B. J. Lang Presents (1971)
a.k.a. The Manipulator
Starring: Mickey Rooney, Luana Anders
and Keenan Wynn
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that I’m fascinated by film
projects by stars at low points in their careers. It holds some sort of
weird fascination, whether it be Jackie Gleason tripping on acid in
Skidoo, Liz Taylor having psychotic fits over stain-resistant
fabric
and dirty glassware in The
Driver’s Seat or Veronica Lake playing with
maggots in Flesh Feast. And then there’s Mickey Rooney…
Rooney had some dry years in the late 60’s and most of the 70’s, prior
to his comeback on TV (Bill) and on Broadway. He seemed to be
one of
those people who were desperate to work in anything, just to
keep busy.
As a result, not all the projects he worked in were, shall we say, very
stellar (to say the least). In fact, some of the films he appeared in
were some of the most notorious flops of their time, including the
aforementioned Otto Preminger ‘psychedelic’ atrocity Skidoo,
John
Frankenheimer’s barely-released flop The Extraordinary Seaman
and John
Candy’s long-disowned debut feature Find The Lady. Somewhere in
between, he stumbled into the studio where B. J. Lang Presents
was
being made.
B. J. Lang Presents is unique in that it represents Rooney’s one
and
only flirtation with ‘avant-garde’ filmmaking (again, barring
Preminger’s insanely wrongheaded Skidoo, which I promise to
review when
I manage to track down a copy). Conceived by screenwriter and one-time
director Yabo Yablonsky, it’s one of those odd projects that could only
have been made in the 70’s. At the time, producers were impressed by
the commercial performance made by Easy Rider, with so little
initial
investment, and were throwing money at any small project in the
hopes
of duplicating its success. This resulted in some fantastically odd
experimental films that could never have been made today. It also
resulted in some spectacular crap by people who had no clue what they
were doing; projects that probably never should have been green-lighted
like…well, like B. J. Lang Presents.
Needless to say, B. J. Lang Presents didn’t exactly set the
box-office
on fire. In fact, if it got a cinematic release at all, it had to have
been a ridiculously small one. For many years, it was effectively a
“lost” film. Then it resurfaced in the 1980’s showing in the small
hours on cable T.V., and eventually garnered a video release (under the
title The Manipulator) courtesy of Vestron Video. I can only
imagine
what the reactions to this cinematic oddity must have been like, but
doubt they were far removed from my horrified, dumbfounded gaping stare
as I first watched this cinematic atrocity unfold.
We fade in on a street (or a sound-stage facsimile thereof). It’s
pouring with stage-rain as a heavily-raincoated figure crosses in front
of the old-timey lamppost. Over a creepy, synthesized Gil Mellé
opening theme, the cheapo TV-movie-like opening credits appear. In
fact, if you didn’t know better, you’d swear this was a
made-for-TV
movie. You’ll find out that it’s obviously not soon enough…
We follow and follow the cloaked figure as he walks through the pouring
rain and enters a service elevator. Here we get the first look at the
cloaked figure. Of course, it’s Rooney himself, as the titular B. J.
Lang. Snowy-bearded and wearing big, lightly-tinted glasses, he looks
so much like Paul Williams in The Phantom of the Paradise, it’s
scary!
Pretentious artiness immediately starts assaulting us as random frames
of cobweb-covered stuffed animals, flowers and scarily made-up women
are inserted as the film goes to slo-mo and the sound of a movie
projector creeps under the soundtrack.
Lang pauses by a stuffed horses’ head, covered (as everything in this
film seems to be) in cobwebs as he wrings the rainwater from his gloves
and begins to ascend a fixed ladder.
He emerges in a sort of warehouse, full of dusty relics, props and
general old junk. Get used to it, they don’t leave this place for the
next 90 minutes. He sits down, switches on a light and takes off his
hat and glasses. The music stops and we hear the sound of applause. He
starts talking to an imaginary movie crew, providing all their voices
as well. Obviously, the man is nuts. Lang isn’t too sane, either (all
right, that was a cheap shot. After the amount of pain this film
caused, I think I’m entitled to it). He spends the next couple of
minutes talking to various mannequins. Eventually, he gets ready to
shoot the next scene of his great picture, which he describes thusly:
The old man has his three sons with him, and all of a
sudden one of the
sons gets into a fight. A horrible fight, and there’s blood all over
the place! And finally he sits down at the table with the old man and
he says, “How’d I do, Pa?” And Pa SLAPS HIM across the face! The blood
goes spurting all over the place. He says, “You took too long with him.
Haven’t I taught you to kill better than this?”
Then he switches on an empty movie projector, calls for ‘action,’ then
sits back down in his armchair where the projected light strobes on his
face. He hallucinates a middle-aged couple (Sylva Kocsina and Stephen
Boyd), heavily made-up in white-face and lipstick, dancing alternately
clothed and in the nude. Meanwhile, Lang jabbers on and on about, ‘I
don’t know what love is, and I haven’t had time to find out!’ Etc. etc.
I suppose we’re to find this all very profound. Pardon me if I don’t.
Eventually, the middle-aged nudes fade in rear-projected behind his
head, laughing maniacally as Lang starts bellowing an off-key,
arhythmic rendition of ‘Chattanooga Choo-Choo.’ He finally screams and
starts freaking out in a strobe-lit scene set to bleepy synthesizer
music where he interacts with the nude couple, kissing the woman’s
cheek, flinging flowers around and generally flailing about.
He comes down from his high, and starts to turn on more lights when he
hears someone sobbing. Lang wanders back and forth, looking around
furtively as we hear his voice in voice-over, interspersed with the
female sobs: ‘No, Mary. Definitely not today or tomorrow or forever for
that matter. Tell Mr. Mayer that…I’m not into him or anyone. Or tell
him it’s my last day. All over after tonight is finished, in the can.
It’s mine, all mine. Directed, written, starred. Tell him B. J. Lang
presents…’
Lang pulls a curtain aside and screams. A woman (Luana Anders) strapped
to a wheelchair, presumably the source of the sobs, angrily yells back
at him. There’s a big, scary fisheye-lens close-up of Lang as he
addresses her. ‘You’re late again, Carlotta,’ he whispers. She’s the
‘star’ of his big picture. How a small, middle aged man of no apparent
strength managed to capture a young, healthy woman who looks like she
might be able to fend for herself is one of the many, many unanswered
questions one has about this film. Anyway, he’s rabbiting on about how
the production can’t go on without her. She, on the other hand, seems
to have a vocabulary consisting of entirely four words, ‘I’m hungry,
Mr. Lang!’ She says this eight times (I counted, though it feels like
twice that much) as he lectures her, talks some more with imaginary
crew members and sweeps up the ‘stage.’ Eventually he breaks down,
calls for a five minute break and spoons some applesauce baby-food into
her mouth.
He blathers on and on about how glad he is to have her as his star.
‘Another B. J. Lang discovery,’ he calls her. She sycophantically
professes her gratitude, obviously scared because she wishes to placate
this psycho. He runs off, switches off the overhead lights and rolls in
a big floodlight over her. She starts freaking out, worrying that he’s
left her alone and for good. Cut to a completely uncalled-for sequence
of Rooney/Lang running around and gadding about like a lunatic,
speeded-up Keystone Kops-style. All set to Gil Mellé’s
high-speed synthesizer jazz. If you didn’t have a headache before, you
do now.
She continues freaking out, screaming ‘Mr. Lang! Mr. Lang!’ until
you’re ready to scream yourself. Then she nods off, dreaming that she
frees herself from her bonds. At last, Lang returns…
OK, the film is almost worth all the pain just for this one scene. I
literally laughed for five minutes straight when I saw what followed.
There stands Lang over Carlotta, now completely made-up, wearing more
rouge, lipstick, eyebrow-pencil and Agnetha Fæltskog blue
eye-shadow than a skanky $5-an-evening Fresno hooker. There are many,
many things that Mickey Rooney will have a hard time living down, and
the sight of his face encrusted with a kilo and a half of ladies’
makeup is up near the top of the list. Is it any wonder this film’s so
obscure?
As he makes up Carlotta’s face, he regales her with stories of his days
as a Hollywood make-up man. ‘When I used to make up Marilyn’s eyes,
she’d say, “They’re not my eyes. They’re our eyes!”’ You’ll
have a hard
time hearing a word he’s saying, you’ll be too busy reacting to
the
sight of Mickey Rooney workin’ it in women’s makeup and men’s clothes,
one of the most bizarre sights in cinema history. He half-finishes
making up her face, when suddenly he’s overcome and runs over to a
mirror. ‘I’m hurting you,’ he says pleadingly, ‘I know I am…but I can’t
help it. Do you understand that?’ He continues babbling about being
caught up in fantasy as he takes a cloth and wipes the makeup from his
face.
Cut suddenly back to the middle-aged couple freak-out scene, and then
it’s back to Lang, looking in the mirror. All of a sudden, he’s got a
big, fake Cyrano nose, and he reacts to it in several inappropriate
ways. He places on a plumed hat and says they’re nearly done with
shooting. She wants to know what happens then. Obviously, she’s hinting
that she wants to be set free. But when she finally blurts out, ‘Please
let me go, Mr. Lang!’ he shoves her wheelchair into the mirror and
bellows, ‘Do you know your lines? Do you know your lines?’
We’re now at *sigh* the thirty minute mark. I’m not a drinkin’ man, but
I feel like I need a good, stiff belt of something a heck of a lot
stronger than Kickapoo
Joy Juice to make it to the end of this baby.
Where were we? Oh yes. Lang is setting up a scene of his ‘masterpiece,’
the closing scene from Cyrano de Bergerac. Carlotta looks with
hope at
the sword he’s hastily belted round his waist. He then shoves her
around in the wheelchair a bit. Then, when he’s positioned her to his
liking, he shines another stage light on her and starts filtering her
through coloured gels. ‘I love you in blue. I love you in the passion
of red. I love you in the white of wintertime…’ In reaction to
this,
Carlotta rolls her eyes sarcastically, long after the audience has done
so dozens of times already.
He leaves in the blue gel and moves to stand over Carlotta, still
carrying on. (hell, he’s been doing it continuously for the past
half-hour, why stop now?) Unwilling to let Rooney be the only one to
totally humiliate himself, Carlotta giggles, then sticks her tongue out
and makes goofy noises. Lang responds, ‘Don’t do that,’ then announces
that he’ll start the scene. As soon as he gets everyone in place.
This involves wandering through a mess of disembodied dummy parts
behind a big sisal-rope net, lecturing his ‘staff’ on how to react to
his direction and Carlotta’s acting.
At last he shrieks ‘ACTION!’ We zoom in on the face of a real,
live
woman amongst the dummy parts before cutting back to Carlotta, still
blue-lit, reading her lines as stiffly as possible. Lang reads the
Cyrano part, then suddenly yells, ‘CUT!’ He goes over to lecture her
calmly, but briefly places his hand roughly on her throat as a
not-so-subtle threat. Then he skips back over to the mirror and, with
sword in hand, does a song-and-dance routine to ‘Chattanooga Choo-Choo.’
Please, please, please…could you just do the f#$%ing scene
already?
He returns to Carlotta, clapping the clap-board over her face and
continues to lecture her. At last he places his hand on her throat
again, demanding to know what she feels.
‘I’m afraid,’ she wails, ‘You frighten me!’
More pretentious babbling on the subject of fear follows. Jesus Christ,
Carlotta, you of all people should know not to get this guy started!
After another bout of choking, we finally get through the
‘There is a
jungle in the garden tonight’ scene we’ve been trying to finish for the
past eight minutes.
When they finally finish the damned scene, cheering and applause appear
in the background on the soundtrack. ‘Do you hear that?’ asks Lang, ‘Do
you hear the applause? It’s all for you. All for you.’ Actually, it’s
applause of relief that that scene is finally over. Too bad the film’s
only half over.
He brings her back over to the side of his armchair and sits down. He
reminisces about his friends and family members. Another psychedelic
freakout/flashback scene follows. A naked baby toddles into a party.
Lang is reveling with a bunch of hippies, folks in circus and SCA
attire, men in drag and the middle-aged couple from before. Jazz music
plays. The party gradually metamorphoses into a sort of orgy/‘love-in.’
Everyone keeps their clothes on…except the baby of course. Over this,
we hear Lang’s voice bellowing through an Echoplex: ‘LOVE! LOVE! LOVE!’
This bit ends with Lang snuggling the naked child, whispering, ‘My
baby. My baby. My baby.’
Back in ‘reality,’ Lang complains of a chill and curls up into fetal
position. He then leaps up and says he’s preparing for the duelling
scene.
Can you see where this is leading?
He directs himself in the duelling scene and then collapses, apparently
from exhaustion or a heart-attack or something.
‘Mr. Lang?’ cries Carlotta, with mounting panic, ‘Mr. Lang? What is it?
You’re dying? Don’t die. Don’t die, Mr. Lang! Don’t leave me!’
As you might have guessed, this scene was designed to have Luana Anders
chew some scenery for a change. It’s not ‘good,’ by any means, but it
does make a nice change from Rooney babbling on egotistically.
She accuses him of faking, taunts him, fake-acts, panics and at last
starts insulting him. ‘I hate you, you bastard!’ she screams, ‘I hate
your eyes! I hate the bounds you’ve put on me! I HATE YOU! And there
was never anything more pure in my life than my hatred of you!’ She
then starts crying, ‘Don’t die Mr. Lang! Please don’t die! etc.’ Lang
manages to unconvincingly mutter, ‘Pills…pills…’
If you thought the scene leading up to the big ‘romantic’ dialogue was
long, wait until you see the compelling scene with Lang propelling
himself slug-like across the floor muttering, ‘Pills…pills…’ as
Carlotta offers pallid words of encouragement. At last, Lang uses his
sword to free Carlotta’s left hand.
Does that mean something can happen?
She almost enters orgasm as he cuts her bonds. It’s really kind of
creepy. She unties her other hand and her legs. She then kicks Lang
repeatedly with her slippered feet, with horror-movie reaction shots of
her face intercut. Never more did she look so much like Carrie. This is
followed, for some reason, by a long, silent scene of her leaning over
him as he looks around confused.
He turns the tables on her by rolling over on top of her and saying, ‘I
want you! Right now!’
Ugh! Please, won’t someone end my suffering?
He plants a wet one on her, and she shoves him off in disgust. Cut to
her running through an aisle of white walls filmed in fisheye lens.
This is followed by a slow-motion chase scene, with Lang running after
Carlotta threatening her with his sword. All set to Gil Mellé’s
bloopy Moog-through-an-Echoplex music. Horrifically, this includes a
face-on Mickey Rooney crotch shot. Not even the old-man ass in checked
trousers from Davy
Crockett and the River Pirates horrified me as much.
Anyway, the slo-mo goes on for a good six minutes, interspersed by
snippets of fast-motion Carlotta running through a meat locker (huh?)
Now we know where Brian DePalma got his idea for the ten-minute slo-mo
scene in The Fury from, anyway.
All right, now the slo-mo is all over with, Carlotta has ascended a
sort of catwalk. She’s crawling along with B. J. hot on her tail at the
foot of the ladder. Rather than climb up after her, he runs around
talking to his ‘crew’ to ‘set up’ another ‘shot.’ He then shouts up to
her, ‘Move! Animal MOVE! Ha ha ha ha ha!’ She continues crawling as he
jabbers on as though he’s directing her. ‘Look at her,’ he babbles,
‘Look, she’s a ballerina! The grace! She’s a Pavlova! SHE IS A STAR!’
His nonsense dissolves into yet another goofy rendition of (not again!)
‘Chattanooga Choo-Choo.’ Man, this guy really needs to expand his
repertoire! BAD! This time, including a totally unnecessary close-up
shot of Rooney’s lumpen posterior. I’m almost longing for DCATRP’s
Ugly
Banjo Player.
…All right, maybe not. As bad as Rooney looks in this film, he still
doesn’t look that bad!
At last, Mr. Lang shrieks, ‘Roxanne! I’m coming, Roxanne! With sword in
hand!’
Carlotta starts crawling some more. Considering how slowly she was
moving, you’d think there was an army of slow-shambling zombies on her
tail. Or perhaps she was practising to be part of an army of
slow-shambling zombies. We get another inserted clip of her running in
fast-motion past sides of beef. What Yablonsky was trying to say with
this is anyone’s guess.
She finds herself in a sort of wardrobe room where she’s clearly never
been before, because she spends a long time staring at a suit
of
armour. Then she pushes her way past some dresses. The sounds of an
aviary are heard on the soundtrack. Suddenly she freaks out as we get a
close-up shot of a freaky looking sculpture of a dwarf, followed by
another clip of her running through the meat locker. We learn that it
was not the statue that scared her, really, but the fact that she’s not
alone up here.
And it’s not Lang who’s up here.
Rather, it’s Keenan Wynn, as a crotchety old drunk. I can only imagine
how hard-up he must have been to appear in this, but at least he has
the decency to look suitably embarrassed. He grabs Carlotta by the
waist and she, of course, screams.
‘I didn’t mean anything,’ he slurs, ‘I’m Old Charley.’ So convincing is
he as an old wino that I get the feeling that he bought a few bottles
of Mad Dog 20/20 and got
all liquored up in preparation for his
rôle. Lord knows it’s hard to imagine anyone being able to get
through this film sober.
Carlotta recoils in horror and backs away from him. She runs into Mr.
Lang, who just managed to discover her hiding place.
If you can’t see where this is leading, clearly you haven’t seen many
films before.
Predictably, Lang greets his new visitor with a glut of flowery
dialogue. And his sword. If you guessed Old Charley wasn’t long for
this world, you guessed right. Have a cookie. Lang backs him into some
fun-house mirrors, spouts more bad poetry and stabs him through the
heart. All Old Charley can do is stammer ‘I’m just Old Charley…’ I get
the distinct feeling Wynn wasn’t given any actual dialogue, and he was
thus forced to ad-lib reactions to Rooney’s scenery-chomping. Either
that, or he just didn’t care enough to memorize his lines. In any case,
there’s a stupid rapid-fire cut back-and-forth between Old Charley’s
death and Carlotta’s reactions. And I thought the ending shot to
Reflections In A Golden Eye was goofy. This makes it look almost
brilliant. Almost.
It’s back to the freak-out scene of Carlotta running through the meat
locker again, set to electric-piano/Moog/flute noodling. At the end of
the corridor of beef, she finds a couple of butchers examining one of
the sides of beef, a couple of folks in circus regalia left over from
the party scene, a girl in a fur coat and a string quartet. She starts
doing a courtly dance for the chamber musicians, sort of like an
acid-crazed hippie chick trying to perform a sarabande. One more replay
of the stabbing scene, then we cut to Carlotta freaking out in the
tunnel of meat, as the image gets solarized.
Solarization: short-hand for ‘It’s the early 70’s, and I’m a pompous
ass who has no idea what he’s doing. But doesn’t solarization look cool
when you’re really high?’
Back in the wardrobe, Lang continues with the mock-poetic B.S. Clearly,
nothing has changed in his mind, even though he’s just killed. ‘I have
a surprise for you,’ he whispers to Carlotta, ‘I have a surprise for
you, dah-ling. I’m going to let you go! Yes only, only if I get that
you’re going to give yourself to me, dear. With no reservations, just
like the rest of them. You’re going to say, “I love you, B. J. Lang,”
just like they all said it!’
He decides he wants to play a sort of hide-and-seek game, so he starts
counting and she starts running. The Echoplexed Moog music starts up
again. He counts to eight, and she makes it into the elevator as he
starts coming after her. For some reason, she’s in slo-mo shoving her
way through the wardrobe, but in fast-motion struggling with the
elevator. At last she makes it outside, where it’s still raining.
She tries to get into Lang’s car, which appears to be locked. She then
hides in a corner as he also emerges from the building. He walks past
the car, then she darts in once he’s out of the way. (Huh? I thought it
was locked.) He finds her and starts banging on all the windows
as she honks the horn repeatedly and screams for help. Finally, he
picks up a garbage can and smashes the rear windshield with it.
He leads her back inside, up a staircase, through a door marked ‘EXIT.’
He promises to get her anything she wants, placing his sword aside as
he does so. ‘I know I’m mad,’ he tells her, ‘I don’t feel mad. Not any
crazier than any other lover. That’s what love is. Madness.’ Then he
plants another big, sloppy wet one on her.
She starts laughing uncontrollably. He starts freaking out. ‘Don’t
laugh!’ he shouts, ‘Don’t laugh at me!’ as we get more dubbed-in
laughter, accompanied by fisheye-lens close-up shots of all the props
he was talking to earlier with the camera bouncing up and down to make
it look as though the props are ‘laughing’ at him. And, of course,
another shot of Sylva Kocsina as the madly laughing naked middle-aged
woman. As he continues to plead with Carlotta, she shrieks, ‘NO! NO!
NO! NO!’ repetitiously.
Finally, he says, ‘Farewell, Roxanne. My death lies waiting in the
trenches ahead.’ Sappy piano music, like that accompanying the big
lecture at the end of an episode of ‘The Brady Bunch,’ creeps in under
his speech. At the conclusion of which, naturally, he falls onto his
sword and dies. He sure talks a lot for a dead man.
‘Do you hear it?’ he asks with something approximating his 30th or 40th
dying breath, ‘The applause? It’s for you, darling.’
‘No, no,’ she responds, ‘It’s for you, B. J. All for you.’
‘Was it grand?’ he asks.
‘A…triumph!’ she replies.
He keels over, really dead once and for all. There’s a
lingering
close-up on her face as cheers and applause fade in on the soundtrack.
She curtsies as the camera pulls back and the applause and cheers
crescendo. Roll credits. But, as if to add insult to injury, they add a
built-in stinger of that horrible high-speed Mickey sequence from
earlier in the film.
This is the perilous part of searching for cool, obscure, weird films.
So many films like B. J. Lang Presents are out there lurking,
just
waiting to snag you like a bear-trap. Of the few who know about it,
among their number is a small cadre of devotees. Really, though, the
film is far too full of itself, far too self-assured of its own
profundity, to work as a ‘cult classic.’ Likewise, there are too many
longueurs for it to work as a ‘camp classic.’ Sure, there are a few
wild scenes, such as the bit with Mickey Rooney in women’s make-up,
that almost make it all worthwhile. Then I think of all the pompous
Mickey Rooney monologues and all the contrived zip-bang cutting and
annoying camera tricks (strobe-lights, solarization, slo-mo,
fast-motion, etc.) that attempted to scream out, ‘THIS IS ART!’ Then I
begin to wonder how I survived without my brain melting down and
shooting out my ears and nose.
Still, for all the awfulness of the film, I’m glad I saw it. The art
direction and set design were by Larry Cohen, not long before his own
directorial debut with the underrated Bone, and they actually
are
pretty good. Likewise, it’s interesting to catch Luana Anders in
between her stint as a Roger Corman ingenue and her appearance in the
wonderfully wacked Greaser’s Palace. Say what you will about
the woman,
you have to admire her daring in her choice of rôles.
Which brings me to Rooney himself. His performance as the psychotic B.
J. Lang is almost frighteningly convincing, so convincing that I don’t
know if I’d be able to handle meeting him in person! He brings a lot
more to the rôle than the crappy script really called for. No
doubt about it, the man’s a pro. And you have to admire anyone so
willing to go so far overboard, so eager to humiliate himself so
terribly in the name of cinema. Apparently, he didn’t out-do himself to
quite this extent until the barely-released, Spanish-lensed oddity The
Milky Life, over twenty years later. What I’ve heard about that
one
scares me to within an inch of my life.
Also of note: the electronic jazz soundtrack by Gil Mellé. All
right, the music here perhaps can't quite compare with Herbie Hancock's
Crossings, but I’ve always found his soundtrack
music compelling. You probably know him best for the pioneering
electronic soundtrack to another 1971 release, The Andromeda Strain.
Yabo Yablonsky never directed another film, but he managed to sell a
small handful of other screenplays, notably the attempted American
kung-fu actioner Jaguar Lives! and the critically-panned John
Huston
soccer epic Victory. Basically, every problem with B. J.
Lang Presents
can be traced back to him, from the gratuitously padded script to the
insufferably overdone camera trickery. It’s not that the story idea
isn’t compelling, it’s just a lot less original and clever than the
film’s creator thinks it is. If you want to see a film about someone
being trapped by a lunatic against their will, track down a copy of The
Collector. If you want to see something about an artist with an
inflated sense of importance who treats those around him horribly, see
Satan’s Brew. If you want a compelling film in which a major
actor/actress humiliates him/herself terribly, there are any number of
Elizabeth Taylor films of the late 60’s/early 70’s to choose from (take
your pick). And pass on B. J. Lang Presents.
Second opinions: Shock Cinema
Buy It: on VHS, using the link below:
IMDB entry for B.
J. Lang Presents
Click on B. J. to return.
© 2003 by Progbear