Really Awful Movies

“Oh my, you’ll never do as a fashion model.”

That was according to Ford Modeling Agency founder Eileen Ford, but Bettie Page was told she’d make a good pinup model, by of all people, a Brooklyn cop out in Coney Island, who proved to be a much better judge of talent. So much so, in fact, he suggested she mask a high forehead with bangs. Bingo. Her trademark look that she never abandoned. And the rest is history.

And Page’s history is riveting.

Born to a mother with a third grade education in The Music City, Nashville Tennessee, and a “sex fiend” father who abused her and her sisters, she was shunted into a foster home when her mother fled and was unable to care for her and her five siblings.

A relentless book-hound, Page excelled in school, married (and later divorced) a military man and moved to San Francisco and then New York before finally becoming a successful model at the advanced age of 27. Much like Latino boxers, whose ages are frequently, “adjusted” according to circumstances, the young-looking Page was perpetually referred to as “22.” “Let ’em think what they wanted to!” She was 22 for a long time.

Page became a regular fixture on the Jersey camera club circuit and also on Fire Island, New York — camera clubs being the only means for some men to actually get that close to someone wearing so little. She earned the princely sum of $25/day.

Authority figures play a recurring role in Page’s life, from her “talent agent,” the beat cop, to her first husband in the military (servicemen being the primary audience for her work) and then to Brigadier General who did a notorious nude photo shoots with the pin up icon; and finally, morality police busting the camera club photo shoots for indecency.

The 50s were a different time altogether, but Page’s beauty was timeless and she’s a terrific narrator here, her Tennessee drawl and good humor much more effective than a usually ponderous documentarian.

Her trademark look continues to inspire, even if her current tough-girl disciples in roller derby leagues and tattoo parlors all over the world, mostly lack her most notable features: vulnerability and accessibility.

And it’s easy to forget that one of the most beautiful women of all time, a one-time bondage queen, was also someone who cultivated so many different interests (she designed and made her own bikinis and lingerie, went to Bible College and pursued a Master’s Degree at Vanderbilt).

She led many more lives than could ever be captured in 90 minutes.

***1/2 (out of 5)

RED WARNING. 8:11. Height: 50,000 feet. Estimated speed: 5,000 miles/hr.

In Phantom from Space, an unidentified flying object is first spotted in Alaska. It then speeds down the coast via Vancouver to Santa Monica and finally (and conveniently) to Los Angeles, California, where filming these quickies was the cheapest. If this were being filmed today, it would probably stay put in BC.

Soon, a frantic woman reports her husband and friend are missing. Witnesses recount a confrontation in the dark with a creature sporting a suit like a deep sea diver (one even took a swing at the thing with a block of wood, a move questioned by incredulous, chain-smoking cops).

“There was no sign of the mysterious intruder,” by the time law enforcement was on the scene. So all they had to go on was the civilian’s story about going at the entity with a 2X4.

Before long though, the law is on its tail and picking up some of the perp’s details:

There wasn’t any head in that helmet.”
“No head?”
“No head at all.

What was the origin of the thing? Did a plane crash? Or was it a plane? No extant technology could reach speeds of 5,000 miles/hour.

Radio and TV signals are being disrupted and the creature is highly radioactive and tracked to nearly oil fields.

Turns out, this is really a job for the feds/army. So Major Andrews asks his assistant, and soon, he and a bunch of fedoras are in hot pursuit, radiation be damned (no protective Hazmat suits necessary).

Phantom_from_space_still — The humanoid creature is underwhelming, to say the least, and can barely outrun law enforcement.

Detectives tell the lady scientist (former MGM showgirl Noreen Nash) how to do her job and prying paparazzi journalists are muscled aside, as if they were getting a scoop at a Trump rally.

We we find out the creature is only visible under UV light, probably a good thing, at least in order to mask its crapiness.

How did the craft get here? Did the spaceship operate by magnetic propulsion? That’s one of the lengthily tedious hypotheses put forward, as damn, there is LOTS of chatter and speculation.

There’s even rehashing of the voice-over sentiments from the film’s beginning to get other characters up to speed.

Directed by W Lee Wilder, brother of Billy (Some Like it Hot, Irma La Douce), Phantom was co-written by son Myles. He would go on to lead the writing team on the Dukes of Hazzard. One of the cops is played by Harry Landers, which is as science fiction a name as you can get, and who was a regular on the 60s medical drama Ben Casey.

Phantom from Space was released in the spring of 1953 and is a product of its time: lots of bleep bleep noises, loads of stock footage and some guy in a puffy suit.

** (out of 5)