The Loved One

If the old lady in front of you doesn't get up and leave in the middle or turn to her husband at least three times to say, "This is disgusting," then you sat in the wrong seat. If you can eat your buttered popcorn all the way through without flinching, then you've got the wrong attitude.

Everyone likes to see a monster or two in a movie--and what's better subject for a Great American Film than a slice of the ugliness of life in middle class U.S.A.? But some things are unnerving--like dead people and dead animals as major characters. Not frightening or even annoying, just mildly shocking.

In The Loved One nothing is sacred. It's four Tom Lehrer records, Candy, and Lenny Bruce rolled into one. Sloppy, but really fun.

The entire movie takes place during Dennis Barlow's unlikely visit to the United States. He was at the airport in London when suddenly he became the ten millionth person to see someone off and won a free trip to Calcutta or Los Angeles. Poor guy chose you-know-what and plunged himself into an incredible chamber of horrors. Shortly after Barlow's arrival his British uncle, a failure in the movie industry, commits suicide, leaving the hapless boy to make all the funeral arrangements--and what funeral arrangements.

Whattagay this Barlow is, Except that he's a little too clumsy and stumbly and naïve, he is you and me. He is simple irreverant, and romantic - an honest warrior against the overwhelming force of the big people. And Robert Morse pulls it off perfectly; he writes poetry (They tell me, Francis Hinsley,/They tell me you were hung/With red protruding eyeballs/And black protruding tongue...) and does lots of things we've all--well, some of us have--been tempted to do, like kissing the breast of a piece of sculpture.

Barlow falls in love with Aimee Thanatogenos (Anjanette Comer), the first lady embalmer of Whispering Glades (and you know what that means). But the trouble is that Aimee is already captivated by Mr. Joyboy (Rod Steiger), who thinks she's the greatest cosmetician he's ever known.

Even if it's way overdone in places, the screenplay of Evelyn Waugh's takeoff on California culture often hits where it hurts. Whispering Glades, the super cemetery for people, and The Happy Hunting Ground, its animal counterpart, are classics. Candy-lovers will recognize Terry Southern's hand immediately. Jonathan Winters is great as The Blessed Reverend Glenworthy and his poor brother Harry, cemetery keepers both; he's the ne-ne-na-na-no-nu baby Frickett grown up.

The sound track helps the already clever satire. There's not too much button-popping pride left in you when you hear "America, the Beautiful" again at the end. Most of the little parodies (like the Air Force officers who are worried about "the pinko prevert influence") come off well. Some individual scenes are truly memorable; director Tony Richardson has made Mom Joyboy's eating scene overshadow Tom Jones's.

The Loved One fails only when it gets serious and when it tries to throw a big space-age joke in with the rest of them. Taken as a whole, the movie is not the best; it will not run away with awards. But the parts are just fine--perfect for reading and exam periods. The dead man on whose chest Miss Thanatogenos and Mr. Joyboy exchange notes could be your Ec 1 section man.