Quick takes on 5 films of the 60s

Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? hails from 1962 and stars two Hollywood heavyhitters, Bette Davis and Joan Crawford. By the 60’s they were aging stars and not getting the calls they used to, but this film revitalized their careers. Directed by Robert Aldrich, it is a psychological thriller about the Hudson sisters. Beginning in 1917, “Baby Jane” Hudson is a child star on the theater circuit while her sister Blanche looks on from the sidelines. By the mid-30s though, their fortunes have been reversed, as studios have found that Jane can’t act her way out of a box, and Blanche has become a Hollywood star. On one fateful night, it is implied Jane, in a fit of jealousy, drives down Blanche. When we see them again in the 60’s, we see that the incident has left Blanche in a wheelchair. She’s protected Jane though, so Jane didn’t do any jailtime, and Jane has been taking care of Blanche, whose residual checks keep the family living well. The film really gets going now. Jane has become a mentally unstable alcoholic, and she begins to mentally torture Blanche, who is confined to the second floor of the house, all while having delusions of revitalizing her career as “Baby Jane.” It’s a great film, tense with an almost-horror flick feel, and two leading ladies who had lost nothing to time. Fun stuff, and gripping to the end. ★★★½

Seconds, from director John Frankenheimer (The Manchurian Candidate back in the day, and more recently Ronin and Reindeer Games), is about an older man who has grown bored of his aging wife and stale life (banker). When he receives a cryptic call from an old friend, who was presumed dead, promising a new life, he jumps at it. He ends up receiving more than he bargained for, realizing too late that the grass isn’t always greener. They give him a new, younger face, new house and career, new life, but he can’t find peace. It’s a psychological thriller, with jarring and close-up shots of our anti-hero losing his grip. The co-leads of older man (John Randolph, who had a long and storied career on TV, in film, and on Broadway) and younger man (Rock Hudson, who needs no introduction) are both great, but the film was too stunted for my tastes. And while Hudson is always great, I like my Rock in his more traditional heartthrob roles. I struggled to get into this one despite the solid reviews. ★★

Something Wild was critically the opposite from above. Receiving middling reviews, I really enjoyed this piece, which again is a psychological film, leaning more on the drama aspects instead of the thriller like Seconds (though there are plenty of tense moments in the final 30 minutes). Walking home from school one evening, college student Mary Ann (Carroll Baker, who is amazing in this role) is brutally raped. The next day, she can’t return to a normal life, and wanders the city, unable to mentally find her footing. Mary Ann abruptly leaves her home and takes a tiny apartment in a seedy part of town, gets a lowly job in a five-and-ten, and spends her nights restless. When Mary Ann finally reaches the end of her rope, she attempts to jump off a bridge but is saved at the last second by Mike, a passerby. He takes care of her at first, bringing her to his place and feeding her, but when he comes drunk home after work, we see that he is up to no good. Mary Ann and Mike are a couple of wonderfully complex characters. Also, the director does a great job of putting us in Mary Ann’s head; you feel her hopelessness as she isolates herself from everyone in her life, and you see how alone she is even though all of New York is bustling around her. Great film that I think was just ahead of its time; if it were made today, it would be a darling of the indie circuit. ★★★½

I was enthralled by Bill Greaves’s pseudo-documentary Symbiopsychotaxiplasm Take One, made in 1968 but not released until decades later. Greaves, an actor and documentarian (in fact, a member of The Actor’s Studio in New York in the late 40’s at the same time as Marlon Brando and Shelley Winters, among others) plays an inept version of himself trying to make a film in a park in New York with three film crews: the first is filming his movie, the second is filming the first film crew in a “making of” sort of way, and the third is filming anything that catches their eye in the area. They keep filming the same scene over and over again, from different angles, different takes, and even different actors. It seems no one is in on the joke except Bill himself; the actors and film crew increasingly wonder what the hell they are all doing there and if Bill even has a plan for it all. Of course in reality, Greaves is filming everything to edit together later for a piece about the mayhem going on and the natural, authentic reactions of those involved in it. It is mesmerizing in a reality television sort of way, but far better for those of us who love movies. It gives a real behind the scenes look. Unfortunately the film took 20+ years to get released, and only did after actor/filmmaker Steve Buscemi saw it at a film festival, and brought on acclaimed director Steven Soderbergh to help raise money for Greaves to finally get it done. They even used a lot of the unused footage (Greaves reportedly had shot 55 hours of tape initially) to make a sequel, Symbiopsychotaxiplasm Take 2 1/2. The first 40 minutes of the sequel is old footage, before they get to new stuff later on. It doesn’t have the freshness of the first film, because the counter-culture element of the 60’s shines so well in Take One, plus, we are all in on the joke now. I’d give maybe 2 stars to the sequel, but for Take One, : ★★★★

The Honeymoon Killers is based on a true story, about a pair of serial killers who killed older woman who had placed “lonely hearts” ads. In the film, Martha Beck has just placed such an ad when she is contacted by Ray Fernandez. The two exchange letters for awhile, until they decide to finally meet at her home in Alabama. Ray makes the trip down from New York, but is only there a day or two, managing to swindle Martha out of some money. Realizing she’s been duped, Martha chases him to New York and threatens the police. Placating her, the duo hatch a plan to continue targeting old single women for money, a scheme that eventually turns to murdering their victims once the cash is safe in hand. Martha plays the crazy one, prone to fits of sudden violence, and Ray seems unable or unwilling to reign her in. Lauded in its day for its realism, it’s a good low budget film with tense moments and plenty of thrills for a late 60s historical drama. ★★★½