I watched an extremely bizarre 1953 movie over the weekend called The Flaming Urge, released on budget-priced DVD by Alpha Home Entertainment (www.oldies.com).

It’s about a boyish young man named Tom Smith (played by twenty-two year old Harold Lloyd Jr, son of the great silent comedian) who has a compulsion to chase fires...meaning, as soon as he hears a fire engine, he stops whatever he’s doing and obsessively and compulsively follows the truck to the scene of the conflagration. Actually, when the urge hits, Tom looks like a guy who's trying to get a bathroom before he pees in his pants. This “flaming urge” has understandably made it difficult for him to keep jobs, and so he moves to Monroe, Michigan, where this early independent, non-studio movie was actually filmed, written and directed by one Harold Ericson.

According to Tom’s research, Monroe does not have many fires. It is a peaceful, ordinary Midwestern burg. He figures he’ll have less fire-related distraction and will be able to hold a job behind the tie counter in a men’s department store.

No sooner is he hired by the rather fussy and effeminate store manager, Mr. Pender (Byron Foulger) than a siren wails by on the street, and Tom runs out of the store to chase it. Harold Lloyd Jr’s nervous manner and almost girlish good looks call to mind Johnny Depp in the role of transvestite film director Ed Wood in Tim Burton’s 1990s film of that name. Strangely, when Tom returns expecting to be fired, Mr. Pender does not dismiss him, but lets him off with a warning.

At another blaze (suddenly the town seems to have one everyday) Tom meets another firechaser, a sixtyish man named Mr. Chalmers (Jonathan Hale), who talks about fires with a perverse relish for detail. It turns out Mr. Chalmers is the owner of the department store where Tom works! Unlike Tom, though, who is tormented by his obsession, Mr. Chalmers revels in the spectacle of fires, even to the point of wishing he could be at those faraway blazes that he reads about in newspapers. Mr. Chalmers even keeps a fireman’s pole in his office so he can slide down and out of the building, where there’s a car waiting at all times to expedite the satisfaction of his own urge to chase fires!

Tom meets a girl named Charlotte (Cathy Downs) who, despite knowing about his compulsion, falls in love with him (not too believable). Her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Cruikshank, are weirdly cheerful considering that their daughter is in love with a self-confessed firechaser, although Pop Cruikshank is wisely skeptical that Tom can ever get over his compulsion. However, a friend of Charlotte’s, a “student of psychology,” believes that Tom will give up his urge once he gets married and takes on responsibilities! In the 50s, people believed marriage would cure a lot of things...and I daresay they even believe that today.

The fires continue in Monroe, and people start to accuse Tom of being a firebug to satisfy his compulsion (word really gets around). Tom, meanwhile, suspects Mr. Chalmers of being the arsonist, even though Mr. Chalmers does give Tom some helpful advice about fighting the compulsion. Charlotte writes Tom a sealed note that she tells him to read the next time he has the urge to run to a fire, and when he opens it, he reads that if he loves her, he will not run to the fire! He successfully resists the “flaming urge” with the help of Charlotte’s note. In fact, the principle involved in the note is similar to what recovery programs use; the substitution of a new and more loving activity (like going to AA meetings) for an old destructive compulsion or disease (drinking).

In the dramatic finale, it turns out that somebody other than Mr. Chalmers has been setting the fires. Freed from suspicion at last, Tom marries Charlotte in a big church wedding and presumably is on the road to recovery from his “flaming urge"...but then again, the newlyweds leave the ceremony on a firetruck, with tin cans noisily dangling behind...so you have to wonder!!

In one of the strangest sequences of the film, but perhaps the most telling, Tom tries to bolster business at the department store's tie counter by making a huge bow-tie display out of three yards of material. The prissy Mr. Pender is appalled at this garish display which he likens to a sideshow, and Tom quickly puts it away in shame.

All right--SPOILER ALERT--am I really giving anything away by revealing that Mr. Pender is the firebug?

What you have to wonder is if this film was consciously trying to use firechasing as a symbolic substitute for homosexuality as a compulsive urge (the way it was often viewed in the 50s), or if it was actually intended as a straightforward exploitation item focusing on the subject of firechasers and pyromaniacs. The character Byron Foulger plays seems like a total queen (even though his character is married), and Mr. Chalmers comes across like a straight-appearing closet case.

What makes the film really odd is that several of the actors--Foulger, Hale, and Pierre Watkin who played Charlotte’s father--were all familiar from Hollywood studio films of the 40s and 50s. Watkin, in fact, played Perry White in the 1940s Superman serials, and I recall Hale himself made an appearance on the George Reeves Superman tv series! Cathy Downs was in John Ford’s classic western My Darling Clementine in 1946, although she may be most well-known today for being leading lady to The Amazing Colossal Man (1957).

According to the DVD's boxcover notes, Harold Lloyd Jr was an unhappy soul tormented by “chronic alcoholism and masochistic homosexual urges.” He had a massive stroke at age 34 in 1965, and died in 1971--only three months after his world-famous father passed away. Knowing this about him gives the film a sad poignance, and you have to wonder what he thought about the subject matter.

Recently, Harold Lloyd Sr has been gaining some posthumous recognition for 3-D photography, which he explored through pinup and cheesecake shots that were recently published in a lavish hardcover book.

I guess I’m going to have to look up a biography of Lloyd Sr to find out what he might felt both about his emotionally conflicted son, and the curious film his son starred in--quite a contrast to the silent comedies which made Lloyd Sr one of the most famous stars of the 1920s, and one of the most wealthy men in Hollywood.

The Flaming Urge is yet another example of a forgotten movie that may not actually be good, but is fascinating both in its peculiarity and in the backstories of the people who were in it.

Young women have immense power through their beauty. It's not speaking against older gals to say that younger women have a more hypnotic effect on men of all ages. It's just the way nature designed it...

Our society is sinking in the bullshit of politeness and political correctness, but there are truths that shout in our faces and we hear them if we don't cover our ears:

YOUNG WOMEN RULE SUPREME OVER MEN.

I saw a Chinese girl about 20 or 21 outside my building today and she had the prettiest face and most beautiful feet...you know how I feel about flip-flips if you're a regular reader of my blog, but I didn't mind them on her...she remained downstairs talking to some guy, and I went up in the elevator thinking about how alluring she was. She wasn't dressed seductively, but demurely in a light summery shift, and she was unexposed to the world except for her bare legs, and her sweet toes in those flip-flops...

By all the gods, it is hard being 54 sometimes. Yet some men obviously don't let it bother them. The other day, I read a personal ad on craigslist from a 22 year old woman who described herself as a "really cool chick," looking for a guy from 20-26 years old with "tattoos, piercings, shaggy hair," and she emphasized that she didn’t want to hear from “no old men...just not interested, thanks anyway though.” Unfortunately, she didn't just leave it at that.

She went on to say that at the end of a bus trip she took recently, the “really old scary bulldog looking bus driver” asked to take her out for a drink, and she "laughed...a lot." This by way of warning the male browsers on craigslist not to be like that bus driver...

Well, that bus driver is a hero to Sir Cranky...good for you, Bulldog...keep asking out those young chicks. And I hope this snotty babe is destined to be asked out by a thousand old bus drivers...and I hope one day, when she’s old herself, nobody even thinks of looking at her, much less picking her up...and that she then remembers that old guy...and how she laughed at him...and I hope she cries long hot lonely tears.

I didn't get to talk to the doctor yesterday about the labwork from my physical, so I'm still up in the air about what my elevated blood sugar numbers mean. Actually, I can wait until Monday, because if the news was aggravating, it would just have spoiled this beautiful weekend. The sun is shining, the temperature is perfect, and I took a pleasant walk over to Tower Video after my morning coffee.

As per usual, I spent money on DVDs, but I found some real treasures on the budget table: among them, The Ring, a boxing movie from the early 50s featuring a very sweet-looking Rita Moreno in one of her first roles; and a collection of early 50s tv dramas starring actors who later became big stars, like Paul Newman, James Dean, and Natalie Wood. I was too young to appreciate dramas like Playhouse 90 back in the 50s, but I seek them out today on disc.

Last night I watched episodes of Dr. Hudson's Secret Journal, Volume 1, a syndicated show from 1955-1957 that's available from Alpha Home Entertainment (www.oldies.com). The basic premise is neurosurgeon Dr. Wayne Hudson (John Howard) looking back on some of his more intriguing cases and personal crises. Some of the dialogue and acting is stilted, but the shows are interesting because they deal with unusual dilemmas such as the inability of an overly-intellectualized minister, a friend of Dr. Hudson's, to convey spirituality to his congregation; hospital trustees who want Dr. Hudson to betray his severely ill mentor by taking over his job; and a young man who feigns a coma because he wants to get out of an impulsive marriage to a beautiful but narcissistic big band singer. In this role of singer "Dixie Dabney," in the episode entitled "Hospital Melodrama," petite and perky actress Jean Porter enacts a truly memorable diva from hell--one of the coldest little bitches I have ever seen on any screen. Dixie wields her Southern accent like an emotional scalpel, and she's so busy rehearsing for a show that she has no time to even look in on her husband, who appears to be comatose! In real life, the talented Miss Porter was married to the late director Edward Dmytryk, who made one of my favorite films, the 1959 Henry Fonda-Richard Widmark psychological Western entitled Warlock.

I like this half-hour dramatic format that was so popular in the 50s, and between watching Superman, Lock-Up, and Dr. Hudson's Secret Journal, I've seen some very enjoyable stuff. But my friend Moe tells me that the recent cable series Rome, which has just been released on DVD, is right up my sword-and-sandal alley, so I'm going to have to wean myself off the 50s for a bit and into the 21st century for a change of pace.

One thing about Alpha's boxcover copy on Dr. Hudson's Secret Journal struck me as funny, though. He's described as a "highly skilled and dedicated brain surgeon." Gee, I'd hate to meet any other kind!

I have so much on my mind today that it’s rebelling...it’s going blank. Between reading all the terrible things in the newspapers, and surveying the less-than-sterling report from my physical last week, I feel caught in a vise of global and personal anxiety.

The weather is beautiful today, as opposed to yesterday’s thunderstorms, and my windows are open and the temperature in my apartment is comfortable; but I am tense as I wait to talk on the phone to the doctor about my rather high blood sugar levels.

At least I had an excellent spaghetti puttanesca last night while out to dinner in Greenwich Village with my writer friend Moe. Our repast was topped off by coffee and Sambucca.

Now, you’d think, after eating that spicy sauce of black olives, capers, garlic and tomato, that if I went home and had vaguely erotic dreams they would have featured the voluptuous Italian movie goddesses who have long held a place of honor in my mental pantheon. Or at least Italian girls.

Instead, I dreamed that I was in a busy indoor marketplace and went to a beautiful Chinese lady barber for a trim. I reclined in the chair and she began to give me a shave, although I had already shaved that morning. Her touch was so relaxing that I simply surrendered to it, and fell asleep. When I awakened, I gave her a large tip, even though I realized she had forgotten to cut my hair.

You might say this dream encounter was the tonsorial equivalent of a lapdance. Like a dance, this visit to the comely barber was a tease, because the job wasn’t finished!

The barber was a combination of an Asian stripper I know, and a Chinese model I saw in a magazine the other day.

Sir Cranky factoid: my computer’s mousepad has 1930s-style color drawings of beautiful Chinese girls on it. Something I picked up in Chinatown. I keep using this alluring mousepad even though its surface is not the slickest.

Be honest: you didn't know a mousepad could be alluring, did you?

Ah, I was sorry to wake up from that dream. I’d like to find a barber like that. Even though I’ve gone to the same barber shop for almost twenty years, I’d be tempted to switch!

It’s good to appreciate the sensual potential of activities that are not necessarily related to sex. Some guys might not consider a haircut from a beautiful woman to be a complete experience, in reality or in a dream, but I would find it a satisfying adventure in and of itself, one that would lend itself to pleasant flights of anecdotage with my pals over checkered tablecloths and glasses of Sambucca.

Maybe I’m just getting senile, or hopelessly middle-aged, or this is yet one more example of how our horizons expand when we free ourselves from the Pubic Imperative!

You know, when I laugh at myself, I stop worrying about my blood sugar...

I find it interesting that the singer Christina Aguilera is so into the pinup thing. I recently heard that she might play the 1950s stripper Tempest Storm in a biopic. At first I was skeptical since Christina doesn't have the same voluptuous body type as Tempest, whose career and fame were definitely linked to her large bosom; but the more I see Aguilera in pinup shots, I'm starting to think she might pull it off simply because she's so dedicated to the glamour girl aesthetic.

Even Christina's marriage to an ordinary-looking guy, a music industry executive, reminds me of the glamour girls of the past. When you look at old movie or gossip magazines, you see many of the female stars and starlets of the past with men of average appearance, as if they needed someone less physically charismatic to counterbalance their own luminosity--a luminosity which, as in the cases of both Bennifer and Brangelina, can be as much of a burden as a blessing.

I always find it funny how people couldn't understand how the gorgeous Marilyn Monroe married someone so "ordinary" (and brainy) as Arthur Miller, when in fact she was married to him longer than to any of her other husbands; he was a tall, formidable, handsome fellow, kind of like a Jewish Gregory Peck, certainly no chopped herring; and he was certainly better looking than Joe DiMaggio!

If Christina really wants to be the total modern pinup, she should pose for a camera club just like Bettie Page used to. It's nice that Christina poses for Rolling Stone and such, but these modern cheesecake models seem to forget that the roots of the art go deep into the territory of ordinary photographers, some amateurish, some skilled, who produced unpretentious images that filled the pages of now-collectible girlie mags. Yep, Christina should get out there and pose for her fans. She could even bring her hubby along as her bodyguard, just like the girls sometimes did in the old days!

An amateur with glazed eyeballs and a disposable camera from the drugstore can sometimes make a better pinup than the slickest pro with a big studio and the latest digital equipment.

Christina should also prepare for the Tempest Storm role by getting out there and actually stripping in a nightclub. And maybe she can also let a sculptor make a plastic cast of her torso on film, just as Tempest did way back in the early 50s.

My question is, when is somebody going to make a movie about Patti Waggin, one of the other great strippers of the 50s? Her dancing was so zesty and joyous that if I had to take a DVD of any vintage stripper's performances with me to a desert island, it would definitely be Patti's. You can see Patti do her thing on the Best of Burlesque DVD from Something Weird Video, as well as in the Hollywood Burlesque/Peek-A-Boo DVD from the same company.