Hey, hey, it’s Halloween and all that sort of thing, donchaknow.
The Fearless Vampire Killers, 1967
Directed by Roman Polanski, written by Roman Polanski and Gerard Brach
Jack MacGowran as Professor Abronsius
Roman Polanski as Alfred, Abronsius's assistant
Iain Quarrier as Herbert von Krolock
A spoof of the vampire myth and Hammer Horror movie styles. There is a loving attention to all that Transylvanian atmosphere and some lovely cinema work just for its own sake. So we’re lavishly situated in the consensus-gothic horror film-reality before we ever get to such inversions and comedic frustrations of trad-vampire-lore as Alfie Bass playing a Jewish vampire impervious to a crucifix waved at him. The bit we’re interested in here though is Polanski’s turning on its head of the usual sexual vampire menacing the virginal female trope.
So, fairly ingeniously for the day, the shy, bumbling, feckless ,fearful young assistant, Alfred, played by Roman Polanski, finds himself the target of a lascivious gay vampire, Herbert von Krolock.
Albert has two previous brief encounters with Herbert von Krolock before this scene. The first is when the vampire hunters have infiltrated the castle of Count von Krolock, and are being given a tour by the Count himself. They happen to meet Herbert and the Count introduces everyone. When Herbert first meets Albert, he looks him up and down, then Herbert fingers his cravat as he looms over the anxious Albert to gently shake his hand. As the Count leads the vampire hunters away, Albert nervously looks over shoulder to see Herbert looking back at him.
Later the pair discover the two vampires asleep in their coffins, so by this scene Albert knows Herbert is a vampire, to compound the general fear and awkwardness of Albert.
The reason Albert enters this room and this scene is that previously he had encountered the girl he is in love with here taking a bath, and so he expects to discover her here again. Instead of which, his sexual anticipation is deflated by the presence of Herbert, and the following hijinks ensue:
What the scene really offers us is an early, and well-executed example of the standard humour of homosexual panic when a straight man finds him the object of gay advances. The whole vampire aspect gives it an additional flavour so that the scene doesn’t thump you crassly about the head.
Herbert isn’t a large character in the film, so there’s not that much to say. Part of the joke is that the usual foppish poses of the Byronic - the dandyish concern and affected manner - readily lend themselves to gay interpretation.
As a characterisation to sustain the gag/horror of the scene, Herbert’s portrayal slowly but effectively escalates. First there’s the surprise of finding that it’s Herbert, not Albert’s girl. Secondly, it’s a Herbert clad only in a shirt and underpants. From there Herbert is solicitous of Albert, then comes across to him to adjust Albert’s attire – a gesture both slightly fussy, and also introducing a physical intimacy. Even as Albert tries to escape (because of his discomfort, or because of his fear of the vampire), Herbert implacably yet gracefully leads them both to sit on the bed together (ramping up the intimacy discomfort). Herbert then becomes slightly flirtatious, comparing Albert’s eyelashes to golden threads.
Up to this point, though slightly soft-spoken, Herbert’s accent obscures obvious homosexual mannerisms. Herbert starts to become a bit more fey now. Pulling a bit of a moue when complimenting Albert on “guessing with his pretty little head” (and note how everything is “little” this or that), this builds into the camp gesture of waving his hand above his head to complement “you’ll be able to dance” and then Herbert gets up to swish about to his own trillings. So if there were any doubts, its obvious Herbert is not manly.
Finally, we get Herbert making an actual move on Albert. I think “Shall we allow an angel to pass?” is a lovely line, delivered with just the right hint of insinuation from Herbert. So the scene reaches its climax as the fear of sexual attack gives way to an outright physical attack from the vampire on his life. Which as far as homosexual panic goes is probably not much of a subtle difference.
For a more contemporary take on homosexuality by Polanski, have a look at Peter Sellers as “A. Queen” in “A Day at the Beach” (1970)
http://ukjarry.blogspot.com/2009/02/231-day-at-beach-with-peter-sellers.html
Showing posts with label roman polanski. Show all posts
Showing posts with label roman polanski. Show all posts
Monday, 26 October 2009
Monday, 14 September 2009
291: The Magic Christian (1969)
“The Magic Christian” (1969)
written by Terry Southern, and John Cleese and Graham Chapman
Adapted from Southern’s short episodic novel of the same name, the film is a series of sketches, in which multi-millionaire Guy Grand (Peter Sellers) employs his money to make people indulge in shocking stunts. So the jokes are two-fold:
1) to demonstrate what indignities people will suffer when offered wads of cash, from minor bribes to a scene of city bankers diving into a vat of ordure sprinkled with pound notes
2) to indulge in stunts which disturb conventional sensibilities - some are intended to be subversive, some are just freak-outs
Vito Russo in his book “The Celluloid Closet” absolutely LOATHED this film: “'fag' jokes fly in a viciously homophobic film".
Somewhere I have a “Spitting Image” parody of late Mel Brooks with the tagline “Totally obsessed with Nazis”. It’s not really stretching a point to say the same about Terry Southern and homosexuals. I mean, really, really, really, really, really obsessed. Well, you understand the emphasis. I suppose he should be given some sort of acknowledgement in managing so many ways for homosexuals to be creepy for comedic gross-out purposes. Maybe, homosexuals really were just that odd and perverse to mainstream audiences at the time, and this film reflects that. (To offset this, there is a very affectionate tribute in Southern’s collection “Now Dig This” to his friend the gay poet Frank O’Hara, capturing his camp, sexually mischievous manner. Although that it SHOULD be the camp, impertinent, sexually mischievous side of O’Hara that Southern fixates on and enjoys...?)
0.00 – 3.22
Laurence Harvey as “Hamlet”
Here’s an instance of satirical humour overtaken by the events of the day. The joke is the unexpected metamorphosis of a performance of Hamlet’s soliloquy into a burlesque strip. Whether it’s actually gay or not is up for debate. When a man performs a woman’s role, it can’t help but look camp. Besides, there’s the fact that he’s offering his body as an object for desire, topped by the chap with the binoculars trying to get a good look at the end.
By the time this was released to the public, cavorting nudity on the stage was very much the thing of the day, with such ultra-hip atrocities of embarrassment as “Hair”, “Oh Calcutta” and “Dionysus 69”. Exploration of homosexuality in Elizabethan/Jacobean theatre also raised its head on the contemporary stage. There had been an all-male 1967 production of “As You Like It”. There had also been an explicitly homosexual 1969 production of Marlowe’s “Edward II”, with Ian McKellen as the lead, and also featuring Peter Bourne (now better known as Betty Bourne of Bloolips). This touring production of “Edward II” aroused a lot of tight-lipped scrutiny from the local moral forces wherever it was staged because of male kissing and unabashed affection. An issue of the early gay lifestyle magazine “Jeremy” had a big feature on the production and interviews with the cast, though no one was questioned or felt up to declaring a personal sexual interest. It also prompted the “Sunday Times” to identify McKellen as one of the actors to watch out for, with a photo-feature of McKellen clad in nothing but some tight leather trousers and sprawling in a chair. Which must have raised a few eyebrows over the breakfast table. (Oh, and I see a BBC recording has been released on DVD earlier this year,) But nothing in this sketch plays off the idea of gay actors, it a subversion of Shakespeare.
So given all this, the overwhelming impression made by this sketch, and indeed by most of the bits and pieces in “The Magic Christian,” is not one of major cultural subversion and criticism, but of a camp, self-congratulatory sense of “How naughty we are!”. As the various outrages are played out, it’s sometime hard to distinguish between the filmmakers portrayal of the onscreen audiences and their attitude to the real one watching the film. There’s a constant sense of being nudged in the ribs, and the impression they want that you should just throw up your hands and cry, “Scandalous! Simply Scandalous!”
0.00 – 1.38
Nosher Powell as the ginger boxer
There’s about 3 previous minutes of verisimilitudinous boxing bout scene-setting before this bit, but I’m sure we’ll all prefer going straight to the real action, shan’t we. In this scene, Southern updates his earlier attempt in the book version of “The Magic Christian”. Then, it was just one boxer pretending to fey and effeminate. Here the ante is upped to actual gay kissing. Nosher Powell has a very fey voice dubbed, and does that limp-wrist gesture. And we don’t get to see the kiss, though the direction is slightly more stylised to point up that fact. As in the book, it all ends in an rioting audience when their taste for violence is subverted. Which is apparently the same conclusion as in “Bruno”.
4.42
The discomfort of a stuffy ex-army type suddenly made the focus of homo-erotic attentions. A formal heightening of the oddness of such devotion to the body beautiful by these muscle men, with a little race-discomfort just to add to the mix. As before with the Hamlet sketch, there’s an obvious homosexual, fluttering his tip at the entertainment, and resting his head in a primping manner, just to highlight the faggotry of it all.
7.45
Leonard Frey as Lawrence Faggot (pronounced Fag-Oh, French-style, so a joke that probably slips past most of the audience. Because simply calling a gay character “faggot” - oh, ho, ho, ho - no we’re much more hip than that) revisits his performance from “The Boys in the Band”. Solicitously and disarmingly oleaginous with a few up-market camp insinuations, in an outrageously over-styled suit. All of which must have been even more of an in-joke, as the film version of “Boys in the Band” wasn’t released until the year after this.
2.00-4..5
Two body-builders dancing together. Which is mostly the boxing gag revisited, but in the context of the elite society of the other dancers.
And the all-out oddness of Yul Brynner in drag, overdubbed with a female voice singing “Mad About the Boy” to Roman Polanski. And then the final reveal and reversion to Brynner’s gravelly voice. Intercutting between the two, these is something of an intense perversity to this.
written by Terry Southern, and John Cleese and Graham Chapman
Adapted from Southern’s short episodic novel of the same name, the film is a series of sketches, in which multi-millionaire Guy Grand (Peter Sellers) employs his money to make people indulge in shocking stunts. So the jokes are two-fold:
1) to demonstrate what indignities people will suffer when offered wads of cash, from minor bribes to a scene of city bankers diving into a vat of ordure sprinkled with pound notes
2) to indulge in stunts which disturb conventional sensibilities - some are intended to be subversive, some are just freak-outs
Vito Russo in his book “The Celluloid Closet” absolutely LOATHED this film: “'fag' jokes fly in a viciously homophobic film".
Somewhere I have a “Spitting Image” parody of late Mel Brooks with the tagline “Totally obsessed with Nazis”. It’s not really stretching a point to say the same about Terry Southern and homosexuals. I mean, really, really, really, really, really obsessed. Well, you understand the emphasis. I suppose he should be given some sort of acknowledgement in managing so many ways for homosexuals to be creepy for comedic gross-out purposes. Maybe, homosexuals really were just that odd and perverse to mainstream audiences at the time, and this film reflects that. (To offset this, there is a very affectionate tribute in Southern’s collection “Now Dig This” to his friend the gay poet Frank O’Hara, capturing his camp, sexually mischievous manner. Although that it SHOULD be the camp, impertinent, sexually mischievous side of O’Hara that Southern fixates on and enjoys...?)
0.00 – 3.22
Laurence Harvey as “Hamlet”
Here’s an instance of satirical humour overtaken by the events of the day. The joke is the unexpected metamorphosis of a performance of Hamlet’s soliloquy into a burlesque strip. Whether it’s actually gay or not is up for debate. When a man performs a woman’s role, it can’t help but look camp. Besides, there’s the fact that he’s offering his body as an object for desire, topped by the chap with the binoculars trying to get a good look at the end.
By the time this was released to the public, cavorting nudity on the stage was very much the thing of the day, with such ultra-hip atrocities of embarrassment as “Hair”, “Oh Calcutta” and “Dionysus 69”. Exploration of homosexuality in Elizabethan/Jacobean theatre also raised its head on the contemporary stage. There had been an all-male 1967 production of “As You Like It”. There had also been an explicitly homosexual 1969 production of Marlowe’s “Edward II”, with Ian McKellen as the lead, and also featuring Peter Bourne (now better known as Betty Bourne of Bloolips). This touring production of “Edward II” aroused a lot of tight-lipped scrutiny from the local moral forces wherever it was staged because of male kissing and unabashed affection. An issue of the early gay lifestyle magazine “Jeremy” had a big feature on the production and interviews with the cast, though no one was questioned or felt up to declaring a personal sexual interest. It also prompted the “Sunday Times” to identify McKellen as one of the actors to watch out for, with a photo-feature of McKellen clad in nothing but some tight leather trousers and sprawling in a chair. Which must have raised a few eyebrows over the breakfast table. (Oh, and I see a BBC recording has been released on DVD earlier this year,) But nothing in this sketch plays off the idea of gay actors, it a subversion of Shakespeare.
So given all this, the overwhelming impression made by this sketch, and indeed by most of the bits and pieces in “The Magic Christian,” is not one of major cultural subversion and criticism, but of a camp, self-congratulatory sense of “How naughty we are!”. As the various outrages are played out, it’s sometime hard to distinguish between the filmmakers portrayal of the onscreen audiences and their attitude to the real one watching the film. There’s a constant sense of being nudged in the ribs, and the impression they want that you should just throw up your hands and cry, “Scandalous! Simply Scandalous!”
0.00 – 1.38
Nosher Powell as the ginger boxer
There’s about 3 previous minutes of verisimilitudinous boxing bout scene-setting before this bit, but I’m sure we’ll all prefer going straight to the real action, shan’t we. In this scene, Southern updates his earlier attempt in the book version of “The Magic Christian”. Then, it was just one boxer pretending to fey and effeminate. Here the ante is upped to actual gay kissing. Nosher Powell has a very fey voice dubbed, and does that limp-wrist gesture. And we don’t get to see the kiss, though the direction is slightly more stylised to point up that fact. As in the book, it all ends in an rioting audience when their taste for violence is subverted. Which is apparently the same conclusion as in “Bruno”.
4.42
The discomfort of a stuffy ex-army type suddenly made the focus of homo-erotic attentions. A formal heightening of the oddness of such devotion to the body beautiful by these muscle men, with a little race-discomfort just to add to the mix. As before with the Hamlet sketch, there’s an obvious homosexual, fluttering his tip at the entertainment, and resting his head in a primping manner, just to highlight the faggotry of it all.
7.45
Leonard Frey as Lawrence Faggot (pronounced Fag-Oh, French-style, so a joke that probably slips past most of the audience. Because simply calling a gay character “faggot” - oh, ho, ho, ho - no we’re much more hip than that) revisits his performance from “The Boys in the Band”. Solicitously and disarmingly oleaginous with a few up-market camp insinuations, in an outrageously over-styled suit. All of which must have been even more of an in-joke, as the film version of “Boys in the Band” wasn’t released until the year after this.
2.00-4..5
Two body-builders dancing together. Which is mostly the boxing gag revisited, but in the context of the elite society of the other dancers.
And the all-out oddness of Yul Brynner in drag, overdubbed with a female voice singing “Mad About the Boy” to Roman Polanski. And then the final reveal and reversion to Brynner’s gravelly voice. Intercutting between the two, these is something of an intense perversity to this.
Wednesday, 18 February 2009
231: "A Day at the Beach" with Peter Sellers (1970)
A surprise cameo by Peter Sellers and his good friend Graham Stark in “A Day at the Beach” (1970). The script was written by Roman Polanski who was due to direct the film too. Sharon Tate was murdered just as he was preparing. Polanski’s comedy, “The Fearless Vampire Hunters” also has a vampire played comic gay. “A Day at the Beach” had a very limited release. It is by all accounts a fairly sombre affair, and Sellers and Stark’s cameo is an unusual piece of relief with deliberately nasty dramatic overtones. Lord only knows how the two came to be in it (although Polanski was in Sellers’s “The Magic Christian” in 1969). Apparently Sellers was credited as “A.Queen”. It’s probably best to compare this gay couple to characters in other contemporary films like “Boys in the Band” and “Staircase”. Here we have two languorous queens who are rather too old, in several ways, for the fashions they wear, and so a little grotesque. Both flirt with / stare hungrily at the young man (Mark Evans) who plays along, if aggressively. A certain primping, fiddling with hair, and Stark’s heavily beringed, effeminate hands is par for the course. Sellers deep-throating the arms of his spectacles is not. Seller’s spiteful bitchiness towards his absent partner as a form of flirtation is not unrealistic, though it provides an excuse for threats by the young man towards Stark as a means of proving his superiority. So not quite comic relief, but much of it played for laughs of a kind. It's certainly a million mile away from the likes of Dick Emery.
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