The Silver Screen Oasis

On Saturday, May 31, TCM will air for the first time one of the 1950s strangest noir films: Gerd Oswald's sensational and twisted 1958 psycho-shocker THE SCREAMING MIMI. Based on a pulp novel by the great Fredric Brown, this is one film that devotees of the truly bizarre cannot afford to miss.

Alcoholic newspaper columnist Bill Sweeney (Philip Carey) becomes entwined in a string of grisly murders that seem to revolve around exotic stripper Yolanda Lange (Anita Ekberg!!). Seems that Yolanda shot a man to death a couple of years earlier who tried to stab her while she showered. Traumatized by this event, she seeks out the help of psychiatrist Dr. Greenwood (the ever creepy Harry Townes) for some quick and dirty therapy. This poor man's Svengali falls in love with her (natch!) and soon insinuates himself into her life, even going so far as managing her career by getting her a job at the El Madhouse, a seedy nightclub run by "Gypsy" Mapes ("Gypsy" Rose Lee!). But before long a series of brutal murders begin to occur and poor Yolanda appears to be the prime suspect. (I won't bother to go into the reasons why; it would probably take longer than the running time of the film.)

Anyone looking for or concerned with conventional logic might likely be put off by this wildly lurid and threadbare melodrama as nothing quite makes sense in this demented Fulleresque nether world. But those hungry for the wonderful cheap thrills only to be found in nightmare B movies of the fringe variety will probably come away from the table more than satisfied. Artfully photographed by Burnett Guffey, THE SCREAMING MIMI probably looks a lot better than it deserves to, and Gerd Oswald's eccentric direction doesn't hurt either. Oswald, as many might recall, later went on to produce and direct many of the more stellar episodes of TV's "Outer Limits" in the early 60s. THE SCREAMING MIMI provided him with the most stunningly perfect testing ground imaginable.

Of note to jazz fans: the incredible Red Norvo Trio is featured as the house band at the El Madhouse.

Most highly recommended!

Thanks for the heads up Dewey. Ekberg is an acquired taste, but I've always thought she was much better than most people gave her credit for. I promise not to put my feet on the back of ChiO's chair this time.

Anita Ekberg, one of the intriguing stars of THE SCREAMING
MIMI...here she is in a spiffy YouTube tribute to her career.
She's really not so hard to take...
[youtube][/youtube]

If Anita was good enough for Abbott & Costello, Martin & Lewis and Federico Fellini, I suppose I can force myself to watch her...again. Gerd Oswald also directed my favorite Sterling Hayden - Barbara Stanwyck vehicle, CRIME OF PASSION.

Been looking forward to seeing this and, as long as Mr. Arkadin can keep his promise not to put his grimy shoes on the back of my seat, I'm planning for an evening of lurid pleasure.

Thanks for bringing this up. I'd run out of films to record, then started looking at next week and filled up my calendar again.

One of the great musical scores in my opinion is also used at least at the end of "The Screaming Mimi". I was tuning in at the end of the film, but I was so surpised! What other movie did Bernstein score? Well, he didn't! Mischa Balenikoff-a "music advisor" :!: used the score at his discretion. Unlike Korngold, Bernstein's score could be culled for other movies if the studio so chose. Seeing Anita Eckberg sent into a rubber-padded truck to the funny farm to the music of Terry Malloy bringing his fellow dockworkers back to work was certainly a shock of some sort! Has anyone else had that sort of "deja-vu" with movie music? I'm sure that other musical advisors had carte blanche to other scores, but such a great score as "On The Waterfront" being culled seems a little bit unnerving. Of course, now I want to see the whole movie now. Of course, I have seen Mr. Balenikoff's name on many other movies-especially on some of the more lurid films that I have seen from the 50's.

Here's what I took away from The Screaming Mimi (besides bruising my eyeballs on the eternally unsinkable, and frequently well-foundationed Ms. Eh-eh-eh-eh-Ekberg [knock-knock: who's there? Anita! Anita who? Anita O2 mask if they keep backlighting her in profile!]) -

That Great Dane must have been one extrememly talented canine performer, with a very on-the-ball handler, cause that breed is one of the least aggressive on the face of the earth!
Or they cayenned his third-eye . . an unfortunate, but not unknown tactic, popular on some cheap shoots.

Oh...was Anita Ekberg in it, too?

It was an enjoyable twisted & perverse little tale, but I must admit that I kept wondering what it would have been like in the hands of, say...Sam Fuller.

Yes, Fuller would have been the absolute perfect director for SCREAMING MIMI. (A dream double bill of SCREAMING MIMI and SHOCK CORRIDOR at the first annual "Fantasy Fuller Festival" comes to mind!) Oddly enough Fuller was in the employ of Columbia Pictures (MIMI's studio) at precisely that time; his CRIMSON KIMONO was produced and released by them the following year!

Hey, I got home late so I missed the beginning of this doozy, but I didn't care about the sulky Anita Ekberg, who only seemed interesting to me when she was in in La Dolce Vita.

All I could see when he was on the screen was dreamy Philip Carey, who seems to have been in every other Columbia movie for quite some time in the '50s.

I was discussing this gentleman's beauty with another observant female within the last few days after enjoying him in the nifty The Shadow on the Window (1957) recently. She agreed that he was quite an eyeful, but told me that he has been quite ill with lung cancer in the last year. Then tonight she told me that the poor man's character on the soap opera One Life To Live has been killed off and was given a funeral on tv today. Classy, those dope operas, aren't they?

Boy, give the man a break, will ya? I hope he fools everyone and lives for another 20 years.

Klon,
Every Great Dane I've ever met has been a sweetheart. A drooling sweetheart who's usually able to knock me down with one paw, but a sweetheart. I can't believe that as recently as the '50s anyone would put cayenne powder in a dog's eye to get the desired reaction. I hope that the hound in this movie was just a good actor.

moirafinnie wrote: Every Great Dane I've ever met has been a sweetheart. A drooling sweetheart who's usually able to knock me down with one paw, but a sweetheart. I can't believe that as recently as the '50s anyone would put cayenne powder in a dog's eye to get the desired reaction. I hope that the hound in this movie was just a good actor.

Me too, in spades!
By the way, though, I fear my language was a bit too euphemistic; the benighted morons who used that sadistic method actually applied the capiscal compound to a more southerly portal . . entirely non-occular.
On a related note, I was once disqualified back in the mid-90's from a two-day dogsled derby in Maine for getting into a donnybrook with a fellow musher; I spotted him a half-hour before the start of the race "suppositing" his dogs with sulphured match-heads, which is an uncaring but reliable method to suppress a dog's post-intestinal activity.
I've mentioned this incident very seldom, over the years; 99% of all mushers I've ever met are pro-dog fanatics who, male or female, young or old, are universally conscientious & kind & compassionate to a point of fault, having usually dedicated their individual lives to the humane & loving treatment of dogs, as family-members and athletes.
Put simply, their motto could easily be the same as that Pedigree sales pitch: "We're for Dogs."
Sadly, though, as with any arena of human commitment, 99% isn't 100%.
And given the misguided activities and platforms of certain activist groups, that kind of rare & extreme occurence is the last thing the noble sport of mushing needs to have publicized, especially in this complex, and rapidly warming, world of the 21st Century.
In my idea of a Perfect World, I would have finished-up with that parka-clad Nazi in Maine by skinning him alive and hanging him from a tree.
But the authority was not mine; all things considered, that's probably a good thing.