Snaking her unhinged voluptuousness through the breezy soundstage jungles, medieval soundstage forests, hick towns and voodoo graveyards of drive-in independence, Allison Hayes was a special breed of star (aggressively sexual) at a special time (the mid-to-late 50s) for a special place (the drive-in). At her best playing the direct, carnal sexually available wanton, the 'unsatisfied but fixing to change that real soon[ woman, she was a recognizable a face in the late-50s drive-in as Vincent Price or Boris Karloff. She was even in The Unearthly next to Tor Johnson and Bela Lugosi! She straddles the big schlock morass of history Classic genre fans revere her like Christians do Mary Magdalene, and rightly! Here are three of her films not as well known as Attack of the 50-Foot Woman, but all are worth hunting down, if you love strong and slightly crazy women.
ZOMBIES OF MORA TAU
(1957) Dir. Edward L. Cahn
***
If you ever saw one of those cool plastic pirate skeleton or old-time diving suit aquarium ornaments, the kind with the oxygen bubbles coming up from a small sunken treasure chest half buried in the gravel, and wanted one even though you didn't have you an aquarium, then independent producer Sam Katzman--the B-movie David O'Selznick--has a film for you. It doesn't have an aquarium either. But there's zombies, as you may have guessed. Set in a bayou-like inlet, it's the salty tale of ye cursed crew of undead sailors doomed to forever guard a sunken chest of cursed diamonds. Many have tried over the years to recover the diamonds, all die--and some stick around to join the vigil. The undead captain's now-elderly wife (Marjorie Eaton) lives in the forlorn hope that one day the curse will be broken but the only way to break is "destroy" the diamonds. What? How can you destroy the hardest thing in the world? So she says "get rid of them, throw them into the sea!" They're in the sea already, lady. Tell your writer to think the drink through.
Enter cute visiting granddaughter Jan (Autumn Hoskins) who gets the backstory after her incoming cab runs over a walking dead crewman and doesn't stop to check (proving the screenwriter saw White Zombie). And now another salvage team has come: burly leader Joel (George "Not the same Beatle" Harrison), his trophy mistress Mona (Alison Hayes) and the object of her lust, hunky first mate/deep sea diver Jeff (Gregg Palmer). Cue the flared tempers and aggressive come-ons, especially when Mona gets a load Jan. Mona's so crazy she practically stabs Jan just for giving Jeff a drink of water after he's roughed up by a zombie.
This movie gets a bad rap (called 'unimaginative' by one critic, "dull" by another) but it's got everything you want for a movie with its gnarly title. Maybe it was badly panned and scanned for TV or just too relaxing to keep viewers awake during late show TV airings back in the day. Now, in its restored HD widescreen version it's, well, unless you're expecting gut-munching it's got near everything you want in a movie called Zombies of Mora Tau. Then again, maybe I just love this movie because I love that all the underwater scenes are all shot on on a dry set, with the actors just moving really... slow. (with bubble overlays). The result is like one of those Bugs Bunny cartoons where the character starts floating as they get into bed, or some Cocteau through-the-mirror dream effect. It still won't keep you awake, but it will make dreamland a cool, sexy place.
But probably the reason I love it is Alison Hayes. Treating the old lady with scorn, suspecting their dinner is poisoned, goading Josh into insisting Jeff kiss her ("How dare you say no to a friendly kiss!"), Hayes' sexual energy makes a nice side dish to the zombie mayhem. Before they know she switches side, 'turned', wandering through the Tourneur-esque shadows in her cinched up nightgown, her knife, bra, and posture stiff as Frankenstein.
Scenes of relentless, slow moving (all-white) sailor zombies coming at the living humans from all sides, never even flinching from point black gunshots, are nicely dispersed throughout. When they're not guarding the treasure they're nosing around on the veranda, looking through open windows, skulking in bushes. Their unstoppable slow momentum, and the moody black photograph make Tau a key historical zombie link between 1932's White Zombie and 1968's Night of the Living Dead. It's a unique twist having them all be sailors and a crew, and they're a hilarious bunch--though one wonders why they were all buried together in one big above ground tomb with no coffin lids so they can all just rise up and/or bring their victims back to be zombified (by lying down on the floor next to a marble slab in the center of the room). If you can get around the weird nonsensical aspects like the way the whole crew is buried in the same above ground tomb, like a big dorm room, the ridiculousness of the curse--and things of that nature, you'll find it a fine film to help you towards ye old catatonia.
THE DISEMBODIED
(1957) Dir. Walter Grauman
**1/2
Another of Allied Artist's drive-in back-end double bill-fillers. Alison Hayes doing the voodoo shimmy with her ever-present dagger is the main, some may even say sole, attraction. They call her Tonda, the sexually frustrated, voodoo-doll strangling wife (her mixed blood implied by her name and a shellacking of bronzer) of an older German doctor (John Wengraf) who studies transmigration of souls and other voodoo practices. They live deep in the middle of generic Africa, where there's nothing to do but lust after hunky servant Zuba (another white person in bronzer) and try to kill her husband with voodoo dolls. Enter handsome jungle photographer Tom Maxwell (Paul Burke) and his lion-mauled buddy - he needs help! Tonda's eyes light up with lust. But how to save the dying friend? What about the witch doctors of which Tonda speaks? And what about Zuba? Surely a voodoo shimmy and a chicken stab will solve both problems at once.
In general jungle movies don't grab me, but Disembodied is free of the reasons for that. As far as I can tell it's all shot on one big soundstage jungle compound set, free of bugs, compost, narration, animals, and realism of any kind. Instead there's Hayes really living it up, smoldering her way along midnight verandas, stringing along her sweaty old husband with the occasional kiss, and keeping herself barely amused by strangling effigies of him and dancing at midnight voodoo rituals. "She's the voodoo queen!" says Tom's guide as they spy on the ceremony.
Zuba's mate Mara (Eugenia Paul) gets vindictive after her man dies; she gets right away that his soul is inside a white dude who, as chance would have it, is now trying to kill everyone for some zombie reason. The gravelly German doctor husband is as surprised as anyone that his mauled-to-ribbons patient seems mostly healed the next day. As one of his buddies notes: "This whole thing is so freaky it gives me the shakes." Move over, buster.
Competently acted all around, Disembodied is let down by two unforgivable elements: white actors playing natives by wearing bronzer and tooth necklaces, and Hayes' godawful makeup, hair and wardrobe. What moron at AIP decided Hayes' skimpy tribal wear should be a formless black top with a long, concealing black fringe? it's worse than a censor bar (below). Hard to believe this is the same girl who looked so young and alive in Corman's Gunslinger (below) and The Undead. I do like her daytime wear, alternately an Asian-style cocktail dress, and safari jumpsuit, carrying a knife on her belt she has no qualms about using.
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| whoever designed this outfit was no friend to straight men |
And you can't blame her for being evil: she's horny and bored, and as the doctor says, "the natives are like children." You can't figure why she'd marry this coded impotent German doctor in the first place, unless she needed to get out of the country. There's no backstory and no sense in in this potted soundstage jungle, but there's good steady drumming, her steamy in-spite-of-it-all allure, and the crisp photography that captures well the shadows of the black soundstage night. Maybe it's enough. Sometimes an eerie night in a "jungle" full of dangers all you need, at least for an hour's distraction. And preferably with that Hayes woman, figure-hiding fringe or no. All it takes to know it's a keeper is the turned-on look in her eyes as she watches Tom and the possessed Joe fight over a knife.
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| Note lack of fringe and light dress shade allowing alluring under-shadow in this glamor shot |
GUNSLINGER
(1956) Dir. Roger Corman
***1/2
Roger Corman is mainly known for his horror and science fiction films, but he also made four westerns! Gunslinger is his last and best, a gender-reversed Wyatt Earp variation starring Beverly Garland as Rose, the wife of a slain marshal, who pins his badge on her own chest after all the men in town are too chicken to take it (especially the mayor whose cowardice we later learned lost the Civil War for the south). We know we're on for a wild ride when Rose shoots a guy point blank at the funeral. Instead of the usual 'only the judge may mete out justice' malarkey ---BANG! It's awesome. People get shot right and left, with no fanfare--people just whip out their guns and kill each other dead on the spot-- is refreshing after so many of the more liberal revisionist westerns of the era. Rose has no problem--no female tears or misgivings--about racking up an impressive body count. She doesn't cry, and shake and whine, or refuse to pack a gun cuz killing is wrong. She just whips it out and fires. Good thing, too--her opposite number, Erica (Alison Hayes), owner of the town's saloon/brothel, was behind the her husband's death, and she's way more lethal and vicious. She has a habit of buying land nearby and then sending her lovestruck little lackey Jake (Jathan Haze) to take a shortcut and murder the seller when he rides out of town, retrieving the money and use it to buy another piece of property, etc. Nice trick! Rose becomes Erica's next target when she decides she decides the saloon has to start closing at 3 AM! What? Up until then I really liked you, Rose. Erica sends her lackey to Tombstone to hire a gunslinger fast enough to take Rose out (it sticks in her little man's jealous craw she thinks he's not fast enough to do it himself). He finds Cane (John Ireland) with whom Erica soon resumes a torrid affair of turned-on animosity that angers little Jake even further! And then, while clocking Rose's habits in advance of the big day he shoots her, well, it turns out Rose and Cane of fall for each other! Who'd a thunk it?
In very cool and nicely underplayed and well-written scenes by future Corman regular screenwriters Charles B. Griffith and Mark Hanna, Rose playfully tries to get Cane to change his outlaw ways, undeniably attracted to him at the same time. What a film! it doesn't even matter that, so rare for a western, the skies are overcast and rainy, the ground super muddy, with the actors gamely pretending isn't soaking through their pants when they sit down for picnics or lay down after getting shot. Hard to believe this currently rates a lowly 3.7 on imdb. Are the western fans threatened by the gender revisionism? I usually roll my eyes at girl gunslinger movies as they're either campy, over-blown, or the actress has to let you know she doesn't approve of guns and murder so she can't press the trigger without breathing hard and crying about it.
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Corman is the first and for a long time the only schlock filmmaker who realized he could cast hot capable actresses in the tough guy and scientist roles usually reserved for men. And Garland is a lovely example of how a woman can be alluring and assertive at the same time. In trousers and a cute red bandanna around her neck, she's unique in the annals of all westerns and it's a shame this little film isn't better known. And on the villain side, with her red hair, black velvet choker, tightly pulled corset and form fitting burgundy red dress, Hayes is an angry vision of loveliness and conniving sex as Erica. It's a perfectly written and and conceived role for Hayes, that mix of greed, jealousy, manipulative sexuality, aggression and dark wit is like her trademark--a mix of noir femme fatale and two-fisted drive-in pin-up. And here, the duality between her and the 'good' woman sets the blueprint for another great Griffith/Hana script, my personal Roger Corman favorite, The Undead the following year.
With none of the liberal guilt-tripping, corny sentiment, or labored symbolism that usually dampens the mood in any 50-60s western (except those by Howard Hawks), Corman keeps the tale lean, sexy and fast. The moral is: if you can't draw fast and shoot straight you better go hide, because death comes quick and sure, and no one asks if it was morally responsible to plug you one. Perhaps the only reason it isn't more widely celebrated today is the title. For a film about two strong, inflexible, beautiful, deadly women--they even have one of the best female-on-female bar fights in film history --why give it the most generic title of western ever With the male characters all subservient and ineffectual---the cowardly mayor, dopey deputy, smitten little bartender/bushwacker, and indecisive gunslinger--it's a woman's world all the way and thus deserving of a relevant title. What about Ms. Gunslinger or Girl Marshall? Would that have worked against it? Because boys is afraid of armed girls? I doubt it!
Though never released on DVD or Blu-ray (outrageous!), it's currently streaming on YouTube. Find it on my public YouTube playlist "4 AM Favorites") right next to another--never been on official DVD or Blu-ray--film, the Dino di Laurentiis-produced, Ennio Morricone-scored tale of a drug-addicted bisexual super spy, Fraulein Doktor. Both feature strong lead women and subservient men See the connection? There are also two 70s TV series about cultures where women are in charge and men subservient--Star Maidens and All that Glitters. There are no streaming. VHS, DVD or Blu-ray releases of them, at all, ever. Dear video labels, stop being threatened over strong women! Release Gunslinger, Fraulein Doktor, Star Maidens, and All that Glitters on DVD or streaming --or Allison Hayes' ghost is gonna make you cry for mama!
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NOTES:
1. Maybe she was busy making Zombies, 1957 was her big year - she was in 4 films and made six TV shows. wth Voodoo Woman, which used to be on a double bill with The Undead (which co-starred Hayes) so maybe that's why they got Marla English instead (in her second go-round as a woman turning into an armor-plated She-Creature) in the villainess role. Two Hayes in one double feature, the same year may have confused half-watching audiences. But Hayes would have crushed it. (though English is clearly having a ball and is rather marvelous in a pint-sized sort of way. Keep your expectations even lower, and check it out).
2. their names and films shall be unmentioned as they constitute spoilers.)