The Naked Dawn

Edgar G Ulmer 
Corriganville Movie Ranch 
Simi Valley CA 1955

Set on both sides of the border between Mexico and Texas (a border that is only recognized as an impertinence by the actual native people of the area, who perhaps recall that it was imposed by European "American" invaders and thieves in 1836,) the Naked Dawn concerns three Mexicans, a young couple, both of them just shy of twenty years, and a bandit about twice their age.  An American railroad agent hires Santiago, the bandit (in France the film is known as Le Bandit,) to steal a shipment of wrist watches and then refuses to pay him his full share.  Eventually it ends with them both dead and the young couple forced to leave their small farm.

It’s based on a story by Maxim Gorky, Chelkash, transposed by black listed screenwriter Julian Zimet from Odessa to Matamoros, Tamaulipas. It was Ulmer’s second film in color, this time Technicolor, though the tones are similar to those seen in the Cinefotocolor used for Muchachas de Bagdad.  As always with Ulmer, the film is beautifully made, in design and execution.

Muchachas de Bagdad

Les Mille et Une Filles de Bagdad 
Babes in Bagdad
Jerónimo Mihura et Edgar G Ulmer 
Barcelona 1952

Starring Paulette Goddard and Gypsy Rose Lee, and known as Muchachas de Bagdad, and Les Mille et Une Filles de Bagdad, as well as Babes in Bagdad, this was Ulmer’s follow up to his made in Lower Manhattan comedy, St Benny the Dip, also for the Danziger Brothers.  Christopher Lee has a small role as a slave merchant, and he fondly recalled attending the Barcelona Opera with Goddard and Ulmer for a performance of Tristan und Isolde.  The Burlesque elements here are pretty heavy handed and feel grossly misapplied, but once the plot kicks in with Kyra running back and forth between the two houses, and later when the Kadi, Hassan, is put out on the street as a beggar, one begins to see just how skillful a director Ulmer can be.  La Danse de la Mer in the long last scene is especially well handled.  Shot in an archaic two strip color film process called Cinefotocolor by master DP Georges Périna, it resembles the color movies put out by Ulmer’s old buddy, Carl Laemmle Jr, twenty years earlier.

Boiled Lobster of Lucky Landlady Lagoon

Jack Smith 
Lower East Side 1969

This is the one that Ira Cohen referred to as Reefers of Technicolor Island.  You see the marijuana plants treated as miniature palm trees, precisely as described.  I take it all as his remake of Edgar Ulmer’s Isle of Forgotten Sins with Mario Montez’s white clad nun filling in for Gale Sondergaard’s brothel keeper and Ira’s crazed sea captain in the John Carradine role.