#seedy

insta | cara | artstation | twitter

Coincidentally, I watched one of Miles’ more obscure efforts on YouTube on Friday night: Who Killed Mary What's 'Er Name? (1971) aka Death of a Hooker (tagline: “Somebody just murdered your friendly neighborhood hooker. Start asking questions, and before you know it, you’re in trouble.”). Directed by Ernest Pintoff and sound-tracked by mournful jazz music, Mary is a low-budget, gritty and offbeat crime thriller set in derelict early seventies New York. Red Buttons stars as Mickey Isador, a plucky diabetic former boxer who takes it upon himself to investigate the murder of a local sex worker, when he feels the NYPD are indifferent. The emphasis on Mickey’s diabetes feels odd (his daughter is constantly pestering him to take his insulin), but this detail becomes important at the genuinely tense finale. Mary has the grungy, seedy look and vibe of an exploitation movie, but the violence is tame and there’s no explicit sex or nudity (in fact, Who Killed Mary was rated PG). We get frequent evocative glimpses of bag ladies, elderly women leaning out their windows and haggard drinkers at dive bars, all resembling escapees from the street photography of Weegee or Diane Arbus. The lead cast is predominantly middle-aged and worn-out looking (which for someone of my vintage, is reassuring and relatable) and is surprisingly comprised of 1970s television stalwarts like David Doyle (Bosley from Charlie’s Angels) and Conrad Bain (Arthur Harman on Maude, Phillip Drummond on Diff’rent Strokes). One exception: a very young, lanky and adorable shaggy-haired Sam Waterston in his Timothée Chalamet era! Sylvia Miles (pictured) is Christine, a chain-smoking, nasal-voiced and bewigged tough cookie prostitute – and she absolutely slays! The print on YouTube is a faded and scratchy “raw scan”, but in a beautiful and atmospheric way.  Watch it here.

An American Werewolf in London (1981) Dir. John Landis