While some might call this obviously cheaply made trashy drama an exploitation classic, I became fascinated by its two leading female characters, actors I'd known from my soap opera viewing of the 1980's. When I first saw Meg Myles on my daytime TV screen, she was playing the kind-hearted tavern owner Sid on "The Edge of Night", dispensing advice along with coffee and pie and trying to find love in a violent, mob controlled town. Around the same time, Grayson Hall was playing the scheming Euphemia on "The Edge of Night", the turban wearing matriarch of a tragic Southern family vowing revenge on the wealthy Texan who had allegedly stolen her family fortune. In the middle of the night during the time, I caught Grayson in her Oscar nominated role as the nasty Miss Fellowes in "The Night of the Iguana" where she played a repressed lesbian whose sexuality was only assumed because of her desperation to keep teenage nymphet Sue Lyon "pure". In this drama, made two years prior, Ms. Hall plays Pepe, a sophisticated nightclub manager who is assumed to be a friend of Sapho's as well, although that is never spelled out.
Pin-up Meg Myles already had a singing career and some film experience when she was cast in this film which utilizes her busty hour glass figure to great advantage. Only 28 when she made this film, for some reason, she seems nearly 10 years older, so for men to go ga-ga over her and kill to keep her out of other men's arms seems absurd. She's first seen ripping off an ex who had earlier tried to kill her, flying to New York, picking up a man on a plane who sets her up with a singing career at Pepe's. Hall takes her in, dominates her time, introduces her to important people and promotes her as a new singing find. Myles does indeed have a good singing voice, but it's obvious that her tracks were dubbed and that she's lipsincing to loudly piped in recordings, especially in her final song, clad in leather and brandishing a whip.
Manipulating the suave Hall into getting hired, she also becomes involved with wealthy Mike Keene and his teenaged son (Bob Yuro) whom the audience is never sure of whether he is in high school (boarding) or college. He looks far older than college age, but the love scenes between Myles and Yuro still make her seem much older. Noila Chapman is great in her few scenes as the aging drunk whom Keene dumps to pursue Myles, and Del Tenney is fabulously bitchy as the obvious gay Paul whom Myles refers to as "Paulette".
This reminded me in some ways of the same year's "Walk on the Wild Side" where Barbara Stanwyck played the lesbian owner of a brothel, as well as 1965's "Who Killed Teddy Bear" where Elaine Stritch added even more glamour to her lesbian character who ran a bar just like Hall does here. There were even some elements of the 1933 Stanwyck film "Baby Face", although Myles seems slightly longer in the tooth here. The scene where Yuro and Myles end up at his father's country hideaway (complete with pool and waterfall) does give Myles a chance to show the desperation for a quiet, peaceful life, but her ambitions take over and back to New York it is where her betrayal of both men takes a sudden violent turn.
Myles really isn't "Satan in High Heels", but your average bad girl who takes several nasty turns (theft and the urging of one man to kill another), and as much as I like her, find her made to look cheap and vulgar and not really the ideal of any man's sexual fantasy outside the glimpse of her ample bust. I would have liked to have seen more of Hall on screen as she has that great raspy voice presence that made her seem like a fellow stage sister to Stritch and the equally raspy Eileen Heckart, showing that the "Baritone Babes" are often more fascinating than the sexually over-exploited blondes, here represented by the fairly amusing Sabrina as Myles' rival at Pepe's nightclub.
Pin-up Meg Myles already had a singing career and some film experience when she was cast in this film which utilizes her busty hour glass figure to great advantage. Only 28 when she made this film, for some reason, she seems nearly 10 years older, so for men to go ga-ga over her and kill to keep her out of other men's arms seems absurd. She's first seen ripping off an ex who had earlier tried to kill her, flying to New York, picking up a man on a plane who sets her up with a singing career at Pepe's. Hall takes her in, dominates her time, introduces her to important people and promotes her as a new singing find. Myles does indeed have a good singing voice, but it's obvious that her tracks were dubbed and that she's lipsincing to loudly piped in recordings, especially in her final song, clad in leather and brandishing a whip.
Manipulating the suave Hall into getting hired, she also becomes involved with wealthy Mike Keene and his teenaged son (Bob Yuro) whom the audience is never sure of whether he is in high school (boarding) or college. He looks far older than college age, but the love scenes between Myles and Yuro still make her seem much older. Noila Chapman is great in her few scenes as the aging drunk whom Keene dumps to pursue Myles, and Del Tenney is fabulously bitchy as the obvious gay Paul whom Myles refers to as "Paulette".
This reminded me in some ways of the same year's "Walk on the Wild Side" where Barbara Stanwyck played the lesbian owner of a brothel, as well as 1965's "Who Killed Teddy Bear" where Elaine Stritch added even more glamour to her lesbian character who ran a bar just like Hall does here. There were even some elements of the 1933 Stanwyck film "Baby Face", although Myles seems slightly longer in the tooth here. The scene where Yuro and Myles end up at his father's country hideaway (complete with pool and waterfall) does give Myles a chance to show the desperation for a quiet, peaceful life, but her ambitions take over and back to New York it is where her betrayal of both men takes a sudden violent turn.
Myles really isn't "Satan in High Heels", but your average bad girl who takes several nasty turns (theft and the urging of one man to kill another), and as much as I like her, find her made to look cheap and vulgar and not really the ideal of any man's sexual fantasy outside the glimpse of her ample bust. I would have liked to have seen more of Hall on screen as she has that great raspy voice presence that made her seem like a fellow stage sister to Stritch and the equally raspy Eileen Heckart, showing that the "Baritone Babes" are often more fascinating than the sexually over-exploited blondes, here represented by the fairly amusing Sabrina as Myles' rival at Pepe's nightclub.