Lana Turner had a true Hollywood life and career- the kind we simply don't get anymore. From her iconic femme fatale portrait in "The Postman Always Rings Twice" to the Oscar night knife murder of her gangster boyfriend Johnny Stompanato by her daughter- an incident cloaked in mystery- Turner's story is rich in the kind of showbiz gothic that makes for a great biography. By 1969, though, the Hollywood Turner embodied had become outdated and out of touch. Released mere months before the summer that gave us both "Easy Rider" and the Manson murder's, "The Big Cube" is a hippy scare thriller aimed at confused parent's of the late 60's.
Renowned actress Adriana Roman (Lana Turner) is giving up her life on the stage to marry Charles Winthrop (Dan O'Herlihy). Winthrop's daughter Lisa (Karin Mossberg) is jealous of Adriana, fearing she'll take her father's attention away from her. Mossberg, with her thick accent, is a strange bit of casting. This is explained away by a reference to her having been schooled in Switzerland. She must have lived over there for her entire life to have an accent of that magnitude.
While the newlywed's are on a sailing honeymoon, Lisa is hanging out with her long hair friends, grooving to the heavy sound's of a band fronted by a guy who looks a bit like Phil Lynott. Lisa makes the acquaintance of Johnny Allen, the acid cooking, perfectly coiffed, cleft chinned med student, played by with smug charm by George Chakiris. The night comes to an end with a full on acid freakout when one of Johnny's crew doses a guy who crossed him.
Later, Charles blows his lid when Adriana and he return home to find a love-in strip tease occurring at their house, courtesy of Lisa's walking sixties cliche friend, Bibi (Pamela Rodgers). O'Herlihy brings his usual grinning gravitas to his role here. He's one of those guy's who apparently was always 60 years old, looking very much the same here as he would fifteen plus years later in film's like "Halloween III" and "Robocop".
With no context, we are given a cool, trippy sequence of Adriana being carried down a beach on a stretcher, with intermittent flashes to her and Charles enduring a storm at sea. It's an intentionally disorienting way to engage the audience in one of the picture's major plot points. The dark, evocative score by Val Johns is wonderful here and throughout the entire film. Not bad for a composer whose major claim to fame is a cover of the "Theme from Ben Casey".
Having been lost at sea, Charles' fortune falls to Adriana. Lisa receives nothing until such time as she is wed, with the caveat that Adriana must approve the nuptials. After Adriana will not give her blessing to marriage between Johnny and Lisa, Johnny manipulates Lisa into thinking Adriana married her father only to get at his money. As revenge, they lace Adriana's medication with LSD. The acid dosing co-conspirator's plan works and Adriana is placed in a mental hospital. Charles' money is given to Lisa after Adriana is ruled mentally unfit. "Maybe there's no perfect murder, but I think we've figured a perfect freak out.", Johnny gloats.
Tito Davison directs the dark acid nightmare sequence's with a sense of lysergic unease; Johns' score helps to immerse the audience in Adriana's altered state. Oddly, this seems to be a Mexican production behind the camera. The psychedelic part's of this picture are mod, gel lit dynamo's and I'd be interested in seeing more of Davison's work based solely on their merit.
Lisa marries Johnny in a wild wedding complete with biker's and hippy wedding cake topper's. At the end of the night, he kisses the far out floozy Bibi right in front of her. After kicking him out ("You are feelthy, disgusting!"), Lisa must decide what to do about the sordid, squalorous situation she has created. The ending involving an attempt to restore Adriana's mental health by having her enact a play of her life- written by her chain smoking, Brylcremed playwright ex, Frederick (Richard Egan)- is the pop psychology cherry on top of this disposable late sixties sundae.
"The Big Cube" with it's juxtaposition of druggy darkness and teary eyed, string swelling melodrama, is the bastard child of Douglas Sirk and Roger Corman; an example of square cinema adopting the visual language of the same counter culture it warns against. To her credit, Turner manages to remain classy and elegant, despite the overwhelming silliness of the material. It's a film meant to confirm every Nixonite's suspicion's about the young folk. Watch it alongside "Skidoo" and have yourself an old Hollywood takes acid double feature.
