Product: Sextette (1978)
Rating: 3.0
Train wreck of a film that can now be called CULT!
Why oh why would anyone green light this film? I can only imagine that Mae West must have put up the money for the film, because it just doesn't make sense!Mae West was never an accomplished dramatic actress. She was a sex kitten - even a provacateur way ahead of her time - in mostly sexual comedies of the 1930's and 1940's. At that, West was tops.In Sextette, West chose to resurrect a script she had written for production back in the 1930's. It is the same script some 40 years later. While that in and of itself is not a bad thing -West stars as the sex kitten once again! That is not good. The film is full of her famous inuendo (which is great), but it is also full of her famous inuendo uttered by her at the tender age of 150.Honestly, Mae West couldn't look worse! She is shot through so much gauze that she actually looks plastic at times. The director has mentioned that she couldn't remember her lines, so they shot her by herself and fed her lines through a device in her ear. She just repeated the lines as only she could.That her costumes and her gait are the same some 40 years later is less a testament to the film and her abilities than it is to the sad nature of her career. In an interview some years ago, a friend of hers noted that Mae West had long ago lost any semblance of who Mae West the woman was and only knew how to be "Mae West: Sex Kitten". It wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact that she was in her late 80's when she appeared in this film (in fact she died less than two years after the film was released).The film is a quaint little sexual farce built inside a very light piece of intrigue. The whole of the film hinges on West and it is West that you pay the price of admission to see. However, to see Timothy Dalton play West's much younger husband is really icky. George Hamilton and Dom Deluise also appear in large parts.It's a bizarre little film, that truly is a train wreck, but one worth the price of admission. However, if you are a Mae West lover, it is a sad footnote to a delightful career.