
Although his screen time is brief, his feline appearance and aggressive sexuality (which freaks out Gene Wilder) was memorable and hilarious. My favorite line occurs when he instructs Wilder and Zero Mostel to take off their shoes before entering Debris' apartment with the warning: "White, white, white is the color of our carpets!" And, of course, the really uncomfortable ride in the extremely small elevator. He had roles in a couple of other Brooks films, but he also worked as an acting coach for such luminaries as Jane Fonda and Warren Beatty. Andreas, I'm sure the carpets are white in Heaven.

You can read more of what I thought about the wonderfully strange Burroughs in my earlier post, but her last role was in Small Town Murder Songs, made in Toronto (of course), and it does sound intriguing. Burroughs, who played an old lady for decades before she actually was an old lady, shuffled off this mortal coil at age 71. The picture I'm using here shows her in 1966 (she's the one on the right).

In 1960, her boyfriend entered her home and was found the next morning, "shot by his own weapon." Ahem. She claimed that he'd attacked her and they'd grappled for the gun. She was made a ward of the court, but soon drifted into dancing and waitressing, marrying twice before she met Ronald Fisher, who seemed to be able to give her the needed stability. However, Aadland told Fisher that she still loved Flynn, and if he was around, she'd be with him. Fisher replied, "Well, it'd be crowded, wouldn't it?"
Cuban Rebel Girls was one of those PD features that was available on super 8mm back in the day, but I was never interested in buying it. It cost $200, it was black and white, and it didn't sound particularly exciting. I wanted to save up for a color print of The African Queen, which I did.

He appeared in nearly 500 movies right up to 2005, but he officially retired in 2007 as a gift to his partner, Zarela Martinez. He played a few "straight" roles—Joel M. Reed's Night of the Zombies, the Sylvester Stallone-Rutger Hauer thriller Nighthawks—and, ironically, his last credited performance is in the film, Die, You Zombie Bastards. Amazingly, it's not a Troma film.

She appeared in Bigas Luna's 1987 Anguish (Anguista), which is such a bizarre film. When I saw it on video in 1988, I said, "Huh?" It reminded me of the Kent Bateman film The Headless Eyes (1971) in that both of the films' killers have an eye-gouging fetish. And yes, Kent is the father of Jason and Justine. Rubinstein plays the mother of a psychopathic murderer who urges him to kill, much like good old Mother Bates, but she's in a film-within-a-film being screened in a grubby Los Angeles theater where a real killer is afoot. Or something. It didn't make much sense to me.
I saw her for the last time in Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon, which cult film fans seems to treasure and compare to Man Bites Dog in terms of being a spoof documentary about a murderer, but it just doesn't have the same bite. Get it?
Guess I'll have to do another installment of this post before the New Year. Happy holidays, everyone!
1 comment:
He's not at all obscure, but I'd like to nominate Dennis Hopper for inclusion in your year-end wrap. He did his share of strange turns. For BLUE VELVET alone, I believe DH earned his place in the Weird Movie Village.
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