The Legend of Lylah Clare (1968)
Directed by: Robert Aldrich
Starring: Kim Novak and
Peter Finch
with Rosella Falk, Ernest
Borgnine and Coral Browne
Sometimes, you
see a film
so splendidly, memorably, unforgettably awful that you begin to wonder
why it’s
not more well-known. Then you remember the hell you had to go through
just to
get a chance to see it, and you say, “Oh, that’s why.” The Legend
Of Lylah
Clare is one such film.
Notorious for
being one of
the first “dramatic” feature films greeted with outright laughter upon
its
prémiere, MGM has taken great pains to bury The Legend Of
Lylah Clare.
It’s never been released on DVD, laserdisc or even videotape. It turns
up from
time to time on cable TV, but that’s about it. I’d heard about it, and
was
curious about it for a long time, but when I saw the trailer for the
film at a
film festival, I knew I had to see it!
Director
Robert Aldrich
had an odd career. Mainly known for “men’s pictures” such as The
Dirty Dozen,
he attempted his first “women’s picture” in 1956 with the forgettable
Joan
Crawford vehicle Autumn Leaves. He eventually hit his stride in
1962
with the legendary Whatever Happened To Baby Jane. Casting
famous
leading ladies of the past in a Grand Guignol horror situation was a
stroke of
genius, and became much imitated. It also served to provide a spark to
both
Bette Davis’ and Joan Crawford’s careers, though they would spend the
balance
of same struggling to live this particular film down. Lightning struck
twice
for
Aldrich with Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte a couple of years
later, one of
the first Hollywood features to feature outright gore.
1968 was
supposed to be a
banner year for Aldrich. Flushed with the success of The Dirty Dozen,
he
formed his own production company, Aldrich and Associates. The result
consisted
of merely two films: The Killing of Sister George and The
Legend of
Lylah Clare.
Both of the
films are
full-on Aldrich at his most unfettered. Neither was much of a success.
Well,
the controversial “lesbian” storyline in The Killing of Sister
George
brought in an audience of the perversely curious, but interest fell off
rapidly. But really, as The Killing Of Sister George was at
least “artistically”
successful, The Legend Of Lylah Clare stands alone. It’s a film
that
shows flashes of brilliance, but is for the most part ineptly rendered
in the
worst way. You can tell what Aldrich was going for much of the movie,
but the
lapses in plausibility in the screenplay, the heavy derivation of other
sources
and the overripe dialogue really make this hard to take seriously.
Worst of all
was the
casting. In particular, the casting of Kim Novak as Lylah herself. It’s
nothing
to do with her acting, though she is rather wooden. Mainly, the fact
that she
couldn’t handle the German accent required of her, so they had to dub
in her
lines as Lylah with another…um…actress? The result is…well, you’ll see.
Opening with a
brief
musical fanfare, we quickly switch to a title card (with film spokes
down the
left hand border) and some voice rabbiting on about Lylah. We later
learn the
source of the voice is Bart Langner, a Hollywood insider hoping to be a
movie
producer played by perpetual TV-movie second banana Milton Selzer.
“This is the
only picture I have of Lylah in colour. Despite what you may have
heard, this
is the only time she posed in the nude. You can’t imagine what a really
big
star she was!” This over a really appalling photo of Kim Novak, her
arms crossed
over her bare breasts and a pink rose strategically placed in the crook
of one
of her arms. The film’s barely begun yet, and already we’re being
bombarded
with cinematic cheese of the highest order. The slideshow and Bart’s
jibber-jabber continue as we get glances of the person he’s showing the
slide-show to: Elsa Brinkmann, a young aspiring actress.
Here’s the
first of the
film’s many failures. We don’t buy for one second that Elsa Brinkmann
is
anything but Kim Novak in a mouse-brown wig, horn-rimmed glasses and a
prim
starch-collared dress. It’s sort of like the old cliché about
the pretty woman
dressed up as a librarian, but the film’s hero doesn’t notice she’s
attractive
till she removes her Coke-bottle spectacles and shakes her hair free of
its tightly-bound
bun.
Anyway, Bart’s
wife lets
Elsa in on the sordid nature of Lylah’s short-lived marriage to
director Louis
Zarkon (whom we see briefly in the slide-show, Peter Finch with a badly
pasted-on beard), and her even more sordid death days later. His wife
also
shows her one of Lylah’s old dresses, which she holds up to the light
so we can
see Zarkon’s face through layers of silk. What’s it mean? Nothing at
all, but
oh, won’t it seem artistic and important to all those stupid
Hollywood
producers who put up lots of money for this trash?
Elsa is
horrified by all
this, and delivers a speech (displaying Novak at her most insincere)
explaining
that though she’s interested in acting, “I’m all wrong for her. Wrong.
Just
wouldn’t want to…I couldn’t be like her!”
No, folks, no
foreshadowing here.
Cut to Elsa
sleeping
fitfully, fully-clothed, in a cheap hotel room (with requisite
cliché blinking
neon sign outside her window) with old movie magazines (all with photos
of
Lylah on the cover) strewn over her bed. The opening credits roll over
this
backed by Frank DeVol-composed guitar music and a female voice speaking
bad
German. “…und endlich Lylah! Lylah! Er mit Schwanz…Tag und Nacht. Tag
und Nacht! Lylah! Ha ha ha! Lylah! etc…”
Whatever you do, don't put the above text into Babelfish. You may break
your computer. Don't say I didn't warn you.
Elsa jerks out
of her
disturbed sleep and decides to go for a sunrise walk down the
“Unfortunate
Deaths” section of the Hollywood Walk Of Fame. Fatty Arbuckle, Jean
Harlow,
Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe, Rudolph Valentino. Somehow she manages to
avoid
looking at any stars (say, Mary Pickford, Jimmy Stewart or Rin Tin Tin)
who didn’t die in some
ironic tragedy vaguely connected to the Hollywood system. Likewise, she
manages to
pass
under a theater marquee where The
Dirty Dozen is playing, a cute bit
of
self-promotion on the director’s part. It all winds up, as these things
must,
at Grauman’s Chinese Theater, where she discovers Lylah’s hand- and
footprints,
bearing the cryptic script: “Three years ago, I might have said, ‘I’m
honoured.’ But now…”
Predictably,
Elsa steps
into the footprints to a musical sting. But not just any
musical sting,
a very familiar-sounding one! Frank DeVol recycled this one, later to
turn up
in the Hawaii episodes of “The Brady Bunch”! Anyone of a certain age
will
convulse themselves with laughter at this realization.
Back at
Zarkon’s office,
Bart’s pouring himself a drink and confessing that he’s been diagnosed
with
liver cancer and has two years to live. When the now non-bearded Zarkon
dismisses his worries, Bart grabs the metal ball he’s idly playing with
(you
filthy, filthy people!) and smashes it through his office window in a
fit of
rage. Then he points out that he was the one who found Lylah, in a
Berlin
butcher shop. To which Zarkon scoffs, “Butcher shop! You ripped that
straight
out of the official biography. You found her in a brothel! One that
specialized
in catering to some pretty peculiar fancies! I always meant to
ask, what
were you doing there?”
Bart’s trying
to get
Zarkon to get back into directing after a twenty-year hiatus. He
suggests a
Lylah Clare biopic as his comeback vehicle, and says that a certain
Barney
Sheehan would finance the picture at the drop of a hat. He tells him
that he
knows a girl who could play Lylah.
“What’s in it
for you?”
asks Zarkon.
“I want to
produce,”
replies Bart sheepishly.
“What is
this?” snickers
Zarkon, “Your last will and testament?”
The dialogue
escalates to
Zarkon grabbing Bart by the shirt. Enter Rosella.
“Maybe you two
should move
to England,” she comments in a wry voice dripping with Italian-ness,
“They have
legalized this kind of thing there.”
She’s played
by Rosella
Falk, probably best known for appearing as Rosella in Fellini’s
8½. All
right, it seemed she only had one character, but what a
character! The
scene immediately becomes more interesting with her entrance. Nobody
could be a
better Rosella than Rosella.
“I always knew
you were
fond of each other. But this is too much!” she adds as she totes in the
tea-tray.
Zarkon tells
her of Bart’s
idea. Rosella picks up a picture of Lylah and gazes longingly at it.
“No one
could ever play Lylah,” she sighs, “No one!”
Note that I
had to listen
to her lines several times over to get what she was saying, her Italian
accent
is so thick. That’s part of her charm.
The three of
them continue
snapping at each other like a trio of bloodthirsty piranhas. Seriously,
there’s
more bitchy dialogue here in five minutes than in all 120 minutes of The
Boys
In The Band
.
Time passes
and we learn
that Elsa has stood up the dinner Zarkon & Co. have invited her to.
I can’t
imagine why, they’re obviously charming dinner companions. Bart goes on
to
describe Elsa, conveniently providing some expository background on her
(father
was a preacher, she worked as a trapeze artist in a circus, etc.).
After some
more sniping in
the piranha tank, we cut to Elsa tip-toeing tentatively up to Zarkon’s
front
gate. Fierce-looking guard dogs greet her with angry barks (gotta love
that
heavy-handed symbolism). She speaks with the butler over the intercom,
and he
shouts at the dogs in Italian, then asks her to come in. Zarkon,
because he’s
the biggest bitch of the three, decides to make Elsa wait, so he takes
his own
sweet time through dessert.
Bart finds
Elsa on the
totally unsafe, rail-less staircase, where she’s looking up in awe at a
huge
portrait of Lylah. He chides her for being two hours late, then
introduces her
to Zarkon and Rosella.
“That’s where
it
happened?” blurts out Elsa, referring to the staircase, “Up there?”
Zarkon
requests that
Rosella tell the story, since she’s the “historical expert.” “I was
Miss
Clare’s…dialogue coach,” she explains between puffs of a cigarette, a
preposterous thought if you’ve ever heard her speak.
She explains
that Lylah
was accosted by a mad male fan who leaped onto her car. Lylah managed
to make
it home. And then it’s off to the wild, wild world of the flashback.
Lordy, lordy,
where do I
even begin with the frickin’ flashback? First of all, it’s in
green-tinted monochrome with an orange aureole round the edges. In the
lower
left hand corner is a little window showing Elsa’s face, so we can see
her
reactions. Add to that the fact that the voices of the people in the
flashback
are slowed down, to the point where you can barely understand
them, and
we have one of the looniest attempts at artiness by any director, ever!
The psycho,
dressed in a
cap and jacket, chases Lylah up the stairs, ripping her coat off and
trying to
make out with her, as Lylah struggles to get away. “At first we
couldn’t hear
her,” explains Rosella, “It was like a…nightmare, an insane dream.” The
fan strips
Lylah to her bra and panties, and she strikes back with her shoe. “Let
go!” she
screams in her slowed-down voice, sounding something like a Teutonic
Joan
Armatrading with a sore throat, “Keep your filthy hands off me!” The
fan
brandishes a knife at a terrified Lylah, caressing her abdomen with it.
He
hands the knife to her, and she stabs him with it. Then in a bit that
couldn’t
help but remind me of the torture scene from Wolf
Devil Woman,
the
screen fills with a splash of animated blood, eradicating Elsa’s face
from the
frame. She stabs and stabs and stabs, eventually sending the crazed fan
falling
off the side of the staircase that goes against every building code
known to
man. A horrified Lylah looks down at her handiwork as Rosella (with an
appalling
“That Girl” flip) calls out to her. Then Lylah takes the plunge off the
edge of
the staircase, falling to her death. Then the bearded Zarkon enters to
take
Lylah’s pulse, and intone in a slowed-down voice from hell, “Lylah, I
love
you.”
Does anyone
buy any of
this? Don’t worry, this is not the last flashback of the film. In true
“Rashomon” style, we get to see flashbacks from other perspectives
later on.
And lest you think that Kurosawa is the only filmmaker being plundered
here,
Bart helpfully adds, “Heights made her dizzy,” reminding us of another,
much
better film starring Kim Novak from some years earlier.
Zarkon takes
Elsa’s coat
and asks her to ascend the staircase, then descend as a lady with “a
modicum of
sophistication and poise.” As she descends, he spears her with pithy
barbs
like, “We’re moving…like a deeply offended Tibetan yak!” She tries to
carry on
towards the front door, but he detains her. They struggle for a bit,
then
suddenly she spits out, “Keep your filthy hands off me!” in a horribly
dubbed
German drag-queen voice.
Given
Rosella’s reaction,
we’re supposed to believe the dubbed-on voice is the mirror-image of
Lylah’s.
It struck me more as being the mirror-image of Charles Pierce doing a
bad
Marlene Dietrich imitation. Either that, or how it’s been described by
many
others, as Mercedes McCambridge’s dub job for demon-possessed Linda
Blair in The Exorcist. Truly,
then, The
Legend of Lylah Clare was a film ahead of its time.
Quaking with
fear, Elsa
continues (in her regular voice), “I’m…not her…I’m not!”
Cut to Elsa
and the
piranhas in a screening room, watching what is apparently one of
Lylah’s
“classic” performances. After seeing this, Lylah’s supposed
superstardom
becomes all the more mysterious. This lamer-than-lame fluff wouldn’t
pass
muster as a TV soap opera, much less a glossy big-screen classic. And
how are
we supposed to buy Lylah as a glamourous movie-star if our only scene
to go on
is this clip showing her knitting in a tweedy Victorian frock? Elsa
recites the
dialogue word for word. In a scene supposed to be dramatic or startling
or
something, but in fact hilarious, Zarkon turns down the volume
on the
projector. My God! The badly dubbed voice she’s lip-syncing to sounds just
like Lylah!
Zarkon is so
impressed by
this act of miming another’s words—er, um…I mean imitation—that
he
phones Barney Sheehan (played by none other than Mr. Ethel Merman
himself,
Ernest Borgnine) to let him in on it. The phone is answered by Barney’s
son
Peter, a wannabee director played by a very young Michael Murphy.
Borgnine
brings all the subtlety and finesse to his role that he brought to the
title
role in “McHale’s Navy.” Central casting couldn’t have come up with a
more
stereotypically loudmouthed Hollywood mogul than Borgnine’s loud and
brassy performance
of Barney Sheehan here. Zarkon pitches his idea to him, and he seems
all right
with it, but when Barney tries to pencil him into his busy schedule,
Zarkon
pulls a Vicki Inch and hangs up on him. Going Vicki one better, he
unplugs the
phone, saying, “Now he has to wait for us!”
Zarkon decides
Elsa
Brinkmann is no name for a Hollywood star, so to talk her into changing
it, he
tells her the story of changing his name from Louie Flack to Louis
Zarkon after
a fateful encounter with a doomed magician. He also decides that Elsa
has to
walk, talk and act like Lylah, so he insists, against her
protestations, that
she move into his palatial estate.
After Zarkon
and Bart
leave, there’s a cryptic warning/seduction scene between Rosella and
Elsa,
where Elsa says, “She’s dead, I’m alive. You’ll just have to get used
to me.”
Rosella
counters with,
“That can be arranged!” as she strokes the pink, fur-lined chair that
Lylah
liked to sit in. Again with the “Brady Bunch” Hawaii episode stinger
music.
Back in his
office, Barney
is being shown a reproduction of a dress Lylah wore by designer
Countess Bozo
Bedoni, played by another Fellini associate (she was in “Juliet Of The
Spirits”), Valentina Cortese. “Looks kinda dull without the meat on
it!” says
he. “Somebody should make a collection of your remarks, you know?” says
she,
rolling her eyes sarcastically, “They have…such very good wit.”
She laments
that Zarkon
hasn’t allowed her to see Elsa yet, claiming that the measurements are
identical. The whole scene is basically an excuse for Barney to bellow
angrily
at everyone and Valentina to make pithy remarks in response to them.
She’s
kinda like a heterosexual (or at least bisexual) version of Rosella.
Which is
all beside the point, they could have cast drag queens in both
rôles and I
doubt anyone would have noticed the difference. At any rate, the scene
is
expository in that we learn that Elsa is to be “unveiled” at a press
event at
his estate, via an invitation Barney received.
Back at
Zarkon’s, they’re
rerunning a tape of dry runs of interview responses. She gives
contrived
“witty” answers to equally trite questions. Various scenes of the
lead-up to
the big unveiling follow. We only see Elsa’s eyes in these scenes. In
their
midst is an obviously placed “plot point” of Zarkon hiding a key in a
carved-out slot of a pillar, framed by shots of Elsa’s eyes. All hail
Lord
Aldrich, God of Subtlety…
Peter arrives
and tells
Zarkon to hold things until Barney arrives, as he’s been detained by a
brace of
French journalists. Zarkon passes the time by schmoozing the press folk
that
infect the party. But it’s Molly Luther that he really wants to
impress. An
obvious Hedda Hopper/Louella Parsons-manqué played by the late,
great Coral
Browne, out first view of Molly is her leg brace with an oh-so-chic
fake red
rose stuck in it. Zarkon and Co. go out of their way to kiss her ass.
Molly
cuts right through all the crap and says what we’re all thinking,
“Aren’t you
borrowing a little heavily from Sunset Boulevard?” They seat
her in the
“place of honour.”
Zarkon decides
he can’t
wait any longer, and simply must make his big introduction. He
introduces her
as “Elsa Campbell.” She has a sip of Dutch courage, then appears toting
a rose
in her gloved hands, sporting a Lylah dress and Lylah hair, posing next
to the
portrait, as she’s made up to look exactly like its subject. The
journalists
lob her softball questions, and chuckle sycophantically at her lame
responses.
She loses it a bit when she gets an eye of Molly, but gets back on
track quickly.
Molly gets a fantastic aside to Zarkon, “She may be tame now, Louis,
but will
she turn into a slut like the last one?” Then she demands Elsa be
brought
before her.
My, but I
can’t tell you
how deliriously awful, and yet wonderful at the same time, the
following
scene is. Elsa offers her hand, but Molly merely prods her roughly with
her
cane like a farm animal. She then announces that she has but one
question for
Elsa: is she sleeping with Zarkon?
Gasps of
horror murmur
through the audience and a long, uncomfortable silence follows. Molly
repeats
her question. Elsa tries to bullshit a response, but Molly cuts her
off. “I
assume you realize what sort of establishment Zarkon’s last
performer
came from,” she says pointedly in a voice dripping with insinuation.
When Elsa
still doesn’t
come up with the goods, Molly continues to goad her by saying, “Oh,
come along,
child! Surely you’re not retarded! I’m asking you, do…you…sleep
with
him?”
And again, the
voice of
Satan…er, I mean Lylah, emanates from Elsa’s throat.
“Why you
miserable son of
a bitch!” she spits out in a basso-profundo voice, “What makes you
think that
because once, maybe just once you spent a cosy hour with Louis Zarkon
that you
have any right to be jealous of him.”
What follows
is an
absolutely bravura display of the lost drag-queen art of lip-syncing
from Kim
Novak. She snuffs out a cigarette in a shell-shaped ashtray set in
Molly’s lap,
and continues her tirade, “Do you really believe that you have a
licence to ask
any dirty questions that frighten into this snakes-nest between you and
him?”
Zarkon warns
her to be
careful, but Rosella eggs her on.
“And nobody
challenges
you. Why? Because they are gentlemen?” She produces throaty laughter
and picks up Molly’s cane. “I’ll tell you why. Molly Luther’s magic
wand! It keeps
her safe from…dragons!” She smacks Molly’s leg brace with the
“wand,”
then knocks the ashtray from her lap.
“Luther’s
personal
guarantee that she has the right of GOD ALMIGHTY! Is this what you use
to dig
graves up with? Now, get out! And don’t come into this house again!”
With
which, Elsa flings the cane aside.
Molly turns to
ask Zarkon
what he has to say. He lamely offers, “a director should never undercut
on his
star’s big scene.” She snaps at Zarkon, telling him he’ll regret this,
then
turns to Elsa and screams, “And as for you, you grubby little slut!”
Elsa/Lylah,
however, can’t
be stopped. “Molly Luther, the Wicked Witch of the West! Pour water on
her and
she shrivels…she me-he-he-helts! Ha ha ha ha ha! Imagine that! She
really
melts! And all that’s left is a little phony flower…and a dried up,
disappointed…FRRRRREAK!”
I really hope
I get across
just how hilarious this all is, but you really have to see it to
believe it.
The combination of Kim Novak flailing around like a transsexual mime in
heat,
as the voice she’s miming to makes some ludicrous voice-acting
decisions (the
overdone rolled “r” on “freak” is truly a wonder to behold). This
really should
be known by “camp classic” fans everywhere, as for sheer lunacy, the
scene is
right up there with the Patty Duke/Susan Hayward confrontation scene in
Valley
Of The Dolls.
Where were we?
Oh yes.
Molly storms out angrily, as Bart tries desperately to detain her.
Outside,
Barney’s car is just pulling up. Peter explains the situation and,
naturally,
Barney blows up at them all. “You tell hot-shot Zarkon up there that if
he
wants my help he can come down to the studio and ask for it,” he
shouts, “And
he won’t get it, either!”
Dissolve to
Zarkon and
Elsa walking through his lush gardens discussing Lylah. She’s wearing a
ridiculous ensemble, polka-dotted navy blue capri pants, a pale blue
scarf, a
bra and…that’s it! He tells her a tale of a Japanese gardener who
worked on the
estate who was shipped off to a concentration camp during the war
before which
he received “the most unexpected going-away present he ever received in
his
life” from Lylah. Who should turn up but Zarkon’s hunky current
gardener,
Paolo, played by Gabriele Tinti (what’s up with all the Italians?). The
shirtless, sweaty Paolo introduces himself to Elsa and they make
goo-goo eyes
at each other.
“Now, if you
were Lylah…”
begins Zarkon.
“That’s
something you’re
born with,” offers Elsa, trying her damnedest to sound virginal.
“You think
so?” he
rejoinders, “I haven’t met a woman yet who hasn’t got a whore locked up
inside
her!”
Later he takes
her out to
dinner. With such sweet-talk, how can she resist? They wind up at the
sort of
fancy restaurant people have never been to fancy restaurants think
fancy
restaurants look like. To quote Craig “Bad TV” Nelson, “it looks like
the most
deluxe Red Lobster ever built.” Who should be sitting front and center
but Miss
Rose-Leg herself, Molly Luther? Elsa, in an unflattering red dress
seemingly
made of tissue paper, shrinks back upon seeing the acid-tongued Molly.
The
Maitre’d pretends not to have a table for Zarkon, so he slips him a
twenty.
Elsa comments that everyone must think she’s his mistress.
“Don’t flatter
yourself,”
replies Zarkon, “The ones that know me know that I never sleep with my
leading
ladies. At least not until the last day of shooting. Gives them
too much
power.”
The
Foreshadowing Alarm is
now buzzing and ringing like crazy.
Peter, who
obviously has a
“thing” for Elsa, leaps up and blocks their way to their table. He’s
sitting
with his dad (I’m beginning to think that Sherwood Schwarz ghost-wrote
the
screenplay, considering how many plot-conveniences abound) who plays
nice-nice
with Zarkon and vice-versa.
Anyway, soon
after they’re
seated, Barney comes over to their table. Zarkon formally introduces
him to
Elsa, then Barney hands him a contract written on a matchbox (Honestly,
how
could this movie even exist without clichés?). He also suggests
taking Peter on
as his assistant so he can get his feet wet.
Enter Bart,
wearing his
usual “I need about a gallon of Maalox just to get through the day”
look. He
hands a
copy of Life magazine with Elsa on the front cover to Zarkon. Upon
realizing
that Barney surely must have seen this, he flies into a rage and soon
the two of
them are going at it like a couple of snapping turtles. Eventually,
Zarkon
states his terms, leading Barney to bellow, “I would sooner commit
suicide!” At
the suggestion of Elsa working for a different director, Zarkon cues
her. She
lets out a chuckle of baritone laughter, and in the dubbed “Lylah”
voice,
intones, “Barney darling, you’re so much smarter when you don’t try to
think.
Ha ha ha! Hasn’t anybody told you that before? Somebody must have.”
Barney, too,
is impressed
by Elsa’s ability to lip-sync to transsexuals with bad German accents,
so he
says “yes” to Zarkon’s terms, on the condition that the film is in the
can in
six months time. Bart and Zarkon toast their success, and Zarkon thanks
the
woman who made it all possible. “To Lylah!” Upon hearing this, Elsa
sprints off
in a petulant frenzy. Bart lectures him for being an insensitive clod,
so
Zarkon goes off to apologize.
Back at the
homestead, he
calls out for Elsa, but finds only Rosella. Rosella goes on about
Elsa/Lylah
parallels, and Zarkon is horrified to find packed luggage in Elsa’s
room.
Rosella begs Zarkon to let her go, but he ignores her protestations,
locking
Elsa’s bedroom door then storming out in search of her. Eventually, he
flings
Rosella off her, shouting, “You’re behaving like a lady wrestler in
drag!” Then
he slaps her.
As Elsa says,
what perfect
timing, as that’s just when she appears at the top of the stairs. Since
she
can’t get into her own room, she decides she’ll have to sleep
elsewhere. “I’ve
never slept in a mausoleum before,” she says as she goes for the key
Zarkon hid
earlier. He protests, of course, but she can’t be stopped. Everything
in the
bedroom is just as it was found twenty years ago. Zarkon arrives,
telling his
side of the story.
Again we’re in
Flashbackland, the sickly psychedelic orange/green colour scheme, the
Elsa-window in the lower-left corner. Only this time, Lylah isn’t
screaming.
She’s laughing, as the fan teasingly strips her as she ascends the
staircase,
and cheesy DeVol music with imitation Swingle Singers vocalizations
plays in
the background. The bearded retro-Zarkon appears, and Lylah (in her
creepy,
slowed-down Laurie Anderson flashback voice) says, “Why Louis, darling,
what a
surprise!” He demands that she get the man out of there, with which she
suddenly apologizes and hugs him. Then Psycho-Fan produces a knife, and
approaches Zarkon with it, as Lylah recedes, chuckling. In a scuffle,
Zarkon
sends the fan vaulting over the stairs to his death. He then approaches
Lylah,
who growls, “Keep your filthy hands off me!” A peep down at the dying
lunatic
reveals it to be…my God! It’s Catwoman herself, Lee Meriwhether!
I only wish I
was joking.
“I tried to
stop her,”
says Zarkon, “I told her not to look down.” But it’s too late for
Vertigo-sufferer (in more ways than one) Lylah, and down she goes.
Zarkon
explains that Barney helped keep the “sordid” details of Lylah’s death
(mainly
the fact that her psycho-fan-lover was a woman) from the press, and
that only
he and Rosella know the truth.
Zarkon’s “Did
she love me?
Did she hate me?” ruminations on the whole episode lead to Elsa peeling
off her
dress in one smooth move, and the two of them collapse in a passionate
embrace
on Lylah’s old and probably very musty bed. Which, as a pan upward
reveals, has
a blurry mirrored surface on its canopy.
Dissolve (mercifully) to
the
post-coital reverie, with Elsa face-down on the bed so we can’t see her
thingies and Zarkon stroking her back with his knuckles. I really hope
I can
get across how thoroughly disgusting this all is. I mean, regardless of
your
sexuality, you must admit that Kim Novak is a beautiful woman. It seems
very,
very wrong to pair her up with a craggy, lumpy, totally unsexy
Englishman like
Peter Finch. But I guess the plot simply cannot proceed until our
principals
have slept together, so we have to suffer the sight of Peter Finch in a
state
of undress. Oh, sure, he’s got bedsheets up to his tits, but still!
Eugghhh!
Shooting
starts the next
day. A portrait of Elsa in the Lylah pose is hung over a replica of the
now-famous
non-code staircase. The floor is strewn with photos of Lylah and Elsa.
Predictably Elsa mis-identifies a photo of Lylah taken 22 years ago as
one of
herself. Cut to a wide overhead shot of Elsa standing among many, many
photos
of Lylah. Ooo, artistic!
Next, they’re
shooting a
scene of Elsa-as-Lylah driving a car down the Pacific Coast Highway.
Zarkon has
a fit because Elsa won’t do the scene correctly. They convene at a
seaside
coffee shop, where Elsa complains that she doesn’t know what she’s
supposed to
feel.
“Feel?” he
snaps at her,
“You stupid cow! All you’ve got to do is do as I say and your feeling
will be
up on the screen!”
Then he has a
go at Bart
when he accuses him of keeping secrets from him about Lylah. He manages
to
blurt out something in reference to Bart’s cancer…in front of his wife
(who
hasn’t been informed yet).
Cut back to
Elsa’s room.
Elsa is absent-mindedly brushing her hair, her face unflatteringly
reflected in
a make-up mirror. We hear the disembodied reverb-laden voice of Zarkon
speaking. “Brush. Brush. Once more, just a close-up. Don’t brush your
hair like
a child, brush it like a woman! As Lylah would brush it. As Lylah! As
Lylah!”
Rosella peeks in on her, concerned. She removes the brush from Elsa’s
hand,
gives her a sleeping pill and sends her to bed. She massages Elsa’s
shoulders.
“This is what you like, isn’t it? Lylah used to like it too. It would
help
her…forget.” As mandolins play on the soundtrack, Rosella says she’ll
help Elsa
get away if she can’t stand it any longer. Then, in a scene that was
surely
considered shocking at the time, she leans in to kiss Elsa, to
yet more
of that Brady Bunch In Hawaii stinger music. “Lylah,” she whispers, “I
love
you. I always loved you!” then gives her another kiss.
Now, I don’t want
to give away the ending of The
Legend Of Lylah Clare, and yet, I do want to write about it. So,
for those
of you who have already seen it, or don’t care about spoilers, I’ve
included
text on that part on another
page. If you don’t want to read that part,
don’t
click.
What more can one
say about The Legend Of Lylah Clare? My friend Al said it was
simultaneously awful and wonderful. Hard to argue with that. As
a drama,
it’s ludicrous. As a satire, it’s awkward and heavy-handed. It’s all so
over-the-top, so overcooked, that the
only level on which one can appreciate it is an ironic one.
The film
pretty much
destroyed Kim Novak’s career. I don’t think it was damaging to her
career so much as damaging to her desire to make movies. She turned up
in The
Mirror Crack’d some years on, but that’s about it from her.
Aldrich went on to
make even worse films, such as the reprehensible The Choirboys,
another
attempted satire that misses its mark so badly, you can’t even enjoy it
on an
ironic level.
But The
Legend Of Lylah
Clare has itself become something of a legend. Odds are, everything
you’ve
heard about it is absolutely true. It’s so bad, it’s delightful.
Do
whatever you have to to see it. It’s worth it!
IMDB entry: for The
Legend of Lylah Clare
Return
*It
may have been preceded
by a few months by Walter Grauman’s infamous Lady In A Cage.