And when he bites, he bites down hard. Other than being called a faggot by a disgruntled dancer, De Noia’s sexuality is never remarked upon, but Nevargic makes it clear the choreographer is a vicious queen. He’s not on screen nearly enough.

Not all male stripper movies are stupid, as Magic Mike recently proved (not so its pointless sequel, Magic Mike XXL). And some male stripper movies are actually TV shows, like TOY BOY, a Spanish-made series currently streaming on Netflix. I was drawn to its male stripper-seeks-justice storyline, envisioning thong-clad men beating the shit out of people, something I’d hoped Jean Claude Van Damme might have treated us to in the ’90s. Alas, Toy Boy doesn’t give us something so glorious, though it’s still very much worth watching. Hugo (Jesús Mosquera) is a stripper framed for a murder he’s sure he didn’t commit (he was drugged at an orgy; how that flaming corpse ended up on his sailboat is a mystery to him), and once released from prison he seeks to clear his name by finding the real killer. Though he gets in plenty of dangerous situations, Hugo’s quest, aided by his lawyer Triana (Maria Pedraza), is more methodical than violent. The story that unfolds, involving rival wealthy families, corrupt policemen, rape, pedophilia, illicit affairs and doomed loves, is more Prime Time soap than crime thriller, and that’s OK. More than OK, in fact.

Though Mosquera and his exotic dancing brethren are easy on the eyes, it’s the women who make Toy Boy interesting. Macarena Medina (Cristina Castaño, stealing almost every scene she’s in), Hugo’s sugar mama until he was sent to prison for murdering her husband, is the show’s vixen character, a bit more dangerous than Dynasty’s Alexis Carrington but not quite as vicious as Game of Thrones’ Cersei Lannister. Just as ruthless is Benigna (Adelfa Calvo, also excellent), matriarch of the wealthy Rojas family. Benigna presents herself as a kindly grandmother, content to just tend to her tomato garden while her son-in-law manages the family fortune, but she’s a ball-breaker of a bitch behind the scenes. She’s a live action embodiment of Mom in Futurama.

Carlo Costanzia as Jairo.

There’s also a gay romance between one of the dancers, Jairo (Carlo Costanzia, whose got a Kit Harington sad-eyed-puppy thing going on), a mute, and Macarena’s blue-haired son Andrea (Juanjo Almeida), a basket case. The show is very matter of fact in its treatment of homosexuality. None of Jairo’s co-workers seem to care that he’s gay, only expressing concern that he’s turning tricks to supplement his income (never mind that Germán, the sole Black stripper, regularly services older women for cash), and Macarena is more concerned about her son’s mental health than his homosexuality. Jairo and Andrea’s relationship doesn’t really progress beyond the hand-holding stage, though this can be attributed to Andrea being a fucking mess. Most of same-sex action shown in Toy Boy occurs during drug-fueled orgies, as if gay sex is nothing more than a kink to be indulged once the molly kicks in.

It’s in the prurient interest department that Toy Boy disappoints. Sex scenes, straight and gay, are few and relatively tame, and the series is surprisingly stingy with the nudity. In scenes showcasing the dancers in action, of which there is at least one per episode, the men don’t even strip down to thongs but Speedos and boxcuts. You’d see more man ass in a season of American Horror Story, and don’t even think about seeing any dick.

You’ll see some dick in the 2018 documentary THIS ONE’S FOR THE LADIES — if you watch the NC-17 version, that is. What I saw streaming on Hulu was rated R and the exposed, erect cocks were all blurred out. In the words of one of the women interviewed, “Why’re you running? It’s just penis.” Fortunately, like Toy Boy, This One’s for the Ladies has more to offer than just bare flesh.*

Director Gene Graham focuses his camera the male exotic dance circuit in Newark, New Jersey. What sets Graham’s documentary apart from other docs about male dancers is he’s focusing on Black dancers (according to IMDb, Graham made this movie in response to the lack of diversity in the Magic Mike films). Though the temporary venues aren’t much, the shows are flamboyant, rowdy and plenty raunchy, making Magic Mike look like a church Christmas pageant. (Channing Tatum never sported a sequined cock sock on his stiff member or ate a cupcake off a woman’s ass.) “Y’all ready to see some sexy motherfuckers?” emcee Sweet Tee asks the crowd. Hell, yeah!

Among those sexy motherfuckers are Young Rider, who learned showmanship from a drag performing uncle; Fever, a hardcore Superman fan whose energetic performances make him a fan favorite; Satan, whose ripped body makes a church-going woman shudder with dirty thoughts (“…[H]e got up on stage, took his piece out, and I’ve just been in love with him ever since,” she gushes); and, my favorites, the brothers Raw Dog and Tygar, who were encouraged to dance after taking their shirts off at a house party. Only Tygar was interested initially: “Raw Dawg told me from the rip, ‘It’s gay and I don’t want nothing to do with it.’” As so often happens, money helped change Raw Dog’s mind.

One of Raw Dawg and Tygar’s promotional photos. Raw Dawg
had no worries about appearing incestuous, either.

There’s even a female dancer in the mix, Blaze. She a lesbian, but what’s interesting about her story is that she is able to find a place in the roster of male dancers, and that she has fans in an audience of straight women. “When Blaze is here I’m gay that one night,” says one fan, who goes by the handle Poundcake. I’m pretty sure audiences at  Penthouse Executive Club, say, would not be as accepting if a male dancer were introduced into the mix.

There’s a side of social commentary that creeps into this documentary, though it’s never explicitly addressed. The dancers and their fans live working class lives, and expectations are calibrated accordingly. One dance event, benefiting an autism organization, nets less than $300, which is nothing to sneeze at but still seems low. Yet the organizer deems the event a success. More positively is the strange sense of community that shown among the dancers and fans—strange only because it arises from doing Jell-O shots and watching men swing their dicks around. I can certainly think of worse causes for communities to coalesce.

*That said, when I watch a movie about strippers, I expect to see everything, goddammit.

Joan Says ‘Fuck,’ Pauline Says ‘Sorry,’ Franco Shows His Dick

I have a weakness for both Joan Collins and Franco Nero, so as soon as I discovered they were in a movie together I knew I had to see it.

Unfortunately, that movie was THE TIME OF THEIR LIVES, a 2017 entry in the Senior Citizens Are People Too comedy sub-genre, the alternative to the Geezers with Guns action genre currently owned by Liam Neeson. These comedies usually exist to (a) give jobs to elderly stars who aren’t Liam Neeson; (b) give elderly audiences not into action (read: women) something to watch; and (c) remind audiences that senior citizens still want to fuck. Though there’s a subset of these films that try to be as raunchy as the stuff made for the kids, like Dirty Grandpa (better to stick to Bad Grandpa, even if it doesn’t star an actual old person), most of them are far gentler, usually staying on the PG-13 side of naughtiness, and usually starring Diane Keaton (Book Club, 5 Flights Up, And So It Goes), Shirley MacLaine (Wild Oats, Elsa & Fred), and/or Morgan Freeman (5 Flights Up, Going in Style, Last Vegas).

Though it’s decidedly R-rated, writer-director Roger Goldby’s The Time of Their Lives is an even gentler SCAPT comedy, so gentle that it’s easy to forget it’s a comedy at all. 

Joan Collins plays Helen Shelly, a one-time movie star, now a penniless kleptomaniac living in a London retirement home where the manager (Allene Quincy) orders her charges about like a general in the Wehrmacht. Pauline Collins plays Priscilla, a doormat of a housewife upon whom her asshole husband Frank (Ronald Pickup) metaphorically wipes his feet. Thanks to a script contrivance, Priscilla accidentally gets included in Helen’s retirement home’s day trip to the beach, kicking off the pair’s madcap adventures. Helen persuades/bullies Priscilla into helping her ditch Ilsa, Wrangler of the Wizened, and abscond to France so she can attend the funeral of an ex-lover. Hilarity Wan smiles ensue.

“Perhaps you remember me?”

“I’m sorry.”

Among their adventures is an encounter with Alberto (Franco Nero, sporting a mullet that earns this movie a place on his bad hair filmography, just after The Visitor and Shark Hunter) after their stolen car runs out of gas. (Yes, they steal a car, a scene that’s not nearly as rib tickling as the movie thinks it is.) Alberto is a painter so famous he can’t walk down the street without being stopped by autograph hounds every few feet. (Quick, filmmakers, name a current living painter or poet who exists on the same strata of celebrity as Robert Downey, Jr. or Cardi B. Can’t think of any? Exactly.) For his first few minutes onscreen we suspect he might also be mute as Alberto does little more than grunt when he encounters Helen and Priscilla stranded on the side of the road. He takes them back to his mansion and, over the protests of his bitchy young nurse (this movie uniformly presents caretakers as forces of evil), invites them to stay the night. Helen all but offers the elderly painter a hand job during dinner, but it’s the shy Priscilla who captures Alberto’s (weak) heart.

“. . .”

The movie continues to follow the well-traveled map of tropes, including old people smoking pot, exposed secrets, a third act break-up, learned lessons and making-up in the finale. The movie’s only surprise is some full-frontal Franco. (I would’ve preferred seeing Franco from 40-years ago, but septuagenarian Franco—who also shows the goods in the series Delicious—makes an impressive daddy bear.)

If only we got the Full Franco when he appeared in
The Third Eye in 1966.

Some might consider Joan’s performance in this movie brave. The role of Helen requires the actress to acknowledge her true age and parody her glamorous image, but this doesn’t make her brave so much as a realist (well, as much as a woman who owns four homes yet denies she’s rich can be) and a good sport, respectively. Joan does get to sing a song, penned by her ex, Anthony Newley, and she sings it well, a pleasant surprise, but otherwise there’s not much here for her to sink her teeth into. Maybe some would find it amusing to hear a woman in her 80s drop a few f-bombs, but most would wish she was wittier lines. She had sharper dialog in The Bitch.

Pauline Collins is equally wasted, her comedic gifts squandered on a character who does little more than apologize for her existence the majority of the movie’s runtime. She does get to show some pluck when she rescues a boy who has fallen into Pertuis d’Antioche strait (Priscilla is an avid swimmer, a detail tied to her not-so-well-kept secret) and bawls out the mother of the boy for being negligent. Yet when she inevitably confronts her prick husband—a scene that really could’ve benefited from giving Priscilla at least one f-bomb—she does so with timidity of a salesclerk informing you your credit card has been declined.

Priscilla’s reticence extends to Goldby’s script and direction as well. You can tell what kind of movie The Time of Their Lives aspires to be, yet too often it pulls its punches as if Goldby is afraid to ask too much of his cast or his audience. The end result is a movie that won’t offend Nana (though seeing Nero’s dick might give her a jolt), but it won’t make her laugh, either.

No Matter How You Spell It

If a movie released today had the title No Man’s Woman, I’d assume it was about female empowerment. It might be set in the 1950s, and it could be the story of a housewife’s awakening of her own agency, realizing the inequities of her station and standing up to the patriarchy as she pursues her dreams of starting the first female-run septic tank cleaning service. It would likely star Jennifer Lawrence or Michelle Williams, and it would bomb at the box office.

But make that movie in the 1950s (1955, specifically) and NO MAN’S WOMAN has a different connotation. It’s a brand of shame, signifying a faithless wife, a two-timing girlfriend, a back-stabbing bitch. No man’s woman? No man would have her!

Plenty of men have had Carolyn Grant—well, really only two, with a third resisting her advances, but because 1950s, she’s a shameless ’ho. This B-grade noir opens with Carolyn (wonderfully played Marie Windsor, to whom Allison Janney bears more than a passing resemblance), tooling down the highway in a convertible full of paintings (she runs an art gallery, more than 20 years ahead of that being the default career for women-who-aren’t-hookers in 1980s movies). When one of the paintings becomes unwrapped she pulls over, asking her male companion, arts columnist Wayne Vincent (Patric Knowles), to take care of the problem. He does so by tearing off the wrapping and tossing it out onto the side of the highway (this movie predates “Native American” PSAs discouraging littering, but I still judged this character for it). Problem solved, Wayne decides to take advantage of pause in their travels to make out with Carolyn, but she resists. She has an appointment with Harlow. “I have to show him some consideration, don’t I darling?” she tells her blue-balled paramour. “After all, he is my husband.”

Of course, she’s cheating on her husband, but here’s the thing: the couple appear to have an open relationship, a shocker for 1955, though the movie tries to appeal to 1950s mores by implying that while the couple lives apart, only Carolyn does any extramarital fucking. The audience is led to believe Harlow (John Archer) is content to putter about his mansion between conjugal visits with his no-good wife, because the reason he wants to talk to Carolyn is to ask for a divorce so he can marry Louise (Nancy Gates). He wants to marry Louise so hard that he’s even willing to keep paying Carolyn a monthly percentage of his earnings. Knowing she’s got Harlow over a barrel, she refuses his offer, demanding $300,000 up front, on top of the monthly percentage. Well, Harlow may be rich, but he’s not that rich. The only way he could pay that is to sell off his father’s share of his company, and Harlow refuses to do that.

C U Next Tuesday!

With her husband sufficiently cock-blocked, Carolyn then decides to seduce the fiancée of her assistant, Betty (Jil Jarmyn). First, of course, is the matter of getting Betty out of the way, so Carolyn tells her she needs to work on a day Betty was originally scheduled to be off — a day Betty was planning on spending with her fiancée — expertly manipulating her into believing she got her dates confused. (Mitigating factor: Betty is as pliable as Silly Putty.) With Betty out of the way, Carolyn is now free to seduce Betty’s fiancée, Dick.

Let’s talk about Dick. Thanks to the sledge-hammer subtlety of John K. Butler’s screenplay, we know Carolyn only wanted Harlow for his money and Wayne because he hypes her gallery in his newspaper column, so presumably she only wants Dick, a man of modest means, for, well, his dick. I realize standards of beauty change—Marilyn Monroe would be body-shamed today—but Dick is played by Richard Crane, an actor who’s more father-of-my-children attractive, yet Carolyn acts as if he’s panty-soaking hot. MST3K was right, 1931-1959 truly was the golden age of the doughy guy.

Carolyn doesn’t make much progress with Dick, a fact that stings all the more when she returns from her “date” to discover Betty, having found out about Carolyn’s deceit, has quit and Wayne has been fired for conflict of interest (remember when that could cost you a job?). Worse, Wayne was blacklisted from the newspaper industry, and he is consequently blacklisted from Carolyn’s cooch. No sooner has Carolyn kicked Wayne to the curb than she has Louise stopping by to appeal to the better angels of her nature and divorce Harlow. Silly bitch, Carolyn doesn’t have any better angels. Carolyn, unsurprisingly, tells Louise to fuck off (I’m paraphrasing).

Could Carolyn’s day get any worse? No, but her night sure can. She’s awakened by an intruder and, after lighting a cigarette (priorities), Carolyn goes downstairs to investigate, whereupon she’s shot and killed.

Given that so much of this movie’s runtime is spent emphasizing how horrible she is — a witch, observes Louise; “No matter how you spell it,” says Harlow — I half expected the cops’ motivation for finding the killer was to give the perpetrator a medal. No such medal is forthcoming when they zero in on Harlow as the prime suspect, however. Instead, they hold him for questioning. Turns out the victim being a cunt doesn’t make the homicide justifiable. Harlow didn’t do it, of course, and he’s ultimately the one to solve the case.

Directed by Franklin Adreon, No Man’s Woman is like a lesser Joan Crawford vehicle crossed with a by-the-numbers police procedural. The first 40 minutes of this movie’s 70-minute runtime are its best, with B-movie staple Windsor stealing the show as the happily remorseless Carolyn. As much as you want Carolyn to die, you kind of wish she got to stick around a while longer. Once she’s gone, the last 30 minutes of No Man’s Woman devolve into the lamest episode of Perry Mason ever. This sub-noir isn’t exactly a must-see, but if you spot it on a streaming service and enjoy watching the vicious deeds of well-dressed women, be they Harriet Craig, Alexis Carrington or Cersei Lannister, No Man’s Woman is worth checking out.

You hardly can tell they aren’t actually on the water.

But What is the Cat Thinking?

WHERE’S ANNIE? is not just the title of this 1963 novel by Eileen Bassing, it’s also the question I kept asking myself while reading it. Specifically: Where’s Annie, and why is she name-checked in title? Because this novel isn’t really about Annie at all.

Annie, the young trophy wife of a retired navy admiral, is but one of a group of American ex-patriots living in an un-named village in Mexico, and even then she is only a peripheral character, having only slightly more impact on the book’s story as the natives of the village.

The book’s actual main character is Victoria, a middle-aged writer who, after ditching husband No. 4, has settled in the village to write a great novel, provided she can get past her writer’s block. Victoria is not an easy character to love. We first meet her when she nearly collides with Andrew Cunningham, Annie’s unhappy husband, while he’s out for his morning walk. “Out of my way,” she says, as though he’s the one at fault. Victoria is too involved in her own thoughts to waste time with social graces.

Victoria is bitchy, but she’s not heartless. She later comes rushing to Cunningham’s aid when his fishing boat sinks in the lake at the edge of the village, then later she organizes a search for Annie when the admiral’s young bride disappears from a party (insert title drop here).

Annie is ultimately found in the arms of another (younger) man. Annie lamely defends herself, telling Victoria that Cunningham is “so…old.”  Victoria encourages Annie to remain faithful to her husband a little longer. “You have time,” Victoria says. “He has…almost no time.” (Bassing is fond of ellipses.)

The Cunninghams leave for the U.S. the next day and Victoria once again focuses on her work. But first, she walks to the post office to see if her agent has sent her a check, then she goes drinking with Charlie, a recovering morphine addict who fights off cravings with booze and pot, and Harry, a junkie who’ll take whatever drug is available. She later meets Ned, a homosexual and gifted artist. Though Ned is perfectly charming, Victoria, who couldn’t give less of a fuck about making a good first impression, is openly hostile. Still, Ned invites her to visit him. She refuses.

Days later she decides to apologize for her rudeness, visiting Ned on the exact same day he comes down with malaria. Victoria elects to stay with him and nurse him back to health, partly out of penance for her earlier treatment of him, but mostly to avoid her typewriter. It’s during this chapter that we get one of the book’s best lines, when Victoria tells Ned, “I’d rather deal with your excrement than your gratitude.”

The pair become friends, but it’s not a healthy friendship. Victoria had to deal with Ned’s literal shit when he was sick but dealing with his metaphorical crap may be worse. It turns out Ned’s charm masks his cold, selfish nature. The pair fight and make-up constantly. He finds her too dowdy, too bohemian, too emotional. She resents his criticisms of her and her writing, but when her temper cools she’s back at his door, seeking his approval. It’s Harry, of all people, who’s the voice of reason:

“[Do] you know what I see Neddy-boy doing? I see him trying to make my Vickie, my original, over into his own mold. He is fashioning, as though he were God, another little Neddy-boy.”

Harry is a drug addict and shit-stirrer, so Victoria dismisses his observations. Besides, she’s too preoccupied with what Ned’s cat is thinking to pay attention to what Harry says.

Let me explain: Late in the book Ned gives Victoria his cat, Hassan, to care for while he’s out of town. This cat behaves like most cats (lies there, mostly), much to the consternation of Victoria.

Could it think? She stared at it and the cat stared back at her, in cross-eyed indifference. After a moment — and she was aware that a lot of time passed this way, hypnotically, with her staring at the cat and the cat staring back at her — it reached out with its paw and pushed at an envelope which was on the shelf near it. The cat did not watch the envelope flutter to the floor, as she did. But wasn’t that proof, since it was a deliberate act, that the cat must have some thought, some reasoning process? Then what could its reasoning process be?

The above text is but a mere taste of Victoria’s obsessing over this cat. Bassing devotes almost three fucking pages to Victoria wondering what makes this goddamned cat tick. I only bothered with one of those pages.

And this tangent about the mysteries of cat thought highlights my biggest problem with Where’s Annie? For all the well-drawn characters and sharp observations, Bassing too often gets bogged down in minutiae at the expense of the story’s momentum. This is a loose, character-driven narrative, with as much attention given to the characters’ inner lives as to the story’s minimal action, but I would argue that any inner life that dwells on the inscrutability of cats is perhaps not a life not worth reading about.

Not helping is Bassing’s tendency to try too hard, her writing often self-consciously literary, as if she’s more interested in impressing critics than engaging readers, similar to how Victoria tailors her writing to please Ned rather than herself. Consequently, this book felt longer than its 382-pages.

But Where’s Annie? has a lot to recommend it. Victoria isn’t particularly likable, but she is relatable. I’ve known people like her—I’ve been friends with them—and as in real life, I was alternately drawn to Victoria for her acerbic wit and put off by her surly attitude. Still, even though I didn’t entirely like her, I didn’t think she deserved the treatment she got form Ned.

Speaking of Ned, while I wouldn’t nominate Bassing for a GLAAD award, her treatment of Ned’s homosexuality is pretty progressive for 1963. She matter-of-factly acknowledges Ned’s queerness (Ned has a boy toy, Manuel), but his homosexuality never becomes his sole character trait. In fact, there are only a couple instances in the book when characters make derogatory comments about Ned’s sexuality. People don’t dislike him because he’s gay, they dislike him because he’s an asshole. 

I didn’t know anything about Eileen Bassing when I was given this book five years ago (my nephew saw it at a used bookstore and thought it looked like something I’d read). Besides Where’s Annie?, she wrote the novel Home Before Dark. According to her obituary — she died in 1977 at age 58 — she also was a screenwriter (she adapted Home Before Dark into a 1958 movie starring Jean Simmons), a story editor and an advisor for the motion picture and TV industries. I’ve seen Home Before Dark and recommend checking it out next time it appears on the TCM schedule. Where’s Annie? is worth checking out, too. If you can fight the temptation to abandon the search early, Where’s Annie? is ultimately a satisfying read.