The Louisiana Hussy

This film, which has an intriguing story and good location photography, is one of the most inept productions I've ever seen. Nan Peterson makes Cleo Moore look like a great actress in the name role. She struts around in tight clothes chasing everything in pants. The male actors, whose names I forget, win the prize for possibly the worst acting ever in a sound film. The laughable fight scenes are choreographed so poorly it makes one long for the old Republic serials. The only decent acting job in this potboiler comes from Betty Lynn, known mostly today from her role as Barney's girl friend in The Andy Griffith Show. According to Wikipedia, this screen classic was released in April, 1959 which I find puzzling. One scene has our lovely heroine doing a sleazy twist, a dance which, I believe, was not popular in 1959. In the last sequence, the lovely Miss Peterson is seen seducing a passerby driving a 1961 model Cadillac. Perhaps this screen gem was re-issued in 1961 with a few new scenes inserted. Several love scenes are interpolated which are quite steamy for 1959 (61?). If you ever enjoyed the Cleo Moore-Hugo Haas epics from the same era, you will enjoy this. I began watching this streaming on You Tube, from the "Alpha Special Edition" and couldn't turn it off. My friend and I were howling with laughter during the first five minutes. "She's a bad woman-a nymphomaniac!"

Nan Peterson literally rolls onto the scene after a harrowing horseback escape while sporting a sweater with an M L monogram emblazoned across her sculpted torso, which she claims stands for Minette Lanier, never mind the association with Marie Laveau. Upon her rescue and transport to town by Peter Coe as Jacques Guillot, the story begins to suck you in like Cajun quicksand. Jacques and his brother Pierre, played by Robert Richards, get their stones rolling via the coquettish Minette, yet still manage to gather a lot of moss as apparently there's a market for that stuff somehow. Minette skinny dips, dances in her bra to radio rock n' roll and initiates petting parties like a 50's anti-heroine busting out of the constraints of squareness in a seething cauldron of southern fried crawdad stew. These characters are engaging and of course get involved in inevitable spurts of violence, yet the last thing you want to see is any of them hurt or killed, based on an empathy for the players that seems rare in movies these days. There is a plot twist that is logical and unexpected which seamlessly rolls into the main story line. Full spectrum black and white low end production values only enhance the southern Gothic mise en scene. Betty Lynn of Andy Griffith fame along with character actor Harry Lauter and some lesser known figures add some spice to the cinematic gumbo which goes down quite smoothly.

A press-release bio item, from Howco-International's release of this Bon Aire Production called "Louisiana Hussy", on Robert Richards informs the reader that Richards Has "......recently taken up cooking and is attempting Alice B. Toklas' complicated recipes."

Well, her recipes, combined with crawdads, okra and hush puppies, possibly goes a long way in explaining this bayou hash-bash.

Brothers Pierre (Robert Richards) and Jacques Guillot (Peter Coe) are partners in trading furs and Spanish Moss---"give ya'll a couple of bushels of moss for a bucket of that stuff Alice B. cooks with"---and Jacques is hacked off at his brother because Pierre is about to marry Lily (Betty Lynn)and Jacques thought he had the inside track on her...and he did, until Pierre gilded Lily with some Alice B. brownies. So, bad-loser Jacques refuses to attend the wedding, and is out gathering moss with his assistant Cob (Howard Wright) when Callie (Helen Forest), an old Gris-Gris woman, who can mix up a mean mess of grits, leads them to where she has found a badly beaten and unconscious young woman (Nan Peterson.) They get her to Doc Opie (Tyler McVey)just as Pierre and Lily are being escorted to their new home by friends following their wedding. Ol' Opie asks Jacques to carry the beautiful stranger into the newlywed's house where he has her put to bed. Pierre, wishing to prime his new bride with some Alice B. goodies, naturally resents this intrusion and takes an instant dislike to this girl who calls herself Minette. He steps into the bedroom and tells her she has to hit the road but she throws her arms around him and kisses him...just as brother Jacques passes the bedroom window. Jacques is irked by this turn of events.

He gets more irked later when wily Minette tells him that Pierre had forced his attention on her while she was ill. Jacques moves her into his shack to protect her from Pierre who is, of course, innocent but glad to get her out of his house. Meanwhile Doc Opie brings Pierre and Lily a New Orleans newspaper showing a very beautiful woman identified as Mrs. Minette Lanier (Rosalee Calvert)who had recently committed suicide in the neighboring exclusive community of Grange Hill, a Louisiana landmark because it was three feet above sea level. Pierre and Lily hustle down to "Nawlenes" and look up Clay Lanier (Harry Lauter)who has been on a prolonged binge ever since his wife's suicide. But his talky servant, Burt (Smoki Whitfield) tells them that the real Minette had been crippled after falling off a horse, and Clay had brought Nina Duprez to his home as a companion for Minette. Nina is more interested at being Clay's companion and pulls a few tricks and incidents that convinces Minette that Clay is carryin' on with Nina, and she ups and shoots herself. Clay knows her suicide was engineered by Nina, almost kills her and tries to kill himself, but Burt interferes and, during the scuffin' scuffle, Nina manages to escape and collapses from the beating and exhaustion at the spot where Callie found her.

Clay sobers up and decides he will go after Nina and finish the job. But the film wimps out after that and nobody else dies and, when last seen, Nina is boarding a Toonerville Trolley heading west.

Jacques and pierre have always been competitive brothers. When jacques is out gathering moss (fish, furs, and moss!), he finds a girl passed out, and brings her to pierre's house so she can recuperate. Of course, she's nothing but trouble. And...it's pierre's wedding day. You'll recognize pierre's new wife lily. Betty lynn was "thelma lou" on andy griffith. There is some really terrible acting in this one. The sound and picture quality are so substandard... this looks like a film from 1930! And the story runs like a john waters film, without the fun, silly charm. Skip this one. I expected it to be parodied on mystery science theater, but no such luck. Directed by lee sholem...he had directed a couple "ma and pa kettle" films, as well as a couple of tarzans. This one just turned out bad.

I had to rate this movie a 7/10, because it is a highly entertaining bayou trash romp. The intermittent sex scenes are especially humorous, thanks to the director's and cast's attempts to push the censors' envelope of acceptability to the limit for '59. In fact, the characters' intertwined shadows sometimes get away with more than the characters themselves do! Then there's lots of fightin' and fussin' to keep you interested between the romantic interludes.

We saw this on public TV's One Star Theatre a few years ago, and had a blast watching it. The lead "hussy" is completely unscrupulous and immoral, and she's played against nice, sweet Betty Lynn ('Thelma Lou' of Mayberry fame) to great effect. Enjoy this one for all it's worth, if you can find it!!