The Devil's Sleep

This is the second film I've seen from director Merle W. Connell. The other one was Test Tube Babies which was a hilariously schlocky movie about artificial insemination. The Devil's Sleep is another 40's exploitation flick along similar lines. This one combines the drugsploitation angle personified by films such as Reefer Madness and Cocaine Fiends with the youth gone wild narrative of the likes of Delinquent Daughters and The Violent Years. Like most exploitation films from the time it's a lot more fun to watch that most boring poverty row flicks. I love these movies pretence at preaching against social evils while blatantly throwing as much sleaze at their audience as they could get away with. Obviously the films of the 40's were very tame but this one like most of its ilk manages to include scenes of semi-nudity. Always very welcome in these old flicks thank you very much. While the drug taking angle is covered by an unscrupulous health club manager pushing bennies onto vulnerable youths and women. The scenes in the health club are cheerfully sexist in that 1940's-political-correctness-hasn't-been-invented-yet-guv kind of a way. Also, the chief drug pusher is played by none other than the legendary anti-actor Timothy Farrell who is always a very welcome presence.

While this isn't as funny as either Reefer Madness or Test Tube Babies, it's still something of an entertaining time-capsule movie. It's entirely ludicrous of course. And its exploitation efforts are commendable – women seem to strip down as much as possible at every given opportunity – while it's heroically bad acting is a delight to see, with some characters clearly reading their lines off bits of paper. All-in-all, a good laugh.

"There is a terrible scourge running through the community in the form of pills be pushed to the youth through a local women's health club. A female judge, with the aid of a police detective, looks to crusade against this problem in the community and eliminate it. Unfortunately, the drug ring has some compromising photos of the judge's daughter they hope to use as an advantage against her," according to the DVD sleeve's synopsis. For producer George Weiss, Timothy Farrell's sleazy "Umberto Scalli" makes his debut.

This isn't a movie as much as it is a chance to for the producer to show off as many muscles and midriffs as he could manage to get away with. Bikinis and briefs abound. "Mr. America of 1948" George Eiferman appears as a women's exercise instructor. And, put your "headlights" on "high beam" for the skin scene highlight, when a towel-clad woman shows everything she can, before stepping into a steam bath. The movie ends with one of those preachy "messages", so you won't feel too bad about enjoying the flesh.

Top-billed Lita Grey (as "Judge" Rosalind Ballentine), one of Charlie Chaplin's wives, contributes little; her best line is, "Somehow all of this has a familiar smell." Harold Lloyd's wife, Mildred Davis (as Tessie Tallulah Tesse) makes an arguably embarrassing "talking pictures" debut; her best line, considering her 51-47-64 measurements, is "Ain't two Tessies enough?" But, hey, whoever hired Stan Freed (as Hal Holmes) to play a hopped-up Benzedrine dealer had a sense of humor, since he went to town as "Hoppity" (1941).

*** The Devil's Sleep (5/18/49) W. Merle Connell ~ Timothy Farrell, Hal Holmes, Lita Grey Chaplin

Unintentionally hilarious, The Devil's Sleep is almost as funny as Reefer Madness, another exploitation film about drugs made in 1936. This one was made in 1949 and there are more amateurs in this film than there are in the Olympic games.

Let's begin with the horrendous production values. Probably spent less than $100 on those. No lighting, sound or prop care. The direction is so bad it makes Wood movies seem professional. I really don't want to use the words actors or actresses, either, as that would be an insult to the profession at large.

Suffice it to say that the acting is so bad, I am sure no one read their lines in advance. Speaking of lines, there are a few good cracks in the film "The exercise I'm giving these fat dames won't reduce a fever" was pretty funny, and when the Judge says at a gathering "I'm glad this is over", truer words were never spoken. The fighting? Sequence looks like it was done for Pee Wee's Playhouse.

And the lead gangster? Onions Oregano was more convincing as a gangster in Soupy Sales than this turkey. None of these people were ever heard from again in film, or at best, were used when there was no one else available. See it for a laugh.

Our kids are in trouble, as Judge Lita Grey Chaplin explains, but it's not their fault. There are adults who take advantage of them, people like Timothy Farrell, who makes his money selling "goofies".

You know there are some issues with a movie when Timothy Farrell gives the best performance. Here, he's the owner of a workout gym, contemptuous of the middle-aged women (thirtyish, I'd guess) who are his overweight clientele. They look fine to me. Farrell plays it smarmy, and he's very good at it, as the guy who uses his gym as a front to push his bootleg prescription drugs; they'll take the weight off you in a flash, but don't use them if you have heart problems. Lita Grey is top-billed, which shows you how desperate for star power this production was. The compositions were suitable for girlie magazines, and the film's 'serious message' is delivered by a man playing a doctor, droning along.

Clearly an exploitation picture, this was the sort that distributor Screen Classics might have "four-walled": rent a theater, cover the town with pamphlets and keep all the receipts themselves.

The print of "The Devil's Sleep" available through Sinister Cinema is probably the the best in existence and it burps, skips, and tears all the way trough. No matter, "The Devil's Sleep" the first film in producer George Weiss's Umberto Scalli" trilogy, in an invincible classic, a virtuoso guttersnipe flemball of a film, and the most filthy minded vision ever committed to the screen.

Timothy Farrell's Umberto Scalli, the dark, pencil mustached keeper of the keys that stick together; makes his maiden voyage here, working as a pill pushing honcho of a hole in the wall fat farm for "society dames". In an entrance befitting one of the greats, Scalli looks over his clients and smirks to a typically unsavory side kick; "I gotta laugh, they're like trained elephants, give them a pill and send them on their way."

In what plays out like the A.C.L.U.'s ultimate nightmare, a crusading Lady Judge is working hand in hand with the cops to fight juvenile crime. Her problem is that Scalli; through an insanely elaborate practical joke, has a photo of the judge's daughter...NUDE. Alas, morality rears it's ugly head when the "Mr. America" Scalli hired to amuse the elephants turns goodie two shoes. I won't give away the ending, but suffice to say in the final scene a character we don't know ties things up from a camera angle too far away to see what he looks like. It's that kind of movie.

Some mere trivia: Weiss seemed to have a soft spot for Silent Movie people: the ex wives of Chaplin and Loyd both are given prominent parts, in the latter's case a horribly degrading one. Also, Jim (Robert's brother) Mitchum makes an early appearance. The only conventionally competent performances are by young unknows playing mixed up kids. "Racket Girl" fans beware: Scalli does no pimping in this film.

But again, no matter. What counts is that, not so very long ago, there were people who looked like the people in "The Devil's Sleep", and others who behaved something like the characters. Somehow individuals got together and made "The Devil's Sleep", and it played in small, dingy, urine smelling theaters in horrible neighborhoods, and some people watched it. Truly this was The Greatest Generation. Ten out of ten.