The Lonely Lady (1983)

There seems to be a bit of a mini trend starting to develop in these Worst Movies Ever pickings. After Mommie Dearest, a movie I absolutely did not care for but ended up being mostly ok if you completely ignore the assumed connection to it's literacy source material, we have yet another "Hollywood" movie industry biopic turned drama based on a literacy publication this week with The Lonely Lady. A 1983 movie loosely based on the novel of the same name by Harold Robbins about a screenwriter called Jerilee Randall, played by Pia Zadora, and her experiences with horrible men in Hollywood. Harold Robbins himself refereed to the movie as "crap." and Pia Zadora herself referred to the movie as "done very badly." so I'll be honest with you guys, I am not flush with confidence going into this one... Similarly like Mommie Dearest I have absolutely no interest in this one whatsoever which I guess, if anything, works in it's favour as I have no preconceptions... But uh yeah, from what I can gather this is altogether not a very good movie...

After a rolling credits sequence at an awards ceremony suspiciously like, but not named, the Oscars, we rewind in time and the movie starts with Jerilee Randall (Pia Zadora) winning her first award for writing in High School and promptly being cut off by the Head Teacher during her acceptance speech. At a party to celebrate later that evening, Jerilee is coerced into a car with the promise of meeting famous screenwriter Walter Thornton by Mr. Thornton's son, Walt Jr. (Kerry Shale). Whilst in the car, Walt Jr's friend; Joe Heron (Ray Liotta), whilst fooling around with his girl in the back reaches forward and grabs Jerilee's chest, sexually assaulting her, and later as Jerilee paces into the garden waiting for Mr. Thornton, Joe drags her into the swimming pool, beats her and sexually assaults her, knocking a hapless Walt. Jr to the ground when he rushes to try and help. It's only broken up when Mr. Thornton Senior (Lloyd Bochner) returns home. Later in the week, Walter Thornton visits Jerilee personally at home and when they talk writing together this upsets Jerilee's mum for... some reason... Walter extends the opportunity to Jerilee to meet her again and offers to read some of her work. The pair develop a friendship that eventually... well not blossoms... but develops into a romance despite the fact he is a good... 20, 30 years her senior. Her mother agrees and when Jerilee breaks the news to Veronica (Bibi Besch) she is naturally incredulous. They end up getting married (!) which leads to what I think is either very disappointing sex, or no sex at all for Miss Randall, I couldn't quite figure that part out. In any event Walter ends up publishing Jerilee's first work and by most accounts it appears to be received well? Jerilee is at least happy with it anyway? And when she expresses an interest in screenplays, Walter agrees to let her manage re-writes on his latest production however the pair clash when Jerilee re-writes one of Walter's scenes, which he doesn't agree on, and then goes with the re-write anyway and then takes all the credit! Walter reacts badly when Jerilee embarrasses him, by passive aggressively bringing it up at dinner in front of friends and reacts badly again when Jerilee tries to apologise. It appears they end up divorced because in the following scene Jerilee now lives alone in an apartment and is paid a visit by Guy Jackson (Anthony Holland - a man I recognise from something I've watched before but can't immediately remember...) who was the director at the aforementioned production that was the nail in the coffin of her marriage to Walter. Through Guy, Jerilee is introduced to George Ballantine (Jared Martin), a married actor, who ends up cheating on his wife with Jerilee and their *ahem* very steamy relationship quickly develops but for the most part Jerilee at least seems to be less naïve now. Walking out of a meeting with an agent when it's quite clear he basically wanted her to sleep with him as part of the deal. Unfortunately though Jerilee struggles to find representation, and George Ballantine stops visiting and returning her phone calls. When she goes to visit him on set and confesses that she thinks she might be pregnant, George reacts selfishly and essentially wants nothing to do with her. Jerilee decides to go ahead with an abortion and has to fall back on her mother for support, who naturally reacts disappovingly with Jerilee's behaviour but remains on the scene to support Jerilee. At the same damn resaturant that seemingly everybody in town goes to eat at... Jerilee takes her mom for dinner to celebrate her birthday. After embarrassingly bumping into George Ballantine, dining there with his wife, Jerilee is segwayed into a meeting with Vincent DaCosta (Joseph Cali), a man she recognises from his association with Walter. After offering to review her work for his next publication, Jerilee visits Vincent at his... slightly seedy? club. When Vincent reveals he can't stump up a purchase of her screenplay for a good 6 or 12 months, Jerilee is on the verge of leaving when Vincent suggests she could work at his club (!) to make ends meet Jerilee accepts (!!) and ends up working for Vincent as a waitress. After some horse racing on the beach (?) it appears a friendship is developing between the pair, but when Vincent spots Jerilee talking to Guy Jackson in the club he reacts jealously, demanding that Jerilee writes for him and not anyone else. To her credit Jerilee sticks up for herself, saying she writes only for herself before storming out. In a moment of weakness, or perhaps desperation Jerilee ends up apologising to Vincent which leads to them developing a romance (??) with Vincent eventually trying to force drugs on Jerilee whilst they're having sex. For some reason she decides to stay with Vincent after this... and is eventually introduced to Gino Paoluzzi (Gianni Rizzo) the Italian Movie Director Vincent promised would end up publishing her screenplay. She is convinced by Mr. Paoluzzi's female companion to go back to their hotel room to discuss "the script" but the pair instead have other ideas about what they want to do with Jerilee... and believing that perhaps it's the only way to finally get a deal, Jerilee goes through with it, allowing herself to be undressed. It transpires though that Mr. Paoluzzi had no interest in her script whatsoever and when Jerilee returns back to the club she catches Vincent naked with 2 of the other waitresses. Jerilee finally hits her breaking point, snatching the script from Vincent, and tearing it to pieces back in her apartment before trashing the place in a frenzied rage. Jerilee ends up getting sectioned (!) suffering with paranoia and delusions and it's here we learn that Walter Thornton is back on the scene, paying for her medical care. Both Walter and Guy visit Jerilee at the Sanitorium but it's clear she's a total mess. She eventually starts to improve after some inspiring words from Guy, and with his support eventually develops to the extent that she can start writing again. After finishing a screenplay based loosely on her own experiences, Guy takes it to an agent but they have to first coerce Jerilee into letting George Ballantine star in the picture which, after some tough words Jerilee eventually agrees to. She goes to meet the producer; Tom Castel (Mickey Knox) but at the meeting it appears again that she is expected to have sex with Mr. Castel's wife if she wants to move forward with producing the movie... she presumably goes through with it because we are now back at the beginning of the movie and at the awards ceremony which is definitely not the Oscars. At the Ceremony, Jerilee is awarded Best Screenplay for her movie, beating competition from some of her former husbands / lovers, and as her acceptance speech starts platonically enough, Jerilee goes on to denounce the Hollywood culture remarking "I don't suppose I'm the only one who's had to fuck her way to the top." before refusing to accept the award and walking out and off into the night.

Haha don't hate me... but I err... thought this was alright! I don't know. Maybe I'm just easy to please but err no, I thought this was ok? It was so severely lacking a cutting edge and it did have a horrible stench of amateurism about it but I thought Jerilee Randall as a character was likeable and well portrayed by Pia Zadora and I thought storyline-wise, although quite predictable, it was halfway decent. I've certainly watched worsely performed and structured movies... but even though I think if I was fresh to this I still would have thought this was ok. Not without it's pitfalls which we will explore but yeah, this was perfectly serviceable.

Honourable mention to Anthony Holland who from what I can tell was massively underappreciated based on his performance in this... but ok so let's break this down. Pitfall Number 1: set design. I wasn't keeping score, but there are maybe 5, or 6 unique locations this whole thing is filmed in? Everybody seemingly eats at this same one restaurant in town. Maybe it's really good? Maybe it's just where all the movie industry people go? But uh yeah, a good 4 or 5 scenes shot in the same restaurant was starting to give me 'The Room' vibes. And once I'd noticed it, I started looking for it in other parts of the movie and I couldn't stop myself. It wasn't a major flaw granted, but it became noticeable and broke my concentration a little bit.

Pitfall Number 2: Dialogue and character portrayal in this movie is kept very basic. I wouldn't say quite to the extent that the characters become parodies of what they are portraying but each male character has a very distinct, very defined personality that they are cast to portray and they very rarely step outside development anywhere beyond that. I will commend that as the movie progresses Jerilee's character develops and she becomes less naïve, more savvy and more self respecting, but other supporting characters exist solely to portray a particular personality trait, mostly negative ones, and very little beyond that.

Pitfall Number 3: the music is god awful. Terrible soppy, crappy 80's stuff that is just trash. I hated every song in this thing they were all just so terrible. Thankfully not a big part of the movie and therefore not immensely damaging but every one was just painful to experience. Just the lowest of low tier music accompaniment with zero effort put in to match it to what was being portrayed on screen.

Pitfall Number 4: do you like sex in movies? And boobies? I sure hope so because there is definitely enough of it in this one. I think, maybe too much. They got a bit carried away with the nudity in my opinion and I think in part it is to show that dark, seedy underside of the movie industry, but some of the sex scenes could have been toned down a bit and it felt a bit exploitative to be honest. There's an audience for that kind of thing, and I dunno, I just don't always want it in my movies. And I think this movie could have been taken far more seriously without it.

That out of the way, for the large part I mostly enjoyed the rest of this. I very quickly warmed to Pia Zadora and I thought she did a good job here, going through quite a range of difficult emotions and doing a good job as the innocent, naïve girl who ends up corrupted and used by the movie industry. Her character was likeable and easy to feel sympathy for, even if she didn't help herself with some of the decisions she made. In any event I thought she was well portrayed and it's almost a shame that the performance was wasted on a movie like this that obviously did her no favours.

And I thought storyline-wise that although it's very basic in it's premise: A demonstration of one woman's struggle to make it as a writer in a male dominated movie industry. And very basic in it's execution: look how badly she is being used and abused by the men in this industry. It wasn't necessarily unenjoyable. I consider myself quite modern, quite progressive, and sympathetic to the fact that for years and years women have had to exist beneath a patriarchy (don't tell me it's not true because it is. Watch any movie from the 50's through to the 80's and tell me I'm wrong...) so perhaps my opinion is different to somebody who maybe wouldn't share my views, perhaps that's why it was so poorly received in 1983... but I digress... I thought it was enjoyable enough in portraying the struggles that Jerilee has to endure and how she finally gets her big break but at what cost. It was kind of almost a moral tale if it hadn't overthought it and grandiosed it just a little bit too much to comprehend.

So uhh yeah.... this was alright. Definitely seen worse. Liked Pia Zadora as an actress and I'd like to watch more of her movies actually. I saw her in Voyage of the Rock Aliens and she was decent in that. I got a bit turned off by all the sex and the nudity (ironically... if you knew me in real life you'd find that hilarious) because I felt like the movie didn't need it and it bordered on exploiting how attractive Pia Zadora is / was. But in terms of an enjoyable if not slightly half soaked 1 hour 30 odd movie, this was ok. A very strong almost 3; 2 out of 5.