Baby Doll

(Elia Kazan, US 1956, 114 min., 35mm)

Senior Matinee. One of the last films to get the Catholic Legion of Decency all hot and bothered, this successful collaboration between director Kazan and playwright Tennessee Williams drove a decisive nail into the Production Code’s coffin. Not your regular steamy potboiler, this sultry story about the stagnation of the old rural South crossbreeds sexual degeneracy with betrayal to produce a fetid literary concoction different from anything then available on the screen, small or large. You can nearly smell the pheromones emanating from horny tomcat Eli Wallach skulking around Carroll Baker as the underage virgin bride of much older Karl Malden.