Purely Joyful Movie!

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

***SPOILERS*** Not so unintentional funny film -the filmmakers had to know what they were doing-about the 1960's drug generation with 1940's sexy blond swather girl Lana Turner as washed up actress Adriana Roman who in her 40's who gets stoned on LSD and driven to almost kill herself by her bird brain step-daughter Lisa Winthrop, Karin Mossberg, and her drug pushing boyfriend Johnny Allen, George Chakiris. Marrying multi millionaire businessman Charles Winthrop, Daniel O'Herlihy, Adriana finds that her step-daughter Lisa is anything but happy with her getting between her and poppa. That in Lisa feeling that she's a gold digger only after her father's money and nothing else.As it soon turns out it's Lisa boyfriend medical student Johnny Allen who after her dad's money and is using her to get his greedy hands on it. Johnny is also mixing up LSD in the collage lab and selling it to students on campus that on one case cause a student to overdose on it. Kicked out of collage Jonny now goes full tilt as a both drug pusher as well as lover-boy in getting a very naive-in not seeing through him- Lisa to marry the bum. It's later that poppa Winthrop is lost at sea in a Caribbean storm when Lisa as well as Johnny find out that he left all his millions to his wife of about a week Adriana to do with what she pleases!Johnny soon concocts this plan to drive Adriana insane by slipping-or spiking- LSD into her sleeping pills and-after her freaking out- have her declared unable to run the family affairs. Johnny goes even farther in trying to drive the by now out of her skull Adraina to commit suicide which finally wakes up Lis to what he's really up to and that being in love with her, which turned out to be a joke, has nothing at all to do with it.****SPOILERS**** It's Adraina's good friend and playwright Frederick Lonsdale, Richard Egan, who smells a rat in what Johnny Allen and Lisa are up to and plans to expose them by having Adriana return to the theater in one last play that he wrote for her that's to snap her out of her forced amnesia, she still doesn't know that her husband Charles was lost at sea, and have her realized that she's been victimized by both her step-daughter Lisa and her boyfriend Johnny Allen. Depressing ending for Johnny who ends up freaking out on LSD and competing, in his roach and rat infested dive, with an ant for a sugar cube, thus the title of the film, laced with his last drop of LSD. As for Adriana she overcame her drug or LSD addiction by marrying Frederick Lonsdale and as for her daughter Lisa she's now a volunteer at a local drug clinic helping out those that her former boyfriend Johnny Allen got addicted. P.S Among the wild and crazy drug or LSD scenes in the film it also had one of the first openly and shocking nude sense that really titillated it's audience who up until then, 1969, was almost never seen in US made movies.

If you are the type who is stupid enough to do drugs, you may even be stupid enough to like this cheap, silly U.S.-Mexican production, The Big Cube. It finds fading, scandal-plagued sex symbol Lana Turner at the absolute bottom of her career, fallen in with a bunch of young, mod, hipster, druggies and a lot of just plain old bad actors.The plot had some promise, at the first anyway. One of those "let's drive mommy wacko" thrillers. But about two-thirds of the way through, it does a complete turn about to a "let's save poor old mommy from the loony bin", psychodrama. Sounds like a horrible muddle, huh? Is that. A strange creature by the name of George Chakiris leads the bad acting brigade, but he gets a lot of help from a gaggle of young hipsters so repulsive, you may find yourself wanting to bash their alleged brains out with a fondue dish. On the adult side Richard Egan, wooden even in the action parts for which he was best suited, is simply embarrassing here, miscast in a role where he has to act sensitive-like.This movie is a serious stinker. Only for die-hard fans of Lana Turner, desperate insomniacs, and those wishing to check out the 1960's counter-culture for reasons known but to themselves and God. Others should avoid The Big Cube as if it were a big bubonic plague bacillus.

Lana Turner on an acid trip - a bizarre thought, but this low-budget Mexican production, "The Big Cube," is about just that - you know, "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," the "Sugar Shack" - LSD. And what a bizarre trip it is for all involved.Turner plays a great theater star, Adriana Roman, who retires to marry Charles Winthrop (Dan O'Herlihy) and comes up against his angry daughter Lisa (Karin Mossberg). No one explains why O'Herlihy's daughter has some sort of foreign accent. Everyone else is American. Anyway, Lisa falls for a sleaze drug dealer and soon to be ex-medical student (George Chakiris) who is after her money. When O'Herlihy dies in a boating accident, the Chakiris character hints to Lisa that they can hurry along the inheritance by - and this is really not clear - either driving Adriana nuts with LSD or using it to kill her. It falls to the playwright with whom Adriana has worked (Richard Egan) to rescue her from the clutches of these two connivers.The plot is beyond muddled. One day Lisa hates her stepmother, and then the next day they're best buddies. One day Adriana has an acid trip while in a car, and Lisa and her boyfriend take her to a cliff, presumably to throw her over, and Adriana gets away from them and doesn't die. The next day, Adriana goes on another acid trip and tries to throw herself out a window, and Lisa saves her. Why did she save her when she tried to kill her the day before? It's a mess.The movie is filled with psychedelic parties and horrible acting, particularly from Mossberg, Pamela Rodgers, Lisa's friend, and Carlos East, who plays an overly made-up artist named Lalo.Turner, approaching 50, does her "Portrait in Black," "Imitation of Life" acting number wearing some horrific wigs. With a simple upswept hairdo, those enormous blue eyes, and petite figure, she's quite beautiful and glamorous, though dressed like she's supposed to be 18; with her hair down, she's a way over the hill ingénue; and with those gargoyle wigs, she looks just plain awful. Her closeups are shot through linoleum. I hate that older beautiful classic film stars had so few alternatives that they turned to these trash movies, but many did.Campy though not on the camp level of a "Valley of the Dolls" or another Lana Turner film, "Portrait in Black" but some might find it fun. It was fun, but also a little sad for those who enjoyed Lana in "Slightly Dangerous," "Green Dolphin Street," and the Ross Hunter glossy melodramas of the '50s.

Mexico-U.S. co-production is misguided, if still entertaining, mishmash of the old and the new. Lana Turner (looking sadly aged, even in softened close-up) plays a retired stage actress who has married a wealthy financier, only to have him perish in a boating accident; meanwhile, Turner's straight-laced step-daughter wants to marry a handsome cad, but Lana's objections over the union are keeping the young woman from receiving her full inheritance. The couple attempts to drive Lana crazy by putting the psychedelic drug LSD into her sedatives--and then goading her into committing suicide! Interesting solution to the mental problems Lana ends up having (reenacting her traumatic events on the stage) nearly makes this ridiculous plot worthwhile; unfortunately, director Tito Davison ends the picture with an extended freak-out sequence, complete with George Chakiris crawling on the floor talking to an ant. Davison has some good ideas (and the film's optical effects and cinematography are good), but he needed a judicious editor to eliminate the "modern" excesses which have now turned the film into a camp-fest. ** from ****