#hagsploitation movie

[bitter69uk]

Hagsploitation truly is the horror sub-genre that keeps on giving. Sparked by the unexpected success of 1962’s What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? in the 1960s and 70s, maturing female stars of golden age Hollywood extended their careers by swallowing their pride, embracing their inner scream queen and plunging into exploitation shockers: think of Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, Tallulah Bankhead, Olivia de Havilland, Agnes Moorehead and Shelley Winters starring in the likes of Strait-Jacket, Hush … Hush … Sweet Charlotte, Berserk, Lady in a Cage, Die Die My Darling, Dear Dead Delilah and especially the “question movies” Whoever Slew Auntie Roo?, What’s the Matter with Helen? and What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice? Roaring back from career doldrums (I last remember her playing Miley Cyrus’ mother), 61-year-old Demi Moore finds herself in a similar position in director Coralie Fargeat’s grisly and stylish satire The Substance. In a gutsy, exposed (in every sense) performance, Moore plays Elisabeth Sparkle, a middle-aged television celebrity abruptly fired by ageist and sexist network executive Dennis Quaid (really chomping the scenery). Despondent, Elisabeth takes desperate measures to rejuvenate her “best self” with a mysterious unregulated black market scientific procedure called The Substance … and things swiftly unravel. Characterized by stunning art direction and a visceral sound design that emphasizes every repulsive squelching noise, The Substance ratchets up maximum dread and offers a goldmine of knowing movie references: Basket Case. Carrie. Death Becomes Her. Every single David Cronenberg “body horror” flick but particularly The Fly. Thematically, it reminded me of two specific b-movies from the late 1950s: The Wasp Woman and The Leech Woman, in which the anti-heroine experiments with science (or voodoo) to restore youth and beauty with monstrous consequences (and – it must be noted - these films make their point with a fraction of The Substance’s budget and two hour-and 40-minute running time). The Substance is bound to be divisive. There was multiple “walk outs” when I saw it. And has Fargeat lost control of the material by the ultra-gory splatter fest finale? However you cut it, it’s a wild ride and destined for cult status.

[devilsskettle]

The X trilogy + "psycho-biddy" influences

[horror-aesthete]

What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, 1962, dir. Robert Aldrich

[esqueletosgays]

STRAIT-JACKET (1964)

Director: William Castle Cinematography: Arthur E. Arling

[sol-flo]

just got THE SUBSTANCE'd. schlock is back babyyyy

[schlock-luster-video]

On June 10, 1964, Dead Ringer debuted in France.

[everydaym0nstrosity]

This is from the Italian poster art.

Dear Dead Delilah, 1972

[hotvintagepoll]

Propaganda

Deborah Kerr (Bonjour Tristesse, An Affair to Remember, The King and I)— For several decades she held the record for most Oscar nominations without a win (6 in total), and she was a prolific leading lady throughout the 40s and 50s. She's best known today for the romance An Affair to Remember with Cary Grant, and as the governess in The King and I. Many people have this erroneous perception of her as extremely prim, proper, and virginal, but this could not be further from the truth. When she first came to Hollywood under MGM she was typecast into boring decorative roles, but broke sexual boundaries for herself and Hollywood generally in From Here to Eternity, when she made out (horizontally!) with Burt Lancaster (on top of him!) in the famous Beach Scene. She went on to play many sexually conflicted women, a character type that would define most of her post- Eternity work. She continued to break Hays Code boundaries with Tea and Sympathy, which addresses homosexuality/homophobia head-on, and even did a topless scene in The Gypsy Moths 1969!! One of the only classic stars to do so. She deserves a more nuanced and frankly a hotter legacy than she currently has!!!

Ethel Merman (Anything Goes, Call Me Madam)— Possessed of a bold, brash voice, and an even bolder and brasher presence, Ethel Merman might be more well known for her stage roles, but she made several movies, and was bold and brash in them as well. Also I think if I don't submit her, she's going to come back and haunt me.

This is round 1 of the tournament. All other polls in this bracket can be found here. Please reblog with further support of your beloved hot sexy vintage woman.

[additional propaganda submitted under the cut]

Ethel Merman:

You've gotta love any woman who got typecast as lead-MILF

Deborah Kerr:

I think she was one of my first crushes before I realised I was bi in The King and I when I watched it as a kid honestly. The kissing scene in From Here to Eternity is iconic for a reason. Actually tried to learn the accents for the characters she was playing if they weren't English which is more than pretty much anyone else was doing then. Played very restrained characters who frequently seemed to be desperate not to be so restrained. Did horror movies without venturing into hagsploitation tropes. Gave Marni Nixon the credit she deserved for her share of the singing in The King and I.

Anne Larsen is a peak late 1950s bisexual with big MILF energy. Have you seen the behind the scenes pics of her wearing a suit?? Have you????? Vote Deb as Anne Larsen.

Nominated for an Oscar six (6) times and never won, but besides her having actual talent (hot), and besides her looking Like That (very hot, also beautiful), she was always playing women who are, like, crazy repressed. Which makes it fun and easy for me to read these characters as queer. Icon!!!! You know what's hot? Playing ambiguously gay in vintage Hollywood.

Her face and talent and body, yes, ofc, duh. But also!!! Her HANDS!!!! I may be but a simple lesbian, but she is the best hactor (hand actor) that ever lived and that's HOT! For propriety's sake I feel I must redact a large portion of my commentary on this subject. Anyway. She's hot in her most famous roles (mentioned above), and also some of her sexiest hacting is on display in An Affair to Remember (her hand on the bannister when Cary Grant kisses her off-screen??? HELLO???), Tea and Sympathy (when she's trying to persuade Tom not to go out and she keeps flexing her hands like she wants to reach out to him but can't??? ALLY BEHAVIOR! WE STAN!), and The Innocents (which opens and closes with extended shots of her hands bc director Jack Clayton was also an ally and he did that for ME). Much of her appeal also lies in the fact that she often played deeply repressed characters and you know what's hot? When those uptight characters finally unravel. It's sexy. It's cathartic. It's erotic. Plus, she's beautiful to look at in both black & white and technicolor, and the more of her films you see, the more you can't help but fall in love!

Literally is in thee most famously sexy scene of all time (or maybe just during the hays code era which is what we're talking about HELLO), which is the beach scene with Burt Lancaster in from here to eternity. To quote a tumblr post of a screen capture of a tweet of a video of joy behar on the view: "y'know, there used to be movies where they were kissing on the beach... From Here to Eternity. They're kissing-- Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr are Kissing on the Beach and then the WAVES crash!! You know exactly what they did!"

She might have a reputation of being chaste and virginal or whatever, but we all know it's the quiet ones who are certifiable FREAKS

[steveyockey]

I think if The Subdtance hsd been 45 minutes to an hoyr shorter it would've been better fr, like sooo much of the build up just feels insultingpy repititve. But the end was fun!! I do think the rest of it had such polished production and effects that trying to pay homage to campier horror at the end felt a little insukting to camp if i'm committing to being cynical but i was alone in the theater at 11am clapping and cheering anyway because it had finally done something. And you're right that casting a beautiful woman very much still in an era of fame to be a hagsploitation role is a little insulting to Demi Moore, but she did eat with the crazed rambling even if the "ooo lonely woman eating in front of a tv how horrorifying" bit felt very uh. Emerald Fennel-esque ij it's understanding of critiquing the way society treats aging women

it’s absolutely too long and I think people have correctly diagnosed this as like a b-movie with a-budget/casting which is why the end both the best part and yeah kind of has a vibe of like oh NOW you choose to join us in the dirt! all the food stuff for elisabeth is definitely undercooked (wow a skinny woman eating a whole chicken… that’s crazy I never thought of that…) but god did demi sell it and like above all I’m content that my theater was jam packed to watch her go sicko mode and that people are paying money for some breast-heavy good ol’ practical effects like dear god did I need that. elisasue forever and always #1 ride or die until the end of time hall of fame

[bitter69uk]

“He made his film debut in Freddie Francis's fondly remembered trash-horror flick Dr Terror's House of Horrors and in his fellow Canadian Silvio Narizzano's Die! Die! My Darling! alongside Tallulah Bankhead, whose last movie it was, and who made a lasting impression on Sutherland. "I loved her. She was wonderful. But poor Yootha Joyce [her co-star] couldn't run fast enough. Tallulah had this wild crush on her. I'd just left the theatre at this time and once I was downstairs putting on make-up. My character was supposed to be an albino and I didn't think he was white enough, so I was down in the basement, putting layers on. And I heard a noise behind me. I turned around and Tallulah was standing there naked, with dugs hanging down like that and this HUGE thatch of blond pubic hair and she looked at me and said, "What's the matter, darling? Never seen a blonde before?" I couldn't speak. And she ran out of there laughing madly, her bum swinging back and forth."

Donald Sutherland reminiscing about his experience working with the debauched 62-year-old wild woman Tallulah Bankhead in the 1965 hagsploitation movie Die! Die! My Darling! in The Guardian in 2005. Sutherland would go on, of course, to become one of the preeminent actors of “New Hollywood” cinema in the 1970s, starring in the likes of M*A*S*H*, Klute, Don’t Look Now, Day of the Locust and Fellini’s Casanova. Character actress Yootha Joyce, meanwhile, would go onto star in classic British 1970s sitcom George and Mildred! Reading Sutherland’s reflections on Bankhead’s antics, you can appreciate why the director concluded, “No words can express my relief that the picture is over. She is magnificent but impossible.” See Bankhead, Sutherland and Joyce onscreen when the FREE monthly Lobotomy Room cinema club presents Die! Die! on Thursday 16 May at Fontaine’s bar in Dalston. I have no idea about seat availability, so contact the venue on bookings@fontaines.bar!

[bitter69uk]

Died on this day: American character actress Shelley Winters (18 August 1920 - 14 January 2006), who progressed from blowzy sexpot starlet in the forties to earth mother of New York’s Actor’s Studio in the fifties to hagsploitation horror movie scream queen. No one could ham it up quite like kitsch icon Shelley Winters! Strictly speaking, Winters’ greatest performances are probably in Night of the Hunter (1954) and Lolita (1962), but I personally treasure her at full throttle in exploitation flicks like The Mad Room (1969), What’s the Matter with Helen? (1971), Whoever Slew Auntie Roo? (1971), Poor Pretty Eddie (1973) and The Initiation of Sarah (1978).  Most recently I’ve watched Winters in a berserk 1977 Italian serial killer flick called Black Journal (the oddball cast includes Max Von Sydow and Rita Tushingham).

Shelley Winters was born Shirley Schrift of very humble beginnings on August 18, 1920 (some sources list 1922) in East St. Louis, Illinois.

[horror-aesthete]

Hush Hush, Sweet Charlotte, 1964, dir. Robert Aldrich

[mmmmalo]

Rambling.

Discovered the microgenre "Psycho Biddy" (or "hagsploitation") that collates films about violent aging women. Somewhat transfixed because of its resonance with names like Hysterical Dame and Nervous Broad, even though those could just as easily be reduced to a regular old Crazy Bitch**. The genre's taste for aging movie stars reminds me of that Sunset Boulevard poster in Joey's bedroom, and its dynamic of an older woman clinging to a younger man to maintain her own sense of vitality carries shades of Roxy's implied pedophilia or Mom's implied imbibing of infantile ecto-goo (both of which are driven by a strong attachment to their own childhood) -- especially since the mid-century aesthetic of the genre meshes well with Mom's retro-futuristic housewife camp.

Reblogged that gif of Hush... Hush, Sweet Caroline because I'm on the prowl for early analogues of Problem Sleuth's double weapons, especially within horror. The lipstick/chainsaw's possible origins from the poster of a Texas Chainsaw Massacre has me suspecting quiet horror references might pervade the story, which is another reason the "psycho biddy" angle appealed to me, even if the thematic conventions of the genres resonate more with Homestuck...

Shrug. My overarching interest at this point is assembling a fuller picture of Hussie's early depictions of gender play and a clearer sense of her aesthetic touching points

** Slurquest gives me reason to favor this plainer reading of course, especially since incomprehensible, "hysterical" speech becomes a major motif of Homestuck's ironic sexism (Feferi deeming her own glubs "retarded", Rose emitting eldritch babble when distressed, Damara asking for babies in faux-Japanese)... but filmic borrowings would still be nice, I always worry that when a paradigm of mine is working out I'll end up missing a bunch of other stuff

[marklikely]

sorry im wlw so i love morally dubious older women and im mlm so i love bitchy starlet queens desperately clinging to the limelight. most hagsploitation lead characters are right in the center of my interests

i cant process hagsploitation as an insult its a massive draw for me . to be honest

[anhed-nia]

BLOGTOBER 10/6-7/2023: X, PEARL

Ti West is so frustrating. His more successful movies have earned him enough good will that I've been willing to wait for him like some war bride while he turns out things I find unforgivable, assuming that someone with his demonstrated talent will right himself eventually. For this reason I wish I liked X more. I find it very watchable and I don't hate the premise, but I also really object to parts of it. Some of it is just half-baked; like I kind of enjoy the movie's conversation about how pornography inflates or injures people's vanity and shines a light on inner moral conflicts, but it's all kind of gestural, I don't know if any real conclusions are reached. And I really don't appreciate the take on hagsploitation here, with sexy Mia Goth under a hundred pounds of foam rubber reminding us all of how scary aging is--which connects to this questionable tradition in horror where the monster is a human who is alienated due to their looks, and we'd better learn to fear such people because being sexually undesirable is a punishment so cruel that it could make you dangerously insane. I'm really interested in this trope, where the corrupting force is just physical ugliness (and/or the inability to get laid), but in the case of X I would have found it more compelling if the villains were played by actual old people.

The movies we think of when we hear the terms "hagsploitation" or "psycho biddie" generally star actual older actresses who bring a certain kind of thoughtful, energetic presence to their roles, and that's why they're so effective; when it's just a young person pretending to be old, it requires the viewer to really be afraid of and repulsed by the basic concept of an old person. I've heard some arguments that X is "sex positive" because of its graphic scene of the fake old people doing it, and although I'd agree that some amount of pity is elicited by that (with the husband explicitly pitying his horny, ugly wife), I think it's a big reach to suggest that that content is celebratory or elevating in any way. Again, I might change my tune if it were real old people, but in the meantime the whole production is just young people telling this story about how old people are gross and you might become a crazed killer if you stopped getting laid, and that's just not good enough for me. Maybe if the old people were more like anti-heroes and less like general monstrosities slobbering in the dark, I would have gotten more out of it.

Meanwhile, the prequel PEARL tells a compelling story about a real monster who is complex and charismatic enough to make you sympathize with her, even though she is unambiguously villainous. I do think this movie is somewhat overhyped, but I'm not mad about it; I'm happy that this happened for Ti West, who I definitely want to make more good movies, and PEARL has a lot of cool qualities. It stretches its $1mil budget a surprising distance to make a period piece (usually inadvisable for a cheap movie) with a lot of style and class. Ti West has a talent for genre pastiche--the present movie is somehow a cross between THE WIZARD OF OZ and HUSH...HUSH, SWEET CHARLOTTE--but it doesn't feel like an empty fashion statement, which is the problem I usually have with modern horror productions that do a forced impression of older genre films. Despite whatever is familiar about it, PEARL feels really fresh and original. Tellingly, I don't even feel like enumerating this movie's flaws. It's a charmer and it deserves its success.

[schlock-luster-video]

Onnn August 14, 1974, Night Watch debuted in France.