The Star Attraction

At first look, the setup for the 1966 film This Property is Condemned seems like a heroic fantasy. Stranger comes to town, assesses the situation, liberates wounded damsel in distress and turns the rest of the town upside down. But this is no Clint Eastwood Western, no James Bond tale. This is an adaption from Tennessee Williams. Hence, the story is more complicated and involves larger socio-economic forces, ties of blood, primal human nature. In this as in Diane Arbus vistas, the freakish is ordinary and the ordinary seems freakish.

Overall, this is an interesting B movie. The talent pool would suggest the possibility of something beautiful and sad like The Last Picture Show (1971), but it doesn't quite add up that way. Still, it's got a lot to make it worth seeing -- starting with Natalie Wood in the juicy role of Alva Starr. Then there's Kate Reid as Hazel, her manipulative mother. Reid looks at times like Shelley Winters in Alfie -- maybe it's the mid-1960s fashions and similar hairdos -- even though This Property is set during the Great Depression -- and she acts like her, too. Alva's little tomboyish sister Willie is played by Mary Badham of To Kill a Mockingbird fame. Then there are the male stars.

Robert Redford gives a solid performance as Owen Legate, the stranger who arrives in town to deliver layoff notices to the railroad workers who comprise most of its laborers; he also becomes Alva's key romantic interest, eliciting all sorts of conflict. Legate discovers a rather twisted if understandable setup. Hazel, who runs a hotel/boarding house, essentially pimps Alva out to the highest bidder to keep things going; her husband has abandoned the family and left them to their own devices. Legate is the primary change agent in the story.

The secondary male characters also give solid performances. It's entertaining to see the nervous Robert Blake as Sidney and Charles Bronson as a brutish J.J., both of them railroad workers with a torch for Alva. J.J. is sleeping with Hazel so he can get close to her daughter. These guys are pure Tennessee Williams. Bronson was already a rising tough guy star, and Blake would break out with his charismatic In Cold Blood performance the following year. John Harding plays Mr. Johnson, a "lonely" older married man who wants to make Alva his kept mistress in Memphis. Dabney Coleman has a minor role as a salesman.

Then there's the director, Sydney Pollack. This was an early effort, and though I'm not a big fan of his movie directing, he is terrific as an actor in Husbands and Wives (1992). The primary screenwriting credit goes to Francis Ford Coppola, also an early effort for him -- before he began producing movies of his own.

The most compelling aspect of the story is the weird Starr family dynamic. Hazel constantly intrudes upon Alva's privacy and tends to trample social boundaries. She has good lines like "I can only be nice to one person at a time;" and, of Alva and Legate, "My, what a handsome couple." But Alva has some good (if cheesy) lines, too. At one point, when she confronts her mother in front of some of her male admirers, Hazel notes that she's "loaded," and Alva fires back: "Yeah, like a pistol." Legate also gets to banter, mostly with little sister Willie, to whom he says, "I suspect your sister is a mighty potent force." And he is right.

Also: Natalie Wood had a lifelong fear and dread of water, and in the course of the film, has to shout "Let's go skinny-dipping!" You can see the fear in her face in a scene that must have influenced Cybill Shepherd's similar pool scene in The Last Picture Show. Of course, the tragic and beautiful Natalie died by drowning in 1981.

Thanks to my big sister Vickie for recommending this movie some time ago. Glad to have finally found it in DVD format.

Today's the traditional date for the founding of Rome by Romulus. And as for England's dreamin', God Save the Queen and her fascist regime. It's her 80th birthday and poor Charles is still waiting in the wings for his turn. And lest we forget, happy birthday Iggy Pop!

Ciao for now. Off to do some nighclubbing. . . . .