Samantha Ashley (the pneumatic Mamie Van Doren), the mistress of ruthless Buddy Barker (Eric Mason), campaign manager for "The Candidate", is hauled before a Senate Sub-Committee hearing and her explosive revelations (told in flashback) rock everyone's world...
The NY Times called THE CANDIDATE a "super-sleazy political drama" and the "ripped from the headlines" fictionalization of Attorney General Robert Kennedy's investigation into Capitol Hill wheeler dealer Bobby Baker really lives up to that psychotronic hype. Under Barker's svengali-like influence, Mamie goes from Miami Beach party planner to swinging Washington "hostess" who "introduces" a down-on-her-luck Brit (the equally pneumatic June Wilkinson) to Barker's boss, a conservative Republican senatorial candidate from Massachusetts (Ted Knight) running on a "family values" platform. The straight-laced pol falls head over heels in love with the bad girl from Blighty and he cries like a baby when he can't get it up. It's all downhill from there, naturally, and the bitter end comes when the candidate suffers a fatal heart attack as he and the Committee are treated to a Barker-produced stag film ("Steam Heat") starring June and a midget plumber.
Oddly enough, the candidate isn't the star of the show here -Buddy Barker is- and he's the same kind of sh!t-heel George Peppard was in THE CARPETBAGGERS which was made the same year. It's Barker's activities as a pornographer and pimp (the real life Bobby Baker was alleged to have procured women for President Kennedy) that concern the Sub-Committee and he also cheats on Mamie with an inexperienced "political groupie" who he gets pregnant at an orgy one night. He pays for the kid's abortion but that only makes things worse because she's raped by the doctor during the procedure and goes insane. Although she can't speak, she's wheeled in to testify (!) and upon seeing Barker, she leaps out of her wheelchair to collapse in his arms. Just when you think it can't get any more off-the-wall, it does and the melodramatic climax comes in a deserted courtroom lit only by lightning from a raging thunderstorm outside with no happy ending for anyone involved.
In 2008, Barry Lowe's "Atomic Blonde: The Films Of Mamie Van Doren" called this film "lost" and thank God it's now "found" because I've never seen anything quite like it for 1964 ...or any other year for that matter. And what's really crazy is the fact that cinematographer Stanley "The Magnificent Ambersons" Cortez gives this silly slab of sleaze a classy, professional look. June's a marginally better actress than Miss Mamie but it's gravel-voiced B-movie bad girl Robin Raymond as their Hedda Hopper-esque attorney (with flamboyant chapeaus and a cigarette holder) who takes top honors in that dubious department. It's a weird mixture of exploitation and innocence from a time when a girl in trouble was ruined if the man didn't marry her and as jaw-dropping as some of the sexploits were, the "orgy" where Barker gets the girl pregnant consists of everyone doing the twist in Halloween masks.
Back in those "Happy Daze", publicized political sex scandals weren't as common as they are today and when they did occur, they blew big (like Britain's Profumo affair) but although they've lost their power to shock over time, THE CANDIDATE seems as topical now as it was then. Like the thematically-similar THE CARPETBAGGERS, there's supposed to be a European version with nudity and although it was filmed at the Samuel Goldwyn Studios in Hollywood far from Poverty Row, I'm not sure where something this "adult" was exhibited. Grind houses, most likely -but then again, the film was reviewed in the NY Times so go figure. And what I wouldn't give to see the Euro cut (sigh). 11/10!
The NY Times called THE CANDIDATE a "super-sleazy political drama" and the "ripped from the headlines" fictionalization of Attorney General Robert Kennedy's investigation into Capitol Hill wheeler dealer Bobby Baker really lives up to that psychotronic hype. Under Barker's svengali-like influence, Mamie goes from Miami Beach party planner to swinging Washington "hostess" who "introduces" a down-on-her-luck Brit (the equally pneumatic June Wilkinson) to Barker's boss, a conservative Republican senatorial candidate from Massachusetts (Ted Knight) running on a "family values" platform. The straight-laced pol falls head over heels in love with the bad girl from Blighty and he cries like a baby when he can't get it up. It's all downhill from there, naturally, and the bitter end comes when the candidate suffers a fatal heart attack as he and the Committee are treated to a Barker-produced stag film ("Steam Heat") starring June and a midget plumber.
Oddly enough, the candidate isn't the star of the show here -Buddy Barker is- and he's the same kind of sh!t-heel George Peppard was in THE CARPETBAGGERS which was made the same year. It's Barker's activities as a pornographer and pimp (the real life Bobby Baker was alleged to have procured women for President Kennedy) that concern the Sub-Committee and he also cheats on Mamie with an inexperienced "political groupie" who he gets pregnant at an orgy one night. He pays for the kid's abortion but that only makes things worse because she's raped by the doctor during the procedure and goes insane. Although she can't speak, she's wheeled in to testify (!) and upon seeing Barker, she leaps out of her wheelchair to collapse in his arms. Just when you think it can't get any more off-the-wall, it does and the melodramatic climax comes in a deserted courtroom lit only by lightning from a raging thunderstorm outside with no happy ending for anyone involved.
In 2008, Barry Lowe's "Atomic Blonde: The Films Of Mamie Van Doren" called this film "lost" and thank God it's now "found" because I've never seen anything quite like it for 1964 ...or any other year for that matter. And what's really crazy is the fact that cinematographer Stanley "The Magnificent Ambersons" Cortez gives this silly slab of sleaze a classy, professional look. June's a marginally better actress than Miss Mamie but it's gravel-voiced B-movie bad girl Robin Raymond as their Hedda Hopper-esque attorney (with flamboyant chapeaus and a cigarette holder) who takes top honors in that dubious department. It's a weird mixture of exploitation and innocence from a time when a girl in trouble was ruined if the man didn't marry her and as jaw-dropping as some of the sexploits were, the "orgy" where Barker gets the girl pregnant consists of everyone doing the twist in Halloween masks.
Back in those "Happy Daze", publicized political sex scandals weren't as common as they are today and when they did occur, they blew big (like Britain's Profumo affair) but although they've lost their power to shock over time, THE CANDIDATE seems as topical now as it was then. Like the thematically-similar THE CARPETBAGGERS, there's supposed to be a European version with nudity and although it was filmed at the Samuel Goldwyn Studios in Hollywood far from Poverty Row, I'm not sure where something this "adult" was exhibited. Grind houses, most likely -but then again, the film was reviewed in the NY Times so go figure. And what I wouldn't give to see the Euro cut (sigh). 11/10!
