Alright real talk mother fuckers if you still have a Netflix subscription you’re living in a bygone era. Real mother fuckers are rolling with FilmStruck/The Criterion Channel app combo for only ONE HUNDRED BUCKS A YEAR!!!!
This is a combined platform that offers something Netflix fails to offer, movies worth watching! So let’s see what’s streaming right now on Netflix shall we?
O we got THE COVENANT??? A movie that’s The Craft for date rapists who shop at Abercrombie and Fitch. O yeah that’s worth ten bucks a month….
Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist, yeah because that’s exactly what I fucking need…a god damn movie that’s a flashback to pretentious fucking hipsters from 2008 who wore nothing but Arctic Monkeys and Weezer t-shirts.
Just Friends, not only a forgettable mid 2000s comedy but a movie that reminds you of the time when people were out of ideas to the point where they constantly said “fuck it put that A list actor in a fat suit.”
Let’s be honest, the only time you’re bothering with Netflix is when it’s time to binge watch a new season of Stranger Things.
I’ve barely had my FilmStruck/Criterion Channel subscription for a month and already my cinefile cock is being served like I just slipped a twenty dollar bill to a sex worker in the parking lot of a truck stop who took Deep Throat Tai Chi at Linda Lovelace’s dojo.
I popped my cherry with this app when I watched Billy Wilder’s 1951 classic released just 10 months after the release of Sunset Boulevard, Ace In The Hole. It stars Kirk Douglas who gives a five star performance in a movie that was very innovative at its bleak view of journalism and the way news is given to the American public.
Then I watched Dead Ringer, a noir film starring the great Bette Davis that was marketed as a horror film following the monumental success of Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?
After that it was The Baron of Arizona starring Vincent Price in a Western, which is certainly out of the comforting zone of horror he has made an iconic name within but in this classic Western, Price plays a villain as great as his sadistic horror icons.
Following a beginning of watching black and white films from the 50s/60s, I then dived into the New Hollywood era with Network, a film similar in tone to Ace In The Hole with the way it comments on the tabloid exploitation of news. It has a great cast but most notable for me at least is Faye Dunaway who plays a character as crazed with chasing success as Kirk Douglas is in Ace in The Hole. Both have given equally captivating performances.
After that brief fling with New Hollywood filmmaking I went right back to the black and white classics with The Maltese Falcon starring the great Humphrey Bogart in a noir classic that also co-stars the one and only Peter Lorre.
Aaaaaaaand then it was back over to the New Hollywood era with Terence Malick’s classic Badlands starring the great Sissy Spacek and Martin Sheen as a love struck psycho who pretty much kills everybody he comes across but never harms a single hair of the fifteen year old he drools over in this taboo cult classic that was the inspiration for Quentin Tarantino when he wrote the script for True Romance.
Fast forward to less than ten years later and I watched a film that can easily be considered the best film of 1981, something I enjoyed so much I watched it twice in the same day, My Dinner With Andre. This film that only shows a conversation between two friends over dinner is perhaps the greatest display of the great vulnerable conversations and civil disagreements we can have and happily experience with those one of a kind people who enter our lives.
Now I’ll begin to talk about a film I was so happy to see on the front page of Filmstruck as I opened the app Friday night, Baby Doll!
Baby Doll is a film that oddly enough has been on my brain for the past month or so before suddenly it on the Filmstruck page, funny how that works right? For those who know me well, I consider the Pope of Trash, John Waters as my Lord and Savior. I was rewatching Multiple Maniacs with the commentary track and John (we’re on a first name basis he just doesn’t know it yet) was pointing out the posters hanging up in his old apartment and one of them happens to be this infamous poster for Baby Doll with Carroll Baker in a crib with a thumb in her mouth. I believe this poster also makes an appearance in Pink Flamingos.
I’m also rereading John Waters’ 2nd book Crackpot and he mentions this film on a list of art films people might be surprised The Prince of Puke loves. Waters was made aware of this film based on a Tennessee Williams production because when he was going to Catholic school the nuns would read off a list of nonredeemable films no Christian should ever see….which for him was a list of recommendations. Baby Doll was a film that was considered something that would send you directly to hell if you watched it. So John Waters naturally made sure to see this film as soon as possible.
When you see Baby Doll you can understand why it was so controversial and angered the Legion of Decency back in 1956. For most people this film might be seen as tame and lame considered to NC-17 films but considering the time it came out and how perverted it still is today, Baby Doll is a masterpiece that is so impressive it was made and dodged its way pass scissor wielding censors (try that three word tongue twister out). One of the very first things you see as depicted on the poster is Baby Doll in a crib like bed sucking her thumb as her husband played by the very talented Karl Malden carves out this peephole exactly like the one Anthony Perkins uses to spy on Janet Leigh in Psycho.
One might be wondering why a man is spying on his wife in such a way. Well, in the film Baker’s character is a 19 year old child bride who Malden can’t fornicate with until her 20th birthday which is in a couple of days when the film begins. Malden can’t exactly wait since he’s already pawing at her when she’s in the bathtub, one of many scenes in this film that is so wonderfully perverted to see existing in a film made during such a stern and boring time like the 1950s.
Karl Malden’s Archie Lee is a man who won this child bride from a father who was hoping his daughter was going to be well off with a successful cotton gin owner. Since this business transaction Archie Lee has had financial failures so severe due to a very successful business rival that during the beginning of the film all of his furniture is being taken out of the house. He responds to this by going to his business rival’s cotton gin and burning it down. His rival is none other than the legendary Eli Wallach who most would recognize from his amazing performance in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.
Once Wallach’s Silva Vacarro catches on to the fact it was Archie Lee that burned down his cotton gin, he plans on getting revenge by seducing Archie Lee’s child bride away from him. In easily one of the most erotic scenes to ever be shown within a black and white movie, Silva is getting closer and closer to Baby Doll on a swing, rubbing his hands across her neck and whispering in her ear which causes her to moan and groan, practically having an orgasm on screen.
With the existence of that scene alone, I’m surprised the Catholic Church and its bible thumpers didn’t resort to burning down theaters screening Baby Doll and offering $10 million dollars to buy all the prints of this movie like they offered when The Last Temptation of Christ was released in 1988.
So bottom line….FilmStruck/The Criterion Channel rules, Netflix blows, Baby Doll is a must watch and o yeah….here’s a link to something you can beat off to. Enjoy it while you can because Net Netruality ended today and pretty soon you may have to resort to borrowing your grandfather’s cum coated VHS copy of Baby Doll and stroking it to Carroll Baker moaning and groaning just like your grandfather did in 1956 when he was busted in the theater like Pee Wee Herman.
Fun fact, this is my orgasm reaction don’t tell any girl I’m about to fuck because it’s ALWAYS a dealbreaker if they happen to come across my old sex tapes like Mr. Clips To Whack Off To Raw and Uncut (Because I’m Uncircumcised…..I’m Half Cuban and I Guess My Father Wanted Us To Have Matching Cocks….Is This Title Too Long?)
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