In this late-'60s drug-tinged
melodrama, The Big Cube (1969), screen legend Lana Turner takes a trip. In fact, she takes
two. One comes from exposure to LSD and the other is a trip down the
career ladder from glossy, but profitable, Ross Hunter confections to
tacky, low-budget thrillers with precious little creative or monetary
return. (She would, in fact, disappear from cinema screens for six
years after this turkey.)
One coming across the opening scene
without benefit of knowing which movie is on, might be forgiven for
mistaking it as Turner's 1956 costume drama Diane, as we find the
star all decked out in period finery (albeit with an anachronistic
red and white fabric choice, courtesy of costume designer Travilla)
on her knees at the deathbed of a royal figure.
Turns out that this is merely the
finale of a stage play that Turner's actress character is performing
in. In fact, it's the finale of her stage career period since she's
about to retire and marry a wealthy businessman played by Daniel
O'Herlihy. Flowers flood the stage as she gives a public farewell to
her admiring audience.
O'Herlihy earns a special treat as the
camera zooms in for a big, gauzy close-up of Turner blowing him a
kiss. He winks back at her from his box seat. (God knows the rest of
the audience in attendance has been cut in from stock footage from
some different, slightly-earlier movie!)
Though Turner had memorably played a
stage actress in 1959's Imitation of Life, that movie didn't ever
show any of the character's performances the way this one does – to
her detriment! In real life, Turner had never set foot on a
theatrical stage, but did do so the year after The Big Cube with
moderate success. Her first scenes of dialogue have a bizarre halting
quality, with strange pauses, that make one wonder if her character
might already be tripping out!
In this bizarre introduction to Turner
as “an actress,” she makes a variety of wide-eyed expressions and
seems to be caught up in a very artificial style of delivery. Maybe
all those lessons from MGM's Lillian Burns sunk in irretrievably. She
also manages to look at once highly-elegant and yet also startlingly
old. Even with all the haze in this close-up, you might be shocked to
know that she was only forty-eight years old here!
Next come the loony, psychedelic
opening credits with a “groovy” song called “Lean on Me”
which is orchestrated throughout the rest of the movie in various
ways. Turner is shown conferring with her husband-to-be while wearing
an elaborate hairpiece (the first of several) whose color bears
little-to-no relation to the star's own bleached-out tresses. Turner
is worried that O'Herlihy's teenaged daughter won't like her.
Said daughter is played by Swedish
model Karin Mossberg, whose thick accent is idiotically explained
away by the fact that O'Herlihy sent her to a European boarding
school after her mother died (because American and Anglo-Saxon girls
always come home from boarding school sounding like they were raised
on an Alp!) Mossberg has a very fast best friend, Pamela Rodgers,
whose idea of fun is to drop acid or engage in an orgy! (She even
propositions the elderly butler!) The comparatively-sheltered
Mossberg is more of a mousy daddy's girl.
Though she doesn't want to attend the
wedding ceremony, she finally acquiesces and Turner does her best to
warm up to her. Turner's theatrical producer and friend Richard Egan
can see that there is tension, however, and asks Mossberg if she's
ever studied acting (something the viewing audience has also been
mulling over already as they've seen her awkward performance thus
far!) It's really not as bad as she suspected it would be, though,
and Mossberg and Turner strike up a tentative friendly relationship.
The newlyweds head off on a sailing
honeymoon, with Turner in an elbow-length blonde wig and a hooty pair
of oversized sunglasses. (Ken Anderson, when/if you read this, doesn't this look like it could be a still from 1970's Dinah East ?!?)
While they are away, Mossberg has begun
to socialize with Rodgers' offbeat gang of friends and has little
time to worry about her father and step-mother anyway. One of her
newfound buddies is a med school student played by George Chakiris
(that he is thirty-five in real life, with gray in his hair, is merely one more bizarre
oddity to be found in this hopeless melange.)
An indication of Chakiris' character
comes when he is seen making out with one girl, then a second one,
but immediately switches focus to Mossberg upon meeting her. The gang
heads to a hot night spot (with mostly bare, white walls resembling
an empty warehouse or sound stage!) People are grooving out to the
music while sipping either beer or coffee. We soon find out that the
chief appeal of these two beverages is that they are conducive to
having a sugar cube dropped into them which has been saturated with
acid/LSD.
Carlos East (wearing circular stripes
across his face), one of Charikis' pals and the boyfriend of Rodgers,
has an axe to grind with one of the bar's newly-arrived patrons, a
tall, goateed bodyguard to a lady known as “Queen Bee” (played by
Regina Torne.) East asks Chakiris for a (big?) cube and plops it into
the guy's drink. Before long, the man is freaking out, crossing his
eyes and tearing at the sides of his hair before being dragged from
the place by policemen!
Chakiris sees Mossberg home (in her
convertible, which seems to be the type of car for which the need for
widescreen cinema came about. It's a boat!)
Their relationship is quite chaste,
with him acting very protectively towards her and more than
gentlemanly. Though she has driven home in her car with him in the
passenger seat, she lets him take the vehicle himself rather than
making him walk or otherwise find a way home, saying she'll retrieve
it the next day.
O'Herlihy and Turner are surprised to
find their daughter traipsing in so late, but she shoos them off with
a lie about how Rodgers was sick and she had to stay with her for a
while. (I don't know how late it is, but the stalwart parents clearly
weren't in bed themselves! He's in a sport coat and Miss Turner is
bedecked in a glittering caftan with another of her hilariously
ornate hairstyles, this one looking as if a slightly darker Shi Tzu
climbed atop her head for a nap! Don't get me wrong, though. I LIVE
for these glossy, glitzy looks from 1960s movies.)
Turner informs O'Herlihy that Mossberg
is deserving of more trust and that she's a good girl who reminds her
of herself at that age. She even says that “the resemblance is
remarkable,” but other than blue eyes, blonde hair and a
wheelbarrow of heavy makeup, the two women really don't look like
each other in the slightest!
We later are told that the drugged up
guy from the nightclub ran into the street and was fatally struck by
a car. This development leads the police to Chakiris where he is
accused of using his school laboratory in order to manufacture LSD
and is summarily expelled. With no career on the horizon, he opts to
move in with artist East (where Rodgers is a scantily-clad model for his various works) and set his sites on Mossberg as a wealthy meal
ticket. He manages to keep his expulsion from her as she continues to
think of him as a future doctor.
Meanwhile, Mossberg convinces her
father to help struggling artist East by purchasing one of his (ugly)
abstract paintings, sight unseen. He gives her $600 for one of his
pieces before departing on yet another trip with Turner (who is
bedecked in a mod, go-go-booted get-up that would have looked more at home on
Sharon Tate or Barbara Parkins in Valley of the Dolls,1967!)
While her parents are away, Mossberg
indulges in a wild party that has the usual gang of trippy friends
all sprawled out in the living room. The token gay character (who is,
of course, way over the top at all times) is performing a striptease
for everyone, but he doesn't seem to suit Rodgers enough. She gets up
and begins to peel off most of her clothing.
She writhes around, with East egging
her on, until finally standing up and yanking off her bra, jiggling
her bare breasts around. Naturally, this is the exact instant that
O'Herlihy and Turner return home! (If Turner was permitted to do or
say much of anything, this would be a racier rehash of her scene in
Peyton Place where she catches her daughter slow-dancing in the dark
– gasp! - but O'Herlihy handles most of the outrage here.)
He orders everyone out, advising them
to take the ugly painting with them as well (even offering to still
pay for it!) and scolds Mossberg. When she retaliates with some heated remarks about how Turner has taken him away from her, he gives her a
wallop across the face. Needless to say, this whole scene helps to
take her mild discontentment towards Turner to a new level of
disdain, even though Turner hasn't really done a thing to her.(Later in the film, though, Turner does get to take her own whack at Mossberg.)
Things are about to go from bad to much
worse, though. We next see that Turner is barely alive after a
horrific storm at sea in which she and O'Herlihy both went into the
water! O'Herlihy is dead and gone while Turner has washed up onto the
sand. (Little did she realize that with this film, her movie career
had darn near washed up, too!)
Leave it to Lana to be discovered,
sopping wet, on the beach by a shirtless hunk who, with the aid of a
few other gents, helps get her onto a gurney and to the hospital
where she clings to life. Incidentally, as one might expect,
forty-eight year-old Turner is lit rather well throughout The Big
Cube and even in this potentially ruinous scene, she comes across all
right, but look at her HAND in the photo below! That's one area that practically
nothing short of gloves can fix on a woman of a certain age.
Initially, Mossberg maintains a certain
amount of concern for Turner, but once she's recovered O'Herlihy's
will is read and it is pronounced that she will have to have the okay
from Turner before marrying or else forfeit her million dollar
inheritance. Mossberg wishes to marry the devious Chakiris, but
there's no way Turner can say yes in good faith after witnessing his
shenanigans with her late husband.
Amazingly enough, Chakiris and Mossberg
have still, to this point, maintained a chaste relationship! He's
still doing some of the regular chicks from his gang (such as a
curvaceous gal who begs him to take a shower with him, though his
mind is still on Mossberg and her million bucks.)
Chakiris, with no future in medicine
now, hangs his sail on Mossberg and manipulates her into going along
with a scheme to drive Turner batty so that she'll change her mind
about the marriage. Chakiris rigs all her sleeping pills with drops
of LSD, meaning that she will increasingly undergo hallucinations and
bad trips from the drug. They also, finally, hit the sack together.
Turner is awakened in the night by
eerie voices, strange lights and various haunting sights and sounds,
culminating in Mossberg coming towards her to choke her to death! But
she is found the next morning, alone, by the maid with no sign of
foul play (and with Mossberg supplying an alibi regarding her
whereabouts.)
Turner and Mossberg (pretending to
still care about her stepmother) go for a drive during which Turner
is scared witless by Mossberg's driving and, ultimately, is dragged
to the edge of a cliff by Chakiris and Mossberg. However, after the
fact, no one will believe her side of the story! It's assumed that
she is merely coming unglued following the loss of her husband.
Even her old pal Egan struggles to
believe that anything factual is happening to her and he believes
that she's just coping badly with the loss of O'Herlihy, who she
truly loved.
Next, the devious duo plays a series of
eerie and suggestive recordings to a half-awake Turner, with the
ultimate goal of having her jump off of her bedroom balcony. At the
eleventh hour, Mossberg can't go through with it and intervenes, but
by that time Turner has already gone off the deep end, mentally, and
now has amnesia about anything related to O'Herlihy's death.
With Turner safely ensconced in a cushy
mental institution, Chakiris and Mossberg can continue with their
marital plans. He presses Turner's lawyer to forgo the marriage's
approval process and when the man won't bend, they take it to court
and declare Turner mentally unfit.
They finally wed in a hippie-ish
ceremony with him in all-white, wearing his ever-presetn ankh around
his neck, while she sports a short white dress that's festooned with
yellow blossoms towards the bottom.
The reception gets way out of hand as
bikers tear across the yard, winding up in the pool, and bikini-clad
revelers splash around. Even the wedding cake finds its way into the
pool before the melee is over!
As the celebration dies down, Mossberg
is slow dancing with East while Chakiris has Rodgers in a clinch.
Mossberg is horrified to see him slowly reaching up under her
oversized shirt to remove the top of her swimsuit! Then he heads with HER up the stairs to bed! Rodgers tells a
stunned Mossberg that she's in for a treat from East, while East says
he'd like to have a foursome. Mossberg cannot believe this
development and comes unhinged while Chakiris hits the floor
laughing. With friends like these...
A now-repentant Mossberg gets rid of
Chakiris and goes to Turner's old theatrical producer Egan for help.
She confesses her part in the plan and seeks his aid in restoring
Turner's memory (something the doctors don't seem to be able to make
any progress with!) His idea is about as bizarre a scheme as could be
imagined.
Egan intends to write and produce a
full-scale, three-act (!) theatrical production based on exactly what
happened to Turner, hoping that if she gets up on stage and acts it,
she'll remember it! He hires actors to portray her husband and
stepdaughter (brunette in the play) and proceeds with rehearsals of
this new work.
As the schedule wears on, Turner has an
occasional flash of the past, but still has no concrete recollection
of what was done to her. Naturally, they get all the way to opening
night and she still hasn't completely recalled the circumstances of
her breakdown. An already surreal movie gets more so as Turner
readies herself to go onstage, before a packed house of real live
audience members, and portray a character who is completely based on
herself and will be undergoing what she went through yet can not
recall!
Meanwhile, Chakiris has slid down. Way
down. He's now shacked up with the Queen Bee gal whose bodyguard he
helped to kill and has become a hopeless addict himself! He's shown
in a torn shirt, crawling around on the floor of a grungy apartment,
with sugar cubes all over, carrying on a conversation with a tiny ant
he's captured! (I am not. making. this. up.)
Miss Turner had been a top star at MGM
in the 1940s and '50s, later surviving a blistering scandal (the
stabbing death of her boyfriend by her own daughter) that might have
derailed another actress. However, she was able to rebound with great
success in 1959's Imitation of Life, in which she played an actress
with (comparatively mild) daughter problems. In the wake of that
movie, she starred in a string of glossy melodramas, with an
occasional comedy, until 1966 when she starred in Madame X, am
all-stops-out tearjerker to end them all (which, in view of its
middling box office, it practically did.)
That was her last film until this one
came along, quite a step down. After this, she starred in her very
own prime-time TV soap opera, Harold Robbins' The Survivors
(1969-1970), but the very expensive (and very troubled) show only
limped along for fifteen episodes before being cancelled. After that,
she did something she swore she'd never do. She took to the stage!
She toured in Forty Carats and then did productions of The Pleasure
of His Company (opposite Louis Jourdan) and Bell, Book and Candle.
This was not without trepidation, unease and difficulty, but she was
a huge hit with audiences eager to catch a glimpse of the always
glamorous star. (You may have to open article above-right in a new tab or window in order to read it if you wish!)
After a few minor movies and a
tempestuous stint on Falcon Crest in 1982 and 1983, Turner was
practically retired and focused on a life that included healthier
eating (and no alcohol!), though years of heavy smoking led to a
fatal bout of throat cancer, which took her in 1995 at age
seventy-four.
Having won an Oscar for 1961's West
Side Story, Chakiris enjoyed nearly a decade of leading roles in
movies of reasonable budget and standing, but this one signaled the
end of that. Other than one British movie and another
straight-to-video flick, his career was relegated to television from
here on, though he did distinguish himself there on occasion. Now
retired from acting and eighty years of age, you can read more about
him (and my own personal meeting with him!) right here.
Egan can probably best be described as
reliable. The granite-jawed actor was a handsome presence in movies
1950 on, with hits including Love Me Tender (1956), A Summer Place
(1959) and The 300 Spartans (1962) among others. He'd been granted a
Golden Globe in 1954 as Most Promising Newcomer. By 1987, he had been
part of the cast of the daytime soap Capitol for several years, but
was felled by prostate cancer at only age sixty-five.
Irish-born O'Herlihy enjoyed a long,
busy career in films and on television from the late-1940s on. One of
his prominent parts was the title role in Robinson Crusoe (1954),
directed by Luis Bunuel. He was nominated for an Oscar, but lost to
Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront. Other movies include the
aforementioned Imitation of Life (1959), 100 Rifles (1969) and The
Tamarind Seed (1974) among many others. He died of natural causes at
age eighty-five in 2005, having retired about seven years prior.
Mossberg had appeared in the 1965
Melina Mercouri film The Uninhibited as well as one other Spanish
production that same year, but that is the balance of her acting
resume before and after The Big Cube. An undeniably pretty girl (who
was, in fact, a fashion model), things simply didn't take off when it came to
a career in acting. She is still with us today at age sixty-eight.
Prior to Cube, Rodgers had shown off
her lithe figure in movies like Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine
(1965), The Silencers (1966) and The Oscar (1966) as well as in
episodes of The Beverly Hillbillies and other shows. In 1969, she
joined Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In for one season, appeared in that
gang's movie The Maltese Bippy and later did a few episodes of Love,
American Style before retiring in 1973. She is still alive today at
age seventy. The latter-day photo below shows her on a Big (Ice?) Cube of her own!
East was a Mexican actor (whose voice
was completely dubbed in this film) with a busy career in movies
there from 1964 to 1994 when he died suddenly of a heart attack. (So
prolific had he been that four movies were released in 1995 after his
death!) He was fifty-two. He had twice worked on Mexican-made horror
films starring Boris Karloff, Fear Chamber (1968) and Isle of the
Snake People (1971.)
The director of The Big Cube, Tito
Davison, was born in Chile and later worked as a teen actor, a
writer and then director of many movies. While this movie is loopy
(as many '60s flicks are), it does possess a certain amount of style
and gloss as well as some creative camera moves. Davison died in
1985 of unknown causes at the age of seventy-two. This foray into
movies with American actors in the leading roles is an anomaly in his
career. In typical fashion, the Mexican poster for this film is far more vivid and fun than the American one!
This is a must-see movie for anyone who
enjoys 1960s clothing, hairstyles and décor and for anyone who gets
a kick out of Lana Turner's colorful melodrama period or who wants to
see George Chakiris in a villainous role. Everyone in it is trying
his or her best to deliver, though overcoming a rather preposterous
script makes it damn near impossible for them. I should add that I
have watched this at least three or four times and still have no idea
WHERE it takes place! Ha ha! I leave you with yet another of Miss Lana's loopy, wide-eyed reactions.
11 comments:
Today feels like Christmas instead of just after Easter-"The Big Cube"!!! OMG-I almost fell out of my chair. Where to begin? The white boots for starts, at least She didn't let her skirts get too short like many middle aged ladies in the 60's, which would really have unbalanced the towering hairpieces. I love everything about this movie except when the slutty redhead throws her drink at the gay guy after he strips (so mean!), and I would have never known the groovy looking George Chakiris was 35 here. Charles Busch spoofs this movie in "Die Mommie Die!" Bravo Poseidon
Lana Turner and George Chakiris dropping acid is really something not to be missed. Lana Turner made another potboiler with Celeste Holm about a couple who discover they are brother and sister! I'm surprised she made this movie with Tito Davison(who made some very enjoyable movies in the 50s) and some Mexican actors (that's VÃctor Junco next to her in the wedding scene). Like you said, Carlos East was a very busy actor, but he's mostly associated with movies about hippies and groovy rebels. His son is also an actor.
Regina Torné (Queen Bee)also paid her dues in low budget horror movies, including one with Boris Karloff. She later played the stern matriarch in Like Water for Chocolate.
Greetings!
Travilla really designed some god-awful clothes after the '50s at Fox, didn't he? Valley of the Dolls, some Matt Helm movies, The Big Cube, and his memorably hideous "Dallas" divas makeover!
Lana must have been inspired by latter-day Liz Taylor with her ornate weaves!
I just watched "My Blood Runs Cold" with Troy Donahue and Joey Heatherton on TCM last night. Hilarious, especially Jeanette (Dirty Sally!) Nolan as an Auntie Mame type aunt who gives Lana a run for the money in the woven piles of hair dept.!
Also, this seems to be the period when Lana decided to keep her figure by half-starving herself. Her arms and as you mentioned, hands, are sticks! Much like Janet Leigh did, sad to say.
A fun flick for all the wrong reasons!
Rico
PS: One word for George Chakiris: Yum!
Oh man, absolutely everything about this sounds fantastic. How do I get my hands on a copy? I've never even heard of it before.
I will watch anything George Chakiris is in, and I have all of his albums on my ipod. Some I had to upload myself from LPs. I even have his French album from a few years after this movie.
The decor, costumes, and hair all sound really fun too. I love this period and see it as the last hurrah of 60s color before all that boring macrame and earth-tones came into vogue. Phooey, give me the fakery any day.
Thanks, Gingerguy! I'm glad you liked this one. I agree about Pamela and the glass throwing. Rude! She got on my nerves in the movie with her goo-goo sort of talking (despite her penchant for stripping down!)
Armando, thank you for noting that about Torne in "Like Water for Chocolate." I ALMOST added her in to the profiles at the end, but finally opted not to. Oh, and I have a cherished VHS of "Bittersweet Love" - the Lana movie about incest you mentioned. Robert Alda, Robert Lansing and Meredith Baxter also costar in it. Dreary, but intriguing all at once.
Rico, I just happened to turn on TCM last night around 8:10 and was faced with Miss Jeanette and her hair! I instantly hit the DVR record button and will be watching that soon. Irresistible....
Dave, this movie was seemingly lost for years and years. I figured I would NEVER see it. But then several years back it was unearthed on DVD as a camp classic. You can either buy it for about $8 or so on Amazon or watch it digitally there for $3 to $6. http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=the+big+cube I'm sure you'd get a kick out of it.
Oy...The Big Cube! I have this in my video library because, obviously, I have amazing taste. It is included in the "Women In Peril" box set (seriously, that's the name). I've tried watching it twice but fell asleep both times. Since I live for your recaps/reviews, I'll have to give it another whirl.
As an aside, I love, love, love me some Lana but homegirl aged in very bizarre way. She looked at least ten years older than she was when she was in her 30s and 40s, and then looked oddly youthful (in a non-plastic surgical kind of way) when she entered her 50s right up until her death. She was like some backwards then forwards Dorian Gray. Also, if any Lana fans don't have the book Lana: The Memories, the Myths, the Movies, get it NOW. Her daughter Cheryl co-wrote it and goes in great detail about Lana's career and details all of her films. She said by the time Lana did this mess, she had mentally checked out of her career because the usually meticulous Lana didn't care that her makeup was terrible and her falls were cheap and did not always match.
A highly entertaining overview of this craptastic mess. Trying to be a completist of my favorite's work and Lana being one of them I purposely sought this out. So I have no one to blame but myself for the assault to my senses this delivered! While it had its own sort of accident by the side of the road appeal it is jaw droppingly awful. Poor Lana is distressingly at sea, I don't know if it was the wear and tear of all the husbands and scandal or over dieting but she looks dreadfully gaunt and her terrible two tone hair is horrifying!! The presence of Dan O'Herlihy made me think of Imitation of Life and left me wondering why I wasn't watching that instead! The best I can say about it is that it got me one film closer to seeing all her work, only five left!, now if I could only track down The Flame and the Flesh.
By the way in regards to My Blood Runs Cold you are in for a heavenly hairdo treat. The movie was a late night staple when I was a teen and I watched it many, many times but hadn't seen it in years so I made a point of catching it on its TCM premiere the other night. It had its pluses and minuses but we're here to talk about the hair and in that respect it was all pluses. Joey Heatherton, and her pout, has some creative styling but NOTHING compared to the creations atop Jeannette Nolan's head, one of which is bigger than her head. Astonishing!
Yay! Another fave i'm so glad you covered!
This movie totally eluded me up until the time TCM screened it. Some years ago. I too have seen it several times and it makes me think it would have made a wonderful double bill with Jennifer Jones' "Angel, Angel Down We Go."
Turner looks dieted within an inch of her life, and poor George Chakiris keeps reminding me of why dancers should dance.
Still, it's colorful and glossy as all get out, and such a timepiece. the late 60s and early 70s were sure rough on aging glamour stars.
Yee-haw!! I think we can rest assured that "THE BIG CUBE" has finally received the most in-depth, probing and HIGH-LARIOUS dissection it will ever receive! I'm so glad you picked this one to profile! I saw it recently on TCM for the first time and--until reading your recap--made me realize that it may have actually put me into some kind of trance--or maybe I accidentally dropped some acid myself before viewing it--because it was so GODDAMNED BIZARRE, I hadn't really processed it all yet. I, personally, was still working out my list of the "Best/Worst Lana Wigs" from the film. The "plot," such as it is, makes NO SENSE! It truly feels as if it were beamed in from another galaxy. And that other-worldly accent of our comely juvenile, Miss Mossberg...thank you for pointing out that they atleast ATTEMPTED to explain the accent...in a totally lame way, but atleast they tried! Thank you for taking us on this psychadelic trip backwards! Do you suspect viewers of this film will suffer crippling flashbacks in years to come?
Hello again, y'all! I'm glad to see that many of you found this movie and resultant post a fun one.
DevilYouKnow, I agree with you about Lana's stop-'n-go aging process. Also, I LOVE that book by her daughter, jam-packed with staggering photos and all done with exceptional quality!
Joel, it's so weird. In "The Big Cube" Lana goes from looking deathly haggard to strikingly elegant, sometimes within the same scene! LOL I guess it's a testament to the power of lighting, when and when not used properly? I am SO looking forward to "My Blood Runs Cold," too.
Oh, Ken, absolutely this would make the perfect companion piece to "Angel, Angel" (even though I have yet to see that one myself!)
Gregory, you're too kind! But I appreciate your comments. I must agree, too, about the hypnotic trance thing. The first time I watched this, I zoned out completely for part of the middle of it. Then this latest time, the SAME THING happened again! I had to go back and re-watch the part leading up to Chakiris and Mossberg's wedding!! Mind control! LOL
One thing I didn't really touch on, but nonetheless find interesting about "The Big Cube" is that with Travilla on board as costumer, there are several similarities between his clothes for this movie and for "Valley of the Dolls" two years prior. The white frilly dress that Mossberg wears near the beginning is either the same one or a close copy of one that Sharon Tate wears in promotional photos for VOD and Lana's white dress in her first scene (after the play) is VERY close to the one Susan Hayward wore during "I'll Plant My Own Tree." Mostly just a different front. I found myself wondering if Lana's mental hospital was the same one Patty Duke stayed in for VOD!
Obviously I am not the only one obsessed, judging by comments. One you made stuck with me Poseiden, that you couldn't figure out where they were even after multiple viewings. Why do I think it's Mexico? I think it was filmed there but maybe someone mentions it?
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