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ARIELLE DOMBASLE—“IT’S NOT DOUBT THAT KILLS ..IT’S CERTAINTY!”

Certainly in jet set terms the most talked about high profile couple in France must be Bernard-Henri Levy and his femme fatale wife Arielle. He is the superstar telegenic philosopher/author and she on the other hand is not only something of a fixture on the covers of Paris Match but an actress turned chanteuse. Her latest collection of songs “Amor Amor” is simply sublime! The new album covers bolero tunes, film music, and of course romance, all packaged to please the lady first, then her admirers will undoubtedly follow.

Roman Polanski and Jean Paul Belmondo worship at her shrine as do most French men after seeing her in Eric Rohmer’s PAULINE AT THE BEACH a few seasons ago. Even though she was born in Connecticut, Arielle is more Latin/French than anything else and her taste in music reflects this in a lush, romantic way. Let’s put it this way: if Bogart were alive today she would know about it big time….Take my advice and pick up “Amor Amor” for your own edification nest-pas?

“POOR PRETTY EDDIE” ART OR TRASH?

Now I have recommended on occasion some very outré films here at Camp David, but with this particular flick I feel we have reached yet a new level of trash, so that even I must pause and reflect on the state of the union…and I mean the actor’s union!

POOR PRETTY EDDIE. The video version came to me by accident in a thrift store impulse buy, mainly because it had a cast that one does not trifle with – you just buy it. I mean Miss Shelley Winters in the role of a lifetime as “Bertha” an overweight barfly who runs a Bates-like motel in the middle of the most mind boggling Mason Dixon redneck sleaze bowl this side of Rob Zombie.

Bertha has a handyman played by the amazing seven foot Ted Cassidy, known to all as “Lurch” from the Addams Family television sitcom, who breeds dogs in his spare time (more on that later). Bertha is ‘serviced’ from time to time when she is sober enough to know it by her redneck ‘Elvis’ wannabe boy toy stud ‘Eddie’ played by the film’s producer Michael Christian.

Into all this psycho drama comes Liz Weatherly (Leslie Uggams), a famous R&B singer whose Bentley has had the supreme misfortune to break down near big Bertha’s heartbreak motel (alternate title of this film).

From this point on the film is a catalog of mind boggling racial abuse leveled at Leslie Uggams by an entire town of redneck assholes including the sheriff, played by the great Slim Pickens, and his deputy, the one and only Dub Taylor!! Pickens is nothing short of outrageous, as is Taylor…I perversely thought of a horror version of the Andy Griffith show but let’s not digress….Poor Eddie turns out to be….yes, a psycho hillbilly rapist, and his rape of Miss Uggams is intercut with scenes of Ted Cassidy’s dogs going at it for breeding purposes!! I mean we are talking class here…baby. Doggie style!

Supposedly based on Jean Genet’s infamous play “The Balcony” (also a film in which Miss Winters appeared”), POOR PRETTY EDDIE is not for everyone, but it is impossible not to watch if you decide to screen it one rainy night. Directed by a gentleman named Chris Robinson, this seedy masterpiece of retro filth will perhaps one day soon come out of the obscurity in which it currently resides to find the audience that has been waiting for such an assault to one’s sense of PC. One can only hope that John Waters has at least heard of this film; if not I will personally see one gets to him pronto. The film is out on DVD this month and we have a picture of the cover so you at Camp David can locate a copy. You have not lived until you hear Shelley Winters mouth such lines as “Get that juicy pick-a-ninny out of here” to her overheated boy toy. When told of Leslie’s celebrity, Shelley observes “I don’t care if she farts Channel Number Five, she has to git!”

I looked for Michael Christian’s other film credits recently and found nothing to compare with this, his greatest role. The odd thing about all this is the weird connection to the late filmmaker Donald Cammell of PERFORMANCE fame. Frank Mazzola, who edited the last films Donald made as a director, worked on this film, as did his brother. I will do a follow up report on the making of this not so underground classic once I have interviewed Frank on the subject.

I trust this little “preview has made you curious enough to check it out or, as Slim Pickens observes to his deputy regarding Leslie’s skin tone, “Maybe she is one of them high Yellers…” Well I guess you had to be there. Now that POOR PRETTY EDDIE is available on DVD, perhaps Ms.Uggams, as one of the films only surviving cast members, will appear at Virgin Mega Store to sign copies of this her most notorious performance.

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