That was an excellent one.

One of my all time favorites.

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

Tennessee Williams was one of the best playwrights ever. This story is not his usual play, but from the comments I've seen by the rubes on IMDb, it's obvious they have not one clue what Williams was ever writing about.THE GLASS MENAGERIE and A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE, for example, are about multiple dimensional characters, although Hollywood missed the boat on "Streetcar". Most of the time, Tennessee writes about characters with normal passions, maybe a few with devious motives, but usually it's the main characters who are reacting to human monsters from outside of the play.Here, he turns the tables. He gives us three utterly complete monsters in the lead, the ones who are simply out to destroy the lives of others, although the woman, Baby Doll, is a bit less to blame than the other two.Meanwhile, he shows us the reactions of the other characters. There is no doubt that the supporting characters are the only ones it is possible to sympathize with.Malden plays a hopeless red neck. For some reason, he marries a girl who is almost a child, while he is middle aged. This isn't as normal as women want it to be, but it does happen. It's a hopeless situation in most cases. True, if a healthy 45 year old man and a 20 year old woman are both into the same poetry, speak the same lingo, and are both champion chess players, that it a relationship that may work.No such case here, although both are rooted in the deep South. It clearly is a loveless marriage.What makes Malden's character a monster is accepted by today's society way too freely. It only takes one drink from his whiskey bottle to turn modern day hypocrites against him, only because he is a Southern man without a lot of money. While in 1956, his character was partially demonetized, today he is total anathema.As the red neck, Malden is only partially a monster, and his viciousness is dwarfed by the self righteous bigotry of the invader to the town, played by Eli Wallach.Wallach's character is the epitome of self righteousness and Psychosis. This is not a man one can deal with. He is there to control everyone, to destroy everyone who doesn't fit in his genocidal desire for the world, and to haughtily consider himself superior because he is Sicilian.The superior Sicilian complex was even around in 1956. It was around before, in Capone's era in Chicago. It was at a peak in the early 1970s, when American men were not allowed to have blond hair or fair skin, unless they were super rich or from the right family. In the late seventies, men were judged solely on how much "dark blood" they could persuade others to think they had. They would either have to dye their hair, or not wash it for days, to make it look darker, in order to be acceptable, to get promotions, to be allowed in clubs, or at social functions. This is the way it was.To a lesser degree, it was that way in the times of Tennessee Williams.Wallach's self righteous monster, Vacarro, is abusive, and totally out to destroy everyone. This is a character who is not "defending" himself. He is a character who wants to steal what other people have.What he does to Malden's character is accepted by today's society, which is the very proof of what I speak. One cannot possibly laugh with Vacarro, sympathize with him, believe he is just, without being a self righteous bigot. That's the story told by Williams here.The naive bubble boy who views this, will get the impression that Malden's red neck gets what he deserves. Why? Because the naive bubble boy is taught early to be a bigot.Vacarro is doing this to everyone in the area. He came there purposely to destroy them, to take their land away from them. That is his "justice", to control others, to not let anyone who is not a proper Sicilian to live, particularly a male.Williams tells us this flat out. Vacarro doesn't "know" that Malden is guilty of the crime he accuses him of. He has no proof, and indeed he fabricates proof from a witness who wasn't even a witness, Baby Doll, who volunteers to lie, because she is a "naive bubble boy".So we can forgive Baby Doll for being a monster, even when she haughtily enjoys it. She doesn't know how evil Vacarro is. She has also been brainwashed into thinking he is superior.The real story is the other characters. Vacarro is doing this to all the black men there, all the white men there, everyone. His "syndicate" is there to make sure none of these men ever get a chance. He has allies from feeble minded, brainwashed fools like Baby Doll. The poor lady he uses as a pawn, pretending to hire, will be used and abused at his leisure. He says he needs a cook. He probably does. She'll get no special treatment from him, however. He has proved that. He is a monster.Some characters are monsters. Williams clearly shows us that Vacarro is one. He shows us that he gets away with this because too many people are like Baby Doll, bigots against their own neighbors. The bigotry of the red neck is minor compared to the treachery of the bigotry against one's friends.

Two years back middle-aged cotton gin owner Archie Lee Meighan (Karl Mulden), obviously none too attractive, entered into marriage with Baby Doll Meighan (Carroll Baker), a girl barely 18 and convinced to accept the proposal at her father's deathbed. Immersed into her name Baby Doll sleeps in a child's crib and states overwhelmingly how unready she is to consummate wedlock, hence entering into an agreement with the elder Archie Lee - she will be ready on her 20 birthday, but only if she is offered the luxuries of the world: life in a mansion and fulfilment of all material needs. However two days before the big game Archie Lee is on the verge of bankruptcy, as his competition, an uncompromising Sicilian immigrant Silva Vacarro (Eli Wallach) has monopolised both cotton production and the gin factory. Obsessed with his deflowering his wife Archie Lee commits arson. Silva is quick to point his finger as Silva and decides to instrumentally use Baby Doll for vengeful purposes...With Tennessee Williams and Elia Kazan (famed for family friendly film versions of controversial novels) "Baby Doll" seemed destined to achieve much at the box office. Although Oscar success was forthcoming the controversial sexual subtexts in the movie caused much furore amongst religious groups and even some drastic reviews in the "Time" or "Variety" demonizing the films confrontational story. Mainly due to the fact that "Baby Doll" was so ahead of its time in terms of context, the plot seems fresh, well defined and relatively up-to-date. Even after so many years Carroll Baker oozes sensuality, a naive vixen not fully aware of her delirious effect on men. Both Mulden and Wallach compliment the picture with equally forceful performances, making "Baby Doll" very much a timeless movie.The biggest issue however seems the overreach by Elia Kazan. The director deals with a contemporarily controversial subject matter with infidelity and promiscuity a theme inclined, rather than presented - Archie Lee does dastardly deeds just to get the nookie, Silva meanwhile uses his charm to bewilder the innocent Baby Doll, who in turn falls into her role of an innocent, but sexual female to entice both men. Therefore in order to lighten the load Kazan uses various moments of the movie to introduce ill-timed humour or counterintuitive slapstick moments, which derail tension between characters and cause a certain lack of reliability on a psychological level. The overall effect is a tired story with limited coherence in dire need of a severe makeover.There are also some dated elements, which albeit purposeful seem out of touch and a tad controversial for non-sexual reasons. This mainly concerns the portrayal of black community, often referred here are 'niggers' and serving a sole purpose as background props. Albeit probably not racist in essence (given Tennessee Williams stance on the matter) and an honest contextualisation of blacks who are treated as denigrated individuals, their diminished role in the movie can cause an uneasy tension. That said they play a key role as watchful observers of the shenanigans in the Meighan household, summarising the events with a meaningful laughter during the final act.Times past the steamy interaction between Baker and Wallach has nowhere near the effect as back in the days - sex now commercialised and mainstream. That said the tension stills lingers, forceful and forbidden, making it one of the main reason to watch the movie.

"Gone With the Wind," with umpteen writers (including Selznick on benzedrine), a fistful of directors, Brits talking "Southern" and a cast of thousands -- though hardly Shakespeare -- still holds up brilliantly."Baby Doll," with Kazan and his New York's Actors' Studio "method" players treating Tennessee Williams' "controversial" claptrap as if it were Art didn't hold up then and completely falls apart today.The laughable "Southern" accents from Strasberg's Yankees are so far removed from actual Southern speech that they render Williams' clownish characters immediately insulting. (Any of the local extras from Benoit, Mississippi are more real and affecting, in their brief moments and lines, than anybody else on screen.) Coming off "Streetcar," this dreck is especially disheartening from all participants.It doesn't know whether it's drama, comedy, farce, tragedy, Southern Gothic, Dixie neo-realism, minstrel show, sexploitation or social commentary. So it showcases every tawdry cliché in the book: including howling hound dogs and clucking chickens roaming through the house for "atmosphere." The leads, at various points, actually imitate the sound of clucking chickens. Symbolism. Get it? (An old cliché used to devastating effect at the climax of von Sternberg's "The Blue Angel" with Emil Jannings 30 years earlier.) "Baby Doll," for all its pre-publicity carny-barker "sexiness" and slip-wearing female lead (another cheap Williams cliché, pathetic in retrospect) is nothing but anti-climaxes. There's only stagy "chemistry," nothing builds, nothing goes anywhere, nothing explodes -- except a cotton gin."Baby Doll", though almost unbearably boring to watch on any level, is interesting only as a halfway marker between Williams' magnificent lyrical genius in "The Glass Menagerie" and his bottoming-out in the embarrassing pseudo-poetic desperation of "Suddenly, Last Summer" and "Night of the Iguanas" (rendered intermittently worthwhile only by the incomparable Deborah Kerr).Here, Williams tries and fails to rescue his woozy would-be white-trash dramedy (as if we hadn't stopped caring 90 minutes ago) with Carroll Baker's final immortal line to Mildred Dunnock: "We'll just have to wait and see . . . if we're remembered or forgotten." Cockadoodledoo, Blanche.

"Baby Doll" (1956) was not just way ahead of its time. Somehow Elia Kazan managed to make and release what is arguably the most erotic film of all time to a Hollywood and a country more uptight and restrictive than at any point in cinema history.Even more remarkable is that this clichéd story, in the tried and true Southern Gothic genre, actually transcends its medium (film); visually fusing Tennessee Williams' literary themes and the lesions of southern history into an allegorical dramatization of Southern decadence and self-victimization.Southerners whine endlessly about their historical victimization but rarely exhibit the insight to put it all into perspective. Putting this self-indulgence and self-destruction into perspective was what Williams was all about and he deliciously condenses his recurring themes into this screenplay. Kazan was more collaborator than director; he understood what Williams felt and he knew how to make viewers feel the same things.The story is all about the invasion of personal space. In the south this meant foreigners (from the North and from Europe) coming into their land and out-competing them. The invaders were more lean and hungry than the natives. They were less self-indulgent and more willing to invest for the distant future. The natives were all about conspicuous consumption and short-term comfort.Even when forced to take a longer term perspective; Archie Lee (Karl Malden) has promised to restrain himself and defer the deflowering of Baby Doll (Carroll Baker) until her 20th birthday; the southerner impatiently fritters away the opportunity to spend his time productively. Then he finds that when the fruit finally ripens it is snatched away by a hungry opportunist.What to watch for in "Baby Doll" is the routine violation of personal space. In the claustrophobic mansion the characters have no personal privacy. It gets even worse with the invasion of Silva Vacarro (Eli Wallach); the characters are routinely in each other's faces and the camera captures it all with increasingly tight shots. Baby Doll herself is not your standard movie nymphet coming onto an older man. Once Vacarro has taken her measure, he assaults her in almost every scene, aggressively moving into her personal space as he hungrily pursues his prize.And like the aggressive Northern invaders, Vacarro's single-minded focus and pursuit of a goal soon overwhelms Archie; despite the fact that Archie enjoys the home field advantage and does not play fair, symbolized by the local Marshall who makes it clear to Vacarro that the law will not be applied equally.One scene that I particularly liked was when Aunt Rose (Mildred Dunnock) gives it right back to Archie at the dinner table. She has been living precariously under his roof up to this point. When he attempts to snatch away her safety she summons the dignity to stand up to him; and the camera gets tight on her face as she claims a bit more of his space.Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.