|
|
A-Z
of Cult Cinema
L Leave her to
Heaven (1945). Director John M. Stahl (1886-1950)
was arguably the greatest Hollywood stylist to tackle films
that the critics derisively labelled 'women's pictures'. His
full-blooded and often lurid melodramas showed a remarkable
consistency of style, and were marked by a vivid and highly
idiosyncratic visual sense. Astonishingly prolific, no reliable
record remains of much of Stahl's early work in the silent
era. Thankfully his finest achievement is readily available
on VHS and DVD: Leave Here To Heaven stars Irish/American
heiress Gene Tierney, whose exotic feline beauty stunned audiences
when, as a teenager, she debuted on Broadway in 1939. Here
in this extraordinary film her startling portrayal of a deadly
femme fatale is mesmerising in its intensity. She plays a
highly disturbed father-fixated beauty who picks up the unfortunate
Cornel Wilde in a railway carriage because of his uncanny
resemblance to her recently deceased daddy. Her mother warns
our hapless hero 'There's nothing wrong with Helen. She just
loves too much.' And how she does. She loves them to death!
This cult classic is the best Hollywood melodrama ever made,
and even on VHS tape Leon Shamroy's Oscar winning cinematography
is wonderful.
M Ms. 45 aka Angel
of Vengeance (1981). Cult director Abel
Ferrara's best film. Starring the late great Zo‘ Tamerlis,
who ten years later went on to write Bad Lieutenant
for Ferrara, this raw and ragged rape/revenge drama tells
the story of Thana, a mute garment worker who is brutally
raped twice in one night. She takes to the streets after dusk
dressed as a nun, and blows away the chauvinist scum that
infest the Big Apple. The film opened anonymously in the grind-house
theatres of New York's 42nd street, where something strange
happened. In these seedy cinemas the exclusively male audiences
would go to see violent, sexually explicit exploitation pictures
where they would often excitedly talk back to the screen.
Unexpectedly, these men didn't whoop and yell as Thana took
her murderous revenge on the lowlife males of New York; instead
they slumped in their seats, covering their eyes before shuffling
off into the night. Die-hard movie buffs soon discovered the
film, and feminist critics began to champion it. A cult classic
was made. See it for the 17 year-old Zo‘ Tamerlis's remarkable
performance. She died tragically in Paris in 2000.
The full article is printed in Film Ireland
103
|
