The Lonely Lady

When I initially saw this movie in the '80s I thought it was so bad, I couldn't watch it all the way through. Subsequent viewings of it on TV were the same. I never really saw the whole movie in it's entirety. I seemed to always come in at the same parts, either the garden hose scene or the psychedelic/Andy Warholish nervous breakdown scene. It was never shown on commercial television here in Toronto, it always seemed to be played on the premium movie channels (First Choice/Superchannel,later to be TMN/Moviepix) I guess they received this movie for really cheap from the distributor. Watching it recently in it's entirety was a real eye-opener! I don't know if it's the nostalgia factor, or just the fact that I am older and going senile, but I thought that this movie was "so bad, that it was so good" The bad acting, and the awful characters that are very unlikable would make most people turn off this movie. For me I went out and bought the video! I don't blame Pia Zadora's character for going off the deep-end at her typewriter. It just seemed most of the characters were really vile-I take it that this was to show how ruthless Hollywood can be...what a joke! If you want to see a comedy about how a movie should not be made, check out "The Lonely Lady"-it's a great waste of time!!

Immediately after renting and watching this movie several years ago, a friend and I decided that it defined the absolute zero on the movie scale. There was nothing about the movie that could have been done worse than it was. To this day we still rate movies, even very bad ones, by how much better than "The Lonely Lady" they are.

A long time ago I saw an interview with Eleanor Perry, who wrote the screenplays for, among other things, "Last Summer" and "Diary of a Mad Housewife," and she related that she had been asked to write a screenplay for the Harold Robbins' book "The Lonely Lady." She said that she sent in a treatment and it was rejected because they didn't think she understood the difficulties of a female screenwriter in Hollywood. She then said "I think they got someone else to write it." The interview was filmed before the movie was released. She died in 1981, and I bet the first thing she did on arrival in heaven was personally thank God for saving her from involvement in the result.

Don't ask me why but I saw this turkey ON OPENING DAY at the Picwood Theater (r.i.p.) in West L.A. when it came out. The auditorium was packed, full of bad-movie patrons, all expecting the worst. And the worst they got! Barely five minutes went by before bales of hysterical laughter were forced out of each and every audience member. Even my feminist girlfriend at the time, (who came, expecting to see a serious film about a struggling female screenwriter) had to bust up a few times. I don't know what the producer/director were thinking. It's hard to determine whether or not this meant to be awful. Regardless, this gets my highest recommendation -- invite about ten friends over with a pony keg -- you won't be disappointed!!!!

As soon as you hear the theme song for this movie, sung by Larry Graham, you know you're in for a trashfest. The tune is very reminiscent of 60's camp-trash movie themes for "Where Love Has Gone" (sung by Jack Jones) & "Harlow" (sung by Bobby Vinton) among others. It gives this movie a very dated feel, even in 1983. What exactly was up with that hair-don't & hideous dress they gave the "teenage" Pia to wear?? She looked like a disheveled Pippy Longstocking. It's amazing what they crammed into one hour & 32 minutes: Rape with hose nozzle, dysfunctional mother, May/December romance, impotence (Pia couldn't doodle with her older hubby's dead noodle), nudity, lesbianism, abortion, bad 80's fashions, overwrought breakdown scene followed by nut house, rags-to-riches clichés (heroine finally writes an "award" winning screenplay), etc. etc. etc. Pia Zadora (a better singer than actress) did the best she could with this script. The amazing thing about this movie is that it's made by people who are supposed to know what they're talking about firsthand. Watch this movie if you like trashy stories about show biz.

I haven't been able to decide if this movie is so bad it's good, or, to quote Enid Coleslaw, "so bad it's gone past good and back to bad again." No matter, it forced me look much the same way a pile of weird coloured vomit might, and it offers up a number of scenes that you won't forget even if you want to. There's a sneering young Ray Liotta telling a pigtailed Pia that her creative writing trophy looks like a penis. A bit later, there's Ray again, molesting Pia, not with the appropriately shaped trophy but a garden hose. There's a firm chinned Pia telling her domineering Mom that she wants to go to bed with Ray's geezer father, Walter. There's the actress in the graveyard scene yowling the best line ever written by Pia or anyone else: "WWWWHHHYYYYYYY!" There's that garden hose again, as Walter waves it Pia's face and roars "Is this more to your liking!?" There's Pia and her date so turned on by closeups of each other masticating salad that they start tearing each other's clothes off. There's Pia showering but forgetting to remove her dress. Perhaps best of all, there's Pia's typewriter, but instead of keys there are the miniature talking heads of those who have tormented her the most (afterwards, I was afraid to open my laptop). And finally there's Pia at "The Awards" exposing Hollywood for the cesspool it is, spitting out the second best line ever, "I guess I'm not the only one who has ever had to **** her way to the top." I see I have already spent more time commenting on "The Lonely Lady" than I have on far better pictures, so I'll quit. Be forewarned, though, that once you start watching you probably won't be able to take your eyes off the screen until two hours of your life have vanished forever.