The Devil's Sleep is one of those amazingly rotgut, tawdry films of the postwar era that were meant to be seen only by the grind-house/skid-row movie audience of the day, the filmmakers arguably never dreaming of these remarkably awful films to be scrutinized and enjoyed by audiences some 50 years later. This is the exact reason why films such as this are rare treasures to some of us. The Devil's Sleep is one of many George Weiss productions, that esteemed Grade-Z money-man being a true icon of badfilm history: Test Tube Babies (and its hallucinatory 1967 resurrection as The Pill), Glen or Glenda, Dance Hall Racket, and several of the notorious Olga roughhouse movies of the 1960s are amongst this amazing fellow's august resume.
In The Devil's Sleep, Weiss offers the extraordinary Timothy Farrell in the first of three roles as the faux-Italian gangster Umberto Scalli. Farrell is known to many cult film fans for his role in the esteemed gutter classic, Ed Wood's sublime Glen or Glenda. Yet it is his Umberto Scalli character - one of the most hilariously goofy sleazeballs ever committed to celluloid - for which Farrell is rightly canonized by cult film fans.
In addition, the film proudly stars Lita Grey Chaplin (a troubled woman with a notorious Hollywood history, beginning as Charlie Chaplin's child bride) playing a self-righteous magistrate in a manner that can only be termed constipated. Indeed, Ms. Chaplin comes across as impossibly rigid, conservative, and uptight, even more so than many of the holier-than-thou characters which appear with alarming frequency in these films, always the mouthpiece of moral arbitration, but more often than not coming across as merely pompous, humorless buffoons. (Think of Ms Chaplin's Judge Ballantine as a carnival version of Ruth Bader Ginsberg.)
In fact, one of the lovely things about these made-for-the-gutter movies is that the entire cast is so "off" by traditional Hollywood standards that they create a bizarre parallel universe, depicting in stark relief what the entire cinematic landscape looked like back then. In addition, these well-meaning and sincere actors, by and large, are terrible performers, and although one gives them a wide berth since they are working in largely first-take, roughly scripted territory, their performances here, as in other films of this genre, are stilted, awkward, and truly amateur, in the best sense of the word.
As for the plot, the film concerns the scourge of recreational pharmaceuticals such as Benzedrine, Phenobarbital, Nebutol, Dinitrophenol and Seconal, some charmingly referred to by their current slang term's such as "Bennys" and "Goofys" (and why not "Goofballs"?), terms which were hopefully never used by actual gangsters or pushers or users - although perhaps they were, after all. Scali, blight on the community, has a gaggle of impossibly doofy henchmen who go around peddling these terribly addictive pills to - get this - overweight women, and gullible high school students. Apparently, these two sections of the community are extremely vulnerable, with high economic value to the low-life underworld characters who peddle their wares. Implausible as this sounds, there was likely some form of this type of illicit activity going on during the time in question, as these provocative exploitation films always took their cue from a (very liberal) reading of the current headlines in newspapers and shock articles in periodicals of the day. The fact remains, however, that these films took the basic concept of a current threat to the community and ran with it, creating wildly fantastic scenarios which may or may not have reflected the current reality in any way, shape, or form.
Certainly, this film's saddest crime is it's extraordinarily sexist view of women, especially lowly housewives who are unfortunately a bit overweight. In addition to treating these poor souls in an incredibly crass and demeaning manner overall, there is one scene which punctuates this mean-spiritedness in a way which is absolutely shocking. This concerns an actress named Mildred Davis, who is quite obese, albeit pretty. As the character Tessie T. Tesse, she is applying to Scali's bogus health club for help with her weight problem. This is all well and good, but the scene is played entirely for laughs, and entirely at the poor woman's expense, as she makes joke after joke about how big she is, and how ashamed she is of this largeness. One wonders if this Miss Davis had some sort of career making fun of her girth in a comical and exploitative manner, as the ease with which she tells these terribly stale, unfunny quips at her own expense seems pat, rehearsed, and well-scripted. The sad scene goes on interminably, and is by far the most disturbing moment in the entire film, which is really saying something coming from a film which is, by and large, uniformly jaw-dropping.
Even more stultifying is a creepy cameo by the creepy George Eiferman, crowned "Mr. America 1948", a hideous muscle-bound freak whose appearance in this low-rent vehicle merely underscores how fringe the whole body-building fad was, even back then. The grotesque Eiferman looks more like a washed-up circus freak than a role model for contemporary youth, his appearance exposing the whole weightlifting racket as little more than a safe harbor for severely neurotic narcissists. Eiferman's appearance alongside Ms. Davis lends a thoroughly morbid carnival atmosphere to The Devil's Sleep, illustrating how these skid-row potboilers owe more than a nod to the tradition of the traveling circus "freak show."
Also worth noting is the depiction of postwar teenagers, several years before they would become canonized, and codified, as well-scrubbed and well-meaning citizens by studios such as American International Pictures; here, about ten years before teens became their own "brand," the high schoolers are depicted as crass, pill-popping, hard-drinking hooligans, living the fast life in a way which seems entirely reckless, if not calculatingly self-destructive. Again, it is unlikely that this depiction of American youngsters as suicidal thrill-seekers had anything to do with their real-life counterparts.
Directed by the inimitable W. Merle Connell, one of the greats of postwar trash film who also photographed Phil Tucker's swan song, the miraculous The Cape Canaveral Monsters, the film is - despite itself - engaging and utterly entertaining throughout, and one may wonder if this was mere accident, or if Weiss and Connell actually knew what they were doing with these tossed-together grindhouse stews. Either way, films such as this stand today as astounding cultural artifacts for a world and a cultural moment long gone, and sorely missed by some. Although the sexism involved would not be seen today as anything but sad and ill-advised, at the time it was seen as perfectly acceptable and, as a barometer of our cultural zeitgeist at the moment, significant and insightful.
Speaking of sexism, one final note: as with many of these films, there are several scenes in which female semi-nudity is provocatively paraded across the screen, giving the audience member everything he could possibly hope for in a film which was not relegated to the smoky back-rooms of the pool hall or the dirty bookstore. Indeed, The Devil's Sleep is the kind of movie that you would sneak into, hoping to see exactly what the poster promised, and walking out an hour and 10 minutes later realizing that you had not only seen what was advertised, but much more. What could be better than that?
As for posthumously rating a movie like this, most literal dweebs give films such as this low ratings due to its obvious lack and flaws (bad plot, bad concept, bad acting, bad photography, blah blah blah), whereas a progressive ratings system might take into account much different, entirely subjective criteria: is the film unique and unusual? Is it entertaining? Does it surprise and charm the viewer? Is it memorable? If the answer to all of these is Yes, then it is, by this new criteria, a classic.
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