THE DAY OF THE LOCUST: Blu-ray (Paramount, 1975) Arrow Academy

Much as the dream factories of yore strove to celebrate it, not everything that went on behind those hallowed studio gates was kosher in the glamor gala yesteryears of Hollywood. But at least clever studio PR made it appear to the outside world as though the streets of Los Angeles, Culver City and Burbank were a truly magical and sovereign realm, dedicated to those deified unicorns, long-since classified as stars. None toiling in Hollywood during its golden age dare tamper with this illusion.  After all, believing in people and places far removed from the squalor and seductions of the Depression era served a purpose. Hence, when director, Billy Wilder took his acerbic chisel to the stiff-upheld edifice with 1950’s Sunset Boulevard he was met with quiet animosity to downright rancor from the mogul class, as yet, and barely in charge of their kingdoms. Reportedly, MGM’s L.B. Mayer charged Wilder at the end of the prevue, angrily shouting, “How could you do this?” Mayer might have better regarded his own numbered days as raja of Hollywood’s most opulent kingdom. And retrospectively, Wilder was ahead of his time. As the studio system crumbled into antiquity throughout the decade, to completely implode by the late sixties, Hollywood proper turned on itself to fuel another sort of mythology – this one, deliberately destined to destroy every last vestige of the apologue dedicated to the town’s high-minded work ethic and ‘goodness knows’ purity to hermetically embalm its larger-than-life gods and goddesses. To quote Mae West – “Goodness had nothing to do with it!” Although, arguably, naïveté did!

John Schlesinger’s The Day of the Locust (1975) is a real Hollywood hatchet job, a disembowelment of Tinsel Town’s bloated conceit, ironically inflicted at the height of the city and the industry’s Teflon-coated fame as a star-lit mecca for the masses to worship. Nathanael West’s novel of the same name debuted in 1939, the year of Gone with the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, Wuthering Heights, Goodbye Mr. Chips, Gunga Din, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, The Women and The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Make-believe didn’t get much better than this. And while widely read, West’s novel had arguably fallen out of favor in the intervening decades. In West, born Nathan Weinstein, we have a truly curious case of the frustrated artist railing against the hand that fed him. Although West showed little interest in academics, and was, in fact, expelled from Tufts, forging his transcripts to get into Brown University, he also showed a genuine flare for the French surrealists, as well as the British and Irish poets of the 1890s. Better still, at least for his own longevity, West’s authorship had a unique literary style, as rare as its content - mixing Christianity with mysticism. West’s first novel, Miss Lonelyhearts (1933) was likely his most well-received in his brief lifetime. It directly led to his being employed by Columbia Pictures as a screenwriter. And although West found the time to write two more novels, neither was critically or commercially successful. Almost as insignificant, were his screenplays for Columbia – ‘B’ to ‘C’ grade fodder, perhaps inspiring West to ferment an idea for The Day of the Locust; very sour grapes with thinly veiled references to the eccentric and depraved West had met while living in a hotel on Hollywood Boulevard. That same year, West moved from Columbia to RKO. Alas, and for the most part, this did not improve his prospects for becoming a crackerjack storyteller. Rather tragically, West’s promise was cut short when, on Dec. 22, 1940, he ran a stop and, along with his wife, Eileen McKenney, was immediately killed in a head-on collision.

That The Day of the Locust took so long to be considered for a big screen adaptation is understandable. The book is a raw and ribald crucifixion of Hollywood’s holier-than-though hoi poloi. Truthful? Perhaps, though merciless in its condemnation of the vast under-class flooding the city - hopefuls desperate for ‘extra’ work in the movies.  The book follows the fledgling career of a young artist, Tod Hackett (William Atherton, in the movie) from the Yale School of Fine Arts, hired by a never-to-be named (at least in the book) Hollywood studio to do set design. Aside: in the movie, Hackett goes to work for Paramount, the studio actually funding The Day of the Locust. While employed, Tod plans a genuine work of art, ‘The Burning of Los Angeles’, depicting a fiery holocaust that will consume the city. Tod befriends stereotypical Hollywood hopefuls but finds himself compelled by this weirdly cynical sect, “eyes filled with hatred”, who have become gravely disillusioned with the unattainable quality of the ‘American dream’. West may have been onto something here – his depiction of a Hollywood premiere degenerating into abject chaos, the city of dreams decimated by a mob, come to tear down their most rarified persons of interest, is a sort of precursor to the Babylon eventually to replace Hollywood’s self-created fantasy-land after the system eroded into oblivion.

West’s mobile of deceit and disdain for Hollywood focuses on three central character, the aforementioned Hackett, social misfit, Homer Simpson (Donald Sutherland), a nervous ex-accountant come to California to restore his health, and, vacuous Faye Greener (cross-eyed, Karen Black) - the epitome of that misguided ‘fresh face’ too absorbed in her own image to recognize she possesses no real talent whatsoever. We are also introduced to the midget, Abe Kusich (Billy Barty), a bookie/hustler of Faye’s, Claude Estee (Richard Dysart), a famous, but jaded screenwriter, Earle Shoop (Bo Hopkins) – a phony cowboy and Faye’s lover, peddling western wares at a novelty shop, Miguel (Pepe Sarna) – a Mexican-American, passing for native-American Indian, and, with whom Faye also enjoys conjugal visits, Mrs. Jennings (Madge Kennedy) – the seedy proprietress of a combo escort/porn parlor, Faye’s father, Harry (Burgess Meredith) a fast-fading clown of the Chaplin ilk, and finally, Adore Loomis (Jackie Earle Haley) – a repugnantly articulate child actor who preys upon Homer’s sexual repression until he snaps. Deliberately, none of these characters is ever fleshed out in the novel. Instead, author, West makes the ample assumption, and point, that in Hollywood any similarity between real people and those stick figures with no soul who populate our daydreams is more than purely coincidental.

At the crux of both the novel and the movie is Tod’s infatuation with Faye whom he really cannot see for the heartless and shallow vixen, even as she hides none of this from him, determined to fall in love with only rich men. Tod’s fantasies about Faye eventually inform a nightmarish rape. The rest of the grotesques – Abe, Claude, Earle, etc. – float in and out of Tod’s life, further blurring the line between reality and fiction in Tod’s mind. Tod also befriends Homer, whose nervous break-down has allowed his ‘unruly hands’ to operate independent from the rest of his body. Eventually, Adore Loomis’ snide remarks cause Homer’s already tenuous hold on reality to collapse. As he slips into madness, Homer pummels Adore to death with his feet, the release of his pent-up frustrations drawing on a frightful clarity, transformed by the mob into an even more dire and emotionless malaise. Novel and film bear consideration for their daring, as each retains West’s verve for wholly unlikable characters who are eventually exposed as total frauds. Virtually all are socially-retarded, cynical, self-absorbed and self-destructive.

Ironically, as much as West’s novel was viewed as radical for its time, the movie version of it arrived on screens at precisely an epoch when the public’s disillusionment with Hollywood was, arguably, at its zenith.  So, unlike the novel, the movie leans towards as a grotesque parody to shock and disturb. Is it effective? Marginally. As with virtually all movies aspiring to recreate a ‘period’ other than their own, The Day of the Locust is tinged and tainted by seventies’ cynicism with America in general, and Hollywood’s then even more bizarre fascination with destroying itself. By the time it went into production, the ‘dream factories’ of yore – Paramount included, had become the unloved and mismanaged real estate of major corporations, overseen by bean-counting investors lacking the wherewithal to command ‘art for art’s sake.’ Nevertheless, corporations encroached upon on these dying empires, enamored by the still fashionable gravitas of ole-time Hollywood merely for the bragging rights. And West’s novel, with its mental defectives, consumed by narcissism and a malignant, moral bankruptcy, fit rather well into the seventies. By such standards, The Day of the Locust ought to have been a real sleeper for Paramount…or rather, Gulf + Western, the company, then, owning the studio.

Alas, no – The Day of the Locust was, instead, a colossal financial flop, made at a time when any studio, though particularly Paramount, could scarcely afford another on their books. The Day of the Locust derives its title from the Book of Exodus and the plague set upon the house of Pharaoh as retribution for refusing to liberate the Jewish slaves – a scene that, for logistical reasons alone - was ‘not’ depicted in De Mille’s The Ten Commandments (1956), one of Paramount’s irrefutable all-time money-makers.  West’s comparison between human insanity and this man-made pestilence lain upon the earth is hedged by other reflections of the coming apocalypse; the painting, The Burning of Los Angeles; also, Hackett’s violent sexual fantasies about Faye, and, undeniably, this show’s murderous finale. Both the novel and the movie open similarly, with Tod Hackett sketching a design for a studio-bound interior ballroom set inside a cavernous soundstage as an unnamed director prepares to shoot a major scene for what appear to be a lavishly appointed production of War and Peace. Interestingly, this sequence was not shot at Paramount but MGM, on the grand staircase once built for the palace of Versailles in 1938’s Marie Antoinette. Perhaps, most miraculous of all, this set survived a decade’s long purge at Metro after its new management under Las Vegas financier, Kirk Kerkorian stripped and liquidated virtually everything of perceived value in a massive public auction for some quick cash.

John Schlesinger completes this opener with a smooth dissolve; the cavernous interiors of the adjacent sound stage suddenly replaced by a skillful matte painting to conceal all the overhead rigging and lights.  Despite the opulence and spectacle of this moment, we quickly regress to a seedier reality. Tod rents a cramped and dingy apartment at the San Bernardino Arms, home to a handful of hopefuls lurking on the fringes of the industry. Among these is Faye Greener, a rather cheap and not terrible talented ‘actress.’ Faye lives with her father, Harry, an ex-Vaudevillian. Also, among the lot – the dwarf, Abe Kusich, in a stormy liaison with gal/pal, Mary Dove (Lelia Goldoni). We also meet the insidious, Adore Loomis, whose perverted prepubescence is being marketed by his stage-struck mother, and finally, Homer Simpson, a sexually repressed bean counter, secretly lusting after Faye. Almost immediately, Tod befriends Faye, attending a screening of a movie in which she appears. Hardly ‘a date’, Tod and Faye are joined by her faux cowboy lover, Earle Shoop. But Faye is bitterly disillusioned when she realizes her appearance in the picture has been severely truncated in the editing process. Smitten with Faye, Tod attempts a romance. Too bad for Tod, the object of his affections is an empty shell, star-struck, yet feckless.

Next, Tod attends a soiree where the partygoers, selected from the upper crust, nevertheless revel in watching stag movies. Despite her qualms, Faye begins to spend time with Tod. Alas, on one of these ‘outings’ – a campfire in the desert – Tod becomes incensed when Faye begins to dance with Earle’s best friend, Miguel. Sufficiently inebriated to allow his inhibitions to lapse, and presumably determined to force himself on Faye, Tod is thwarted in his seduction. Meanwhile, Faye and Homer take her father, Harry to a religious revival presided over by Big Sister (Geraldine Page doing shades of Jean Simmons’ female preacher from 1960’s Elmer Gantry). Big Sister performs a public ‘healing’, presumably to cure Harry of his heart ailment. Regrettably, a short time later, Harry dies. In order to pay for his funeral, Faye begins prostituting herself. Despite being an introvert, Homer vies for Faye's affections by proposing marriage. Undeserving of a better offer, Faye continues to hopelessly find employment as a movie extra, but moves in with Homer anyway. While filming the Waterloo-themed period drama, Faye barely escapes injury when the set collapses under the weight of extras in a charge up a man-made incline.  As Tod also bears witness to this devastating event, Faye and Homer subsequently invite him to dinner. Now, this triumvirate attend a drag show, Faye confessing, she and Homer are involved in a bizarrely sexless, yet loving relationship.

Sometime later, Faye and Homer host a party attended by close friends, including Claude Estee, a successful art director. Desperate to get noticed, Faye cavorts as though already a byproduct of stardom, hoping to impress Claude. Homer, however, observes as the male contingent swarm Faye for the wrong reasons. Catching a glimpse of Homer’s disdainful gaze, Faye bitterly accuses him of being a peeping Tom, throwing a vase through the window. Not long thereafter, Homer discovers Faye having sex with Miguel. Already knowing what Faye is, Earle becomes incensed and attacks Miguel. We move into the movie’s real ‘climax’; the Hollywood premiere of DeMille’s The Buccaneer at Grauman's Chinese, attended by a vast assortment of celebrities and star-struck onlookers, including Faye. Caught in the traffic, Tod notices Homer aimlessly wandering. Homer ignores Tod, seating himself on a bench instead. Attending the premiere with his mother, Adore provokes Homer by striking him in the head with a rock. Chagrined for the last time, Homer terrorizes Adore to an adjacent parking lot where he violently stomps the child to death. Adore's dying gasps draw the crowd’s attention. The mob gathered for the premiere now viciously turns on Homer and chaos ensues. Unaware of the murder just across the street, the night’s MC mistakes the fervor as giddy anticipation for the premiere. Faye is crudely assaulted and Tod suffers a compound fracture, nearly trampled to death. Now, Tod hallucinates several faceless apparitions descend from his painting, ‘The Burning of Los Angeles’. The next morning, a fragile Faye stumbles into Tod's apartment only to find he has since moved out, leaving nothing behind except a single flower he once used to decorate the crack in his wall caused by an earthquake. Faye suddenly begins to weep. 

The Day of the Locust is a very saucy, sad-eyed, brittle and jaundiced homage to that mid-seventy’s vintage in Hollywood’s self-inflicted desecration, hastened by a sudden decline in popularity for its product. Indeed, pundits of the day were already writing Hollywood’s eulogy on masse, suggesting society would look upon ‘going to the movies’ with the same nostalgia once ascribed to the horse and buggy. Mercifully, a renaissance, rather than a reckoning was on the horizon in 1980. This would carry over until the early 2000’s. The reckoning, alas, has since come to pass. The Day of the Locust possesses the cache of a major studio release – exceptional production values, and a star/director at its helm. But it horrendously lacks the sheer audacity to achieve any genuine or lasting staying power in our collective mind’s eye. Top-billed Donald Sutherland was well on his way to becoming a major player in Hollywood then. Regrettably, he was still was not considered ‘a star’. Karen Black, an actress whose allure and mid-70’s popularity continues to elude me, is woefully miscast. Black plays Faye as a jaded/vacuous starlet from the period in which this picture was made, not as star-struck/self-absorbed aspiring hopeful from the period in which the movie is set. Bereft of any genuine altruism, or even a single character we can root for, the most ‘heartfelt’ performances here are given by Burgess Meredith and Geraldine Page – each, a well-cured ham, able to recall the real/reel gala days of Hollywood with a clear, sad-eyed glint for all that had been lost since.

The penultimate scene of mob chaos and the murder of Adore ought to have been shocking. But actually, it plays with stifling predictability.  If, as West’s novel inferred, the unraveling of the Hollywood myth is a reflection of Europe’s then growing anxiety about the rise of fascism, the removal of this hyper-comparative reverence in the movie, much less a comparable political parallel, denies the movie version its ‘nightmare of terror’ – the angry citizens, fists drawn, now depicted as nothing more than an unruly rabble run amok for the sake of a good time gone horribly awry. While reviews of The Day of the Locust registered its ‘nastiness’, fairly saturated in commodified depictions of arousal and aggression - a repository for the derailed daydreams of people in a frantic fix for their magic elixir - the picture, today, remains an oddity and time-capsule testament to that awkward period of adjustment in the picture-making biz, with the new Hollywood, eager to smash its gods and goddesses down to bedrock.

The Day of the Locust gets reissued on Blu-ray via Arrow Academy and the results are very welcomed indeed. Previously made available by Aussie/indie label, ViaVision, the first chomp at the apple was a disaster – riddled in edge effects, artificial image sharpening, age-related dirt and debris, and with a color palette severely faded and skewed to an artificial orangey/brown tint. Virtually all of these issues have been addressed for Arrow’s re-issue; advertised as a ‘brand new’ 2K scan off an original negative. The results speak for themselves.  Conrad L. Hall’s magnificent ‘vintage-esque’ cinematography sparkles. It’s a sepia-tinted/soft-palette with gauze-diffused imagery, now looking absolutely indigenous to its source. Colors are infinitely more refined here. Flesh tones finally appear natural. Fine detail in close-ups is excellent. Again, Hall’s use of diffusion filters lends the entire image a ‘soft’ dream-like appearance. This is as it should be. While the ViaVision release looked like a VHS tape bumped up to 1080p, Arrow’s reissue truly looks ‘film-based’ and magnificent. So, an upgrade from your old Blu is DEFINITELY warranted.  

Arrow also provides 3 audio options: original theatrical mono, a 2.0 DTS stereo and 5.1 DTS.  The Day of the Locust really doesn’t warrant a 5.1 and its’ appeal here is limited. But it’s nice to have the option. Extras explode: a new commentary hosted by historian, Lee Gambin, with pieced together inserts from assistant directors, Leslie Asplund and Charles Ziarko, production associate, Michael Childers, actors, Grainger Hines and Pepe Serna, title designer, Dan Perri, costume designer, Ann Roth, assistant editor, Alan L. Shefland and assistant camera operator, Ron Vidor. It’s such a comprehensive addendum to the movie, and well worth a listen. Historian, Glenn Kenny weighs in with a nearly-half-hour video essay. There’s also two more video pieces, the first – just under 20mins. with Elissa Rose, discussing costuming, and Gambin – again – and for almost a full 30mins., speaking about the picture’s themes and influences. The package is rounded out by a handful of radio spots, and a stills gallery containing images from the private collections of production associate, Michael Childers and assistant camera operator, Ron Vidor. Bottom line: Arrow’s reissue is the absolute best way to experience The Day of the Locust on home video. The only way the movie could possibly look any better would be if it were restored and remastered in 4K!

FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)

3

VIDEO/AUDIO

4

EXTRAS

4.5