How great is Valerie Solanas? In her vignette in this highly Paul
Morrissey-accented porno spoof, she stands in a poorly lit hallway
and rebuffs the star, Tom Baker's, attempts to bed her. Her
rapidfire delivery suggests a long-term study of 1930s third and
fourth bananas--gum-chewing wisecrackers handed a scene's
one good and last line. If only Andy had given her the Ingrid
Superstar treatment instead of shutting her out in the cold, things
would've been so different--Warhol would've gone on making good
movies, and Morrissey would have had no career.
There is also a spicy and almost mesmeric sequence with the
extraordinary Nico, who, in addition to all her other qualities, is
infinitely more able to act improvisationally than the cloddish
nonactors assembled here. Baker, the straightest, most earnest
and dullest figure ever put at the center of a Warhol movie, has no
gift for impromptu dialogue; the women opposite him generally
don't either. The film is long and draggy; it resembles the
"recitative" sections between sex scenes in an early-seventies
porn movie. It seems not particularly Warholian but quite
Morrisseyan--it recalls the worst of Morrissey. (One big laugh line
comes when Baker interrupts the beginnings of sex with a
stoned-seeming woman to spray a passing cockroach.)
The film is also, in the worst Morrissey fashion, obsessed with a
microscopic study of physical uglinesses. It often induces
gagging.
