{"id":1469,"date":"2024-08-01T01:53:12","date_gmt":"2024-08-01T01:53:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=1469"},"modified":"2024-10-14T13:33:24","modified_gmt":"2024-10-14T17:33:24","slug":"the-lonely-lady","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/08\/01\/the-lonely-lady\/","title":{"rendered":"The Lonely Lady"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"The Lonely Lady<\/strong>\u00a0(1983)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Universal\/Drama\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 92 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (nudity, strong sexual content, rape, language, drug use, mature themes)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Peter Sasdy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Ellen Shepard, John Kershaw and Shawn Randall\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Charlie Calello\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Brian West\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: September 30, 1983 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Pia Zadora, Lloyd Bochner, Bibi Besch, Joseph Cali, Anthony Holland, Jared Martin, Ray Liotta, Carla Romanelli, Giovanni Rizzo, Olivier Pierre, Kendal Kaldwell, Lou Hirsch.\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Box Office: $1.2M (US)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ***<\/p>\n

\u00a0One of the greatest bad movies of the 80s, The Lonely Lady<\/strong> is 100% pure trash. It\u2019s an adaptation of Harold Robbins\u2019 1976 trashy best seller about a female screenwriter\u2019s rough journey to success in male-dominated Hollywood. It falls in the same category as other trash novels brought to the big screen- e.g. The Other Side of Midnight, The Betsy and Bloodline- with its soap opera trappings and all the melodrama that comes with the territory. It stars Pia Zadora, undisputedly one of the worst actresses of all time. She was married to Israeli multimillionaire industrialist Meshulam Riklis at the time; he put up half the money for The Lonely Lady<\/strong>. It was his second failed attempt (after 1982\u2019s Butterfly) to catapult his wife into superstardom. Pia is wonderfully terrible in it.<\/p>\n

\u00a0She plays Jerilee Randall, an aspiring screenwriter who deals with one abusive male jerk after another as she attempts to achieve her goal of having her own screenplay produced. It starts in high school right after she wins a creative writing award. She goes to a pool party where she\u2019s raped with a garden hose by some creep (Liotta in his debut role) who gets away with it because his family\u2019s rich. A few scenes later, Jerilee marries prominent screenwriter Walter Thornton (Bochner, Point Blank), the father of one of her classmates. The marriage ultimately falls apart and not because of his erectile dysfunction. It\u2019s because she dared to rewrite lines in one of screenplays that turned out to be an improvement over what he wrote. Jealousy turns him into an abusive bully and she leaves him.<\/p>\n

\u00a0It\u2019s all downhill for Jerilee as she keeps getting involved with a**holes like the married actor, George Ballentine (Martin, Dallas), with whom she has an affair that culminates with an unwanted pregnancy and an abortion. She then becomes involved with a sleazy club owner, Vincent DaCosta (Cali, Saturday Night Fever), who claims to have connections in Hollywood that can get her screenplay made. Instead, he pimps her out to a skeevy Italian couple he passes off as producers. He laughs about it afterwards.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em>It\u2019s the final straw for Jerilee. She goes back to her apartment and has a full-blown nervous breakdown. She takes a shower fully clothed, screams and wrecks her place. The topper is when the keys on her typewriter turn into the faces of all the people that did her wrong (a hallucination). It\u2019s one of the most unintentionally funny scenes I\u2019ve ever seen.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I forgot to tell you that The Lonely Lady<\/strong> is a flashback framed by Jerilee arriving at some unnamed prestigious awards show where she\u2019s up for Best Screenplay. PLOT SPOILER!<\/strong> She wins and uses her acceptance speech to denounce Hollywood as a system in which she had to \u201cf*** her way to the top\u201d. It\u2019s the best use of the f-word since Joan Crawford\u2019s warning to Pepsi executives in Mommie Dearest (\u201cDon\u2019t f*** with me, fellas!\u201d).<\/p>\n

\u00a0Setting aside its camp value momentarily, let\u2019s talk about The Lonely Lady<\/strong> as a mere movie. It\u2019s bad in a lot of ways. The narrative is filled with gaps. In one scene, Jerliee\u2019s mother (Besch, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan) voices her disapproval of her daughter\u2019s relationship with the much older Walter. In the very next scene, she\u2019s at their wedding reception all smiles and well wishes. What changed? Jerilee develops a drinking problem as the marriage crashes and burns. Walter calls her out on it during an argument. After that, it\u2019s never even alluded to again.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Also, and this is a pretty big deal, Jerilee seems to get over the garden hose rape rather quickly. You would think that she\u2019d be traumatized by not only the attack but also her rapist not facing criminal charges because he\u2019s from Beverly Hills and can afford a better lawyer. Jerilee doesn\u2019t even appear particularly depressed. It doesn\u2019t make sense. This is just bad writing, not just on the part of Robbins but also the screenwriters.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Zadora, whose first movie role is actually one of the Martian children in 1964\u2019s Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, is horribly miscast. She was nearly 30 at the time of filming yet we\u2019re expected to believe her as an innocent schoolgirl with pigtails in the early scenes. She looks like a hooker playing a twisted sex game with a john that fantasizes about little girls. Pia has spunk, I\u2019ll give her that. She\u2019s also easy on the eyes. However, she has next to nothing in the way of actual talent. After The Lonely Lady<\/strong>, her only other major role is the Beatnik Chick in Hairspray (1988) but we all know that was novelty casting on John Waters\u2019 part. Reportedly, Pia hated The Lonely Lady<\/strong> so much that she wanted her husband to buy the movie and halt its release permanently.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Since I don\u2019t want to be unfair to Pia (who I\u2019m sure is a sweet lady), I must point out that all of acting in The Lonely Lady<\/strong> is various degrees of bad. Bochner hams it up as the cruel husband who takes credit for his wife\u2019s script doctoring. And what brilliant words does Jerilee contribute to her hubby\u2019s screenplay. She has a grieving mother say \u201cWhy? Why?!\u201d at her son\u2019s funeral instead of the monologue Walter wrote for the actress playing the part. He goes from warm to cold just like that. Cali really camps it up as Vincent. Anybody with half a brain can see through this guy\u2019s BS. He\u2019s so obviously a pimp. How does Jerilee NOT see it? Honestly, Besch is the only one that emerges with a scintilla of dignity. Her character is inconsistent but she makes the best of it.<\/p>\n

\u00a0There seems to be a lack of proper nouns in The Lonely Lady<\/strong> universe. Jerilee attends \u201cThe Awards\u201d. I guess they couldn\u2019t get the rights to \u201cThe Oscars\u201d. When two characters discuss a movie they\u2019ve just seen, the conversation goes something like this: \u201cI liked her better\u201d and \u201cI liked him better\u201d. The sex scenes border on ridiculous. In one of them, we get to see Walter\u2019s very, VERY hairy back. In another, there\u2019s a sweet continuity gaffe. In order to help her husband finish, Jerilee climbs on top and straddles him. It then cuts to shot of their feet with her toes pointing up. The makers used this very shot just moments before.<\/p>\n

\u00a0There are numerous reasons The Lonely Lady<\/strong> is a camp classic. One of the main ones is the wonderfully awful theme song \u201cThe Lonely Lady\u201d sung by Larry Graham. It opens and closes the movie. It sets the right tone for 92 minutes of glitzy trash. The dialogue is horrendous. When told of her daughter\u2019s mental state, her mother replies \u201cShe\u2019s always been difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0The Lonely Lady<\/strong> works best as an unintentional comedy. It really wants to be taken seriously which makes it that much funnier. It put an end to Peter Sasdy\u2019s career as a feature film director. He previously directed a few Hammer movies- Taste the Blood of Dracula, Countess Dracula and Hands of the Ripper. He won a Golden Razzie for The Lonely Lady<\/strong>\u00a0 which won five additional Razzies including Worst Picture, Worst Actress and, ironically, Worst Screenplay. That\u2019s the final insult, a movie about screenwriters with a bad screenplay. This is a must-see for connoisseurs of bad movies.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Lonely Lady\u00a0(1983)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Universal\/Drama\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 92 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (nudity, strong sexual content, rape, language, drug use, mature themes)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Peter Sasdy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Ellen Shepard, John Kershaw and Shawn Randall\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Charlie Calello\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Brian West\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: September 30, 1983 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Pia Zadora, Lloyd Bochner, Bibi Besch, Joseph Cali, Anthony Holland, Jared Martin, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1803,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1469","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-guilty-pleasures"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/The-Lonely-Lady-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1469","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1469"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1469\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2027,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1469\/revisions\/2027"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}