Walk On The Wild Side 1962

 

The two best things in this pot boiler from the early 60’s is the opening and closing stalking black cat credits by Saul Bass and the Oscar nominated title song sung by Brook Benton that is used over a great traveling crane shot of the girls of the Doll House getting ready for their evening duties. Everything else in this soggy story of some sad outcasts in deep trouble fails to deliver and connect. The opening screen note tells us that its the early 30’s and we are in a day for night scene of Laurence Harvey a miscast drifter drifting when he comes upon a young beautiful sexy Jane Fonda at the beginning of her remarkable career. He’s named Dov Linkhorn and Jane is Kitty Twist great names stuck on them like name tags.  These two roving bums are in a 30’s American landscape that is all early 60’s from hairstyles and clothes. Jane is a low life hustler, thief and prostitute who latches on to Harvey who is moaning and groaning about his lost love who he thinks is somewhere in New Orleans. She is and is played in high 60’s flair by Capucine who is a prostitute living in madame Barbara Stanwyck’s bordello called the Doll House.

Capucine is being kept by lesbian madame Stanwyck who in her mid 50’s is all silver, pale and tough as only Stanwyck could be. Dressed to the hilt in 60’s fashion with her trademark silver hair, this was how I remember her as a kid and not as the dark haired actress she was in the 30’s and 40’s and when I finally saw some of her wonderful work from that period, her look came as a shock to me. Stanwyck is a mean bitch and is basically keeping her lady love in a threatening and dangerous relationship.

 Capucine is a “sculptress’ and wants out, especially when Harvey finally finds her, and the results are a bordello house explosion. Jane/ Twist also winds up working for Stanwyck  in the Doll House and her badness turns to good during the last part of the film when she tries to save several of the characters from terrible ends. The film looks ok with some location work in New Orleans but there are also sloppy process shots and L.A. footage posing for New Orleans. The last time I looked there were no palm trees in the big easy.

Directed with a lazy hand by Edward Dmytryk who turned yellow during the House Un American Activities Commitee (HUAC) at first refusing to cooperate but after a couple of months in the slammer on contempt charges he changed his tune and named names. His once promising career where he made some swell noir bullets like “Crossfire”, “Murder My Sweet “, and “The Sniper” slowed down a bit, but later rebounded if you can call it that in the 50’s and early sixties where he had a big success with “The Caine Mutiny” and went on to make popular camp trash including “Where Love Has Gone”, “The Carpetbaggers”, and this little camp fest.  The cast also includes a ridiculous turn by Anne Baxter playing a Mexican cantina owner with a black wig and a silly accent and an assortment of character actors and actresses most notably the sexy Richard Rust playing of one Stanwyck’s sadist henchmen and a rather good Joanna Moore as a simple minded whore. Also of note is the co-screenwriter John Fante who had a promising writing career in the 30’s with hard boiled depression era novels and stories.