cinema history class: chained for life

Session: Get Your Freak On, Week 1
Movie: Chained for Life (1952)
Directed by Harry L. Fraser

As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL

Plot:
Life is turned upside down for conjoined twins, Dorothy and Vivian, when Dorothy decides she needs more than a life chained to her sister. Hilarity ensues.

Reaction:
When Keith started this class more than half a decade ago, the first movie he showed us was Freaks, Tod Browning's seminal 1932 film. Now Keith has decided to devote four classes to Freaks ripoffs. And he started with Chained for Life, a 1952 exploitation flick starring conjoined twins, Daisy and Violet Hilton (who, b the way, had appeared in Freaks) in the roles of conjoined twins, Dorothy and Vivian Hamilton, who are loosely based on them.

Chained is truly an exploitation film, as its advertising relied heavily on the curiosity factor -- seeing conjoined twins in a movie. I find this interesting because there was really no need -- beyond the exploitation factor -- to get true conjoined twins. Identical twins would have done fine. So would two unrelated women who look sufficiently similar (with judicious use of makeup). In fact, Dorothy's dream sequence would have been much easier to produce without the limitations caused by having conjoined twins.

But, hey, I guess producer George Moskov didn't want to cheat his audience.

At any rate, this actually had a pretty strong plot for an exploitation film, and it developed into an interesting legal conundrum. I spent most of the time wondering how the whole thing would play out. I will say that the judge's prologue and epilogue bookends were kind of hokey, but they didn't really harm the film.

The Hilton sisters did not perform well as actors; their deliveries were wooden. When I pointed that out, Keith noted that they never were really actors. They were singers and musicians. So I'm still kind of torn as to whether I think the movie would have worked better with others in those roles. But, as noted, a bug selling point was the use of real oddities and vaudeville performers. The vaudeville acts occupied a bit more of the movie than they should have -- they were, essentially, filler. I kind of liked them, but I would have preferred more story and less variety hour.

Chained isn't any kind of great masterwork, but it is an interesting little flick.

Ratings:

Me: 9

Dave: 9.2

Ethan: 7

Joe: 10
Sean:  2 out of 4