Crime

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Va-Va-Villainess: Dorothy Lamour

Published July 4, 2020 by biggayhorrorfan

Dorothy LaMour Lulu Belle

For someone held in regard most often for her untouchable beauty, the divine Dorothy Lamour had a surprisingly eclectic career. She jovially accompanied Bob Hope and Bing Crosby throughout the adventurous Road series while also breaking hearts as a love sick gun moll in Johnny Apollo. She was an endangered woman in the appropriately titled Manhandled and was even further victimized as an elderly shop owner in the opening segment of Creepshow II. Damn kids!!

Dorothy La Mour Lulu Belle duoBut she coolly and efficiently turned the tables on the more dominant sex as the advancement minded Lulu Belle in the 1948 film of the same name. Beguiling an up and coming lawyer to assist her in rising above the dusty barroom that she performs in; she soon finds herself bored by the mundane trappings of the life that he can offer. Flirtations with a successful boxer, a night club owner and a distinguished business man soon improve her station.  But ever the fickle minded schemer, she soon finds herself uninterested in the successful Broadway productions that she is starring in and, once again, longs for the honest man that she initially led to ruin.

Framed in flashback style and presented as a bit of a crime mystery, Lamour delights throughout the proceedings here. She nicely adds a bit of heart to her creation, evening out the character’s more self-involved edges. One truly believes that she has feelings for her first love, but just can’t help herself from trying to aim for ever glitterier heights.

Horror Hall of Fame:

Besides Creepshow II, Lamour also showed up in Death at Love House, a fun 1976 supernatural television film, as the former rival of a long-deceased Hollywood movie queen.

Dorothy La Mour Lulu Belle poster

Shark Bait Retro Village: The Cover Girl Murders

Published March 3, 2018 by biggayhorrorfan

CGM Jennifer Knife

Iconic supermodel Beverly Johnson doing her best imitation of Lana Turner’s The Bad and the Beautiful breakdown in a motor vehicle… Jennifer O’Neill brandishing a knife against Lee Major’s whiskered throat…Adrian Paul exploding in a fiery crescendo… The 1993 USA Network made for television thriller The Cover Girl Murders offers up all of this and so much more.

CGM Bev CrazedHere a series of down on their luck models join Major’s Rex Kingman, a sleazy publishing patriarch, and O’Neill’s secretive Kate, his efficient and concerned editor, on a remote and tropical photo shoot from hell. Kingman manipulates each of the beauties into awkward scenarios, often pitting them against each other…and their own best interests. But is he the one responsible for their mysterious and violent deaths?

Functioning as a bit of Ten Little Indians mystery with a dash of April Fool’s Day, the lovelies expire via poisoned water, suspicious suicide, a gunshot wound and questionable equipment errors. Fairly bloodless in application, director James A. Conter (Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, Shark Swarm) does keep this enterprise jaunting along at a frisky pace and he is aided by the soap operatic elements that highlight the script. Nicely, the teleplay is written by none other than The Fall Guy’s Douglas Barr, known to the terror troops for his appearances in such quirky horror offerings as Deadly Blessing and The Unseen.  CGM Crowd

Of course, the cast has plenty of genre credits, as well, adding to the viewing fun. O’Neill graced such projects as Scanners and The Psychic while Majors, who recently added comic flair to the second season of Ash Vs. The Evil Dead, started off his career in the uncredited role of Joan Crawford’s philandering husband in William Castle’s Strait-Jacket.

Besides Johnson, the bathing beauties are represented by Showgirls’ Bobbie Phillips (Evil Breed, Carnival of Souls) and Weird Science’s Vanessa Angel (Sabretooth, Puppet Master Vs. Demonic Toys). Naturally, Angel, playing O’Neill’s jealously vengeful younger sister, gets the best lines. Even more enjoyable, perhaps, the fact that her accent is decidedly British and O’Neill’s is not is deliciously ignored here.

CGM Bev Staircase

Until the next time, SWEET love and pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan!

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Horror, She Wrote: Alice Krige

Published November 17, 2017 by biggayhorrorfan

Alice K 1

Horror, She Wrote explores the episodes of the ever-popular detective series Murder, She Wrote, featuring Angela Lansbury’s unstoppable Jessica Fletcher, that were highlighted by performances from genre film actors.

Show business is full of complications…professional jealousies, Napoleon complexes, cold blooded killers. The sweet Nina Cochran (Alice Krige) definitely discovers this to be true on Murder in the Afternoon, a second season episode of Murder, She Wrote.

Alice K2The niece of the series’ stalwart Jessica Fletcher, a mystery writer who continuously finds herself solving real crimes, Cochran is accused of offing Joyce Holleran (Jessica Walter, Play Misty For Me), the evil head writer of the soap on which she appears. Of course, Cochran isn’t the only suspect for doing away with this callous doom bringer. Holleran has threatened the jobs of many of the show’s beloved cast, including the indulgent, adulterous Bibi Hartman (Tricia O’Neil, Piranha II: The Spawning).

Capped by a double red herring, this episode, nicely, allows Krige to display a full range of emotions. Fear and anger, naturally, figure prominently here. But true movie buffs may delight most to Krige’s sweet scenes with Lansbury and golden age character actress Lurene Tuttle (Psycho, Niagara, Don’t Bother to Knock), who plays Krige’s devoted grandmother with a daft charm.

Alice K3

Krige, who gave sophisticated and passionate performances in such horror offerings as Ghost Story, Sleepwalkers, Silent Hill and Stay Alive, also works well amongst the vindictive environs of  Walter and O’Neill. She, wisely, plays off their characters’ inherent selfishness with a firm and determined resolve of her very own. …and while that surely doesn’t provide much love in the afternoon, as those daytime ads in the flashy ‘80s always proclaimed, it most certainly allows for plenty of delicious, lightweight fun!

Until the next time, SWEET love and pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan!

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When Wez Met Jason

Published April 28, 2017 by biggayhorrorfan

 

Hunter 4

Wells and Crew attack.

What happens when two titans of injustice and mayhem clash? Well, unfortunately, one is eventually going to have to take a premature visit to that great and grisly powder room in the sky.

Such was the case when Vernon Wells, the massively frightening Wez from The Road Warrior, tangled with Ted White, the ferocious, almost unstoppable Jason from Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, on War Zone, a second season episode of the beloved 80s detective show Hunter.

Hunter 3

White retaliates.

When Wells’ Sonny Zajak and crew invade a warehouse guarded by White’s Manfred T. Royce, explosives detonate, shots ring out and soon Royce goes flying, downward, in a hail of fire. Royce hangs on by a thread, in the aftermath, causing Zajak a moment or two or distress. But, Royce’s balance on the beam of life is too shaky and soon he breathes his last.

Thus, it appears when apocalyptic action meets classic slasher, the former reigns victorious – for the time being, at least.

Until the next time – SWEET love and pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan!

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