Baby Love

As a public service to older men who are thinking about getting involved with girls 30 or more years younger than themselves, or who are giving serious thought to moving in on their longtime girlfriends' daughters and then saying something like, "The heart wants what it wants," Movieline has compiled the "Essential May/December Video Library," also known as "The Jailbait Baker's Dozen." These are not the only movies that deal with the subject, nor are they necessarily the best. Rather, they are the only films the local video store had in stock the night we stopped in. For purposes of thematic and gender consistency, we have ignored older woman-younger man films such as The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone and Harold and Maude, and have also avoided older man/younger boy films such as Death in Venice because they do not apply to people like Woody Allen, and because they have too much depressing Austrian music. Still, the compilation is of sufficient breadth and scope that it would make a fine addition to any film library, even though it might make your babysitter nervous to see them all together, side by side, on the shelf.

Here then is our list;

Baby Doll (1956). Fortyish Karl Maiden, a complete asshole, has a weird, unconsummated marriage with 19-year-old Carroll Baker, who is first seen sucking her thumb in a crib, clad in baby-doll pajamas with ruffled shorts. Baker is seduced by Eli Wallach, an immigrant cotton magnate, who chases her around the house while clutching a riding crop, then gets all tuckered out and has a nap in her crib. Maiden, having burned down Wallach's cotton mill, ends up getting hauled off to jail for arson, which suits everybody just fine. The movie is memorable for Wallach's subtle remark, "This world is built on the principle of tit for tat," and because Maiden keeps a look of wide-eyed terror on his face for two hours, not unlike a guy who's just had all of his American Express Travelers Cheques stolen.

Blame It On Rio (1984). Fortyish Michael Caine falls in love with his best friend's teenage daughter. Michelle Johnson, who sleeps with a teddy bear and who shares a bedroom with Caine's own teenage daughter, played by Demi Moore. Yes. Caine's Lolita is named Jennifer, and yes, she has breasts that are not to be believed, though Caine certainly has no trouble believing them. Best line: ''I love it when your glasses steam up." ATTENTION PARENTS: Film contains rabies jokes and Valerie Harper.

The Blue Angel (1930). Emil Jannings plays a crusty old professor who falls in love with Marlene Dietrich, a talented, pre-Nazi Madonna in slightly roomier underwear. The relationship ends in tragedy, though many would argue that if you're going to have your life end in tragedy, there are worse fates than having your life end in a tragedy involving Marlene Dietrich. Especially in that getup.

Butterfly (1981). Stacy Keach, a poor mine-shaft security guard, makes love to Pia Zadora, even though she thinks he's her father. Meanwhile, Pia already seems to have gotten knocked up by Edward Albert, whose parents are played with zest and verve by June Lockhart and Ed McMahon. (McMahon was chosen for the role because he was the only actor stupid enough to be credible in a role as a man who would welcome Pia Zadora into his family.) As things turn out, the baby did not spring from the Albertian loins, but was actually sired by Pia's mother's lover, James Franciscus. Moreover, Pia may even be Franciscus's daughter, meaning that she has slept with one dad and slept with another man who she thinks is her dad. Keach now begins to suspect that Pia may be a tramp, and murders Franciscus before he has a chance to sleep with anyone else and further complicate the plot. Keach is convicted of incest and sentenced to 10 years in jail at a trial presided over by Orson Welles, who spends a considerable amount of time gasp¬ing at Pia's formidable knockers.

"He didn't do anything to me that I didn't want to happen," declares Pia, a statement the court has no trouble believing. This film is memorable because of the wonderful scene where Keach teaches Pia optimal mining techniques, and because it demonstrates that no matter how bad Woody Allen's problems are, they could be a whole lot worse.

Goorgy Girl (1966). James Mason plays a wealthy, dirty old man who dreams of taking the plump, dowdy Lynn Redgrave as his mistress. Instead, Redgrave falls in love with the flashy mod Alan Bates, who has just knocked up Charlotte Rampling, who, in one of her first films, is cast, ingeniously, as a slut. Redgrave adopts the baby, is deserted by Bates, and ends up marrying her aging, wealthy benefactor. A film best remembered for its truly ghastly theme song, Georgy Girl is basically a fat girl's Lolita.

Last Tango in Paris (1973). Fiftyish Marlon Brando sodomizes 21-year-old Maria Schneider, volunteers to prepare a dead rat for dinner, plays "Shenandoah'" on the harmonica, and says a lot of things like, "I wanna get a pig. Then I want the pig to fuck you, and I want the pig to vomit in your face," then wonders why the relationship doesn't work out. European.

Lolita (1962). James Mason, a pretentious urbanite obsessed by art, marries a strange woman, falls in love with her jail-bait daughter, forces her to lake piano lessons and go to museums, brings her A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man while she's in the hospital, and drives her to Los Angeles, where he is supposedly working on a film about existentialism. Any similarities between Vladimir Nabokov's screenplay and Woody Allen's entire life are purely coincidental.

Pages: 1 2 3 4