Women’s Issues

All posts tagged Women’s Issues

Hell of a Gal: Pulsebeat

Published January 12, 2017 by biggayhorrorfan

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(Hell of a Gal explores the films of the ever luscious Euro Vixen Helga Liné.)

Mother Earth or mother of Daniel Greene…the stupendous Helga Liné is fit to play them all. Of course, in 1985’s Pulsebeat, a gloriously goofy Perfect take-off, she plays the latter with cool ease and directness.

Naturally, the big joke (of sorts) here is that Liné, at 53, is still gorgeous enough to be confused as the younger, muscular Greene’s ex-lover. The scriptwriters definitely spend the first half of the film leading the audience in that direction as Liné’s conniving Marlene tries to undermine the smooth and juicy Roger (Greene), her former employee, as he attempts to save his health club from certain extinction. Of course, Mama Bear is just lonely…and controlling…and wants her son at her side to help run her own oasis of perfection.

But by the time the two rival clubs are competing against each other in the film’s climatic, unconvincingly strenuous National Aerobithon, Marlene reveals a bulging pair of maternal instincts and urges her flesh and blood onto victory, despite her own business interests.

Unfortunately, sticking to the tried and true, the film, disappointingly yet unsurprisingly, does focus on Marlene’s physical upkeep with Roger, at one point, calling her “embalmed” and warning her about “her face cracking”. Granted this is a silly comedy, but these moments do stick out as another indication of how women, particularly those of a certain age, are viewed in society. Funnily, here, it almost comes off as ironic, as everyone involved treats Roger’s almost freakishly large muscles and slavish devotion to his body as a normal state of being while a middle aged woman’s attempts to grow older, gracefully, are treated with contempt. Thankfully, Liné, like every woman of grace and power, wears the insults well. helga-1

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

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Book Review: Sharon Farrell, Siân Phillips

Published December 4, 2016 by biggayhorrorfan

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Written in completely different styles and featuring authors who arrive at their writing points from much different backgrounds, the memoirs of Siân Phillips (The Doctor and the Devils, Hammer House of Horror) and Sharon Farrell (It’s Alive, Night of the Comet) still manage to broker in the much of the same emotional currency and definitely illustrate how it is still the men in society who continue to steadily manipulate the fates of those around them.

sian-public-places A prodigiously talented theater actress, Wales bred Phillips details her courtship and years of marriage to Peter O’Toole in Public Places, which was first published in the United States in 2003. While Phillips engaged, successfully, in a performing arts career, O’Toole, obviously, was the more famous of the two, reaching a worldwide platform with Lawrence of Arabia. He also definitely, as evenly and poetically described by Phillips, controlled the many specifics of their lives together. Fairly, Phillips often revels in the adventures she experienced while visiting O’Toole on his various film sets and, lovingly, describes a remote home on a mountain that she, painstakingly, created for him and their two daughters.

Phillips also shares stories of such legends as Katharine Hepburn, who frightened her children by vehemently suggesting that they should become something useful like plumbers, and My Fair Lady’s pompous Rex Harrison. Harrison, known for his misogynistic temper, is painted truthfully here and Phillips shows grace and courage when explaining how she mastered his moods while performing on stage with him. sian-hammer

In deep contrast to Phillips’ artfully measured tones, Farrell’s “Hollywood Princess” From Sioux City, Iowa is a messy and rambunctious offering, often filled with grammatical errors and with the names of famous participants misspelled. Yet, with pluck and little sense of bitterness, the actress traces her career which was often sidetracked by affairs, a miscarriage, rape, medical issues and mismanagement.

As with Phillips’ offering, Farrell’s honestly reveals how the males in power, here in LA (and beyond), frequently, shaped her destiny – from the unstableness of Hawaii Five-O’s Jack Lord to the peculiarities of Bill Bell, the creator of the popular soap The Young and the Restless. Farrell frequently found herself jobless due to their whims and when, onset, was subjected to unprofessionally bizarre behavior – prime examples being Dennis Hooper peeing on her while filming Out of Blue and a physical attack from a fellow performer on the location of The Reivers.

Still, Farrell, who suffers from bi-polar disorder, is often hardest on herself here and she acknowledges her own responsibility in many of the choices that she made. She is full of passion and heart and, despite the lack of editing, often sets up a nice sense of atmosphere and sense of time and place even when her viewpoint rambles some.

its-alive-sharon-farrell Unfortunately, neither actress concentrates much on their genre offerings here. Phillips does, happily, describe her interesting audition for David Lynch’s Dune and Farrell gives passing mention to such projects as The Premonition and The Fifth Floor. But, what is most poignant and interesting about each book, is the conclusion that readers can draw about society, itself. It is still a straight man’s world, as plainly evidenced in both writers’ circumstances. Here, they show how they overcame and thrived despite that sometimes overpowering obstacle.

Public Places is available, on sale, from various dealers on Amazon. Farrell’s tome, meanwhile, can be purchased from her at www.sharonfarrell.com.

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

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(Images of are Phillips in Hammer House of Horror and Farrell in It’s Alive.)

The Destruction of Princess Tilde!

Published February 23, 2015 by biggayhorrorfan

Princess Tilde defying Valentine.

Someone left this cake out in the rain!

Filled with sophisticated, comic style mayhem that is piloted by a handsome, plucky hero (Taron Egerton’s Eggsy), who, in turn, is buoyed up by such distinguished talents as Colin Firth, Michael Caine, Samuel J. Jackson and Mark Hamill as a multitude of engaging mentor types and villains, Kingsman: The Secret Service is loads of glorious fun.

My one issue with the film, besides some truly obvious head bursting moments of CGI action, is the ultimate treatment of Princess Tilde, one of the movie’s strongest female characters, portrayed with quirky resolve by Hanna Alström.

Tilde is one of the few fully featured, distinguished characters who actually rejects the devious plan of the primary villain, Valentine (Jackson), and winds up imprisoned in his underground bunker. Spunky and willful to Valentine’s every overture, she is a steely example of a femme in an action movie.

Yet, co-writers Jane Goldman and Matthew Vaughn (who based their script on the comic book The Secret Service created by Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons) betray this positivity by turning her into a sexual joke by the film’s closing. Upon finally meeting Eggsy, who promises to defeat Valentine, Tilde spontaneously offers up an outrageous sexual favor should he succeed.

This suggestion is so damaging, ultimately, because it is so left field for the defiant princess. Development is, obviously, important for a character and if even, momentarily, Tilde had revealed some kind of amorous side previously, this denouement may have worked. Even more importantly, it is, also, out of context for the film, itself. While there are plenty of spy antics, exaggerated feats of violence and explorations of the darker side of the street thug lifestyle detailed in the film, there is little to no sexuality offered up, making Tilde’s comment stand out all the more.

That our last image of the character is one of her rolling over to, luxuriously, fulfill her promise is, also, unfortunate. Granted, anytime a woman in film (or life, for that matter) expresses a powerful sexuality outside of the vanilla zone is definitely important. Yet, the effect, here, is that moment is all most movie goers will remember about Princess Tilde.

Surely meant as a play on the excessive sheet turning of the Bond films, this issue could have been saved if we saw Tilde reversing the tables on Eggsy by throwing him on his backside to, ultimately, show him what she really meant by “do it in the asshole”.

Sadly, this is not to be.

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

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The Boy Next Door and The Best Friend Phenomenon!

Published January 30, 2015 by biggayhorrorfan

“Lady, you are gonna get me killed!”

Formula is good for babies and genre fans, but eventually we all outgrow it. While, current (very successful) cheese fest The Boy Next Door does offer some nice reverse fetishism with hunky Ryan Guzman being the prime target of the film’s voyeuristic gaze, it also provides an expected trope (along with its deliriously fun plot holes and frequently unbelievable circumstances) that probably needs to change. Like many thrillers before it, including such offerings as The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, The Juror and this fall’s No Good Deed, Claire, the beleaguered heroine of The Boy Next Door, has a sassy best friend (spoiler alert!) who meets an unfortunate end at the hands of the film’s twisted villain. Here, just like the ladies in the previous flicks, this friend, a high school vice principal played with sarcastic warmth by Kristin Chenoweth, is successful, highly sexual and single. Just like the heroines in the other features, this is the complete opposite of Claire (Jennifer Lopez), a mother whom, despite expected flaws and one questionable mistake, is truly struggling to come to grips with her seemingly shattered family life. While this devise does have some practical purposes, including presenting an extreme sense of emotional resolve for the primary victim, one has to wonder what kind of picture this actually paints. A moment’s contemplation produces the thought that the creators of these vehicles, whether intentionally or unintentionally, are telling us that any woman who doesn’t want a traditional family unit, who wants to thoroughly explore her sexuality and thumb her nose at the patriarchy by having a profitable career, deserves to die. This notion comes off as especially grievous in the case of Someone’s Watching Me, a 1978 John Carpenter directed television film, in which the wise cracking bestie is, also, a lesbian, played with forthright dignity by genre icon Adrienne Barbeau. (Interestingly, Guzman’s habitual nakedness along with the combined presences of Chenoweth, an acclaimed Broadway performer, and Lopez, a fashion icon and diva with multiple club hits, seemingly nods in the direction of The Boy Next Door achieving a healthy gay following, something the producers, in a progressive moment, must have seemingly intended.) Granted, when all is said and done, the murder of the vibrant companion is such an established element now, that some audience members may feel let down if it doesn’t occur. But, in all honesty, it couldn’t be too hard to change the demographics of said character to something less predictable and less, dare I say it, offensive. Until the next time – SWEET love and pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan! http://www.facebook.com/biggayhorrorfan