LAS VEGAS STRANGLER (1968)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

For some cinema-fans, the rediscovery of this considered-lost grindhouse film is significant because it preserved location shots of Las Vegas as it existed in 1964 (though the film wasn't released to theaters until 1968). For me, it's another interesting test of my theory about the dividing line between uncanny and naturalistic manifestations of the "perilous psycho" trope.

Visually, STRANGLER-- also released with the arty title NO TEARS FOR THE DAMNED-- has nothing in common with American horror films of the period. The script does utilize one element seen in many horror movies, that of the "outre outfit," but this item of attire plays a very small role in the narrative. So it behooves me to ask whether or not the way writers Oliver and June Drake portray their titular psycho merely creates an atmosphere of physical peril, or if it shades into the world of uncanny dread. And to my way of thinking, one of the best ways to generate dread is to put the audience "inside" the mental world of the psycho, rather than allowing the viewers to view from "outside," in a more clinical manner.

Most of what we know about psychotic strangler Jeff Murray (Robert Dix) unfolds through the viewpoint of Lori (Gillian Simpson), who has loved Jeff from afar for four years, a clear case of a cat looking at a king. Jeff and his mother Madeline (possibly widowed, though it's not specified) own a ranch/cotton farm near Las Vegas. Lori, an English girl whose drunken father moved to America and died after marrying Lori's stepmother Hattie, ekes out a living at a seedy motel. Technically a waitress at the motel lounge, Lori also turns tricks with the locals and, at the start of the movie, tries to steal a twenty-spot from her john's wallet. But whereas Hattie is fine with pimping out Lori, the young woman clearly wants something better in life.

Lori's act of theft is seemingly rewarded: Jeff happens to be in the lounge, and when the john roughs Lori up, Jeff beats the guy down. Then, though he's never before interacted with Lori in any major way-- though in the lounge he seems somewhat aware of how Hattie misuses her stepdaughter-- Jeff takes Lori for a night on the town. They're too busy enjoying the various acts-- including a surrealistic set-piece in which topless girls cavort atop a merry-go-round-- to take much notice of radio reports about another showgirl killing by a serial strangler. In fact, Lori gets so drunk during their date that she wakes up in a motel with a ring on her finger, and Jeff telling her that they're man and wife from now on.

As the viewer works backward to figure out why Jeff did this, it would appear that this was a last-ditch attempt at normalcy on his part. Possibly he sympathizes with Lori a little because of her stepmother's abuses, though he also certainly marries Lori to honk off his own mother Madeline (co-writer June Drake, billed as Liz Marshall). Indeed, Lori has seen Madeline before, and remarks to Jeff that she resented the way Madeline would boss her son around.

When Jeff takes Lori to his ranch, she realizes that she didn't know the half of it. One of the big indicators of Jeff's psychological instability is a huge framed picture on one wall, depicting a younger Madeline, dressed in an evening gown with long black gloves, and Jeff as a child, with long pageboy-styled hair and a Little Lord Fauntleroy outfit. At one point Lori remarks that being dressed in so effeminate a fashion must have hurt Jeff's psyche at the very least, and meeting with Madeline-- who instantly considers Lori to be "trash"-- confirms that Madeline is a "smother-mother." I mentioned above that the viewer doesn't actually know if Jeff's father is alive or dead, though at one point Jeff talks about having seen his old man chase after "an Indian girl." He also characterizes his domineering mother as being both "man" and "woman," which also applies to Jeff himself.

To no viewer's surprise, Jeff is the strangler, venting his sexual confusion by killing showgirls in an unusual variety of ways. There had been various serial killers in American movies going back to the advent of sound films, but usually they all killed the same way. Jeff resembles the eighties slashers in that he doesn't just strangle. He kills one victim with drowning, another with electrocution, and two others by impalement. But in all cases, Jeff takes a trophy from each victim, cutting a hank of hair from their heads with a big scissors, while wearing (here's the "outre outfits" part) his mother's long black evening gloves. Director William Collins even juxtaposes a shot of Jeff looking at one destined victim's long black hair with his memory of his feminized image in the wall-painting. In fact, if I am right that Jeff made one final attempt at normalcy by marrying Lori, marriage does nothing to settle his uneasy mind, and the rest of the film alternates between Jeff's killings, Lori sitting around fretting at the ranch, and several shots at a wild party that furnishes most of the film's gratuitous nudity. 

There's also a gratuitous suggestion that Jeff may also have sought his lost masculinity in a gay encounter, for Lori tracks him down to a gay bar. But Jeff isn't an advertisement for Healthy Homosexuality, and he beats down a male acquaintance who may have been a previous hookup. Clearly Jeff's main thing is that of scalping women of their long hair as displaced revenge against his mother, while at the same time confirming Mother's power by wearing her gloves. In the hurry-up-and-finish ending, Jeff completely loses his marbles and begins to strangle Madeline-- I think with one of her own gloves. Then he's kayoed by a ranch-hand, and the film ends before there's even a word said about turning Jeff over to the authorities.

STRANGLER is an anomaly for a grindhouse film. It resembles the majority of films in that category in that there are no big names in the cast, and the director made no other films on record. But usually, most grindhouse personnel barely worked except within that limited sphere. Oliver Drake, in contrast, had worked on many low-budget films from the late 1920s through the 1950s, writing and directing a few dozen B-westerns. (Reportedly he met his wife June on the set of one such western, and she collaborated with him on other scripts, albeit without credit.) Drake dabbled with other genres-- comedy, mystery, and even an adventure-serial (UNDERSEA KINGDOM). But STRANGLER doesn't resemble anything else in Drake's repertoire. Without further info, I would guess that he just stumbled into an opportunity to script a grindhouse film, finished the task and went back to writing TV-westerns. 

So some thought went into the script for STRANGLER, unlike the vast majority of grindhouse movies. Drake's portrait of a feminized serial killer lacks any subtlety, but it's not any worse than the majority of psycho-films in the sixties. At most, the film might be faulted for not being as delirious as the wildest exploitation-films of the decade, such as the best works of Russ Meyer and Michael Findlay. But STRANGLER is still strange enough to be worth a look.