| It seemed like a simple question at first. "What’s the worst film noir ever made?" The more I thought about it, the tougher it seemed, and I was tempted to flake out and write off the conundrum as a Zen question with no real answer. After all, movie buffs love noir, and any example of the form that can still be found today is available precisely because it has some kind of fan following. Plus, elements that would detract from the quality of any other film (outrageous dialogue, low budgets, minimal lighting) are considered plusses in noir. Is the entire genre above criticism?
No, of course not. Even classics of the style have their weaknesses. Double Indemnity (1944) may be a masterpiece, but I can’t be the only one who thinks that the acting’s a bit dodgy at times. As for cult favourite Detour (1946), I attended a screening once in which the audience burst out laughing at the film’s hokey climax. Still, these films accomplish far too much to be considered failures. The former is a genuine classic that demands repeat viewings, and the latter achieves a palpable aura of paranoia and despair despite its thrown-together-in-six-days B-movie status.
Can any noir succeed simply by making full use of generic clichés? Maybe the worst film noir would be shot in full colour, brightly lit, and contain at least one completely trustworthy female character. (That’s it! The worst noir is…Vertigo (1958)! Ha! … Er, wait, that can’t be right. Shit.)
Perhaps there’s an easier way to approach this. Has Edward D. Wood Jr. ever made a film noir? Yes, indeed he has. Problem solved!
Jail Bait (1954) is probably the most technically accomplished film in "The World’s Worst Director’s" oeuvre – that is to say, it’s the Wood flick that most closely resembles a real movie. For this reason, it’s frequently ignored by fans of the infamous director – fans that demand the nonsensical dialogue, ridiculous continuity errors and laughable special effects that Eddie can usually be relied upon to provide. Nevertheless, there are enough of Wood’s trademark touches in Jail Bait for any fan to recognize who was behind the megaphone.
According to auteur theory, the best directors mould their actors into the perfect representatives of their own all-powerful directorial vision. Wood was too generous a soul and too accepting of other’s foibles to ever do this. His actors, who were frequently friends and loved ones, were given free rein to be themselves. Thus, the best Wood productions are kaleidoscopic bursts of contrasting acting styles. Witness the scene-stealing exuberance of Paul Marco, the hulking menace of Tor Johnson, the smug clarity of Dudley Manlove, the silent stiffness of Vampira, the patrician elegance of Bela Lugosi, the reliable professionalism of Lyle Talbot and the wooden awfulness of Dolores Fuller.
Only the latter two thespians appear in Jail Bait, so this film lacks the crazy texture of, say Plan 9 From Outer Space (1958). There’s still plenty of contrast in talent, though. Talbot is a fine actor, able to make Wood’s ridiculous dialogue sound like something a human being would actually say. (If you don’t think that’s high praise, you don’t know Wood’s scripts.) Fuller on the other hand, makes her lines seem even more nonsensical than they do on paper. When she isn’t speaking, she stares blankly into the distance, waiting for her next cue, even if the situation is meant to be unbearably tense.
Another lovable quirk of Wood’s films is that he never uses doors when he can use shower curtains. Plan 9 gave moviegoers their first-ever glimpse of a shower curtain-equipped airplane cockpit. In Jail Bait, a character is meant to open a closet, and discover a corpse, which falls out onto the floor. The fact that this closet door is actually a shower curtain makes the scene unbelievably surreal.
The music is absolutely awful, consisting of the wretched flamenco guitar-piano score from Ron Ormond’s infamous turkey Mesa of Lost Women (1952). Equally out of place is a blackface scene from a genuine minstrel show, taken from Ormond’s Yes Sir Mr. Bones (1951). Rhino video’s director’s cut of Jail Bait replaces the latter with vintage stripper footage. (My copy is the original version from Admit One Video, but I think I’d be happier with the strippers.)
In spite of itself, Jail Bait flirts with competence. Alex Gordon helped Wood with the script, so a few passages come across as genuinely noir rather than utterly ridiculous. ("What’s with him?" "Eh, he shot his first cop." "You’re joking." "Does he look like I’m joking?") The Alfred Hitchcock Presents-style twist ending is predictable, but satisfying. Still, it’s the closest thing to a film noir fiasco I’ve ever come across. Like all Wood productions though, it’s a very watchable fiasco and isn’t boring for a minute. |
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