Slumming: Jail Bait, where the title doesn’t say it all!

"They" have nothing to do with it! It's the goddamn gun, Donny!

‘k. I love – unabashedly and unrepentantly – “Plan Nine from Outer Space” and “Glen or Glenda”. I have not seen Ed Wood's later, more tawdry films, though my morbid curiosity leads me to believe I should check them out.

“Jail Bait” has lingered in my mind as the middle of the three films, rounding out a pretty craptastic trilogy and I have to admit, it shows a surprising amount of competence while still remaining fairly nuts.

I don’t think I completely avoided the film until now; I just never carved out time for it. I’m glad I did. Really. In all, it’s a stretched out “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” episode minus good writing. However, that might even be a little unfair; the dialog isn’t nearly as idiotic as much of what comprised the screenplays of the other two movies mentioned here.

It helps that there are real actors mouthing the words and there’s an almost Lynchian quality to some of the scenes. I think I can actually come up with examples later on.

This isn’t to say that this is a particularly good movie. But on the sliding scale of what we’re looking at, it ain’t bad. There’s a lot of heart to it and more than a couple of moments where Wood’s eccentricities shine through; Steve Reeves randomly opening a scene where he’s shirtless and dressing in front of his partner at the police precinct. There’s also a minstrel show that shocked the shit out of me, both because it was so ridiculously out of place and quite frankly, repulsive. Blackface in the fifties? I suppose it was still a thing, but it’s pretty sickening and I’d say it took me out of the movie, but Ed’s work is typically something you don’t immerse yourself in. Not if you want to maintain some semblance of normality.

 

Here's where we see Don's body, propped up in a closet (in the kitchen?! Gross!) that recalls Cagney's corpse at the door before it comes falling forward. This is also a scene that calls into question an influence on Lynch's and perhaps Todd Haynes's interiors. 

Here's Cagney's body for contrast.

There’s also the discovery of a body that calls back, unintentionally I assume, the end of “Public Enemy” where Cagney’s body just shows up and falls to the floor. The story itself isn’t really all that unusual for a B movie of the time. In many ways, it calls to mind the crime comics that were on the rise. Not necessarily EC Comics level, but some of the more innocuous stuff. Sure, there’s cop killing, attempted murder, robbery, a miserable little shit of a criminal slapping his dame, and of course, plastic surgery to conceal the bad guy’s identity.

It's worth going into, though. As I mentioned, it’s conspicuously competent. No one flubs their lines, there’s no handmade set that gives way when someone bumps into it, there’s a genuine plot, and even some decent cinematography (a nifty pan shot before a murder was a shock to the system!) There’s a semi-annoying score that keeps dithering in and out through the soundtrack. The composer Hoyt Curtin would go on to work for Hanna-Barbera and was responsible for themes of cartoons and incidental music. His low key atonal work here is disconcerting; tinkling piano keys and a guitar that sounds almost like a zither combine to give a kind of slowed down sense of time. Or maybe, it’s just the film. There’s a fair amount of action, but it comes at a leisurely pace; it’s a kind of talky affair. Imagine if Kevin Smith wrote a script for Sam Fuller, you might wind up with something like this. No. No, you would not. That would be infinitely better (and possibly weirder), but you kind of get the idea.

There are moments where characters discuss right and wrong, love and loss, and as a procedural, it’s not the worst I’ve seen. But people do chat a bit, in between robbing and shooting and trying to decide how to get out of a fix.

The title is a bit of misdirection; “Jail Bait” refers to a gun. I remember finding out about that and being profoundly disappointed. An Ed Wood, Jr. joint that should be about underage girls turns out to be a mediocre crime movie. We’ll get to all of this in due course.

"You know that gun is jail bait!".."Wait, you mean it's under age?"

I just thought of something else; “Bride of the Monster” is the rightful part of the trilogy with “Plan 9” and “Glen or Glenda”. How could I forget? Because it’s a terrible movie. Unintentionally hilarious, but terrible. “Jail Bait”, then, stands outside Wood’s oeuvre.

Timothy Farrell and Jack Nance

Because the plot is fairly straightforward and linear, the recap is simple: a troubled young man(Clancy Malone, in his only starring role…in fact, I think this is his only role) falls in with the wrong crowd (well, of two; the penny-ante crook/grifter Vic Brady -  Timothy Farrell, a dead ringer for Jack Nance – the Lynch comparisons to this movie don’t end with him –  and his moll, Theodora "Tedi" Thurman, a kind of blowsy second hand Lauren Bacall). His sister Marilyn, a game Dolores Fuller (Ed’s girlfriend and altogether longsuffering heroine of his flicks; she continued to help him out even after they broke up and yes, the cross-dressing did get to her after a while…) bails him out after getting pinched for some minor infraction, but he was carrying a gun without a license for it and is played as a sullen punk, if there ever were one. Malone’s a handsome enough guy, but seems a little old to be carrying that big an adolescent chip on his shoulder (aw, what do I know? A punk’s a punk; the bum kid, why, I tell ya…)

"Do you know what it would do to dad to find out what a little shit you are?"

Anyway, she springs him, they return home and she gives him a lecture about responsibility, as one would, he cops an attitude, goes to a bookcase, pulls out a large tome inside of which is – you guessed it – another gun! “That gun” is the “Jail Bait” of the title. It’s right there in the dialog! Donny boy takes off and leaves his sister and dad to ruminate on Don’s future and his dad, another way overqualified thespian in the form of Herbert Rawlinson (with a career going back to the silent era), wondering where he failed as a father and bemoaning the absence of a mother’s presence in his son’s life.

Cut to Don meeting up with “hardened criminal” Vic Brady at a dive bar where Vic tells Don how proud he is that the kid got busted and didn’t puss out, blahblahblah. Don, on the other hand, has second thoughts about this business written all over him. He’s carrying a piece, though, which he hands off to Vic right before Inspector Johns (Lyle Talbot, who at 52 by this time had hitched his wagon to Ed Wood’s star) and Lieutenant Bob Lawrence (Steve Reeves in his first movie role! Beefcake ahead, kiddies!) step up to them and tell them they’re keeping an eye on them. They tell the would-be mobsters to beat it, Don throws some shade and outside Vic tells Don that they’re still going to hit a theatre’s payroll drop tonight. Don tries to back out, but Brady won’t hear of it and they head off to do the deed.

 

Who knew he was an ex-cop?

The robbery is a slightly interesting affair visually; it boasts the only pan shot in the film which stands out like a sore thumb in an otherwise series of static scenes. I don’t want to traffic in generalizations, but one earmark of almost all B-movies is the lack of any dynamic camera movement. Transitions are almost always fade-ins or once in a while smash cuts that are so obviously signs of a lack of craft/understanding of the “motion” in motion pictures that they grind the movie to a halt as opposed to advancing the plot…or much else.

Anyway, through a series of lazy script passages, Don winds up shooting the night guard who turns out to be a retired police officer, making Don a cop killer. Next, the company secretary shows up, sees the shooting, flees from the office the theatre’s stage and gets gunned down by Brady in the aisle. Brady returns to a shell-shocked Don and they flee the crime scene.

Uh-oh! The Secretary!

To be sure, some of the photography is actually pretty good. The cinematography, not so much; static and dull. But individual scenes like this show a rich gray scale and lend atmosphere to a film that has as much of that as, oh, Mars. Or the moon...

 

In a not-terribly inventive narrative sequence of back and forths between Don and Vic and Loretta (Vic’s girl) in a downright Lynchian apartment (swear to god, this could have come out of “Blue Velvet”) where the performances are all over the map. Tedi Thurman’s line readings are supposed to be tough-girl solid, but come off as from a woman too bored with the idiot’s antics to care, Farrell musters up the requisite tough-guy patois, and Donny remains a catatonic PTSD victim who bolts while Loretta and Vic are planning next steps. Et. Cetera.

Part of it's the furniture, but it's also the static interior that calls to mind other aspects of Lynch's approach to space.

For comparison, there's this scene from "Blue Velvet"; I'll insert some more from Loretta's apartment for elaboration.

It's this odd angle, emphasizing Don's trauma and turning to drink that doesn't quite work, but in the context of the film, has a strange dreamlike quality. This photo alone doesn't capture that, but I'm putting it here to provide some context.

This captures the more apprehensive quality of the situation Don is in. Loretta is an unknown quantity and this sequence - for a few seconds, anyway, presages the strangeness of the unfamilar dread that comes with crime and transgression in Lynch's work thirty years later.

This might be a better visual analogue of what I'm getting at.

 "What's wrong with him?" "He shot his first cop."

The press photog shooting the shot.

Then there’s the return to the crime scene where we learn the woman isn’t fatally wounded and will recover in mere hours and the inspector and his hunky charge already have a good idea who committed this dastardly crime. There’s some goofy ballyhoo with a crime scene photog and lady reporter from the local rag. She tries to charm one of the detectives present to get a statement from the inspector, he says no, and she shuts him down before she splits. Dude’s got no game.

In the meantime, and one finds oneself using that phrase a lot looking at movin’ pitchers like this, Don’s gone to his dad’s office – dad being a world renowned plastic surgeon (PLOT POINT!), to tell his father what he’s done and that he will turn himself in. The kid goes out the side door as the inspector and lieutenant enter and the good doctor updates them and says they can expect to see Don when he comes to them to turn himself in.

Don is accosted by Vic, seemingly at random – but not (how could the random exist in such a small town where a criminal’s whereabouts are hardly a secret to his partner? In other words, what kind of goober wouldn’t expect to be hunted down by his now-pissed-off partner in crime?). Vic drags Don back to Loretta’s and after telling Vic that he’s going to the fuzz to turn himself, in, Vic shoots him and stuffs him in a closet located in Loretta’s kitchen.

Great, Loretta figures, so now my BF is a stone murderer and I’m implicated and this is all going to hell in the proverbial handbasket. She raises her concerns and, of course he belts her. But she loves him, as she'll tell Marilyn later.

But then, Vic has a storm in his brain pan! What if he didn’t look like himself? Why, he and Lo could cut outta town and go anywhere they wanted! How to do that, though? Why, his partner’s dad is the greatest plastic surgeon in the world; it’s simplicity itself.

Vic makes the call to Dr. Gregor who agrees, thinking that if he goes along, he’ll get to see his son and help him turn himself in. He and Marilyn (“do you remember your nurse’s training?” he asks his daughter) make ready to go to Loretta’s. The doc goes first and Steve Reeves shows up to make a pass at Marilyn (pardon me if he just doesn’t strike me as the type), she basically tells him to pound salt and she splits to join her father to assist in the operation. Oh, and did I mention that she grabs a gun, too? The fuck is it with firearms in small town 50s America? Oh. I forgot. Red Scare? Gangsters among Us? That’s three guns to one family, though…

Anyway, somewhere in here, we see a shirtless Steve a propos nuthin’. Apparently, he was sleeping over at the precinct since he was working so hard on this case. Round the clock, goddammit. I’m sure it had nothing to do with Ed’s proclivities nor the idea that a hunk like Reeves would really pack in the ladies.

 

Hiya, goils! How do you like this slab o' meat?

Back at Loretta’s, the doc sedates Vic, goes hunting for a basin for hot water, finds his son’s body and all the while, Loretta and Marilyn have a heart to heart about a life of crime and love’s blindness/stupidity. Dolores Fuller felt that she got a raw deal from working with Wood. In her later years, she complained that she never felt she got credit for growing as an actress because of her association with Wood. I – well, let’s just say, I don’t think I can quite see that growth. Particularly, since this was on of her later roles. But I digress.

"Call me in two weeks."

The operation concludes with Vic out like a light, the doc’s orders to keep the dressing cleaned with a special ointment for two weeks (as opposed to changing the dressing? Okay, okay, we need those bandages to stay on!) and then to call the doc to come and remove them.

Here we go, kids. The day of the removing of the bandages arrives with the cops in tow (which doesn’t bug Vic; the doc is covering for him…while he’s covered). Dr. Gregor points out to the police that the man under the bandages is not Vic Brady. The cops also brought the woman who Brady shot to identify him, but when the bandages are removed, no! It’s not Vic Brady!!! “It’s my son!!!” Brady is handed a mirror and sure enough, as he turns to the camera, it’s Donny boy!!! Who’dathunk?

"That's the man that killed Max!"

Vic in Donny skin makes a run for it, kills his own cop and takes a fatal shot from the inspector. He falls by the side of the swimming pool and of course, rolls over and dies face down in the water. Roll credits, while you’re at it.

 

Of course, he gets shot by the pool....

So, really, there’s nothing terribly wrong here. It’s the kind of blah movie that anyone could have made and despite the single camera static shots, the pretty hacky script (but not poetically weird like “Plan 9” or “Glen or Glenda”), the acting is solidly B-movie stolid to okay. Lyle Talbot as the inspector brings his usual character acting professionalism to the role, Herbert Rawlinson does the best he can with what he’s given and attempts to bring some gravitas to a movie that wouldn’t know what to

...so he can roll over into it. Not to be confused with Ray Milland in "Sunset Boulevard."

do with gravitas if it bit it in the gravitass.

Farrell as Brady does a decent slow burn and I can’t totally fault Thurman for her blasé approach to a character that is ill-served by said hacky script. For what it’s worth, she has one other film credit and appeared on The Jack Paar show; she also lived to be 99 years old! Come to think of it, Fuller lived a good long life, as did Talbot. Rawlinson and Reeves made it to their seventies. I wonder if working with Wood had some effect on longevity. “Working with Ed Wood, Jr. killed my career, but not me!” Except that Rawlinson died shortly after filming “Jail Bait”, sorry.

I could have substituted any other of Wood’s opuses for this, but I wanted to see to what degree Wood’s WTFery would make it into a fairly “normal” B-movie. Principally, it’s the wooden performances, the strange mise-en-scènes, Reeves’ out of the blue hunk of the month shirt donning, the minstrel show that comes out of nowhere and has not point, and the to and fro editing to get to the Rod Serlingesque reveal.

The next cinematic mistake is already in queue. We’ll take a look at “The Mesa of Lost Women” starring our Dolores. But before we dip into that masterpiece, I had the pleasure (to some degree) of seeing Guy Ritchie’s latest. That’s up next.

Random observations:

People read books back in the fifties:

Dr. Gregor's nurse, for instance.

Even Loretta, the minx!

A minstrel show? Really? For fuck's sake...who thought this shit was funny? Oh, of course, white Americans....Ah, yes, the fifties, the last great cracker decade.

 

"He's not really a bad kid." This was said a few times. It's what everyone tried to convince themselves of, although, I kind of get the feeling Marilyn was a tough sell.