Brandon’s movie memory

Thanks to TCM for showing this rare cult film written, directed, produced and even distributed by goofball character actor Timothy Carey (of The Killing, Paths of Glory, One-Eyed Jacks and East of Eden - later of Head and two Cassavetes films).

Carey, with all the power he can muster, plays an insurance salesman who tires of the game, has an internal moral/religious/political crisis and decides that anyone can be God. He gets his name changed to God, affixes a fake goatee, hires his Mexican gardener as his number-two man, gets sponsored by a shadowy political figure, and runs for high office. He names his group the Eternal Man’s Party, says his followers can be “super-human-beings”, it sounds like a dangerous cross between naziism, self-help dianetics, and The Holy Mountain. Plenty of people follow God Hilliard’s clearly sacrilegious message until late in the campaign newsmen start asking if he’s maybe an atheist. Atheists don’t get elected, but people calling themselves God do? Clarence has sent his wife and kids away so he can have sex with 16-yr-old groupies and live the decadent life of the rich and powerful, but amongst the atheism allegations he starts defying God to show Himself, wanders into a church and steals those holy biscuits that Catholics are so nuts about, starts stabbing one with a needle. Ha, nothing, he leaves the room, comes back, a trail of blood, miracle, movie busts into crazy color.

Coming out around the time of X: The Man With X-Ray Eyes and Carnival of Souls, and only a year before Shock Corridor, it’s not like it was the only weirdo movie in Hollywood those days, but its weirdness is still pretty damned impressive. Roughly edited with a cheap look but a good eye, clearly a personal movie.

Assisted by Ray Dennis Steckler (Wild Guitar, The Incredibly Strange Creatures…). Music composed by a 21-year-old Frank Zappa, four years before Freak Out. The title song ended up on the Cucamonga comp. Wife is played by Betty Rowland, who has very few credits, but one is a doc called Striptease: The Greatest Exotic Dancers of All Time, so we can guess where Carey found her. His Mexican gardener/assistant Alonzo turned up twenty years later in Scarface. Paul Frees, the professional voiceover guy who did the snake/narrator, was writing/directing The Beatniks around the same time… crazy.

Joan’s sister Valerie is getting married, so Joan wonders how she might also get married. Marriage, you see, is a business, and emotion should not be involved, so Joan (Ann Harding of Holiday & Peter Ibbetson) makes a business decision to marry John (William Powell, the Thin Man and the Great Ziegfeld), with the scheming help of Valerie (Lucile Browne of “Soup To Nuts”) and the unwitting help of their father (strangely german-accented Henry Stephenson, who played the nice rich guy who adopts David Lean’s Oliver Twist).

John isn’t into the whole marriage thing and starts hanging out with his hottie ex Lilian Bond (apparently best known for Wyler’s 1940 “The Westerner”). Meanwhile Val has gone deep into debt buying fancy clothes and in her drunkenness she blows the secret of the scheming to John, who was gonna divorce Joan anyway, but he and Joan kinda love each other now so I think it’ll turn out alright.

George Meeker (ninety movies in the 1930’s! first one was preston sturges’ first big hit as a writer) is unexciting as the sister’s husband, but Reginald Owen (Stingaree, 1938 Christmas Carol, Diary of a Chambermaid, The Pirate, Red Garters and Mary Poppins) is delicious as John’s butler.

It’s a good movie, some funny and racy parts (sly references to all the sex everyone’s having offscreen), good direction, some long camera takes. Nice to see such an excellent new print of a film from 70+ years ago.

We were told by the Turner guys who introduced the film that a famous drag queen was hired as the couturiere in the opening scene but upon seeing the rushes the studio flipped and made ‘em reshoot it with a more low-key (but still semi-flaming) actor.