Beef

Unfaithfully Yours (Preston Sturges, 1948) - pro-
Gets a low pro, because while it features some of the trademark Sturges wit and a rather brilliant way of letting the classical score Rex Harrison is conducting dictate his fantasies (and thus the narrative) about what he should do with his supposedly unfaithful wife, the film is marred by a silly use of sound effects and a sloppy, catch-all ending perhaps fitting for the genre but unworthy of Sturges. Harrison grows into his role, and he handles the free-flowing dialogue with authority - just witness his verbal assault on the poor tailor mistaken for a private dick. The rest of the cast is a bit disappointing, even though the reliable Rudy Vallee gets a few good scenes as Harrison's unbearable brother-in-law.

***

Prime Cut (Michael Ritchie, 1972) - pro
In this bizarre exploitation flick, previously near-forgotten and only recently released on DVD for the first time, Lee Marvin plays Nick, a Chicago mob guy sent out to rural Kansas to collect a debt from a shady sleaze called Mary Ann(!), played by Gene Hackman. Mary Ann is a dope dealer who fronts his operation with a meat packing factory, co-run by his brother "Weenie", but he is also a slave trader, grabbing young girls from a local orphanage and selling them to the highest bidder in twisted events resembling cattle auctions. Needless to say, Mary Ann doesn't take too kindly to Nick's presence, and the standoff between the two quickly turns into a full-blown confrontation. In the process, Nick frees one of the young orphans (a dreamy Sissy Spacek in her first credited performance) and learns all about the depths of Mary Ann's depravity.

Even for the iconoclast era of the early 70's and a director like Ritchie, whose early work include the tremendous political fake doc The Candidate and the beauty queen satire Smile, Prime Cut is decidedly an odd number. Both suspenseful and humourous, and brimming with seedy details, it is elevated above the cheapest exploitation fare thanks to the colourful characters and the suggestion of a dark rural underworld among all the corn fields and sunny country fairs, where the henchmen are blonde farmboys and the opposition literally ends up in the meat grinder. The cast is uniformly good, especially Hackman, grinning and chuckling as the outrageous Mary Ann. Hackman was on an amazing roll at the time this was made, just coming off his Oscar-winning performance in The French Connection (1971) and on his way towards his very best appearances, in Schatzberg's Scarecrow (1973) and Coppola's The Conversation (1974).

The scene where Mary Ann is enjoying a full plate of cow guts while naked and drugged-up orphan girls sit in droves in stables, waiting to be picked up and bought, is significant of the movie - it's delirious, unsettling, and funny all at once.