The Big Cube

Lana Turner plays Adriana, a stage actress who retires to marry wealthy widower financier Charles (Dan O'Herlihy). Charles has an adult daughter Lisa (Karin Mossberg) who resents this and takes up with the hippie types. One of those, med student Johnny (George Chakiris), finds out that Lisa is rich, and takes Lisa for his girlfriend.

Then Daddy dies, leaving Adriana as executor of the will. There's a clause about her having control over disbursement of the estate and her approval of any husband for Lisa (at least before she turns 25), and when Adriana doesn't approve of Lisa and Johnny getting married, Johnny comes up with a devious plan to drive Adriana crazy by spiking her sleeping pills with LSD! The basic plot, that of a parent not approving of a child's marriage, and the two young lovers deciding to do something about it, isn't a bad one. With the right script, as in Pretty Poison, it can be quite good.

Unfortunately, The Big Cube doesn't have the right script. And it certainly doesn't have the right acting. Mossberg is wooden; O'Herlihy is wasted in a bit part; Adriana's playwright Lansdale (Richard Egan) plays the guy who just knows he knows more than all of the doctors; and then there's Lana, who has to play bad acid trip scenes. Oh my.

There are also the other hippies, and the Travilla-designed gowns Lana has to wear. Parts of the movie wind up in "so bad it's good" territory, but too much of it winds up in the realm of just being tedious.

Lana Turner was four years off the big screen when she did The Big Cube. Unlike some of her other contemporaries from the Hollywood Studio years she never went the horror route. But The Big Cube was enough of a psychedelic horror show as it is.

Lana plays acclaimed stage actress and second trophy wife of billionaire Dan O'Herlihy. His daughter Karin Mossberg is jealous of her stepmother especially after O'Herlihy is killed in a boating accident and his will gives Turner control of the fortune until Mossberg reaches the age of 25 and she can only marry someone Lana gives consent to.

That consent will not be given to medical student George Chakiris and he works Iago like on Mossberg. Chakiris supports himself selling LSD and he acts as travel agent to give Turner a trip to the psychedelic loony bin.

I can't believe Turner who was still drop dead gorgeous in 1969 couldn't find a better vehicle than this piece of trash. Take out the LSD and it's really just a watered down version of some of the soap operas Turner did in her latter years.

Richard Egan is here to and he has little to do but stand around and catch Turner on the rebound from the psych ward. He's a playwright and the truth is exposed with a gambit from Hamlet.

But the Bard would not have been happy seeing his idea wind up in this freak show.

So many of the great film actresses from the Golden Age were driven hard by their own ambitions and the maintenance of stardom: they seemed unable to gracefully leave the screen and their considerable achievements, and would rather be horrors than has-beens. Joan Crawford's last film was the dreadful Trog, Bette Davis appeared as the Wicked Stepmother, and even Mae West, at age 85, creeped her fans out in the tedious Sextette. I thought of Mae West especially, and her attempt to be sexy while watching Lana Turner negotiate her way in the exploitation film The Big Cube.

If you want to understand how mainstream America envisioned the 1960's counterculture and all that it implied--psychedelic colors, heavy drugs and trippy music--the first 30 minutes of this nutty camp classic have it right: a visit to a San Francisco nightclub is a complete hoot, full of coeds dropping sugar cubes (LSD) into their beer, a freak out in the center of the dance floor so bad the police arrive (rather quickly, as if they had been waiting offstage) to drag the poor victim to rehab--and even, however briefly, a topless dancer!

But to return to Lana Turner, trapped in a bad situation when her husband drowns unexpectedly and she's left with an avaricious stepdaughter whose malicious boyfriend (George Chakiris, who should have fired his agent for casting him in this turkey) decides the two of them should drug mama and drive her slowly mad; Lana hasn't a clue why she's having psychedelic hallucinations, and one hopes she wasn't secretly hoping this was her final chance for an Oscar as she screams and wails and carries on like Godzilla on a bender.

This wild immersion in off-the-wall exploitation is entertaining fun for the first half, and then gets bogged down in the melodrama; Lana's co-star, the young Karen Mossberg, competes with her mother for worst blonde wig, but her wooden acting style and bizarre accent makes her hard to understand, and she never made another film; watch instead for her redheaded BFF, played by Pamela Rodgers, whose perky personality enlivens the screen with a totally zany sex kitten. TV star Richard Egan maintains a stoic attitude throughout the film, a steady if stolid presence.

This is a fun romp "of a kind," and succeeds at that level. For Lana fans, it's probably fairly horrifying to see the persuasive actress of the excellent Bad and The Beautiful and The Postman Always Rings Twice stuck in such a turkey, but in spite of fairly fuzzed-out lenses and a slightly anorexic appearance, the lady does her best and soldiers on.

My father in-law was channel surfing and accidentally found this movie playing on TV last night. I heard some of the lines and the weird 60's style music from another room and thought what the heck they were watching. It intrigued me enough to walk over to see what it was and my in-laws commented that it looked like a 'B' movie. At a glance, I thought the acting was really bad. But then I took a closer look at one of the actors and realized that it was Lana Turner! I couldn't believe my eyes. I noticed immediately how much older she looked. I love how every time the camera was on her face she looked mysteriously out of focus. Kind of like what they did with Sybil Shepard in Moonlighting. The lines were really awful and painful to hear but we all found ourselves compelled to keep watching it. Even my husband woke up from a snooze on the couch and started watching it. The daughter, Lisa sounded out of place with some French-like accent. The special psychedelic effects were really bad. I felt almost embarrassed for Ms Turner. I was also surprised there was nudity in this film.

She shouldn't have done this movie. She looked really out of place as if she was still playing one of her roles in her older movies like Imitation of Life. Don't get me wrong, I loved Imitation of Life. That was a really wonderful movie. She was really great in it and her acting was right for that time. But this movie was not right for her type of acting. It looked really out of place.

Also, the guy who played Johnny looked really familiar until I realized that it was 'Bernardo' from West Side Story! He seemed to play this sleazy character all too well.

I do have to say that it was entertaining. But if you're a real big fan of Lana Turner, save yourself the agony if you want to remember her as she was in her heyday. Cheers!

Bad movie lovers rejoice. Craptastic mess from that unfortunate time period when the studios were trying to connect with a youth audience that just wasn't there. Poor Lana, looking dreadfully gaunt, and her terrible two tone hair are stuck in this tripe with nowhere to hide. Her costarring with Dan O'Herlihy reminds the viewer that they were in Imitation of Life together and makes you wonder why you're not watching that instead! The rest of the acting is of the seriously wooden variety and the direction inept. Trash but if you are in the mood for something to make fun of or a Lana completist than give it a chance but one view will be more than enough.