Rat Fink
(1965)
Director: James Landis
Cast: Schuyler Haden, Hal Bokar, Judy Hughes, Warrene Ott
It seems to
get anywhere in life takes a great deal of effort, save for death - you
are able to sit back and do absolutely nothing at all for you to reach
that goal, though it may take longer than you might think. Anyway, you
can probably think back on your life and recall all the many different
major goals you managed to reach, though with each and every goal you
probably had to work extremely hard to get there. When you were
learning to walk as a toddler, you probably along the way embarrassed
yourself just as much as if you were to fall down on your butt. Then
later when you
started school, as you were learning essential skills of life, there
were times when people would ask you, "What's the matter - can't you
count/spell?" before you felt reasonably comfortable with putting those
skills to practice. But possibly the goal that you considered an
endgame before you even started to make serious plans to eventually
plan and succeed at reaching it is a career. I can tell you that my
career path was crazy for a number of years. I had a number of jobs at
first, jobs that at their best only lasted a few years. And some of
those jobs weren't very prestigious; at my lowest point, I was working
at used book stores or thrift stores. But I didn't give up - somehow in
the back of my mind, I knew that if I worked hard and never gave up,
someday I would land a great job. Over the next years I had several
jobs, but each one became more prestigious than the previous one. The
experience I got from my hard work at those past jobs eventually got me
my present job, which would be a dream job for some. Yes, I would much
prefer to be a full-time (and richly paid) movie critic, but at the
same time I know that I have a job that many people would kill for, so
I am quite satisfied.
Though my movie criticism may just be a hobby
I do when I am not working at the job where I get a salary, through it
I have not only learned a lot of neat things about movies, I have also
learned from these movies (and literature about movies) that I was
probably very lucky not to try my hand in the world of showbiz. I'm not
just taking about the motion picture industry, but in other showbiz
roles where you would in one way or another be considered an
entertainer for the masses. Why do I feel that way despite my great
love of one particular side of showbiz? Well, I have seen and heard a
great deal that show you've got to work really
hard in that industry. Just to enter the industry, you face a great
deal of competition from other star-struck individuals, and you somehow
have to rise prominently out of the pack. And even then, getting any
showbiz role isn't a sure thing - having really good luck seems to play
a part too, since many talented people never get far in the industry.
As well, you might have to do some things against your morals if you
want to step up on the showbiz ladder. Would you be willing to go for
the "casting couch" angle if it were offered to you? (Since I know
movie executives are all hot women in their 20s, I'd say YES!) All
kidding aside, if you somehow manage to prove yourself and become
popular with the public, your hard work has not
ended. In fact, you'd have to work a lot harder. You may have to spend
an ungodly amount of time in a studio to get product done. You might be
exposed to illegal narcotics. You'd have to struggle to keep your
finances and expenses in check. You would also have to be very careful
of your image to the public, since there's little chance that you'd get
a reasonable amount of privacy.
The question that inevitably comes up is: What would you be willing to
do to keep your showbiz career flourishing so you won't find yourself
abandoned by the showbiz industry? I'm not sure how far I would go,
except I'd try desperately to keep obeying laws and keeping up a good
appearance. But there are definitely
those who would go a lot further
to keep their showbiz position, enough that there have been movies
about characters with that cold determination. One such movie was the
1966 camp classic The
Oscar,
where actor Stephen Boyd played a Hollywood actor named Frank "Frankie"
Fane. In the course of the movie, Frank did so many outrageous and
unethical things
to get to be a superstar - and to keep that role - that I (and many
others) had to just laugh at what utter gall and dirty-dealing came
from this guy. The ending where he got his comeuppance was the cherry
on the cake. But a year before The Oscar, the
movie Rat Fink
was released, and while it wasn't about a big-time actor - instead a
big-time musician - it promised to be another exercise in showing that
some people will do anything
for fame and to keep it. Actually, since this earlier movie was a
low-budget independent production, my enthusiasm at first wasn't extremely
big. But research I did uncovered the news was that after its release
to theaters, it was completely lost for over fifty years
before someone stumbled upon a sole surviving print. My interest was
piqued, so I decided to sit down and watch it. Who knows, I thought, it
might have some amusing features. But almost right from the start of
the movie, I started to become more and more interested in what I was
seeing. Then just before the twenty-minute mark, something happened in
the movie that had me think, "HOLY
COW! I've GOT to tell
my readers about this movie!"
What, you may be asking, happened in the movie at that moment? Well,
before I tell you, I will admit that no other moment in Rat Fink had my
jaw drop as much as that particular moment... but there were a number
of those moments that got very
close to the impact of that big scene. Also, I feel I need to first
illustrate what happens in the movie before that big moment so you can
get a better feel of the movie. Don't worry, it won't take long to get
to that big moment, and it will be worth the short wait. Trust me. Let
me get
into the movie now...
Rat
Fink
starts by introducing us to its main character, Lonnie Price (Schuyler
Hayden, also the movie's producer), a drifter of sorts walking down the
train tracks somewhere in the American southwest, eventually hopping
into an empty boxcar of a passing train. Instantly there is a quite
bleak feeling, continuing as the opening credits are displayed. The
credits song (Lonnie's Theme)
is effectively somber and low, and the
black and white photography is extremely striking and makes us feel the
desolation and isolation. No surprise from that photography, because
it's done by a pre-fame Vilmos Zsigmond (The Sadist),
who went on to be a cinematographer major Hollywood studio productions,
winning an Oscar for his cinematography for Close Encounters Of The
Third Kind. The credits also list James Landis, who directed the
previously mentioned extremely effective movie The Sadist,
as both the screenwriter and the director. Now you may understand why
already my interest was going up. When the train stops, Lonnie gets
off, and is chased by the railroad police in a short but very effective
burst of action with the combination of Zsigmond's and Landis'
respective camera skills. Lonnie gets away, and wanders into the
countryside until he comes across the isolated house of one Mrs.
Dunkirk (Eve Brenner). Lonnie asks her for directions, but Dunkirk sees
a wound on his back, and she smiles greatly when subsequently offering
Lonnie a bandage, while Lonnie has an even bigger smile when he accepts
her offer. Inside, after a now shirtless Lonnie is patched up and
offered a meal, Lonnie makes his move. "You know, traveling alone can
be mighty lonely...", and starts pawing his hostess, who only puts up a
very weak resistance for a few seconds before... dissolving to the next
scene where Lonnie is in her bed and she in a robe. During breakfast,
the ga-ga Mrs. Dunkirk tells Lonnie, "I'll make myself really pretty!"
and goes to the bathroom to do so. But when she comes back to the
kitchen, not only is Lonnie no longer around, her emptied purse is on
the table. She cries, and we get the first of many clues that Lonnie
may not be the nicest of guys.
(Wait, don't go away! I'm almost at that aforementioned big jaw-dropping moment!
Keep reading!)
We cut then to sometime later, and now Lonnie has made his way to
Hollywood. Lonnie is walking the streets when he passes the local civic
auditorium. There are some girls who are crowded around and admiring
the cool parked automobile of one Tommy Loomis, a rock star who is
performing inside.
Lonnie enters the auditorium. As he watches Tommy Loomis on stage
performing to the enthralled teenybopper audience, a strange look gets
on Lonnie's face, and here and many subsequent times before the ending of the movie,
he looks remarkably like a young cousin of another
Tommy - Tommy Lee Jones. As he watches, he passes by one Paul Finlay
(Hal Bokar, The
Wild Angels),
and from his dialogue with the auditorium's manager, we learn Finlay is
the manager of Tommy Loomis. While Lonnie stays silent, we see on his
face that he gets an idea. Later, when the show is over, Tommy Loomis
exits
the auditorium, fighting off loads of screaming and squealing female
teenagers wanting an autograph and much more. Tommy manages to break
through the immense crowd and enters his car. Before he can start the engine, he
says out loud with confusion, "It smells like gasoline," and then...
...Lonnie, mixed in the big and heavy crowd around Tommy's car, quickly lights a match and
throws it into Tommy's car's interior.
What happens next can be paraphrased from a quote from another famous rock musician:
Goodness gracious, great ball of fire! The car interior lights up with
huge flames, and Tommy is caught in them. He starts screaming with pain, but
somehow manages to get out of the car and run around the parking lot
while engulfed in flames, while the very close by mass of teenyboppers
continue screaming (though now for another reason.) After a lot more
screaming and running around while on fire, the flames burning him are
finally extinguished. Tommy is still alive, but by those visible burn marks, he
is
certainly in no shape to play another engagement any time soon. Lonnie
looks on all this while being silent and stone-faced.
Now, do you see why Rat Fink
already is a keeper? Do yourself a favor now and stop reading this
review, and watch the movie immediately to see that scene and the additional
surprising delights that the movie will subsequently offer.
...What's that? Some of you aren't willing yet to buy a copy of this movie
right now?
You need extra convincing? Very well, let me now list a number of
moments that subsequently follow the literal critical roasting that
Tommy got:
-
After later that evening hearing on the radio that Tommy will never
sing again, Lonnie exacts the rest of his complex scheme to be the next
big rock star.
What does he do? Well, he walks into a pawn shop to buy an acoustic
guitar...
then walks straight to Paul Finlay's office and asks Finlay's secretary
if
he can see Finlay. Yeah, that it. Well, the secretary asks if he has an
appointment, but Lonnie spouts some bullcrap to the secretary that
Finlay once promised he would listen to Lonnie if Lonnie came to
Hollywood. The secretary is instantly convinced enough, and lets Lonnie
into
Finlay's office. Finlay, upon talking to the lying Lonnie, states that
he
knows he never met Lonnie... but what the hell, apparently, since Tommy
is obviously no longer a viable meal ticket to Finlay. "All right," he says to
Lonnie, "let's see what you can do." But before Lonnie can show the
unremarkably unsavvy Finlay what musical talents he has... we cut to
the next scene.
-
But Lonnie's musical talents apparently were good, since Finlay takes
him on, and immediately records his first single My Soul Runs Naked.
It's a typical sixties syrupy ballad, but it's not bad for what it is,
and actor Haden does have the pipes for singing. It doesn't take long
in the subsequent montage for Lonnie's single to hit #39 on the chart,
one position ahead of Jan and Dean's New Girl In School. After
some more montaging, the single climbs to #24, one position ahead of
Jan and Dean's Dead Man's
Curve. I'm not sure what the repeated use of Lonnie being ahead
of Jan and Dean means, but it's got to mean something,
I think. Also, I wonder how Jan and Dean would have reacted in real life to the news
that a sociopath bested the two of them on the top 40 chart for at least two weeks.
-
Lonnie continues to gain publicity and fortune. He decides to celebrate
by throwing a party at his pad. "No dogs!" he orders a party organizing
friend that we haven't met or heard of before. At the party, while everyone is
dancing,
Lonnie (in the same room) is lying on the floor and making out with
Miss Iceland 1962. Finlay comes in with his young wife Vera (Warrene
Ott). Lonnie asks Vera for a slow dance, and while they are dancing, he
starts to in a very crude way to put the moves on the understandably repulsed Vera while Finlay is just a few feet away. Well, it is kind
of loud at the party...
-
As Lonnie's fame continues to grow, he starts to get a little resentful
towards his manager Finlay. That might be because Finlay's charges for
his services fifty percent of
everything Lonnie earns. "I'm not complaining," says Finlay when he confirms to
Lonnie that he's somehow not a millionaire by now. (BTW, my research
revealed that artist
managers usually don't charge more than twenty percent of what one of
their clients make.)
-
Lonnie, still resentful of Finlay's money sucking, gets drunk one night
while Finlay is out of town, and drives to Finlay's home, where
Finlay's wife Vera is. Already wary of him, it doesn't take long for
Lonnie to seriously p*ss her off. "You have an awfully fat ego!" she
shouts, then soon after yells, "I'll give you just five minutes to get
out of my house!" Huh? Her house isn't that
big! Anyway, she storms upstairs to her bedroom, and in short notice
Lonnie follows her there. Naturally she's more upset now, but in even
shorter notice, Lonnie throws her on the bed, and we are then treated
to a short montage of close-ups of Vera's hands and her agonized face. Yes,
Lonnie rapes his manager's wife!
Curiously, afterwards, her clothes don't seem the least torn or
dishevled, and the only thing not intact on Lonnie is his partially
loosened tie and the top button on his shirt (which he's wearing under
his crisp and unwrinkled jacket) being undone. Regardless,
Vera is
so upset that she charges Lonnie with a knife in her hand, but Lonnie
wrestles with her and pushes her down the stairs, which kills her.
Well, as they allude to in the world of rock and roll, it can be a steep
downwards
staircase to hell for some participants.
-
Oh, in case you are wondering... in the next scene, Lonnie is at a
different location sometime later with Finlay, who is (somewhat) stunned by the death of
his wife. No word, however, if her death is being handled as a homicide
by the police or not. In fact, after this scene, Vera is never
mentioned in any way again!
-
Earlier in the movie, there was a short subplot about Lonnie meeting
with a young teenybopper named Betty (Judy Hughes), whom he subsequently
invited to her home to swim with him in his pool... and do something
else after the movie suddenly cuts to the next scene when Lonnie is starting to
remove her bathing suit. While having a break while shooting a movie
at a studio, Lonnie finds Betty in his dressing room. How did she get
by security? For that matter, how did she know not only the particular movie studio lot
where Lonnie was working, but the exact soundstage on the lot? Anyway,
you can guess what Betty tells Lonnie... that
being she's annoyed by the high membership fee of being a member of the
national Lonnie
Price Fan Club. Just kidding, but actually, she did pay a big price for
being such a fan of Lonnie: "I'm going to have a baby!" she cries.
(Wow, this movie not only has "regular" rape, but statutory rape too!
Something for everyone!) Lonnie tries a variation of the old and
usually reliable, "If you did it with
me, you must have done it with other guys," routine, though when you think
about it deeply, that routine backfires on the guy because it has him basically admit
that he is just interested in sleeping with women who sleep with many
guys! Getting back to the movie, Lonnie is foiled when Betty tells him
that he is the only man she's ever slept with. Lonnie thinks fast and
tells Betty that he'll take care of it for her. What does he do? Well...
-
...what Lonnie does is send Betty to the neighborhood veterinarian.
After
all, when your golden retriever get pregnant after a romp with the local
stray dog, you can get rid of the unborn puppies that way, right? As it
turns
out, the veterinarian's office has a room to provide abortions for
female humans, which is right against a very narrow hallway where there are
dozens of cages of dogs, owls, monkeys, and other animals making a very loud ruckus. Not
very sanitary... but hey, scientists say that pets can reduce a person's blood
pressure and stress. When Betty is taken in the room to be prepped, she
is told twice to take her clothes off, which unnerves her. Hey, Betty, you
had no problems earlier taking off your clothes for Lonnie! In fact,
the abortionist's assistant impatiently snaps at Better that, "You girls are all alike.
You're never bashful about having your affairs, just when you come
here." Customer service isn't what it used to be. A few seconds later, the chief abortionist walks into the abortion
room... carrying a dog. From Betty's reaction to that sight, it seems
that the idea of using a dog as a tool
for abortion (and/or a device to get rid of any sign of the bloody aftermath)
really freaks her out, and she gets out of there like a
bat out of hell. Catching and consoling her, now Lonnie has to think of
some other way to get out of his potentially damaging predicament.
Again, what does he do? Well...
...well, wait a minute. I think I have really illustrated by now why Rat Fink
is a bonafide A+ and four star classic drive-in movie that not only really deserves your
immediate attention, but also more than deserves a big cult as well. Also, I really
don't want to tell
everything about it so that you'll then have no interest in seeking out
a way to watch it. Though I have written a lot of words about this
movie to make you want to watch it, I think by now that you know a
movie like this can be summed up by just one word - superfantasticamazing. As I kind
of said years ago about the movie The Sweeper,
I have done my duty to not only watch this movie, but to tell about it
to all of my readers. So do your
duty to watch it, and then
subsequently, with great enthusiasm, tell your friends about it, so a mighty
oak can grow
from this presently little neglected seed.
(Posted July 23, 2022)
Check for availability on Amazon (DVD)
-
Check
for availability on Amazon (Blu-Ray)
See also: Malbu High, The Sadist, Your Three
Minutes Are Up
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