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The Flesh Merchant
[Secret Key Motion Pictures]
1956; b&w
Directed by W. Merle Connell
Starring: Joy Reynolds, Geri Moffatt, Marko Perri & Norman Wright
Skin In The Fifties Loop Collection
[Secret Key Motion Pictures]
b&w
Starring: Virginia Bell, Chen, Stacy Farrell & more
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The Flesh Merchant is billed as and example of '50s style exploitation but to me really feels more like a later period noir. (Albeit with random bits of nonsensical nudity added in post-production; and for no good reason.) Although this feeling may be due to the fact that - thanks to a showing of Marked Woman, an awesome Bette Davis movie the Kommandant & I caught on TCM a couple weeks ago; which, in turn, kicked of a round of DVD double feature rentals from our local video store - I have been having a noir moment as of late and become familiar with the trappings of the genre. This film features a fairly standard storyline involving an innocent young beauty, Nancy, who's got her sights set on, and her bags packed for, the City Of Angels. Once in LA she arrives on the doorstep of her sister, Paula, who is enjoying a fabulous life as a model; being showered with furs and attending glamorous Hollywood nightclubs daily. (Or, uh, nightly.) Except, as it turns out, sis has been fibbing a bit to the family about her life in Tinseltown. See, Paula isn't so much a fashion model as she is paid to take her clothes off for groups of perverts thinly disguised as art students. And I think the fur stoles are actually fruits of her work as a prostitute. (This was released in the mid-'50s which I suppose means they had to be a little more discreet, so they just kind of hint around at the whoring part of the equation. I can't imagine we're supposed to believe she was paid in fur stoles for nude modeling though.) Anywhoo, once Paula realizes Nancy's aspirations, and that her little sister is essentially doomed to the same fate if she attempts to mimic her present lifestyle, she tells Nancy she's getting dropped off at the bus station the very next day and being shipped back home to Mom & Dad. Nancy is none to pleased about that and not about to be sent home so easily. She pockets a business card for the art school before being led out of the apartment and heads straight for the place via taxi as soon as Paula dumps her off at the curb. (She probably should have at least looked in the rear view mirror if she wanted to make sure her sister got on the bus but, you know...) Surprisingly, once innocent Nancy learns what is required of girls who "model" for this particular "agency", she seems somewhat unfazed by it. This winning combo of naiveté, enthusiasm and good looks affords Nancy another job (essentially the same kind of job as the one that got Paula her furs; nudge, nudge, wink, wink) and, of course, this pivotal change of address is what really kicks off the downward spiral of implied sex and actual violence that permeates oh so many films of this ilk. And eventually leads up to their somewhat climactic, often slightly awkward and a bit preachy, endings. Although the plot certainly fits the bill for either the exploitation or noir genres, (in fact, the plot of Marked Woman involved a similar story of a woman trying to keep her younger sister out of trouble), this telling of an oft-told tale of a good girl turned bad by the evils of a Hollywood dream is much tamer than, say, the Doris Wishman style roughie we've become accustomed to here at the buffet. Still, fans of either type of film would probably enjoy this.
The second disc in the "Skin In The Fifties" collection is a series of burlesque loops and the types of movies you used to have to put a quarter in a box to view, which can sometimes be fun; and sometimes be tiresome. On the particular night I watched The Flesh Merchant I just kinda wasn't in the mood so I found them to be the latter. Still, these films are a little bit of smutty history that I would much rather see archived for posterity than rotting on a shelf somewhere so I wouldn't want to complain about it too much. Overall a satisfying, if somewhat prudish, package.
—Bunny
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