The Grissom Gang (USA, 1971) 128 min color DIR-PROD: Robert Aldrich. SCR: Leon Griffiths, adapted from James Hadley Chase’s novel, No Orchids For Miss Blandish. MUSIC: Gerald Fried. DOP: Joseph Biroc. CAST: Kim Darby, Scott Wilson, Tony Musante, Robert Lansing, Irene Dailey, Connie Stevens. (Cinerama Releasing Corporation)
After the success of Bonnie And Clyde, Hollywood made a slew of Depression-era gangster pictures, in which the robbers were deemed as counterculture heroes, and their period flavour evoked a nostalgia for “the good old days”. The Grissom Gang on the other hand evokes the Great Depression in all of its squalor, and deconstructs moviemaking of yore. In the opening, young socialite Barbara Blandish (Kim Darby, arguably in the best role she ever had) is kidnapped by the loathsome Grissom Gang for ransom. In the subsequent chase, the old cars are blatantly in front of a rear-screen projection unit. No hip filmmaker in the 1970s would dare use this old-fashioned device. In his typically heavy-handed fashion, Robert Aldrich brusquely whisks away the primitive artifice of old movies and our romanticism of the gangster in 1930s Warner programmers for wonderfully vulgar, over-the-roof characterizations. The Grissom Gang is the inbred family from Hell: Ma Grissom has a moustache! With all the dust, dirt, and brown hues, Aldrich slyly reminds us that the Dirty 30s really were dirty. This may be the sweatiest movie of all time – certainly more than Body Heat; perspiration is like a second skin. Even if you don’t like this baroque live-action cartoon, you’ll still feel as though you’ve really lived in the unforgiving landscape it depicts.
Updated from a review originally published in Vol. #1, Issue #10, (“Summer in the 70s”).
Greg Woods
Greg Woods has been a film enthusiast since his teens, and began his writing "career" at the same time- prolific in capsule reviews of everything he had watched, first on index cards, then those hardcover dollar store black journals, then an old Mac IIsi. He founded The Eclectic Screening Room in 2001, as a portal to share his film love with the world, and find some like-minded enthusiasts along the way. In addition to having worked in the film industry for over two decades, he has been a co-programmer of films at Trash Palace, and a programmer/co-founder of the Toronto Film Noir Syndicate. He has also written for Broken Pencil, CU-Confidential, Micro-Film, and is currently working on his first novel. His secret desire is for someone to interview him for a podcast or a DVD extra.