Screaming Mimi (1958) A Psychotronic Femme Fatale

"A Quasi Beatnik / Tail Fin         Noir."

Directed by Gerd Oswald. Who?

I had to check him out. Oswald was German born. He was the child of a German director and a German actress. When he got to the US he started on Hollywood's poverty row, eventually making (Color Noir A Kiss Before Dying for Crown Productions and distributed by United Artists. He also made Crime of Passion which plays to me like a sort of police soap opera Noir. 

Oswald back in Europe then directs Brainwashed (his highest rated film on IMDb) if that really means anything, these days. I've clicked on some streamers all in Germán. It stars Curd Jürgens (who played in The Enemy Below with Mitchum, and ...And God Created Woman with Brigitte Bardo ), Claire Bloom (The Man Between (1953), and Mario Adorf who I known from a few Spaghetti Westerns. I've never seen it. It could be another Noir, it might be worth checking out. Oswald, after 1960 directed TV, notably to Noir fans Perry Mason and a lot of The Outer Limits. 

Screaming Mimi was written by Robert Blees and based on Fredric Brown's novel of the same name. The Cinematography was by Burnett Guffey (many many Classic Hollywood Noir) and music by Mischa Bakaleinikoff and Red Norvo.

The film stars Anita Ekberg (Miss Sweden 1950, also starred in Pickup Alley (1957), Fellini's La Dolce Vita (1960) as Stripper Virginia Wilson. 

Anita Ekberg as Virginia Wilson / Yolanda Lang

Philip Carey as Bill Sweeney

Philip Carey (I barely remember him on TV for Tales of the 77th Bengal Lancers and later 77 Sunset Strip, he was also in the Classic Noir Pushover, and a lot of Westerns). Carey plays Newspaper reporter Bill Sweeney, stripper Gypsy Rose Lee plays Joann 'Gypsy' Mapes owner of a hip for 1957 Beatnik / Jazz night club called El Madhouse.

Gypsy Rose Lee as Joan "Gypsy" Mapes

Harry Townes (The Twilight Zone and lots of TV) as Dr. Greenwood / Bill Green, Linda Cherney as Ketti, Romney Brent as Charlie Weston, Red Norvo as Red Yost (as The Red Norvo Trio) and Frank J. Scannell as Paul the Bartender.

Harry Townes as Dr. Greenwood / Bill Green

The Story

Virginia is a dancer up from New Orleans, visiting her artist stepbrother Charlie at his beach cottage.in California. 

It's shot at Carrillo Beach but since the tale is moved from Chicago to San Francisco, the beach house is probably supposed to be between Monterey and San Francisco.

We first see Virginia out swimming in the surf off a rocky beach. She runs out of the water and up the stone steps to an outdoor shower. 

She removes her suit and begins to rinse off the salt. He dog Rusty starts barking. Virginia tells him to leave the rabbits alone. We see a man approaching with a knife. 

Rusty whimpers then goes silent. When Virginia looks out of the stall, she sees the man with a now bloody knife approaching.

We see him from the opposite angle and he has a shirt on that says Highland Sanitarium on it's back so we know for sure he a mental patient. lol

Virginia screams, and ducks his knife thrusts. Her brother Charlie runs out of the cottage, sees that man attacking Virginia, runs back in the house and pops back out with a rife, and blows him away. 

When Charlie runs up to the shower stall Virginia is hysterical and when she sees Charlie she starts screaming even harder. 

Cut to a sign - Highland Sanitarium.

Virginia is in the sanitarium. She's been there six months. Dr. Greenwood her doctor is taking an unusual interest in Virginia. He seems pretty interested in one thing.

He dictates a letter to Charlie telling him that he doesn't think Virginia will recover, and he gives her maybe six months. That out of the way. He starts keeping office hours in his bungalow with Virginia, and the other docs are talking about it.

Oh yes!

Time to disappear with Virginia 

Virginia thinks she's recovered. But she tells Dr. Greenwood about a dog she used to have. She obviously has still blanked out the attack. Virginia also tells him that she wants to dance again. Dr. Greenwood asks her if she trusts him, and also  if she is willing to do everything he tells her to do. Virginia answers yes. 

Let that subtext sink in....

Yes!

Boing! San Francisco here we come. 

Pacific Street 

The Barbary Coast

Dr. Greenwood is now Bill Green. Virginia has apparently taken care of the" wood." Virginia is now Yolanda Lang. Green is her "manager." She's dancing down in the Barbary Coast on either Pacific Street or Broadway. The El Madhouse is owned by Joann 'Gypsy' Mapes. 

Dancing Waiters

Older guy younger woman

Now this is maybe the third of forth time I've watched this and besides the Beatnik - Jazz vibe there's something a bit off, a bit subterranean going on. 

Number one, when we first see  Bill Sweeney seated at the bar, he's not watching Yolanda at first. But when he turns the barstool to catch the last half of Yolanda's act, he comes into the view of Gypsy, who is apparently and old friend. When Gypsy comes over to say hi, Bill tells her that he's surprised she hasn't been shut down. 

 Linda Cherney as Ketti

Number two before we first see Gypsy, there's a cute cigarette girl Ketti standing in front of her, she moves off revealing Gypsy. We see again the same cigarette girl in a few more shots during Yolanda's dance. She's like a character "McGuffin," a build up to a suggestion of a lesbian affair? It doesn't really work as intended anymore. 

Number three, while Gypsy is talking to Bill we see, just behind them, the cigarette girl again. She is stopped by a man who puts his hand on her shoulder. Gypsy, seeing this out of the corner of her eye very possessively admonishes the gut to keep his hands off the "candy."  

Now jump back and rewatch the shots of the nightclub couples watching Yolanda. Two women together, then two men, next an older guy with a bleach blond with dangly earrings a prostitute maybe. Then two more women, one very butch looking with short cropped hair and wearing a mans sport jacket over a sweater. It must be a gay friendly and vice friendly hangout. Like I said I didn't notice any of this the first couple of watches. 

Did Eddie Muller ever have Screaming Mimi on Noir Alley? I wonder if he ever mentioned this.

Later in the film when Sweeney visits Gypsy at her apartment, cigarette girl "Ketti" is obviously living there with her, lol. I'm sure it went over the heads of the square johns back in the day.

Yolanda's Dance Sequence

Ketti

Ketti

Out with the old in with the new

Young chick with dangly earrings and old fart = he's probably her uncle, yea sure.

Young dude in sweater and businessman = he's probably his uncle, yea sure.

Another couple of women

Bill Sweeney, feeling no pain, the smoke curling up with his cigarette hasn't noticed Yolanda yet

Boing!!!

another cute couple

Anyway, after Yolanda's dance is over, Gypsy asks Bill if he'd like to meet Yolanda, Boing!, he of course, jumps at the chance. Gypsy brings Bill backstage to Yolanda's dressing room. 

Gypsy introduces him as the nightlife columnist for the Times and then leaves.  Devil her watchdog growls. The sound of Bills voice seems to calm Devil down a bit. Bill starts putting the moves on Youlanda immediately.

Bill starts with his reporter spiel, kind of interviewing Yolanda, asking questions about her background, i.e., nationality, height in heels, etc., etc., but he's also trying to wrangle a date on the town with her. 

At about this time Bill Green walks in to the dressing room and is surprised to see Bill Sweeney. 

Green tells Sweeney that Yolanda doesn't need publicity. Huh? WTF? Every entertainer needs publicity. Immediately Bill Sweeney know something is screwy with this situation. 

His though bubble says "She don't need publicity? Something's screwy."

When Bill Sweeney splits Bill Green throws a tizzy fit. Not only because Yolanda was talking to Sweeney but also because she kept a "Screaming Mimi" statue that he told her to get rid of weeks ago, because she "sees" herself in the piece. 

Screaming Mimi

In the novel there was a whole side bar story woven into the plot about a sculptor in Wisconsin who made the original Mimi. In the film we see Virginia's artist brother Charlie working of an armature with the beginnings of the Screaming Mimi. So they tie the statue in that way in the film.

Once Green calms down he tells Yolanda that soon they'll have enough money to go to Europe where he can become Dr. Greenwood again. 

One night when Yolanda is out walking Devil along a brownstone street, she is accosted and dragged down the steps to the basement entrance of a brownstone. 

She screams. The residents in all the surrounding brownstones start turning on lights and opening windows. A crowd gathers. 

These are the days BFA - Before First Aid classes, nobody is trying to go to Yolanda's aid. A scene like that wouldn't ring true today. 

We can over look that, with the excuse of Devil growling and keeping everybody at bay. But, if you are at all familiar with these brownstones and their stoops, there is a basement entrance "behind" Yolanda under those steps, so you can get to her that way in the real world.

You can see the doorway just behind Yo

Bill Sweeney on his reporter beat sees the crowd and investigates. When Yolanda, who we first see doubled over stands up the front of her trench coat is slashed and we see some of her blood. 

This is the same M.O. of a slasher who has been attacking and killing strippers in the city. 

So Bill goes to the Daily Times Newspaper morgue to read up on the killings. When he reads the piece on Lola Lake, he spots the broken statue laying on the concrete beside her. The same statue he saw in Yolanda's dressing room. To be sure Bill looks at a print of the photo.

It starts going Noirsville when Sweeney sees that the pervious dancer who was killed by a slasher also had the exact Screaming Mimi statue. 

Noirsville

An "on the cheap" mostly studio bound, gutless copout adaptation of Fredric Brown's novel. Instead of Chicago and a strip club with nudie cuties and bump & grind with a hint of bestiality, we get San Francisco's Barbary Coast and the tragically hip, El Madhouse, a sort of Beatnik Jazz /exotic night club. 

No naked Ekberg or Gypsy Rose Lee for that matter, no boobs at all. (hey Hollywood get in step with the times, lol). With this lame shit like this you can see why people were going out to see the real thing or staying home and watching the boob tube. 

There's also a paucity of location shooting in this production. I know we've seen that same angled backlot brownstone street since the 1930s. By 1958 it was also used in countless TV Noir shows to boot. By the 1960's the more "Avaunt Garde"  Noir were being filmed in gritty locations rather than backlots. 

Red Norvo Trio plays some interesting jazz, Red aka "Mister Swing" is the master of the vibes. Ekberg does a ballet in rags and Gypsy Rose Lee for some reason does a lame atrocious version of "Put the Blame on Mame." She wears a sequined dress with tassels on each breast. Rita did it better in Gilda. 

It's still entertaining enough. It is what it is. Most Classic Noir if they actually followed the Novels they were based on would be surprisingly quite different films. Maybe even better films.

In the novel BTW the stripper has a dog act. During her routine her dog Devil (he looks like a wolf) leaps at her, grabs a silk tab on her strapless evening gown with his teeth and pulls down, causing the dress to fall, leaving her naked. 

If I remember correctly in the book the actual story starts when the reporter Sweeny who is on a bender is walking down a Chicago street when he comes upon a small crowd of rubberneckers crowded around the descending steps to the vestibule of a building. When Sweeny pushes up to where he can see down, he finds Virginia laying on the floor with blood on her gown, and her dog Devil snarling at the onlookers on the other side of the glass entrance doorway.  When Virginia finally struggles to her feet, Devil does the act, leaping up catching the silk tab and strips the evening gown off, just like at the burlesque house. How Noir would that have been if it had actually been filmed as it started in the book? So reporter Sweeny starts investigating what happened.

This little sequence above does appear in the film but well along with the story and since the dog is just her pet, he just snarls at the crowd. There is no glass door.

Now if all the above sounds vaguely familiar it should, because Brown's Screaming Mimi opening was also unofficially adapted for The Bird with the Crystal Plumage by Dario Argento.

As is even the Screaming Mimi statue has clothes. lol. Harry Towns is always a good creep. At least there is some stylistically Noir Cinematography, but very disappointing if you happen to read the book first. 5-6 /10.

Anyway the late great bmacv (IMDb) is more lenient see below:

Late noir oddly recalls haunting cheapies of a decade earlier, 30 April 2002

Author: bmacv from Western New York

Somehow surmounting a creaky script rooted in some crackpot psychiatry, Screaming Mimi creates a somnambulistic, doom-laden mood that keeps you watching, bemused. And that's not easily explained.

The director, Gerd Oswald, was one of the lesser expatriates from Germany, a pedestrian workman who the year before helmed Crime of Passion, a jejune noir starring Barbara Stanwyck, Sterling Hayden and Raymond Burr; it's hard to extinguish the sizzle in that kind of cast, but Oswald did a pretty fair job of it.

In Screaming Mimi, he was saddled with the sort of rounded-up cast that doesn't incite box office stampedes. Anita Ekberg, - the Swedish bombshell with the storied bosom - proves oddly affecting in the numbed-out role she's called on to play. And society stripper Gypsy Rose Lee supplies a welcome bit of sass as proprietress of a nightclub called El Madhouse. But the male leads emerged from the La Brea tar pits of Hollywood anonymity. Philip Carey passes as sort of a poor man's Gary Merrill (that is to say, absolutely penniless), while Harry Townes, an even more faceless actor, makes up the roster.

The plot? Ekberg, an exotic `dancer' who writhes about suggestively in an act with bondage overtones, is visiting her sculptor-stepbrother on the California coast when she's almost knifed by an escapee from a nearby asylum, whom the brother promptly shoots dead. In consequence, Ekberg winds up in the selfsame asylum where her smitten shrink (Townes) arranges her release and, in a development reminiscent of The Blue Angel or Sunset Boulevard, leaves his post to manage her career (as stripper Yolanda Lang).

Then one night she's stabbed (again), but her vicious great dane wards off the attacker. Carey, a columnist whose curiously broad beat includes night clubs and crime in the night, grows intrigued, and stumbles onto the fact that both Ekberg and an earlier victim possessed strange statuettes called Screaming Mimis....

It's a jumble, all right, but it manages to hold some interest. A large part of the credit must, by default, fall to top-notch cinematographer Burnett Guffey, by far the most talented factor in the movie. (He films one scene in the light from a flashing neon sign, alternating between a two-shot and daringly long intervals of pitch blackness.) The movie shares a restive, oneiric quality with certain low-budget noirs from a decade earlier, that again compelled more attention than they deserved. Go figure.