Tab Hunter

  • Polyester (1981)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2022) As I keep going deeper and older into John Walters’s filmography, I keep waiting for the one film that will make me think, “OK, that’s it—too much.”  After all, I began at the end of his career, with his friendlier, most mainstream films. But so far, so good—and it’s not Polyester that will have me screaming to the exits. A wild parody of 1950s Sirk-style “women’s melodrama” adapted to the early 1980s, this is a film that presents an ideal nuclear family and then does its damnedest to pervert it. The only halfway decent character is the housewife played by Divine—but the more the film goes on, the more the façade of idyllic suburban living shatters and vaporizes. The husband is a philanderer, the son is a serial foot stomper (you read that right), the daughter gets pregnant from her no-good husband and things go downhill from there. A momentary upturn in her fortunes leads to an even wilder conclusion and that’s the film for you. There are a few levels of comedy here—and you can argue that the more absurd moments (such as the dog committing suicide, leaving a note) end up working at odds with the attempted straight-face satire. But really, it means that Polyester plays on several comic registers at once, from the conceptual to the obvious. It’s not that funny, but it’s corrosive enough in its sarcasm to be worth a look—and wonder why such films aren’t being made anymore. There are plenty of oddities here, but Walters’s goal in lampooning middle-class America remains focused. Tab Hunter turns up in a small role that takes advantage of his movie-star good looks. Polyester’s other claim to fame upon release was its use of “odorama” scratch-and-sniff cards. Amazingly enough, thanks to the long-ago benevolence of Paul Riddell, I have one such card in my unlikely possession… and used it for its intended purpose even when it wasn’t a good idea. Having done that, there’s only one more thing to say: bring on more Walters, the loopier the better.

  • Gunman’s Walk (1958)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2022) The 1950s were a rich period for westerns and as the decade drew to a close, films in that genre had to find something to distinguish themselves. It was a decade where more movies were shot in colour, where the role of Native Americans was being redefined ever so slightly, where having a cowboy with a gun wasn’t enough to sustain a narrative for a more demanding audience. Gunman’s Walk may not be that good of a film, but it fits in that trend in fitting a family drama in a western context, and is more nuanced about its native characters than most westerns of a few years earlier. Much of the story revolves around a hard patriarch (a good late performance from a mustachioed Van Heflin) having to contend with two very different sons: an overly aggressive and racist one (Tab Hunter, playing against type) and a more refined one who doesn’t fit his idea of what an heir should be like. One cattle drive later, there are multiple complications: One son falling for a half-Native woman (Kathryn Grant, looking great), the other accused of killing the woman’s brother. The tangled drama is enough to keep audiences interested even if they don’t like westerns, and give everyone in the cast a few good sequences to play. Gunman’s Walk remains a western, but one that’s not intolerable (if sometimes a bit dull) to modern audiences.

  • Lust in the Dust (1984)

    Lust in the Dust (1984)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2021) As far as western comedies go, Lust in the Dust hits a very specific and rather sweet spot of camp flamboyance, ribald naughtiness and over-the-top absurdity. Divine stars as a rotund dancehall girl lost in the desert, where she encounters a taciturn cowboy (Tab Hunter, no less) and goes treasure hunting with the help of strategically tattooed maps. As comedies go, this one combines a dumb premise with weird characters, unusual situations and good one-liners even if the rhythm is uneven throughout. Still, Divine does well as the unravishable heroine (and the cross-dressing aspect hasn’t aged as badly as you’d think), while Lainie Kazan and Gina Gallego provide much of the nudity and raunch that make the film even funnier. By the time the film works itself off to a mutual stand-off above a treasure, well, we’re satisfied. Director Paul Bartel’s filmography is all over the place when it comes to comedy (Everything from Cannonball to Eating Raoul) and Lust in the Dust doesn’t clarify anything about his approach. While the result can’t be called a great comedy, it’s watchable and funny enough to be worth a look.

  • Tab Hunter Confidential (2015)

    Tab Hunter Confidential (2015)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2020) Even if you don’t know about Tab Hunter, you can still approach his engaging biography Tab Hunter Confidential with the assurance that you will learn plenty about this 1950s heartthrob whose career waned in the 1970s to the point where he was doing dinner theatre. Fear not: he bounced back in later years thanks to the success of the John Waters film Polyester. But Hunter wasn’t like most other 1950s icons—gay at a time when such things were strictly unacceptable in Hollywood, this difference ends up becoming the structural backbone of the film, as evolving social acceptance ends up reshaping his life and career. Hunter himself makes for a very likable subject, and the arc of his career from the 1940s to the 1980s is an interesting illustration of how things can go wrong for many actors even after hitting the limelight. Well-presented with some ironic footage (“I’m Tab Hunter, and I have a secret”), it sprouts interviews with notables such as George Takei, John Waters and Clint Eastwood, and digitally enhanced archival photos. Executed with more grace and substance than many other celebrity biographies, Tab Hunter Confidential offers a new light on Classic Hollywood, and makes for entertaining viewing as well.

  • Grease 2 (1982)

    Grease 2 (1982)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, February 2019) I know that Grease 2 has a terrible reputation (upon release, it bombed so hard that it killed off its male lead Maxwell Caulfield’s career for years), but watching it now doesn’t seem like a terrible experience. Of course, I ended up watching both movies at more than a decade’s interval (is this unique? Both movies came out four years apart, and nowadays most people wanting to watch the sequel would do it soon after seeing the first one) and that probably helped a lot in erasing the comparison factor between this mediocre entry and its far better-received prequel. At best, it’s a bubblegum high school musical going back to the early sixties (but really the late fifties) for harmless teenage antics. A young Kim Basinger is quite good in the lead role, her slightly grumpy attitude doing much to make it fun. It’s also fascinating, as a cinephile, to see a film act as a bridge between newer stars such as Basinger or Christopher MacDonald, and veteran actors of yore such as Tab Hunter. As with many musicals, the best numbers come early on, with “Back to School Again” effortlessly introducing most of the cast, and “Score Tonight” wringing the most out of its bowling alley setting. The songs may not be the pop-culture hits of the original, but the dance choreography remains pretty good. No, Grease 2 is not the original. But when I look at the early-1980s musicals, this one is better than most.