Hollywood Boulevard (1976)
If Singin’ in the Rain had been contemporary instead of a period picture, if it had not been idealistic and innocent about making it in show business, if it had been allowed to show nudity and revel in destruction and carnage, if it had been absurd instead of a song-and-dance entertainment, and if it had been so self-referential as to cross the line between homage and metafiction, the result would have been Hollywood Boulevard. Here is a ‘70s B movie about the making of ‘70s B movies, all exploitation and gratuitousness, true to the tagline on the poster reading “Shamelessly loaded with sex and violence.” One cannot say with a straight face that this is a “good” movie – it’s trashy and proud of it. But one can say that, as trashy films go, it achieves exactly what the filmmakers set out to achieve.
First-time directors Joe Dante and Allan Arkush were both proteges of Roger Corman. This is only fitting, not just because Corman is himself a maker of B movies, but also because Dante and Arkush rely on several of his moviemaking methods, such as reusing sets, props, and actors from other films. They take the idea one step further with obvious insider references that blur the line between fantasy and reality. Dick Miller, for example, who appeared in many Corman productions, doesn’t just appear in Hollywood Boulevard but plays a character with an acting past – and actually watches himself in a scene from Corman’s The Terror, which plays at a drive-in theater. We also have the casting of B filmmaker Paul Bartel as … a B filmmaker, whose latest sci-fi sex romp includes cars and footage from Bartel’s real-life film Death Race 2000.
Naturally, the exploitation element involves women who are often topless, made to commit acts of violence, and are subjected to male characters that use and abuse them in ways that are clearly not narratively appropriate and meant solely for the enjoyment of chauvinists and perverts. Also naturally, they’re played by actresses who are veterans of the sexploitation subgenre. We have: Mary Voronov, who, in addition to her work with Bartell, cut her cinematic teeth on the New York art films of Andy Warhol and Paul Morrissey; and Candice Rialson and Tara Strohmeier, who probably are but shouldn’t be proud of their separate and collective involvement in films like Pets, Mama’s Dirty Girls, Candy Stripe Nurses, and Summer School Teachers.
Rialson plays ingenue Candy Wednesday, first seen walking along the Hollywood and Vine intersection as fresh-faced, idealistic, and naive as Mary Tyler Moore in the opening of her namesake sitcom. She very quickly learns that becoming a starlet isn’t all fun and games. She soon meets Dick Miller’s former actor turned agent, who has at least half a dozen phones on his desk (and one in his refrigerator), which is also cluttered with whatever he’s eating for lunch. He will usually have three or four calls going at the same time. He even has a python in the drawer of his desk, for reasons known only to the filmmakers. Through him, Candy lands her first movie job: A replacement stuntwoman (for which she has no training) on Bartel’s gun-toting-women-in-the-jungle film, shot on location in the Philippines. Scenes from The Big Bird Cage, a real women-in-the-jungle movie, are intercut here.
Bartel’s director – an exaggerated spoof of ‘20s filmmakers, complete with a scarf, a flat cap, a non-electronic bullhorn, a viewfinder, and, for some reason, a riding crop – is a hack who churns out trash at a rate of seemingly one movie a week, yet he has a sophisticated air and says all the cliched, pretentious things about realism and motivations. His artistic vision is often questioned by the veteran star actress (Voronov), who sees herself as this generation’s Bette Davis yet has only appeared in grade-B garbage. Having presumably gone through the phase of sleeping her way to the top, she has moved on to more extreme methods of continuing her reign. On a related note, perhaps, the young starlets in the cast are mysteriously dying one by one, most in “accidents,” one graphically stabbed. Topping everything off, there are a lot of car crashes, explosions, and machine-gun massacres.
Other bits of silliness and satire: Bartel’s screenwriter (Jeffrey Kramer), whose dedication to research and serious storytelling are always nullified by the cost-cutting, audience-pandering, sex-obsessed demands of a sleazebag producer (Richard Doran); the unnecessary but nostalgic inclusions of Godzilla and Robby the Robot, the latter adamant that he’s unwilling appear nude in a movie; the unexplainable inclusion of a musical interlude featuring a country band; the studio Miracle Pictures, where “If it’s a good picture, it’s a miracle.” But for all its over the top tastelessness, one aspect of Hollywood Boulevard struck me as intelligent and clever: Brief scenes where Candy sits on the decaying, vandalized letters of the Hollywood sign. It’s a perfect symbol, juxtaposing the idealized vision of the way the city was and the reality of what it has become.
