Never on Sunday (1960)

Happy 4th of July, Americans!  This is another Jules Dassin movie where he plays a bumbling doofus who ruins everything.  The man was working through some things.  

Homer Thrace (Jules Dassin) is an American in Greece looking for the cure for all the world's ills.  Ills he has defined as a divergence from the Ancient Greek philosophical ideals.  Ilya (Melina Mercouri) is a prostitute in a small coastal town.  She chooses her own customers, makes her own hours, is beloved by the townsfolk, and believes in making your own happy endings, no matter how sad the story.  So obviously, Homer becomes obsessed with trying to "fix" her.  

A lot of older movies don't hold up all that well but this remains a banger.  Ilya is a great character and Mercouri plays her to the hilt.  The tone is light and fun with zero judgment.  Homer is a stuck-up scold but it's played for laughs.  

It's streaming on Amazon Prime.

The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1964)

  This wasn't nearly as good as I thought it would be.  

Molly (Debbie Reynolds) grew up poor and uneducated in the hinterlands of Colorado but determined that she was going to make something of herself... by becoming a rich man's wife.  John J. Brown (Harve Presnell) is technically rich but he doesn't care enough to show it.  He decides to woo Molly based on her personality but she very quickly informs him that he's going to have to put up or shut up.  So he becomes the richest man in the U.S.  Molly now has her dream of financial security, but it doesn't come with social inclusion.  The head of Denver society, Mrs. Gladys McGraw (Audrey Christie), has decided the Browns are too crass to associate with and given them the cut direct.  So Molly goes to Europe to gain a little sophistication, hobnobbing with aristocrats charmed by her directness and willingness to pick up the check.  But J.J. is tired of it.  He only ever participated to make Molly happy and as soon as he realized that was an ever-shifting goalpost, he was out.  Molly has to choose between her marriage and her posh friends, deciding once and for all what she really wants out of life.

Honestly, I was shocked anyone liked this broad.  Reynolds was almost terminally charming in real life but she grated on my nerves in this role.  She is the main character but all the big songs are given to Presnell.  For an introductory role!  And the songs themselves are terrible!  Repetitive and boring.  Reynolds deserved better than this.  Ed Begley, Sr. and Hermione Baddeley try but can't lift this movie out of the mire.  It's streaming for free on Tubi and I'd still like my money back.

In other news, I watched season 2 of Cheers, which still holds up pretty well, and season 1 of What We Do in the Shadows.  I liked it more than the movie so I'll probably watch season 2 eventually.  

Kwaidan (1965)

  Some bonus post-Halloween ghost content for your All-Souls Day.  

This is an anthology of four traditional Japanese ghost stories.

The Black Hair - a samurai (Rentarô Mikuni) regrets the choices he made in service of ambition.

The Woman in the Snow - a woodcutter (Tatsuya Nakadai) has a terrifying run-in with a snow demon (Keiko Kishi).

Hoichi the Earless - a blind monk (Katsuo Nakamura) is summoned to perform a historical epic for its victims.

In a Cup of Tea - a samurai (Kan'emon Nakamura) is tormented by a ghostly presence reflected in his teacup.

I don't throw the word "masterpiece" around very often so trust me when I say it.  Kwaidan is a masterpiece of Japanese cinema.  The scare factor of this is very low while the art factor is extremely high.  Every scene is basically a painting that moves.  It is a stunning film.  The performances feel a little wooden, a little stage-y, but it just adds to the vibe.  It does run a little over three hours but I did not feel it.  

It's streaming on the Criterion Channel and also (sigh) Max.  Treat your eyeballs.

To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)

  Content warning:  racist slurs, discussion of sexual assault

Atticus Finch (Gregory Peck) is a Depression-era, small-town Alabama lawyer defending Tom Robinson (Brock Peters), a Black man accused of beating and raping Mayella Euwell (Collin Wilcox), a white woman.  The story is mainly told through the eyes of Finch's children, Jem (Phillip Alford) and Scout (Mary Badham), who are beginning to see their father as a person, not just a caregiving extension of themselves.  While also dealing with stalkers, attempted murder, and angry mobs.

This movie is still depressingly relevant.  Peck is the image of gentrified nobility and it feels very much like a spiritual sequel to his 1947 performance in Gentleman's Agreement.  The child actors manage to be charming and sincere, which is a relief considering they have a LOT of screen time.  Alford's accent is also extremely realistic, probably because he was born in Gadsden, Alabama, 30 miles from where I grew up.

It's not a super-fun watch but it is still a very good movie.  The courtroom scene is famous but it only takes up about 20 minutes tops.  The rest is mostly centered around the kids learning about the world they are inheriting.  It's currently streaming on Tubi for free with ads.

The Apartment (1964)

  Here's another classic "comedy" that has aged like milk.  Content warning:  attempted suicide

C.C. Baxter (Jack Lemmon) is an up-and-comer at Consolidated Life Insurance by virtue of being willing to loan his apartment out to executives and their mistresses.  He has a crush on elevator operator Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine) but doesn't know that she has been seeing his boss, Mr. Sheldrake (Fred McMurray).

There are parts of this that are clearly set up to be funny.  They just don't make it anywhere close.  

Every man in this movie is disgusting, yes, including Baxter.  (I will give Dr. Dreyfuss a pass based on no incriminating evidence but he's on thin fucking ice.)  The executives treat their female co-workers like their own private safari, gleefully patting themselves on the back for their supposed conquests.  Baxter lies with every breath, and continues to carry water for these predators even after a woman nearly dies.

This is basically Sexual Harassment: The Movie.  Not a fan.  It's currently streaming on Criterion.  Watch something else.

The Woman in the Dunes (1964)

Happy Mother's Day!  Show your mom you appreciate her by not exploiting her labor.  Cut her a check today.  This is the Cinema Club pick for this week, paired with Showgirls, a film I already said I would never watch again.  Between that and last week's Eurovision, feeling very attacked by Movie Club's choices.  And then there's this piece of shit!  I thought, "oh, thank God, a Japanese film.  That can't possibly send blood shooting out of my ears like a cartoon oil rig."  WRONG.  Content warning:  domestic violence, attempted sexual assault, ectopic pregnancy

An entomologist (Eiji Okada) is out bug-hunting in the dunes of the Japanese coast.  He gets so into his search that he misses his train but the friendly local villagers offer him a place to stay.  It's a little weird that he has to climb down a rope ladder to a little house practically buried in the sand but the lady (Kyôko Kishida) inside is super hospitable.  The next morning, of course, the ladder is gone and he is dumbfounded to realize that he is now the metaphorical bug in a jar.  See, the villagers ran a cost-benefit analysis and found that slave labor is way cheaper than paying for countermeasures against erosion.  And the eponymous woman is no help in escaping.  She's been fully indoctrinated and is just thrilled to be given a new man after her last one died.

My first problem is that this movie is two and a half hours long when Rod Serling would have smoked two packs of cigarettes and knocked this same concept out in 23 minutes.  It's a good concept.  It's made well.  The hits keep coming every time you've absorbed one.  All well and good.  But too long.

My second problem is that the protagonist is an asshole.  I get it.  Unlawful confinement, forced labor, the impersonal cruelty of one's captors.  It's hard to maintain a cherub-like demeanor.  But he not only despises this woman for being a stooge for her slavers, he also demands her unpaid labor for himself.  When she works all night, comes in, and he makes her cook dinner and bathe him?  I screeched like a newly hatched cicada.

This is considered a landmark in Japanese and art-house cinema and if I overlook the baked-in misogyny, I can see it.  It's streaming on the Criterion Channel and so is Showgirls, for probably the same reason.

Night of the Living Dead (1968)

Happy Earth Day!  Here's a completely unrelated movie!  The Movie Club pick for this week was Eyes Without a Face but I just watched that a couple of years ago and I already re-posted They Live this week, so I thought I'd swap out one highly regarded black-and-white 60s horror for another.  

A handful of survivors hole up in a farmhouse as they are beset from without by the undead, risen as a result of cosmic radiation from Venus, and from within by paranoia and selfishness.  Ben (Duane Jones) is trying to keep them all together and uneaten but is hampered by Barbra (Judith O'Dea) being completely useless as anything but a doorstop and Harry Cooper's (Karl Hardman) sweaty cowardice.

This is the OG of zombie movies, the innovator that spawned an entire sub-genre, the undead Coke Classic, if you will.  It remains a gold standard despite being made for approximately $42, adjusted for inflation, because it doesn't try and get cute or over-explain.  We know precisely as much about the characters as we need to for this moment and any information we get otherwise is the same as what they get.  That keeps us the audience rooted in the moment, which keeps the whole film feeling fresh as a deodorant commercial.  

The 2016 restored version is currently streaming on the Criterion Channel.  Plus, you might get lucky and catch it the way God intended, streaming at 2 a.m. on their new Criterion 24/7 feature.  Give it a shot.

Yojimbo (1961)

This was one of the picks for Movie Club this week.  I can't believe it's been a decade since I saw it last.  It's still great and you should still watch it.  It's currently streaming on (sigh) Max and on the Criterion Channel.  Completely worth it.  Originally posted 04 Aug 13.    I have no idea if this is the right movie poster but it looks really badass so I'm keeping it. 

This is the original Akira Kurosawa film on which For a Few Dollars More is based.  It's been copied many a time but that's the best of the derivatives. 

A masterless samurai (Toshiro Mifune) wanders into a town divided amongst two gangs.  Each side has been hiring thugs and criminals in an escalating arms race over who is in control of the lucrative silk trade and gambling halls.  Seeing an opportunity, the samurai begins playing both sides off of each other, culminating in all-out war.

I found this film to be absolutely mesmerizing, even though I was already familiar with the story.  It's a Criterion collection Blu-ray so the quality is razor-sharp and the whole experience was highly enjoyable.  If you're a Kurosawa fan, you're already familiar with it but if you're new to Japanese cinema, or foreign films in general, this is a great introductory piece. 

The Russians are Coming, the Russians are Coming (1966)

  In the 60s, this was a comedy.  Now, the hysterical-fear mongering-descent-into-violence isn't quite as funny for some reason.

A Russian sub runs aground off a small New England island.  A small crew is dispatched to shore to find some local maritime maps.  Instead, they find a writer (Carl Reiner) and his family, a gossipy telephone operator (Tessie O'Shea), a put-upon police chief (Brian Keith), and a bloodthirsty if geriatric local militia leader (Paul Ford).  The Russians just want to go home peacefully but as the rumors fly faster and thicker than sand midges, leaving without bloodshed becomes less and less certain.

This was a hard movie to sit through.  I found almost every character annoying, especially the kid played by Sheldon Collins.  I wanted to string that little brat up by the ears every time he opened his mouth.  Most of the humor was slapstick, which I have a low tolerance for, and the romance subplot was by-the-numbers boring.  Alan Arkin was good and it was nice to see Carl Reiner look so young, but those are the only nice comments I can make.  

The Russians are currently streaming on Tubi, but it's a big nyet from me.

Eyes Without a Face (1960)

  It's classic French horror, by which, I mean it's extremely stylish but a little light on plot.

Dr. Génessier (Pierre Brasseur) is obsessed with finding a replacement face for his disfigured daughter, Christiane (Edith Scob), mostly so he can absolve himself of the guilt from causing the accident that disfigured her in the first place.  He has his assistant, Louise (Alida Valli), lure girls who looked like Christiane to his house, then attempts to transplant their faces onto hers.  

This was re-edited for the American market and shown as The Horror Chamber of Dr. Faustus, because if there's one thing Americans are known for, it's a love of subtlety.  I have no idea what that movie is like, but this one is very reminiscent of the pulpy, 50s creature features where science has run amok.  It's got some excellent effects for Christiane's face in various stages of decay and atmosphere for days.  It's not particularly scary, unless medical procedures make you squirm.  If so, there's a full face removal scene that you may want to hide your eyes for.  

The mask she wears has become an iconic image for good reason.  This isn't necessarily the best French horror but it's definitely worth the watch.  Currently streaming on The Criterion Channel.  Also, don't miss the trailer for the re-cut American version they have, billed as a double feature with The Manster, half-man, half-monster.  A truly lawless time.

The Hustler (1961)

  I tried to watch this movie when I was way too young to understand it so my brain bookmarked it for a later date.  It fully deserves the praise heaped on it, but you know, maybe also a content warning.  So here's a content warning.

CW:  suicide

"Fast" Eddie Felson (Paul Newman, with a profile that belonged on a Grecian coin, my God, what a beautiful man) is a pool hustler, traveling across the country with his partner, Charlie (Myron McCormick), scamming locals out of their cash.  But what Eddie really wants is to make a name for himself by challenging the legendary Minnesota Fats (Jackie Gleason).  He loses, and badly.  Embarrassed, Eddie abandons his partner and hooks up with Sarah Packard (Piper Laurie), a damaged, borderline alcoholic.  The two are at peace for a while, licking their respective psychological wounds, until Eddie starts to crave the action of the pool-hall again.  He meets Burt Gordon (George C. Scott), a backer with money to burn and a penchant for abusive manipulation.  Sarah immediately recognizes Burt for the evil bastard that he is, but Eddie still thinks he needs Burt to get back to a level where he can challenge Fats to a rematch.  

There are a ton of movies about gambling addiction but almost none as skillful as this one.  It doesn't romanticize Eddie or Sarah at all, presenting them as deeply flawed but sympathetic, adrift in a world full of sharks.  George C. Scott was a hell of an actor at playing complete assholes.  (Also, you've never seen a man who hated the Oscars as much as he did.)  All four main cast got nominated for performances but no one won.  I guess this means I'll have to watch The Color of Money now.

The Hustler is currently streaming on the Criterion Channel.

Persona (1966)

  I was watching this movie and thinking that the pandemic had made me dumber, because I was really struggling to find the point of this entire goddamn film, but then I went online and it turns out it's supposed to be enigmatic and atmospheric.  So now I feel better (but still possibly dumber).

Alma (Bibi Andersson) is a young nurse assigned to the care of actress Elisabet Vogler (Liv Ullman).  Elisabet is physically healthy but refuses to speak.  Over a therapeutic holiday, Alma confides in the mute but sympathetic actress until she can no longer tell where one of them begins and the other ends.

Like, I know I should be going full film school and talk about Ingmar Bergman and art house and the aesthetic, but I cannot move beyond how creeped out I was by some of the implied ages in Alma's stories.  So, she starts by confessing to Elisabet that her first love was an older married dude that she had an affair with for five years before meeting her current fiancé.  She is 25.  Best case scenario is that her current relationship was whirlwind and they got engaged after a year or less.  More likely, she was fucking some predatory older dude while in her teens.  Not great.  So then she tells a further story about how she was on vacation with her current dude, met some other chick on the beach, and the two of them got peeped on by a pair of boys she describes as "young, terribly young."  She is 24-25 in this story.  How young is "terribly young"?  Because she then fucks one.  

The theme of the movie is identity and how much of ourselves we come to see in others, not "is this statutory rape?" but I had a real hard time moving on.  It's currently streaming on the Criterion Channel and HBO Max.  

Camelot (1967)

  It was a very musical weekend.  This is the feature film version of the Broadway musical.  I had watched the film Broadway production in one of my classes at community college and added the feature to my queue to see if there were any differences.  (That was about seven or eight years ago, if you're tracking how long it takes something to move to the top of my queue.)

King Arthur (Richard Harris, reprising his role) struggles to create a lasting, peaceful kingdom focused on justice and rule of law with the help of his wife, Guenevere (Vanessa Redgrave, also reprising), and best friend, Lancelot (Franco Nero, new!).  But when those very same laws require him to condemn the two for their adulterous affair, Arthur must choose between his love and his country.

It won three Academy awards, one for every hour of runtime.  Seriously, it is three hours long.  No musical needs to be three fucking hours.  I am certain the Broadway production was not that long.  I'm pretty sure it never had the characters of Pellinore and Mordred, but it's been almost a decade so I'd have to do research to be sure.  I'm basing this on the fact that they didn't have songs and you could cut both of them and still tell the same story.

This is not my favorite Lerner and Loewe.  (That's Brigadoon.)  The film does do an admirable job of showing the toll willful ignorance takes on Arthur both as a man and a king.  It could have shown more of the friendship between him and Lancelot but then it would have needed a fourth hour and now we're moving into miniseries territory.  Guenevere comes out as the worst character.  She is portrayed as spiteful, shallow, and vindictive, and the blame for the affair falls squarely on her instigation.  Lancelot is a helpless naif against her wiles.  It is absolutely not my favorite take but sadly common for these legends.  

It is only available if you have a Hoopla subscription or for rent from Vudu or Google Play, but I wouldn't bother.  There are 5000 Arthurian retellings out there.  Find a better one.

Promises! Promises! (1963)

  This is a fucking terrible movie.  Holy shit.  I was not prepared.

Jeff (Tommy Noonan) is a nerdy screenwriter on a cruise with his wife, Sandy (Jayne Mansfield).  Sandy really wants a baby and Jeff appeals to the cruise doctor (Fritz Feld) for help.  The doctor gives him an aspirin and tells him it's a miracle cure, writing Jeff off as an anxious wreck with performance problems.  The pill doesn't work but Jeff tells Sandy she's pregnant (yep, brace for it.  It gets worse) and confesses to the doctor that he knows he's infertile because of a childhood reaction to mumps. (Vaccines are important!) The doctor tells Jeff he's just not trying hard enough and gives him two more aspirin, one for himself and one for Sandy, to be put in her drink (because she's still drinking) without her knowledge.  (Yes, they are harmless but Jeff doesn't know that.  And he's totally okay with roofie-ing his wife.)  Except their cabin neighbors interrupt and the neighbor's husband, King (Mickey Hargitay), drinks Jeff's drink.  Jeff knocks himself out trying to intervene and the neighbor's wife, Claire (Marie McDonald), takes him to the sickbay, where she gives him an aspirin and takes one for herself.  Then Sandy and Claire both end up actually pregnant.  So who is the father?  Is it Jeff?  Is it King?  Is it both?

If your answer is "Oh my God, who caaaaares?  These people are awful!"  Congratulations!  You have passed the test.

Everything about this is the worst distillation of the 60s.  There's not a POC in the entire cast, stereotypes run wild, and the characters are unsympathetic assholes, except for Sandy and King, who are portrayed as literally too dumb to be hateful.

Mansfield and Hargitay were actually married in real life (you may be familiar with their daughter, Mariska from SVU) and this was probably the last thing they were in together before their divorce.  By this point, Mansfield's career was in decline and the poster you see indicates the level at which she was regarded.  According to Wikipedia, Noonan, the film's star, producer, and writer, convinced her to appear topless, which also makes him gross in real life.

Mansfield was one of the leading sex symbols of the 50s and considered a successor to Marilyn Monroe.  As with Monroe, she suffered with substance abuse issues and died young.  This is not a great swansong.  If you're going to watch anything, stick to pre-1958.

Promises! Promises! is currently streaming on Amazon Prime.  Don't watch it.

Repulsion (1965)

  You can see why that tagline is the worst, right?  I don't have to explain it?  Cool.

Carol (Catherine Deneuve) is a shy young woman living with her sister, Helen (Yvonne Furneaux), in London.  Where Helen finds it easy to go out and date, Carol actively avoids engaging with other people, especially men.  She becomes more and more withdrawn after Helen goes on vacation, isolating herself in the apartment, wracked with nightmares about the walls cracking and intruders, leading to murderous results.

This is one of those "classic" films that I would actually like to see updated and remade.  There is a great story to be told of a woman stifled by the toxic men around her, wrapped into her fears so tightly it chokes her, but without the gross fetishization of rape fantasy.  Give me Repulsion without Polanski, is what I'm saying.

The Pawnbroker (1964)

  I don't know why I keep doing this to myself.  Quarantine is no place for heavy Holocaust-survivor drama.  And yet, here I am.

Sol Nazerman (Rod Steiger) is a survivor only in name.  He sleepwalks through his life, filled with bitterness and guilt for living when so many others had died in unimaginable conditions.  Still, his business does well in 1960s Harlem, well enough that he can afford an assistant, the ebullient ambitious Jesus Ortiz (Jaime Sanchez).  Ortiz is trying to climb his way out of poverty but Nazerman's relentless misery wears at him.  Nazerman's destructive spiral increases as more and more of his trauma comes to the surface, leading to a terrible showdown.

I remember adding this to my queue because it features the first appearance of one Morgan Freeman as an unnamed bystander and I wanted to point out what a baby he was.  Readers, I will confess, I fully forgot to be looking for him while I was watching this and totally missed it.  And I'm not watching it again.  It is fully traumatizing.

Content Warning:  concentration camps, the Holocaust, the emotional toll of human misery

The lone silver lining is that this is a rare example of a mainstream film by a prominent director to feature a predominantly POC cast.  In particular, Thelma Oliver (now Krishna Kaur Khalsa) was a breathtaking actress who deserved better than being credited as "Jesus's Girl".  In a just world, she would have been an A-lister, but she's apparently gone on to be a very well-respected yoga instructor so that's good.  Also, Brock Peters doesn't get enough mention as an incredible actor.

Peeping Tom (1960)

  I can't remember where I heard about this movie but it was definitely in the context of it being a banned film.  When this was released in 1960, critics lost their shit and whole countries decried it as indecent, immoral, and not suitable for anyone under 16.  It wrecked the director's whole career.  So obviously I had to see it.

And it's pretty tame by today's standards.  I would definitely say okay for people over 10.  Any younger and you're probably going to have to explain voyeurism, which you may or may not want to do.

Mark Lewis (Carl Boehm) is a shy, retiring photographer and focus puller for TV commercials.  In his spare time, he murders prostitutes and films their faces as they die.  It's important to be well-rounded.  He also rents out the house he grew up in to Helen Stephens (Anna Massey) and her blind mother (Maxine Audley).  Helen takes a shine to Mark and he really wants to stop killing people, or at least not kill Helen, but he also wants to complete his masterwork of documenting his murder process before the cops get him.

If this had been made even five years later, it probably would have been hailed as visionary.  Unfortunately, Michael Powell had to wait over a decade to get vindication.  Since then, Peeping Tom has gone on to be consider a progenitor of slasher films, a meta commentary on film watching, and a masterpiece of horror.  And best of all, it's streaming for free on Tubi.  If you like cult classics, slashers, lurid psychosexual exploits, or stabbing British people, give it a shot.

Torn Curtain (1966)

  I thought I had seen all of Hitchcock's movies but I had missed at least one, because I never knew Paul Newman and Julie Andrews made a movie together.  It's not my favorite Hitchcock but it is very suspenseful.

Michael Armstrong (Paul Newman) is an American physicist on a European convention tour with his girlfriend/assistant Sarah (Julie Andrews), a doctor in her own fucking right and a peer in the field but whatever, the 60s, when he starts behaving oddly.  Sarah becomes increasingly suspicious of his attempts to ditch her and get her to go home so she follows him on an impromptu flight behind the Iron Curtain into East Berlin where she is horrified to know that Michael plans to defect because the American government won't fund his anti-nuclear weapons defense.  Of course he's not really a traitor, he's a spy sent behind enemy lines to get the missing piece of information from a Russian scientist (Ludwig Donath) so the Americans can scoop the Communists.  He was supposed to go alone but Stand-By-Your-Man Sarah wouldn't abandon him so now he has to figure out how to get both of them back to safety before the East German Secret Police catch them.

This is kind of like if True Lies wasn't a comedy.  It's pretty predictable in that I didn't believe for a second that Paul Newman was going to defect to East Germany but it really maintains tension throughout and works very well as an escape film.  It was on Amazon Prime but I think it was scheduled to come off at the end of March so I might have caught it on the last day.

Elmer Gantry (1960)

  This has been sitting on my shelf since before Christmas.  I just haven't had the time or the energy to sit through a 2.5 hour movie, but I really needed to send it back so I could get some of the new Oscar nominees.  This might have been a vastly different review if I hadn't just seen Hail, Satan?.

Elmer Gantry (Burt Lancaster) is a silver-tongued vacuum salesman during Prohibition.  He can quote the Bible all day long to make a sale, charm the birds from the trees, and more than one lady from her skirts.  When he meets Sister Sharon Falconer (Jean Simmons), a revivalist, he knows he's fallen in love at last.  But his past is there to haunt him no matter how he runs from it.

There is an honest-to-God disclaimer at the beginning of this movie warning good Christian folk to not be horrified by the depictions therein.  It is very preachy, for sure, with the skeptical atheist newspaper reporter (Arthur Kennedy) filling in for the villain when one is needed.  In a different age, this might have been a cautionary tale about snake oil salesmen masquerading as preachers but Elmer Gantry is almost painfully earnest.

It is very well acted.  Lancaster has never been my go-to leading man but he is extremely charming and affable here.  Simmons isn't given quite as much to do other than switch randomly between wildly affectionate and cold-shouldered.  Through modern eyes, Sister Sharon definitely gets short shrift, especially in the ending conflagration.  She's essentially punished for refusing to give up a position intended only for men (preaching).  The real standout of the film is Shirley Jones, the fallen woman and one-time victim of Gantry's charms.  She takes what could have been a stereotype and makes a real role out of it.

I didn't hate it but it definitely wasn't my favorite film.  It is currently streaming on the Criterion Channel.

We Heart Horror - Day 27: Dead Ringer (1964)

  Bette  Davis is a great actress but something about this movie just didn't click for me.  I definitely wouldn't consider it horror.  Maybe just a thriller and a lesser one at that.

Edie Phillips (Bette Davis) kills her twin sister, Margaret, over a lie from 20 years ago that resulted in Margaret living a luxurious life with the man Edie loved, and Edie living over a ratty bar that's three months behind on rent.  So Edie fakes a suicide and assumes the role of Margaret but soon discovers that a surface resemblance isn't enough to cut it when there's a nosy cop (Karl Malden) and a suspicious lover (Peter Lawford) sniffing around.

Unless you are a hardcore Bette Davis fan, there's really nothing here worth searching out.  The special effects are pretty decent for their time but we now have deepfake performances of dead actors so it's safe to say that the bar has been raised.