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 duo But 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

Music to Make Horror Movies By: Joan Blondell

Published July 21, 2019 by biggayhorrorfan

Joan B pin up.jpg

She was one of Warner Brother’s brightest, sassiest dames in the ‘30s. The distinctive Joan Blondell also found recognition in such ‘70s MFTV horror flicks as The Dead Don’t Die and Death at Love House.

But whatever era she found herself in, she was always her simply irreplaceable self…most particularly in this production number by the influential and equally singular Busby Berkeley.

Also of significance here are the haunting vocals of Etta Moten. Moten appeared in a number of fun Warner Brothers pictures, including the WIP epic Ladies They Talk About, but was never allowed to reach her full potential, cinematically, due to the racism inherent in that (and, unfortunately, every) decade.

Etta

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

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Sharkbait Retro Village: Death at Love House

Published February 14, 2019 by biggayhorrorfan

Death Main

Mysterious houses have not been kind to the fragile male ego in horror films. James Brolin and Ryan Reynolds both succumbed to the madness of the Amityville house in different versions of The Amityville Horror while Jack Nicholson and Steven Webber spiraled into insanity, decades apart, while attending to The Shining’s Overlook Hotel. Similarly, novelist Joel Gregory in 1976’s Death at Love House finds himself transported to the brink of erotic hysteria by the lingering essence of a former movie queen in her long shuttered abode. Dorothy Death

Efficiently helmed by veteran television director EW Swackhamer, this telefilm is perhaps most notable for its use of such Golden Era greats as Joan Blondell, John Carradine, Dorothy Lamour and Sylvia Sidney. That they all play former rivals of or associates to the glamorous Lorna Love, a kind of Jean Harlow-Marilyn Monroe-Jayne Mansfield hybrid, makes this quick primetime horror a truly fun experience for those lovers of ‘30s and ‘40s cinema. Sidney, as Ciara Joseph, the mansion in question’s caretaker, definitely has the most interesting role, but one has to wonder how this frequently cantankerous presence felt about playing the film’s silly twist in the project’s final reels.

Joan Death Of course an argument could be made that DALH, piloted around the disintegration of Gregory’s marriage to his wife/collaborator Donna (Kate Jackson) as they work on a project about Love, truly comes alive when LaMour, as coffee commercial queen Denise Christian, reminisces about Love’s evil deeds. Blondell devotees are also sure to admire her hysterical break from reality during the heat of the film’s fiery climax. Whatever your preference, DALH is ultimately high on mysterious mood and thoroughbred nostalgia.

Dorothy Trio Death

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

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Music to Make Horror Movies By: Dorothy Lamour

Published May 20, 2018 by biggayhorrorfan

Dorothy Lamour -1939

The glorious Dorothy Lamour was probably best known for the multiple Road pictures that she did with Bing Crosby and Bob Hope (and for the vibrant wraparound dresses that she wore in them) in Hollywood’s golden age. There, and in other brightly filmed projects, she often burst into inventive song. Anthology buffs, though, probably know her best as the doomed Martha Spruce in the Old Chief Wooden’head episode of Creepshow 2. Thankfully, she had a much more colorful (and happier) role in Cecil DeMille’s grandiose The Greatest Show on Earth.

Lamour, who also appeared in the fun 1975 television terror Death at Love House also showed some new generation teens how to sell a production number in 1964’s Pajama Party.

Saying sarong…and until the next time – SWEET love and pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan!

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