'Ain't nothin' dirty goin' on':
Dickinson, Dan
BEST LITTLE WHOREHOUSE II 'Ain't nothin' dirty goin' on' DAN DICKINSON SHOULD prostitution be legalized? Isn't it, after all, a "victim-less crime"? Back in 1978, a musical play appeared which...
...I'm getting callous," she explains to Mandy...
...Throughout the movie, we get the distinct impression from Walt that he anticipates that Broom-field and Sissel will produce another Little Whorehouse, a tribute to the joys and utility of legalized prostitution starring himself...
...Should prostitution be legalized...
...Later, at the climax, she is fired because she refuses to turn a trick at a substantial discount...
...More than any of the women, however, it's Mandy who gives the film focus and resolution...
...Touches of tasteless luxury predominate, plush chairs and the like, stamping the whole proceedings with a certain air of tawdry desperation...
...Moving within, the emptiness yields to an oppressive claustrophobia...
...It's perhaps the saddest commentary in the film that as the clients make their choices moments after the introductions, nota single one bothers to recall the name of the lady he's picked...
...INSIDE THE BORDELLO, we're introduced to the cast of characters...
...In a very real sense, that's what the film is...
...LIKE ALL good movies, and unlike simplistic ones such as Whorehouse, Chicken Ranch raises more questions than it resolves...
...Accordingly, the brothel owner is on his best behavior...
...Madams are motherly, cheery lovers of a good time...
...I don't want this filmed...
...I don't see how any girl can feel anything with a trick," says one...
...Visited by two French journalists, he waxes poetic about his noble calling, explaining how his party house saves the lives of "basket-cases and amputees" who, after they're treated "as if they're whole men" by the likes of Connie or Mandy, go back to their hospitals determined to stay alive until their next visit...
...Chicken Ranch opens with a panning shot of the whorehouse's new home...
...Broomfield and Sissel do not pretend to present us with the solutions...
...Lying on a bed, she discusses price with a client with the commission consciousness of a used car salesman...
...By some device, Broomfield and Sissel were allowed into the Ranch to film a few weeks of life in a bordello...
...Following its expulsion from Texas, the Chicken Ranch moved to Nevada where, in a.few counties, prostitution is legal...
...repressed, mean-natured Calvinists out to impose their strait-laced beliefs on everyone else...
...Yet if the women lack individuality to the customers, they portray it clearly to the camera...
...No amount of policing, regulation, or health inspection will ever change the basis of prostitution, which is the exploitation of women...
...And he's right, as in avarice, the love of money...
...You've got to radiate a good feeling," he advises...
...When Mandy is dismissed, all hell breaks out as Walt angrily stamps down the hall to eject her from the Ranch...
...Back in 1978, a musical play appeared which trumpeted both these positions...
...In a revealing bull session, she and her counterparts discuss how they've been bullied, beaten, and tormented by the men...
...What we're talking about," he contends, "is a form of love, really...
...Concerning prostitution, there is something dirty going on...
...Around mid-movie she decides to quit...
...They filmed it, and Mandy's subsequent explanation of the firing...
...serving up, we're to presume, the same brand of slightly naughty fun and games we saw portrayed on stage and screen...
...Even so, the girls do have feelings, when they permit themselves to...
...They get back by servicing their patrons as fast as possible, allowing themselves no emotions besides hatred and contempt...
...On other occasions, the hooker mentality shows through...
...Yet if Chicken Ranch doesn't have the answers, at least it serves to help us frame the issues honestly...
...Were the setting not real, the cinematog-rapher would have had to think long and hard to name a better locale...
...Clearly, they are unable to find happiness either outside the Ranch or in...
...the hookers are fun-loving free spirits, unhampered by the shackles of bourgeois morality...
...When the mask comes off near the end, we are more relieved than surprised...
...We protect migrants, laborers, and immigrants from being taken advantage of...
...It's an unusual occurrence when art captures the essence of reality...
...I'll sue the shit out of you...
...As the filming proceeded, it must have become apparent to Walt that Chicken Ranch would not turn out the way he'd undoubtedly expected...
...As the women stand in line, each one steps forward to introduce herself...
...the near prison-like conditions the girls endure . . . allegations of sexual abuse of the women by the owner...
...In our own era we've brought prostitution into the open but, in our urge to prove how enlightened and tolerant we are, we've failed to remember that prostitution is, after all, exactly what the Victorians said it was: a despicable vice that exploits and dehumanizes both its practitioners and participants . It seems that, if on the one hand there's a widely understood totalitarian temptation on the part of those who possess power to accumulate more of it at the expense of freedom, there also appears to be a less frequently acknowledged libertarian leniency, a desire to make excuses for personal choices which are often bad ones...
...They caught the truth, and they were out...
...After all, as Fran says, "Customer is King...
...Thus, it isn't enough for many supposedly open-minded people to advocate marijuana and cocaine legalization...
...At last the ladies appear, parading their charms in the parlor as the customers make their selections...
...Or should the Chicken Ranch be closed again...
...Toys," retorts another...
...For one thing, the camera was catching too much - drug abuse...
...They're pretty enough...
...This may be a brothel," he intones sanctimoniously, "but there isn't anybody here that doesn't believe in God...
...Walter thinks its her attitude...
...We're considering a vice that progressively dehumanizes a whole class of society...
...A divorcee, she found herself out of a marriage and out of work, so she turned prostitute...
...In both the smash play and the less successful film version that followed, the portrait of prostitution is clear...
...She acknowledges that someday she too has to "find out if I can be a true person...
...Welcome back to my parlor, urged the spider to the fly...
...Why not women...
...No...
...Next there's Walter, the owner, a beer-bellied panderer who manages, until nearly the end of the movie, to lace all his statements with a low-keyed super-sincerity that's as phony as it is manipulative...
...Regarding prostitution, what we're talking about is not simply a seedy business...
...To this day the place continues to operate, DAN Dickinson is the director of the Productivity Communications Center in Boston...
...Now a fascinating new documentary has appeared which does just that, showing up Whorehouse and similar such ventures for the cynical distortions they are...
...Based on the real-world closing of the Chicken Ranch, a famed bordello, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas was an entertaining, extravagant romanticization of harlotry...
...Later, at a Thanksgiving party, in a scene as repellent as anything I've found in film, Walt offers a prayer...
...Connie thinks the reason is her frizzy hair...
...Surrounded by desert and framed by distant mountains, the Ranch is a collection of interconnected mobile homes encircled by a towering, locked chain fence...
...Still, there's another side...
...You get that camera out of here," he bellows at the crew...
...For Connie it's a tough task as she despises the opposite sex...
...You film it and you're out...
...They have to insist that the stuff is harmless, too...
...Further, the film makes one thing clear...
...The resulting movie is as devastating an indictment of prostitution, and so-called "victimless crimes," as the screen has ever portrayed...
...We're just machines to them," says one prostitute...
...As if to emphasize the point, the camera catches two hookers discussing their lives while smoking joints and peering out of an open, darkened window...
...J. J. for example...
...By contrast, the Authorities, those who want to stop the party, are one of a kind...
...Officially illegal, prostitution flourished...
...During the Victorian age the question was publicly ignored...
...Filling the bill are the " clients," a faceless bunch of nonentities, as much the victims as vic-timizers...
...As Fran hotly informs more than one patron, the Ranch is a "high class" place, with the prices to match...
...Thus, the argument goes, why not make it legal and reduce the disease and policing problems...
...I've got to get out before it's too late...
...There's Connie for example, a tall beauty who's nevertheless seldom picked by the clients...
...It isn't enough simply to let homosexuals be...
...A Churchill film produced and directed by independent filmmakers Nick Broomfield and Sandi Sissel, Chicken Ranch might more profitably market itself as Best Little Whorehouse II...
...Despite the disgust for the institution that Chicken Ranch engenders, the answer might well be yes...
...We're now expected to back high school curricula that specifically endorse the practice as an "alternative lifestyle...
...Fran, the madam, is a middle-aged woman whose face bears a smile of cordiality so frozen as to make Nancy Reagan's glacial grin seem sincere...
...At times, such as when she discusses J.J.'s reasons for leaving, she demonstrates both depth and awareness...
...It's rarer still when reality is allowed to illustrate, or repudiate, art...
...History makes it clear that Walt and Connie and the "clients" will, like the poor, always be with us...
...Such repression is, of course, unwarranted, for, as a popular song in Whorehouse informs us, "There ain't nothin' dirty goin' on...
...Should prostitution be legalized...
...As she prepares to leave, Fran asks her to call if she ever needs help or is in trouble...
...the customers are high-living good sports...
...Outside, the imagery suggests isolation, detachment, and sterility...
...These are hard questions...
...It's when Mandy is sacked that all the elements of Chicken Ranch come explosively together...
Vol. 110 • September 1983 • No. 16
