Geometria di un delitto

Lana Turner on an acid trip - a bizarre thought, but this low-budget Mexican production, "The Big Cube," is about just that - you know, "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," the "Sugar Shack" - LSD. And what a bizarre trip it is for all involved.

Turner plays a great theater star, Adriana Roman, who retires to marry Charles Winthrop (Dan O'Herlihy) and comes up against his angry daughter Lisa (Karin Mossberg). No one explains why O'Herlihy's daughter has some sort of foreign accent. Everyone else is American. Anyway, Lisa falls for a sleaze drug dealer and soon to be ex-medical student (George Chakiris) who is after her money. When O'Herlihy dies in a boating accident, the Chakiris character hints to Lisa that they can hurry along the inheritance by - and this is really not clear - either driving Adriana nuts with LSD or using it to kill her. It falls to the playwright with whom Adriana has worked (Richard Egan) to rescue her from the clutches of these two connivers.

The plot is beyond muddled. One day Lisa hates her stepmother, and then the next day they're best buddies. One day Adriana has an acid trip while in a car, and Lisa and her boyfriend take her to a cliff, presumably to throw her over, and Adriana gets away from them and doesn't die. The next day, Adriana goes on another acid trip and tries to throw herself out a window, and Lisa saves her. Why did she save her when she tried to kill her the day before? It's a mess.

The movie is filled with psychedelic parties and horrible acting, particularly from Mossberg, Pamela Rodgers, Lisa's friend, and Carlos East, who plays an overly made-up artist named Lalo.

Turner, approaching 50, does her "Portrait in Black," "Imitation of Life" acting number wearing some horrific wigs. With a simple upswept hairdo, those enormous blue eyes, and petite figure, she's quite beautiful and glamorous, though dressed like she's supposed to be 18; with her hair down, she's a way over the hill ingénue; and with those gargoyle wigs, she looks just plain awful. Her closeups are shot through linoleum. I hate that older beautiful classic film stars had so few alternatives that they turned to these trash movies, but many did.

Campy though not on the camp level of a "Valley of the Dolls" or another Lana Turner film, "Portrait in Black" but some might find it fun. It was fun, but also a little sad for those who enjoyed Lana in "Slightly Dangerous," "Green Dolphin Street," and the Ross Hunter glossy melodramas of the '50s.

This was made during an age when old-time Hollywood stars were destroying themselves in film and it would have been better if many had just retired instead of making god-awful films like Joan Crawford, Jennifer Jones and Lana Turner did late in their careers. BUT, these bad films are enjoyable, as they are so bad you can't help but enjoy them for their camp value.

The film begins with Turner marrying a rich guy (Dan O'Herlihy). However she tries, Turner is not able to get the man's daughter (Karin Mossberg--who was an odd choice to play the daughter, as her command of English seemed rather poor) to accept her. However, Turner doesn't realize just how deep the step-daughter's resentment of her is. When the father dies in a boating accident and Turner is left in charge, Mossberg and her freaky boyfriend (George Chakiris) decide to drive the woman crazy--that way they can get their hands on all that money. So, combining LSD and recordings weird suggestions, they drive her towards the deep end. What happens next (other than lots of crazy psychedelics), you'll have to see for yourself. Just be prepared--it's embarrassing and amazingly silly.

While there is some shock value (with all the boobies scattered throughout the film), the writing is just awful. Characters behave in insanely inconsistent ways and the ending is just dumb (you've GOT to see the play--it's amazingly dopey). A bad film but a strangely enjoyable one.

So many of the great film actresses from the Golden Age were driven hard by their own ambitions and the maintenance of stardom: they seemed unable to gracefully leave the screen and their considerable achievements, and would rather be horrors than has-beens. Joan Crawford's last film was the dreadful Trog, Bette Davis appeared as the Wicked Stepmother, and even Mae West, at age 85, creeped her fans out in the tedious Sextette. I thought of Mae West especially, and her attempt to be sexy while watching Lana Turner negotiate her way in the exploitation film The Big Cube.

If you want to understand how mainstream America envisioned the 1960's counterculture and all that it implied--psychedelic colors, heavy drugs and trippy music--the first 30 minutes of this nutty camp classic have it right: a visit to a San Francisco nightclub is a complete hoot, full of coeds dropping sugar cubes (LSD) into their beer, a freak out in the center of the dance floor so bad the police arrive (rather quickly, as if they had been waiting offstage) to drag the poor victim to rehab--and even, however briefly, a topless dancer!

But to return to Lana Turner, trapped in a bad situation when her husband drowns unexpectedly and she's left with an avaricious stepdaughter whose malicious boyfriend (George Chakiris, who should have fired his agent for casting him in this turkey) decides the two of them should drug mama and drive her slowly mad; Lana hasn't a clue why she's having psychedelic hallucinations, and one hopes she wasn't secretly hoping this was her final chance for an Oscar as she screams and wails and carries on like Godzilla on a bender.

This wild immersion in off-the-wall exploitation is entertaining fun for the first half, and then gets bogged down in the melodrama; Lana's co-star, the young Karen Mossberg, competes with her mother for worst blonde wig, but her wooden acting style and bizarre accent makes her hard to understand, and she never made another film; watch instead for her redheaded BFF, played by Pamela Rodgers, whose perky personality enlivens the screen with a totally zany sex kitten. TV star Richard Egan maintains a stoic attitude throughout the film, a steady if stolid presence.

This is a fun romp "of a kind," and succeeds at that level. For Lana fans, it's probably fairly horrifying to see the persuasive actress of the excellent Bad and The Beautiful and The Postman Always Rings Twice stuck in such a turkey, but in spite of fairly fuzzed-out lenses and a slightly anorexic appearance, the lady does her best and soldiers on.

Bad movie lovers rejoice. Craptastic mess from that unfortunate time period when the studios were trying to connect with a youth audience that just wasn't there. Poor Lana, looking dreadfully gaunt, and her terrible two tone hair are stuck in this tripe with nowhere to hide. Her costarring with Dan O'Herlihy reminds the viewer that they were in Imitation of Life together and makes you wonder why you're not watching that instead! The rest of the acting is of the seriously wooden variety and the direction inept. Trash but if you are in the mood for something to make fun of or a Lana completist than give it a chance but one view will be more than enough.

Being a Lana Turner fan, and having seen most of her films, "The Big Cube" had always been amazingly allusive. It's not an easy movie to find, but once I got my hands on it, I was like a little kid at Christmas. I had read reviews on it and seen the disdain for this film over and over again, but I wasn't as horrified by it as most reviewers had me expecting to be. And, strangely enough, that was both a disappointment and a relief.

Lana plays a supposedly great stage actress (though you wouldn't know it based on the horrendous play the film opens with) who retires to marry a wealthy man whose witchy teenage daughter resents Lana's intrusion into their lives. This diva daughter, meanwhile, begins to date a sleazy drug pusher whom neither her father nor Lana approve of. The daughter (played oddly enough with an Eastern European accent of some sort) teams up with her boyfriend to drive poor Lana mad by lacing her medication with LSD.

"The Big Cube" is not a good movie by any stretch of the imagination. Many of the lines and scenes are laughably bad. Lana's LSD-induced hallucination scenes are beyond campy. And seeing Lana in the same film with bare breasts and naked rear-ends is a little disconcerting. But the film will suck you in and have you hooked - much like LSD itself. And in an oddly appealing way, there is a dash of awkwardness thrown in when you see how seriously Turner takes herself in this film. For a woman who was on the verge of 50, she still acted like a young vixen in her 20's.

This vehicle is one of pure exhibitionism. Truly only for Lana fans or those who like trippy '60s flicks. But I have honestly seen much worse. "Valley of the Dolls" is from the same era and in the same vein, but much more ridiculous and tedium inducing. "The Big Cube", strangely enough, resembles a drugged-out version of Turner's 1959 hit "Imitation of Life". Between Lana's successful stage actress character and the conflict she experiences with her step-daughter, plus the on screen reunion with Dan O'Herlihy (who plays her husband here), the similarities are striking enough for me to imagine that the director of this bizarre film must have been a fan of Lana's older melodramas. Having said that, "The Big Cube" is also about as far away from "Imitation of Life" or "Peyton Place" as one can get.