For those hording toilet paper

Hollywood After Dark (1968)

Strangely (or maybe not), I was thinking about Peg Entwistle’s suicidal leap from the Hollywood sign in 1932 as I was watching Hollywood After Dark (1968), part of a double feature of Rue McClanahan films by Something Weird Video. This isn’t a good film in the slightest but those involved in its making do try to take a sincere stab at commenting on the boulevard of broken dreams that exists in The City of Angels, where success isn’t as easy to come by as failure. You wind up shaking the moneymaker (or star in no-budget turkeys like Hollywood After Dark) in some sleazy rundown strip club, the epitome of desperate times call for desperate measures. I have to say, though, that Rue honest to God tries in this tedious, extremely talky melodrama; it looks like it cost about a buck-forty in production costs (in other words, locations owned by people the director/writer John Hayes knows). “Alan Smithee” first emerged around 1968 from what I gather, but I think Hayes made the film years prior to its release date; he might  could have used it in the case of this film. Anyhoo, this film features Rue as a down-on-her-luck actress stuck in a strip club hoping to eventually get that one great read at the right time to secure the part of her dreams. However, such a lofty goal seems always out of reach, as she eventually latches onto a poor fella who runs a junkyard. His name is Tony (the morose, often sulking, most-of-the-time-miserable Tony Vorno), and Rue’s Sandy works at a club whose owner enlists Tony in a robbery scheme. This is the kind of film that stages both strip numbers and a heist with as little excitement as possible.

I’ve read that this was a film Rue (not surprisingly) didn’t acknowledge, and obviously her doing the butt-jiggle probably had something to do with that. It is one of those humiliating lowlights of a career that would improve in a few decades. The strip dance was perhaps not even as embarrassing as a Hollywood screenwriter (a real sleaze) fondling her legs after getting her drunk. This was supposed to be her big chance at attaining an acting gig, but it was your basic “casting couch” that produced only Tony’s beating the shit out of the writer in a fight that winds up being a real bore (nothing in the film seems to work, not even a good neighborhood fisticuffs grows out of what is a volatile turn of events.).

 He may not be amused....

 ...but this guy is.

The worst kind of jazz plays as backdrop to the most boring heist in cinematic history (perhaps not, but good grief is this heist dull!). No sound, just bad jazz and a heist that couldn’t be less exciting. There’s just no energy. Everyone (rightfully so, I guess) is slumming through this.

This was the period of the aching young man, and I imagine every actor was giving his best James Dean and Marlon Brando. Vorno gives it his best shot, here, with a character stumbling around in the listless wasteland of the mundane. The potential for securing some "easy money", getting out of Hollywood, and finding "an island" to spend has too much allure for Vorno to withstand. He wants to go away with Rue, but she isn't keen on joining him with money stolen, instead confirming his suspicions that she will once again head back on stage to perform for ten leering males ogling her wiggling ass. 

Vorno is to share the money with two men who came to him with the job, but one of them is a bit greedy, killing his accomplice. We see the killer dumping his accomplice in a boat prior to Vorno's arrival. It never usually ends well after a successful heist, does it?

Vorno gets his "I'm cold. So cold..." moment in the film. And Rue has that "gasp" and "sigh" that accompanies the potential for a happy ending squandered. Vorno also has plenty of moments where he agonizes (to the best of limited capabilities) about decisions made. Rue doesn't have to do much because her character's dilemma speaks itself.

That said, as I have mentioned previously about the likes of Ray Dennis Steckler, that I’m glad little Z-grade curiosities like Hollywood After Dark (1968) exist. It proves that anyone can make a movie. Plus, these kinds of junk movies are a lens on an era of time now 45 years removed. With the studio system falling to its knees, these films were allowed to be made and circulated. Something Weird Video is our vehicle to travel back to that time. This company never met a film they wouldn’t like to distribute to the cult masses.

We are kidding ourselves if there’s any reason to believe this film would matter at all if it weren’t for Rue’s involvement. There’s just something about seeing an actress pre-stardom in a disastrous part that she hopes remains buried six feet under in obscurity. With a company like Something Weird Video (or jokesters like Rifftrax and Mystery Science Theater 3000), that wasn’t likely to happen. She’s long gone now and here it is, Hollywood After Dark, a turd from yesteryear ready to stink up the nostrils for all bad movie lovers everywhere.