Sole Man

Part I: And the Oscar Snub Goes To...

It’s the highlight of every televised awards show, the moment viewers are drawn to like rubberneckers at a train wreck. It’s also, without fail, the most controversial segment of every awards broadcast. It is the “In Memoriam” montage, when the various academies and guilds pay their respects, on-camera, to their fallen comrades. The granddaddy of all awards ceremonies, the Oscars, repeatedly draws the most flak when it comes to faces seemingly overlooked by the Academy.

The 88^th Academy Awards, which were presented on February 28, 2016, did not disappoint in roiling discontent. Glaring in his omission during the segment was Abe Vigoda, indelibly etched in filmgoers’ memory as the beagle-faced traitor, Salvatore Tessio, in “The Godfather."

 

A painting of Abe Vigoda was on display at his funeral.

Abe Vigoda’s daughter, Carol Vigoda Fuchs, expected to see his image on the Oscars telecast. “I have to say it was very disappointing,” she said, “and I feel that we were all cheated, and I don’t understand why…This is the final curtain, this is the big one, and – wow! – why no tribute?”

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences issued a statement saying, “Abe Vigoda is among the many worthy artists and filmmakers we were unfortunately unable to feature in the ‘In Memoriam’ segment of this year’s Oscar show. Vigoda is, however, included in our ‘In Memoriam’ gallery on Oscar.com.”

 

As nutjob General Garcia, Richard Libertini chats with
his friend, Pepe, in "The In-Laws" (1979).

In fact, the list on the Oscar website is considerably lengthy, but you have to ask yourself why the Academy included a Time magazine movie reviewer in their televised memorial and yet snubbed these “worthy artists and filmmakers”: old-timey comedian and sometime actor Jack Carter (“Viva Las Vegas,” “Hustle,” “Mel Brooks’ History of the World”)…Emmy Award-winner and film actor Richard A. Dysart (“Being There,” “The Thing,” “Pale Rider”)…musician-sometime actor Glenn Frey (“Jerry Maguire”)…George Gaynes (befuddled Commandant Lassard in the “Police Academy” movies)…British director John Guillermin (1974’s “The Towering Inferno,” “1976’s “King Kong”)…Gunnar Hansen (chainsaw-wielding Leatherface in the seminal slasher film “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre”)…Richard Libertini (“The In-Laws,” “All of Me,” “Fletch”)…Ron Moody (Oscar-nominated for his role as Fagin in “Oliver!”)…Amanda Peterson (“Can’t Buy Me Love”)…Roddy Piper (utterer of the iconic line “I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass, and I’m all out of bubblegum,” in “They Live”)…Academy Award-winning cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond (“Close Encounters of the Third Kind”).

Geoffrey Lewis (pictured above), whose 45-plus-year career included several costarring roles with Clint Eastwood – “High Plains Drifter,” “Thunderbolt and Lightfoot,” “Every Which Way But Loose,” “Any Which Way You Can,” “Bronco Billy,” “Pink Cadillac” – died on April 7, 2015.  After he was overlooked in the “In Memoriam” tribute, his daughter, singer and actress Juliette Lewis (“Cape Fear,” “Natural Born Killers,” “From Dusk till Dawn”), tweeted, “My dad was beloved and contributed over 220 roles in film and TV. The Academy maybe you can remember to remember him next year.”

The names in the segment are reportedly not chosen by the program’s producers but by a committee of the Academy of Arts and Sciences. The list is intended to focus on those who made significant contributions to film and to cover a range of sectors. “But how does one actually land on the list?” asked entertainment writer Kate Erbland. “Not surprisingly, it involves a paper trail, voting, and plenty of hurt feelings.”

Former Academy executive Bruce Davis once said, “It is a beloved segment, but I would prefer we didn’t do it…When you sit down to do the list, the last 15 or 20 cuts you make are people with substantial careers…You just feel like shit for days afterwards. And there is nothing you can say to somebody’s wife or daughter about why they didn’t make ii into the sequence.”

To that list of snubbed artists the Moveihouse would like to add Denise Mattthews. If that name doesn’t ring a bell, you might recognize her by the name she used during her brief career as a singer and actress and Prince’s protégé in the 1980s – Vanity. Vanity – er, Denise Matthews died of renal failure at the age of 57 on February 15, 2016.

Part II: Vanity Fare

  

The daughter of an African-American father of Hawaiian and Native American ancestry and a mother of Polish and Jewish descent, Denise Matthews began her career in teenage beauty contests and as a model. In 1980, she met Prince at the American Music Awards. The two started a romantic relationship, during which time he renamed her Vanity, seeing her as the female manifestation of himself. Another version of the story alleges that Prince wanted her to use the stage name “Vagina,” which she declined in favor of Vanity.

Prince selected Vanity as the front woman for a female R/B-funk trio he originally wanted to call The Hookers. He renamed the trio Vanity 6 (the number six supposedly reflected the number of breasts onstage). The group’s Svengali dressed them in sexy lingerie and high heels and wrote provocative songs for them, including the 1982 hit “Nasty Girl,” which hit number one on the U.S. Dance chart.

Vanity was supposed to play the female lead in Prince’s 1984 semiautobiographical film “Purple Rain" but abandoned the project when Vanity 6 disbanded in 1983. She was replaced by Vanity clone and former Los Angeles Rams cheerleader Apollonia Kotero, and the trio became Apollonia 6 for the movie.

Vanity recorded two solo albums for the Motown label. Her career continued to thrive on raciness and a scanty wardrobe. She told the Associated Press in 1985, “My music is very sexual, so you could say I’m just putting all of me out there.”

At the height of her career, Vanity was linked romantically to Adam Ant and Billy Idol. In 1987, she was engaged briefly to Motley Crue bassist Nikki Sixx (prompting her to joke that she was going to become Vanity Sixx again), during which time she was heavily addicted to crack cocaine. From 1995 to 1996, she was married to Oakland Raiders defensive end Anthony Smith, who was later convicted of a number of murders and is currently serving three consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole.

In 1985, Vanity costarred in “The Last Dragon,” a martial arts musical starring martial arts stuntman Taimak and executive produced by Motown founder Berry Gordy. The following year, Vanity entered the big league with a major role in “52 Pick-Up,” a dark crime thriller based on Elmore Leonard’s novel and directed by John Frankenheimer, featuring Roy Scheider and Ann-Margret. In 1988, Vanity costarred with Carl Weathers and Sharon Stone in the vengeance melodrama “Action Jackson.”

 

The girl just can't keep her clothes on...in "52 Pickup," with Roy Scheider.

In 1994, Vanity overdosed on crack and suffered from near-fatal renal failure. She began daily dialysis treatments. She had told Jet magazine in 1993, “There was a lot of cocaine. I tried men, women, everything. I didn’t snort cocaine, I smoked it.” Vanity claimed that Jesus Christ appeared before her, promising to save her if she gave up her Vanity persona. Upon her “miraculous” recovery, she abandoned the name Vanity and all that was associated with it and became a born-again Christian. Her years of drug abuse resulted in a kidney transplant in 1997. She became an ordained minister and preached in churches nationwide (pictured below).

Her years of drug abuse resulted in a kidney transplant in 1997, but even those failed her nearly two decades later. After her passing, Prince told an Australia audience, “She and I used to love each other deeply. She loved me for the artist I was; I loved her for the artist she was trying to be.”

Before she hooked up with Prince, Denise Matthews, billing herself as D.D. Winters, appeared in a couple of Canadian-produced films. She had a small role in the slasher movie “Terror Train” (1980), starring Jamie Lee Curtis, Ben Johnson, and magician David Copperfield.

Also in 1980, Matthews – er, Winters starred in – and got nekkid a lot in – a curio of cinema called “Tanya’s Island,” playing a model whose volatile relationship with her prick of a boyfriend – a violent, surrealist painter - forces her to conjure a fantasy island where she befriends a feral but gentle, blue-eyed apeman, leading to a bizarre love triangle between the model, the painter, and the creature.

The ape-suit for “Blue” (Tanya’s affectionate nickname for her hirsute admirer) was created by special effects makeup masters Rick Baker and Rob Bottin, while the man under the fur was Don McLeod, an actor who seemingly made a career out of playing gorillas in movies, including “Trading Places.”

Don McLeod (left) and future U.S. Senator from Minnesota Al Franken
have lunch together in "Trading Places" (1983).

Overall, “Tanya’s Island” is a frequently tedious mishmash, made all the more wearisome by the over-the-top histrionics of actor Richard Sargent (no relation to the Dick Sargent who became the second Darrin Stevens on “Bewitched”) as the maniacal painter, ridiculously named Lobo. There’s even a horse that didn’t want to be in the movie, much less be ridden. Thankfully, any allusions to bestiality are spared until the film’s – er – climax. Predictably, director Alfred Sole throws in the old it-was-only-a-dream-or-was-it ending.

III. A Little Bit O' Sole

The saga of “Tanya’s Island” director Alfred Sole’s filmmaking career is itself something of a curio. It all started in 1972, when Sole, a 29-year-old interior decorator and architect, decided to make a textbook ‘70s X-rated porno. “Deep Sleep” was shot in his hometown of Paterson, New Jersey, with a cast and crew made up of friends, family members, and neighbors, including high school teachers, an accountant, a lawyer, a judge, the mayor’s wife, Sole’s wife, and his mother.

What followed, according to one journalist, was “one of the most remarkable and notorious prosecutions of an adult film in American history.” The moviemakers were indicted on the state level under a dated anti-fornication statute and on a federal level for interstate transportation of pornography. Sole later thanked the county prosecutor for helping launch his career as a filmmaker.

As mentioned above, Paterson, New Jersey, is Alfred Sole’s hometown. Paterson was the birthplace and childhood home of Lou Costello, the bumbling fall guy of the popular 1940s comedy team Abbott and Costello. Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, the middleweight boxer wrongfully accused of murder, was arrested in a Paterson bar in 1966. Paterson was featured in the first season of “The Sopranos.” And Paterson again served as a backdrop for Sole’s second film, “Alice, Sweet Alice” (1976), a nifty, well-crafted, intelligent slasher-mystery.

Poor little 9-year-old Karen is murdered in church at First Communion, which is unfortunate for screen newcomer Brooke Shields, as she exits the picture after a mere 11 minutes. All the clues point to Karen’s cruel, 12-year-old sister as the prime suspect, but Sole’s influences here definitely stem from Alfred Hitchcock, so the viewer can count on red herrings, twists, and turns. The music score by Stephen Lawrence (no, not Frank Sinatra’s pal, singer Steve Lawrence – this Lawrence composed over 300 songs and scores for “Sesame Street”) pays homage to frequent Hitchcock collaborator, composer Bernard Herrmann, without overdoing it.

 

Brook Shields' big screen debut is cut short in "Alice, Sweet Alice." The killer's
yellow raincoat is a direct homage to "Don't Look Now" (1973).

Besides Hitchcock, Alfred Sole said he was inspired to make “Alice, Sweet Alice” after seeing the 1973 psychological thriller “Don’t Look Now,” directed by Nicolas Roeg and starring Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland. Sole’s film includes a number of visual references to “Don’t Look Now.”

“Alice, Sweet Alice” is rife with Catholic iconography and imagery, as well as several references to Catholic guilt and repression, which caused some to view the movie as anti-Catholic. Sole had no qualms about describing himself as an “ex-Catholic.” In the wake of the obscenity charges stemming from “Deep Sleep,” the Roman Catholic Diocese of Paterson formally excommunicated the filmmaker.

The movie was originally called “Communion,” however, overruling Sole’s objections, the distributor, Allied Artists, changed the title because they didn’t want audiences mistaking it for a religious picture. After Brook Shields’ breakthrough role as the daughter of a New Orleans prostitute in “Pretty Baby” (1978), the film was re-released as “Holy Terror.” For years, “Alice, Sweet Alice” remained in public domain, since no one bothered to tack on a copyright line when the movie was originally released. In the late 1990s, Sole made some minor changes in the film so he could copyright the new version.

Paula E. Sheppard (pictured above) delivers a standout performance as Alice, a potential “Bad Seed” character, troubled and complex, reluctantly burgeoning on womanhood; in the vein of the story's obsession with Catholic contrition and continence, the film contains references to developing breasts and starting the menstrual cycle. Interestingly, Sheppard, who appeared in only one other picture - 1982’s “Liquid Sky,” a cult science-fiction film set in New York City’s new wave club scene - was 19 when she played the 12-year-old Alice.

As if stepping in off the set of a John Waters movie, an amateur actor named Alphonso DeNoble makes a sizable (literally as well as figuratively) impression in “Alice, Sweet Alice” as the like-named Mr. Alphonso, a morbidly obese, soiled, cat-loving, pedophilic landlord. According to Sole, he first laid eyes on DeNoble when the latter was making a few bucks by dressing up as a priest and hanging around a Paterson cemetery, where elderly widows would ask him for a blessing and offer him a donation for the “church” in return. “Father Alphonso” also worked as a bartender at Paterson’s only gay bar. He made only two other screen appearances, in “Blood Sucking Freaks” and “Night of the Zombies,” both directed by Grade-Z filmmaker Joel M. Reed.

“Director Sole does not give us a gratuitous gore fest,” Tom Becker noted in his review of “Alice, Sweet Alice” on the website DVD Verdict. “The focus here is on story and character. The script…is a nicely twisted mystery that doesn’t become convoluted or derivative. The characters are well developed and played by actors who had a background on stage. The film is visually dynamic, eschewing that flat TV look that marked so many low-budget films in the ‘70s.”

After his sojourn north of the border to shoot "Tanya's Island" in Toronto (with tropical scenes shot in Puerto Rico), Alfred Sole directed "Pandemonium" (1982), a scattershot spoof of slasher films such as "Friday the 13th." The comedy, originally titled "Thursday the 12th," is set at a cheerleader camp where an unseen maniac terrorizes the half dozen cheerleaders-in-training.

The film, co-scripted by Richard Whitley, who co-wrote the screenplay for 1979's "Rock 'n' Roll High School," opens with a flashback to a 1963 football game at Indiana's It Had to Be U. After a halftime salute to vegetables, five cheerleaders are skewered by a single javelin in what the press dubs "The Shish-Kebab Murders." Eying the victims, still holding their oversize vegetable props, a news photographer says, "This must be the act of a maniac." Phil Hartman, as a reporter, adds, "Either that or a very large chef."

Bob the horse and Cooper of the "Royal Candamanadanies" (Tom Smothers)
meet cheerleader instructor Bambi (Candice Azzara) in "Pandemonium."
(Candice was cast as Gloria in a pilot episode for "All in the Family.")

As an inside joke referring to the fact that a number of ‘80s slasher pictures were shot in Canada, the hero of the film is a uniformed Royal Canadian Mounted Policeman, played deadpan by Tom Smothers (whose dialogue includes the repeated pronunciation of “out” as the Canuck “oot”). Paul Reubens portrays Smothers’ disgruntled sidekick (pictured below), whose snarky outbursts sound a lot like Pee-wee Herman.

Reubens created the Pee-wee Herman character during an improvisation exercise with the Los Angeles-based comedy troupe The Groundlings. Interestingly, fellow Groundlings in the cast of “Pandemonium” are John Paragon (Jambi the Genie on “Pee-wee’s Playhouse”), Edie McClurg, and Phil Hartman (Captain Carl on “Pee-wee’s Playhouse”). It should be mentioned that although she wasn’t a Groundling, Lynne Marie Stewart (Miss Yvonne on “Pee-wee’s Playhouse”) also has a small role in “Pandemonium.” (Recently Stewart has played Charlie’s mother on “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.”)

Glenn Dandy (Judge Reinhold), Andy (Miles Chapin), Randy (Marc McClure),
Candy (Carol Kane), Sandy (Debralee Scott), and Mandy (Teri Landrum)

The cheerleading trainees, billed as numbered victims in the opening credits, are played by Miles Chapin, Debralee Scott (a familiar face on TV as Sweathog  Rosalie “Hotsie” Totsie on “Welcome Back, Kotter,” as Louise Lasser’s sister on “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman,” as Donna Pescow’s sister on “Angie,” and as a fixture on the ‘70s game shows “Match Game,” “$20,000 Pyramid,” and “Password Plus”), Teri Landrum, Marc McClure (recognizable for his portrayal of Jimmy Olsen in the Christopher Reeve “Superman” films), Judge Reinhold (best known as Detective Billy Rosewood in the “Beverly Hills Cop” movies), and the always charming Carol Kane (pictured below).

Just like the flood of genuine slasher flicks in theaters at the time, "Pandemonium"
was released amid a spate of slasher parodies, including "Saturday the 14th," with
real-life couple Richard Benjamin and Paula Prentiss, "Student Bodies," written and
directed by onetime Woody Allen collaborator Mickey Rose, and "National Lampoon's
Class Reunion," featuring "Animal House's" Flounder, Stephen Furst.

“Pandemonium” boasts “special appearances” by an eclectic ensemble, including Eve Arden (forever endeared as the principal of Rydell High in “Grease”), Kaye Ballard (who costarred with Eve Arden in the late 1960s sitcom “The Mothers-in-Law”), Eileen Brennan (enigmatically billed onscreen as “A Friend”),’50s heartthrob Tab Hunter, Sydney Lassick (memorable as the whining Cheswick in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and as the sarcastic English teacher in “Carrie”), toothsome game show host Jim McKrell (remember when Michael J. Fox’s dad made him wet his pants in “Teen Wolf”?), Lenny Montana (a former professional wrestler and real-life mob enforcer who played the hulking Luca Brasi in “The Godfather”), and Donald O’Connor.

Warden June (Eve Arden)  is menaced by prisoner John Paragon in "Pandemonium."

“This ‘Airplane!’-styled spoof of slasher movies has its moments but is ultimately more bizarre than it is funny,” noted Donald Guarisco on the website AllMovie. “The script takes a shotgun approach to humor…Some of the gags are truly clever…but those gags are outmatched by scenes involving humdrum grossout humor and other scenes that are just plain bizarre, like a death by electric toothbrush and a throwaway gag about bestiality…Alfred Sole keeps the film moving at a breezy pace and gives it a surprising amount of horror-film atmosphere for the jokes to bounce off of…’Pandemonium’ doesn’t produce enough consistent laughs to qualify as a top-shelf comedy, but its cast and its definitely eccentric approach make it a worthy curiosity piece for the cult movie set.”

...And yes, that's David L. Lander, TV's Squiggy on "Laverne & Shirley,"
playing Pepe the groundskeeper in "Pandemonium."

After “Pandemonium,” Alfred Sole abruptly turned his back on directing movies. Calling on his roots as an architect and interior decorator, he transformed himself into an in-demand production designer in the mid-1990s. He worked on several TV movies, including “Halloween Town” and “Halloween Town High,” as well as such popular series as “Veronica Mars” and “Castle.”

An older and wiser Alfred Sole...

Speaking particularly about “Alice, Sweet Alice,” Glenn Erickson, on the website DVD Talk, mused that if Alfred Sole had ever cared to direct again, he would have been an excellent choice to direct an episode of “Masters of Horror.”