Sweet Trash

Sweet Trash (1970)

** (out of 4)

Michael (Duncan McLeod) is a longshoreman who enjoys drinking and gambling and being broken. Those three things aren't a good combination and soon the top guys come for their money and when Michael doesn't have it he goes on the run with the gangster's hot on his trail.

I'm going to guess the only reason people would be watching SWEET TRASH is that they're interested in the filmography of its director, John Hayes. Hayes is best remembered for his film GRAVE OF THE VAMPIRE and he had a chapter in Stephen Thrower's NIGHTMARE USA, which is where I learned more about him and this film. On its own, this film would pretty much be forgotten by anyone except, as I said, those like me looking into the director's films.

For the most part this here is a mildly entertaining drama but it certainly falls well short of being what you'd consider a good film. There are several problems with the movie but the biggest is the fact that there's really just not a lot of suspense or tension. The movie is meant to play out as a thriller as our good guy is constantly avoiding the bad guys but the director just never builds up any suspense and for the most part you're just going along for the ride instead of really being invested in the story.

There were some good stuff though including the performance of McLeod (working under the name Patrick Shea). I thought he was actually pretty good in the movie I liked the character that he played up. You can at least be interested in the lead character and that helps get you through the running time. The highlight of the film comes towards the end when the character is trapped inside a house and pretty much has to take on the bad guys one by one. This was a very fun sequence with some mild blood thrown in. We also get some beautiful women along the way and the type of nudity that you'd suspect.

Revisionists have taken '60s pornography (the films without hardcore content) and redefined it as"Sexploitation" -just another movie genre of its day alongside Westerns, Romantic Comedies and Musicals. SWEET TRASH is a good example of the folly (and downright misleading results) of this approach to film history.

Watching a new Vinegar Syndrome DVD of the movie I was both intrigued and fascinated by its good and bad elements, and treat it as a real movie, but an Adult film aimed at the nation's slice of several hundred theaters of the day that specialized in porn. Rather than put the John Hayes movie on a pedestal and pitifully treat it as a victim of discrimination, the clichéd "indie" ghettoized by an industry and critics with blinders on, the more interesting question is "what went wrong?".

Wrong in the sense that like so many films, perhaps 90 or 95% of those produced, ST barely saw the light of day. Other Hayes movies (I've seen 20 so far, only half a dozen theatrically) were widely distributed and successful at the box office, but ST sank without a trace. Even the AFI's 1976 book documenting all U.S. releases for 1961-1970 (as complete as research would permit) has only a sketchy place holder listing for it.

My key point of comparison stems from this movie having starred Duncan McLeod (billed here as "Patrick Shea"), among my favorite Russ Meyer actors. He starred opposite Erica Gavin in VIXEN, my favorite porn film back in the '60s and a truly huge hit that grossed millions at the box office, far more than the average mainstream film of its time. In Cleveland it was shown at "art houses" like the Continental Art Theatre where I caught it first-run.

In SWEET TRASH, McLeod plays Michael Joseph Donovan, giving a fascinating performance, at times thanks to Hayes' pretentious script taking the little movie into Eugene O'Neill territory in its depiction of an Irish working class subculture in NYC's Hell's Kitchen of the '60s. But that aspect of the movie clashes with its far more routine, and necessary, main plot of sleazy sex-trade in the Big Apple, dominated by organized crime, loan sharks and unbelievably a monster computer (not unlike COLOSSUS of THE FORBIN PROJECT) that turns out to be little more than an IBM card sorter in the final reel "shock ending" (the shock is how lame this is).

So why is Meyer's VIXEN a movie breakthrough and SWEET TRASH a total flop? It wasn't persecution by the establishment, otherwise Meyer, who was painfully hounded by censors throughout his career, would not have been the constantly influential success story he was.

While watching TRASH the answer became obvious: though Hayes like clockwork inserts Pavlovian scenes (albeit brief) of actresses displaying full-frontal nudity and beautiful breasts, the movie's serious, pretentious tone and aspirations are a turn-off to the target audience. Wiser pornographers, like David Friedman and Harry Novak, knew their customers (belittling them as "pervs" in their SWV DVD voice-over commentaries decades later), but Hayes, like his contemporary Paul Leder, apparently though he was dishing out high art to the unwashed.

McLeod as Donovan is a longshoreman oddly chosen by the nameless (but evil?) computer to be recruited by the mob as a loan shark. On the issue of scalability, presumably he is the computer's test case for outreach as the mob enters modern management era.

The existing loan shark McGuire, whom McLeod already owes $4,000, schemes to have him lose at a big back-room poker game in Pete's bar, his aces-over full house beaten by four fours. Independent spirit McLeod rejects the job offer out of hand, preferring the alternative of having his fingers crushed by mob goons.

This sets in motion an improbable tale of McLeod outsmarting the baddies, going on the run to Coney Island and Jersey, and the film trailing off into rather fanciful but pace-killing excursions that are more dreamlike (and often, like Meyer, potentially accused of being Fellini-esque) than fitting the film's down to earth atmosphere.

Location footage of Manhattan, replete with Bowery bums oddly relocated to litter the Hell's Kitchen sidewalks, and Brooklyn is perhaps the movie's strongest suit, though typical porn-level claustrophobic interiors for the disrobing and barely shown simulated sex scenes predominate. Acting is at a very high level, notably the character actress (who does disrobe revealing a huge chest late in the film) who plays McLeod's Irish pal from childhood but can't stand his antics and pipe dreams. She's the movie's Colleen Dewhurst to his Jason Robards, but the chances of Hayes ever working with such greats as these were clearly nil.

Similarly Ted Roter as the nominal villain of the piece, sleazy Rizzo, surrounded by beautiful babes in his Westchester mansion, is suitably slimy and far more entertaining here than in his later XXX garbage where he both directed and spotlighted himself in leading roles. Hayes takes great pains (perhaps out of fear of retaliation?) to avoid Italianate Mafia references, with the unseen mob kingpin named Mr. Cohen.

Photography by vet pornographers Paul Hipp and Henning Schellerup is excellent. Hopefully some '60s experts will identify the half dozen alluring actresses in supporting roles who deserve some sort of posthumous credit. As far as Hayes is concerned, I suspect he will suffer the double-edged fate of leaving one's legacy to revisionists: destined to be remembered more for very occasional straying into klutzy and worthless horror and suspense genre territory with misfires like DREAM NO EVIL and GARDEN OF THE DEAD than his pretentious pornography.

Duncan McLeod plays hapless "hero" Michael Joseph Donovan in this combination of crime drama and adult film. It's got enough of the requisite sex and nudity to satisfy us, but in truth it also tells a pretty entertaining (if unimaginative) story. It even gets decidedly surreal towards the end, as Michael regales a chance acquaintance with the tales of his youth (which are also portrayed on screen in an atmospheric, low budget manner). There's a delicious amount of gory squib violence going on, and fine use of NYC locations.

Donovan is a chatty, somewhat obnoxious, but not unlikable Coney Island longshoreman deeply in debt to area mobsters. Just like any person with a debt, he swears he'll pay it back, but when he gets his chance, he escapes from mafia goons and decides to take it on the lam.

"Sweet Trash" opens with a pretty effective set piece that ends rather unexpectedly. From then on, it's decent exploitative fun, with a highly memorable central performance from the swaggering McLeod ("Beyond the Valley of the Dolls"). In fact, the acting from most people concerned is actually not too bad, including Mary McGee as Donovans' loyal lady friend Helen, and William Guhl as Dan the loan shark. People familiar with B cinema will recognize the names of Paul Hipp (cinematographer) and Henning Schellerup (camera operator).

Perhaps most bizarre is the slightly futuristic touch in which the mob men take all their orders from a computer (!) that makes their decisions for them.

Hurt by its less than satisfying ending.

Six out of 10.