 |
| Is there a connection between these two very different directors? |
Not long ago, on this very blog, I declared that Ed Wood and Woody Allen were opposites. Eddie held onto seemingly every bit of footage he ever developed in the hopes of using it someday, while Woody scrapped and reshot an entire feature film at a cost of millions of dollars just because he felt like it. Obviously, these men had very different approaches to the filmmaking process. Besides, Woody is an Oscar winner who for decades (until his late-in-life downfall and disgrace) was one of America's most-respected and praised directors. And Eddie? Well... you know. MST3K. Golden Turkey Awards. "Worst Director Ever." That stuff.
But maybe these two have more in common than I'd thought. For one thing, they were born in the same state (New York) just eleven years apart. They witnessed decades of the same history and experienced a lot of the same popular culture, too. So they were drawing on the same source material when they became filmmakers and writers. Maybe their views even aligned to some degree. I know, for example, that both men were stubborn haters of rock music and never warmed to it, sort of like how people of my parents' generation remained deeply resentful of rap music even after it had been around for decades. And when you read Allen's short story "Count Dracula," as collected in the book Getting Even (1971), you get the sense that he's inspired by Bela Lugosi's portrayal of the title character.
 |
| An early Woody Allen film. |
Recently, while doing research for my podcast, These Days Are Ours, I had to revisit one of Woody Allen's early comedies, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask) (1972). I hadn't thought much about that movie in years, but it was directly referenced in a Garry Marshall comedy I was reviewing called Nothing in Common (1986) so I had to refresh my memory. Specifically, in Nothing in Common, Tom Hanks quotes a joke from Everything You Always... in the hopes of impressing Sela Ward. It doesn't work. (Or maybe it does, because she sleeps with him just a few scenes later.)
When I started looking into Everything You Always..., one of the first sources I consulted was the movie's Wikipedia entry. And there, I discovered this very intriguing passage in the film's synopsis:
Victor, a sex researcher, and Helen Lacey, a journalist, visit Dr. Bernardo, a researcher who formerly worked with Masters and Johnson but now has his own laboratory complete with a lab assistant named Igor. After they see a series of bizarre sexual experiments underway at the lab and realize that Bernardo is insane, they escape before Helen becomes the subject of another of his experiments. The segment culminates with a scene in which the countryside is terrorized by a giant runaway breast created by the researcher. The first part of this segment is a parody of Ed Wood's Bride of the Monster (1955), and especially, The Unearthly (1957), which also stars John Carradine.
There it was: a direct reference to Ed Wood himself in an article about a Woody Allen movie! Even when I'm not looking for Eddie, I find him! Obviously, I had to investigate further.
Luckily, Everything You Always... was easy to find online for free. This was among Woody's earliest directorial efforts—only his fourth full-length feature—and it's one of the zany, absurdist comedies that marked the first phase of his film career. By the early 1970s, through his standup comedy and his countless television appearances, he'd built up an instantly recognizable persona: the neurotic nebbish with an out-of-control libido and a penchant for Groucho Marxist wisecracks. Those early films of his, such as Take the Money and Run (1969) and Bananas (1971), traded heavily on that persona. They're also comedic free-for-alls, replete with sight gags, fourth-wall breaks, stylistic experimentation, and genre parody. They exist in a realm somewhere between Mel Brooks and Mad magazine.
Everything You Always... is arguably the last of Allen's wacky "anything goes" movies before he matured as a director. His next efforts, Sleeper (1973) and Love and Death (1975), though still unabashedly comedic, were moderately more grounded from a narrative standpoint. By Annie Hall (1977), he was already mixing in some drama with his comedy, though the fourth-wall breaks and stylistic experimentation continued. After that, he made Interiors (1978), his first all-out drama and also the first in which he did not appear onscreen. Since then, he's made dozens of movies ranging from deathly serious to unabashedly goofy.
Even among Allen's wild-and-woolly early films, Everything You Always... stands out for a number of reasons. It's one of his only literary adaptations, for instance. The film is very loosely based on psychiatrist David Reuben's 1969 nonfiction best seller of the same name, which had chapters devoted to then-shocking topics such as impotence, masturbation, abortion, frigidity, and more. Allen and Reuben apparently didn't think much of each other and exchanged unkind words in the press. But, still, Everything You Always... is the rare Allen film that's unmistakably tied to someone else's work. The film's marketing campaign strongly emphasizes its connection to Reuben's controversial yet undeniably popular book.
Another factor that sets this film apart is that it has no overarching narrative and is instead broken down into seven separate vignettes about different aspects of sexuality. Topics include aphrodisiacs, cross-dressing, bestiality, and ejaculation. Don't look for reliable medical advice here, though; these are comedy sketches that aim strictly for yuks, often juvenile ones. While Reuben wanted to educate his audience (whom he felt had a "stone age" understanding of sex), Allen's only goal is to entertain. The director himself stars in four of the seven vignettes, including the one said to be influenced by Ed Wood's Bride of the Monster. We'll get to it in a moment.
 |
| Lou Jacobi in Everything You Always... |
Allen does not appear in this part of the film, incidentally. In his place is comedic character actor Lou Jacobi (1913-2009) as Sam Musgrave, a seemingly-average middle-class husband and father with a secret cross-dressing fetish. I think Allen specifically chose Jacobi for this role because there is nothing effeminate or androgynous about the actor whatsoever. With his receding hairline, bushy mustache, gruff voice, jowly face, and lumpy physique, Jacobi is about as un-ladylike as a person can be.
"Are Transvestites Homosexuals?" unfolds rather like a sitcom episode or a theatrical farce. Sam and his wife, Tess, are invited to have dinner with the wealthy, snobbish parents of their son-in-law, Alvin. They're uncomfortable and bored during the affair, but everyone's on their best behavior and trying to make polite dinner table conversation. Suddenly, Sam sneaks away, ostensibly to use the bathroom but actually to try on some of Alvin's mother's clothing! Once suitably attired, he minces around the room, looking a bit like Bella Abzug. This is the happiest we ever see Sam. Unfortunately, Alvin's father picks that moment to look in the bedroom for some African wood carvings, so poor Sam has to dive out the window to keep from being caught.
Now on the front lawn in full drag in broad daylight, Sam worriedly plans his next move. Within moments, a thief steals Sam's purse and runs down the street. This attracts a great deal of unwanted attention, first from passersby and then from the police. Soon enough, Tess investigates the commotion, as do Alvin's parents. Tess recognizes her husband, and the jig is officially up. In front of a crowd of gawkers, his wife, Alvin's parents, and the police, a humiliated Sam strips off his stolen feminine attire. Later, at home in their bedroom, Sam and Tess have a conversation that feels like a parody of Glen or Glenda:
TESS: Sam, you should have told me, that's all. I would have understood.SAM: It's not the kind of thing that's easy to talk about.TESS: Sam, we've been married for years. I love you. You love me. You could have come to me and said, "Tess, I have a diseased mind. I'm a sick individual. I need help. I need treatment. I'm perverted. I'm unfit to function with normal, decent people." I would have understood.SAM: Thank you, Tess. I'm going to see Dr. Fillmore next week.(They settle into bed.)TESS: Well, I'm glad.
SAM: You're wonderful.(A beat. Then:)TESS: The look on their faces when the police removed your hat...(They both laugh as the scene fades to black.)
Now, I'm not saying that Woody Allen ever saw Glen or Glenda. But isn't it odd that both directors covered such similar ground? And it's such specific ground, too! The conversation between Tess and Sam is eerily like the heart-to-heart talks between Glen (Ed Wood) and Barbara (Dolores Fuller) in Glen or Glenda, except Allen plays the moment for laughs. And can't you just imagine the unseen Dr. Fillmore comparing notes with Dr. Alton (Timothy Farrell) from Glenda? As for whether the segment is any good or not, opinions vary wildly. One critic called it the comedic highlight of the entire movie; another said it was laughless. Me, I found it modestly amusing. If you have a high tolerance for I Love Lucy and Three's Company, you'll have a good time with this.
 |
| Woody Allen and John Carradine. |
Like most evil scientists in horror movies, Dr. Bernardo works out of a Frankenstein-type lab located in his own home. That trope is so persistent that it lasted well into the 21st century, as evidenced by The Human Centipede: First Sequence (2009). Speaking of tropes, the scientist also has a deformed manservant named Igor (Ref Sanchez) whom he cruelly controls with a whip. After treating Victor and Helen to dinner, Bernardo takes them to the lab to show them what he's been working on. What follows are a series of sex-related sight gags: a man making love to a giant loaf of rye bread, a lesbian whose brain is being transplanted into the body of a telephone company employee, etc.
Victor and Helen are shocked by these experiments, and when the deranged Bernardo announces his intention to lock Helen in a room full of twenty horny Boy Scouts, our hero and heroine make their narrow escape. Bernardo tries to shoot them but only shoots his own lab equipment, leading to a fire that destroys the lab. Victor and Helen survive, but Bernardo and Igor perish. And the trouble is far from over! One of the mad doctor's experiments, a gigantic breast, escapes from the lab and goes bouncing across the landscape, destroying everything in its wake and squirting half-and-half from its enormous nipple. Happily, Victor devises a solution: a giant brassiere.
I'd say that, in its early passages, "Sexual Research" borrows pretty evenly from The Unearthly and Bride of the Monster. When Victor and Helen arrived at Bernardo's creepy Gothic mansion, I could not help but think of the Old Willows Place from Bride. And, just like Dr. Eric Vornoff, Bernardo is fond of strapping people to tables and putting colanders on their heads. Woody Allen was very wise to cast John Carradine (1906-1988) as Dr. Bernardo, since Carradine played innumerable mad scientists in real horror movies and seems right at home in this parody. He brings conviction and gravitas to lines like: "It was I who first discovered how to make a man impotent by hiding his hat!"
As you might guess, Dr. Bernardo is one of those mad scientists who is bitter about his rejection by the scientific community, and some of his tirades could have come directly from Dr. Vornoff. Here's Bernardo on that topic:
Does that sound mad? That's what they called me at Masters and Johnson's clinic. Mad. Because I had visions of explorations in sexual areas undreamed of by lesser human beings.
And here, for comparison, is Vornoff:
One is always considered mad when one perfects something that others cannot grasp.
Pretty similar, right? On the other hand, the room of groaning, hormone-crazed Boy Scouts is an obvious reference to The Unearthly and its dungeon full of beastly, animalistic men. Like the scientists in both Bride and The Unearthly, Dr. Bernardo has a manservant. But Allen uses a stooped-over Dwight Frye-type hunchback instead of Tor Johnson's hulking Lobo. Tor was already dead by the time Everything You Always... was made, but I'm sure Lee Kolima would have been happy to take the job.
Once the giant breast escapes the lab, "Sexual Research" becomes a parody of giant-monster-on-the-loose movies. I'd compare it to The Blob (1958), The Creeping Terror (1964), and basically any film in which an oversized reptile, ape, or insect goes on a rampage. Here, too, Allen's knowledge of the genre is obvious. Nearly every detail we see—from the skeptical small town sheriff to the doomed couple making out in a parked car—feels like it could have appeared in a real monster film. I also liked how Victor, who is not a member of the police force or military or even the government, is somehow immediately put in charge of subduing the threat. That's the way it usually works out in these movies: the first guy to spot a monster is then responsible for stopping it.
 |
| The gas station from Woody Allen's Everything You Always... |
And can we talk about gas station scenes in horror movies for a minute? In "Sexual Research," Victor and Helen meet while Victor is getting "fifty cents worth of regular" for his 1961 Ford Galaxie. Helen's car is broken down somewhere nearby, but they're both going to see Dr. Bernardo and decide to carpool there. Watching this scene, I experienced deja vu. I've been sitting through cheap sci-fi and horror films most of my life, and it's really remarkable how many of these films have a scene at an old-fashioned gas station. Often, the only employee on duty at such a place will be a bewildered bumpkin in overalls or a jumpsuit. Some of my personal favorites:
- The ill-fated youngsters in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) stop at a forlorn-looking gas station shortly before they are victimized by a family of cannibals. They eventually learn that the seemingly-friendly owner of the station (Jim Siedow) is actually a member of that family.
- In The Horror of Party Beach (1964), a trio of young women pull into a Cities Service to ask for directions while driving through a small Connecticut town. There, they take the opportunity to ask the Gomer Pyle-esque pump jockey about the murders that have been plaguing the area. In the next scene, the women get a flat tire and are promptly killed by monsters.
- In Hand of Death (1962), John Agar's misguided scientist character begins to transform into a mutant whose very touch can cause instant death, so he decides to go on the lam. During his road trip, he stops at (you guessed it) a quaint gas station and kills the bumbling, comedic attendant (played by Joe Besser of The Three Stooges).
- In Eegah (1962), shortly before encountering a prehistoric caveman (Richard Kiel) who has survived into the 20th century, the film's young hero, Tommy (Arch Hall, Jr.), and his girlfriend Roxy (Marilyn Manning) converse playfully at the Sky Chief station where Tommy is employed.
- At the very outset of The Touch of Satan (1971), bewildered protagonist Jodie (Michael Berry) stops to gas up his 1971 Maverick at a station where the folksy attendant (John J. Fox, who coincidentally also appears in Everything You Always...) warns him about the "froma-kidal maniacs" that have been terrorizing the town lately. No points for guessing that Jodie soon meets said maniacs.
- Near the beginning of the Ed Wood-scripted The Revenge of Dr. X (or whatever title you want to call it) (1967), mad-scientist-to-be Dr. Bragan (James Craig) stops at an extremely rustic gas station where he chats with the eccentric owner (Al Ricketts) and finds the strange plant that will eventually become the catalyst for the rest of the plot.
That's not a comprehensive list of such scenes, obviously, but it took Everything You Always... to make me notice this strange motif and really think about it. That's what parodies often do; they bring attention to the tropes and tricks that we've been seeing for years. At the outset of this article, I said that Woody Allen and Ed Wood were probably drawing on the same pop cultural references simply because they lived through the same period of American history and were making their own movies at the same time. "Sexual Research" proves how much overlap there was between these two men. I don't know if Eddie ever saw it, but I'm guessing he would have loved it.
As the "Sexual Research" segment winds down, Victor reflects on the folly of Dr. Bernardo's work: "The truth of the matter is, I've learned one thing from this whole situation, and that is, when it comes to sex, there are certain things that should always be left unknown. And with my luck, they probably will be." To me, that's just a Woody Allen-ish way of saying, "He tampered in God's domain."