Dear Dead Delilah (John Farris, 1972)

A hit on the Southern drive-in circuit in the early '70s (but a financial failure everywhere else), Dear Dead Delilah is a highly amusing Dixiesploitation tale of decadence, rot, decline, and rivalry within a wealthy plantation family. It's like a slasher movie version of a Tennessee Williams play, and the cast and filmmakers (well, most of them) let you know they're in on the joke without overtly acknowledging they're in on the joke. They don't break the spell. The accents and line deliveries in this movie are a pleasure for the ears, especially the women in the cast, who each provide their own distinctively hilarious blend of honey and poison, Southern-style. I had a great time with it.

A truly bizarre one-off, Delilah is the only movie directed by horror novelist John Farris, whose best-known novel, The Fury, was made into a movie by Brian De Palma in 1978, and the only movie produced by "Cowboy" Jack Clement, a producer at the legendary Sun Studios in Memphis and a singer and songwriter whose songs have been covered by dozens of the biggest names in country and early rock and roll. Clement's Sun Studios colleague Bill Justis provided the film's score. Justis had a rockabilly hit in 1957 with "Raunchy" and was both a solo artist on and the house arranger for Sun Records. He later moved to Nashville and became a successful producer there. Unlike his colleagues, Justis turned Delilah into more than a one-off, composing the scores for future films including Smokey and the Bandit and Hooper.

The talent on camera is also a wild, eclectic mix. Agnes Moorehead makes her final onscreen appearance as Delilah (her last movie was a voice-only role as the goose in the following year's Charlotte's Web), and the rest of the cast includes veteran of many westerns Will Geer, prolific character actor Michael Ansara, Dallas and Dark Shadows regular Dennis Patrick, theater veteran of many Tennessee Williams plays Anne Meacham, soap opera star Robert Gentry, theater director Patricia Carmichael in her only film role, theater actor and Dark Shadows regular Elizabeth Eis in her only film role (though she was also in a Bon Jovi video), and TV and cult movie regular John Marriott. At least half the cast was on at least one episode of Bewitched.

The movie opens with a blast of hillbilly music and a strange flashback scene where a disturbed young Nashville woman named Luddy (Anne Gibbs) has just brutally murdered her mother with an axe. Flash forward 25 years, and a recently released from prison middle-aged Luddy (Carmichael) wanders into a park to watch a group of men play football and draw them in her sketchbook. (The movie makes a big deal out of Luddy's drawings in the early scenes but never goes back to them later.) One of the players, cocky pretty boy Richard (Gentry), accidentally runs into Luddy and briefly knocks her unconscious, but his smoky-voiced wife Ellen (Eis), a nurse, looks her over and thinks she's okay. When Luddy tells Ellen and Richard that she's homeless, Ellen suggests taking her to the plantation so her ex-doctor uncle can examine her.

Richard and Ellen put Luddy in Richard's flashy convertible, and Richard drives recklessly and at high speed to the plantation, regaling the dazed woman with colorful descriptions of how much he hates Ellen's aunt/employer, the wheelchair-bound and ailing head of the Charles family and its dwindling but still substantial wealth, Delilah (Moorehead). Delilah frequently converses with her twenty-years-dead father, who advises her on what moves to make from his stern portrait in her bedroom and his crypt on the plantation grounds, just a few yards past the never-used swimming pool.

Delilah has been left in charge of the Charles plantation and the family money in her father's will, much to the chagrin of her three siblings, two of whom live in the mansion with her, along with Ellen and Richard and the head of the servants, Marshall (John Marriott). The siblings on the property are the aforementioned ex-doctor Alonzo (Patrick), an aging junkie whose medical license was revoked after an underage girl he impregnated died in his care, and Grace (Meacham), an even smokier-voiced world-weary alcoholic who delivers every line with withering sarcasm and a full drink in her hand. She also spends a lot of time with Richard, who, besides two-timing his wife with her, is the drug supplier for Alonzo. The third sibling and the only one to live away from the plantation is Morgan (Ansara), a schmoozy, glad-handing type (and the only one to have lost his Southern accent) facing a possible prison term for embezzlement unless he comes up with the missing funds in a week. Morgan arrives for a family visit with his girlfriend, ditzy Southern belle Buffy (Ruth Baker). Our other major character is the folksy family attorney Roy (Will Geer) decked out in his finest Colonel Sanders attire.

Luddy becomes a servant in the household and forms an instant friendship with Alonzo, who is just as mentally unstable as her. The pair bond over losing their children to the state and share a dream of opening an orphanage (bad idea!). Those plans have to be placed on the backburner when Delilah makes a major announcement at dinner. Her late father has let it be known from the beyond that she only has a few months left to live. This makes little news because Delilah has been announcing her impending demise for years. What does make big news is that Delilah is leaving the plantation and the family fortune to the state, where the property will be turned into a museum. Each sibling will receive $4,000 and a kick in the pants. And there's one more thing. Papa's long-rumored $600,000 horse winnings have been located somewhere on the property after years of existing in speculation and legend. The first sibling to find it gets to keep it. Winner take all, loser receive none. If you guessed that people start to get axe-murdered shortly after this announcement, you guessed wisely, my friend. But who's doing the axing? The convicted axe murderer turned housekeeper is a great suspect (duh), but so is everyone else.

Director Farris is not the greatest visual stylist, which is understandable considering it was his only stint behind the camera. Fortunately, he stays out of his own way and doesn't try to get flashy. He puts his camera on his actors and the spaces they inhabit and lets them go wild. All the actors deliver the hilarious goods, especially Moorehead, Meacham, Eis, and Gentry. There's something so satisfying about amoral wealthy Southerners with smoky voices verbally destroying each other in calm, measured tones. It's one of my favorite things.

Dear Dead Delilah was not well-received by critics or the non-drive-in audience in the early '70s, but they just didn't get it. If you can't meet this film where it lives, I don't entirely trust your judgment and I don't find your sense of humor compatible with mine. We can politely agree to disagree over a mint julep, but a tiny piece of my respect for you will be lost forever. Part of having good taste is having good taste in bad taste, and Dear Dead Delilah is for those who know the difference. Time to wrap this post up. This Southern flower is wilting. Until next time, my trashy friends.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame (William Dieterle, 1939)

The second Hollywood classic made from the Victor Hugo source novel (I wrote about the 1923 silent version, with Lon Chaney in the Quasimodo role, in 2015; here's the link), 1939's The Hunchback of Notre Dame has a great cast, a great director in William Dieterle, top-notch sets, hundreds of extras, an ambitiously epic sweep with lots of delicate personal touches, and finely developed characters who don't get lost in the bigness of it all. It's a great example of how to handle a large canvas without succumbing to bloat.

This second Hollywood version follows the beats of the silent film fairly closely, including retaining the major change to Hugo's novel (making the priest an honorable man instead of a villainous one and transferring his deeds to his brother to avoid angering the church), but Dieterle's compositions and visual emphases make it much more than just another remake or adaptation. 

This version also draws much more attention to the French government's persecution of gypsies, making an obvious parallel to the Nazis' persecution of the Jews. Dieterle, a German actor/director who moved to Hollywood to pursue job offers a few years before the Nazis began consolidating their power, helped many fellow Germans fleeing the Nazis find work in Hollywood, putting in recommendations for professional peers and hiring nonprofessionals as extras so they could make some money while getting back on their feet.

Given one of the largest RKO budgets at the time, the filmmakers shot most of Hunchback on elaborate sets, though the bell tower interiors were filmed in the philosophy building at USC, Mudd Hall, which was equipped with a bell tower. These sets are something else, and the hundreds of extras bustling through them give a real sense of a city teeming with life. I complained about this in my 1923 Hunchback review, but modern studio filmmaking with its digital shortcuts creates such an empty feeling in me as a viewer. There's a tactile energy and texture of image that's missing from today's computer-generated slop. I don't think I'm being a Luddite or a things-were-better-in-my-day grouch (I was a long way from existing in 1939; how old do you people think I am?) because I care about aesthetics and practically created images.

I could rant about that all day, but I'll rant about how great the cast is instead. Lon Chaney Jr. almost reprised his father's role as Quasimodo, but Charles Laughton won out in the end. Laughton makes a great Quasimodo, and the creations of makeup artist Perc Westmore (who had a famously combative working relationship with Laughton) influenced so many people who came after him. (Sloth in The Goonies is pretty much Laughton's Quasimodo with the left and right sides of the face reversed.)

Laughton was also responsible for the casting of Maureen O'Hara, in her first American movie, as Esmeralda. He was impressed by her when they worked together on Hitchcock's Jamaica Inn and insisted on her getting the part, which was bad news for the already cast Kathryn Adams, who was demoted to a much smaller role. I will willingly admit that O'Hara hardly looks like a poor, oppressed gypsy woman. She doesn't even look like someone who's spent a single night in an uncomfortable bed. However, the camera loves her, and it's easy to see why half the characters lose their minds over her. She's got that movie star charisma you can't manufacture. 

Other notable cast members include Cedrick Hardwicke as Frollo (master of the quietly withering stare), Thomas Mitchell as Clopin, and, in his first movie, Edmond O'Brien as Gringoire. It's absolutely wild to see a skinny, youthful O'Brien playing an earnest, overenthusiastic, naive dork. I'm so used to seeing him as rugged, world-weary, frequently doomed middle-aged men in '50s and '60s crime thrillers and westerns. He's even an imposing gangster (though he also gets a littly silly) in the live-action-comic-strip rock'n'roll comedy The Girl Can't Help It (one of my favorite movies).

Dieterle is equally good with epic set pieces and intimate character-based scenes. He gives us so many great moments, including Gringoire's terrifying introduction to Clopin's underground kingdom of pickpockets and street people, Quasimodo's nighttime chase of Esmeralda, Frollo's cat-filled office (the otherwise villainous, manipulative, and cowardly man has a soft spot for animals), Quasimodo protecting the cathedral from invaders, and a scene-stealing goat (the GOAT of goats). He handles the large cast and its complex, competing interests and motivations with real skill and lots of style. This movie is right up there for me with my other Dieterle favorites The Devil and Daniel Webster (also sometimes titled All that Money Can Buy) and poker-scam film noir Dark City.

These early Hunchback of Notre Dame films are often included in lists of classic horror alongside the Universal monster movies, but horror is just one ingredient in a multi-genre stew that also includes melodrama, adventure, romance, and political intrigue. I have a wide, eclectic, and expansive definition of horror, and I love every kind of movie as long as it's made with personal feeling and style, so I have no problem inviting the hunchback to the party. If you want a straight-up classic horror movie, this may not be the right fit for the occasion, but I otherwise recommend it wholeheartedly.

Director William Dieterle, who fortunately left Germany for the U.S. before Hitler's ascent, fell victim to another fascist cultural moment when his friendship and support of many artists on the '50s Hollywood blacklist kept him from finding steady work. Dieterle moved back to Germany, where he mostly directed German television for the rest of his career. As we slow walk and occasionally sprint toward fascism in the U.S. in an atmosphere that is already poisonously anti-art, I can only shudder at what's to come. Maybe there are a few lessons in The Hunchback of Notre Dame's power-to-the-people and fight-smart-not-hard messages.