At a small ocean-side greasy-spoon well off the beaten path, the owner of this eatery barely ekes out a living. Minimally staffed by a world-weary waitress and a cantankerous short-order cook, what few customers George (Wynn) does get consists of an occasional long haul trucker and the staff of a government research center nestled somewhere up the road a piece. Well, wherever they come from, all these customers agree on two things: one, they'd all like a fling with the saucy Kotty (Moore), and two, Slob's cooking is awful.
But the thick-headed Slob (Marvin) couldn't care less what others think, and Kotty turns them all down flat. See, she's currently attached and swapping spit with one of those research scientists; a Professor Sam Baniston (Lovejoy), who's also trying to help her ditch this dead-end occupation and shepherd her into a cushier government job through the Civil Service exam.
And as we meet a few more kooky denizens of this diner, including a daffy salesmen named Eddie (Bissell) and a shifty-eyed fishermen (Lesser), things seem normal enough on the surface, but underneath something far more sinister is happening once the sun goes down and the kitchen closes for the night.
Seems several of those government researchers have up and disappeared without a trace, and they were all last seen eating at this very establishment. And not only that, but there are other transactions going on at the diner. Transactions that are off the menu and take place strictly under the table. And what are these clandestine transactions all about? Secrets. Secrets bought and sold that could bring about the end of the world as we know it...
In August of 1950, after the FBI ferreted out their spy ring, a Federal grand jury indicted Julius and Ethel Rosenberg on 11 counts of conspiracy and espionage for allegedly passing on the secrets of the A-Bomb to the Russians. Later convicted on these charges in March of 1951, despite the couple's protests of innocence, the Rosenberg's, admitted Communists, were sentenced to death for this act of treason; a sentence that was eventually carried out in June, 1953. But this was not the end of it. No. Far from it.
History would show this notorious incident only added fuel to Senator Joe McCarthy's Stomp-A-Commie-Crusade; and Hollywood, already stinging from the whipping it took from the House Un-American Activities hearings in 1947, which resulted in the Black List, where countless artists and craftsmen suddenly became persona non grata to the studios, were eager to make nice with a series of Anti-Communist films -- I Married a Communist /The Woman on Pier 13 (1949), I Was a Communist for the FBI (1951), Big Jim McClain (1952), and assorted shorts -- What is Communism? (1952), Red Nightmare (1957), to bolster the perception of Tinsel Town's unwavering patriotism to avert anymore governmental grievances. Even second tier studios like Allied Artists got in on the act; and Shack Out on 101 (1955) is a prime example of this type of output.
An Atomic-Paranoia-Sleaze-Noir, the separate ingredients of Patriotism and Red Scares in Shack out on 101 are clearly definable to your viewing palate as the film digests, but these morsels are essentially overwhelmed by a few more spicier ingredients thrown in with the best of intentions to make it all go down a little easier. For, not only did the married screen-writing tandem of Edward and Mildred Dein throw the kitchen sink into this seamy little potboiler (-- Edward also directed), but added the stove, the fridge, the cupboards, and all the above's contents into the mix as they tried to subvert this central theme under several layers of steamy romantic intrigue, oddball characters, and laugh-out-loud comedy.
Strangely, each element on its own works fairly well but kinda curdles when baked together. Sticking with the culinary metaphor, then, admittedly, the end results tastes kinda funny. Not bad, mind you. Just funny -- a bit off, maybe -- with each bite either too salty or too sweet or too bland that never reaches any sort of satisfying equilibrium. (Note to self: You are so talking out of your "You Don't Even like to Cook" ass right now.) Anyways...
Yeah, the soapy melodrama just never jives properly with the cloak and dagger stuff. The comedic elements work best, especially a few throwaway bits with George and Slob working out, and the resulting pissing contest over whose legs are in better shape -- a contest Kotty eventually has the last word on, and George and Eddie (Whit Bissell in a rare comedy relief stint) swapping tales and testing out some new fishing equipment.
Frankly, the whole plot feels like a hyper-condensed season of your garden variety soap opera, where said soap latches onto the latest headlines or hot-topic and folds it into one of its many subplots, with the viewer plopped down right into the middle of it, beginning with Slob's initial molestation of Kotty on the beach, whose tired reaction says this kinda crap happens all the time, and who only gets indignant when the grab-fanny cook spoils her latest batch of laundry.
Now, with a soap, you would have months and months to work this storyline -- hell, in some cases, years; here, we barely have an hour as a frustrated Kotty moves from man to man, looking and longing for love or some kind of stability, eventually sniffing out the nefarious truth behind Bastion and Slob's secret sea-shell swapping sessions down by the sea shore but doesn't quite grasp the stakes until it is far too late. For, unlike the Rosenbergs, here, not only are those Commie bastards stealing classified information from the research center through several stooges, they're actually kidnapping scientists and engineers and smuggling them out of the country through Mexico, destination Moscow, to unlock more Atomic secrets for Uncle Nikita.
Discovering her beau (and ticket out of this shack) is one of these stoolies, in perhaps not the wisest of moves, knowing they've killed several people already, Kotty's self-righteous snit-fueled tirade nearly gets everyone else killed as the mysterious Mr. Gregory, the man behind this nest of vipers, finally reveals himself, who decides it's time to cut bait on this operation and leave all the witnesses at the bottom of the Pacific.
Now, since everything that brought us to this point, and the climax itself, to the pat happy ending, is all carried out six and half miles somewhere above “over the top” an argument could be made that Shack Out on 101 should be considered a farce, which kinda makes sense, making it a nice subversive foil for this particular genre that was already fizzling out. And despite all these complaints and snarky observations, I'm happy to report the cast overachieves and makes all of these disjointed plot elements work.
As the Tomato, whom everyone wants to *ahem* sample, Terry Moore is a million miles away from her big screen break as the young ingénue in Mighty Joe Young (1949). She brings a solid “been there, done that, screw the lousy t-shirt” weariness to Kotty, who once more sees a way out of this funk only to have the door seemingly slammed in her face. The constantly blustering Keenan Wynn is great, too, as always, and plays well off the bumbling Bissell. But Lee Marvin steals the movie as the slovenly Slob, who isn't as slovenly and thick-headed as he lets on.
It also helps the film itself looks fantastic. Credit to cinematographer Floyd Crosby, who used the limited sets brilliantly, keeping things nice and dingy and sleazy, and who used the cramped and limited space in the diner to his advantage by having the camera ridiculously close to the action at all times, resulting in a seedy documentary feel that's about [--this--] close to crossing the threshold of cinéma vérité. Seriously. You can almost smell some Pine Sol wafting from the toilets and hear the grease popping on the griddle.
This would be one of Crosby's last stops before he hooked up with Roger Corman and the boys from American International Pictures, starting with Fast and the Furious (1954), and whose skills are kinda underappreciated in the success of both. One also cannot discount the efforts of editor George White, who also stitched together the similar docu-noir, The Phenix City Story (1955), and the noir to end all noir, The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946). And then there’s the music of Paul Dunlop, whose horn-heavy spazz-jazz riffs only amp up the proceedings even more.
After finishing Shack Out on 101, the Deins latched onto the wrong bandwagon with Calypso Joe (1957) -- yup, there was a time when most people predicted calypso music would have more staying power than rock ‘n’ roll, but then the couple were roped in by Universal and scripted the strangest, but surprisingly effective entry in that studio's resurgent monster movie movement with Curse of the Undead (1959), which throws a vampire into a western, making him an indestructible hired gun set loose on a range war. You wouldn't think that would work but, believe me, it does.
Thus, despite its haphazard structure and kitchen-sink narrative, Shack Out on 101 will surprise you when it's over and done. It shouldn't work either, but it does. Apparently, the film's original title was Shack Up on 101 but some muckety-muck at the studio didn't like the euphemistic connotation of "shack up" (-- some sources claim the objection came from Moore), and so producer Mort Millman made the change. Whatever the title, more folks probably need to see this gritty and dirty and highly idiosyncratic film.
Shack Out on 101 (1955) Allied Artists / EP: William F. Broidy / P Mort Millman / D: Edward Dein / W: Edward Dein, Mildred Dein / C: Floyd Crosby / E: George White / M: Paul Dunlap / S: Terry Moore, Frank Lovejoy, Keenan Wynn, Lee Marvin, Whit Bissell, Len Lesser, Frank De Kova
As the Battle of Minatogawa rages nearby, which triggered a long and bloody period of civil war and strife in 14th century feudal Japan that would last for over fifty years, two soldiers flee from the wholesale carnage but are pursued by several others on horseback. Now, whether these men are fleeing from the enemy or are deserters no one can say for sure as they try to lose themselves in a dense patch of grass. And as they struggle through the deepening marsh and overwhelmingly dense vegetation, as the wind whips the elongated chutes into a blinding frenzy, both men are suddenly run through by spears held by unseen hands, gored, and killed rather gruesomely.
It is then revealed those spears were held by two women, who quickly strip the victims bare of their weapons, armaments, and clothing before unceremoniously dragging and dumping the bodies into a large and ominous pit secluded deep in the marsh. All of this is done with such a ruthless efficiency, it becomes quite obvious these two have pulled off this kind of ambush before. And not only have they done this before, but they’ve turned it into a cottage industry as these desperate and destitute women leave their ramshackle hut and take this latest batch of loot to a black market peddlar named Ushi (Tonoyama) and trades them for more rations of rice.
Seems times are tough in this province, what with the feuding factions having stripped the land bare of anything edible and shanghaiing all able-bodied men into service (-- and women, too, for other reasons), leaving no one to regrow the next batch of crops, leaving those left behind to eke out an existence by any means necessary or face death by starvation. And since it’s rare to have a dog wonder into camp and onto the menu, the old woman (Otowa) and the girl, her daughter-in-law (Yoshimura), decided to get proactive. In fairness, they haven’t chosen a side in this conflict and are equal opportunity killers and looters. And once the latest negotiations are complete, the lecherous Ushi offers up an extra ration if either woman will have sex with him. The older woman refuses. Bluntly.
When they return to the hut, the women are startled to find someone there, hiding out, waiting for them. Hachi (Satō) is another deserter, but he was also a neighbor and friend of Kichi, son and husband to these two scavengers, who got conscripted into the conflict at the same time, explaining why he wasn’t immediately set upon or wound up in the pit -- at least not yet, as Hachi brings bad news, revealing Kichi also tried to desert with him from the ongoing battle but was killed while trying to steal supplies from a group of farmers on the way home. Convinced the cowardly Hachi let her son die, the woman tosses him out and forbids the girl from ever interacting with him.
But things tend to get mighty lonely in the tall grass and, soon enough, Hachi is able to not-so-clandestinely seduce the girl and they go at it, hot and heavy, night after night. Soon realizing she is about to lose the girl to this interloper, and knowing full well she will never survive on her own without her partner, the woman, perhaps a little jealous, and definitely equally sexually frustrated, confronts Hachi, pleads with him to leave the girl alone, and offers herself up instead to satisfy his carnal needs only to be laughed off as an old hag he wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole. Thus, despite the fact Hachi was awful handy in killing two dueling samurai caught in the flooded paddy, whose superior weapons brought them more rice, the old woman concludes he needs to go in the hole with all the others.
But before she can set this in motion, while the other two are once more off fornicating, making her distracted and off her game, yet another samurai -- a general (Uno), clad in a hideous demon mask, stumbles upon the hut unmolested. Seems the general, who refuses to remove the mask, saying it protects his beautiful face, has gotten lost after the latest battle and wants the woman to guide him out of this infernal marsh. And after a brief philosophical debate on Japan’s patriarchal caste system, the woman agrees to these demands only to the lead the man into a trap, when he is herded toward the unseen pit and falls to his death.
Then, when the woman lowers herself into the hole, she finally manages to wrest the stubborn mask off, which reveals the man was hideously scarred underneath. And as she strips the rest of him and makes fun of his looks, the woman suddenly hits upon a blasphemous notion that will solve all of her problems and explains why the samurai’s robes and demon mask were noticeably absent when she sells the rest off to Ushi. And while this does solve one problem for the old woman, it curses her with yet another, more deadly one...
An erotically charged, strange, but deceptively simple little bugaboo of a movie, Kaneto Shindo’s Onibaba (1964) was based on an old Shin Buddhist parable, Yome-odoshi-no men (-- translated as bride-scaring mask), whose moral lesson of piety and divine consequences the director kinda acknowledged but then turned on its ear. In the story, a mother feels her daughter-in-law spends too much time going to temple and praying to Buddha, feeling her day would be better spent on her chores and tending to her husband’s needs. And so, to rectify this, the mother waits in ambush on the path to the temple, hiding in a patch of tall grass. And when the daughter-in-law approaches, she jumps out in front of her, wearing a hideous demon mask, shrieking and gesticulating, scaring the girl into an immediate u-turn.
But this stunt backfires when the wrathful Buddha puts a curse on her for this deception, which left the mask permanently welded to her face once it gets wet in a rainstorm. And only after she prays for mercy did the mask finally come off, but it took half of her face with it as a reminder that while Buddha can be merciful and forgiving, there will still be consequences to deal with for your blasphemy.
Shindo would later recount how his mother told him this story in his youth to reinforce the notion to always be honest and forthcoming and the dangers of hypocrisy and deception, and it apparently stuck. And while the central theme is still there and drives the third act, both Shindo and Onibaba had a lot more to say. Not since Isao Takahata’s Grave of the Fireflies (1993) have I seen a film hold this much contempt for those who wage war, which is then reflected in how the film wallows in the desperation, degradation, and poverty of those caught up in this no man’s land as they try to survive not day to day nor hour to hour but minute to minute.
From the opening scene of Onibaba -- which literally translates as “demon hag,” the cynical Shindo makes it perfectly clear he has no patience for the current corrupt social order of his native country, which led Japan to war two decades earlier, and strips bare the samurai’s bushido code by having his protagonists literally desecrate and strip every samurai carcass they come across. (This is all reinforced later in the scenes with the general both mortem and postmortem.) It is the stuff of nonsense, says Shindo, that only leads to loss and ruin for those caught in the wash, who suffer the real consequences of this kind of blind faith, leaving you with few choices: a terrible death by violence, or a horrible death by starvation.
But it’s not just food they’re all hungry for. There’s a very strong libidinous component to Onibaba as well. This is a lusty, sweaty, and primal movie. And if one looked at the evolutionary chart of such things, the film feels like a common genre ancestor for both the Pinky Violence and Roman Porno films that were about to come into vogue in the late 1960s.
Unlike everyone else in this movie, the old woman is sexually frustrated. She’s extremely jealous when Hachi rejects her. And there’s even a few less than subtle hints of sapphic desire for her daughter-in-law, making things even more twisted as she waits in ambush as the girl once more sneaks out of the hut for another moonlight rendezvous with Hachi.
With Operation: Scare the Piss Out of Little Miss Horny Pants a complete success, the following morning, the old woman presses things even further, convincing the naive girl the demon was most assuredly real and divine punishment for her infidelity. And it will be back if she tries it again, she warns. These scare tactics work for a little while, but lust is a harsh mistress never satisfied. And so, as a thunderstorm rages, the old woman dresses up again and sets another ambush, which totally backfires this time. Seems Hachi was tired of waiting for the girl, sets out to find her, only to have the "demon" chase her right into his arms. And as he quiets her down and they go at it, the old woman, realizing she has failed and lost the girl for good this time, watches on dejectedly.
Once the deed is done, Hachi returns to his hut, where he catches another deserter stealing his food and is promptly killed by his startled guest. Meantime, the old woman has discovered she can no longer remove the soggy demon mask. When the younger girl returns, and is rightfully frightened by the sight of the demon in their hut, the old woman reveals it was her all along, begs forgiveness, and promises to no longer interfere in her love-life with Hachi if she will help get the infernal mask off. A mighty struggle ensues and, in the end, the girl winds up having to break the mask off with a hammer. Once gleefully removed, it’s revealed the mask took most of the woman’s skin with it.
Taking one look at this hideous visage convinces the girl this really was a demon all along; she screams, and then flees into the night. The old woman chases after her, swearing she is not a demon. This erratic chase leads them to the pit, which the girl jumps over. Right behind her, the older woman also makes the leap as the film abruptly ends, leaving it up to the audience on whether she made it across or not. Me? I’m leaning toward not, but it all kinda depends on your own metered severity of the ‘hell of your own making’ in what you just watched.
To fulfill his vision, Shindo wanted to make the entire film in a dense field of susuki grass; an invasive perennial that ranges from three to seven feet tall. And after a lot of searching, he finally found what he was looking for along a riverbank in Chiba near Inba-Numa, where they put up prefabricated buildings to house the minimal cast and crew for the scheduled three month shoot. The crew got a little mutinous as things dragged on due to the incessant rains and flooding that plagued the shoot, which bred hordes of insects and stirred up the local crayfish population; but stuck it out when told they wouldn’t get paid at all unless the contractual obligation was met.
Despite these hardships, Shindo, his cast, and his cinematographer, Kiyomi Kuroda, really captured some magic here. A film with more visual texture than Onibaba I’m hard pressed to name. Poetic even, when you add in the haunting vocals of Hayahi Hikaru’s intense, percussion heavy score. And I think the film works better if you take it at face value with the visuals, which -- from the opening sequence to the finale, where the old woman's scarred face brings to mind the radiation burns of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, are stunning, since the plot is kinda leaking water; and the less you try to ponder on the schism of an old folktale on right and wrong and a twisted carnal yarn of gaslighting and survival the better in the long run.
Onibaba (1964) Kindai Eiga Kyokai :: Tokyo Eiga Co Ltd. :: Toho :: P: Hisao Itoya, Kazuo Kuwahara, Tamotsu Minato, Setsuo Noto / D: Kaneto Shindô / W: Kaneto Shindô / C: Kiyomi Kuroda / E: Toshio Enoki / M: Hikaru Hayashi / S: Nobuko Otowa, Jitsuko Yoshimura, Kei Satô, Jûkichi Uno, Taiji Tonoyama
