Who? Bette Davis? Peter Lorre? Zac Efron? Worse. A combination of the three molded into a single unholy fright machine. I am of course referring to hellish imp Mickey Rooney, a man who creates more terror before breakfast than Rob Zombie has in his entire career. Does this mean we're going to review Silent Night, Deadly Night 5? You fucking wish we were going to review Silent Night, Deadly Night 5. So do we. But we can't do. It's October. It's almost Halloween time, and if we don't present the kind of mortal terror and strangeness that makes your testicles ascend, then we're wasting your time. We're going to discuss 1971's The Manipulator. It's a doozy. If you drop acid and watch it, Mickey Rooney will crawl out of your television and whisper into your ear the exact time and date of your death. The Manipulator is a movie about Mickey Rooney making his own damn movie all by himself, like Robert Rodriguez. If Robert Rodriguez completely lost his goddamn mind.
Mickey Rooney plays BJ Lang, a cameraman during Hollywood's glory days, discarded and displaced by time, like Mickey Rooney. BJ is a one man crew for a movie in his own mind, or multiple movies in his own mind, or perhaps even a Hollywood in his own mind. Rendered powerless by age and a changing business, he seeks to reclaim this power, to live a past he wished he had and to stand around a makeshift soundstage acting like a raving lunatic. Mickey Rooney talking himself in multiple voices would be terrifying enough. Mickey Rooney eating Fruit Loops and reading the paper would be terrifying enough. But he does more. He has kidnapped an actress, played by Luana Anders, tied her to a chair and is forcing her to make this movie with him.
Her every move is dictated by a mad man, her every word and action must be chosen to avoid transgressing against a set of imaginary rules. She has been thrust into a chaotic mirror universe, an embodiment of all the worst things about the Hollywood delusion machine. She must feign compliance, respect, appreciation and even to a degree, love to survive.
That's pretty damn creepy. And Lang talking to himself is pretty damn creepy. When he puts on lipstick and eyeshadow and tells anecdotes about doing makeup for Marilyn Monroe, the creepiness gets worse. When you see glimpses into his warped imagination, involving nightmare Hollywood parties that look like a New Year's Eve in Hell hosted by Ken Russell, then you start to get the full impact. Or perhaps it's when Rooney puts on a swashbuckler costume and a fake nose and romances her as a far less than serviceable Cyrano. This is a bad situation.
And when you factor in the meaning of this mess, the rage and despair and truth of his performance, the significance of his character playing a man who gets no respect for being a puppeteer to the beautiful people, the disgust factor goes over the top. The surrealistic bile of Lynch's Mulholland Drive lurks under the surface of this and Rooney, lashing out against a system that stunted his potential and left him by the wayside, The Manipulator becomes an unwatchable vortex of chaos and artistic frustration, rotten to its core with dark truths, awkward performances and unnecessary weirdness. Mickey Rooney is good in this part. Too damn good.
An honest, scary, grotesquerie that I would wholeheartedly recommend not seeing. There's nothing more icky than badness with moments of uncomfortable insight.
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