Soap Gets In Your Ears: Part 5

Now back to paperback sleaze king Harold Robbins again; in 1970, Paramount released a mammoth version of his sleazy South American jet set novel, The Adventurers, with a bizarre cast including Candice Bergen, Olivia de Havilland, Rossano Brazzi, John Ireland, and lots of other bewildered stars. The end result featured enough nasty sex and violence to earn a hard R rating but failed to turn a profit, so Paramount replaced it with a gutted PG version that remained the only viable viewing option for decades (but thankfully the DVD is uncut). Brazilian bossa and jazz maestro Antonio Carlos Jobim (who penned "The Girl from Ipanema") offers a nice and sunny score with some great loungy moments (especially "Rome Montage"); his work was later adapted into the more easily obtained (and better-selling) Music from The Adventurers by Quincy Jones and the Ray Brown Orchestra, but here's the original for comparison.

Soap Gets in Your Ears: Part 4

The indisputable queen of literary trash, Jackie Collins (sister of Joan) ruled the '70s with string of "steamy, yummy bestsellers" (in the words of French & Saunders) with titles like The Bitch and The Stud. Fortunately the movie adaptations are just as OTT and hilarious, and one of the most overripe of the bunch is 1979's The World Is Full of Married Men. Almost a musical, this full-strength wallow in glitzy excess features many on-screen dance performers including a young Bonnie Tyler (who sings the title track, later issued in a different version on CD), Paul Nicholas (still fresh off his turns as Cousin Kevin in Ken Russell's Tommy and Wagner in Lisztomania), and even space-disco Brit-group Hot Gossip, whose one-time lead singer, future stage and vocal chart star Sarah Brightman, also contributes a song (the ultra-rare horror disco ditty, "Madame Hyde"). The "normal" actors in the film include an obviously fearless Anthony Franciosa (pre-Tenebrae), Caroll Baker, and even Story of O's Anthony Steel. The UK-issued double-LP soundtrack ("As Seen on TV!") was released by Ronco, best known for hawking chintzy kitchen utensils on television, who apparently decided to compete with K-Tel in the late '70s and lost. The album quickly disappeared and has become quite a curiosity item thanks to a dizzying roster of songs, most of them pleasingly weird and obscure (just skip past the occasional overworn chestnut like "Copacabana").

The World Is Full of Married Men - Part 1
1. The World Is Full Of Married Men (Bonnie Tyler)
2. Get Down (Gene Chandler)
3. Shame (Evelyn "Champagne" King)
4. Weekend (Mick Jackson)
5. Love Clone (Hot Gossip)
6. We Don't Make Each Other Laugh Anymore (Gladys Knight)
7. Copacabana (Barry Manilow)
8. Woman In Love (The Three Degrees)
9. Boogie Town (F.L.B.)
10. Take That To The Bank (Shalamar)
11. Boogie Oogie Oogie (Taste Of Honey)
12. Makin' It (Paul Nicholas)
13. Snakes Alive (Nona Hendricks)
14. Disco Nights (G.Q.)
The World Is Full of Married Men - Part II
15. Now That We've Found Love (Third World)
16. Contact (Edwin Starr)
17. Lovely Day (Bill Withers)
18. Right Back Where We Started From (Maxine Nightingale)
19. Crazy (The Glass Family)
20. Madame Hyde (Sarah Brightman)
21. Best Of My Love (The Emotions)
22. Mind Blowing Decisions (Heatwave)
23. Every Woman In The World (Billy Ocean)
24. You make Me Feel Mighty Real (Sylvester)
25. Heaven Must Be Missing An Angel (Tavares)
26. Disco Concerto (Jasmin)
27. Loveline (Paul Nicholas)
28. The World Is Full Of Married Men (Mick Jackson)

Soap Gets in Your Ears: Part 3

Sidney Sheldon was never anyone's idea of a great novelist, but his lurid, heavy-breathing potboilers used to sell by the ton back in the '70s. One of his most popular titles was The Other Side of Midnight, which Fox mounted as their big prestige film for 1977. Of course, the fact that they had no major stars and were using the director (Charles Jarrott) from the disastrous Lost Horizon musical should have been big warning signs, but execs were still shocked when the film landed on screens nationwide with a resounding thud and was quickly eclipsed by another little Fox movie they had completely ignored... Star Wars. It's still incredibly entertaining on a camp level, though, thanks to its improper use of erotic ice cubes, self-administered abortions, gauzy romantic walks in the rain, and, uh, a young Susan Sarandon. That master of romantic melodies, Michel Legrand, does his best to save the film by going crazy with the pianos and strings; it's one of his lushest efforts on its own terms and certainly more successful than the film it accompanies.

Soap Gets In Your Ears: Part 2

The ultra-trashy novels of Harold Robbins have provided some entertaining, glossy sleaze over the years (see The Carpetbaggers, The Betsy and The Adventurers, for starters), but sitting at the top of the trash heap is The Lonely Lady. This side-splitting1983 soaper stars Pia Zadora as a wide-eyed aspiring screenwriter who gets raped with a garden hose (by Ray Liotta) and decides to sleep her way to the top of the Hollywood elite, thanks to her brilliant writing prowess and ability to copulate on pool tables. Featuring one of the funniest mental breakdown sequences ever filmed, this gem from once-talented Hammer director Peter Sasdy (Countess Dracula, Hands of the Ripper) won a boatload of Razzies and is still screaming out for a DVD release. The soundtrack is a wonderfully ripe chunk of '80s pop excess, including an over-the-top theme song (by "Ellis Hall, Jr.") and, best of all, a zippy cover of the Belle Stars' "The Clapping Song" enhanced by the vocal stylings of Ms. Zadora herself.

Soap Gets In Your Ears: Part I

Showgirls and Wild Things notwithstanding, Hollywood has been really slacking off in its delivery of lurid, overwrought soap opera trash on the big screen for the past decade. Just take a look back the '60s and '70s, which were filled with glossy, howlingly trashy adaptations of books by writers like Harold Robbins, Sidney Sheldon, and that tragic queen to rule over them all, Jacqueline Susann. She'll always be remembered for that catfighting classic, Valley of the Dolls, but the screen was also blessed with other Susann stories as well -- namely 1975's Once Is Not Enough and 1971's sadly neglected The Love Machine. Diabolik himself, John Phillip Law, stars as the titular "love machine," a local TV news anchor (they were once considered celebrities, believe it or not) who decides to sleep his way to the top and winds up tangling pyromaniac exec spouse Dyan Cannon and outrageously "flamboyant" photographer David Hemmings. Sony's really overdue with a DVD of this one. Composing duties here are handled by first-timer Artie Butler, a songwriter who went on to score The Harrad Experiment and The Rescuers. His work here has a surprisingly groovy edge, especially the two-part "House Party" cues, but most folks remember this for the two songs by Dionne Warwick (or "Warwicke" according to the album cover), "He's Moving On" and "Amanda."