Director: Dennis Kane
Writers: Barney Cohen and Dennis Kane
From: Cult Cinema
A young woman gets drugged in the French Quarter and dreams about her past life in a brothel.
Two lines from the narrator that come early in the movie: “Anybody that wants something real bad is gonna get it real bad.” and “Mixture of half child, half girl, and all woman.” Oh, this is going to be a thing, isn’t it? It’s going to be a whole big thing.
Nope, it’s just going to be real boring the whole way through. So… better?
Christine is a young woman who decides to move to New Orleans after the death of her father. Her mother’s been dead and her father’s death leaves behind some substantial debt. She arrives in the French Quarter and starts looking for work, but no one will hire her. She finally gets a job as a topless dancer at a club. Her first night doesn’t go great, but she gets hired on (sidenote: the scene with her stripping is fantastic because it cuts to an elderly lady in the audience who is acting really impressed. Something about this delighted old woman at a titty bar filled me with joy in a way nothing else in the movie did).
Her first paycheck, though, is pretty paltry. The boss has taken out all kinds of expenses so Christine decides to quit and head home. It’s a Saturday, though, so she can’t cash the check. The bartender sends Christine to a voodoo priestess across town who will cash the check. The priestess drugs Christine and she slips into a dream where the borders of the screen are all blurry.
No, seriously, like a quarter of the frame is given over to blur for the rest of the movie. An affectation like that to indicate a dream sequence only works if you eventually leave the dream sequence. Spoiler alert: this blog gives away all the details about the movies it discusses and you should really be aware of that by now. Also, the movie doesn’t come out of this dream sequence until the very last minute.
So Christine wakes up as Trudi, a new arrival at a brothel. Since Trudi’s a virgin, she’ll be auctioned off in a few days. Meanwhile, she gets courted by a piano player who’s just arrived to start working at the brothel. They fall in love, he buys her at the auction, but that offends one of the crime syndicate operators in town. I don’t really know his role, why he’s angry at the sale, or the situation in general. All I know is he’s played by the same guy that plays the owner of the topless bar. Everyone in the dream is someone from the present. Even the other sex workers at the brothel are women Christine saw in the audience her first time dancing (which answers the question of why so many women were at this topless bar earlier).
Anyway, villain has the voodoo priestess cast a spell to kidnap Trudi. When Trudi’s about to be sacrificed, someone enters with a gun. It’s fired and we come back to the present where the police are raiding the voodoo priestess’ apartment and save Christine. Turns out she’d fallen into a sex slavery ring and was about to be sold off to someone. The cop that saves her is the piano player from the dream. They walk off together as the narrator returns, revealing himself as the cop, telling the story of how they spent the rest of their lives together. THE END
So I didn’t know what this movie was about before I watched it, as I watched, or even now that I’ve finished watching it. I guess it’s the story of rescuing Trudi from having her virginity sold (although she’s rescued by having the right person buy it so I don’t know how well that works) presented as an allegory for saving Christine from being sold into sex slavery, but there’s never any indication of that. Christine vanishes from the movie the moment her character falls asleep and, once we’re in the past, it’s really the story of this brothel, this hot-shot jazz pianist that’s moved to town, and everything else going on. Most of the time I couldn’t differentiate Trudi from the other sex workers.
The movie’s pretty boring and aimless. There are a few moments that feel like they’re supposed to be consequential, but they don’t come up again. Basically, things happen to the vaguely human-shaped things you can see through the blur for about an hour, and then it ends. The only thing that could make this a recommend is that blur, frankly. That element is pure seeing-is-believing because I’m guessing you think I’m joking or exaggerating. I’m not. The majority of the movie has the entire border of the frame blurred out. Find a clip if you can. Otherwise, skip it. It’s just puzzlingly empty and vapid.
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