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From Tales of the Easily Distracted:Hosted by Dorian TB- A wonderful romp through the golden years, with fun facts and filled with love…
Post from Kristina at the slick and stylish Speakeasy Blog-
The Film Score Freak Recognizes iconic 70s songwriter-Paul Williams
PAUL WILLIAMS
Growing up in the 7os, a lot of what inspired me to follow my journey as a singer/songwriter had much to do with the brilliant, evocatively poignant and memorable compositions by artists like the great Paul Williams. I still can’t listen or sing one of his iconic songs without becoming a fountain of tears, melting into an emotional puddle of ‘feelings.’ His contribution to the world as a singer/songwriter has been so immense, that I feel inadequate just showing a little love here, instead of doing one of my long winded posts.
But I am too agitated with excitement about the documentary Paul Williams Still Alive, and to have found him alive and well on Twitter. I love you, We love you Paul Williams.
You have given us a magical, alchemical concoction of music that will forever flare up like molten gold in our hearts. It’s so good to see you again.
So here’s a just a little reminder of SOME of the things this beautiful, brilliant man has brought us from his heavenly throne where he sits with the other musical angels.
From the new documentary, here’s the official trailer for Paul Williams Still Alive
Karen Carpenter sings Rainy Days and Mondays
Kermit the Frog sings The Rainbow Connection from The Muppet Movie
Karen Carpenter sings We’ve Only Just Begun
Barbra Streisand sings Evergreen from A Star is Born
Jessica Harper sings Old Souls from Phantom of The Paradise
Here’s to the immortal genius! – With love Jo Gabriel the little singer/songwriting MonsterGirl
A Trailer a Day Keeps the Boogeyman Away! 2 Tales of Matrimony On the Treacherous Rocks!
“An Absolute Ball”
X, Y and ZEEÂ 1972
Elizabeth Taylor wears the role of Zee Blakeley, a Machiavellian temptress, who is married to the wealthy yet miserly, miserable, and misogynistic architect Robert, played deftly by Michael Caine who partakes every bit in the nasty psycho-sexual game playing their afflicted marriage has manifested over the years.
Zee is wild, possessive, and cunning, and Robert is melancholy, brutish, and at times downright violent. Longing for a change he pursues the lovely Stella played by Susannah York, who he meets at a party given by a friend, the bird-like, arty, jet-setting, gold Lamé, pink fluffy-haired Gladys (Margaret Leighton) who collects people and things for her ‘cocktail parties’ strewn with beautiful types, fags, artists and anyone with a title attached to their name.
Life and love are cutthroat in this film, and Taylor’s portrayal of Zee is unnerving and difficult to watch at times, as she fluctuates between venomous seductress and wounded little girl. York as always is like a fawn from the eldritch woods with those dreamy eyes. But talk about eyes, no one has a pair that arrests you quite like Elizabeth Taylor.
Once Robert decides to play house with Stella and leave Zee to wallow in her jealous vitriol, Zee goes on an orchestrated rampage to try and destroy their burgeoning romance, uncovering the shell of sweet Stella exposing that she has some secrets of her own. Written by Edna O’Brien, and directed by Brian G. Hutton who also directed Taylor in the thriller, Night Watch 1973, another equally disturbing film about the deep-rooted ugliness and danger of an ill-fated marriage.
With fabulous Costume designs by Beatrice Dawson.
Next up…
SUCH GOOD FRIENDS 1971
“The little black book that became a national bestseller.”
Based on the novel by Lois Gould, with a screenplay by Elaine May using her pen name Esther Dale, and an uncredited Joan Didion (A Star is Born 1976, Panic In Needle Park 1971) Directed by the omnipotent Otto Preminger.
Dyan Cannon is Julie Messinger a New York housewife who finds out that her husband magazine editor Richard (Laurence Luckinbill Boys In the Band 1970) has been cheating on her because he ‘doesn’t like her feet.’ She stumbles onto his little black book with the names of several ‘women.’
Nina Foch, plays Julie’s mother an annihilating, narcissistic harpy who criticizes her about everything.
When Richard winds up in a coma from complications stemming from a simple mole removal, Julie’s good friends gather around her for support. Including an impromptu cocktail gathering in the blood donor ward of the hospital…
It’s a biting, black comedic sexual romp through the self-explorative 70s, with a fabulous cast of characters.
Co-starring the wonderful James Coco as Dr. Timothy Spector, Jennifer O’Neill, as Miranda, Ken Howard as photographer Cal Whiting, Louise Lasser, Burgess Meredith, Sam Levene, William Redfield, James Beard, Rita Gam, Lawrence Tierney, and Doris Roberts. And an uncredited Salome Jens as a Blood Donor at the hospital and Joseph Papp and his Shakespeare Theatre.
Nurse-“Have you ever had venereal disease?”
Blood Donor-“No I was never even in the tropics!”
It’s been a ball-MG
Coming next to The Last Drive-In: A Chilling Double Feature
I feel like it’s time to show some love to one of my most very treasured classic horror films of the 1970s, a film that I’ve placed within my top 25 best horror films of all time. I’m talking about the atmospheric and illusory!
Let’s Scare Jessica to Death (1971) Starring Zohra Lampert
I’ll be covering this chilling gem in the next week and have decided to couple it with another rare oddity of the obscurely horrific 70s genre that is quite brutal and I feel works well as a companion piece. Starring Silver Screen beauty, Jeanne Crain in The Night God Screamed (1971).
So keep your genre fan eye’s peeled for my upcoming-
Let’s Scare Jessica To Death (1971) & The Night God Screamed (1971)- Leave Your Faith, Fear and Sanity at the Water’s Edge.
See ya at the water’s edge-MG
A Trailer a Day Keeps the Boogeyman Away! Goodbye Gemini (1970)
“Jacki and Julian have evil twins. Each other.”
GOODBYE GEMINI (1970)
Based on the screenplay by Edmund Ward and the novel ‘Ask Agamemnon’ by Jenni Hall, the film stars British cutie Judy Geeson as Jacki and Martin Potter (Fellini Satyricon (1969),Satan’s Slave 1976) as brother Julian, who play incestuously menacing twins that wear flashy clothes and travel with a creepy black teddy bear in tow, whom they talk to. They insert themselves into high society circles, scheming and submerging themselves in the underground Swinger scene in London.
The murderous siblings kill their landlady right before they get themselves invited to a party where all the ‘swingers’ hang out. Bi-sexual brother Julian is a little too enamored of his sister Jacki, and is quite possessive of her affections. Once they attract gambler Clive Landseer (Alexis Kanner) who is heavily in debt, the deadly sequence of events unfold, as Clive manipulates Julian into helping him concoct a plan of blackmail and ultimately murder. The film’s flash and trash derives it’s sensationalism from the inhabitants of ornamental transvestites, swingers, and the beautiful people of London’s counter-culture.
It’s and obscure film from director Alan Gibson who worked on Journey To Midnight (1968) and a few of the episodes in 1968-1969 for the resulting tv series that followed called Journey to the Unknown Gibson directed another psycho-sexual thriller Crescendo (1970) Of course there’s also his, The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1973) and Dracula A.D. (1972)
It’s an interesting moody and untempered piece of psycho-sexual 70s fare, that also co-stars veteran British actor Michael Redgrave as James Harrington-Smith, Mike Pratt as Rod Barstowe, Marian Diamond as Denise Pryce-Fletcher and Freddie Jones as David Curry. Peter Jeffrey plays Detective Inspector Kingsley, and Daphne Heard is Mrs. McLaren.
The film features songs from the soundtrack, “Nothing’s Good and Nothing’s Free”, “Forget About the Day” with music by Christopher Gunning and lyrics by Peter Lee Stirling. Both performed by Peter Lee Stirling. Plus “Goodbye Gemini” Written by J. Alexander Ryan and Rick Jones , performed by Jackie Lee and “Tell the World We’re Not In” Written by Denis King and Don Black , performed by The Peddlers
Goodbye just for now, from your Cancerian MonsterGirl
A Few More Neglected Characters from Classic Film.
The FilmScore Freak Recognizes:Jerry Goldsmith’s Hauntingly Poignant Score: The Other (1972)
“When does the game stop and the terror begin?”
THE OTHER (1972)
Directed by Robert Mulligan
Based on actor/author Thomas Tryon’s best-selling novel, about the duplicity of innocence and evil in the incarnation of twin boys. Set in the Depression era during a hot and dusty summer of 1935. The atmosphere of rural quaintness is painted beautifully by cinematographer Robert Surtees.
Niles and Holland Perry (Chris and Martin Udvanoky) live with their extended family on a rural farm. The boys are looked after by their old-world loving Russian Grandmother Ada (the extraordinary icon Uda Hagen).
The sagely mysterious and angelic Ada has taught the boys a special and esoteric gift from the old country, she calls ‘the game.’
When several inextricably grotesque accidents beset the town, the clues start to point toward Niles’ wicked brother, Holland, who may be responsible for the gruesome deaths.
Also starring Diana Muldaur as the boy’s hapless mother, Alexandra.
Norma Connolly plays Aunt Vee, Victor French co-stars as the drunken swarthy handyman Angelini, Lou Frizzell is Uncle George, Portia Nelson as the uptight Mrs. Rowe, Jennie Sullivan as Torrie, and a young John Ritter as Rider.
Tryon’s story is a most hauntingly mysterious journey through the eyes of a child, a macabre and provocative psychological thriller from the 70s that has remained indelible in triggering my childhood fears, filled with wonder and the impenetrable world of the supernatural. I plan on doing a broader overview of this film as I am prone to being long-winded. But for now, The Film Score Freak would like to focus on the film’s hauntingly poignant score contributed by one of my favorite and in my opinion one of THE BEST composers of all time, Jerry Goldsmith.
In Dreams-MonsterGirl
Ida Lupino: The Iron Maiden Part II – Lupino revises her role in Women in Chains ( tv 1972)
WOMEN IN CHAINS 1972 ABC Movie of the Week
Follow up to :
WOMEN’S PRISON (1955) Part I
Women’s Prison or Young and Willing (1955)aka
The Weak and the Wicked (original title)
Now, it’s 1972 and IDA LUPINO reprises her role as brutal chief matron of her cell block, the new distinction is that of Claire Tyson. Tyson is a modern transformation from her original role as Amelia van Zandt in Women’s Prison 1955. She is as wicked as her last incarnation as cruel prison Matron, possessing that reptilian stare that could smack down the orneriest of Glory Stompers, Cycle Savage, Devil’s Angel, or Mini Skirt Mobber, on a rampage, with just one look from those cold-blooded eyes.
Directed by Bernard L. Kowalski (Attack of The Giant Leeches 1959), produced by Edward K Milkiand, and written by Rita Lakin (Peyton Place, Mod Squad) With a collection of 7os actresses to fill up the septic green environs of the prison system with their archetypal guises, The sage, and kindly old timer, the tough loner black female outsider, a woman, but a ‘black woman’ doing time for her old man, in the pecking order there’s also the disturbed sylph who wanders aimlessly until provoked by any random act, and of course, let us not forget the essential queen bee who has a direct pipeline to the savage Claire Tyson. New in the mix is the bewildered new fish who has to learn the ropes fast if she’s to survive, and the renegade newcomer undercover, who dares to challenge the system’s status quo.
This ABC Movie of the Week entry stars the great Lois Nettleton as Sandra Parker an employee of the parole department who decides to go undercover as Sally Porter, so she can infiltrate Tyson’s den of maltreatment and sadistic foreplay that she wages over and engenders in the inmates of her cell block. After witnessing the result of a brutal beating death of one of Sandra’s parolees a returning inmate at the prison, Sandra plants herself undercover to try and unearth the prison brutality and bring it to light. She wants Claire Tyson prosecuted for the death of Ginger Stratton.
The Film Score Freak recognizes: Vincente Minnelli’s musical fantasia ‘On A Clear Day You Can See Forever’ (1970)
On a Clear Day You Can See Forever (1970)
Barbra plays Daisy Gamble, a woman based on Bridie Murphy, who knows when the phone’s going to ring, and talks to flowers helping them to flourish. She seeks help from a doctor who specializes in hypnosis to help her quit smoking. Once she’s under, she becomes regressed back to several past lives and quite a few animated personalities, one of which he falls madly in love with. Co-Starring Yves Montand and Jack Nicholson, Simon Oakland, Larry Blyden and Bob Newhart.
With music by Burton Lane and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner, sung by the unchallenged songstress of the millennia Barbra Streisand, here’s just one of the spectacular, and transcendental songs of the film.
On a Clear Day You Can See Forever sung at the film’s coda
some extra bit of goodness
Hurry It’s Lovely Up Here
I’m too Verklempt to speak-MonsterGirl