Mary Taylor Movies
- 1986
- R
Trash-movie moguls Lloyd Kauffman and Michael Herz -- the creative team (so to speak) behind distributor Troma Films and makers of The Toxic Avenger -- foist yet another epic of bad taste upon the viewing public with this melding of teenage sex-comedy and slime-oozing monster mayhem, described by the filmmakers as "like The Breakfast Club, only not as stupid, and really, really drunk." The story involves the student body of Tromaville High school, who resemble the usual group of slackers, stoners and surf punks who drift through the halls of academe... except this is Tromaville, and the dilapidated nuclear plant is busily churning out glowing green effluvia next door. Before long, the kids are glowing in the dark too, riding hell-bent through the hallowed halls on their choppers, shrieking obscene pseudo-songs and giving birth to slimy mutant offspring... pretty much business as usual. The only way to put this film into any kind of perspective would be to say it's never dull; fans of Troma product (the cinematic equivalent of head cheese) should be delighted. Followed by two sequels, subtitled respectively Subhumanoid Meltdown and The Good, the Bad and the Subhumanoid. ~ Cavett Binion, Rovi
- Starring:
- Janelle Brady, Gilbert Brenton, (more)
Greer Garson is dignity and integrity personified in the role of the real-life Edna Gladney. After several life experiences which rival daytime drama for unrelenting misery and melodrama, Edna marries flour-mill owner Sam Gladney (Walter Pidgeon). They have a baby, who dies shortly after Edna discovers that she can never have any other children. To give her life some meaning, Edna sets up the Texas Children's Home and Aid Society, which specializes in caring for illegitimate children and offering them for adoption. After her husband's death, Edna becomes a powerful political figure, succeeding in removing the stigma of illegitimacy by having that word stricken from all future Texas birth certificates; in this way, she honors the memory of her own half sister, who had killed herself upon discovering she was born out of wedlock. MGM thought enough of Blossoms in the Dust to film the production in Technicolor, a luxury usually reserved in 1941 for musicals or Westerns. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- Starring:
- Greer Garson, Walter Pidgeon, (more)
- 1939
It's "Never the Twain Shall Meet" time again in the MGM romantic melodrama Lady of the Tropics. The lady in question is half-caste Manon De Vargnes (Hedy Lamarr), a resident of prewar Saigon. American playboy Bill Carey (Robert Taylor) falls madly in love with Manon, but both have their crosses to bear: she is affianced to an Indochinese prince, and he is unable to secure a passport to bring her back to the United States. Adding to the dilemma is influential bureaucrat Pierre Delaroch (Joseph Schildkraut), who agrees to arrange an exit visa for Manon in exchange for a few "favors." Nothing good can come from this, and nothing does. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- Starring:
- Robert Taylor, Hedy Lamarr, (more)
- 1936
In the print ads for Soak the Rich, writers/producers/directors Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur were shown singing "We're the boys who wrote the yarn/ And here's what it's about/ Class ideas don't mean a thing/ When love kicks 'em out." The film pokes broad fun at New Deal liberalism and 1930s campus unrest, which the authors evidently regarded as a passing fad ("the latest form of necking," observes one character) Millionaire college chairman Humphrey Craig (Walter Connolly) is saddled with fuzzy-headed daughter Belinda (Mary Taylor), who allows campus radicals to hold rallies in her living room. The main bone of contention is Belinda's romance with starry-eyed economics professor Buzz Jones (John Howard), whom Craig had fired after the publication of Jones' inflammatory book Soak the Rich. Belinda's enchantment with "pinkos" comes to an end when she's kidnapped by a comically menacing communist agitator (Lionel Stander) and when Buzz proposes marriage (in the Brave New World, she reasons, there is no room for matrimony). Her fed-up daddy solves matters with a shotgun wedding -- only it's the bride, not the groom, who's the reluctant participant. Novelist Alice Duer Miller, a longtime Hecht-MacArthur crony, plays a supporting role. Soak the Rich may sound like a "lost masterpiece," but it isn't; in fact, many critics regard it as one of the worst films of the 1930s. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- Starring:
- Walter Connolly, Mary Taylor, (more)
