Well, whatever I said yesterday about modern actresses not being able to hold a candle to those of Golden Age Hollywood does not apply to Salma Hayek. I forgot about Salma...I readily eat my words. She is far more than that gorgeous shape and face about which I've waxed poetic in earlier blog posts.

I saw her latest film Lonely Hearts yesterday. She truly puts the femme fatale prototype on a whole new level of physical beauty and psychological disease. She plays Martha Beck, who in the 1940s worked a lonely hearts con with her lover, Raymond Fernandez. Their fleecing of lonely women eventually led to incredibly brutal and horrific murders. Some of the scenes in the movie, although not overly gory by today's standards, are especially disturbing because of their emotional violence. I couldn't get them out of my head when I went to sleep last night.

John Travolta and James Gandolfini play the Long Island detectives hunting them down, and deliver solid acting in unshowy roles. Jared Leto plays Raymond Fernandez as a kind of Tyrone Power wannabe who, although he is already a worthless grifter and scumbag, grows even worse under Martha's tutelage. He goes from a fly in her sexual web to a murdering fiend. His excellent performance as a slimy sleazeball well complements Hayek's demented temptress.

I'm curious as to why Lonely Hearts has garnered little buzz, especially with its high profile cast. I have three theories about this.

One theory is that Salma's performance so deftly mixes her intense beauty with extreme evil that it's enough to make you look for the nastiness under any pretty face you meet. It seems to put the "fatale" in all femmes. It almost seems to undercut the media's current worship of all things feminine. It seems to say: "Beware the spider in the skirt!" Not exactly a popular viewpoint nowadays. Promoting a subconscious image of "vagina dentata" to the masses doesn't exactly sell cosmetics or handbags.

My second theory concerns how the film depicts the execution of Fernandez and Beck in the electric chair. Fernandez' death is shown closeup in detail, Beck's is just implied, but by the end of the movie, after seeing all the carnage these two have committed, a viewer becomes convinced of the justice of the death penalty swiftly applied. Martha and Raymond were clearly human vermin and they deserved to be destroyed. I wonder if this message rubbed politically liberal people in the movie industry in the wrong way, and subsequently the film has been flown under the radar. I'm not saying the film overtly espouses capital punishment, but I see the overall effect of the film as, "Yeah, in cases like this, execution is justified." That's not exactly a politically liberal position. Travolta's character gives some lip service to the view that execution might not have been the answer, but then the film notes the character's subsequent ability to move ahead with his life, which seems to imply that bringing the prosecution of these killers to a Biblical finish (eye for an eye) may have helped bring the detective the peace he was searching for in his own life.

One additional theory is that perhaps the film was seen as just too downbeat for wide theatrical consumption, and so it's been released in only a few theaters to build buzz gradually so that it'll make a bigger splash later when it's on DVD.

It takes courage to make a downbeat film amid today's relentlessly upbeat zeitgeist. I've read a considerable amount of true crime history and psychology over the years, and it's my impression that Salma Hayek's interpretation of Martha Beck absolutely captures the childish, sociopathic narcissism of people who commit crimes of this nature. Although Miss Hayek is stunning and curvy, whereas the real Beck was unattractive and so fat that the executioners had trouble sitting her in the electric chair, Salma's performance works in spite of its not being true to Martha's actual appearance; Salma does not stint on portraying the wretched inner ugliness that festered in Beck's soul. She is frightening, and it's a mark of the integrity of Miss Hayek's performance that her character's awful deeds and disgusting lies overwhelm the outward allure of her character, until all you can really see is a death's head superimposed on Salma's face, and her hip-swaying walk in seamed stockings transformed into the writhings of a vertical serpent.

Years ago I remember thinking that the movie Dangerous Liaisons, wherein Glenn Close played a manipulative aristocrat in 18th century France who destroys people's lives, was actually a vampire movie in the guise of historical drama. Miss Close played an emotional leech, sucking the souls out of her victims. Similarly, Lonely Hearts is a monster movie in the guise of a true crime thriller. Hayek and Leto play the creatures, emotional mutants, who ravaged America from Michigan to New York.

See this movie in the theaters if you can bear the horror of it. I feel sure the impact on a big screen is much greater than it will be on DVD. Todd Robinson (grandson of the late detective whom Travolta portrays) has brilliantly directed the film.

Spoiler alert: There's one more thing I want to mention, but if you don't want to know everything about the film, come back to this entry after you see it. There's one shot of Fernandez in the foreground, his head bent over in well-earned despair and confusion while Beck drags one of their victims through the room--a child whose mother they have just killed--that is unbearably haunting and sums up the movie's unflinching depiction of evil in the guise of beauty. Still, maybe the film's depiction of the murder of a sweet mother and angelic daughter in itself put the movie beyond the theatrical pale. It's pretty hard to take. I have to admit that as much as I admired the film, it also made me pretty tense throughout.

I wonder if I'm depressed these days, because I hardly see any attractive women on the springtime streets. This is not natural for me. Everybody looks average bordering on dull. This is probably all in my head. Or maybe I'm going through some kind of male menopause? And I wanted to be one of those eighty-five year old guys still doddering into stripclubs for lapdances.

On the other hand, at least I saw some beautiful women in the films I've been watching this week. Actresses who made me pant (well, not literally, but figuratively). Diana Lorys in The Awful Doctor Orlof, a 60s Euro horror film...Scylla Gabel and Dany Carrel in Mill of the Stone Women, another 60s Euro gothic...Karin Kernke in The Head, a late 50s German mad doctor flick (the German title was Die Nackte und Der Teufel, which translates as The Nude and the Devil)...Hillary Brooke in Heat Wave, Barbara Payton in Bad Blonde, and Diana Dors and Marguerite Chapman in Man Bait, three 1950s Hammer films noir...

Maybe the problem is that for me, most real women simply don't come up to the standards of the beauties I see in the vintage movies I am addicted to. And "real women" includes most of the actresses in movies today, who can't hold a candle to the old-timers either in face, figure, carriage, or even delivery of their lines. In my view, modern women have a undeservedly high opinion of themselves which is bloated out of all proportion to reality, an opinion which is fed by the pandering and sycophantic media whose paychecks are proportional to profits amassed by this non-stop flattering and pampering of the egos of the feminine population.

Even the high visibility of a Rosie O'Donnell is a form of flattery to women--who can then say to themselves, "Well, at least I'm not gross and crude like her!"

I like to watch film noir, and femmes fatale, not only because the women look sexy, but because the movies depict accurately through melodrama the authentically grasping and manipulative nature of many females. Film noir is realism to me.

Yes, those last few paragraphs sound like the statements of a depressed and anxious person. On the other hand, I think they contain grains of truth, so I will let them stand.

I read this morning that Bobby (Boris) Pickett died. He did the immortal 1962 song "The Monster Mash" which featured his impression of Boris Karloff. As the chorus went, "He did the monster mash, it was a graveyard smash!"

Fun song about movie monsters dancing around. Just thinking about it conjures up my 60s childhood pleasures of reading monster movie magazines and going to see films like King Kong vs. Godzilla or watching giant grasshoppers invade Chicago on the late show fave, Beginning of the End.

At the time, I only knew one other kid who shared this interest in horror films; it was then considered a pretty nerdy pastime (although we didn't have the word "nerd" back then).

No, to prove your incipient manhood you had to be into sports, just like nowadays. Having a fascination with Karloff, Lugosi and Peter Cushing as Dr. Frankenstein was not considered cool.

I remember the new issues of Famous Monsters of Filmland used to appear at my local drugstore newsstand on Tuesdays. Not understanding the schedules of magazine distribution, I used to check constantly and anxiously for new issues.

An even better magazine was Castle Of Frankenstein, with more in-depth analytical articles (and lots of great pix, of course).

Now, through the memorabilia world, I know many people who love and revere the old monster and horror films.

The other night I saw a movie that was ballyhooed at the time of its release in the pages of Famous Monsters. The Evil of Frankenstein came out in 1964 but never showed up at my neighborhood theater, so I missed it. I finally caught up with it on DVD the other night, 43 years later. It's part of a collection of Hammer horror classics. Unfortunately, it was no classic. The photos in the magazine made it seem much more exciting than it actually was.

For me, the world of Gothic horror in those old films from the 30s to the 60s was not so much interesting for the gore or monsters, but rather as a fantastical vision of brilliant men devoting themselves to the pursuit of god-like knowledge. And when they weren't in their labs or castles, they were mixing it up with saucy and busty women in low-cut gowns. All that appealed to the adolescent Sir Cranky, with his grandiose dreams of vaguely defined future achievements, and future conquests in love.

Ironically, after I wrote last night's post about not wanting my fond memories damaged about a favorite stripper I once knew, I read an article in the current Films of the Golden Age wherein a reader about eighty-two years old wrote about his affection for the late glamour girl Dorothy Lamour. He recalled how he discovered her back in 1936 on the screen at his local movie palace in Ohio.

Although he saw her a few times in concert, he never actually met her face to face, and in his article he said he was glad for this; that he didn't want to spoil their relationship. At first glance, I didn't think sending fan letters and receiving autographed photos in return qualifies for the word "relationship," but maybe I'm wrong; maybe it was a relationship of a specific kind, of a man and his dreamgirl. The flame never stopped flickering for this fella, and over sixty years he wrote to her and received three autographed pictures in return: when he was a teenager, when he was in the Navy, and then shortly before her death in 1996 at the age of 81.

He donated his three huge scrapbooks of Lamour memorabilia to a major motion picture library shortly before she passed away, and wrote her to tell her about this, too.

We can't know everybody we wish to know, so sometimes these other types of relationships have to suffice, like my dreamy recollections of my encounters with Angela the lapdancer. And the Lamour fan obviously feels that Dorothy had given much to him through her career as an entertainer, and he was glad to give back by donating his collection to posterity for others to enjoy.

I have written here about my stripper favorites for much the same reason; to show you how they gave me something pleasurable in the hours I spent watching them, talking with them, getting lapdanced by them, and thinking about them later. This is a record to show how they mattered to me, and how they matter to men in general for many complex reasons.

Anyway, you can find this interesting piece about Dorothy Lamour in the current issue, #48, Spring 2007, of Films of the Golden Age. The writer's name is Paul Padgette. There's also a fine profile of Gloria Stuart who, after never achieving the stardom she aspired to back in the 30s and 40s, finally scored an Oscar nomination when she appeared in her mid-eighties in the mega-blockbuster Titanic. She's had a really extraordinarily creative life, not just as an actress but as an artist. And she's still going strong at 96! Where does she get the energy...?

If you click on the Classic Images link over on my Sites I Like list, you can learn more about Films of the Golden Age, which is published by the same company.

I went over to the Time-Warner Center at Columbus Circle after dinner, to browse at Borders. When I was going up the escalator, I saw a young woman who reminded me a little of Angela, who was my favorite stripper-lapdancer of all. I haven’t seen her in almost three years; she quit the job in 2004.

Actually, the resemblance didn’t occur to me until we got to the top of the escalator and the young woman began to walk away. But while we were riding upwards--she was about seven or eight steps ahead of me--I was looking at her sleek figure, which was clad in an ivory blouse and slacks. She had on spiked heels too, and at one point she raised her right foot and held her leg backwards at a ninety degree angle as she stood on the moving stair.

Although this gal was probably unaware of me, that movement with her foot set me off on a brief train of thought. I imagined for a moment that she DID realize I was looking at her, and lifted up her foot almost as a subconscious gesture to tell me to stay away, as if she would kick me if I said something, no matter how benign.

We got to the top of the escalator and she turned and walked off in a different direction than mine. That was when I thought, “Wait--was that Angela??” I was pretty sure she wasn’t, because I think I would have recognized Angela readily, and I saw this girl in profile. But I suddenly feared the idea of running into Angela in the “outside world” and having her either ignoring me or spurning even the most mild and friendly greeting. You have to understand, I am very discreet, and I would only say hello to her if she were alone. Many dancers keep their job a secret, and I wouldn’t want to put her in a compromised position with anyone else. But if I saw her while she was alone, yes, I would say hello.

Of course, if she were with somebody else but still said hello to me, I would certainly return the greeting.

But actually I hope I don’t EVER run into her, because I have so many pleasant and erotic memories of our encounters that I wouldn’t want anything to spoil them. I wasn’t her friend and she wasn’t mine; she was a stripper and I was her customer, and I don't think my seeing her again would mean much to her. I fulfilled her goal of making easy money, and she fulfilled mine of brief uncomplicated eroticism. Although she gave me great value for my lapdance dollar, she did not otherwise linger and talk with me much beyond pleasantries. It was sexual, sensual fantasy and that was it. And I’d rather keep that fond recollection intact, because if I did see her and she snubbed me, it would probably destroy the daydreams of her I still enjoy.

The possibility that she might actually be glad, even in a cursory way, to see an old customer...somehow seems remote.