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 This one stars Joan Crawford as a carnival dancer who likes a young politician,
but Titus Semple, "a political kingmaker who oozes malevolence from every
portly pore" doesn't think that a carnival dancer fits in with his young
protege's future. He frames her for streetwalking, "but she'll eventually walk
all over him." 1949, 94 minutes, VHS
There was a moment in this movie where I was inexplicably reminded of the NBA
playoffs back in the nineties when Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls were
running roughshod over sad sacks like Pat Ewing and crybabies like Reggie
Miller. One of the announcers (let's just pretend it was Marv Albert because
it makes for a better story) would bust out the same old cliche whenever
someone from the opposing team would get in Jordan's face and start talking
trash (I would say "smack" instead of "trash" but then you might think I was
some kind of Jim Rome fan or something). Marv would always say, "you don't spit
in the wind, you don't step on Superman's cape, and you don't talk trash to
MJ". At
this point, you should probably also imagine sideline reporter and Jordan suck
up Ahmed Rashad nodding his head eagerly in agreement, but that isn't really
relevant - I just don't like Ahmed Rashad and will take any chance I get to shower him with scorn. Anyway, as I saw Sydney Greenstreet and Joan Crawford engaged
in a heated dispute and he chucked a telephone at her head and actually knocked
her upside her baby skull with it, I thought to myself that you could probably
add to that whole spitting, cape stepping, trash talking cliche something along
the lines of "and you never bounce a telephone off the side of Joan Crawford's
head". As soon as it happened, I was actually feeling a little sorry for
Sidney because I once watched a documentary or news report about Ms. Crawford
called Mommie Dearest and I think her kids were getting beaten with wire coat
hangers or something. If that was what really went down with her own kids
I didn't think that a fat man in a wrinkled suit was going to fare a heck of a
lot better. And he didn't, ending up with a slug in his chest, but I still
found that and the rest of the way this film played out to be very
unsatisfying. Frankly, the ending of what had been a promising movie would
have given Scottie Pippen a migraine (and remember - he usually only got those
in the playoffs!).  This movie may have been based on a book. I only say that because I recall
that the opening credits were done in the style of someone opening up a book
and turning pages for each series of names and job duties. There's no chance
in hell that I'll ever read a book if such a book in fact existed, so I guess
it doesn't really matter where this movie came from. I would also like to say
that there is no chance in hell that I would ever watch the NBC television
series based on this movie that was made thirty years later, but that one
starred Morgan Fairchild and when Morgan Fairchild is involved I just can't
make no guarantees. This movie got off to a good start with me because someone
(probably one of those all-knowing, plot-advancing narrators) told me right
away that Flamingo Road was the road in this town (Bolden) where all the really
powerful people lived. I like a movie that explains its obscure title early
on, because otherwise I'll spend my time watching the movie and wondering just
what the dickens the title is supposed to mean. A recent example of this
phenomena was the Korean movie Sorum. I still have no idea what that title
meant as well as any idea of what went on in that movie. I'm not going to
sugarcoat things and say that I would have had any better notion of what went
on in that film if at the very beginning some Korean guy (I'm guessing his name
would have been Kim) had got up on screen and said something like "Sorum was the
kind of apartment building that crazy taxi drivers and chicks with battered
spouse syndrome live and hook up in", but it couldn't have hurt, could it? So
this one got points for clarity right off the bat. Then it follows that up by
taking us to a sleazy carnival that was visiting the wrong side of the tracks
in town. Joan Crawford was dressed up in one of these harem girl outfits and
shimmying along to that "there's a place in France where the naked ladies
dance" song that most of us had committed to memory by the second week of first
grade. Naturally, I was thinking that we would have one of these "carny slut
takes on
closed minded townspeople" affairs that at some point would involve the big top
burning down and an elephant stampede down
Flamingo Road.
 The carnival angle though is sadly written out of the movie almost immediately
when it turns out that the carny owes some guy in town money and the carny folk
have to escape across the state line to avoid a sheriff's attachment on it. For
reasons that I never understood, Joan was the only carny person left and was
just hanging out in one of the tents when the hunky and borderline ambitious
deputy sheriff, Fielding Carlisle showed up with his attachment (hee hee!).
Somehow or other, he ends up inviting Lane Bellamy (Crawford) into town for
some dinner. This is in spite of the fact that he was supposed to be having
dinner at the home of his regular girlfriend's dad. Course, Lane was the kind
of gal who didn't mind changing her shirt in front of strange cops, so what you
gonna do, right? Fielding works for the sheriff of these parts and his name
is Titus Semple. Greenstreet plays Semple as a sweaty behemoth of evil and
is prone to use his distinctive deep mumbly voice to emphasize his bad
intentions. Semple runs the county and is the kingmaker regarding local
politics. He has Fielding pegged as his boy and is planning on putting him
into state politics with the ultimate goal of making Fielding governor some
day. There's a lot of talk about how Fielding never finished law school and
how he came from a really respected family where his dad was a much beloved
judge and everyone wonders why he's hanging out with the slimy Semple. I have
to admit that I was wondering that myself. Why didn't he finish law school?
Never in the movie is Fielding portrayed as being happy in his position as
Semple stooge, but never in the movie is there any reason given as to why he
has to be in that position. It would have made sense if we had some backstory
about his family losing everything or him being involved with some daughter
that Semple had or something, but I guess we were supposed to assume that he
was there because he was hungry for political power, but he never evidenced
anything like that when I was around.  Lane and Fielding fall in love as quickly as forbidden love usually happens in
these kinds of movies that try to shove all this liberal classism stuff down
our throats and just as quickly, Semple recognizes that this is a threat to his
chances to hang out at the governor's mansion using hookers on the state dime
in five or so years and sets about ruining Lane and Fielding's chances at
happiness. He does it just the way you would expect him to: he frames Lane
for streetwalking! She swears vengeance on Semple, does her thirty days in
lockdown, comes back to Bolden and declares that Semple will never run her out
of town. Meanwhile, Fielding decides to up and marry the high class girl he
doesn't like and Semple gets Fielding elected as state senator. Once Lane is
out and back on the streets of Bolden, she gets a job at an upscale roadhouse
frequented by the political movers and shakers. This is where Semple and his
cronies from across the state meet to decide who is going to win elections and
stuff. The head of the political machine in the state is Dan Reynolds and he's
got the attitude that people get the government they deserve and that they
can't be pissed at him for picking who's going to run the government if they're
too busy to go out and vote for themselves. In spite of this, the movie tries
to make him out as a good guy later on, once Semple gets around to framing him
up. Lane and Dan somehow hit it off (though we strongly suspect that Lane is
just using him to get back at Semple) and they get married and she convinces
Dan to buy a house on Flamingo Road (probably right across the street from
Semple). Semple wants to keep Dan in line vis a vis Semple's political plans
so he frames up the son of Dan's construction foreman (Dan runs a construction
business when he isn't fixing elections and pumping carny skanks) for a hit and
run. Later he frames up Dan for using convicts on construction jobs without
paying them. I don't believe I've ever seen a movie where one guy framed up so
many people. And just to show us that he's more than a one trick pony, he also
beats up Fielding for crawling into a whiskey bottle and developing a
conscience. Things come to a head when Semple informs Dan and the rest of the political guys
that he's decided he'll be the next governor. Everyone looks at him and
realizes that the public may have a real problem swallowing a distasteful evil
fat man as governor. It would be kind of like us electing William Bennett to
anything, except with the added bonus that Bennett's a hypocrite. Semple
blackmails
them all into supporting him, but Dan won't budge so Semple gets a grand jury
to indict him on peonage charges which I think is a fancy way of saying that
this
guy was taking a leak in the street or something. Around this time, Fielding
decides to pay Lane
a drunken visit, spills some beans about the big frame up then eats his gun in
her study. Final, unsatisfying confrontations ensue (Lane even bemoans the
fact that the only person who can clear Dan is dead - well except for the
construction foreman who lied about all that peonage in the first place, but
where would the drama be in that?) and you're left wondering what exactly
happened to cause this movie to kind of limp across the finish line like it
did. Crawford's performance in this one is quite subdued, so if you're looking
for campy moments, you'll probably want to check out her later films, but it's
really Greenstreet's effort that makes the movie worth seeking out. His Semple
is one of the great "regular guy" villains who's frightening because of who
effortlessly and callously he plots. This is a guy who acts like it's
practically in his job description as sheriff to ruin people how get in his
way. He and Joan have some good scenes together whether its when he's
comparing her to a rat that bit off his toes or when she was comparing him to
an elephant they had to shoot at the carny or when he's smacking her upside the
head with that telephone. The ending is a let down because Lane makes a big
deal out of showing up this guy by staying in town and marrying up and living
on Flamingo Road and then she doesn't have any kind of scheme cooked up to
destroy this guy. She just gets mad, shows up with a gun and they end up
struggling over it. For the first two-thirds of this movie, I kind of thought
they were portraying these two as intellectual equals and I was looking forward
to a final matching of wits between them, but it never came. Add to that the
unexplained motivation of Fielding to ever get embroiled in all this right from
the get go and you've got a solid performance by Crawford and classic
performance by Greenstreet wasted in a standard issue forties small town
melodrama. This one just didn't have the smarts to achieve what it seemed to
aspire to. And as far as Sydney heaving a telephone at Joan all I can say is
"dude, you don't bring a knife to a gun fight!"
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
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