Deuce in the hole (7/13/01)
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Harold Robbins’ Body Parts. [Craig Corman, 1999.]
Born loser Richard Grieco agrees on the spur of the moment to go along with wild and crazy buddy Will Foster Stewart [aka J.J.] on a Far Eastern shopping expedition which turns out [oops] to be a $750K score of China White; and, sucker that he is, seems genuinely surprised when in an excess of entrepeneurial enthusiasm J.J. wastes the sellers and then tries to smoke him too. Surviving this escapade by pure dumb luck, he finds himself taking the fall in a Hong Kong jail after an abbreviated show trial in which his doting wife Athena Massey — who, strange but true, doesn’t seem to have been surprised by any of these events — testifies against him; and seems well-launched upon a permanent vacation at governmental expense until political accident springs him in 1997, allowing him to make his escape to California.
Here immediately and surely not by accident he runs into the upwardly-mobile Ms. Massey, now ensconced in suspicious affluence as the proprietor of a company which matches transplant patients to organ donors [hmmm], and she immediately and surely not by accident declares her undiminished passion for him, rips her clothing off, and hoses him into acquiescing to a dimwitted scheme which entails his making a business trip to Manila on her behalf — and, as an incidental corollary, seeking revenge upon his nemesis, who in the interim seems to have raised himself to robber baron status among the Filipinos. With that existential shrug with which the film-noir hero invariably steps into the current which sweeps him to his doom, he allows himself to be convinced, despite the transparently nefarious motivations of Ms. Massey. — “I think there’s something you should know,” she says. — “What?” asks Grieco, “that you were fucking J.J. behind my back?” — “I’ve always loved you,” she protests. — Yeah, right.
The predicament of the protagonist is, however, as nothing beside that of the authors, who, having succumbed to temptation and allowed the spectacular Ms. Massey to disrobe so early in the scenario, have no alternative but to repair posthaste to a strip bar in Manila, in the vain hope that quantity will, as it were, substitute for quality. Thus here sure enough our hero presently discovers himself drowning his sorrows and searching vainly among the Filipina hookers [“We take traveller’s checks,” they explain helpfully] for a rack that may expunge his perfidious ex from memory. — No such luck, of course, but he does turn up another girlfriend [too sweet, alas, to be able to go the distance in a cold cruel scenario such as this], and locates the wicked J.J., who seems taken aback at his ability to hold a grudge. — “Come on, man. Cut me some slack” — “Cut you some slack? J.J., you tried to kill me twice, and in between, you fucked my wife.” — [J. J. is hurt:] “You make it sound so personal.” — Indicating the vast expanse of construction projects [a veritable metropolis springing up overnight] he is supervising, he protests that the syndicate is going legit by getting into real estate. — “Well, you are right about one thing,” says Grieco. “You
are going into real estate.” [If you read this as a Jimmy Hoffa reference, you are correct.] They draw down, and commence a fight among tropical fishtanks. Complications ensue.
Weird but undoubtedly true, B-movie though this is, it is far more entertaining than what I’ve seen in A-movies lately. — For one thing, they couldn’t afford the wooden Affleck for the lead. — For another, the dialogue is laced with zingers. [Probably the work of Robbins, though you’ll forgive me if I don’t check; I swore off after
The Carpetbaggers.] — And, anyway, film noir was always a B-movie genre, because in the classic era as now a limited budget not only allowed more creative latitude in the screenplay and more interesting casting choices but forced occasionally inspired improvisation; as in this instance, where the necessity of shooting cheap in the Philippines meant the film could end with a gunbattle in the tunnels of Corregidor — where, not to give away anything that shouldn’t be obvious, Grieco ends up wasting his wife for buying his girlfriend’s organs on the black market and delivers a classic kissoff over her cooling stiff: “Mom was right...I never should have married you.” — With which he walks off into the East Asian sunset; leaving me laughing my ass off, and reaching for my edition of Mickey Spillane. Who says movies can’t be fun any more?
____________Midafternoon of infamy (6/2/01)
