First Look: VIDEO WATCHDOG #161

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"Her Mind Was the Most Erotic and Dangerous Part of Her Body."

Mimsy Farmer seduces Robert Walker, Jr., posing as her long lost brother, in ROAD TO SALINA.

... so read the US posters for Georges Lautner's largely forgotten ROAD TO SALINA (1970), which lingers, if at all, in the popular memory as an embarrassment made by an aging Rita Hayworth shortly before her retirement from the screen. I watched it tonight, for the first time uncut, and can't figure out why it has acquired such a low reputation.

It still awaits its DVD debut, so you can only see it via an old Charter Entertainment VHS or DVD-R, where it's badly cropped and less than smoothly dubbed, so that works against it... and yes, at 52, Rita Hayworth is no longer GILDA, but that's not the movie we're watching. Rita's actually fine, playing a delusional woman in middle age, sick with loneliness, who mistakes a young drifter for her son, missing for the past four years; Robert Walker Jr. (the son of one of Hitchcock's STRANGERS ON A TRAIN, fresh from his near catatonic appearance in the commune sequence of EASY RIDER) is very watchable as the boyish, spaced-out protagonist with Clint Eastwood's DIRTY HARRY haircut, who decides to take a break from his bad luck and be mothered for awhile... but he soon gets sistered too. Mimsy Farmer is electrifying as the sexy, teeth-baring, peroxide pixie whose free and faux-incestuous ways tempt Walker to stick around for awhile in a "hot box" in the middle of nowhere.

I would argue that ROAD TO SALINA is exactly what a Seventies film noir properly was and should have been: the depiction of a steamy Venus Fly Trap that you or I might easily wander into, and not be too quick to extract ourselves from -- not another second-hand gumshoe story set in a Hollywood B-movie version of the 1940s.

The Loves of Mimsy Farmer #1: Robbie Douglas

You won't find any reference to it on her IMDb page, but Mimsy Farmer's earliest known TV appearance took place in an episode of the long-running series MY THREE SONS. The episode hails from Season 3, Episode 10: "Steve Gets an 'A'." It originally aired on ABC-TV on November 22, 1962, thus predating her appearance on the ADVENTURES OF OZZIE & HARRIET episode "Rick's Wedding Ring" by close to a year.

The episode finds Robbie Douglas (Don Grady) unable to focus on his studies due to the pheromonious allure of fellow student Janee Holmes (Mimsy). Father Steve Douglas (Fred MacMurray) insists that Robbie stay at home over the weekend until he finishes writing a theme for his history class, a project that threatens him with missing out on a pre-arranged date at the lake with Janee. Above, we see the girl of Robbie's dreams meeting Bub, a role essayed by William Frawley for the show's first six seasons.

The whole family gathers approvingly around the future Queen of the Giallo, even the usually-immune-to-girls Chip (Stanley Livingston, right).

Janee doesn't take the prospect of missing out on their lake date very well...

... and after issuing an ultimatum, pauses at the door of the Douglas household to shoot Robbie one of those blood-icing PERFUME OF THE LADY IN BLACK looks of hers.

Under crippling sexual pressure, Robbie is compelled to cheat on his homework in order to meet Janee's demands. He accomplishes this by copying one of his father's old history schoolpapers, found in the attic and graded "A." (The existence of the paper is brought to his attention by older brother Mike [Tim Considine], who understands what he's up against after getting a hubba-hubba glimpse of she who was destined to star in RIOT ON SUNSET STRIP, THE WILD RACERS, FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET and MORE.) This frees Robbie up for his eagerly awaited lakeside assignation with Janee, which is depicted in a montage of double-exposed, romantic highlights like this strolling shot...

... this swimming shot...

... this "Polaroid Moment" shot of them smiling and waving to each other, seemingly from opposite sides of the lake...

... and finally, this rowing scene, which finds Robbie heroically paddling a canoe as passenger Janee dreamily cocks an ear to... what is that, a conch shell? A transistor radio? (Okay, we can see why it's not on her résumé...)

Robbie gets caught at cheating, is scolded by father Steve who is summoned to school for a discussion with his professor, and the two men realize that Steve copied the text, too, out of a textbook from the 1870s! There's a last minute curve that helps to save the Douglas patriarch's moral character from reproach, but that's all we get of Mimsy Farmer...

... except for this closing affirmation of her presence in this surreal showcase, brought to us by the fine people at Chevrolet.

FOUR FLIES on Grey Market

One of the most exciting developments of this holiday season is the unexpected arrival of a German gray market release of Dario Argento's elusive FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET on DVD. I've received some e-mails asking me if the rumors are true and, if so, how does it look... so I'll devote today's blog to answering that question.

As these screen grabs illustrate, the 97m disc -- titled VIER FLIEGEN AUF GRAUEM SAMT and credited to a company called Retrofilm -- is indeed real and it looks pretty good. It was also obviously assembled by people who know their Argento movies well. The great bulk of the source material comes from a 35mm print, in English, that looks like it's been around the block a few times; it's a bonafide, old-fashioned grindhouse print, complete with the occasional travelling scratches and thumpy splices... but the image quality, imperfect as it is, is by far the best I've seen for this particular film. If you've only seen the film on one or more of the ratty bootleg videocassettes long in circulation (which happens to also be my story), I think I can safely promise you a viewing of FOUR FLIES that you might consider revelatory.

Closeups like this one, of the blackmailing maniac's mask, are sharp enough to bring out previously unsuspected textures. I always thought this was a facial mask, but it appears to be more of a whole-head mask.

Medium or long shots like this look a bit softer, but still more than acceptable on my 58" widescreen set. If your screen is smaller than mine, the quality will only improve for you.

As always, the sharper the picture, the more attentive we can be to matters of performance and Mimsy Farmer gives one of her most interesting and brittle performances here.

This shot of protagonist Michael Brandon, sharing the screen with Euro great Bud Spencer (as "God") is a good index to the disc's color quality. As you can see by comparing these skin tones to those in the bed shot shown previously, they are prone to fluctuation. Not ideal, but those who saw the film in theaters here in 1972 probably saw something similar.

Earlier I said that "the bulk" of the disc looks pretty good. I qualified my statement because the 35mm print used for this release was evidently incomplete, requiring the Argento buffs behind the scenes to obtain the best possible inserts from other sources to make their presentation as complete as it could be. I didn't notice anything missing from the movie; in fact, there are shots included in this disc that I've either never seen before, or saw in such poor quality that I could never appreciate them for what they were. The scene illustrated here, of Brandon's maid waiting in the park for a meeting with the killer, is one of five or six short patches inserted into the continuity from other sources. They're unfortunate, but it would be worse not to have them in place.

I should also mention that it's a pleasure to see this Techniscope film in its correct ratio, which brings to life fleeting shots like this one -- of the gay private eye investigating the case.

Indeed, the disc salvages so much heretofore obscured detail that, for the first time, I noticed that Argento or his art director used some record albums of the day to wryly underscore the film's death imperative prior to its grand finale: Traffic's JOHN BARLEYCORN MUST DIE and George Harrison's ALL THINGS MUST PASS.

The only source I know for this Region 0 PAL disc is Xploited Cinema, where it is priced at $29.95. The disc includes English, German and Italian audio options, but only German subtitles. A bonus section includes German trailers for this film, as well as one each for Argento's previous features THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE and THE CAT O'NINE TAILS. Alternate Italian titles and an extended edit of the film's finale also taken from that version are included, as well.

Of course, VIER FLIEGEN AUF GRAUEM SAMT is not what anyone would call a definitive release. It's really just a deluxe pacifier to keep Argento's fans contented until whatever legal problems are preventing the film's legitimate release can be solved. Anyone who buys this disc will inevitably want to upgrade in the event of an official release, but it's worth the inevitable double dip to have this movie available to us now -- for those crazy goddamn nights when nothing else will do.