NOT Available on DVD: Andy Warhol’s ‘BAD’

Obnoxious drag queens, sleepy hustlers, washed-up starlets, effeminate vampires, and sickly junkies were among the miscreants and lowlifes that inhabited a series of films made in the 60’s and 70’s under the banner of the Andy Warhol “Factory” label. Though the eccentric artist himself had virtually no creative input, ANDY WARHOL’S FLESH (1968), ANDY WARHOL’S TRASH (1970), and ANDY WARHOL’S HEAT (1972) though low-budget and mostly improvised, were milestones in underground independent cinema. The final film made under the Warhol banner was 1977’s ANDY WARHOL’S BAD, one of the most shocking black comedies of the 1970’s. ANDY WARHOL’S BAD differs from the earlier Warhol films because of its higher production values (a 1.5 million dollar budget) and studio-friendly casting, but retains its sense of underground cred thanks to a demented script by Pat Hackett and George Abagnalo that breaks many taboos of the time to create a hilarious deadpan satire. It’s a much more technically polished film than the earlier Warhol efforts with a stronger narrative and situations that seem inspired by the works of John Waters who, at the time was pushing the boundaries of bad taste even further than the Warhol gang had.

Greedy and crass middle-aged Queens housewife, Hazel Aiken (Carroll Baker), runs a electrolysis parlor (salons that specialize in removing facial hair from women) from the kitchen of her home and, as a side business runs an assassination-for-hire ring using mostly young female killers. Hazel hires a male drifter named L.T. (Perry King) to kill the autistic son of a woman who’s ashamed to have such an offspring and thinks the boy’s death might cure her husband’s drinking problem. The tyrannical Hazel lives with her sick mother (Mary Boylan), feckless husband (Gordon Oas-Heim), and half-witted daughter-in-law Mary (Susan Tyrrell) and her baby–she’s the abandoned wife of Hazel’s lowlife son. Hazel rents out rooms in her home to her female assassins and L.T., who’s a pill-popping sleazeball as heartless as the women killers and is willing to smother the helpless child to earn $5,000 for himself and another $5,000 for Hazel. Meanwhile, two deranged sisters are contracted through Hazel by an obese, angry woman named Estelle (Brigid Berlin) to kill a neighbor’s dog because the dog’s owner (Lawrence Tierney) called her a “Fat Bitch”. They also burn down a movie theater, killing several innocents, because they’re annoyed that the film they’re seeing is in Spanish. A man who lost his arm when an illegal alien pushed him onto the subway track hires a hit lady to get similar revenge and a corrupt black detective (Charles McGregor) shakes down Hazel for protection money and forces her to give up one of her girls so he can make an arrest.

The world of ANDY WARHOL’S BAD is populated by nothing but grotesque sociopaths. The only one with any sense of morality is L.T. and that’s only revealed when he confronts his young victim at the film’s conclusion. The murders committed by Hazel’s assassins fit so easily into New York City’s 1977 crime statistics that they go unnoticed, making the jaded point that we all live in a diseased world. When not killing people, the characters are constantly committing petty acts of cruelty or destruction just to be mean, but the nastiest by far is Hazel Aiken. The role of Hazel was originally offered to Shelly Winters and seems tailor-made for her (I guess the two-time Oscar winner was too busy making more prestigious films like TENTACLES). I think ANDY WARHOL’S BAD would have greater cult status had Winters accepted the part, but Carroll Baker was an inspired second choice. Best known for her Oscar-nominated title role in BABY DOLL in 1956, ANDY WARHOL’S BAD was Baker’s return to American movies after a ten-year self-imposed exile from Hollywood. She had been working in Europe starring in a string of odd Euro-trash horror/sex films (PARANOIA, BABA YAGA, THE SWEET BODY OF DEBORAH) and she tackles the role of Hazel with bitter gusto and great warped humor. She spends much of her screen time smoking and on the phone making appointments for removing facial hair and arranging murders and she makes these scenes quite funny with her annoyed, seen-it-all delivery. Hazel does horribly rude things like putting broken glass on a floor where she knows someone’s about to stand and telling the blind newsvendor she gave him a five dollar bill when she really gave him a one before getting her own absurd comeuppance. The part of L.T. was written for Warhol superstar Joe Dallesandro who had starred in TRASH, FLESH, and HEAT as well as ANDY WARHOL’S FRANKENSTEIN and ANDY WARHOL’S DRACULA (both directed by Paul Morrisey in 1974). Perry King (who I’ll always remember as the guy who made MANDIGO soup) is good but Dallesandro would have bridged ANDY WARHOL’S BAD with the earlier Warhol films and his surly presence is missed here. Susan Tyrell is memorable as the pathetic, put-upon Mary. Tyrell was a eccentric presence in 70’s and 80’s cult cinema and co-starred in many interesting films (and even scored an Oscar nom for John Huston’s FAT CITY in 1973) including FORBIDDEN ZONE (1982), BUTCHER BAKER NIGHTMARE MAKER (1983), and Paul Verhoeven’s FLESH + BLOOD (1985) before John Waters cast her as Johnny Depp’s grandma in CRY BABY (1990). Estelle is played by Brigid Berlin and her personal story made for a fascinating documentary in 2000 (PIE IN THE SKY: THE BRIGID BERLIN STORY). Berlin was the delinquent daughter of wealthy socialites and her father Richard ran the Hearst media empire and served in the Eisenhower administration. Brigid ran away from home as a teen, hooked up with the Warhol gang and used her wealth and connections to become their main drug supplier. John Waters claims the overweight Berlin was “always my favorite Warhol star” and her rancorous war with tough-guy Lawrence Tierney (RESERVOIR DOGS) in ANDY WARHOL’S BAD is very amusing. Jed Johnson’s direction may seem pedestrian on the surface but he admirably resists the temptation to go broad with the humor (the actors don’t scream their lines like in the Waters films) and keeps things straight-faced and low-key. Johnson would never direct again and was killed along with 230 others aboard TWA Flight 800 when it exploded over New York City in July of 1996.

ANDY WARHOL’S BAD’s frequent moments of graphic violence almost always have comic overtones. In the scene that everyone who’s seen it remembers, a woman grows impatient waiting for Hazel’s hit squad to show up and kill her baby so she drops the newborn from the window of her hi-rise. On the sidewalk below, a fat woman holding her child’s hand sees the bloody splattered infant and growls at her kid “That’s what’s going to happen to you if you don’t behave!” That moment was way ahead its time and had me rolling in the aisle when I saw ANDY WARHOL’S BAD at the Tivoli in 1980 but it’s really not that shocking today. Scenes like that probably turned off delicate moviegoers in 1977, but the film offered plenty to like for adventurous film fans and is considered a cult classic. ANDY WARHOL’S BAD was released theatrically by Roger Corman’s New World Pictures in 1977. It had a VHS release in the mid-80’s on the Embassy Home Entertainment label and Image Entertainment offered it on laser disc. Many of the Warhol factory films, including HEAT, TRASH, and FLESH, are available for home viewing but ANDY WARHOL’S BAD is one that is NOT available on DVD.