Just Screenshots: 2020-02-23

Toys Are Not for Children (1972)

aka

Virgin Dolls

Emotionally stunted child woman Jamie Godard (a solid and touching performance by adorable brunette Marcia Forbes) not only suffers from an unhealthy fixation on her whoring no-count long absent father Philip (well played by Peter Lightstone), but also has an obsession with all the toys her wayward pop gave her as a kid. After getting a job at a toy store, Jamie decides to marry co-worker Charlie Belmond (a sturdy and likable portrayal by Harlan Cary Poe). When the marriage doesn't work out, Jamie runs away to New York City and becomes a prostitute who specializes in servicing perverted old men who like to play daddy with her.

Although the seamy premise sounds like ideal grindhouse fodder, director Stanley H. Brasloff and writer Macs McAree surprisingly deliver very little nudity and no simulated soft-core sex. Instead they tackle such dark and disturbing themes as incest, pedophilia, sexual repression, childhood trauma, kinky fetishism, and arrested adolescent syndrome gone tragically wrong in an unflinchingly stark and head-on confrontational manner. (IMDB Woodyanders)

Marcia Forbes as Jamie Godard

Fran Warren as Edna Godard

Marcia Forbes

Evelyn Kingsley as Pearl Valdi

Harlan Cary Poe as Charlie Belmond

Harlan Cary Poe and Marcia Forbes

Robert Hazelton as the Justice of the Peace

Harlan Cary Poe as Charlie Belmond

Luis Arroyo as Eddie

N.J. Osrag as Max

Mark Justin as Roy the mailman

Pocket knife with blade fully extended

Peter Lightstone as Phillip Godard

Tiberia Mitr as young Jamie

Harlan Cary Poe as Charlie Belmond

Herbert Martin as Frankie the Bartender

Irene Signoretti as Gloria

Marcia Forbes

Jack Cobb

Marcia Forbes

Sally Moore

Marcia Forbes

Madelyn Killeen

Peter Lightstone and Marcia Forbes

Marcia Forbes and Peter Lightstone

Evelyn Kingsley as Pearl Valdi

Peter Lightstone "Oh My God!"

Marcia Forbes

Desert Hearts (1985)

It is 1950s Nevada, and Professor Vivian Bell arrives to get a divorce. She’s unsatisfied with her marriage, and feels out of place at the ranch she stays on, she finds herself increasingly drawn to Cay Rivers, an open and self-assured lesbian, and the ranchowner’s daughter. The emotions released by their developing intimacy, and Vivian’s insecurities about her feelings towards Cay, are played out against a backdrop of rocky landscapes and country and western songs. (IMDB)

"Desert Hearts was one of the first movies to centre on a female love story that allowed the women to be together, and it was a revelation when it was released in 1985. Before then, most on-screen lesbians had fallen prey to some combination of murder, suicide, vampirism, nervous breakdown, or heterosexuality." ~Nicole Pasulka

Hazlitt Magazine © Penguin Random House