Single Room Furnished [1968]

[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.]

This movie is an experience. Not every movie we watch is an experience and not every movie described as an experience is necessarily a movie that's so bad it's worth watching. Although this movie rated below the "5 and up is worth watching" threshold, it's such an experience that it won't be a complete waste of time to watch it. It is odd in a way that I can only describe as a failed Tennessee Williams play: all the melodrama and none of the substance. On the Wikipedia page the movie is described like it's a drug deal: "The feature was Jayne Mansfield's final "filmed" starring role. . . The feature was released "legally" and "officially" in 1968." Why so many quotation marks, movie? What are you hiding?

This "movie" is initially introduced by a guy who really wants you, the audience, to know that this is Jayne Mansfield's last role and a dramatic role and that you should really like it or else you are shaming the ghost of Jayne Mansfield. We are then treated to an apartment set that is definitely not on a sound stage and a snippy teen fighting with her mom about being slutty and Italian. The teen then encounters the super of the building who tells her a series of stories all featuring this one woman's decline and how she kept trying to reinvent herself. First he tells her about the woman, then called Johnnie, and how she got married young to a guy who left her six months later to join the navy because his super hot friend is having such a good time there. If we were playing Tennessee Williams Bingo this is where you would mark off "gay subtext." Johnnie has a miscarriage and renames herself Mae. Then the super tells a story of the only happy couple to live in the building, Charlie and Flo, and we have to watch their intensely awkward courtship filled with fish smells and admitting they don't know anything (side note: no characters in this movie have any education). Charlie is friendly with Mae who got knocked up by a random drifter who gave her a fake name. He feels bad and spontaneously proposes to her before realizing what a stupid idea that is and marries Flo instead. Finally, in the present, Mae is now Eileen, a prostitute in a relationship with another navy guy who wants to marry her. In a fit that shows how mentally unstable they both are, he threatens to kill her but kills himself instead. Snippy teen gets perspective. Eileen continues to wallow in crazy.

This movie is clearly trying to teach something or at least get to the heart of the lives of regular people. If only the writer knew anything about how humans communicate. Aside from strange dialogue and the Home Depot sound stage set, the acting is peculiar (yes, Jayne too; my apologies to her ghost), and the direction is really strange. A lot of the time it's shot like a stage play but sometimes the camera will go off in a random direction while someone is talking.

Also, there's more than one room. And furnished is a generous word to use for most of them.

Quotes:
"Take your stinking boat and throw it in the ocean!"

"Where does he get off playing dollhouse with real life human dolls?"  

"The world smells like BEER."

Adam's Grandma's Review: "Strange."

Spoon Rating: 4