Aldrich Bows Out With Panache

If you ever need a friend, buy a dog, says fast-talking women’s wrestling promoter Harry Sears (perfectly played by Peter Falk) in Robert Aldrich’s final movie, California Dolls, released today. The movie is violent, indecent, sexist and disreputable and it’s also terrific, red-blooded fun, with a right rousing climax when the good guys (or rather girls) finally triumph, having had the daylights thumped out of them by a pair of wicked nasties who are black. It’s no surprise that the film is anathema to the critics. Aldrich is perhaps the most forceful American film director to emerge in the 1950s, with a string of hits such as Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? His later films brought increasing hostility as the trampled on society’s corns, but none can deny their sheer power. With this last film Aldrich has retired, at the age of 63. “Eddie, don’t move I want to forget you just as you are,” Sears says in California Dolls. But Aldrich’s films aren’t that forgettable.