Die Screaming, Marianne (1971): Why Murder?

Die Screaming, Marianne (1971)
dir: Peter Walker

I'm going to say this up front. The whole review here is one big spoiler given the way that Peter Walker structured this movie so oddly that you have no idea what is actually happening for just about an hour. Things happen, more things happen, explanations and dialogue happens...but then you get the plot an hour into the movie. If you don't want to even know the basics, back out now because there is no way to talk about the movie without giving away the spoilers.

Die Screaming, Marianne opens with a hotel that has a sign out front. The sign has Marianne's name and face on it, as if she is a performer. This seems to be occurring some morning in Spain. Marianne has already realized she has to hightail it out of the hotel, and there are a couple of guys that are coming to look for her. She has to leave her lover of the night and leaves out a window in time to get away by running down a road, and a steep hillside, and almost getting run over by some guy, whom she then picks up.

There are no explanations given, this is just the pre-credits scene explaining that Marianne is on the run and has met some English guy with a sports car in Spain. After a credits sequence of Marianne as a go-go dancer, Marianne is then being forced into marrying Sebastian, the guy she met two weeks ago in a sports car, with his friend Eli and a flower lady as their witness. But, she gives the magistrate Eli's name, and so now she is legally wed to Eli. And, as she packs up and leaves Sebastian's place (with whom she had been living for two weeks), she tells him that his attempt was a really lousy attempt.

Eventually we learn that Sebastian is really hooking up with some girl named Hildegard and the Judge (who are living together), and everybody is out to get Marianne for some reason that is left semi-unexplained. It's vaguely about money. Marianne, now shacking up with Eli, tells him that they're both in danger but won't tell him or us what the hell is going on. Even after Eli has had an attempt on his life, and Marianne has run away to continue her career as a go-go dancer, and then returned to Eli, she still refuses to say what is going on.

Around the hour mark (give or take a few minutes), when Marianne and Eli have been invited to The Judge's house in Portugal, we finally learn that Marianne is the daughter of The Judge, and Hildegard is her half-sister. Marianne is wealthy because her recently-deceased mother was wealthy and left her a lot of money in a trust fund not to be touched until she is 21. Marianne is about to turn 21 in a few days, and will receive the money as well as a bunch of documents that will incriminate The Judge for some legal wrong doing. It's all explained in about 5 minutes, because even though this provides the whole basis of the movie, the movie is all about trying to kill Marianne for no good reason.

The plot of Die Screaming, Marianne seems to be an experiment to negate the need for the MacGuffin, but really emphasizes the need for purpose. By dropping the audience into the middle of an ongoing story, Walker is asking us to care about the welfare for this seemingly street smart and also seemingly perpetually chased young woman simply because she is being chased. Additionally, the MacGuffin in the middle of the movie is one of importance and one of non-import. Not only is the prize for killing Marianne just additional money for the rich people (non-import), but it is also one of self-preservation for the Judge and other people of power with the incriminating documents. One is a silly reason for murder but the other seems reasonable, and Walker seems to be asking "Is there a good justification for murder? If so, what is a good justification for murder?" His answer, by placing the MacGuffin in the middle, seems to be that there is no reason to kill this girl, and we should care about anybody in trouble simply because they don't deserve to be in trouble.

The final 45 minutes of Die Screaming, Marianne is taken up by various people trying to kill each other. Hildegard tries to kill Sebastian by taking out the brakes on his car, but the Judge takes it instead. Hildegard and Sebastian try to kill Marianne in various ways. Eli and Marianne try to kill Hildegard and Sebastian to save their life. It's all just a big jumble of who's killing who in what way. Although, I should note that this is now my earliest instance of death or torture by sauna.

Because the structure of Die Screaming, Marianne is so mixed up, the audience spends the majority of the first hour not quite knowing who they should be rooting for. It seems like we should be rooting for Marianne, but she acts like an overly street smart cold woman who doesn't care much for anybody but herself. But, we don't know if she's somebody on the lam or a mob girl or a squealer or what. She could have killed the wrong person, but we don't know. However, after the revelations start coming, then we figure out that we can root for Marianne and Eli and actually support their survival.

Which led me to wonder, "why do people watch movies with titles like Die Screaming, Marianne?" Not even as a judgment, because I watched it, but as a sort of thought game. Do we want to see somebody named Marianne die or just attempted to be killed? Do we want her to die because of some sort of character retribution and she deserves it? Or, do we want her to die because she's innocent? Or, do we just want to see her saved?

Die Screaming, Marianne is marketed as a horror movie, but it isn't a horror movie. It's a drama/thriller with all the pacing constantly cut off at its pass. It's all cat and mouse and who will survive. The meta questions that Die Screaming, Marianne are far more interesting than the movie itself, which is otherwise a poorly-paced, underacted, mundane movie of people trying to kill each other while wearing the worst of 1970s fashions and hairstyles. But, the questions it asks may be ones you might not know the answers to.

Boys in the Sand (1971): A Gay Coffee Table Porno

Boys in the Sand (1971)

Dir: Wakefield Poole

From a distance, it seems unnatural for the world of the 1970s porno chic to have seemingly caught popularity with a low budget gay hardcore pornographic film that featured no dialogue to go with its trilogy of sexual adventures. However, Boys in the Sand is a gorgeously shot amateur feature that fills the screen with fantasia and matters of cultural and political import.

Comparing the film to the early works of Andy Warhol isn't just a compliment, it's a given. Poole was one of Warhol's contemporaries, and seems to have been inspired by Warhol's earlier works of objectification and voyeurism, such as those featured in both My Hustler and Chelsea Girls. The main difference between the Warhol/Morrissey pictures and Boys in the Sand, other than the hardcore sexuality that Poole was now able to deal in, is that Warhol's films present a sense of jaded detatchment, while Poole is fully engaged in his scene, and hopeful for the next steps to come.

Boys in the Sand is a trilogy of short films featuring Casey Donovan (nee Cal Culver), a blond hairy and toned sort with a sizable phallus, who would go on to be one of the first gay pornographic superstars. All three are presented as fantasias of secret desire and lust.

Bayside begins with a dark haired Peter Fisk walking down a long boardwalk, hopping off at an unmarked location, wandering through a long path of sorts through the forest and ending up at an isolated nude beach, where he strips down to catch some rays and contemplate the water. Casey Donovan magically appears out of the water, and walks up to him. They engage in some beach sex before leaving for a more secluded area in the trees, where they get down on a blanket. When both have came, Fisk puts his leather bracelet/cock ring on Donovan's wrist and wanders out into the water to disappear. Donovan, now alone, dons Fisk's clothing and walks down the beach.

Poolside is a Donovan showcase, where he stars as a richer gay man who is trying to pick up guys on the boardwalk by using the gay newspaper as a signal he's gay. Unsuccessful, he wanders home to sunbathe by the pool, when he finds an ad that he mails about. Time goes by, filled with swimming and wandering the beaches, when he gets his package in the mail. Inside, is a tablet that, when thrown in the pool, becomes Danny DiCoccio. They get it on, and once finished, they get dressed and go out as a couple. On the boardwalk, they meet another lonely gay soul with the same paper.

Inside features Donovan lounging in a treehouse-styled house, when he spots Randy Moore, a power employee setting up a long pole to fix the cables. After taking a shower, he fantasizes about Randy Moore, first laying naked in his sunroom, then out on the deck, then on his landing, and finally in his bed. But, Randy is just his imagination, as he huffs poppers and fucks himself on a large black dildo. After he climaxes and cleans up, he wanders back downstairs to find Moore waiting for him outside his front door. He smiles, and they go inside, closing the front door.

These stories feature gay life in a way that's a blend of fantasia and reality. Bayside features a fantasia of the real phenomenon of cruising, where a blond god comes out of the sea. Poolside blends the reality of gay bar busts with the fantasia of being able to mail-order a boyfriend who comes in a tablet without ever having to be worried about being raided. Inside is about fantasizing about men who may actually be straight, but you can't proposition them because of gay panic, then the hopefulness of the object of your fantasy being attainably gay.

There are no judgments here. Gay is good and beautiful, and gay life comes with its own desires and wants and needs. Gay men have dogs too. They're respectful of straight borders. They lust, they need fulfillment. And, their lust has no borders. Not only is this a gay male fantasia, but the last of the vignettes features an interracial coupling, which features Moore as a power figure with many of the same stances seen in Bayside.

But, Poole is also making comments on the daily life of a gay man. There are reasons why he has the closeups of the raided bars in 1971, 2 years after Stonewall. These were everyday worries of the gay man in a political sense. You couldn't actively go after men for fear they would kick your ass, which is why the majority of Inside is a fantasy about the unattainable until he is attainable. You could go hookup and meet people on beaches that were secluded and distanced and out of the public eye, but you probably had to know about them. These were regular bits of knowledge that have been passed down through the generations.

But, what makes Boys in the Sand so essential is the cinematography. Shot on a handheld, which is reminiscent of the Warhol shorts, Poole manages to create a lush and richly photographed film about gay sexuality. In movies that had preceded it, and would follow it, frequently the films would eschew quality imagery just to have hard raw sexuality featured in a raw light. There was nothing romantic or beautiful about it. But, looking at the images in this, you come to realize that Poole's main limitation was the quality of film stock. While the handheld nature of the film leads to periodic shaky cam pans, it's forgivable for many of the stills that he created which were framed as deeply as any mainstream film would before it. Sometimes it was random luck, and sometimes it was static shots that were purely intentional, but Poole's films frequently had a gorgeousness to them that is rarely seen in pornographic filmmaking.

Is Boys in the Sand essential? Is it good? Well, it's erotic, and it's beautifully shot. To say it is just a gay pornographic film is so reductive of the qualities that are in it. But, it is primarily a pornographic film. It's place in the history of porno chic is undeniable, and its place as a gay time capsule of the post-Stonewall worries of 1971 also render this to be a must watch for those who want to see what people were thinking and worrying about. I enjoyed watching it, and it is romantic in an anonymous way.

The Point! (1971): The point is not the point unless it is the point

The Point! (1971)
dir: Fred Wolf

""I was on acid and I looked at the trees and I realized that they all came to points, and the little branches came to points, and the houses came to point. I thought, 'Oh! Everything has a point, and if it doesn't, then there's a point to it.'" - Harry Nillsson, Bright Lights Film Journal


Confession: I grew up on this movie. I remember renting it several times on VHS, and would love it on television. Watching it as an adult, this may have been the best piece of film that I loved as a child. I'm also surprised that my parents didn't wonder about me since I kept re-watching this movie.

The Point! is the most acid-tinged cartoon this side of Yellow Submarine, which I did not grow up on. It is both crude and hand-drawn, like a children's book. It is dark but nonsensical. This is Alice in Wonderland but for the post-60s generation. A meditation on race, circles, sense and nonsense, The Point! challenges the world that everybody takes for granted.

The Point! tells the story of Oblio and his dog, Arrow. They live in the Pointed Village, a world of points, where everything is pointed and sharp, including people's heads. Except, he has a round head, and has to wear a pointy hat to disguise his point. While the town's citizens are accepting of Oblio, the Wizard, who is the King's right hand man, doesn't appreciate Oblio's non-conformity. When Oblio bests the Wizard's son at a game of ring toss, he is banished to live in the Pointless Forest, where he encounters a series of strange people who teach him that everything has a point. 

As with Alice in Wonderland, the encounters pretty much define the point of The Point! My personal favorite was always the circular and far too short segment Think About Your Troubles, which details the life cycle of people's problems, and their tear drops. In a metaphorical sense, it details how everybody's depression creates a ripple and will mostly come back to haunt you, going from a teardrop to the ocean, which gets recycled by fishes and whales to come back through the faucet back to your teapot. This is the first stop on Oblio's journey.

Along the way, Oblio and Arrow encounter the Pointed Man, a man who points at everything all at once, which, it is argued, points at nothing at all. They encounter the Rock Man, who speaks and talks like a bluesy beat, who tells them that they see what they want to see and hear what they want to hear. They encounter three very large joyous bouncing fat women. They stumble across a businesstree who grows leaves for money. They're picked up by a giant bird, who shows them the forest from a different perspective: the treetops. 

Of course, along the way, he discovers that everything has a point, except the pointed man who says that everything is pointless. The Point! becomes its own ironic paradox of life. It makes a strange case for everything matters except those that say nothing matters. It's certainly anti-nihilistic. Nilsson's point is that nothing doesn't matter.

In turn, it also discourages passive acceptance of everything having a point. The Pointed Man reprimands Oblio for thinking every chance he gets. You're not supposed to think. You're supposed to accept. Which would give the Pointed Man his reason to exist, and thinking about him causes him to vanish. 

The thing that The Point! is closest to is Norton Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth, another of my childhood favorites. Incidentally, in 1970, The Phantom Tollbooth had a toothless film adaptation which retains none of the psychedelic absurdity of the original book. Both The Phantom Tollbooth and The Point! discourage the laziness of childhood, and encourage active thinking and participating in life.

Nothing exists in a vacuum, of course. The anarchic joy of The Phantom Tollbooth foretells the joy of the 1960s hippy movement as well as the anti-authoritarian, questioning, nature of society and children. In 1970, as the movement had started receding, Harry Nilsson's The Point! indulges in the joy of the psychedelic movement, but also is telling the sadness as it comes crashing down around everything. Not only does Think About Your Troubles sing about the circular nature of sadness, but Life Line also is about drowning in depression and needing to be rescued.

What The Point! brings is a certain wisdom as well. A high and a wistful post-comedown that is all about clinging to the reality one wants to cling to, even though it is ripped out from under you. These are far too advanced concepts for most kids, who will cling to the absurdity and the anti-authoritarianism of The Point! wondering why things had happened. The Pointed Man even admonishes Oblio for thinking "Why?" But, The Pointed Man is not who you're supposed to be idolizing. Whether you're idolizing the rock man, the dancers, or the businessman, at least they have a point. 

The Point! is a strange movie that still brings enjoyment to those who are completely in tune with its wavelength. There are few movies that have been for children that have so effortlessly captured the strangeness of figuring out the world without jumping through hoops to get there. While it's not flawless, as it can be somewhat on the nose, and sometimes blunt as a sledgehammer, The Point! is an enjoyable rewarding experience.