WALK ON THE WILD SIDE (1962)

This is a trashy, overheated soup of a movie that had the potential to be fun, but thanks to some stupendously bad acting and underwritten characters, is mostly a tedious haul through faux-Tennessee Williams territory. Laurence Harvey is Dove Linkhorn (no, that't not a typo), a tall and apparently penniless Texan lad who hitchhikes his way to New Orleans to find his long-lost love, Hallie (Capucine). She's a sculptor and supports herself by working in a brothel, the Doll House, run by tough-as-nails madam Barbara Stanwyck. Capucine is also Stanwyck's lover. Helped out by a kindly Mexican diner owner (Anne Baxter), Harvey finds Capucine and the two plan to leave New Orleans together to start a new life, but Stanwyck doesn't want to let go of her "girl toy." The wild card in all this is Kitty Twist (Jane Fonda), an ambitious and wildly sexy but nasty underage girl whom Dove finds along the road. She winds up working at the Doll House and helps set in motion a blackmail scheme against Harvey intended to get him out of town and away from Capucine. Harvey and Capucine seesaw back and forth about getting back together, and in the end, after Stanwyck's musclemen beat the living crap out of Harvey, a gun goes off, killing an important character and making sure that no one gets a happy ending out of any of this sordidness.

What's good here? Stanwyck, of course, is fine, giving us a little preview of her "Big Valley" melodramatics. Any fun the movie has is due to her. I liked Fonda in a total spitfire role. Baxter is also good; some critics have taken her to task for her bad Mexican accent, but I thought she was as believable as anyone else. Another plus is the camerawork, with lots of slithery movement around elaborate sets. The music, by Elmer Bernstein, was good, much of it being played by a jazz combo in the brothel. The biggest problem with the movie is Laurence Harvey, who is totally miscast. I've never liked Harvey--the best thing I can say for him in THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE is that he doesn't hurt the movie. But he definitely hurts this one. He's not a Texan, he has no passion and he is too old for the part. He is terrible. Capucine is not very good, either, though she certainly looks like she could make a good living as a hooker. The weak screenplay is another problem; the backstory of Harvey and Capucine's characters is almost non-existent. Stanwyck's character is married (to a legless man who has become her flunky) and certainly adores Capucine, but she also makes a strange anti-lust speech late in the movie, which makes me wonder exactly what she and Capucine did behind closed doors--lie around in their nightgowns and talk about sensible shoes? I'm quite surprised that they got away with such strong implications about prostitution and lesbianism with the Code still (barely) in force. The credit sequence by Saul Bass, with a black cat slinking around and getting into a fight, is famous and great looking, though the movie doesn't live up to it. But I've got to admit, any movie with a character called Kitty Twist can't be all bad. [TCM]