STANLEY (1972)

Director: William Grefé

Writers: Gary Crutcher, William Grefé

Producer: William Grefé

Cast: Chris Robinson, Alex Rocco, Steve Alaimo, Mark Harris, Marcia Knight (as Marcie Knight), Susan Carroll, Rey Baumel, Paul Avery, Gary Crutcher, Pamela Talus, Milton ‘Butterball’ Smith, William Marquez, Mel Pape, (and uncredited cast) Charles Lawlor, Melanie Grefé, Frank Weed, Julio C. Chávez

Tim Ochopee is a Seminole Indian living alone in his shack amidst the Florida Everglades. His Vietnam War experiences have soured him on humanity. He feels more kinship with the many snakes that he has caught and cares for in his home. Tim’s closest companion is the rattlesnake he names Stanley. When various locals further aggravate the disturbed young man’s misanthropy, Tim uses his venomous pets to enforce his sense of justice.

The Flashback Fanatic movie review

Since 1971’s Willard was a big hit at the box office, animal-inflicted-horror films were all the rage for the rest of the decade. Florida filmmaker William Grefé was savvy enough to hop on that trend early. That surely inspired Grefé’s dream, which formed the story basis of his weaponized-snake flick Stanley.

This film takes a slow-burn approach by establishing the setting, psychology of the protagonist, and the conflicts that protagonist has with the rest of the main characters. This certainly seems to be a Willard-modeled template, though the setting and characters are unique here.

But snakes alive! No time is wasted in immediately rousing the audience’s ophidiophobia. Our maladjusted hero, Tim Ochopee, is bitten by a venomous snake in the very first scene. Tim takes it in stride and adds the slithering reptile to his vast array of snakes that he keeps as pets in his humble home. We soon learn that snakes are the only true friends the reclusive Vietnam War veteran has.

Chris Robinson stars as lead character Tim Ochopee. Robinson was a prolific actor on television, and he is probably best remembered for continuing roles in the soap operas General Hospital (1963–present), Another World (1964–99), and The Bold and the Beautiful (1987–present).

Robinson is one of the many Caucasian actors impersonating Native Americans in this film’s era. Details of his character’s backstory are sketchy. Although his Tim Ochopee is referred to by the locals as an Indian, there is one moment when he says that he does not feel like he is either an Indian or a white man. This could be a throwaway indication he may be of mixed-race heritage and that his blue-green eyes are appropriate for his character.

What will probably impress the most about Robinson’s performance in Stanley is how much interaction he has with snakes. It is absolutely vital for this story that his character is completely comfortable mingling with his unusual pets. He is constantly talking to them, removing them from their cages to crawl all over the floor of his home, draping them around his neck, and even setting places at his dinner table for a couple of them. His petting and conversations with his closest chum, the rattlesnake Stanley, makes the poisonous, scaly critter seem almost cuddly.

Not only Robinson, but many other cast members are in very close proximity to the snakes in the film. Even with the on-set snake wrangler’s coaching and milking of the poisonous snakes’ venom, this had to be quite a challenge for the cast to be able to focus on their performances while their slithering co-stars are around. There were some measures taken with the snakes, such as defanging, that helped ensure actors’ safety. Unfortunately, there seems to be quite a bit of snake abuse happening in the film that just would not fly today. I can only hope that the abuse was only inflicted on some of the snakes that had died in captivity, but that appears doubtful in a couple of shots.

Stoic recluse Tim Ochopee is confronted by some obnoxious louts (Steve Alaimo, Mark Harris, and Paul Avery) in the employ of Richard Thomkins. This entrepreneur’s business-model is dependent on harvesting the reptiles in the Everglades for their skins to be used as fashion accessories. Thomkins’ philosophy is that he should be appreciated for making “worthless” animals into something valuable (belts, vests, shoes, etc.) It is not only Thomkins’ predation-for-profit of Tim’s beloved snakes that creates conflict; Tim’s father was “accidentally” shot by one of Thomkins’ goons.

As Richard Thomkins, Alex Rocco’s performance is delightfully despicable. He is a soulless capitalist creep who thinks everything and everyone is for sale. Thomkins not only pays for the company of his “girlfriend” (Pamela Talus), he also leers at his teenage daughter (Susan Carroll), who he thinks should respect him because his money provides everything she could want. His vanity and insecurity make him quite entertaining. We watch Thomkins primping before his poolside mirror as he performs a series of pointless and low-effort motions, as if they will somehow maintain his physique. The ridiculous dumbbells he curls are little more than paperweights. His loud swim trunks perfectly complement the frivolous nature of this character.

Alex Rocco is probably the most recognizable cast member in Stanley. His exploitation movie roots were planted with his very first film role in Russ Meyer’s Motorpsycho (1965). He would become a ubiquitous face as a guest-star on many television series for decades and was a busy character actor in feature films. Rocco would be awarded a Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a comedy television series as Al Floss in The Famous Teddy Z (1989–90). Perhaps his most high-profile role was as Moe Greene in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather (1972). While Rocco was in Miami, Florida doing promotion for Coppola’s film, he squeezed in his enjoyably hissable role for Stanley.

Without a doubt, Gloria is the most important character in Stanley. Why? Because she is this film’s featured burlesque dancer, of course! I must admit that her stirring my adolescent loins (when I first saw Stanley on late- night television before I even knew I had loins) has endeared this flick to me. Ahhh, those never-to-be-forgotten formative experiences… They have honed the cinematic insight and critical perception that I know you all appreciate and have come to expect here.

While charming the trouser snakes at The Climax club (and in the film’s audience), Gloria’s dance routine is distinguished by brandishing the snakes that Tim lends to her for the act. It is an extra kink she adds later to her performance that pushes our protagonist even further over the edge. However, early on she proves to me that Tim must already have a few screws loose if he’d rather snuggle with snakes than Gloria. Perhaps he is afraid of being gored by Gloria’s fearsome, false eyelashes.

Marcia Knight appeared in three of director Grefé’s 1970s films. Her filmography is quite limited, but she seems to have made her movie debut back in 1961’s inept-movie exemplar The Beast of Yucca Flats. Knight is quite good here as Gloria. She is embittered and a bit sad as an aging exotic dancer stuck with her disrespectful, money-grubbing hubby (Rey Baumel) who owns the club where she works. Even when Knight’s Gloria does the wrong thing, we understand why. Hell, with a beer in my hand and her on stage, I’d let Gloria get away with murder. Gloria has not only cultivated my critical faculties, she has also nurtured nuance in my wishy-washy morality.

Exploitation films just can’t serve up too much cheesecake, so we have sexy Susan Carroll around to add to that beauty-and-the-beasts vibe. As Susie Thomkins, the impudent, rebellious, and promiscuous teenage daughter of this flick’s biggest heel, she hates her greedy and intolerant father. I find it quite refreshing and honest that this film does not make Susie some idealized moral counterpoint to her awful old man; she is not really very likable. It stands to reason that she might be spoiled being raised by a rich jerk like Richard Thomkins, and that some of his lack of tact might rub off on her.

Therefore, it’s up to our maladjusted hero to give us someone to root for. Once all the foes of Tim Ochopee step up, and then step way over the line, our snake-loving loner starts slinging serpents around to do his “dirty work.” That’s what we all are waiting for, right? Those oh so mellow ’70s had no room for the “I’m okay—you’re okay” philosophy at the drive-in. Yeah, yeah, I’m still trying to justify my Gloria-influenced, wishy-washy morality.

BLUE VELVET (1986)

Director: David Lynch

Writer: David Lynch

Producer: Fred Caruso

Cast: Kyle MacLachlan, Isabella Rossellini, Dennis Hopper, Laura Dern, Dean Stockwell, George Dickerson, Hope Lange, Priscilla Pointer, Frances Bay, Fred Pickler, Brad Dourif, Jack Nance, J. Michael Hunter, Ken Stovitz, Jack Harvey, Jon Jon Snipes, Dick Green, Peter Carew, Leonard Watkins, Moses Gibson, Philip Markert, Selden Smith, Donald Moore, A. Michelle Depland, Katie Reid, Michelle Sasser, Sparky (the dog), Angelo Badalamenti, Jean Pierre Viale, Robert J. Maxwell (uncredited)

When his father (Jack Harvey) suffers a health crisis, college student Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan) returns to his small hometown of Lumberton, North Carolina. While walking home from visiting his father in the hospital, Jeffrey discovers a severed, human ear lying in a field. He brings the body part to Detective Williams (George Dickerson) at the Lumberton Police Department. Jeffrey’s curiosity is roused, and he learns from Detective Williams’ daughter, Sandy (Laura Dern), that she overheard her father often mentioning the name of Dorothy Vallens in connection to his other current cases. Vallens (Isabella Rossellini) is a local nightclub singer whose apartment is near the field where Jeffrey found the severed ear. Jeffrey begins his own investigation by sneaking into the singer’s apartment. The young amateur sleuth is soon embroiled in the dangerous circumstances of Dorothy Vallens’ life.

The Flashback Fanatic movie review

I have never been a fan of films that are so obtuse or personal on the director’s part that I can’t possibly interpret them as having any meaning or narrative coherence. Directors creating such works will probably write everyone off who does not “get it” as either being ignorant or wanting to be spoon fed all their entertainment. Such directors are usually affecting cultural and intellectual superiority, when they can’t just admit that they are so self-indulgent that they won’t bother to tell a story well. The late filmmaker David Lynch often comes perilously close to fitting into that category, yet his work can usually hold my attention.

The recent passing of David Lynch has prompted me to revisit some of his films. He is such an idiosyncratic filmmaker that his work can be interesting and head-scratching (Lost Highway-1997) or utterly confusing and irritating (Inland Empire-2006). Nevertheless, each of his films seems to establish a mood all their own, which is probably why David Lynch has inspired the stylistic term “Lynchian.”

Although I am trying to reacquaint myself with some David Lynch films and have not seen all his work, I will probably always feel that Blue Velvet is THE David Lynch movie. I think it is the most accessible of his films, while it still benefits from those touches of Lynchian weirdness.

Now, I suppose that the more erudite among you are probably poopooing me as the most shallow of Lynch-film watchers. Sure, this schlockoholic likes Blue Velvet because it fits a genre and has a coherent plot. However, what I like most about the film are the oddball characters with behaviors we can’t quite understand, but can try to interpret, and the bits of incongruous humor. These are things that do not appear just to fulfill any mystery story or crime drama expectation. They add a grotesque flair to this genre film that makes it distinctive and offbeat, just as any dangerous and bizarre experience should feel to both the film’s protagonist and the audience.

Artist that David Lynch is, he also presents imagery that can be a bit perplexing, causing us to ask: Why do we need to see bugs crawling beneath the front yard of a cozy home in the suburbs, and why must we zoom into the dark abyss of a severed ear? These stylistic touches are meant to be disturbing and perhaps never intended to make any sort of statement. We may attach meaning to them or simply be a bit weirded out. Either reaction serves to make this movie unique and atmospheric without making a jumble of the story.

I am certainly not the first to state that Blue Velvet is about corruption. More specifically, I think it is about the perception of that corruption; a filmic painting displaying corruption in contrast to the idyllic setting it infests. That corruption is not presented as a process. Rather, it is shown as already established and perhaps intrinsic to all things. An example of this is the front yard in that postcard-perfect slice of American suburbia teeming with voracious insects that seem engaged in an unsavory orgy of consumption, copulation, or combat. That thriving nastiness has always been there just beneath the proper, placid surface.

Such a perspective applies to the some of the denizens of Lumberton. The police department has a corrupt detective who has been in cahoots with the criminal element long before the story begins. The Lumberton criminals we meet are presented, without any backstories, brandishing their eccentricities to leave us wondering how such behaviors became instilled in them. This sudden confrontation with unpredictable evil leaves us just as unnerved as Jeffrey Beaumont, the young hero of the story. As most of the narrative is from Jeffrey’s perspective, there is no storytelling cause-and-effect preparation helping us assimilate to the unsettling reveal of the corruption already underway in idyllic Lumberton.

The corruption element can also taint the seemingly decent people we are inclined to root for. Our hero, Jeffrey Beaumont, becomes ensnared in the dangerous situations resulting from local chanteuse Dorothy Vallens being controlled and abused by local criminal Frank Booth. At first, it seems that Jeffrey is simply an impetuous, young adventurer wanting to find clues to a crime. Once we see him hiding in Dorothy Vallens’ apartment spying on the distraught, beautiful woman, we may be seeing him indulging his voyeurism. This aspect of Jeffrey’s character was made much clearer in some excised footage meant to take place earlier in the story that underscored Jeffrey’s conflict between his prurience and his basic decency. We are shown corruption as something everyone must grapple with.

Kyle MacLachlan made his feature-film-starring debut in David Lynch’s previous film, the ill-fated, big-budget, 1984 adaptation of Frank Herbert’s science-fiction novel Dune. MacLachlan would also star as FBI agent Dale Cooper, the hero of Lynch’s cult television series Twin Peaks (1990–91); its prequel film, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992); and the 2017 television series revival, Twin Peaks: The Return.

As Blue Velvet’s Jeffrey Beaumont, MacLachlan seems guileless, yet his character’s curiosity may be leading him into indulging darker impulses. Of course, our own curiosity is waiting to be sated by Jeffrey’s investigations, so we identify with him, even if his motives may not be totally pure. He still seems moral and is upset by the injustice and brutality he witnesses, but his sensitivity does not make him an infallible hero. Jeffrey Beaumont is both physically and emotionally vulnerable in the dangerous situations he faces.

The daughter of actors Bruce Dern and Diane Ladd, Laura Dern, would begin her acting career at a very young age and have quite a prolific career herself. Like her Blue Velvet co-star Kyle MacLachlan, Dern would continue to work in further David Lynch film projects: Wild at Heart (1990), Inland Empire (2006), and with MacLachlan in the 2017 Twin Peaks: The Return series.

As Lumberton Police Detective John Williams’ teenage daughter, Laura Dern’s Sandy seems to be the most unsullied character in Blue Velvet’s community. She becomes Jeffrey’s reluctant cohort in his investigation when he gently coerces her assistance to help him gain access to the apartment of the mysterious Dorothy Vallens. During the rest of the movie, Sandy is Jeffrey’s confidant. Dern’s Sandy has appealing, nice-girl chemistry with MacLachlan’s Jeffrey. She also expresses the film’s theme of lurking corruption when she half-jokingly tells Jeffrey, “I don’t know if you’re a detective or a pervert.”

Our neo-noir femme fatale here is Isabella Rossellini. She is shrouded in mystery and misery as The Slow Club’s lounge singer, Dorothy Vallens. This was only the Italian actress’s second American film, and Rossellini gives a very brave performance. Her character is only glamorous when in the nightclub spotlight. The rest of the time, we see her as a tragic and tortured woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Her beauty entices Jeffrey Beaumont, and her plight earns his sympathy and compels him to continue his risky investigation.

If ever there was a scene-stealing performance, it is Dennis Hopper’s as the despicable Frank Booth. He is full of bizarre quirks and outbursts that are usually profane and threatening or funny. His psychotic temperament drives his every scene to an unpleasant conclusion. Frank Booth is the volatile thug that has made Dorothy Vallens his virtual prisoner. Frank seems to actually revere Dorothy as he cries during her nightclub performance of “Blue Velvet.” Otherwise, she is nothing but his long-suffering slave. While we hate his guts, we still see he has some unspoken mental conflicts probably responsible for his manic and violent behavior.

Dean Stockwell manages the impossible feat of stealing his single scene in the film from Dennis Hopper. As the “suave” Ben, Stockwell is an eccentric criminal crony of Frank Booth, yet another of the many oddballs in the criminal underworld of Lumberton. There is really no plot purpose served by Ben and his scene; it is just a weird and wild stop during Frank’s nighttime road trip. This adds to the unpredictable nightmare vibe of the film.

Although now regarded as a classic from an important filmmaker, when Blue Velvet was first released, many were either nonplussed or offended. This was no mere crime thriller; while it dallied in the genre, its main goal was to evoke a unique atmosphere by contrasting the comforting stability of small-town America with the unsettling reveal of lurking, inexplicable evil. Whether you call it a mystery yarn, crime drama, or neo-noir, Blue Velvet is stylized filmic fabric hung from the genre curtain rod. It needs that genre support for its display, but its style is what intrigues, shocks, and fascinates.