St Valentine's Day display: The Violence
Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)
It's Saturday 14 February 1900 and a party of schoolgirls from Appleyard College picnic at the caverns of Hanging Rock, near Mt Macedon in the State of Victoria. During the afternoon several members of the party disappear without trace Based on the novel by Joan Lindsay, the film was released in Australia in 1975 to critical and popular acclaim, and also commercial success.
"The tragedy had its beginnings on St Valentine's Day. Traditionally it's the day of the pairing of birds. And from the moment the day begins, the story is about the failure of birds to pair and of connections to be made." Peter Weir, interviewed by Jan Dawson for Sight & Sound, Spring 1976, p. 96.
Tales from the Crypt (1971)
Based on the stories of William M. Gaines' horror comics of the 1950s, Tales from the Crypt and Vault of Horror. The film centres on five sightseers on a tour of catacombs in England who become trapped in a secret chamber. There they find Sir Ralph Richardson, in the role of Crypt Keeper, who forces them to see into their future and the consequences of their past acts of greed, cruelty, or murder. The third tale in the film 'Poetic Justice' - features Peter Cushing as Arthur Edward Grimsdyke, a junk man despised by his wealthy neighbours who want him to move out. They arrange for St Valentine's Day cards to be delivered to him, supposedly from everyone in town, each one containing a cruel and vicious rhyme. This drives him to suicide, but a year later he reaps revenge by delivering his own Valentine. The neighbour finds his son dead, and a note which reads...
- Happy Valentine's Day!
- You were mean and cruel
- Right from the start
- Now you really have no...
next to his son's still-beating, ripped out heart.
As each of the tales ends the sightseers attempt to escape the caves but realise they have descended into hell for their sins.
The St Valentine's Day Massacre (1967)
Pictured here is Bugs Moran's henchman George Segal (Peter Gusenberg) on the morning of his massacre. Tired of his girlfriend Jean Hale (Myrtle Nelson) he considers how easy it would be to rid himself of her.
There are numerous accounts of this story and, inevitably, it has flamed the imagination of many a film-maker, such as in the next two films mentioned here.
Dance Fools, Dance (1931)
Loosely based on the St Valentine's Day Massacre and the Jake Lingle murder case in Chicago the film features a young Clark Gable (Jake Luva) as the gangster bootlegger responsible for the murder of seven of his rivals. Joan Crawford (Bonnie Jordan) and William Bakewell (Rodney Jordan) start off as the spoiled children of a doting father, William Holden (Stanley Jordan), whose lives change drastically when he suffers a heart attack and dies at the collapse of the stock market. By the end of the film they find themselves in a sticky situation - she as the reporter turned undercover entertainer who infiltrates Gable's gang, and he as her brother losing his life in an attempt to save hers.
Reviewed at the time of its release Lionel Collier writes, "While none too pleasant in its racketeering theme and with one scene, in which all the characters get partially undressed in order to go for a swim, which is definitely vulgar, this picture is redeemed by the acting of Joan Crawford and, indeed, the whole cast." Picturegoer, vol. 1, no. 15, 5 Sep 1931, p.19.
Some Like it Hot (1959)
February 1929, and Tony Curtis (Joe) and Jack Lemmon (Jerry) are two unemployed musicians desperate for work. The pair accidentally witness the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, watching mobster George Raft (Spatz Columbo) and his henchmen wipe out Toothpick Charlie and his gang. Forced to leave town in a hurry Joe and Jerry take the first job they can get. They assume the identities of Josephine and Daphne to play in Sweet Sue's all girl band.
The film opened in March 1959 to excellent reviews, but small audiences. It picked up, however, and became one of the most profitable films of 1959, earning $9.5 million, though this doesn't begin to compare with the year's biggest release Ben Hur, which earned $37.6 million. Ben Hur swept the board with 11 Academy Awards but, and this would have been small consolation to the Some Like It Hot team, was denied winning its 12th nomination for Costume. In fact that was the one Academy Award that Some Like It Hot did pick up, despite six nominations!
Still, in the words of one inimitable Joe E. Brown (Osgood Fielding III), and one of cinema's greatest punchlines, "Well, nobody's perfect."
