The Love Statue (The Love Drug) (1965) The Beat Turns On

[cigar joe]

Dig this. There's this struggling loft dauber in The Village named Tyler, he's kept in bread by this angel, Lisa, a leotard dancer grooving her stuff at The Bitter End Café down around the corner.

Tyler is a snagged stag. This chick Lisa is jazzing it with Tyler, playing hide the sausage whenever she makes the scene at the loft. This arrangement of lustful convenience with no real love, has both Tyler and Lisa blowing their jets.

Tyler's creativity is not the only thing he's struggling with apparently his sex life with Lisa is also sputtering. They have another row. Things get rough and Lisa hits him over the head with a vase. Lisa tends to his wounds, sticks a wad of bills in his hand, puts on her rags and splits. Tyler runs up to the roof and screams that he doesn't want her money. He throws the wad of cash down to the street. Lisa struts back and picks it up out of the cobblestones and tells Tyler to pick her up after her set.


Tyler (Ratray) and Lisa (Seay)


"You're not much of a lover, you're not much of anything."






"I don't want your money"


"Pick me up at the club"

Stan, Tyler's crazy sculptor buddie drops by schlepping buckets of clay. He's a sort of cheep creep. He got evicted from his studio and needs a place to crash. Tyler gives him shelter from the storm.


Stan (Goldenberg)


"Tyler you're getting some style."

After helping him carry in his clay, Tyler heads down to The Bitter End Café. At the cafe he catches Mashiko (actually Hisako "Choco" Tsukuba - was in 1964 "Big In Japan") a Japanese torch singer doing her number.


Mashiko (Tsukuba)




LSD the newest thing in dreams

Bitter End Buddy: Instant psychoanalysis babe.
Tyler: Aaay, if you're talking about what I think you're talking about, no you got the wrong pigeon, I like my nightmares just the way they are.
Josh: Man you don't know until you get (snaps fingers) turned on yourself.
Tyler: Ah you're pushing Josh, I said forget it.
Mashiko: If you should change your mind. You can reach me anytime (gives him her card).


Josh with LSD sugar cube

Tyler splits the table, content on being a just a juicehead. He orders a double from Arnie a waiter. Lisa comes on doing her "leo-tart" dance shaking her buns of steel booty hypnotically for the beats. Tyler, now drunk, stops the dance and asks the audience "now that you've seen the merchandise do I have any bids." Lisa kicks him off the stage and walks right over him.


Lisa's "leo tart" dance




These heels are made for walkin'

Tyler, stumble/stomps out of the café, later, sloppy drunk he's passed out along an iron fence on a Greenwich Village street. In what may be the first depiction of a predatory gay pick-up, a homosexual man tries to take advantage of Tyler offering him a tar bar/kick stick and asking him if he'll let him "help" him back up to his apartment. It's sort of an attempted date rape without the date. Tyler's not that drunk figures it out and begs off.

The Predator Gay Pickup Sequence









Later Lisa drifts up to the loft and she and Tyler, after an attempt at sex, have another war of words. Lisa verbally castrates him and Tyler throws her out.




Lisa (Beti Seay)

Frustrated, Tyler remembers Mashiko's offer, and finds her card and the address to her pad. He runs out of the loft passing Stan on the stairs who is bringing a model up to pose. At Mashiko's there's an acid party going on, there Tyler makes it with Mashiko and drops acid he turns on, tunes in, and drops out.


Acid Party


Tyler drinking water with a dissolved sugar cube of acid

continuing.....

[cigar joe]

continued...

Three days later at the loft Stan has finished a sculpture of a goddess in clay. Lisa is desperately questioning him frantic about Tyler's disappearance, thinking she should call the fuzz. Stan tells her not to worry.


Where is he?



Tyler has been on a three day acid trip. Mobile again, but still tripping, he stumbles out of Mashiko's into The Village and he hallucinates his way back to the loft (accompanied by a crazy bongo leitmotif) where he imagines that Stan's clay sculpture comes alive, and that he has made love to her.






Tyler tripping through The Village


the statue


The dream sequence

He finally comes down when laying on the floor of the loft, Lisa pokes him awake with her high heel. Lisa tells him that she has been terribly worried, then she tries to embrace him, but Tyler rejects her, telling her that "it's over Lisa." He takes off out of the loft and heads up to Central Park free from manipulating Lisa and high on life. Lisa is stunned and incensed.




"It's over Lisa."

Lisa comes back down to the loft later while Tyler is still out traipsing about Central Park and destroys everything even Stan's precious sculpture. Stan arrives back at the loft sees all the destruction and totally freaks out killing Lisa with his knife. When Tyler finally gets to the loft he finds Lisa's body amongst the wreckage. He panics and flees into the city.




Lisa - gonesville

Wandering about lower Manhattan slightly dazed, he spots Stan's model and follows her down into a subway station, onto an uptown train. Desperate he finally convinces her to help him, telling her to call if she hears from Stan.


What could be possibly on the other side of the "money" locker room in Once Upon A Time In America  









Tyler finds Stan's model

When Stan finally calls she sets up a rendezvous at Central Park. When Tyler confronts Stan, he pulls his knife and abducts his model, dragging her into his lead sled and taking off upstate for a little dam in Noirsville.


Noirsville










Tyler (Ratray)








Denouement at the New Croton Dam

The Love Statue is an interesting and curious melange of Breakfast at Tiffany's, The Man With The Golden Arm, Stakeout On Dope Street, and Lost Weekend. Capturing that curious fringe time between the end of The Beats and the beginning of The Age Of Aquarius. A non union film, The Love Statue was shot guerilla style on the streets of New York, it also captures nicely the Greenwich Village Art Scene and NYC circa 1965.  Durston informs us that the films original title "The Love Drug" could not be used because theater managers would not put it on their marquees. It's a "C" picture throughout showing some humorously pathetic attempts at some "European" style but it's a film with a lot of heart. Some of the performances and sequences are well done others are lacking in ability or clunky, but it's still a fun watch.

Directed by David E. Durston, written by David E. Durston and Robert A. Poore. Cinematography was by Amin Q. Chaudhri, Music by Sandy Barnett (musical director), and Rudy Traylor (music editor).  The film stars Peter Ratray as Tyler, Tyler, Beti Seay as Lisa, Harvey J. Goldenberg as Stan, Nancy Norman as The Model, Gigi Darlene as The Statue, Hisako Tsukuba as Mashiko, Coleman Younger as Nick, Mario DeRosa as Gay guy on street, and Liz Otto as Loud woman at bar.

Peter Ratray reminds me of Matt Damon, his performance is excellent. Harvey J. Goldenberg has an aura of Woody Allen, he's quite funny when he's critiquing Tyler's work. Beti Seay's Lisa gives off a Laura Petrie, Mary Tyler Moore vibe, but it's her evil twin. The uncredited actor who plays Josh the pusher is quite good also. Hisako Tsukuba couldn't speak a word of English so her lines are all done phonetically, but it adds to the overall "spaciness" of her character. Director Durston in the extras on the DVD tells us that he did indeed drop acid prior to directing the film in order to give it authenticity.

Apparently the film had some added sexploitation scenes inserted once The Motion Picture Production Code was canned. The Secret Key DVD October 13, 2009 Release (where the screencaps are from) has restored the film to it's original premier version. The Love Statue, according to Durston had a two week original run. A curious artifact 6/10. Full review with more screen caps here: http://noirsville.blogspot.com/2017/03/the-love-statue-love-drug-1965-beat.html

[titoli]

Of course the T&A cut scenes were the real reason this piece of sexploitation was shot at all. Without them the only reason for watching it is the nostalgia one living in NYC at the time may have for places, characters, styles. The rest is pure trash, featuring the worst acting ability by main and secondary players, atrocious japanese songs (spoiling the only piece of this crap worth saving: the initial credits James Bond Style with the nude female dancing) and the plot invented on the spot. 1/10

[cigar joe]

Of course the T&A cut scenes were the real reason this piece of sexploitation was shot at all. Without them the only reason for watching it is the nostalgia one living in NYC at the time may have for places, characters, styles. The rest is pure trash, featuring the worst acting ability by main and secondary players, atrocious japanese songs (spoiling the only piece of this crap worth saving: the initial credits James Bond Style with the nude female dancing) and the plot invented on the spot. 1/10

Wrong, it was a drugsploitation film from the get go, (watch the director interview), and that was well done if amateurish, nobody said it was a masterpiece. Hollywood wouldn't be able touch a subject like this at that time. And it really captures a microcosm of NYC in 1965, it feels way more New York-ish than the big budget Mirage shot the same year, which comes off as a travelog for tourists.

[titoli]

Wrong, it was a drugsploitation film from the get go, (watch the director interview),

What do you want him to say to somebody caring to interview him? That it was sexploitation from the start? And then whom would the flick have appealed to without the sex?

 

Hollywood wouldn't be able touch a subject like this at that time. And it really captures a microcosm of NYC in 1965,

What I said: nostalgia. Hollywood wouldn't have touched the subject only because they thought nobody cared. But  movies on drugs had been made before and right after this one. It was  sex that Hollywood banned and it was sex that the off-Hollywood peddled at the time. But then you may believe it is pure chance that the word "love" is featured in both titles and that it was double billed with "The Long Hot Night"

[cigar joe]

What do you want him to say to somebody caring to interview him? That it was sexploitation from the start? And then whom would the flick have appealed to without the sex?

Wrong, Actually, this is from the lead actor Ratray's interview (on the disc). The film was produced by get this three Harvard graduates, who wanted to make a drugs-ploitation flick and that's what they made. Ratray says that a month or two later he was called back to do additional footage, basically he said it was a lot of rolling around with naked women. The reason was that the Supreme Court declared New York State's censorship laws unconstitutional. So the producers thought they could make more money with a drug and sexploitation flick. Ratray's states that when he went to do the additional scenes he noticed that the director  David E. Durston wasn't present. That's when he discovered that the producers took the film away from Durston.

But feel free to believe what ever BS you want,  .

What I said: nostalgia. Hollywood wouldn't have touched the subject only because they thought nobody cared. But  movies on drugs had been made before and right after this one. It was  sex that Hollywood banned and it was sex that the off-Hollywood peddled at the time. But then you may believe it is pure chance that the word "love" is featured in both titles and that it was double billed with "The Long Hot Night"

I'm not talking about heroin like The Man With The Golden Arm, or there was a Shelley Winters flick that dealt with it too (don't remember it's name either) and probably others, Reefer Madness about marihuana, or Lost Weekend about alcoholism. This was about LSD, and what was unique is there wasn't any Motion Picture Production Code to make sure that the lead actor Ratray got dead or went crazy, or what ever moralistic comeuppance the powers that be demanded, i.e. like the end of Easy Rider, god forbid they show no consequences.

PS. for all Once Upon A Time In America fans when Noodles leaves Williamsburg and goes to the Erie Lackawanna locker room where his gang stashed the cash, watching The Love Statue will give you a pretty good idea of the journey he made from Manhattan to Hoboken to get there. Actor Ratray gets on the ferry in Manhattan crosses the Hudson and arrives at the Hoboken Erie Lackawanna Ferry/Railroad station.

[titoli]

Wrong, Actually, this is from the lead actor Ratray's interview (on the disc). The film was produced by get this three Harvard graduates, who wanted to make a drugs-ploitation flick and that's what they made. Ratray says that a month or two later he was called back to do additional footage, basically he said it was a lot of rolling around with naked women. The reason was that the Supreme Court declared New York State's censorship laws unconstitutional. So the producers thought they could make more money with a drug and sexploitation flick. Ratray's states that when he went to do the additional scenes he noticed that the director  David E. Durston wasn't present. That's when he discovered that the producers took the film away from Durston.

Oh, come on. Nudity in flicks had been around at least since Mr. Teas and what was bad for NYS could have been good for California, they could have made a double version. BTW Flesh and Lace was made the same year. And the whole drug affair takes about 10 minutes of the whole affair.

This was about LSD, and what was unique is there wasn't any Motion Picture Production Code to make sure that the lead actor Ratray got dead or went crazy, or what ever moralistic comeuppance the powers that be demanded, i.e. like the end of Easy Rider, god forbid they show no consequences.

So much about LSD that they didn't even think to put it in the title. I guess they didn't even know what LSD was. In fact, as you said, the director took some only prior to start shooting.

[cigar joe]

What the fuck do you want a documentary about LSD, forgedaboudit.

It is what it is an underground film, just because you don't like it doesn't mean anybody else won't. Like I said they changed it post wrap with new footage, the actress that played Lisa was a broadway actress who changed her name and was concerned about her career. Buy the disc and listen to the interviews yourself, as I said it's not a masterpiece but it's a fun watch with some good ideas. Worth checking out.

[titoli]

What the fuck do you want a documentary about LSD, forgedaboudit.

No, I'd expect a movie about it. This isn't. The drug part is limited, that's why I don't think drug was the main ingredient of the project. But I'll admit that those who made the movie were so inept they may not have thought of sex as the main reason to make it.

It is what it is an underground film,

It isn't. At least not in the line of a Warhol, or Brakhage or whoever was doing movies at that time not distributed in the commercial (or half-commercial) line like this was.

[cigar joe]

No, I'd expect a movie about it. This isn't.

Horse Shit, 

[titoli]

Horse Shit, 

Amen.