Top Ten Anniversary: Guilty Pleasure Movies

Top Ten Guilty Pleasure Movies

As I've noted more than once over the years, "Bad Movies We Love" are actually among my favorite kind! I absolutely recognize the artistry and quality behind a number of great films, but the unintentionally rotten ones are usually far more entertaining to me personally. Continuing with our ten-year anniversary series of Top Ten lists, I now give you - in alphabetical order - my guiltiest of guilty pleasures when it comes to the cinema! Let's roll 'em...!

BEYOND THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE (1979) -- The Poseidon Adventure (1972) won my heart and enthralled me for all time when I saw it on TV for the first time in 1975. Clearly, the impact was profound if you've ever taken notice of the name of this blog! It's belated (and wholly unnecessary) sequel was so indescribably hackneyed and rotten it sank like a stone at the box office before I had ever even known of its existence. Nevertheless, like a poor wounded animal, I cannot help but feel for it in spite of its pronounced awfulness. I love almost anything with people versus water and the all-star cast calls me hither, especially dewy Veronica Hamel and the elegant Shirley Knight, who offers the same sort of graciously detached regality that Faye Dunaway had in The Towering Inferno (1974.) Problem is, Shirl is locked in a total dud of a film with Jack Warden scarcely comparing to the hot Paul Newman of TTI! You can read a lot more about this movie by clicking on the title and perusing its tribute here.

COLOR OF NIGHT (1994) -- Though I rarely mention it, this is one of my very, very favorite terrible movies. It's gorgeous to look at, is brimming over with all sorts of phallic imagery, contains a fascinating supporting cast (including a hysterical bit from the aforementioned Shirley Knight!) and is so bizarrely bent from frame one that its awfulness is unlikely to ever be duplicated! Reviled by critics and basically ignored by audiences, it slammed the lid on eclectic director Richard Rush's career and came perilously close to derailing Bruce Willis'. Infamous for the moment when he gets naked except for his sneakers in a pool with (always barely-dressed) Jane March, exposing the head of his penis, that's only one of several times he and March engage in crazed sex scenes. (And depending on the framing, widescreen or cropped for TV, he has additional nudity as well.) The movie operates at a fever-pitch, despite its length, and has at its core a truly lunatic plot "twist" that is obvious from the first few moments the groundwork is laid.

DINAH EAST (1970) - Completely unknown to me until the excellent blog Dreams Are What Le Cinema Is For profiled it to perfection, I knew I had to have a copy of it and made it happen post haste. Imagine my reaction when I watched the DVD and every male star in the movie proceeded to get completely naked one after another...! It's like the filmmakers spent their $16.98 budget doing everything they could to please me! LOL We need more movies like this, not that anyone today could really grasp that unmistakable verisimilitude that could only come with an earnest desire to be great mixed with only enough money to cover one decent dinner for ten. The movie is aggressively bad, but every participant's heart is in the right place. I utterly adore it.

DIE! DIE! MY DARLING (1965) -- I have been a diehard fan of all "hag horror" films since the day my mother introduced me to What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) one afternoon on TV. It kicked off an absolute slew of imitators and wannabes. This one is so terrific because legendary (and legendarily outrageous) stage actress Tallulah Bankhead not only plays against type as a dour, dowdy religious fanatic, but also gives every waking moment of her screen time 110% even though she was frail, sickly and approaching death within a few years! Her target is a young, pert Stefanie Powers, but there are other great performers such as Peter Vaughn, Yootha Joyce and Donald Sutherland as a special needs handyman. It's campy to start with, but the hooty music score puts it over the top even further. Most of all, it's unforgettably vivid and fun to take in.

HURRY SUNDOWN (1967) -- Another notorious howler is this southern-fried drama of racial tension from taskmaster Otto Preminger, who loved pushing the cinematic envelope when it came to hot-button subject matter. A dream cast of actors is saddled with some of the most jaw-dropping dialogue and situations, not the least of which is Jane Fonda getting on her knees and trying to blow Michael Caine's saxophone between his legs. Again, everyone seems to be trying his or her best, and some of the performances are indeed earnest, but the overall effect is one of startled disbelief at what is unfolding before one's eyes.

LADY CHATTERLEY'S LOVER (1981) -- For people of a certain age (around in cable TV's primary hey-day), there are movies we saw over and over that now seem to have receded from view. This is one that I could never, ever forget. Once glimpse of Nicholas Clay soaping up and hand-washing his beefy body, completely naked, was all I needed to make sure I was in front of the set, with no other pesky people around, for the first half-hour at least every time this flick was on! It's considered a low-rung, exploitative adaptation of the famed D.H. Lawrence, but I couldn't care less. Sylvia Kristel cannot act, but she knew how to play sexy and there aren't enough words for Clay, who also made an impression in Evil Under the Sun and Excalibur (both 1981.)

LOST HORIZON (1973) -- This was one of those bucket-list movies I figured I'd never see, especially in its original length with the infamous fertility dance intact. Thankfully, sometimes the universe is kind to the patient. I had been listening to a soundtrack cassette (!) from the film, purchased for $0.50, when one day in 1998 AMC ran it even though the description was for the original 1937 rendition and I was able to tape it. Later came a DVD with all the squalor included! This is one HOT MESS of a musical, brimming with stars who have no business singing (or pretending to be) and despite top names in every category, a creative fiasco. Bad movies are great, but bad musicals are a scream!

MAME (1974) -- I saw the stage musical Mame before I ever got the "chance" to see the film adaptation and I loved it. Like Lost Horizon, even though there are highly accomplished people involved in most areas of the film, it is a resounding dud much of the time, mostly because its star, Lucille Ball, was a little too old and a lot too vocally challenged to pull off the demanding role (which screamed out for verve, flair and exuberance.) Even the always reliable Bea Arthur is partially hamstrung, though she does provide a few deliciously funny moments. There are many terrific character people doing their best along the way in support (though Jane Connell knew herself that she was far too aged to still play her part effectively.) The lively songs are beaten up and defaced yet, even with Lucy, the title number is an eye-popper. 

THE CARETAKERS (1963) -- Progressive mental health is the subject of this disjointed drama which is punctuated by strreeennnuous overacting by several people, including Polly Bergen (who likes to tear her clothes apart) and Janis Paige (who makes the word manic seem sedate in comparison!) Then there are other performances more than a bit staid, such as from Robert Stack and the disinclined Diane McBain. However, on hand to make this dreary picture unforgettable is the silver-haired, dragon-like head of nurses played by Miss Joan Crawford. She (and her right-hand woman Constance Ford) are a hoot as severe overseers who don't believe in newfangled ways. One highlight is watching Crawford conduct a self-defense judo course to her new hires! Ahh... the likes of this (and her) will never be seen again...

WHERE LOVE HAS GONE (1964) -- A lurid soap opera (adapted from a novel inspired by Lana Turner and the death of her lover at the hands of her teenage daughter) is given incredibly glossy and tame treatment. But that's the way we like things! I don't want kitchen sink drama. I want a grand staircase, bouffant hair and gowns by Edith Head. Throw in, too, a velvety Jack Jones sung theme song over the opening credits. Some folks have snickered that Bette Davis (as Susan Hayward's mother) resembled George Washington, but I love her silvery, uptown look. You can keep yer Apple Annie...!

My list of favorite guilty pleasures goes far, far beyond ten! Some that aren't mentioned here are omitted simply because the film in question turns up for some reason in another Top Ten list. But these ten represented a pretty good cross-section of where my dubious taste in movies lies! Ha ha!

BONUS PICS!

A (very) rare happy moment for Diahann Carroll, Jane Fonda and Faye Dunaway while on location for Hurry Sundown. The shoot was plagued by ill will from many local townspeople in the various southern cities in which it was shot and Preminger reportedly often took several of the less-powerful actors and crew to task, sometimes viciously.

A dazzling shot of Miss Joan about to set foot on the set for her judo instruction scene in The Caretakers. 5'3" she may have been, but she towered on screen!

The End!

Modeling Some Clay

It seems every generation had its big screen Lancelot. My mother’s was Franco Nero (and I claim him, too, because I selfishly want more than one!) Some fans a couple of years before him might have liked Cornel Wilde. Recent ones have included Ioan Gruffudd and Richard Gere (please…) The one my generation probably identifies the most with the role is Excalibur’s Nicholas Clay. Mr. Clay is the divine subject of today’s posting!

Nicholas Anthony Phillip Clay was born in London, England in 1946. With an early interest in acting, he eventually enrolled at the prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. As a teen, he enjoyed small roles in British television and one feature film, These are the Damned, a 1963 Hammer Studios thriller about captive radioactive children.

In 1971, at age 25, Clay filmed The Night Digger, a mysterious drama concerning two sisters (Patricia Neal and Pamela Brown) who take in a boarder/ handyman (Clay) who may very well be responsible for some ugly strangulation killings taking place nearby! The hunky, humpy Clay had several shirtless scenes, including one in his tightie-whities, and, most surprisingly, a love scene with Neal who was twenty years his senior. (This photo is actually from a run-thru. The actual scene in the film had him nude!)

Neal, who had recovered from a debilitating stroke not long before, was making her second foray before the camera in the wake of it. (Her prior film, The Subject Was Roses, netted her an Oscar nomination, but it was three years before she followed it up with this.) Her stroke was written into the plot rather than have her try to mask the resultant symptoms of it.

Clay was charming and dangerous all at once. His unusual features (sort of caveman-ish, at times, to be honest) were alternately beautiful or rather brutish, depending on the angle and the lighting. He was already establishing a screen persona that equated to desirability at the risk of personal danger.
With his thick mop of hair and a sexy voice, Clay continued to work in the West End in various stage plays as well and did several of Laurence Olivier’s productions at the legendary Old Vic. One of them, The Misanthrope, would eventually transfer to Broadway, bringing him some attention in America.

First, however, Clay won the starring role in The Darwin Adventure, the tale of famed naturalist and scientist Charles Darwin, who sails off around the southern tips of the world in order to investigate the geology and try to inform himself about the evolution of mankind. His five-year voyage around the globe aboard the HMS Beagle is filled with strenuous conditions and events.

Adventure or not, Charles Darwin was a bit of a hard sell to many moviegoers and the movie had little impact (and, in fact, is extremely scarce today!) He was a game lead actor for such a film, but it didn’t help set his movie career on fire.

It was in 1975 that he made his way to America to play in The Misanthrope on Broadway. His costar was no less than Diana Rigg and it was she who gleaned most of the attention at awards time. Ms. Rigg would play a part in Clay’s professional life more than once. When their time on The Great White Way was over, she made a British television movie called In This House of Brede, about a wealthy businesswoman who decides to become a nun and Clay was cast in a supporting role.

Nicholas continued to do terrific work, but in supporting parts. He was unhappy scientist Alan Campbell in a BBC production of The Picture of Dorian Gray and good friend to Dr. Victor Frankenstein in The Terror of Frankenstein, a low-budget take on the oft-told story. The telefilm Saturday, Sunday, Monday, based on a play, put him in the company of such actors as Laurence Olivier, Joan Plowright, Edward Woodward and Underworld favorite Judy Parfitt!

He also played The Earl of Southampton in a British miniseries called Life of Shakespeare (with Tim Curry as the title personage!) Then, in 1979, he one of many notable British stars to appear in Zulu Dawn, a prequel to the eye-popping action film Zulu. Along with American Burt Lancaster, the film included Simon Ward, Denholm Elliott, Bob Hoskins, Peter Vaughn, Christopher Cazenove and Peter O’Toole.

In 1980, he married Lorna Heilbron, who would remain his spouse for the rest of his life and give him two children.
Finally, 1981 brought his, perhaps, his most famous role, that of Lancelot in John Boorman’s Excalibur, an opulent, but visceral, retelling of the Arthurian legend that included the famous characters of Arthur, Guenevere, Merlin, Morgana, Mordred and Gawain, most of them played by stalwart actors such as Nicol Williamson, Helen Mirren, Liam Neeson and others.

In the dark, dank world of the film, Clay’s brilliantly gleaming armor stands out. His blue eyes are at contrast with the murky, mystical surroundings. When he finally gives in and makes love to his best friend’s wife, they awaken in a lush, green glade, that is after he dreams of himself fighthing in the nude, his perfect naked body standing out against the background. How many times did we watch this on cable TV, waiting and waiting for the moment to arrive when we got to see Clay without his armor?!

In order for any telling of the Arthur and Guenevere story to work, Lancelot must be alluring enough for the queen to give up everything in order to satisfy her desire for him. I think I still consider Franco to be the very best looking Lance, but as far as I'm concerned, Nicholas Clay is also more than adequate for the task!
That same year, he starred as the title figure in the miniseries The Search for Alexander the Great, a project that also starred James Mason and Gabriel Byrne. 1981 continued to offer up plenty of Nicholas Clay. He was cast as the groundskeeper Oliver Mellors in an adaptation of Lady Chatterley’s Lover.

A sort of softcore rendition of the famous D. H. Lawrence book, it starred Sylvia Kristel as the wife of a highborn husband who is paralyzed and unable to make love to her. Initially patient with this situation, she eventually begins to fall for another man, something her husband has suggested she do. The problem is, it’s her gardener, a man far below her in station!

This time Clay abandoned all remnants of screen modesty and filmed a frontally nude bathing scene, one that is secretly observed by Kristel. His beefy, manly persona is too much for her to resist any further and the two embark upon a passionate, but doomed, love affair.

The film is cheaply made by the infamous Golan & Globus production team and directed by Just Jaeckin, the man who gave the world The Story of O and Emmanuelle (which also starred Kristel), but thanks to some atmospheric photography and the use of a spectacular mansion for a setting, it comes close to masking its budget. Again, people of a certain age will clearly remember this film popping up on cable and how they waited in anticipation for Clay’s nude scene.

The rugged, burly, hairy looks he sported here are at odds with the many more debonair and slick types of roles he played, but they are most welcome. As the saying goes, “He can chop my wood or hoe my garden any time!” While the images of him rolling around with Kristel, planting flowers in her hair (and I do I mean ALL of her hair!) probably didn’t help legitimize his acting career, it did give the world the gift of his hunky, undressed self.

Still not done with this surge of work, 1981 also brought him the role of the famed lover Tristan (of Tristan and Isolde fame) in Lovespell. In a role very similar to that of Lancelot, he once again played “the other man,” this time opposite Kate Mulgrew and Richard Burton. Despite a cast that included Cyril Cusack and Geraldine Fitzgerald, the film was not a hit and is practically forgotten today.

1982 found him once again surrounded by a bevy of great and fun actors in the Agatha Christie whodunit Evil Under the Sun. As the husband of a sickly looking Jane Birkin, he played the handsome and virile Patrick Redfern who rather openly carries on an affair with the elegant (and delightfully bitchy) Diana Rigg, his old costar from The Misanthrope on Broadway.
The stellar cast also included Peter Ustinov, James Mason, Roddy McDowall, Maggie Smith and Sylvia Miles. Filmed in the breathtaking Balearic Islands of Spain and accented by Cole Porter music interpolated into the score, it’s an elegant and classy affair. Everything, however, takes a back seat to the sight of Nicholas trotting around in a snug, abbreviated pair of swim trunks that caress his sun-kissed body. (Look. I take these things very seriously! Ha ha!) As always, his acting was terrific and he was a joy to watch.

The next year he appeared in a very well received TV version of The Hound of the Baskervilles, which let him sink his teeth into a villainous role. 1984 brought one of his more intriguing parts, this of the story of St. Sebastian called The Martyrdom of St. Sebastian. Clay played Emperor Augustus who falls in love with Sebastian, the chief archer in his Roman Army.

When Sebastian (played by a young Michael Biehn) turns to Christianity and, in turn, rejects the love of Clay, Clay orders him to be shot to death by a team of his fellow archers. The film is given an unusual present day wraparound story, setting the tale of Sebastian more in the category of a dream or flashback. Whatever the case, it’s always nice to see Clay in a homoerotic scenario.

This same year would see him as one of the leads in one of American TV’s most hooty miniseries (and that is saying something!) The Last Days of Pompeii told the story of various citizens of that legendary city scrambling around due to various dramas until everything climaxes with the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Clay played a wealthy, kind Greek, living among Roman people, who pines for priestess Olivia Hussey. Hussey’s high priest brother (ironically enough, former Lancelot Franco Nero) will have none of it.
Throw in gladiator Duncan Regehr, kindly whore Lesley-Anne Down, statesman Laurence Olivier (and his wife Siobhan McKenna), social-climbing Ned Beatty (!), overseer of the gladiators Ernest Borgnine (!) and blind slave Linda Purl (!!) and you have a smorgasbord of cheesy, campy delights. Nicholas practices the discus in a teensy skirtlet and wrestles with Regehr. It’s yet another opportunity to see Clay in his physical glory, but his days in the sun were becoming quite numbered.
In 1987, he was seen (by about twelve people) in the bizarre Sleeping Beauty, one of nine feature film musicalizations of classic fairy tales produced by Golan & Globus for Cannon Films in the mid 80s. The series was intended to consist of sixteen films, but after the first one, Rumpelstiltskin, starring Amy Irving and Billy Barty, flopped at the box office, the remainder, including this one, went straight to home video.

Looking quite preposterous in the most unfortunate of hats, he played Prince to Tahnee Welch’s sleeping Princess Rosebud. (Welch swiftly replaced a fired Page Hannah after shooting had already commenced!) That Morgan Fairchild plays the Queen ought to clue you in on the caliber of the proceedings, though Sylvia Miles as the evil Red Fairy tried in vain to make an impression in the cheap, made-on-the-fly production. Jane Wiedlin, of all people, plays a good fairy while special effects makeup maestro Kenny Baker portrays an elf.

That same year, he appeared in the film Lionheart: The Children’s Crusade, all about young Eric Stoltz and his attempts to join King Richard’s crusades, but distracted by a villain who is kidnapping children for use as slaves. The heavily troubled film was actually shot several years before and reedited a couple of times before seeing a brief release. Collectors praise the Jerry Goldsmith score as one of his all-time best, but the movie has been M.I.A. for years.

Farrah Fawcett, who had gone to great lengths to shed her bimbo image and emerge as an actress made Poor Little Rich Girl: The Barbara Hutton Story and Clay was cast as the debonair first of her seven husbands. His real life character, Prince Alexis Mdivani, was a man who deliberately married into money (he divorced one of the Astors to marry Hutton!), but who died in a car accident not long after Hutton divorced him, so she almost needn’t have bothered.

American audiences saw less and less of Clay after this. He returned to the U. K. to work on a few television series including Gentlemen and Players (which featured a theme song by Petula Clark) and Virtual Murder, a crime investigation series that costarred him with Kim Thompson (of Stealing Heaven.) The offbeat show took its cue from The Avengers, and has devoted fans even now though there were only six episodes, but it was abruptly cancelled and scarcely seen again.

In the GCI-heavy miniseries The Odyssey, which starred Armand Assante and a gallery of other familiar faces like Isabella Rossellini, Bernadette Peters, Christopher Lee, Vanessa Williams, Eric Roberts and Geraldine Chaplin, Clay played Menelaus. Now 50, his face was buried under a large beard.

Though Clay would continue working steadily, mostly in British projects, through 1999, he was stricken with liver cancer and died far too prematurely in May of 2000 at the age of 53. The three films for which he is best known and best loved in The Underworld all came within a period from 1981 – 1982, but we thank him for them! Excalibur, Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Evil Under the Sun were all made better by his presence.