Mercedes McCambridge

All posts tagged Mercedes McCambridge

Sapphic Angels

Published September 28, 2022 by biggayhorrorfan

The Angels in Chains episode of the eternally fresh Charlie’s Angels gave mid-70s television viewers a mild taste of lesbian subculture. There the energy was all jail-yard female power plays & aggressive correction officers, one even emphatically played by cult goddess Mary Woronov, the cinema’s supreme manipulator of androgynous tension! Two years later, the production team upped the femme-on-femme ante even more. Drenched in pink, Angels in Springtime, which takes place at the beginning of this glamorous detective outing’s third season, is perhaps the most Sapphic entry in that original Angels oeuvre.

Taking place at an exclusive health spa for well-to-do women and guest starring the magnificent Mercedes McCambridge during her coarsest prison matron years, this episode finds the plucky trio menaced not only by McCambridge’s ego-soaked Norma, an ex-actress, but by a needle wielding psychiatrist (Joan Hotchkis) & a sumo wrestling masseuse (Nancy Parsons), as well. That the psychiatrist’s interest in the romantic adventures of Jaclyn Smith’s Kelly seems more profound than just the plot line’s blackmail purposes Is due, almost exclusively, to the silkily seductive way that Hotchkis operates as an actress. The way she expresses the character’s interest in Smith, posing as a well-to-do mistress here, definitely seems more than just casually criminal. Meanwhile, Parsons’ Zora might try to kill Cheryl Ladd’s perkily masquerading Chris through wet towel mummification…but this is seemingly only because she didn’t have a sweaty dildo and a gag ball nearby to help her perform that duty instead.

Of course, McCambridge, the diabolical heart of the episode, is definitely frightening the horses here, as well. Despite her character’s humorous mention of many ex-husbands, you know what two options she would choose in the kill-fuck-marry categories when dealing with any of Charlie’s finest, frilliest best.

Indeed, from a casting standpoint alone, it could easily be surmised that one of the show’s producers was a closeted, gay movie buff. Joining McCambridge & Parsons, best known for her dementedly villainous actions in (cult classic) Motel Hell, are film noir diva Marie Windsor and future horror queen Bobbie Bresee (Mausoleum, Evil Spawn). That Windsor, regally hoisting a cigarette holder as a prop, plays Eve La Deux, a board treading rival of McCambridge’s, is almost worth the price of admission alone for the show’s many queer fans. Her dramatic performance in the opening scene is, indeed, the starting point of an evening filled with both subtle and emphatic alternative delights.

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

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Shark Bait Retro Village: Who is the Black Dahlia?

Published July 13, 2022 by biggayhorrorfan

According to online speculation, the legendary Lucille Ball did not want her daughter Lucie Arnaz to take the title role in the 1975 television film Who is the Black Dahlia? Based on the notorious 1947 murder case in which a young woman named Elizabeth Short was brutally bisected and left in an abandoned field, this film took a highly fictionalized look at the proceedings – which Ball, a Hollywood stalwart, had obviously been aware of in real time. Arnaz, smartly, was not about to turn down the title role in a compelling project, though, and her sensitive performance definitely highlights the film’s emotional truths. Unfortunately, those intimated facts haven’t changed much in the decades since this film was made – discrimination and real dangers still, overwhelmingly, lurk for young women in the world on a daily basis.

Interestingly though, since so much of Short’s life was shadowed in after-the-fact hearsay, once this television film is over, viewers still don’t have a clear view of who the title character was on a personal level. Writer Robert W. Lenski often paints her as a good person abandoned by her father, consistently threatened by rowdy soldiers and gangster types who do not understand her. But, despite Arnaz’s multi-layered work, he never finds a consistent thread to her behavior. Her actions often make no sense – engaging with people and then mysteriously evading them…acting grateful to her benefactors and then resorting to thievery. Painting her as a full-blown master of manipulation might have been inaccurate but could have ultimately created a more comprehensive narrative here.

Still, this work radiates with both a bit of a smoky film noir vibe and the sincere charms of the classic movie of the week format. This is particularly interesting as Arnaz has recalled in interviews that the entire creative process was completed in a quick two weeks. Even more impressive are the variety of well-known performers who deliver layered characterizations as the events unfold. Mercedes McCambridge, who committed fully to her demon-centric vocalizing in The Exorcist, shows her versatility here by giving her role as Short’s grandmother a vibrantly wounded heart. Donna Mills, the queen of the tele-flick genre at the period of time, adds venomous charm as one of Short’s rivals and Gloria DeHaven, who often played petulant romantic rivals in classic musicals, radiates with kindness as a prison matron who encourages Elizabeth to stay on the right track. The appearance of horror movie veteran Sid Haig as a roadside tattooist might cause a shout of surprised joy to erupt from any genre enthusiast watching, as well.

Nicely, Arnaz would continue this based on a real horror vibe with her next project, Death Scream, another movie-of-the-week outing inspired by an actual crime. Showing up in the film’s last quarter as the late arriving final girl, Arnaz manages to outsmart the killer this time and share a second or two of screen time with Raul Julia, that project’s leading man, to boot!

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

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Book Review: The Quality of Mercy

Published June 3, 2016 by biggayhorrorfan

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Who knew the voice of Satan could be so sweet? Indeed, Academy Award winning actress Mercedes McCambridge, best known to terror stalwarts for providing the ghoulish vocal pyrotechnics of the demon in The Exorcist, writes with enormous beauty and supreme self awareness in her 1981 memoir The Quality of Mercy: An Autobiography.

Nicely, McCambridge, a versatile veteran of live radio, spends an entire chapter describing how she came up with the various signature sound pieces that made William Friedkin’s seminal shocker so potently creepy. (If you thought Regan’s onscreen vomiting was hard to take, the image of McCambridge spitting up raw eggs into a cup for the sound effect is liable to make your stomach a mite queasy, as well.) McCambridge also relates her heartache upon realizing she hadn’t, initially, received screen credit for her work and describes the efforts taken to make sure she received it. (Note: In Friedkin’s 2013 memoir he relates a different story, that McCambridge, at first, had insisted on no screen credit to help supply a sense of atmosphere to the film.)

As an unexpected bonus, the husky voiced actress also relates her joy upon working with Boris Karloff in a vampire piece for the radio. She, gleefully, recounts how, behind the scenes, life savers were chomped on to create the illusion that her character’s neck was being snapped. mercedes 99

Perhaps, not unsurprisingly, McCambridge’s tome, occasionally, deals with the often devastating effects of religion on women. Taught to fear an all powerful being, she strains to find her own voice and live a liberated and creative life. She is haunted by her two divorces and recounts, in frightening detail, how she assisted a childhood friend in procuring an illegal abortion.

She also, honestly, recounts her struggles with alcoholism and, with the sweeping curtness of a master storyteller, recalls her activism and her personal relationships, that she hints might have contained flickers of romance, with such powerful figures as politician Adlai Stevenson and master showman Billy Rose.

Euro-buffs, meanwhile, will get a kick out of her non-mention of exploitation maestro Jess Franco. Franco’s 99 Women, the WIP flick that features a boisterously accented performance from McCambridge, is brushed off as an unnamed, nonessential entry in her filmography here.

Thankfully, McCambridge, whose career seemingly suffered due to her visible efforts to link a popular face to the rigors of addiction, comes off as completely singular and absolutely worthy of the cinema fan’s eternal (and loving) recall.

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