Click on this You Tube clip at your own risk:
It gives you a tiny taste of one of the most dreadful movies ever made, Sextette, screen legend Mae West’s truly repugnant 1978 swan song.
She was 85 when she made this film which co-starred a young Timothy Dalton, who went on to have a career in spite of it. Sextette has become something of a “camp” novelty in recent years, because it reflects the ultimate Hollywood conceit and unfortunate choice: how a star with a long, distinguished and pioneering career made a film convinced that everyone would believe she looked as young as she yearned to look. In reality, the film shows Dalton and the public swooning over a grandmother in a bright blonde wig who walks slowly and uses circa 1920s and 1930s sexy body language.
I originally read about Sextette but missed it because when it came out I was overseas, writing in Spain for the Christian Science Monitor and other newspapers. So I bought it on video cassette while working on the San Diego Union newspaper in 1982. I watched it once, then lent it to an editor — who never returned it. I’d ask him every few days: “Greg. What about Mae West?” He’d say: “Oh. I’ll bring it tomorrow.”
Eight years later, when I left the newspaper, he still hadn’t returned it. My theory is that he ruined it when he threw up on it.
It isn’t just the age factor (West on film looks younger than 85). It’s just that right down the line the movie is stunningly inept and bad.
So I recently ordered it on DVD to see if it was as dreadful as I recalled. I first watched this clip on You Tube and felt: yes, it is at least as bad as I thought, but the whole movie couldn’t be that putrid. But it was.
Hollywood can pull off illusions but nothing can make viewers believe there is logic in younger men, a cast of cameo-star characters, and extras swooning over the beauty of a woman who looks like a refugee from a wax museum. It’s sad because West WAS younger looking than her 85 years….or…was that due to her heavy makeup…or the soft filters through which they shot her…or due to my own age (I look younger than I am)?
And when I watched it this time, I wanted a WITNESS. So I got my nephew Greg, who is 14, to watch it with me.
He sat with a look of shock on his teenage face.
“How old does she look to you?” I asked him.
“VERY old,” he replied. And then he had one statement about Timothy Dalton.
“They must have paid him A LOT of money to make this movie…”
Whatever it was, it wasn’t enough.
FOOTNOTE: To be fair: you still to give Mae West her due, despite the unfortunate misfire of Sextette. Watch this BBC excerpt (which contains her singing Twist And Shout):
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.