R.I.P., Angela Lansbury

Only now does it occur to me... BLUEBEARD (1972)

Only now does it occur to me... somehow, by putting a drunken Richard Burton into what is essentially a Vincent Price role––playing "Bluebeard," with an actual blue spray-painted beard, in a campy Technicolor French-Italian-German-Hungarian co-production––

 

that you could end up with something that's quite so... mediocre.

This is an odd duck. It's directed by former Golden Age Hollywood player Edward Dmytryk (CROSSFIRE, THE CAINE MUTINY, and MURDER, MY SWEET), has a haunting soundtrack by Ennio Morricone (which is very reminiscent of his work on DUCK, YOU SUCKER, completed one year prior), and brilliant cinematography (Gábor Pogány),

 

art direction (Tamás Vayer ), 

 

and set decoration (Boldizsár Simonka), 

 

by a trio of talented Hungarians who would rarely find work outside of their own country. It occasionally evokes shades of Mario Bava, Hammer horror flicks, and Nicolas Roeg's work for Roger Corman. All of this is good.

However, the screenplay (by Dmytryk and three Italian collaborators, based on the dark fairy tale but updated for a 1930s setting) is an absolute train-wreck: unfocused, pretentious, and meandering. Or perhaps it's more like a messy bird attack, ordered by a lethargic Richard Burton on his wife who just blew a raspberry at him?

 

I'm sorry, I'm afraid I'm making this look better than it is. There is artistic merit here, and, hell, there is camp merit, too, but it keeps getting dragged down into a morass of Italo skin-flickery and wannabe arthouse pomp. Like the Nazi subplot that it can't quite support.

(That's right, this Bluebeard is also an Austrian Nazi––and the cheapjack scaffolding this film provides can't come close to bearing that historical load.)

So while the director and writers believe it is something closer to CABARET or MEPHISTO, and its design team believes it is something closer to THE ABOMINABLE DR. PHIBES or BLOOD AND BLACK LACE, and its star believes that it's his naptime (between his morning tipple and his happy hour), I think the producers––with their reliance on tawdry Eurosleaze thrills––think they're making a Tinto Brass or Joe D'Amato flick. Whew.

 Also, on a semi-related note, there are way more musical numbers in this than I would have imagined.

Oh, and Raquel Welch kinda sorta plays a nun. Maybe Ken Russell should have directed this. 

Speaking of Ken Russell, there's a ridiculous phallic moment where one of Bluebeard's wives cheats on him and then makes the mistake of falling asleep, naked, entwined with her lover beneath a rhino horn antler-chandelier. Which Burton gleefully unleashes upon the couple, impaling them.

And even though it's set in the 1930s, I guess Joey Heatherton is playing "Shirley Partridge" from THE PARTRIDGE FAMILY?

Damn, there I go again, making this look better than it is. Anyway, just go watch Catherine Breillat's BLUEBEARD instead.