Jessie Maple’s Debut Will: Addiction and Redemption on the Mean Streets of Harlem

WILL 

(Jessie Maple, USA, 1981, 83 minutes) 

Jessie Maple's first feature, a true independent effort, was an unusual enough feat for a woman in the States in 1981, but doubly so for a Black woman. 

Maple's husband served as cinematographer and the cast consisted primarily of nonprofesional Harlem actors. With the exception of the two adult leads, most had never acted before and would never act again, but they brought the authenticity the former journalist and news camera woman prized. 

If Will wasn't widely seen at the time, that wasn't necessarily Maple's goal, but her film was never completely forgotten, and it's now making the rounds thanks to Janus, much like Zeinabu irene Davis's Compensation, an exceptionally fine film by another Black woman director, earlier this year. 

Maple's debut opens on a long-limbed man (Obaka Adedunyo, who has the angular features and wide-set eyes of Raúl Juliá), wearing only his briefs, writhing and sweating as he goes through heroin withdrawal. There's no music, only the sound of his yelling and grunting, static from a portable radio, and retching after he runs to the toilet to throw up. This is Will. 

Into this sequence, editor Willette Coleman intercuts glimpses of Will on a city basketball court in happier times. It's hard to miss the expansive length of his fingers–ideal for piano-playing and basketball-gripping alike. 

While Will struggles to get clean, his wife, Jean (Loretta Devine in her first feature), does the cooking, cleaning, shopping, and working, and her patience is running thin. She recommends he seek help, but Will insists he doesn't need it. Maybe she believed him once, but those days are over. 

It doesn't help that Will continues to hang with the same crew. If he was serious about quitting, he might put some space between them. Then one day, 12-year-old Delbert, aka Little Brother (Robert Dean), drops by. The men don't see a problem with a pint-size drug buddy, so Will raises a ruckus, they scatter, and he's left with a smart-mouthed kid who wants to cop. 

He has to think fast, so he comes up with a way to keep Little Brother from getting high. It works once, but there's no guarantee it will work again. The orphan, who lives in a squat, lost both of his brothers to drugs and violence, but he's convinced he won't get hooked. Will, who knows otherwise, invites him to stay over for a couple of days. It isn't a solution, but it's something. 

As nice as he is to the kid, who he entices with ice cream and a color television, Will could be nicer to Jean. Then he almost cheats on her with a former flame. Granted, employment officer LaVern (Mimi Ayers) started it. First, she offers him a basketball coaching job, and then she puts the moves on him, right there in her office. I didn't find that especially believable, though it ends in the least sexy way possible–heroin really is a hell of a drug. 

Instead of getting darker, though, the film gets lighter and funnier–until it doesn't. Prior to that swerve towards the end, the playful moments were starting to accumulate, like the prickly exchange between Jean's teenaged sister Audrey (Audrey Maple), a basketball player, and Little Brother, who refers to all women as "babes." Audrey quickly sets him straight. 

A blissful houseparty sequence also echoes and predicts similar sequences in Michael Schultz's Cooley High and Steve McQueen's Lovers Rock, two Black films with which it shares a few similarities, though it has even more in common with rough-hewn LA Rebellion films, like Charles Burnett's My Brother's Wedding or Billy Woodberry's Bless Their Little Hearts.

Though it isn't clear why Will and Jean don't have kids, it doesn't need to be, even as the role of father comes naturally to Will. 

Nonetheless, Jessie Maple and her husband, LeRoy Patton (Brewster's Millions, Rosewood), who co-produced the film, had a daughter, Audrey Snipes, who has overseen Jessie's estate since 2023. Similarly, the role of mother comes naturally to Jean. Then again, she's been mothering her husband, as it were, for years. 

Working with young people does Will a world of good, and in short order, he becomes the coach of Audrey's team, the Pacemakers, but he isn't a miracle worker or a saint, and despite his best efforts, not everything works out, though he appears to be finished with the junk, possibly for good. 

Though it's easy to feel thankful when a worthy film gets a second life–it's just as easy to feel regret when the filmmaker is no longer around to appreciate it, but that isn't exactly the case with Maple as it has been for other woman directors, like Christina Hornisher (I wrote about her sole feature, Hollywood 90028, last year), and actors, like Carrie Hamilton (I wrote about her sole starring role, in Tokyo Pop, the year before). 

Rather than theaters, Maple intended her film primarily for churches, schools, and community groups. After all, it was too gritty for the family film circuit, but not gritty enough for the grindhouse crowd. 

Instead of waiting around for a distributor, she and Patton converted their home into a micro-cinema, 20 West, where they screened Will in addition to other works from independent Black filmmakers, including a young Spike Lee. 

So, I don't think she considered her first feature a failure, not least since she was sufficiently encouraged to do it all over again with her followup, 1989's Twice as Nice, but after that, she retired from narrative filmmaking and moved on to other projects. Like Kathleen Collins, the multi-talented director of 1982's Losing Ground, Maple had many skills and interests, and filmmaking was only one of them. 

Obaka Adedunyo, however, would continue to act, albeit in bit parts, while Loretta Devine began rehearsals for 1983's Broadway sensation Dreamgirls that same year. I would imagine her name was a factor in Will's resurrection, and she really is good, though not in a way that puts anybody to shame.

Afterward, Devine worked--and still works--regularly, though I'm more familiar with her work for TV than film, particularly A Different World, Roc, Boston Public, and Grey's Anatomy, for which she won a primetime Emmy. 

Though Maple passed away two years prior to this year's long-delayed release, she was aware that a restoration was underway–and genuinely surprised that there was enough interest to make it happen. 

There's a lot to be depressed about these days, but distributors, like Janus, and cultural institutions, like the National Museum of African American History and Culture, one of the three entities behind this restoration, willing to preserve unique voices, like that of Jessie Maple, gives me hope. 

In 2024, the Library of Congress added Will to the National Film Registry. Maple may not have expected all this fuss over four decades after she made this $12,000 film, shot on 16mm, with her Harlem friends, neighbors, and relatives, but she deserves it.

Will plays Northwest Film Forum on Tues, July 15, thanks to Grand Illusion Cinema. Images from Janus Films (Loretta Devine and Obaka Adedunyo and Adedunyo and Robert Dean), Black Film Center & Archive (Adedunyo, Devine, and Dean), BLK MKT Vintage (Devine, Sheryl Lee Ralph, and Deborah Burrell, the original Dreamgirls, on the cover of Ebony in 1982), and New York Women in Film & Television (Jessie Maple on the set).

The Cat and the Canary: Paul Leni's Winning Template for the “Old Dark House" Subgenre

THE CAT AND THE CANARY 

(Paul Leni, 1927, USA, 82 minutes) 

"You're like your uncle–in a cage surrounded by cats."--Roger Crosby 

Though The Cat and the Canary, from a 1922 play by actor and novelist John Willard, was filmed six times between 1927 and 1978, German emigré Paul Leni (Waxworks, The Man Who Laughs) got there first. 

The horror edition of the Overlook Film Encyclopedia goes on to claim it as "the most famous of all the haunted house spoofs," but I believe James Whale's 1932 The Old Dark House, which borrows the same tropes, has overtaken it. Whale had the benefit of sound, in addition to stars--Gloria Stuart, Boris Karloff, Charles Laughton, Melvyn Douglas, and Raymond Massey--who remained stars for years to come. Leni's silent predecessor features actors who were well known at the time, but who did not survive the sound era as successfully. A few kept working, albeit on a smaller scale. 

The film begins with the death of Cyrus West, who stipulates that his Will be opened in 20 years, so he's long gone by the time the family gathers in his spooky mansion to see who gets what. As it transpires, pure-hearted Annabelle (Laura La Plante) stands to inherit her uncle's entire fortune.

Naturally, her relatives are less than pleased. Cyrus's estate attorney, Roger Crosby (Tully Marshall), prepares to carry out his wishes, except the safe contains a second Will to be unsealed only if something goes awry with the first, like, say, Annabelle going insane, so Roger hires a psychiatrist, Dr. Lazar (Lucien Littlefield), to determine the heir's mental fitness on the following day. As an estate gift planning professional, I found the idea of a second Will just as suspicious as the West family. I guess ol' Cyrus wasn't familiar with the concept of the codicil. 

If Annabelle can't hack a night in his haunted house, the fortune will go to the secondary heir, so that mysterious individual plots to make the sanest among them seem unhinged. An already-fraught situation is complicated by the news that a dangerous lunatic, known as the Cat, is on the loose. 

The guard (George Siegmann), who bursts in to make the announcement--"He's a maniac who thinks he's a cat!--is just as freaky-looking as the doc. Until he nabs the Cat, no one is allowed to leave the Hudson River home. 

The captives include Cyrus's nephews Paul Jones (Irish actor Creighton Hale), Forrest Stanley (Charley Wilder), and Harry Blythe (Arthur Edmund Carewe), sister Susan (Flora Finch), and niece Cecily (Gertude Astor). Hale, who had the longest career, worked steadily from 1914 to 1959, and yet most every role after 1933 was uncredited. I'm glad he kept his hand in, but his Harold Lloyd-like timing is so good, I'm surprised the roles got smaller--and stayed small. Though his role here isn't as significant, Littlefield had a much more robust career.

Like Cyrus before her, Annabelle is the Canary, which makes everyone else a Cat. Similarly, the screenplay posits that family greed drove Cyrus insane. 

Universal Pictures contract player La Plante, with her kewpie doll face, is quite good as the young innocent. Her task to remain sympathetic and believable, while spending most of the film's run time looking worried and frightened, isn't exactly the toughest, but she aces it with ease. Though La Plante's acting career fizzled out in the 1930s, she married well, lived a long life, and raised a son, jingle writer Tony Asher, who would go on to cowrite Beach Boys classics like "God Only Knows" and "Wouldn't It Be Nice."

Old Dark House movies don't tend to waste their time, and The Cat and the Canary is no exception.

The housekeeper, Mammy Pleasant (the severe-looking Martha Mattox, who recalls Margaret Hamilton) believes Cyrus's ghost placed the second Will in the safe, so she's already planted a seed that could grow in Annabelle's mind.

No one knows for sure, but it's certain that Cyrus hid a diamond necklace for his heir, so Annabelle sets out to find it, and though she succeeds, a creepy-looking hand swipes it while she's sleeping. Around the same time, Crosby, who had been planning to share some life-saving information with her about the secondary heir, is snatched–Will in pocket–by the same weird hand. 

Altogether, only one character ends up dead before Leni reveals the culprit, though The Cat and the Canary would inspire more heightened narratives in which multiple characters meet their maker, from Joseph Kesselring's 1939 play, Arsenic and Old Lace, and Agatha Christie's novel, And Then There Were None, right up to Rian Johnson's more recent Knives Out series (the third Benoit Blanc Mystery, Wake Up Dead Man, arrives this December). 

In 2022, my friend, Aaron Hillis, arranged for Johnson to introduce 1928's The Last Warning, part of his virtual Playtime series, so I think it's fair to say he's a Leni fan. It's another excellent comic mystery, and definitely recommended to anyone who enjoys this one. Or the subgenre in general.

In this case, Leni's fast-paced conclusion involves a milkman, a cat-monster costume, and a secret passage, and it's no spoiler to say that Annabelle emerges triumphant at the end. She doesn't do anything especially heroic, unlike the cousin who grapples with the Cat, but she never loses her head. 

Along the way, Leni imbues his first American film with Expressionist flare, like the surrealistic black cat montage of the opener, the winding hallway with billowing curtains–which reminded me of the Beast's lair in Jean Cocteau's La Belle et la Bête– and that hairy hand with claw-like nails, which predicts the costuming of Universal's Wolf Man series with Lon Chaney Jr. 

Though I was unable to determine who provided the makeup for The Cat and the Canary, Universal's Jack Pierce, who designed the creature effects for 1941's The Wolf Man, also worked on The Man Who Laughs, another Leni triumph. (The Chinese Parrot, a Charlie Chan mystery featuring Japanese actor Sōjin Kamiyama, is the only American Leni film I haven't seen yet.) 

I quite enjoyed the director's take on John Willard's play, though I found it a little confusing at times, which may have more to do with my attention span than the writing of Alfred A. Cohn and Walter Anthony, so I decided to watch Radley Metzger's 1978 UK-set version to see how the two compare. 

The other adaptations include 1930's The Cat Creeps with Helen Twelvetrees, 1939's The Cat and the Canary with Bob Hope and Paulette Goddard, and 1961's Swedish take Katten och Kanariefågeln, but only Metzger's version features Wilfrid Hyde-White, Honor Blackman, Wendy Hiller, Olivia Hussey, and Carol Lynley, who plays the heroine, so I started there before moving backward. Sadly, the 1930 version, which includes a Spanish-language companion made simultaneously with the same sets and different actors--much like Todd Browning's 1931 Dracula--is believed lost. 

It was helpful to watch more modern interpretations of the play, and though Metzger's saucier update has its moments–he sets it in 1934 while imbuing it with post-code morés, including spicier language and a lesbian relationship–it only made me appreciate Leni's original more, which I found both funnier and scarier, despite the fact that Metzger, who remains best known for his efforts in the erotic realm, was working with bigger stars. 

I feel much the same about Elliot Nugent's 1939 version, which relocates the story to swampy Louisiana, and leans harder on Hope's skills as a standup. Like Metzger's film, it's worth a look, but the first guy did it best (both films can be found on free streaming services Plex and Tubi).

Paul Leni, who died at the age of 44 in 1929, had recently scored a hit with his final film, The Last Warning.

Though we'll never know how he would have fared in the sound era, which was already underway, the ease with which he segued from German to American filmmaking suggests he would have continued to conjure up enchanting visions, like this eminently enjoyable, wildly influential picture that marked the start of his brief, but brilliant English-language career. 

The Cat and the Canary is available on Blu-ray in a 4K restoration from Eureka! Extra features include two commentary tracks, one with Kim Newman and Stephen Jones and the other with Kevin Lyons and Jonathan Rigby, video essays, a play extract, a collector's booklet, and much more. 

Images from San Francisco Silent Film Festival (Laura La Plante), the IMDb (Old Dark House and Tully Marshall, Laura La Plante, Arthur Edmund Carewe, Gertrude Astor, and Flora Finch), Horror Cult Films (Martha Mattox), Cinema Cats (the cat montage), screen shot (Honor Blackman with on-screen lover Olivia Hussey), and Cinema History (full-color poster).

Holly Woodlawn Takes Manhattan in Musical Comedy Scarecrow in a Garden of Cucumbers

SCARECROW IN A GARDEN OF CUCUMBERS 

(Robert J. Kaplan, USA, 1972, 82 minutes) 

I'm not certain if Scarecrow in a Garden of Cucumbers was the first film to feature a trans woman in the lead, but it was surely one of the first to simply let her be her authentic self. 

Something similar could be said of Paul Morrissey's 1971 Andy Warhol-produced feminist satire Women in Revolt, which also features trans superstar Holly Woodlawn, in addition to Candy Darling and Jackie Curtis.

Woodlawn may have been trans in real life--though she didn't use the term--but Eve, the character she plays in this film, comes across as cisgender. She's just a Midwestern girl looking to make her name in the Big Apple.

 

As with its star, the cast came primarily from Warhol's Factory, Off-Broadway, burlesque revues, and the world of bathhouse entertainment. 

Bette Midler associate Jerry Blatt composed the music, and Midler sings most of the songs: "Get It On" and "Nothin Goin' Down at All" (both with Mike Lincoln), "Love Theme," and the lovely "Strawberry, Lilac and Lime."

 

In her breathless 1991 memoir, A Low Life in High Heels (with Jeffrey Kenneth Copeland), Woodlawn describes her third feature as "a riotous romp of oddities and mishaps" that took three months to shoot. There were ups and downs, but for the most part she had a blast, though director Robert J. Kaplan did tell her that if she didn't stop drinking, he would pull the plug, and so she did…though she reverted to her old ways once filming wrapped. 

 

Predicting the loopy suburbanites of John Waters' filmography, the cheeky comedy–pun intended–opens with a set of clueless parents looking down at the camera, and wishing their unseen daughter well as she leaves home. As they turn to enter the house behind them, Kaplan reveals that they aren't wearing any pants or skirts or even underwear. Just two bare bottoms. 

 

Significantly, the film was released the same year as Lou Reed's ode to some of the Factory's brightest lights, "Walk on the Wild Side," which immortalized Woodlawn, Darling, and Curtis and would become better known than Kaplan's film, which also follows a young-woman-in-the-big-city story line. 

"Holly," as Reed spoke-sang, "Came from Miami, F-L-A, hitch-hiked her way across the USA, plucked her eyebrows along the way, shaved her legs and then he was a she…she says, 'Hey babe, take a walk on the wild side'...said, 'Hey honey, take a walk on the wild side'."

 

While Emmaretta Marks, an original Hair cast member, sings the title song, "Scarecrow," a bus makes its way from Topeka, Kansas to New York City where Eve gets off with her luggage. Instead of a cab, she grabs a ride with a nun who predicts the ride-hailing drivers of more recent vintage. She's driving a cab (poorly) in order to earn enough money to take the orphanage to see Jesus Christ Superstar. After swearing at another driver, she drops Eve off at the Chelsea Hotel, where much of the filming took place. 

 

After settling in, Eve connects with her fashionable friend, "Margo Channing" (Yafa Lerner), who has a side line in sex work, so men assume Eve does, too, but she just wants to act. She's also pretty naïve, but not stupid, and quickly figures out why strange men keep referring to Margo as "$5.95"--it's the price she charges for blow jobs (the equivalent of $45.52 today). 

 

At this point, you can probably guess Eve's last name. That’s right, it's Harrington, though Woodlawn's acting style reflects an even earlier era, since she has screwball energy. She's a very physical performer, a little like Shelley Duvall. She doesn't seem capable of standing still or keeping quiet for very long, and the expression on her elastic face is constantly changing. 

These qualities apply to Woodlawn's other early performances, too, like Holly in Morrissey's 1970 film Trash, except that's a darker work overall, even if Woodlawn brings the light. In Caden Mark Gardner and Willow Catelyn Maclay's insightful 2024 book, Corpses, Fools and Monsters: The History and Future of Transness in Cinema, the authors describe her as "wildly expressive." Though they don't cover Scarecrow in a Garden of Cucumbers, they do discuss Trash and Women in Revolt in a section titled "The Warhol Superstars: Pioneers Without a Frontier."

 

As Eve explores NYC, she keeps running into a woman named "Mary Poppins" (actress and nightclub singer Tally Brown, another Factory figure) traveling with a harem of hunky men. While Eve is thin, awkward, and discreet, Mary is zaftig, confident, and extravagant. She also has some of the highest hair and thickest false eyelashes I've ever seen. Though in part because of the era in which it was made and the milieu in which it takes place, the makeup and costuming throughout are truly show-stopping. 

 

Margo, who is preparing to leave town, introduces Eve to Mary in hopes she can help her find an apartment. She also encourages her to spiff up her look, so Eve gives herself a glam makeover, except no one notices until she meets "Rhett Butler" (Woodlawn in male drag). Their meet-cute at a snooty party is truly cute--and pre-dates Oscar-nominated trans actress Karla Sofía Gascón's male drag in last year's Emilia Pérez by a whopping 52 years.  

Rhett, a producer who speaks with a Bela Lugosi accent, invites Eve to his brownstone. She's thinking about her career, while he's thinking about…something else. This sequence, which begins in total darkness, takes a brief swerve into horror territory before Eve makes her escape. 

 

Once the dust settles, she meets up with Mary, after which Brown sings a number on screen. Her throwback aesthetic lies somewhere between Bessy Smith and Janis Joplin, though more kittenish than either. In the lyrics, she says she came to NYC from Texas. 

Eve sings, too, and though Woodlawn has less of a voice, her charisma combined with the sparkly outfits, pretty boys, and Busby Berkeley-on-a-budget set design goes a long way. That sequence plays out in black and white. Another plays out in shades of brown, like a daguerreotype, and yet another plays out in still images, like Chris Marker's La Jetée--but faster. 

 

If there's a theme to Sandra Scoppettone's sole screenplay, it's that all these women came to the city to make a name for themselves, and that straight men can be a real pain in the ass (the men surrounding Mary appear to be gay). As two potential roommates, "Baby" and "Jane Hudson" (Kathryn and Margaret Howell), put it, "Men are nothing but little boys who have never grown up. They're selfish, evil, egotistical, sex crazy, and repressed." 

Eve and Mary both have some pretty not-so-great encounters with heterosexual men, though the last straight guy Eve meets, a diminutive wrestler named "Joe Buck" (Sonny Boy Hayes) is not so bad...though his sister is another story.

 

Scoppettone, a playwright and author of YA and mystery novels, was already out, more or less, when she got involved with the project. When Holly's boozing got out of control, Kaplan extricated her from the Chelsea Hotel, and sent her off to stay with Sandra, a former alcoholic, and her girlfriend. 

Not so coincidentally, one of Scoppettone's best known novels, 1976's The Late Great Me, dramatizes a teen's battle with the bottle. The book proved such a sensation that it was adapted into an Emmy Award-winning ABC After School Special, The Late Great Me! Story of a Teenage Alcoholic, in 1979. 

 

Eve's adventures in roommate-wrangling continue until the very end of the picture, at which point she decides to move to Hollywood, which seems to come from out of nowhere, though Holly's name seems to insist upon it.  

Scarecrow in a Garden of Cucumbers was designed for maximum enjoyment, and that's what it delivers. Kaplan, by way of Scoppettone, doesn't appear to be trying to deliver a political message, though presenting a trans performer in such an unconflicted, uncomplicated way is political by its very nature. 

 

The film has been compared to the work of Robert Downey, Sr., and that makes sense in terms of his anything-goes approach to race, rather than gender or sexual orientation, in 1969's Putney Swope. Or the human form itself in 1970's Pound, in which actors play different breeds of dog. 

 

I was also reminded of Milos Forman's 1971 countercultural comedy Taking Off, and there's a degree to which all of these films and filmmakers intersect, beyond the fact that they're all set or based in NYC, since Forman would adapt Hair into a feature, and Hair co-writer Gerome Ragni--spelled "Jerome" in her memoir--was among Woodlawn's Chelsea Hotel social set.

 

Not all of it works–or works perfectly–but that's no crime when it comes to by-the-seat-of-your-pants lunacy. Instead of a pie fight, for instance, there's an ice cream brawl in Central Park, an improv class taught by sexist wackadoo "Walter Mitty" (David Margulies in his film debut), pigtailed health food nut "Ninotchka" (Suzanne Skillen), and other zaniness of that ilk. 

 

What the film reflects in 2025, however, is freedom. There was a time in American life when anything seemed possible, and this was one of those times, but life would not be easy for some of these players. Though Bette Midler and Lily Tomlin, who has an audio cameo as Laugh-In phone operator Ernestine, would go on to bigger things, not everyone would follow suit.

Robert J. Kaplan, for instance, who followed up with a 1976 softcore Jaws parody called Gums, never made another film. After serving as production manager on Henry Jaglom's 1976 Tracks, he virtually disappeared. 

 

By the time of her death in 2022, Emmaretta Marks, who made an impression on rockers from Jimi Hendrix to Deep Purple--they even wrote a song about her--had lived with dementia for several years. As Margaret Hall noted in her 2022 Playbill obituary, "Ms. Marks had no formal retirement or life insurance plan; her family is currently taking donations to cover her funeral and burial expenses."

 

Seven years before, playwright and performance artist Penny Arcade had set up a GoFundMe for her friend, Holly Woodlawn, who had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. She died that same year. As Arcade put it in her appeal, "Holly gave visibility long before it was comfortable to do so and also gave thousands of people both hope and pleasure." Among those pleasures is this sweet and goofy film in which her ebullient spirit takes full flight. 

 

 

If you missed it when it played, for one night only, at this year's SIFF, the Academy Film Archive's new 4K restoration of Scarecrow in a Garden of Cucumbers plays the Beacon Cinema on June 13. Images: the IMDb (Holly Woodlawn in closeup and in B&W with sausages), Cinema 5 Distributing / Slant (Woodlawn in Trash), Hari Nef's Instagram (Tally Brown), Academy Museum of Motion Pictures (Woodlawn's big musical number), and Lost Classics of Teen Lit: 1939-1989 (The Late Great Me book cover).  

Stranger Flashback: Doom Metal Pioneer Bobby Liebling Rises from the Grave in Last Days Here

Here is a revived version of a 2012 Line Out post about Last Days Here (these posts were purged from the internet some time after The Stranger pulled the plug on their music blog in 2014).

Doom Metal Pioneer Rises from the Grave 

Posted by Kathy Fennessy on Mon, Jun 18, 2012 at 12:23 PM 

LAST DAYS HERE 

(Don Argott and Demian Fenton, USA, 2012, 91 minutes) 

Liebling: German for "darling."

Don Argott and Demian Fenton's Last Days Here joins the ranks of documentaries about artists who've kept the dream alive against all odds. 

Depending on your point of view, that makes Bobby Liebling, lead singer of Pentagram, an admirable figure or a delusional one. It's also a cautionary tale about a rocker who never picked up a second trade—you too could end up in the family basement, subsisting on Fig Newtons and crack. 

Author Ian Christie (Sound of the Beast) describes Pentagram's music as "harrowing and bone-chilling," while Blue Öyster Cult producer Murray Krugman feels that the Alexandria, Virginia quartet provided the missing link between heavy metal and punk rock, like a "street Black Sabbath," but their flirtations with the big boys—KISS, Sandy Pearlman, Columbia Records, etc.—always fell flat. Sometimes they were to blame, sometimes not. 

Right: Greg Mayne, Bobby Liebling, Geof O'Keefe, and Pentagram 

At the film's outset, the rail-thin, grey-haired, crazy-eyed Liebling appears to be nearing the end of the line. If you thought Ozzy Osbourne has been looking wobbly lately, you haven't seen what 53-year-old Liebling looked like in 2007 (the film ends in 2010). 

Though he dresses like a young man in jeans and hard-rock t-shirts, there's clearly something wrong with him. His drawn face and twisted mouth could only be the result of long-term drug use or chronic illness—more likely a combination of the two. 

Bobby proceeds to acknowledge 44 years of substance abuse; 39 addicted to heroin. Bandages cover his arms and his hands bear puncture wounds. 

Accused of enabling their son, Diane and Joe Liebling, a nightclub singer and a former White House security adviser, believe in his talent, but worry that his best days are behind him. Despite evidence to the contrary, Bobby's manager, Sean "Pellet" Pelletier, who has released two collections of Pentagram material on Relapse Records, First Daze Here (The Vintage Collection) and First Daze Here Too, refuses to write him off as a lost cause. 

Pellet believes Bobby has one record left, and he wants it to receive a proper release. While he attempts to negotiate a contract with Pantera's Phil Anselmo, who runs Housecore Records, Bobby goes to detox, and events take a surprising turn: he meets a beautiful young woman, falls in love, and moves to Philadelphia--at which point, the filmmakers abandon the record-making storyline in favor of Bobby's misadventures in domesticity. 

If it seems too good to be true, it is, and his circumstances change again. And again. 

Says Pellet, "Anything that is bad for his heart, he'll do it: love, drugs, bacon." Liebling, as it turns out, has a thing for bacon pizza.

Until Bobby met Hallie, I didn't think this documentary could get more depressing, and it doesn't, but Last Days Here will try even the more hardened metal heads. I've seen a few scary movies in my time, but even David Cronenberg would recoil at the sight of Bobby's un-bandaged arms. 

A lot of recent music docs have taken on subjects who've persevered through adversity. Rock School co-directors and metal musicians Argott and Fenton don't break the mold, but they do depict a version of bottom that puts most others to shame. In that sense, it's more like Brother's Keeper. 

If it wasn't for the parents who gave him shelter and kept him fed, Liebling wouldn't still be alive, and the film ends on a high that justifies their support and that of Pellet, the best friend a guy like Bobby could ever have. 

*I found no evidence that this alignment came to fruition. 

Last Days Here plays the Grand Illusion Cinema through Thurs, June 21. The theater is located at 1403 NE 50th St in the University District. 

In an interview with Christopher Campbell, Don Argott talked about his next project: "We're working with this heavy metal band called Lamb of God. They’re embarking on a world tour that we're documenting. The film is less about the band and more about their fans around the world. Places including more troubled spots like Israel and India and Mexico. We're in the early stages of shooting, but we’re really excited about it." Images from The Film Stage (Bobby Liebling) and the IMDb (Pentagram on and off the stage).

Stranger Flashback: A Peek Inside Jonathan Furmanski's The Weird World of Blowfly

This is a revived version of a 2011 Line Out post (The Stranger purged them from the internet some time after they pulled the plug on their music blog in 2014).

Film/TV  |  Nov 26, 2011 at 9:05 am 

Blowfly's On-Screen Freak Party 

KATHY FENNESSY

THE WEIRD WORLD OF BLOWFLY
(Jonathan Furmanski, USA, 2010, 89 minutes)

Clarence Reid, aka Blowfly, was an odd-looking Miami cat with bizarre taste in clothes—especially his signature, sparkly, luchador-like outfit—and a fine feel for a funky groove (he had the flattened facial features of an ex-boxer). 

With his teddy bear-like growl, Reid sang stuff so unbelievably filthy that it's hard to take too much offense. After repeated exposure, it starts to sound like a low-level hum, the rantings of a street-corner crazy, or a sustained Tourette's attack. And if you don't take it literally, it can be pretty funny.

The husband and father began by writing and producing safe-for-radio Miami Sound classics like Betty Wright's "Clean Up Woman" and Gwen McCrae's "Rockin' Chair." It wasn't until 1971 that he introduced the Blowfly alter ego. At which point, he left his wife and children, and never looked back.

For his feature debut, cinematographer-turned-director Jonathan Furmanski (loudQUIETloud: A Film About the Pixies) focuses on Blowfly's relationship with drummer/manager Tom Bowker, a super-fan who made it his business to put the entertainer back in the spotlight. 

Over the year that unfurls in the film, Blowfly lays down new tracks and goes on the road from Florida to Germany with backup players including Fishbone singer and bass player Norwood Fisher, but it's always clear who's calling the shots.

Bowker looks after Blowfly, but he also tells him what to do and when to do it. It's hard to tell if he really cares or whether he just sees the 69-year-old as a profitable "brand" (his term). Blowfly clearly resents his orders, but complies anyway, much like a child tethered to a domineering guardian.

Further, it soon becomes clear that Blowfly, despite the explicit imagery, has no interest in sex. He may brag about his prowess, but he's a drug-free Christian who finds women fundamentally unclean, much like Terrence Howard, contributing to an impression of stunted adolescence. And coming from a man with long, spindly fingernails, that's pretty rich. To be fair, though, he's got harsh words for queer, Black, and white people, too.

If you're looking for 89 minutes of fun, The Weird World of Blowfly won't be the documentary to fill that need. Though high-profile admirers, like Ice-T and Jello Biafra, testify to his influence and importance, Furmanski tells a pretty sad story, though I enjoyed the footage of Henry Rollins rocking out at a live gig and Isaac Hayes providing piano accompaniment for Reid's infamous Otis Redding parody "Shittin' on the Dock of the Bay." 

Other speakers include songwriting partners, session musicians, record label representatives, and his ex-wife, who describes Reid as "a loner person."

After Blowfly sold the rights to his catalog in 2003, he paid his debts, and bid goodbye to any future royalties. Without Bowker, he'd probably be holed up in a motel, watching television, and filling up on fast food, but this trained-seal act can be hard to watch. Still, there's something to be said for Furmanski's clear-eyed approach when most other music documentaries cling to the rise-fall-and-rise model, though there's no mention of predecessors and protégés, including Redd Foxx, Rudy Ray Moore, Wu-Tang Clan's Ol' Dirty Bastard, and 2 Live Crew's Luther Campbell.

If it isn't the raunchy comedy I was expecting, it isn't a full-blown tragedy either. Instead, the aptly-titled Weird World of Blowfly is more like a Dave Chappelle-produced horror movie where the monster lives on and Dr. Frankenstein caters to his every whim until the money runs out.

       Chuck D: "Rap Dirty" was my inspiration when I wrote "Fight the Power."

6/4/25 update: Clarence "Blowfly" Reid passed away in 2016 at 76.

The Weird World of Blowfly continues at SIFF Cinema at the Film Center through Thurs, Dec 1. For more information: (206) 633-7151. 

Images from Rotten Tomatoes (Blowfly in sparkly outfit) and Wikipedia (cover art for Betty Wright's 1972 Alston Records single "Clean Up Woman" and the 1973 Weird World Records album The Weird World of Blow Fly).

A Thriller with Purpose: Norman Jewison's Best Picture Winner In the Heat of the Night

IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT 

(Norman Jewison, USA, 1967, 110 minutes) 

“We talk a lot about freedom, but it's a country based on slavery."--Norman Jewison in Lee Grant's 2000 Sidney Poitier profile One Bright Light 

Norman Jewison (1926-2024) knew exactly what he was doing when he made In the Heat of the Night. Concerned about race relations in his adopted country, the Canadian director set out to make a thriller bursting with local flavor, set to a scintillating score, and toplined by experienced actors who generated a crackling chemistry. No speechifying, no sadism. 

The movie has all the tropes of the conventional murder mystery–dead body, colorful suspects, potential coverup–but everything leads back to the way this small-minded Southern town treats a Black detective from the North. 

The film begins in a roadside diner where a beat cop (the great Warren Oates) refuels before making his late-night rounds. Ralph, the counterman (inexperienced actor Anthony James), is a tall, gangly guy who enjoys the more rollicking tunes on the jukebox. Jewison had hoped to include Sam the Sham's menacing "Little Red Riding Hood," but it was too expensive, and to be clear, many things were. The director was no fool, and he knew full well that United Artists wasn't funding his so-called Black Movie as generously as they could have–by 1967, he had already made six major motion pictures.

Fortunately, resourcefulness was among Jewison's finest qualities, and he tasked Oscar-winning composer Quincy Jones with the diegetic songs, like "Bowlegged Polly," that appear in the film, in addition to the country and blues-saturated score. There's no funk here, and nor does there need to be. That would come later.

This sequence sets the tone for the film, and I would imagine some Southerners weren't all that thrilled, because it's filled with sweaty faces and hair-trigger tempers--starting with Officer Wood and Ralph--and even a few flies buzzing around the greasy spoon, which gives off health hazard vibes. 

Granted, I don't believe Jewison was trying to paint all Southerners with the same brush, but the narrative never leaves this backwater Mississippi town. 

On the other hand, he made it in Sparta, Illinois, because Poitier who had had run-ins with the Klan, refused to risk a protracted stay below the Mason-Dixon Line, and during the brief period they filmed in Tennessee--where he slept with a gun under his pillow--they were made to feel most unwelcome. At least they didn't have to paint over the Sparta town signs. 

During his rounds, Wood drives past 16-year-old Delores's house knowing she has a predilection for lounging around without a top--hey, it's hot at night. 

The officer gawks for a bit before going on his way. Haskell Wexler, who would win an Oscar for his expressive work, uses window panes to avoid anything too risqué, but he gets the point across: Wood is a voyeur and Delores is an exhibitionist. 

Though Ralph and Delores come across as "local color," both will factor into the larger storyline, and though Corinne Margolin, aka Quentin Dean, would receive Golden Globe consideration for her destabilizing performance, she would retire from acting only three years later. She was 58 when she died. 

Shortly afterward, Wood finds the body of Chicago industrialist Phillip Colbert lying facedown in an alley, and the plot begins in earnest. He could follow proper police procedure, but nope. He spots an unfamiliar Black man at the train station, and assumes he's looking to get out of dodge after doing the deed. Beyond the overt racism, he fails to note that Sidney Poitier's Virgil Tibbs is professionally dressed, and nothing about his behavior suggests that he just murdered another man. He explains that he was in town to visit his mother, and that he's waiting for the train to take him back to Philadelphia. 

While any dispassionate officer of the law might give him the benefit of the doubt, Wood notices he has a roll of crisp dollar bills in his wallet–unusual for Sparta's Black citizenry–and that he's non-deferential in affect, so Wood clocks him for a defiant, remorseless, murderering thief, and hauls him to the station. 

I won't say too much about the ensuing investigation, not least since Jewison considered the relationship between Tibbs and Rod Steiger's Chief Gillespie of primary importance, and that's what proves most memorable. 

At the station house, Tibbs meets Gillespie, a more intelligent character than the doltish Wood–Oates really is a treat in the role–but one susceptible to the same prejudices. The chief is taken aback when Tibbs explains that he's a cop and flashes his badge, but it only gives him momentary pause, and he locks him up. He'll eventually set him free, only to lock him up again. 

While he's able, Tibbs does what he can to aid the investigation. It's in his best interest, to be sure, but it's also what he was born to do (there's a subtext here that big cities provide more opportunities for murder-solving). Gillespie grudgingly allows it, because the Philly detective is clearly better at his job. Even his knowledge of forensic science puts the coroner to shame. 

It wouldn't be the first time Poitier had to prove himself superior to white characters just to get by, but as both Steiger and Lee Grant, who plays the industrialist's widow, note on the Criterion commentary track, the actor felt the same way in real life. As popular as he was, and as much as he opened doors for other Black performers, he knew that even a minor misstep would reflect on an entire people. It was fundamentally unfair, but hardly a fictional construct. 

Grant, who had been blacklisted for 12 years, was so affected by the pressures Poitier faced that she made a documentary about her friend, One Bright Light, which premiered on PBS's American Masters in 2000. It's no wonder, after the terrible way Hollywood treated her, that she would shift from acting to directing. You can find her film on Max. It's quite moving.

En route to solving the crime, and winning the freedom that always should have been his, Tibbs questions a squirrely Wood, a petulant Delores, Harvey, the young man who swiped Colbert's wallet (In Cold Blood's Scott Wilson), and Mama Caleba, a shopkeeper and abortionist (Beah Richards, an Oscar nominee as Poitier's mother in 1967's Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?).

If there's anything about this film that proves especially surprising now, it's the matter-of-fact way Jewison handles abortion. After all, the production code was still in effect–though facing challenges–and Roe v. Wade was five years away. That said, no one terminates a pregnancy. 

When cornered by rednecks in a garage, Tibbs also proves himself handy with a metal pole he finds lying around, wielding it like a samurai sword. It's probably the closest the film comes to full-on fantasy, but I can imagine audiences cheering when he goes to town on those miscreants, though that wasn't the sequence that would make the film instantly infamous. 

There's another in which Tibbs, Gillespie at his side, questions Colbert rival--and cotton plantation owner--Endicott (Larry Gates). It's little surprise when Endicott slaps him, but what shocked audiences in 1967, and surely provoked even more cheering: Tibbs doesn't hesitate to slap him right back. So hard he nearly knocks the guy off his feet and makes his eyes water. 

That was a first. Blaxploitation hadn't happened yet, and even if off-screen Poitier came across as a temperate individual, he had done the damn thing. 

As the civil rights movement, with which Poitier was heavily involved, gathered steam in the 1970s, In the Heat of the Night came to be seen as too tame by more radical observers. It wasn't as pointed or as cynical as the angrier, low-budget films that arrived in its wake, attracting fewer customers, but growing in admiration, like William Wyler's final film, The Liberation of L.B. Jones, which is also very good, but much less optimistic. 

That perception suggests the film as wish fulfillment writ large, except it really isn't. If Jewison, working from an Oscar-winning screenplay by Naked City and Perry Mason creator Stirling Silliphant, flirts with the mismatched buddy cop formula, Oscar-winning actor Steiger's Gillespie remains an antagonist until the very end, at which point the clouds briefly part, as it were, and Jewison leaves us with the impression that Tibbs just happened to join forces with the one man in Sparta who was redeemable, and even that isn't guaranteed, unless you take the film's long afterlife into consideration. 

Silliphant adapted his screenplay from 1965's In the Heat of the Night, the first of John Ball's seven Virgil Tibbs novels, though he made several changes: Ball set the original story in North Carolina, the victim was a conductor named Enrico Mantoli, and Tibbs hailed from Pasadena. 

As Robert Altman used to say, films don't end, they just have a stopping point. Life goes on. Having put the case to bed, Tibbs will presumably return to Philadelphia, and Gillespie will remain in Sparta. Both single men at the time, they might fall in love, get married, and have kids, though that's less likely in Gillespie's case, because he admits to Tibbs, in an unguarded, booze-fueled moment, that he's a loner. Though the 42-year-old Steiger looks older than Poitier, they were only two years apart in age. 

That said, the movie was such a sensation that it led to two sequels, neither directed by Norman Jewison, and a television series starring Howard Rollins, Jr. and Carroll O'Connor, that ran for eight seasons on NBC and CBS. As you can imagine, Tibbs and Gillespie really did become buddy cops. Tibbs was also presented as a married man with children, while Gillespie has a Black girlfriend he marries in the series finale. The show was set in the 1980s and '90s, and shot on location in Louisiana and Georgia. 

I'm sure all three have their merits, but I've never felt the need to follow Tibbs beyond his entrance into the train heading toward more hospitable territory. Poitier is terrific from beginning to end, but Tibbs doesn't really change. When tested, he proves his mettle, but I can't imagine expecting anything less. Gillespie, on the other hand, gains respect, and possibly even a little affection, for the detective, though that doesn't make them friends. 

Beyond Jewison, Poitier, Steiger, Grant, and Wexler, the creative team included other talents known for their dedication to civil rights, like Quincy Jones, who considered Poitier a friend and called on Ray Charles to sing the theme song, and editor Hal Ashby, who considered Jewison a mentor.

When Jewison dropped out of 1970's gentrification satire The Landlord to direct 1971 musical Fiddler on the Roof, he gave Ashby the chance to direct his first feature–it was the least he could do after Ashby's innovative work on The Cincinnati Kid, The Thomas Crown Affair, and The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming for which he received an Oscar for Best Editing. 

The Landlord also tackles race relations in America–the North in this case–but from a more comedic and sexualized perspective. The writing also came from two Black talents, novelist Kristin Hunter and writer/director/actor Bill Gunn. Times were continuing to change, and Ashby's debut plays like a companion to In the Heat of the Night, the farcical light to its noirish dark. 

All of the principals involved with the latter film, which won five Oscars including Best Picture, would go on to do work of merit for years to come. Just as Lee Grant would turn to directing in the early-1970s, Sidney Poitier would do the same. Now he was the guy literally calling the shots. 

As for Norman Jewison, he made a lot of terrific pictures during his filmmaking career, three of which form a trilogy about race relations in America, exemplifying the fact that this was a lifelong concern: In the Heat of the Night, 1984's A Soldier's Story, starring Rollins, Jr. and a 29-year-old up-and-comer named Denzel Washington, and 1999's Hurricane, his triumphant reunion with Washington–one of the highlights of my filmgoing life was attending the Toronto International Film Festival premiere with Jewison, Washington, and former middleweight boxer Rubin "Hurricane" Carter in person. 

The film that launched the trilogy was a success on every level, reportedly making 12 times its cost, and yet Sidney Poitier received no recognition from the Academy. It's an odd oversight, and not necessarily a racist one, but if there was no Poitier, there would have been no film, because no other actor in 1967 could have replaced him. He was singular, unique, groundbreaking, and one of the finest actors this nation ever produced.

In the Heat of the Night is out now on The Criterion Collection in a 4K restoration on Blu-ray + UHD with several archival features, including an interview with Norman Jewison and Poitier biographer Aram Goudsouzian.

Images: Ann Arbor Observer (Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger), The Oklahoman (Warren Oates and Anthony James), the IMDb (Quentin Dean, Poitier with Oates, Poitier with Arthur Malet, Fred Stewart, and Jack Teter, Poitier with Scott Wilson, Lee Grant with Beau Bridges in The Landlord, and Poitier with Bill Cosby and Richard Pryor in Uptown Saturday Night), EyeFilmmuseum (Poitier with Steiger and Larry Gates), and Amazon.

SIFF 2025 Dispatch #8: Cat Town, USA Celebrates a Sanctuary for Cats in Florida

CAT TOWN, USA 

(Jonathan Napolitano, 2025, USA, 73 minutes) 

Terry and Bruce Jenkins, the couple at the center of Jonathan Napolitano's Cat Town, USA have lived a fairly charmed life. They spent their 30s sowing their wild oats, and when they were ready to settle down, they chose a spread in coastal Florida, where Bruce built a miniature western town, complete with water tower, for their kids to play in and around. 

The two started out as dog people, but they had all this land and all these buildings, so they began by adopting a senior cat who was two weeks away from euthanasia, inspiring them to open Cat's Cradle Foundation, a cat sanctuary (after that recollection, they never mention dogs again). Since then, the couple has adopted cats who were abandoned, who didn't get along with other pets, or who were left homeless after their owners died. 

All of their cats are seniors, meaning 11 and older. The oldest, Garfield, is 20. I had hoped my little grey cat, Lola, would live that long, and she came close, but this velvety orange tabby looks like she has plenty of life left.

A highlight is "bag and box day," one among many sanctuary events, when Terry and Bruce bring in cardboard boxes sprinkled with catnip. Napolitano films the cats in slow motion as dreamy music plays on the soundtrack. 

Beyond the cats, the Jenkins have chickens, fish, ferrets, and a miniature horse named Shortcake, who seems to get along just fine with the cats. They no longer have Porkchop, a pig, for reasons Terry explains in the film. 

These are people with good hearts, but there are limits, and they can't take in every senior Pasco County cat who needs a home, so Napolitano shares some of the letters they have received and introduces some of the cats they have taken in. Bruce says they receive one to two requests each day. 

Napolitano also speaks with their volunteer, in addition to others who have benefited from or helped to promote their service, though their kids don't put in any appearances. It would be interesting to hear what they think about the sanctuary, and its unfortunate that neither of them are involved, because it's clear that Terry and Bruce, much like their cats, are slowing down.

Bruce, who serves as the sanctuary's cheerleader, accountant, and IT guy, becomes emotional when he talks about the cats they have lost. By comparison, the pragmatic Terry is stoic, so much so that she's the one who takes cats to the vet to be euthanized when their time comes. Though I've seen Cat Town, USA described as a "feel good" proposition, that's a bit of a stretch. A senior couple who looks after senior cats represents a risk–a risk worth taking, but a risk nonetheless. Things can, and do, go wrong. 

The film ends on a happy note, though the insular nature isn't always to its advantage. 

 

What worked in Suburban Fury works less well here, because it isn't clear what Terry and Bruce did before they retired, and where their money comes from. I'd imagine Cat's Cradle is a non-profit, and that they welcome donations, but I couldn't say for sure. Retirement income may also be a factor. I just know that they do it for love, because it isn't profitable. 

I also don't know what they'll do when they're no longer able to continue. It would be nice to think the sanctuary will continue, but without a succession plan, that seems unlikely. Even if it doesn't, though, it's clear they've done a world of good for dozens, if not hundreds, of Florida cats, and that's no small thing. Not least if the film encourages others to do the same. 

 

After I posted this review, I did some digging. Find out more about Terry and Bruce Jenkins here. I'm happy to report that Garfield was still going at 23. 

 

The last weekend of the festival is packed with some of the most enticing films. My recommendations include Color Book, Familiar Touch, and Sorry, Baby. I wrote about the first two, both great, when I saw them at last year's Cucalorus. Writer/director/actor Eva Victor, who will be in town with Sorry, Baby, has also made a cat film of a kind. The narrative doesn't revolve around cats, but her character, in the wake of a traumatic experience, finds a kitten just when she could use a companion, since her best friend (Naomie Ackie) moved away. I wouldn't say that the kitten changes her life, but it definitely helps.

 

 

Cat Town, USA  plays SIFF Cinema Uptown today, May 24, at 3:30pm. Jonathan Napolitano and producer James Gannon will be in attendance.  

 

Color Book plays the Uptown May 24 at 5:30pm and May 25 at 2:30pm, Familiar Touch  plays Shoreline Community College on May 25, and Sorry, Baby, followed by the closing night party, plays SIFF Cinema Downtown May 24 at 6pm. Cat Town, USA and Color Book will be available to stream May 25 - June 1. Click here to view the SIFF 2019 short, All Cats Go to Heaven, from which Napolitano expanded his feature. All images from the film.