The Loved One

The Loved One (1965)

Runtime: 122 minutes

Directed by: Tony Richardson

Starring: Robert Morse, Jonathan Winters, Rod Steiger, Liberace

From: MGM

Now, here’s a movie I’ve seen before but I stumbled upon while looking through various VHS tapes (yes; I still use them in 2011; it works for me); I recorded this another time after I first saw it years ago so that I could watch it a second time, but that second time just came this evening.

This was a movie I heard about long before I got to see it. It was described as being “something to offend everyone”, and I’ll agree that for its time period, I am surprised they were able to get away with some of the things that they did.

To sum up the plot, Dennis Barlow of England won a ticket to L.A. so he decided to use that ticket to escape London. As he’s an aimless sort he had the time to hang around Southern California with a bit. Having a famous uncle who works as a production staffer in Hollywood (John Gielgud). They hang out but it isn’t long before the uncle gets canned because of his age. He decides to kill himself via hanging, and you do see him at the end of a noose. Some British expatriates say that he should be buried at the prestigious Whispering Glades Cemetery. That’s where the crux of the movie takes place at, both this place and a pet cemetery that Dennis works at to earn some income.

Along the way he meets up with some rather unusual people and falls in love with a lady who works at Whispering Glades. There are also other people around, like Mr. Joyboy (Steiger), someone who is as bizarre as the surname would suggest. There’s also Liberace briefly appearing as a casket salesman, and in hindsight, it seems funny to me that a lot of people didn’t catch onto the fact that he was… well, you know. I have no problem with that orientation. All that matters to me was that he was quite the showman and quite the piano player too.

Anyhow, this movie has a lot of dry and wry British humor. After all, the short story was from Evelyn Waugh; he (yes, he) was a novelist from across the pond. That sort of humor isn’t for everyone (even me sometimes) but I found this to be rather amusing. It’s mainly a satire on the funeral industry so various things associated with that field are parodied, and the barbs also go towards the Hollywood industry. It also is never boring, as the movie goes in rather strange directions that you couldn’t predict. I won’t give it away as it’d probably sound preposterous from what I’ve said most of the movie is about. Yet, it manages to work somehow.

So, if you like the wry sort of thing, this movie is worth seeing. It sometimes is played on Turner Classic Movies, which is how I saw it. I’ll be back Wednesday night with a new review.