My World of Flops Hot, Hot, Hot Case File #188/Control Nathan Rabin 4.0 #220 Palmetto (1998)
Welcome, friends, to the latest entry in Control Nathan Rabin 4.0. It’s the career and site-sustaining column that gives YOU, the kindly, Christ-like, unbelievably sexy Nathan Rabin’s Happy Place patron, an opportunity to choose a movie that I must watch, and then write about, in exchange for a one-time, one hundred dollar pledge to the site’s Patreon account. The price goes down to seventy-five dollars for all subsequent choices.
Or you can be like four kind patrons and use this column to commission a series of pieces about a filmmaker, actor or television show. I’m deep into a project on the films of the late, great, fervently mourned David Bowie and I have now watched and written about every movie Sam Peckinpah made over the course of his tumultuous, wildly melodramatic psychodrama of a life and career. That’s also true of the motion pictures and television projects of the late Tawny Kitaen.
A generous patron is now paying me to watch and write about the cult animated show Batman Beyond and I’m about halfway through the complete filmography troubled former Noxzema pitch-woman Rebecca Gayheart. Oh, and I’m delving deep into the world of Oliver Stone for one of you beautiful people as well.
I love Neo-Noirs as a sub-genre the same way I love movies about movies even though, on the whole, they objectively fucking suck. I love Neo-Noirs because I love Film Noir so by definition I dig their disreputable modern offspring.
I love the ripe sensuality of Neo-Noirs. I love the danger. I love the style. I love the cynicism and dark comedy and the deliciously curdled take on human nature. So it is perhaps not surprising that I also quite like the 1998 Neo-Noir Palmetto, an adaptation of James Hadley Chase’s pulp novel Just Another Sucker from screenwriter E. Max Frye and director Volker Schlondorff.
Frye wrote one of the best and most original screenplays of the 1980s in Something Wild while Schlondorff is a German filmmaker best known for helming the arthouse sensation The Tin Drum and the film adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. He’s also the star and creator of Schlondorff on Golf, a confusingly titled series of instructional golf videos in which the Teutonic filmmaker uses simple camera tricks to pretend to be a little person golf professional.
Schlondorff on Golf is consequently a lot like comedian Tim Conway’s Dorf on Golf except that it’s serious, even dour. I know Tiger Woods credits it with making him a champion.
With Palmetto Schlondorff and Frye don’t try to reinvent the steamy contemporary Neo-Noir because they know that when done correctly there’s nothing wrong with it.
A smartly cast Woody Harrelson, Carnage himself, stars as the unfortunately named Harry Barber, the sucker at the heart of Just Another Sucker. Barber begins the movie in prison, having been railroaded into a two year stint in the pokey after he wrote an article that upset some very powerful people because it contained some very inconvenient truths.
When he’s unexpectedly sprung from jail Harry resolves to make the most of his fresh start but being the protagonist of a Neo-Noir he is weak-willed and eminently corruptible, particularly where sex and women are concerned.
The luckless ex-jailbird may not have prospects but he does have gorgeous women throwing themselves at him constantly, beginning with his girlfriend Nina (Gina Gershon), a sculptor who uses her body to keep her man from splitting town for greener pastures.
A woman like Nina deserves better than a schmuck like Harry but it isn’t long until other, arguably even sexier vixens enter the mix in the form of Rhea Malroux (Elisabeth Shue, setting the screen ablaze with her raw sexuality) and Odette Malroux (Chloe Sevigny).
Shue’s tawdry temptress gives Harry an offer he should refuse because everything about it stinks to high heaven. She wants Harry to help her fake the kidnapping of her jailbait step-daughter Odette for a half million dollar ransom.
Like The Hot Spot and Body Heat, Palmetto conveys scorching heat and incandescent sensuality so vividly and viscerally that the film stock itself sweats along with its over-sexed characters.
Palmetto positively drips with overwrought sexuality. As an archetypal femme fatale who initially seems like the least trustworthy human being in existence yet turns out to be even nastier, Shue is sex incarnate.
Cinematographer Thomas Kloss’s camera is a pure, potent vessel for the Male Gaze. It lingers lasciviously over the curves of its insatiable seductresses, leering lovingly over every shapely posterior squeezed into hot pants or too-tight dresses.
Odette throws herself at Harry as well and while he’s just strong enough to resist the titanic force of her advances he’s entirely weak enough to say yes to a scheme that goes sideways from the very beginning.
In the grand tradition of both Film Noir and Neo-Noir, no one is quite who they profess to be here and our hapless anti-hero finds himself overwhelmed and played for a fool. In an ironic development, an understandably and justifiably scared Harry is called in by the police in the aftermath of the girl’s kidnapping but as a press liaison rather than as a suspect.
Harry thinks he’s smart and strong enough to navigate profoundly murky waters but he discovers just how dumb and corruptible he is when things spiral out of control as he tries to escape his fate as a quintessential fall guy.
The key to making a timeless Neo-Noir is to adhere to the classic style of Noir, with its shadows, stylization and seedy, steamy sexuality. For a dope just out of the big house Harry dresses fabulously, with a retro sartorial style that has aged beautifully.
With the exception of a TV in the background playing the music video for OMC’s “How Bizarre”, nothing about Palmetto marks it as a product of the late 1990s as opposed to the late eighties or seventies or even aughts.
With sexy thrillers like Palmetto, style is substance. It’s a crackling yarn about sex, lies, murder and the infernal Florida heat that loses steam as it lurches to a conclusion and could easily be fifteen minutes shorter but otherwise does exactly what a Neo-Noir should do.
Palmetto titillates. It entertains. It confuses and if it’s not terribly memorable or surprising in its storytelling and world-building it doesn’t have to be.
Late in the film Shue’s schemer describes herself as “just a girl with a little ambition.” Palmetto is a film of exceedingly modest ambition as well but that’s a big part of its pulpy charm.
Palmetto knows exactly what it wants to do and does it in a way that’s deeply satisfying if not terribly distinctive.
Failure, Fiasco or Secret Success: Secret Success
Be a part of the recently launched Indiegogo campaign for 7 Days in Ohio II: Return of the Juggalos over at https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/make-7-days-in-ohio-2-return-of-the-juggalo-happen--2/x/14797497#/ and help send Nathan back to the Gathering for the EIGHTH time for more literary magic, madness and miracles!
Pre-order The Joy of Trash, the Happy Place’s upcoming book about the very best of the very worst and get instant access to all of the original pieces I’m writing for them AS I write them (there are EIGHT so far, including Shasta McNasty and the first and second seasons of Baywatch Nights) AND, as a bonus, monthly write-ups of the first season Baywatch Nights you can’t get anywhere else (other than my Patreon feed) at https://the-joy-of-trash.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders
Missed out on the Kickstarter campaign for The Weird A-Coloring to Al/The Weird A-Coloring to Al-Colored In Edition? You’re in luck, because you can still pre-order the books, and get all manner of nifty exclusives, by pledging over at https://the-weird-a-coloring-to-al-coloring-colored-in-books.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders
and of course you can buy The Weird Accordion to Al here: https://www.nathanrabin.com/shop
AND of course you can also pledge to this site and help keep the lights on at https://www.patreon.com/nathanrabinshappyplace