Oh boy, here’s another one that you’d better catch before it disappears. The Bloody Brains are a fierce garage/punk band out of Los Angeles. The audio here is the band performing the classic The Us Four tune “The Alligator.” The video is – well, I don’t think I have to tell you.
The music matches the action quite well! I always maintained that Timothy invented the mosh pit and crowd-surfing with Sinner. It just might be true. Enjoy!
Today’s pic takes another look at Matty Trifon, the gangster who enjoys nothing more than taking his friends out to dinner and stuffing them with yummy food. He appeared in the very first Baretta episode, “He’ll Never See Daylight”. It first aired on January 17, 1975 and was directed by the legendary Bernard L. Kowalski.
I am fairly certain that the actress portraying Matty’s confused girlfriend is Judith Hanson, who is helpfully listed in the credits as “Girl”. I am also fairly certain that she is the same Judith Hanson who is now a country singer with a CD entitled Even Perfectly Nice People Go to Jail. She has this to say on her CDBaby artist page: “I was a child entertainer and became a top model in New York. I did national commercials and then went to Hollywood where I worked on television and some movies. I started writing songs for a very unusual reason and it turned into a business. Now I own my own publishing company, Hanson Payday Publishing, and I’m ready to cash in my chips!”
Thanks to Careyphile Eric Levy over at the Criterion page, I have discovered a contemporary song that name-checks Timothy! Check out “Moonrock Mambo” by Yo La Tengo, and pay close attention at about the 3:02 mark.
I knew these guys were cool, but their coolness factor just shot up a thousand points in my book. Sweet!
As I head off this morning for my second BurlyCon experience, I leave you with this video that I’ve shared before (but I have a feeling you won’t mind too much). Timothy arrived in LaFitte, Louisiana in the fall of 1956 to begin filming Bayou. He had an unusual assignment from the film’s producers – he had to learn to “dance real wild.” In New Orleans he asked a cab driver to help him out. The cabbie took him straight to Leon Prima’s 500 Club in the French Quarter. A stunning, statuesque burlesque dancer by the name of Lilly Christine, billed as “The Cat Girl,” was performing there. Tim returned to the club every night for a week to watch her dance. I’m sure he needed little persuasion to conduct this kind of research. After all, it was for the good of the film, right?
This is a beautiful gallery of stills accompanied by the awesome tune Song for Lilly Christine by the one and only Big Rude Jake. Posting will probably be sporadic for the next five days or so. Enjoy!
You won’t believe [Carey’s] performance [in The World’s Greatest Sinner]. He just starts shaking and his hair falls down . . . He must have watched Jerry Lee Lewis or something. He starts rolling around on the stage, he’s just shaking all over. It’s a live performance and he’s just smashing his guitar, he’s really beating on it real loud. This is one of the greatest rockabilly movies ever made. If you get a chance to see it, it’ll just change your life. Wow!
– Lux Interior of the The Cramps
Poison Ivy and Lux Interior
For a weird, Z-grade movie, The World’s Greatest Sinner is remarkably prescient. In the ‘60s and ‘70s, there would be an explosion of God Hilliards out there. The Manson Family, the MOVE, the SLA, and Jonestown were all political and religious hybrid cults with charismatic leaders that led their followers into horrible ends.
The film’s music was composed and conducted by an (at the time) unknown musician from the L.A. area, Frank Zappa. There’s nothing in the music that is noticeably Zappa-esque, it mostly sounds like countless other swinging soundtracks from no-budget ‘60s films. Zappa briefly promoted the film during his 1963 appearance on the Steve Allen Show. There to show off his talents at playing the bicycle as a musical instrument, Zappa casually calls The World’s Greatest Sinner, “the world’s worst movie.” Zappa would later make the world’s worst movie, the unwatchable dreck known as 200 Motels.
The World’s Greatest Sinner failed to gain any wide distribution. For decades the film was the stuff of legend with rough bootlegs being passed around. That started to change with its initial airing on Turner Classic Movies – you can now purchase the film on iTunes. I first heard about it on a list compiled by Lux Interior and Poison Ivy of The Cramps where they ranked it their favorite film. Carey continued to work as a character actor in TV and films until his death in 1994, though he never completed another film as a director. He did work on directing Tweet’s Ladies of Pasadena, but the film was never completed and it has been said that the footage is unwatchable. Regardless, Carey has morphed into a full-blown cult movie icon. The Timothy Carey Experience is a regularly updated fan site dedicated to the legendary character actor.
As is the case with many no-budget, Z-grade films from the ‘60s, The World’s Greatest Sinner can be rough around the edges. The film does avoid the Z-grade pratfalls of padding the running time with stock footage to hit the 90-minute mark, running a tight 77-minutes. Even though Carey has worked with some of the greatest filmmakers in history, his work as a director varies from borderline incompetence to borderline brilliance. Even though the film isn’t the work of a cinema virtuoso, it’s an unusual, brave, and uncompromising work. Like its star, writer, and director,The World’s Greatest Sinner is truly one of a kind.
– Sean Mulvihill, “Reelin’ and Rockin’ – The World’s Greatest Sinner: A True Cult Film”; FanBoyNation.com, May 30, 2014
Well, this one is, shall we say, different. It’s a weird little rockabilly tune that samples some of Timothy’s dialogue from Beach Blanket Bingo (1965) and Head (1968). And that’s about it.
Sorry folks, this is the best I could come up with this week. Enjoy!
Perhaps the most notorious recording made during the PAL Studio days was the soundtrack to one of the greatest independent movies ever, The World’s Greatest Sinner (1962). The movie was written, directed, and produced by Timothy Carey, who had previously acted in The Wild One (1953), East of Eden (1955), and two movies directed by Stanley Kubrick, The Killing (1956) and Paths of Glory (1957). Despite being made very cheaply – much of the action was shot in Carey’s garage in El Monte – The World’s Greatest Sinner was certainly ahead of its time. Carey plays a messianic rock’n’roll singer who invokes riots, while the ensuing political takeover predates by several years movies such as Riot on Sunset Strip and Wild In the Streets. The score was produced in November and December 1961, with Zappa recording a 20-piece chamber ensemble and a 55-piece orchestra at the Chaffey College auditorium, as well as an eight-man rock’n’roll band at PAL. (Zappa later made an off-color remark about the movie on The Steve Allen Show – on which he also ‘played’ a bicycle – effectively ending his relationship with Carey.)
– Domenic Priore, Riot on Sunset Strip: Rock’n’Roll’s Last Stand in Hollywood (Jawbone Press, 2007)
Frank Zappa with Timothy at the Sinner premiere
EDITOR’S NOTE 03/04/2015: Another one lost to the copyright infringement wars. Bummer! It was so great.
This week’s video is swingin’, baby. It features scenes from Stanley Kubrick‘s The Killing (1956) set to Frank Sinatra‘s “Luck Be a Lady”.
Perfect song choice for this film! Very nicely put together. I especially appreciate the use of appropriate Tarot cards to illustrate the theme. Timothy has his moment, however brief. But he’s just another cog in the Wheel of Fortune. SPOILER ALERT: The end of the film is shown, just in case you haven’t seen it.
I am so. excited. to be bringing you today’s pics. Thanks to my new Facebook pal Juan Ibáñez Mateos, from beautiful Barcelona, Spain, we are presenting some candid photographs of young Timothy that I can pretty much guarantee you have never seen before. They were taken at an unknown venue by an unknown photographer sometime in the mid-1950s. It looks like there is some kind of song-and-dance talent competition going on. The Johnny Otis Band is going to town in the background. And Mr. Timothy Carey is owning the room.
The fellow who gave these pics to Juan was apparently unaware that Tim was even in them. They have a marvelous LIFE magazine quality. In the James Dean article from Movie Stars Parade magazine, Tim tells Dean that he spent a lot of time at the 5-4 Ballroom in Los Angeles. I’m willing to bet that these pics were taken there. And, of course, we’ve all got to wonder – did Tim win the competition? Eternal thanks to the unknown photographer, the friend who passed these on to Juan, and Juan himself. I am just blown away by this unexpected glimpse into the life and times of young Tim. I’ve been walking around with a goofy grin on my face since yesterday. It’s showing no signs of going away anytime soon. I hope you love these pics as much as I do.
The Timothy Carey Experience 