- distinctive and intriguing titles;
- mothers preoccupied by witchy thoughts of revenge, and daughters who get caught up in their schemes;
- scenes of fire and catharsis, in which the movie's proletariat is at last invited to let loose;
- murky plots that left us scratching our heads over certain key details;
- and, courtesy of Mill Creek, terrible transfers with very bad sound, which surely don't do the movies in question any favors.
Chloe, Love is Calling You (1934)
Grade: F
As Kelsey Grammer would say, "Oh, dear Lord."
Let's get this out of the way up front: the only saving grace of Chloe, Love is Calling You is the historically significant footage of the Shreveport Home Wreckers. Their performance, though brief, is certainly a highlight.
Otherwise, this atrocious melodrama in the "one drop of black blood" vein manages to be both offensive and boring, which is no small feat. Olive Borden (in her final screen role) is almost plausible as Chloe, a girl who yearns to escape the not-entirely-loving arms of her mother, the voodoo priestess Old Mandy (Georgette Harvey). Old Mandy fled after her husband Sam was lynched many years ago, and now she and Chloe have come back to their old home.
Chloe's decidedly unmelanistic appearance is explained by the fact that she's allegedly "high yella", or mixed-race. And okay, it's not inconceivable that Olive Borden could be mixed-race; she looks more Joyce DeWitt (or Gilda Radner) than Lena Horne, but whatever. But this guy?
Yes indeed: they chose Philip Ober, best known as "the guy who married Vivian Vance and beat her up", to play Jim Strong, the movie's second mixed-race character. (What kind of person would beat up Vivian Vance, for God's sake?) Mr. Ober was many things, but a plausible non-Caucasian was not one of them, and even in 1934 one has to imagine his casting must have elicited giggles in the audience.
Jim is utterly besotted with Chloe, and even wrestles dead alligators on her behalf to prove his love:
But she'll have none of it, and instead pines for local plantation foreman Wade Carson (Reed Howes), who returns her affections -- but doesn't realize she's black. (Cue dramatic music here.)
Still, Chloe and Wade fall madly in love, leaving poor Jim out in the cold. A noble soul even so, he saves Wade's life not just once, but twice, and barely gets a thank-you in return.
(He could've at least sent a card. One imagines that the local gift shop in Chloetown would've had "Thanks for saving me from murderous minorities" stocked in both A1 and A7 sizes, since every non-white character in the movie except Chloe and Jim is either servile or treacherously homicidal.)
Now, Wade has recently started working for the genteel Col. Gordon (Francis Joyner). Years ago the Colonel lost a daughter, Betty Ann, under mysterious circumstances: she was presumed to have drowned, but her body was never found. (You can probably see where this is going.)
The chief roadblock in Chloe's road to happiness (and not-black-ness) is Old Mandy. She holds Col. Gordon responsible for Sam's lynching, which some reviews of the movie seem to take at face value. But racist though Chloe, Love is Calling You is, it's not Birth of a Nation, and as far as we could tell the sequence was actually meant to be:
- Col. Gordon fires Sam (probably for stealing, since the movie makes a point of showing Wade confronting a pre-existing workplace culture of employee theft);
- Sam attacks Col. Gordon, knocks him unconscious, and escapes;
- then an unspecified group of "folks" pursues, catches, and lynches Sam, without the Colonel's knowledge or encouragement.
At least Chloe, Love is Calling You is short. But it's terrible, and thanks to the poor audio and shaky picture, it's literally hard to watch. So unless you're interested in black screen presence in early talkies -- or in the Shreveport Home Wreckers -- avert your eyes and ears, and be the happier for it.
The Long Hair of Death (1964)
Grade: D-
As a wise man once said, "OH, NO! NOT THE BEES! NOT THE BEES! AAAAAHHHHH! OH, THEY'RE IN MY EYES! MY EYES! AAAAHHHHH! AAAAAGGHHH!"
Or, perhaps more to the point: "BITCHES! YOU BITCHES!"
Barbara Steele plots and schemes her way through this mediocre Italian gothic tale of murder, revenge, and creepy (though not terribly convincing) medieval dungeons. The film opens on a rather festive note, as an accused witch flails about in the midst of a flaming maze of hay bales and cross-shaped scaffolding. A stylish change from the typical crone-on-a-stick set-up, we thought.
Meanwhile, upstairs in the castle, the woman’s eldest daughter Helen (Steele) endures the sleazy advances of the local nobleman, who promises to spare mom in exchange for a little rapporto carnale. It makes no difference, of course: the crispy witch expires, but not before cursing the village and imploring her two daughters to avenge her death.
Revenge, however, will have to wait. Helen is abruptly offed by the Count in the next scene (to the outrage of Steele fanboys everywhere, we’re sure) and the other daughter, Elizabeth -- just a child, at this point -- is, perversely, entrusted to the Count’s household. Keep your enemies close, we suppose, or pray that Stockholm syndrome does its magic.
All this is a prelude to the real action, which takes place a decade or so later amid the Black Death or some similar plague. Elizabeth (Halina Zalewska), by now a petulant, sulking sourpuss of a woman, is married, against her will, to the Count’s son Kurt (George Ardisson) -- a boorish Shatner lookalike with a penchant for frilly shirts and pig-headed chauvinism.
Things aren't going so well for Elizabeth, but soon the requisite dark and stormy night blows in a mysterious figure -- why, if it isn't good ol' Barbara Steele, back from the great beyond! At least, we guessed it was the great beyond. Here is where things got somewhat murky (murkier than the terrible Mill Creek print, if you can believe it). Now Steele claims she's a traveler named Mary, and everyone in the household seems to go along with this fiction (except poor old Count Humboldt, who keeled over from the shock). Not even a flicker of recognition from Kurt, the staff, or, significantly, her own sister.
Plot hole, or lost in translation? Who knows or cares, because soon the film turns into a long, slow, murky slog to the finish. Kurt, predictably, falls under the spell of the mysterious Mary, who seems to oscillate between wanting it and not (women, right?), and the two of them eventually plan to do away with Elizabeth permanently. There's a ton of gabbing around the dinner table, skulking in dungeons, mooning about the bedroom, and a generous helping of not getting on with things.
Other reviewers of this film (and there are many) seem to fall into two schools: first are those who agree that, yes, it does get rather dull in the middle -- but that it's not really relevant, because Barbara Steele is just such a talented actress. Then there are those who rabidly insist that no, what you plebes call dragging is actually mood and atmosphere and a building sense of dread.
As to the latter, all we can say is that we tend to love films where nothing much happens (Idaho Transfer, anyone?), but there's a difference between good atmosphere and pea soup. As to the former? No accounting for taste, we suppose. It is our expert and informed opinion that both sets of reviewers enjoy this movie for precisely one reason. Well, two reasons.
Inexplicably, nobody else seems to be bothered by the score, which is heavy-handed, mind-numbingly repetitive, and by its presence alone threatened to put this film firmly in "F" territory. We decided on a "D-" simply because we were genuinely curious about how things would all turn out. Though reminding us not unpleasantly of a similar denouement in a more recent film -- and there is something vaguely Summersisle about all the women, it should be said -- ultimately, we were left feeling unsatisfied. Next time the Italians have a zany adventure, we'll make sure they bring a big tomato sauce.
