I like to play with dolls

This "exclusive accessory," which ably captures my prevailing mood this week, comes with Sideshow Collectibles' Friday the 13th Pamela Voorhees doll, er, action figure. It is comforting to know that this denizen of Crystal Lake, mother of Jason and [**SPOILER ALERT**] original slasher of the long-running film franchise has been so memorialized. This Mrs. Voorhees, according to her purveyors, possesses "over 30 points of teen-slaying articulation, and . . . many tools for dispatching -- hunting knife and sheath, axe, machete, and a bow and arrow!"

If only all mothers defended (the memories of) their sons with such ferocity.

"Kill 'er, mommy. Kill her!"

Overheard at lunch

n my community, I'm what's considered a soft butch.

Anticlimactic

OK, so the eagerly anticipated Notorious Bettie Page isn't so good. This is through no fault of Gretchen Mol, who strives mightily to elevate the material. As someone who in snapshots and stills doesn't look much like Page, Mol employs facial expression and physical movement to channel the pinup icon. (It takes real knowledge to embody the titular naïf so convincingly.) Mol is most effective in re-creations of photo sessions and performances for silent reels. Particularly appealing are moments like those in the cheap little bondage films where, clad in elaborate lingerie and truly punishing heels, she shakes her finger at a naughty, often hog-tied captive. She seems less the dominatrix than a little girl scolding her doll. Unfortunately, such endearing aspects are almost lost in an uninspired story and script. The filmmakers don't do Ms. Mol or Ms. Page any favors by stranding actress and character in a tedious narrative that skips along the surface of what is presumably a more interesting life. The film version of Bettie is like the movie itself: they're not engaging when she's not posing. Especially finger-wagging.

Oh, did I mention that Mol's performance is fearless?

On to the next obsession . . . hmm . . .

No, I'm not ready yet for Snakes on a Plane.

Patiently waiting

One more day.

Heart of darkness

I know I had promised that the last entry would address noirish melodramas, but I couldn't resist that Trog one-sheet featuring the late, great J.C. (As I've explained to A & L, Norman doesn't worship Jesus Christ.) That exploitation-cheapie poster is not entirely unrelated, as Ms. Crawford happened to star in -- and garnered her only Oscar for -- Mildred Pierce (1945), which may be the most effective blend of key elements of melodrama and film noir.

Last weekend I went to a screening of two other such blends, Ruby Gentry (1952) and Beyond the Forest (1949). By way of introduction, a talking head remarked that, as so-called woman's pictures, this pair of films are not strictly noirs. But, to my mind, some of these weepie hybrids are closer to noir's dark heart than certain policiers, procedurals, detective stories, heist films and so on. For instance, in T-Men (1947), which as it its title suggests, follows a couple of treasury agents' crime-busting exploits, the agents are immovable figures of rectitude, who never succumb to the temptations of their undercover lives and identities (if they're tempted at all) as they navigate and unearth an elaborate criminal enterprise. T-Men indeed employs the dramatic chiaroscuro lighting typical of noir -- its cinematography is a real standout -- but the film's dark, grasping shadows do not extend to its themes. T-Men's noir credentials are ones of visual style, not narrative content. (In Mildred Pierce, Ms. Crawford's title character is basically a pure victim, but other characters and institutions we would normally expect to be good, most notably the daughter of a devoted, self-sacrificing mother, are corrupt or thoroughly rotten.)

Ruby Gentry and Beyond the Forest, which were directed by King Vidor and are, in all fairness, ripe for earnest revival, share certain elements. The films' respective central characters, Ruby (Jennifer Jones) and Rosa Moline (Bette Davis), are unstable, at times scary women with unfulfilled longing and proficiency with a shotgun. In comparison to Rosa, Ruby is more victim than villain, though she tends to wield her hammer of justice like the blunt, unforgiving tool that it is. Although both films are overwrought but unfairly maligned, Forest is more coherent, effective and entertaining. Neither its critical reputation as a "camp classic" nor any mere plot summary does the film justice. Its appeal lies largely in well-crafted dialogue, particularly admittedly outrageous lines delivered by Ms. Davis in a casually devastating manner; her overall performance as Rosa, who remains remarkably sympathetic for much of the picture; and an extravagant visual style. Ostensibly made, like most melodramas, for a predominantly female audience, both Ruby Gentry and Beyond the Forest nonetheless seem, no less than certain hardcore noirs featuring a ruthless femme fatale, to reflect a paranoid male fantasy: Beware women with ambition. And deadeyed aim.

Ruby Gentry, which is available on DVD, and Beyond the Forest, which inexplicably is not, were featured last weekend at the Egyptian here in L.A. as part of the American Cinematheque's annual noir program, which concludes this weekend. T-Men, which recently had its Turner Classic Movies premiere on cable, has been included on the programming slate for the yearly Film Noir Festival in Palm Springs in early June.

Speechless

Are you there, God? It's me, Norman.

As a general matter, I experience sufficient difficulty slogging through a day of work without writing about it. Every now and then, however, the constant low-level agitation and dread explode into full-fledged Grand Guignol. For instance -- don't blame the messenger! -- this morning, as I was turning into the corridor from our offices, I overheard the tail end of a co-worker's litany of grievances as she and another emerged from the ladies':

"And on top of everything, I got my period. (beat) It stained my underwear."

Seriously, God, are you there? Please deliver me from this place. And restore my hearing.

Although I wanted you to be aware of another of the petty indignities that beset poor Norman, I am truly sorry, gentle reader, for the vulgarity and insensitivity of this post. As penance, I will attempt in my next entry to take up the cause of melodramas, the so-called woman's pictures or weepies, in a noir context. Bear with me, though; I'm still convalescing from my unfortunate encounter.

Turn it off. Turn it off! Turn it ARRRGH!

The latest Netflix fix came in the form of Paul Schrader's Hardcore (1979), a curious mix of exploitation and self-loathing, with a priceless tagline: "Oh, my God, that's my daughter." The film follows the quest of a strictly religious Midwestern father, Jake Van Dorn (George C. Scott, RIP), to find his runaway daughter in the urban jungles of California and rescue her from a seedy funhouse milieu of porn, peep shows and prostitution. (Drugs, too, presumably, given the legions of young, slow-witted, dead-eyed skinflick performers and sex workers. Lots and lots of narcotizing drugs.) He is assisted in this endeavor by a sleazy private dick and guide (Peter Boyle), whose screening of a scratched, grainy reel featuring Van Dorn's daughter in a group sex scene prompts the "Turn if off" paroxysm and kicks off her father's search in earnest. In all candor, I didn't pay close attention to all the clues on the scummy, winding path to Van Dorn's daughter. Under the circumstances, some of the nuances of character and personality were probably lost on me; I couldn't really tell you the difference between a Ratan and a Jism Jim. I was absorbing the gritty atmosphere and relishing Scott's blustery bull in a sex shop. If you haven't already, see the movie, if only for Scott's, ahem, sartorial 70s splendor, including groovy 'stache and roadkill wig, as he goes undercover as a bottom-feeding porn producer; moments like the one where an apoplectic Van Dorn, triggered by an insult to his daughter's oral sex technique, beats a scrawny, pockmarked porn actor with a table lamp and tosses him into a shower stall, further threatening the (in the words of Boyle's detective) "faggot hustler" with the shower head; and, most importantly to Hardcore's value as a historical artifact, a listless stripper reenactment of a Star Wars light saber duel.
Hardcore. Quality: **. Entertainment Value: ***** (on a four-star scale).

Norman's grab bag

It's depressing to be suffering from this writer's block after only a few entries. The blog form certainly lends itself to a certain mundanity and casualness (what former pop star Jewel refers to as "casualty" in her poetry), but I've never been good at small talk. (Have I told you about all the rain in "sunny" California?) Maybe it's the diary-like intimacy that gives me jitters. (I mean "journal." Journal.) But I don't want my blog to suffer some form of crib death, so I thought I'd check in and share some of my inchoate ideas and failed attempts. Please let me know whether I should move from simple neglect to active infanticide and kill the blog I've sired. (I'm not quitting, but I am given to melodramatic gestures.) Without further ado, here's what's been gestating:

1. Slither review: Last weekend I saw the sci-fi horror comedy Slither, which was written and directed by James Gunn, director of the well-received 2004 remake of George Romero's zombie classic Dawn of the Dead. Of special interest to me, naturally, were Slither's zombies, classical, slow-moving, individually manageable but collectively deadly hordes that represent a welcome development away from the sprinting undead of Mr. Gunn's Dawn. This development alone, however, is not enough. The knowing (practically winking) attempts to mine the outlandishly horrific situations for their comic possibilities keep the audience at arm's length and drain the scenes of much of their power to frighten and disturb. I don't know if this broad, goofy humor reflects any lingering shame surrounding the (formerly?) disreputable horror genre and serves as a hedge of irony against any disapproval an earnest, fully committed approach might face. As a horror fan, I await something truly scary. That being said, Slither had a few good moments and one particularly exciting sequence involving a teenage girl's encounter with a merciless (and darkly funny!) gauntlet of horrors. And I was disheartened to read in today's Hollywood Reporter that, for industry execs, the upshot of Slither's disappointing opening-weekend grosses is that, in the words of one "insider" at Universal, the film's distributor, "there is no audience for horror-comedies." That's too bad, for a well-crafted horror comedy, like any genre hybrid, can be very effective. The overall implications for such blending and for horror in general remain to be seen.
2. Quality-of-life kvetching: I can't stand people who don't wait for you to disembark before barging into the elevator, subway car, etc. But what plagues me even more profoundly is the blindingly high wattage of the headlights of apparently every car or truck manufactured in the last 5 years or so. SUVs, with their eye-level lamps, are the most egregious offender in this regard (not to mention several others). Are these people lighting a path or completely irradiating it? I wonder what I look like from the perspective of these oncoming drivers. Do they see a little skeleton shielding his eye sockets? I don't believe in Hell, but I could design it: A crowded elevator I can't escape, lit on all sides by state-of-the-art beams from Japan/Germany/Detroit.
3. The long shadow of M: I saw M (1931) last Saturday, and as with Metropolis, I am in awe of Fritz Lang's vision and mastery of narrative and technique. In this film credited with giving birth to both the serial-killer movie and the modern procedural, Peter Lorre's child murderer is haunting, particularly when facing a novel form and process of "justice." Lang's even-handed depiction of the killer, his crimes, the hysteria surrounding them and the mob mentality that seizes an entire city is chilling, breathtaking and always timely. It is a testament to Lang's powers that he can, without diminishing the acute suffering such a predator wreaks, critique the society in which he prowls. (I went to see M a few short hours after seeing Slither. One of the reasons I abandoned a comprehensive assessment of Slither was that, before I could record my fresh impressions of it, M had wiped it almost entirely from my mind. Lack of recall and comparisons that would be unfair to almost any movie conspired to poison the review, making it unduly negative.) M had been paired on a double bill with another masterpiece of German Expressionism, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919). The themes and style of Expressionism, with its then-lurid preoccupations and creeping shadows, were a precursor to and critical influence upon two personal favorites: early Hollywood horror, particularly the Universal classics, and film noir, the subgenre/style closely associated with the studio films Lang directed after fleeing his homeland in the wake of the Nazis' ascension to power. (His wife, staying behind, opted to join the Party.)
4. Lost fan fiction: It has come to light that, in addition to Ana Lucia and the other "tailies," a small band of stewardesses (NOT flight attendants) on Oceanic Flight 815 separately crash-landed on an idyllic yet mysterious area of the island. In keeping with the enormous tease the show has become, this blog will bring you up to date, filling you in on their story up to now, a tale of survival, sexual exploration and madness! (Never let it be said that this blog doesn't pander to the lowest common denominator and its basest instincts.) Now it can be told!
5. Today's fortune: Nothing is impossible to a willing heart. (Not knowing what this means, I won't disagree.) Lucky numbers: 3, 14, 18, 33, 34, 37.