parterre box

La Cieca is once more available for dancing in the streets and shouting from the housetops for the (admittedly off-topic) reason that the Technicolor musical campfest Torch Song has made its long-awaited debut on DVD. Only in 1953 — with the Red Scare, the threat of nuclear annihilation and the growing threat from televsion bewildering studio exectives — could so tone-deaf a concept get green-lighted.  You see, it’s an MGM musical with Joan Crawford as a voice-of-brass, heart-of-brass, Helen Lawson-esqe Broadway diva who falls in love with a disabled rehearsal pianist (Michael Wilding.) 

Yes, you’ll shudder as a chorus boy trips over Joan’s outstretched leg during a not-very-complicated dance routine! You’ll cringe as Joan belts out the politically incorrect “Two Faced Woman” number! And you’ll retch as Joan, on a lunch break from rehearsal, stomps into a restaurant and snarls her order at the maitre d’: “Lobster thermidor and black coffee!”

“With garish Technicolor, acidic dialog, dubious production numbers, and Crawford at her man-eating peak, Torch Song belongs at the top of every bad movie aficionado’s must-see list.” — CoolCinemaTrash.com. (Also included in this set, The Joan Crawford Collection, Vol. 2, are a pair of rags-to-riches sagas, Sadie McKee and Flamingo Road; and a couple of offbeat roles from the last year of Crawford’s Metro era, Strange Cargo and A Woman’s Face.)

[kml_flashembed movie="http://youtube.com/v/nqvhQ_pwZRI" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]