Good , But It Is Overrated By Some

Excellent, a Must See

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

The movie is all over the place.All I can point to is there was a LOT of drug use in 1968. Probably scrambled the brains of writers and director and inflated their egos so that they thought they were making art and actually were saying something. 180 degrees from THE BIG KNIFE!

The Legend of Lylah Clare... I watched this 1968 film starring Kim Novak, Peter Finch and Ernest Borgnine some 30 years ago, and would love to see it again... I recall it being a low budget style film, but was mystically involving and I find still unforgettable. And so have often sought where I could purchase a copy, particularly since DVDs became commonplace. I noticed a question on this site: 'will it ever be available on DVD?' But in order to answer, credit card details, etc. were required... Anyhow, in January 2008 I found the following: www.cinemasirens.com/lylah_clare.html. To me, this film is worth seeing.

Every once in a while Hollywood feels obligated to turn out cautionary tales to encourage young people in Iowa to stay at home instead of hopping a Greyhound to Los Angeles. People ignore them and keep on coming, but it's created a whole sub-genre of films. In a fairly short period of time we had this, VALLEY OF THE DOLLS, and BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS.The film starts very well: Kim Novak, wearing glasses, walks around Hollywood Boulevard early in the morning. She passes Mann's Chinese Theater, where THE DIRTY DOZEN (director Robert Aldrich's previous film) is playing. Kim plays Elsa, a reserved, somewhat bookish young woman, who resembles Lylah Clare, an actress who died in the late 1940's after marrying Lewis Zarkan, the director who shaped her screen persona and made her a superstar.An agent has found Elsa and thinks she'd be perfect to play Lylah. Soon the movie spirals into silliness that's fun to watch but not very rewarding.Elsa changes her last name from Brinkmann to Campbell and work begins to transform her personality so that she can play Lylah in a filmed biography. Imagine putting MY FAIR LADY and VERTIGO in a blender: you'll get some idea what the project is like.Finally Elsa is ready for her debut to the Hollywood press, especially the much feared gossip columnist Molly Luther- a dynamite performance by Coral Brown, who played the lead in THE KILLING OF SISTER GEORGE for Aldrich the same year.Elsa descends the stair at Zarken's mansion, her hair and wardrobe perfect. She confronts Molly, and instead of submitting to Molly's questioning she suddenly starts speaking in a guttural voice with a thick German accent and humiliates Molly.Bear in mind that the film comes from over forty years ago, and gossip columnists did wield tremendous power. Much goes into the buildup for the confrontation, it takes place, and........really, nothing. The story lurches on as if it never happens.There are good performances here. Novak is looser and more relaxed in front of the camera than I remember ever seeing her. Ernest Borgnine as a hearty vulgarian studio chief, Rossella Falk as a drug addicted lesbian with a peripheral connection to the story (she seems to function with Zarken like a sidekick to a villain on an episode of Batman), and, of course, Coral Brown all gleefully overact so much I wondered if MGM wrote checks to them or vice versa.The chickens all come home to roost in a circus scene that comes out of absolutely nowhere. There was no reference to any big top films with Lylah, but it does put the characters in place in a setting that possibly reminded someone at MGM of Fellini: the same mistake would be visited upon Robert Altman at the same studio when he made BREWSTER MCCLOUD two years later.This film seems more antique than many others from the same time period. THE GRADUATE, BONNIE AND CLYDE, YOU'RE A BIG BOY NOW and EASY RIDER feel so much looser, more organic, more like real life caught on film. This feels very much studio bound, and watching it you appreciate the scenes under the opening titles mentioned in the second paragraph for their naturalness.Case in point: an important scene takes place at the Brown Derby restaurant. The place is packed. During the dialog scenes there's no background noise at all: no conversations, no sound of people moving, no clink of silverware and plate. No ambient noise at all. It's as if the characters had entered a soundproof recording studio and closed the door.This film takes Robert Aldridge into a dimension he'd never touched on before. He'd made dramas like AUTUMN LEAVES and THE BIG KNIFE, action films like KISS ME DEADLY, TEN SECONDS TO HELL, THE FLIGHT OF THE PHOENIX, and THE DIRTY DOZEN. THE LEGEND OF LYLAH CLARE just doesn't fit in his filmography. Like Mark Robson's VALLEY OF THE DOLLS, this seems to totter toward Camp.Aldridge is one of the great directors of time, so this is definitely worth watching. And it's certainly not unwatchable: in fact, it's like watching a school bus go over a cliff- it's hard to tear your eyes away. You just can't help wondering if this was what Aldridge really intended it to be.

Legendary for being "flamboyantly awful", as Leonard Malton put it, this outrageously rotten film entertains for all the wrong reasons. It's hard to believe that this psychedelic piece of dreck came from the same director who helmed the comparatively stark and tense "Flight of the Phoenix", among other fine films. Novak plays a mousy, rather backward and shy actress who is recruited by agent Selzer and introduced to reclusive director Finch to play the title figure, a phenomenally successful actress who died an untimely and mysterious death. Finch hasn't been able to direct again since the star married him and died soon after, but is intrigued enough by Novak (who plays both roles) to give the project a try. Soon, Novak is transformed completely and is paraded out before the press where she has an unfortunate run-in with bitter, crippled columnist Browne and suddenly takes on the persona (and guttural German voice!) of the deceased legend. Lylah is an amalgamation of Dietrich, Monroe, Harlow and any number of other famed screen goddesses. As work on the film progresses, Novak continues to fall under the dead woman's spell, eventually beginning to shrink behind a harsher, more bravura facade, to the point where her own life is at stake. Novak, though her face and figure are in stunning condition, is made to look quite awful at times during the film. She's given a blonde wig with a wall of low-riding bangs that obscure her eyebrows and some of her eyes. Oddly, since it was not flattering, it's a look that Novak would keep for virtually the remainder of her life! She also has nude lips throughout the film, something the 1930's dead actress would never have had and something that does Novak no favors in any case. Some of the costumes are attractive, but many of them are ghastly. Her performance is truly bad on its own, but is hampered even further by atrocious overdubbing whenever she is taken by the spirit of Lylah Clare. There was nowhere to go but up after this startling debacle, but, except for "The Great Train Robbery" and, much later, "The Mirror Crack'd" along with a few other projects, Novak never did much on the big screen again. Finch fares a little bit better, though he leans more towards over-the-top. He's appealingly fit and tan for his age and it's surprising to know that he'd be dead within a decade of this. Borgnine plays a blowhard studio chief and offers his customary bombastic, yet still interesting to watch, brand of acting. Falk plays a lesbian hanger-on and former dialogue coach of the dead actress. When she can be understood, her performance isn't bad. Cortese hams it up amusingly as a flashy costume designer. She's another of many foreign actors who dot the cast roster. She and Borgnine would be reunited years later in an even bigger turkey than this: "When Time Ran Out"! Sprinkled into the film are Borgnine and Finch's "Phoenix" co-stars Tinti (as a swarthy gardener) and Bravos (as the butler.) "The Waltons" fans may enjoy viewing Corby in modern dress as a script girl. Anyone who's ever wanted to see former Miss America Meriwether (briefly) playing a knife-wielding, cross-dressing, lesbian has finally found his Holy Grail. Walking away, so to speak, with the acting honors of the film is Browne who confidently and condescendingly plays an aging and handicapped gossip monger in the mold of Louella Parsons. The film could certainly have used more of her acid presence, but what there is is fascinating. It would be hard to find a more day-glo colored, bizarre MESS of a drama than this concoction, but, even though it is overlong, it's compulsively watchable. Check out Novak's stroll along the Hollywood Walk of Fame in which, during the span of less than a block, she traipses upon one tragic film star case after another (yet she still goes to Finch's house!) Then there's her garden scene in which she languidly walks through the grass wearing only long navy trousers, a bra, and a sweater around her neck! Keep an eye out also for the many instances of prodding. People are forever using fingers, canes, etc... to poke and prod or otherwise intrude upon one another. A series of flashbacks to Lylah and her death are infamously insane. Dreamy soft-focus photography shows her dress being torn off as the characters speak in a warped slow-motion while a little circle in the lower left corner displays Novak's present day face. The whole film is a matter of taste. Those who enjoy a good cackle at audacious badness should lap it up. Others beware.