Dreams Are What Le Cinema Is For: What's The Matter With Helen? - 1971

WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH HELEN? 1971lecinemadreams.blogspot.com/2014/03/whats-matter-with-helen-1971.html

Debbie Reynolds is always quick to cite her performance in 1964s The Unsinkable Molly Brown as her personalfavorite. Which is easy enough to understand given it's a title role which afforded the versatile actress theopportunity to play both comedy and drama, showcase her considerable singing and dancing ability, and won her anOscar nomination (her only to date). While I find parts of The Unsinkable Molly Brown to be a little tough going (Ihate to say it, but Reynolds’ acting in the early scenes make Irene Ryan in The Beverly Hillbillies look like a model ofnuance and subtlety), I nevertheless enjoy the movie a great deal. But even given that, I still would only rank it asmy favorite Debbie Reynolds film somewhere below Singin’ in the Rain (1952), I Love Melvin (1953),and Mother (1996). Surprising even myself, I have to rate 1971s What’s the Matter with Helen? – Reynolds’ late-career, against-type, low-budget, semi-musical venture into the world of hagsploitation horror – as my absolutefavorite Debbie Reynolds movie.

Debbie Reynolds as Adelle Bruckner (Stewart)

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Shelley Winters as Helen Hill (Martin)

Dennis Weaver as Lincoln Palmer

In What’s the Matter with Helen?, Reynolds and Winters play Adelle Bruckner and Helen Hill, two dowdy,Depression-era moms in Braddock, Iowa who forge an unlikely friendship (Winters’ Helen is a slightly dotty religiousfanatic, Reynolds’ Adelle is a self-deluding dance instructor) born of a shared burden of guilt and fear of retributionarising out of the conviction of their adult sons in the brutal mutilation murder of a local woman. Hoping to flee boththe scrutiny of the press, and, most significantly, mysterious phone calls from a stranger threatening murderousrevenge, the women flee to Los Angles to start a new life as partners in a dance studio catering to aspiring ShirleyTemples.

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Adelle and Helen are confronted by an angry mob outside the courthouse wheretheir murderous sons have been spared execution and sentenced to life. In the

cab, Helen becomes aware that someone in the crowd has sliced her hand.

With new names: Adelle Stewart/Helen Martin; and altered appearances – Jean Harlow-fixated Adelle goesplatinum blonde ("We could be sisters!”), mousy Helen has her Lillian Gish tresses cut into a bob ( "You’re theMarion Davies type!”); the two women, at least for a time, appear to have successfully left their pasts behind them.This is especially true of the dreamy, ambitious Adelle, who, in trading the bland Midwest for the seedy glamour ofHollywood, clearly feels she is in her element. Unfortunately, the change of locale has rather a more detrimentaleffect on the mentally fragile Helen, whose religious fundamentalism plagues her with guilt over her son’s crimesand whose latent, repressed lesbianism fuels an irrational possessiveness once Adelle begins showing interest inthe wealthy divorced father of one of her tap school charges (Dennis Weaver).Is it mere coincidence when mysterious letters, death threats, phone calls, and shadowy figures in the distance startto resurface just as Adelle moves closer to securing a new life for herself … a life free of memories of herneglectful past and thoughts of her estranged son and his crimes? Is it coincidence? Bad luck? God’s will? Or issomething the matter with Helen?

Adelle and Helen are joined by a mutual inability to see themselves as they reallyare

Released into theaters (well…dumped, actually) on the heels of the single-season cancellation of Reynolds’ rathergrim NBC sitcom The Debbie Reynolds Show, What’s the Matter with Helen? is a first generation cousin to theunofficial trilogy of Robert Aldrich-produced horror thrillers centered around elderly female twosomes of questionablesanity (What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? - 1962/ Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte - 1964/ What Ever Happened toAunt Alice? – 1969).

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Directed with a rather uneven hand by Curtis Harrington ( Games - 1967), and lacking Aldrich’s gleeful willingness togo for the full Grande Dame Guignol; What’s the Matter with Helen? is nevertheless an intriguingly quirky and off-beat melodrama with an irresistible premise and considerably more on its mind than its quick-buck, exploitation filmtitle would indicate. (The film's working title was the infinitely more subtle: The Best of Friends.)I love how ill-matched the two women are. It's so absolutely clear that nothing good can come of it. Plus, the settingof a tap school for creepy little Shirley Temple wannabes lorded over by a bunch of pushy stage mothers moreterrifying than anything else in the film, is truly inspired.Themes of transferred guilt, repression, delusion, redemption, role-playing and revenge play out against thebackdrop of a darkly cynical, funhouse-mirror vision of tarnished Hollywood glamour populated with a gallery ofgrotesques rivaling The Day of the Locust.

Above: a crime scene photo of the murder victim, Ellie Banner (Peggy Patten) showing a bloody palm. Below:several times in the film, Helen suffers wounds to her hand. A motif of bloody palms runs throughout What's theMatter with Helen?, fueling the religious and moral themes of transferred guilt and (quite literally) having blood onone's hands.

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Agnes Moorehead as Sister Alma

No film about Hollywood's creepy blend of artifice and showmanship would be complete without referencing theoddball phenomenon of celebrity evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson. A similar character known as "Big Sister" isportrayed by Geraldine Page in The Day of the Locust.(It has been alleged - refuted by producer Ed Feldman - that Page was an in-the-wings replacement option for ShellyWinters who was very difficult during the filming of What's the Matter with Helen?. Drinking, displays oftemperament, and, according to Reynolds, suffering something a a bit of a mental breakdown, Winters turned thefilming of What's the Matter with Helen? into something of an ordeal for all involved) . In both films, religion is depicted as just another myths-for-a-price opiate of the masses in the souls-for-salelandscape that is Hollywood.

What’s the Matter with Helen? was directed and written by Henry Farrell (author and screenwriter of both What EverHappened to Baby Jane? and Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte) from his short story "The Box Step," and produced byDebbie Reynolds as part of her contract with NBC for a TV series, two specials, and a film. The television anglecertainly goes to explain the participation of NBC star Dennis Weaver, who was riding high as TVs McCloud at thetime.

Micheal Mac Liammoir as acting coach, Hamilton Starr ( "Two 'R's, but propheticnonetheless!")

When What’s the Matter with Helen? came out, I was familiar with the likable Debbie Reynolds from her TVappearances, from having seen The Unsinkable Molly Brown four or five times at the local theater, and fromsurviving How Sweet It Is - a smutty, 1968 “family” comedy with James Garner that by any rational standard shouldqualify as Debbie Reynolds’ first real horror movie. As a fan of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? and Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte, I was fairly eager to see a What’s the Matter with Helen?, but it came and went so quickly

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from theaters that I didn't get to it until many years later.

Still, not seeing the movie didn't prevent me (at age 13) from being fairly traumatized by its legendarily boneheadedad campaign; one which prominently featured as its central image, an image from the film that effectively gave awaythe grisly surprise ending. My guess is that the distributors (and a monumentally lazy publicity department),obviously stumped as to how to convey to an unwitting public that a PG-rated pairing of America’s perennial girl-next-door with the reigning queen of outrageous talk show appearances wasn’t going to be a comedy or a musical,resorted to using the single most striking and violently grotesque image in the film to sell it.Never mind that it not only seriously undercut the suspense in a film that could use every ounce of help it could getin that department, but in its ham-fisted obviousness, cheapened and sabotaged the very real potential What’s theMatter with Helen? had for building word-of-mouth interest based solely on the shocking payoff of its climax.

Watching the usually cheerful Debbie Reynolds playing a somber and self-interested character who stands in stark contrast to her well-established girl-

next-door image, contributes immeasurably to making the psychological horrorof What's the Matter with Helen? all the more unsettling.

Imagine Psycho promoted in its original release with a tip-off to Janet Leigh’s fate, or a Planet of the Apes postercomprised of the film’s "big reveal" ending (which now serves, ironically enough, as the cover art for the DVD).

Did the poster for What’s the Matter with Helen? (which also included an inset pic of Shelley Winters looking moredemented than usual) create interest in my wanting to see the movie? Yes. In fact, the image was so harrowing anddisturbing, it made me want to see the movie more. So…in that way, you could say the advertising was successful.But did it ultimately spoil the moviegoing experience for me? Hell yes!

When I finally got around to actually seeing the film, the tension leading up to that dreaded denouement is so deftlyhandled that I was more than a little pissed-off that I already knew EXACTLY how things were going to pan out. Thecolossal spoiler of that poster (still used on DVD overs to this day and shown in the theatrical trailer) cheatedviewers out of a well-earned shocker climax, leaving us with only the HOW to wonder about.(Such careless disregard is something of a stock in trade for Martin Ransohoff, the meddlesome and artless headof Filmways Productions [The Beverly Hillbillies] - hair-raising stories about whom can be read in the memoirs ofRoman Polanski and Joe Eszterhas.)

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WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILMAlthough a troubling number of my favorite films fall under the classification of "camp," I sometimes think thatoverworked little noun is a frustratingly limiting classification. Especially when, as in the case of the rathermarvelous What’s the Matter with Helen?, it reduces the entirety of a flawed but arresting thriller to its mostsuperficial and easily-accessed characteristics. What’s the Matter with Helen?, as does the entire "psycho-biddy"horror sub-genre, traffics in the sexist conceit that there is something inherently grotesque and terrifying in women(most particularly, unmarried women) growing older. In the cultural currency of Hollywood, old men are adorable(The Sunshine Boys, Grumpy Old Men), old women are gargoyles (Sunset Boulevard, Strait-Jacket).

Structured as standard gothic melodramas, these films replace the traditional movie monster with actresses "of acertain age" and exploit our attraction/aversion to seeing once-youthful and glamorous stars in various states ofmental and physical decline. Camp rears its head in the spectacle of excess: too much makeup on wrinkled,sagging flesh; opera-scale performances; overdramatic dialogue; and the occasional outburst of female-on-femaleviolence (which, regardless of the intensity, is depicted in the scope of the irrational "catfight").

Psychological horror is the context, but running below the surface like an undercurrent is the unmistakable air ofgynophobia. The fear that women, when divested of their cultural "value" as wives, mothers, and youthfullyornamental symbols of beauty and desirability, turn into monsters. They become, as the line in Clare BoothLuce's The Women goes, "What nature abhors. ... an old maid. A frozen asset." Which may go to explain why asignificant camp element of the genre is how strongly these women come across as female impersonators or dragqueens. It's as if on some level they cease being women at all.

All the above are present in abundance in What’s the Matter with Helen? (and with Shelley Winters playing insane,

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how could it be otherwise?), but the enjoyable weirdness of this infectiously watchable, wholly bizarre movieshouldn't completely blind one to the fact that behind the camp there lurks a hell of a nifty thriller containing a greatmany good (if not wholly realized) ideas.

The Feminine Defiled

Sammee Lee Jones adopts the exaggerated, hyper-feminine "living doll" personaof Shirley Temple

Body of a child, face of an older woman. Mature, heavily made up Little Person,Sadie Delfino (who looks like a doll-come-to-life to the children at the tap school)

is presented as jarring contrast to the armies of little girls tarted up by theirstage mothers to look like grown women

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Robbi Morgan vamps a la Mae West in a vulgar burlesque (that provesnonetheless to be a real showstopper) to the highly inappropriate song, "Oh, You

Nasty Man!"

The Best of Friends Adelle's porcelain dolls passively reflect both her external perception of her

friendship with Helen (she's glamorous to Helen's dowdy) and her inner sense oftheir inherently unequal status (Adelle the sophisticate outclasses Helen the

farm girl).

From the first time I saw it, I've always felt What’s the Matter with Helen? had more in common with NathanaelWest's The Day of the Locust than What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? The horror is in these characters' patheticquest for salvation and beauty in a world depicted as squalid and tawdry. I particularly like how the sub-theme ofguilt as something shared, transferred, and possibly redemptive, infuses the film with a quasi-religious tone ofdoomed fate and predetermination.

A nice touch is how the film juxtaposes the neglectful mothers of two thrill-kill murderers (Adelle & Helen) with theexploitative moms vulgarly prostituting their daughters for a chance of becoming another Shirley Temple (whoseprecocious adult appeal always seemed to border the perverse and freakish). What’s the Matter with Helen?envisions Hollywood as a place of grotesque misfits lured by vague promises of happiness and hope for renewaland regeneration. Stage mothers seek to reclaim their youth vicariously through their daughters, Helen seeks toredeem her damned soul through religion (as presented, just another arm of show business), and Helen strives toreclaim her lost youth and live the idealized life she's learned from movies and movie magazines.

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It was true in the 1930s and it's true now: no one comes to Hollywood to facereality

PERFORMANCESAlthough it has been said that Debbie Reynolds was insecure about her ability as a dramatic actress during themaking of What’s the Matter with Helen?, its actually Oscar-winner and Actors Studio alum Shelley Winters whoseems to be going through the motions here. She's really very good playing a latent lesbian whose bible-thumpingmorality causes her to deny and suppress her nature to a psychopathic degree; but it's a performance I've seen hergive so many times before, anything unique she brings to the character is lost in a haze of half-rememberedstutters, whimpers, nervous flutters, and expressions of slack-faced befuddlement from other films.If there's any complaint I have with her performance, it's that she pitches Helen's instability so high so soon that sheleaves her character nowhere to go. This leaves Helen's feelings of attraction for Adelle, her mounting jealousy, andnot-unfounded desire to persuade her "sane" friend to face a potentially dangerous reality, as the only compellingcharacter arcs.

Sexually repressed Helen caresses (and sniffs!) Adelle's satin teddy.The film's lesbian subplot is enhanced by claims in the rather nutty memoirs of

Reynolds' ex-husband Eddie Fisher that Debbie Reynolds and Agnes Mooreheadcarried on a years-long affair

As the selfish and pretentious Adelle (her rinky-dink Iowa dance studio is christened, Adelle's New York School ofDance) Debbie Reynolds is surprisingly effective in a role originally offered to Joanne Woodward, Shirley MacLaine,and Rita Hayworth. With her girlish cuteness matured to a slightly brittle hardness, Reynolds creates a characterwho plays both to and against our sympathies. Her Adelle may harbor illusions of Hollywood stardom more

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appropriate and realistic to a woman half her age, but as she is revealed to indeed be a talented dancer anddesirable beauty (enough to land the attentions of a Texas millionaire).One can easily imagine her circumstances as being that of a woman feeling trapped in a small Midwest town,perhaps married and saddled with a child at too young an age. Her pragmatism looks like sanity, but it may benothing more than a determination born of bitterness at feeling cheated in life, hardened into a resolve to have herreality match up with what she's been promised (and feels entitled to) from the movies.

In a rare, intoxicating moment when her real life briefly lives up to her fantasies,Adelle becomes the center of attention when she dances the tango at a

speakeasy with a suave stranger. In keeping with the film's themes of peelingaway at Hollywood artifice, unknown to her, the handsome stranger is actually a

gigolo surreptitiously paid for by her date.

THE STUFF OF FANTASYThe only Academy Award attention What’s the Matter with Helen? garnered was a well-deserved nomination for thesplendid period costume designs of Morton Haack (nominated for Reynolds' The Unsinkable Molly Brown and ThePlanet of the Apes). In fact, for a low budget feature, What’s the Matter with Helen? is an atmospherically grittylooking film (suffering a bit from an over-obvious backlot set) with a fine eye for period detail.Producer Debbie Reynolds engaged the services of William Tuttle, her makeup man from Singin' in theRain; legendary hairdresser to the stars Sydney Guilaroff for those stiff-looking, but period-appropriate wigs; andLucien Ballard (True Grit, The Wild Bunch) as cinematographer.

For those interested in such things, throughout What's the Matter With Helen?Debbie Reynolds looks striking and gets to model a slew of gorgeous '30s

getups and frocks. Ms. Winters..., not so much.

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THE STUFF OF DREAMSOpenly gay director Curtis Harrington in his posthumously published book, Nice Guys Don't Work inHollywood (Harrington passed away in 2007, the book published in 2013) wrote: “Of all my films, 'Helen' is the one Ipersonally like the best.” And its not difficult to understand why. Its a darkly amusing, surprisingly gratifying film thatworks - perhaps only intermittently - as a thriller (those musical numbers, enjoyable as they are, go on far too long,wreaking havoc with suspense), but works most consistently as a macabre and off-beat melodrama with a uniquesetting and trenchant premise.

What’s the Matter with Helen? is a true favorite of mine, hindered chiefly by slack pacing and perhaps, in angling fora GP-rating over a boxoffice-prohibitive R, too much postproduction tinkering. Nevertheless, it is a movie I considerto be a good deal smarter than usually given credit for, and it boasts a memorable dramatic performance from living-legend Debbie Reynolds. (The supporting cast is also particularly good. Look for The Killing's Timothy Carey andYvette Vickers of Attack of the Giant Leeches - a personal fave.)

So if you don't mind knowing the ending beforehand and are willing to risk having the Johnny Mercer song "GoodyGoody" stuck in your head for days afterward, I'd recommend paying Helen and Adelle an extended visit. They're ascream.

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BONUS MATERIAL

That all-purpose backlot building

The Iowa courthouse in What's the Matter with Helen? (above) served as aHospital in 1967s Hot Rods to Hell (below) and as a high school in a 1963 episode

of The Twilight Zone (bottom)

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Do It Debbie's WayDebbie Reynolds and Shelley Winters reunited in 1983 forthe laugh-a-minute home exercise video, Do It Debbie'sWay (YouTube clip HERE). You haven't lived until you'veseen an aerobics class in which a continually disruptiveShelley Winters (in a "I'm Only Doing This For Debbie"sweatshirt) cries out, "How many girls here have slept withHoward Hughes?" (a surprising number of hands go up),or hear Reynolds say aloud to no one in particular, "If Ionly had a hit record I wouldn't have to do this!"

What's The Matter With Helen? Radio spot HERE

What's The Matter With Helen?: The entire movie isavailable on YouTube HERE

Copyright © Ken Anderson

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