Marva
It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,
TheLastDriveIn
The immortal Joan Crawford is Lynn Markham, a widow who longs to be left alone at her beach house, where previous tenant, Eloise Crandall (Judith Evelyn) had fallen to her death.Lynn's neighbor turns out to be the gorgeous male specimen in the form of Jeff Chandler, playing Drummond Hall (Drummy), who might have had something to do with Eloise's fatal fall off the porch. Of course Drummy starts to move in on Lynn. Along for the ride are the marvelous duo of Natalie Schafer and Cecil Kellaway who play Drummy's crafty aunt and uncle, Osbert and Queenie Sorenson. And then there is the frequent visitations by realtor Amy Rawlinson played by the always effervescent Jan Sterling who is of course gaga over Drummy, the slick and sleazy gigolo with a rough past.Directed by Joseph Pevney (prolific in great television series' spanning the 1960s-80s, not to mention THE STRANGE DOOR 1951,and PLAYGIRL 1956 starring Shelley Winters.)The film is filled with the right amount of 50s kitch and camp and delicious vulgarity under the sensationalized surface. An obscure Crawford goodie that enthusiasts of the actress and genre should add to their 'must see' list!
evening1
I thoroughly enjoyed this clunkily titled B-thriller and it was all because of Joan Crawford and Jeff Chandler.Crawford is sardonically mesmerizing as a hard-bitten tough gal, and I loved her repartee with the darkly handsome Chandler, whom I'd never seen in anything before.It was dazzling to see Crawford gradually melt under Chandler's charms, despite her suspicions.The only weakness in this film was its extremely unlikely plotting toward the end, when Jan Sterling's suicidal realtor turns out to be the puppet master and killer. Huh?However, the movie manages to recover and I thought it was extremely effective to have Drummy saving Lynn from a disastrous plummet from her porch.I'd never have anticipated this would have ended on such a satisfyingly romantic note. Yes, people can grow and change, even reprobate gigolos. Bravo, Joan. And so sorry Chandler had to die so young...Check out his interesting bio on Wikipedia.
dinky-4
Early in the movie Joan says to Jeff: "It's getting longer." But later in the movie she tells him: "It's smaller than I thought." Okay, the first line refers to her list of dislikes and the second line to the interior of Jeff's boat, but you get the idea. This whole movie hinges on the sexual attraction supposedly felt by its two leading characters and everything is secondary to this relationship. There's no subtlety here. The first time Joan sees Jeff he's shirtless and you can tell from her expression that she's wondering what he'd look like if he lost his pants as well. And when Jeff looks at Joan, you can tell he's wondering if her dress would fit him. The second time Jeff is seen he's lying face down on the beach with his swim suit molding tightly to his buns. Yes, there's something for everyone here.Actually, Jeff seems a bit old for his part. Isn't "37-year-old-beachboy" sort of an oxymoron? But it's great to see Judith Evelyn during her "Golden Age." Just the year before, she played "Miss Lonelyhearts" in "Rear Window" and the Queen Mother in "The Egyptian."Ed Fury pops up briefly in one scene. Maybe he should have played Jeff Chandler's part!
bmacv
Few case studies of Hollywood stardom rival Joan Crawford's in their curiosity. A certified star from the time of last silent movies and the first talkies, she fell from favor more than once only to be restored in ever newer incarnations, largely through the boundless reservoirs of her will. And if there is an era that defines the Crawford that we remember most vividly, it's the decade-plus, from her Oscar-winning turn as Mildred Pierce in 1945 through her last `really top' movie, The Story of Esther Costello in 1957. In her valiant assault, as she moved into middle age, against time's winged chariot, she had vehicles built around her that helped define the canons of camp but retain a fascination that transcends camp. This dozen or so includes: Humoresque, Flamingo Road, her second Possessed, The Damned Don't Cry, Harriet Craig, This Woman Is Dangerous, Sudden Fear, Torch Song, Queen Bee and Autumn Leaves. Though we may howl at some of them (or at parts of them, for they range from rather good to quite dreadful), we're always aware – at times discomfitingly so – of the human drama that underlies and links them all: the Joan Crawford story.In Female on the Beach, she plays a recent widow taking up residence in the coastal California home her wealthy husband owned. Her arrival proves ill-starred, for a broken railing on its deck marks the spot where its previous tenant – another woman battling age and isolation – plunged to her death. Did she jump or fall – or was she pushed? It unfolds that she had fallen prey to a youngish beach bum (Jeff Chandler) operated by a pair of older con-artists (Cecil Kellaway and Natalie Schafer); Crawford is targeted as their next mark.Obsessively guarding her privacy, however, she proves to be a tough nut to crack. Her too familiar realtor (Jan Sterling) is swiftly shown the door when she makes the mistake of taking Crawford for granted. And Chandler, turning up unbidden in Crawford's kitchen one morning, encounters that same rough hide; asked how she likes her coffee, she icily replies `Alone.'But tanned muscles and prematurely grey temples do not count for nothing in affluent oceanside communities, so Chandler slowly wins over the armored Crawford. But the course of true love never did run smooth, as the Bard of Avon warns us. Crawford just happens to find the dead woman's indiscreet diary (it's hidden away behind a loose brick in the fireplace!), a sad yarn of being cheated in card games and bilked for loans by the larcenous old couple while being strung along by Chandler.No fool she, Crawford hands the gigolo his walking papers. But then she sinks into a sump of liquor and self-loathing, staggering around waiting the phone to ring like a torch-carrier out of a Dorothy Parker story. Finally, of course, Chandler does call and, better yet, wants to marry her! But fate has a few final cards to deal, including an uninstalled fuel pump Crawford had bought for Chandler's boat....That staple of genre cinema, the woman-in-jeopardy thriller, generally features dithery, hysterical young things as straw victims. Crawford in jeopardy, by contrast, turns all the conventions upside down. The coquettish bulldozer she has constructed of herself at this menopausal juncture in her life, with her face as fiercely painted as a Kabuki mask, seems designed to repel – to crush – any threats. (Of course, like most such postures of domination and intimidation, It's a construct of fear – her fears of falling short as a serious actress, as a mother, as a woman; fears of aging and no longer being able to lure her directors and costars between the sheets; fears of not mastering her own unachievable goals.) The facade of control and self-sufficiency proves all the more arresting when it comes under siege from the cumbersome twists and turns of these situations held over from nineteenth-century melodrama.Hence, Female on the Beach and its ilk. An indomitable woman of a certain age flies solo into the perils of mid-life, only to triumph against all odds. That was the life Crawford was living at mid-century, the life reflected in these films, by turns appalling and transfixing. Not since the Brothers Grimm has such a string of cautionary tales been issued.
