Sometimes Aunt Martha Does Dreadful Things (1971)

Director:

Thomas Casey

Writer:

Thomas Casey (writer)

Genre:

Crime | Horror

Tagline:

sometimes aunt Martha does dreadful things

Plot:

Stanley and Paul, a pair of friends on the run from the law, rent a house in the suburbs, where they...

Plot Keywords:

Female Nudity | Gay Interest | Transvestite | Independent Film | Character Name In Title

Cast

Abe Zwick	...	Paul
Wayne Crawford	...	Stanley (as Scott Lawrence)
Don Craig	...	Hubert
Robin Hughes	...	Vicki
Yanka Mann	...	Mrs. Adams
Marty Cordova	...	Alma
Maggie Wood	...	Dolores
Mike Mingoia	...	Joe
Robert DeMeo	...	Jerry (as Robert De Meo)
Sandra Lurie	...	Mary Lou
Brad F. Grinter	...	Lt. Farrell
Charles Guanci	...	Sgt. Baker
Francelia Waterbury	...	Mrs. Johnson
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Victor Anchipolovsky
Joseph Bracci
Terry Craig
Rita Dagovitz
Robert Halstead
William Kerwin	...	Detective (as Thomas Wood)
Pat Lee		(as Pat Erle)
Robert Mann
Larry May
Donna Lee Miller	...	Dorothy
Nannette Monsillo
Robert L. Rivero
Harry Rose
John Wilson

Runtime:

USA:95 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

USA:R | UK:18

Filming Locations:

Miami, Florida, USA

Abe Zwick, where are you when we need You?

Abe Zwick perfected the one-off, beautifully. He never made another film, but created a brilliant portrait of homosexual self-hatred in this film that is both caustic and affecting. He commands the screen, presenting the crumbling debris of a man breaking down under the strain of an increasingly meaningless life.

Paul (Zwick) is an aging queen who's somehow convinced Stanley (Wayne Crawford), a doe-eyed idiot with no sense of the future, to follow his star. He's a petty thief who's seething hatred has escalated recently. He's been forced to skip town and move to a suburb in Miami. As a disguise, he dresses up like a dried up old blue-stocking with as much seething sexual torment as the Church Lady. He tells Stanley to tell his friends that he lives with his "Aunt Martha". Paul himself has no friends, spends far too much time alone in the house, and has to deal with Stanley's dissolute lifestyle. It would be enough to make any man cross the line into transgendered homicidal mania.

Again, Zwick portrays Paul as a tragic figure who has utterly lost any understanding of how to relate to other people. Nevertheless, there is a certain poetry in his anguish, which burns slowly over the course of the film. He's tragic, but also elegant. This is, ultimately, a very sad film. It certainly has many hilarious moments, but there is such an undercurrent of hopelessness and despair, that the humour is bittersweet. This film is worth watching for the performance of Abe Zwick. He could have really built his career on Martha. She's quite a gas, once you get to know her. Just make sure you cut your hair and stop your horsing around. She really hates that!