AND GOD CREATED WOMAN (1956)

In 1956 Brigitte Bardot was a 23 year old aspiring starlet who had already appeared in a number of films.  Her husband, director Roger Vadim, put her into this movie (French title: Et Dieu . . . crea la femme) which skyrocketed his young wife into stardom and made Bardot an international sex symbol.

The superficial plot involves Juliette Hardy (Bardot) an 18 year old orphan.  Juliette just can't help herself - she likes to lie out in the sun naked, go barefooted, dance, drink and she REALLY likes MEN.  Juliette is also fabulously beautiful.

A Girl Just Can't Help It: She's Gotta Take a Sunbath Naked In the Yard!

As the film opens, Juliette's foster mother has had enough and announces that Juliette is going back to the orphanage until she's 21.  By this time, Juliette is being pursued by the wealthy magnate Eric (Curd Jurgens) and Antoine Tardieu (Christian Marquand).

Antoine and Juliette washed up on the beach

Antoine promises to take Juliette away with him, but she overhears Antoine tell his buddies that he just intends to bed Juliette in a one night stand and then dump her.  Outraged, Juliette flees to the lavish yacht owned by Eric but also refuses to sleep with him or become his mistress.

Juliette has resigned herself to going back to the orphanage when Antoine's younger brother, Michel, asks Juliette to marry him.  Juliette realizes that this is a mistake and warns Michel that she will probably betray him because she just can't help it.  When Michel insists, Juliette says yes and they are married over the objection of Michel's mother.

On the way back home from the wedding, Michel gets into a fight with a local tough guy who has called Juliette a whore.  Skipping the wedding dinner, Juliette takes Michel upstairs and consummates their marriage, scandalously coming downstairs wearing only a bathrobe and loading up take out plates to take back upstairs.  Apparently, this was just as scandalous to the censors in 1956 as it was to the family at the dinner.

Juliette tries hard to be a good and faithful wife to Michel.  Eventually, she is bored out of her mind and doesn't know what to do with herself.  The real problems start, however, when Eric buys out the small shipyard owned by the Tardieu family and makes Antoine his local manager.  When Antoine moves back to St. Tropez, Juliette knows they're going to have a hard time keeping their hands off each other.

Juliette has become really bored with this marriage thing!

When Juliette takes a boat with a bad engine out for a spin, Antoine has to swim out and save her.  Washing up on a remote beach, Juliette and Antoine do what comes natural and have sex.  Being a very honest girl, Juliette takes to her bed saying she has a fever and tells Michel and Antoine's younger brother who tells their mother.  Momma Tardieu tells Michel when he comes home that he needs to run that whore off this minute.  Instead, Michel pursues Juliette to a local bar where she is letting loose and wildly dancing with the Rumba band.  Overcome with jealousy, Michel pulls a gun to kill Juliette but is stopped by Eric who was come to the bar to try to take Juliette for himself.  Eric is shot by Michel and has Antoine take him to a doctor who will be discreet and not tell the police.
Eric orders Antoine to leave St. Tropez and transfers him to a job out of town.  In the last scene we see Michel take Juliette home, apparently for a little sexual healing.  The End.

Juliette gets down with the band!

The film was a big hit in France and stirred up a firestorm of controversy when released in the U.S.  The National League of Decency condemned the move and attempts were made to ban the film in various jurisdictions.

Despite its thin plot, And God Created Woman is a visual feast.  Shot in Cinemascope on location in St. Tropez, the color and the scenery jump out at you.  And, of course, the young Brigitte Bardot is stunningly gorgeous and well deserves her "sex kitten" reputation.  Bardot really doesn't do much acting in this, she mostly just struts around showing off her "assets."

As proof positive that time destroys everything, here's a recent picture of Ms. Bardot 

I watched the Criterion Collection DVD with a fully restored print of the movie in the original French with subtitles. Four out of five bikinis.

  

THE MOON IS BLUE (1953)

Watching this movie in 2015, it's hard to understand all the controversy that surrounded it when it was first released in 1953.  A notorious "dirty movie," which the Motion Picture Production Code Office refused to approve and which was banned in Kansas, Ohio, Maryland and Jersey City, New Jersey, the film today seems really tame and silly.  I felt like Hawkeye Pierce in the M*A*S*H  episode "The Moon is Not Blue."   Hearing about the controversy about the notorious "dirty movie," Hawkeye moves heaven and earth to get a copy of it for the 4077 only to be really disappointed.

About as racy at "The Moon is Blue" gets: 

Cynthia (Dawn Addams) dresses to try to get Donald back.  

It's really hard to understand what about this was thought so bad that it was condemned by the Catholic League of Decency and was thought to corrupt the morals of the public.  Nobody has any sex and nobody says any dirty words.  There's no nudity.  And, in the end, the institution of marriage (between one man and one woman, I might add) is upheld.

William Holden, Maggie McNamara and David Niven share dinner and a lot of peppy dialogue.

Based on a very successful Broadway play, also directed by Otto Preminger, the film version of The Moon is Blue starred William Holden, Maggie McNamara and David Niven.  The slight plot involves the infatuation of an architect, Donald Gresham (William Holden) with an aspiring actress, Patty O'Neill (Maggie McNamara).  Gresham "picks up" O'Neill on the observation deck of the Empire State Building and convinces her to join him for dinner and drinks in his apartment.  There is a lot of snappy dialogue involving Patty telling Donald that she's a virgin and asking him if he intends to seduce her.  Inside the apartment building, Donald is being stalked by his former fiance Cynthia.  Donald and Patty are joined for dinner by Cynthia's playboy father, David Slater (David Niven).

Other than a lot of colorful dialogue about sex, pretty much nothing happens.  The most exciting thing that happens is that Patty's father, a hard bitten Irish cop, thinking that his daughter has been seduced by Donald, shows up and gives him a black eye.  The evening comedy of manners comes to an end, Patty meets Donald the next day back at the Empire State Building, Donald asks Patty to marry him and she accepts.  Patty predicts that they will have five children and they live happily ever after.

"The Moon Is Blue" started out as a successful Broadway play by F. Hugh Herbert.

On stage, Patty was played by Barbara Bel Geddes and Donald by Donald Cook.

The controversy surrounding this movie is really incredible.  In fact, there's more sex and naughtiness in most Shakespeare comedies than there is in this movie.  After United Artists released the film "for adults only" without a seal of approval from the Production Code Office, the film faced censorship fights in court which went all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States which overruled the Supreme Court of Kansas which had upheld the banning of the film.

The great Otto Preminger

It's interesting to speculate what the censors of the early 1950s would have thought about a really "indecent and obscene" film.  Viewing the film today, William Holden and David Niven were really great actors, and do a good job with this light comedic material.  Maggie McNamara is cute and handles her peppy dialogue very well.  (The dialogue is like a Tarantino movie - it sounds good, but nobody talks like this in real life!).  It's not a great film by any means, but it still hold up as an entertaining light romantic comedy.  Three stars.

Kiss Me Deadly (1955) & Repo Man (1984)

Kiss Me Deadly (1955) and Repo Man (1984) are a couple of strange ass movies.  I watched them back to back because I had read on the internet that Repo Man was heavily influenced by Kiss Me Deadly.

Based on Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer novel of the same name, about the only thing that this weird surrealist flick share's with Spillane's novel is the title.  Reportedly, screen writer A.I. Bezzirides thought that Spillane's novel was a piece of crap and jettisoned the whole thing and wrote a screenplay about nuclear armageddon.

Mike Hammer (Ralph Meeker) and his secretary Velda (Maxine Cooper) get down to business!

The original Mickey Spillane novel involves a mafia conspiracy about a suitcase full of drugs.  This movie involves a conspiracy about a nuclear device concealed in a box.  According to the Wikipedia article on Kiss Me Deadly:

 "It comes to represent the 1950s Cold War fear and nuclear weapon paranoia about the atomic bomb that permeated American culture. (Homage is paid to this glowing MacGuffin in the 1984 cult film Repo Man, the film Ronin, and in Tarantino's film Pulp Fiction.)

Bad things happen when the nuclear box is opened!

When the box is opened, really bad shit happens and nobody may ever get over it.  The film stars Ralph Meeker as a sadistic, totally amoral Mike Hammer, Cloris Leachman as the damsel in distress, Gaby Rodgers as the two faced dike, Albert Deckker as the mad scientist, Maxine Cooper as Mike's main squeeze Velda.

Filmsite.org describes Kiss Me Deadly as "the definitive apocalyptic, nihilistic, science fiction film noir of all time - at the close of the classic noir period."

Repo Man was inspired by Kiss Me Deadly and is a much more entertaining movie.  According to Wikipedia "Repo Man received near universal acclaim and is considered by many as one of the best films of 1984."

1984 is back in the Bad Catholic's heyday, but I guess I missed this because I was probably too busy graduating from High School, applying to college and getting a job for the first time.  But, better late than never.  This time, the MacGuffin is some shining dead aliens in the trunk of a Malibu.  The shining light in the trunk which will kill you is directly inspired by Kiss Me Deadly.  Unlike Kiss Me Deadly, Repo Man sort of has a happy ending.

Repo Man stars Emilio Estevez and Harry Dean Stanton.  It is listed by Entertainment Weekly at number seven on their list of the best cult movies of all time.  The sound track features songs by popular punk rock artists Iggy Pop, Black Flag, the Circle Jerks and others.

The Glowing Malibu from Roswell, New Mexico

Roger Ebert said "I saw "Repo Man" near the end of busy stretch on the movie beat: Three days during which I saw more relentlessly bad movies than during any comparable period in memory.  Most of those bad movies were so cynically constructed out of formula ideas and "commercial" ingredients that watching them was an ordeal.  "Repo Man" comes out of left field, has no big stars, didn't cost much, takes chances, dares to be unconventional, is funny, and works.  There is a lesson here."

The Bad Catholic gives Kiss Me Deadly three and half glowing nuclear boxes and gives Repo Man five glowing car trunks.