Something tells me that if this film had been made in the 1940's, it might have been considered "pro-Communist". Three young people with different issues get together and rent a dilapidated house where they can feel accepted and support each other when times get really rough. Insensitive neighbors create all sorts of problems for them, but even though they take a beating along the road, they definitely make it through the wilderness. Each of their stories are told in detail, from the facially scarred Liza Minnelli, the wheel-chair bound Robert Moore and the handsome Ken Howard who suffers from epilepsy.
Liza's opening sequence, recalling her scarring at the hands of sex fiend suitor Ben Piazza, is truly frightening, and it is disturbing to watch her seemingly willingly disrobe in front of him then become his target of vengeance after she lightly teases him about it. Moore is a gay man with paralyzed legs, raised by obvious gay men after his mother took off to Argentina, and Howard is troubled by seizures even though he seems quite normal on the surface. When he gets a job working in James Coco's fish shop, a nasty neighbor accuses him of being a sodomite and gets him fired. There's no real plot to hold all their stories together other than their support of each other, but even in spite of the weird situations and "mod" feel of the film, it all ends up being pretty touching and especially extremely well acted.
While Howard manages to fall in love with Liza, it's a bittersweet feeling for her. "Something happened to me and I don't think that I could love a man ever again", she says, paralleling her real life and also the fact that during the filming of this, her mother Judy Garland died, adding to the intensity of her performance. Like Pookie Adams from "The Sterile Cuckoo", Junie Moon is a girl desperate for love (she obviously doesn't get much from her mother who is seen briefly prior to the horrible acid attack) yet she is not just physically and emotionally scarred, but on the verge of becoming one of the walking dead should one more heartbreak attack her soul. Her large eyes scream in both character and real life, "Please love me!", and this becomes so horrifyingly realistic that her performance is both heart-felt and scary.
Liza actually asks Ken Howard, "What would I do with sequins?" when he promises to buy her a sequined dress. To top off her "drag-queen" off-screen persona, there's Kay Thompson as the eccentric wealthy landlady who in her first scene looks like a World War I pilot in drag, reminding me very much of Rosalind Russell in "Oh, Dad, Poor Dad, Mama's Hung you in the Closet, and I'm Feeling so Sad". The scene with her and Moore and a very large cross was rather bizarre, but then this was Otto Preminger during the days of "Skidoo" and "Such Good Friends" which were even more bizarre than this! Then, there's the surprising presence of Fred Williamson as a gay man known as "beach boy" who flirts with Moore, a far cry from all those "Blaxploitation" movies he later appeared in.
The recurring use of Pete Seeger's song "Old Devil Time" is very touching, and it's one of those late 1960's/early 70's movie themes that has to be heard in the context of the film. There's all sorts of other surprises, whether it be veteran actress Anne Revere as a hospital social worker, T.V. veteran Nancy Marchand in a cameo as a nurse, and the delightfully sweet black character actress Clarice Taylor as the patient in bed next to Liza who later visits the threesome's house. This isn't a film for all tastes (were any of Preminger's post 1960?), but it is one you'll never forget and one that will touch you deeply if you open up your heart enough to let it.
Liza's opening sequence, recalling her scarring at the hands of sex fiend suitor Ben Piazza, is truly frightening, and it is disturbing to watch her seemingly willingly disrobe in front of him then become his target of vengeance after she lightly teases him about it. Moore is a gay man with paralyzed legs, raised by obvious gay men after his mother took off to Argentina, and Howard is troubled by seizures even though he seems quite normal on the surface. When he gets a job working in James Coco's fish shop, a nasty neighbor accuses him of being a sodomite and gets him fired. There's no real plot to hold all their stories together other than their support of each other, but even in spite of the weird situations and "mod" feel of the film, it all ends up being pretty touching and especially extremely well acted.
While Howard manages to fall in love with Liza, it's a bittersweet feeling for her. "Something happened to me and I don't think that I could love a man ever again", she says, paralleling her real life and also the fact that during the filming of this, her mother Judy Garland died, adding to the intensity of her performance. Like Pookie Adams from "The Sterile Cuckoo", Junie Moon is a girl desperate for love (she obviously doesn't get much from her mother who is seen briefly prior to the horrible acid attack) yet she is not just physically and emotionally scarred, but on the verge of becoming one of the walking dead should one more heartbreak attack her soul. Her large eyes scream in both character and real life, "Please love me!", and this becomes so horrifyingly realistic that her performance is both heart-felt and scary.
Liza actually asks Ken Howard, "What would I do with sequins?" when he promises to buy her a sequined dress. To top off her "drag-queen" off-screen persona, there's Kay Thompson as the eccentric wealthy landlady who in her first scene looks like a World War I pilot in drag, reminding me very much of Rosalind Russell in "Oh, Dad, Poor Dad, Mama's Hung you in the Closet, and I'm Feeling so Sad". The scene with her and Moore and a very large cross was rather bizarre, but then this was Otto Preminger during the days of "Skidoo" and "Such Good Friends" which were even more bizarre than this! Then, there's the surprising presence of Fred Williamson as a gay man known as "beach boy" who flirts with Moore, a far cry from all those "Blaxploitation" movies he later appeared in.
The recurring use of Pete Seeger's song "Old Devil Time" is very touching, and it's one of those late 1960's/early 70's movie themes that has to be heard in the context of the film. There's all sorts of other surprises, whether it be veteran actress Anne Revere as a hospital social worker, T.V. veteran Nancy Marchand in a cameo as a nurse, and the delightfully sweet black character actress Clarice Taylor as the patient in bed next to Liza who later visits the threesome's house. This isn't a film for all tastes (were any of Preminger's post 1960?), but it is one you'll never forget and one that will touch you deeply if you open up your heart enough to let it.
