This film was quite enjoyable really. It starts out a bit slow...and never really gets to full speed...but in the end it's got a pretty decent storyline going. A carny/burlesque girl rips off her carny/sleaze ball husband and sets out to the big city to find wealthier men to take advantage of. She gets a job at Pepe's, an upscale burlesque/variety club and proceeds to mercilessly make her play for the rich older man. And his son. This movie is worth watching if only for the vibe that it gives off. The early sixties smokey club scene is beautifully portrayed. The costumes are over the top and lovely. The riding outfit that the main character wears is priceless, as is the plastic-ish, big collared pant suit she wears in a couple of scenes. Pepe's wardrobe is gorgeously early mod. The ending was a little anti-climactic for me. I was expecting a lot more....like an actual murder. Either of her or of the old man. The way they left it was a bit lame. But still a pretty darn good film and worthy of a viewing.
Add a Review
-
dolly_the_ye-ye_bird5 August 2011
-
moonspinner554 July 2017Petite, buxom Meg Myles is a hoot as carnival dancer Stacey Kane, a girl with ambition who ditches her drug addict husband and takes off for New York City, where a pick-up on the plane results in her getting a singing audition at an uptown club, Pepe's. Stacey boards with Pepe herself (Grayson Hall), a chic butch who puts her newest discovery in a leather get-up complete with riding crop! But trouble brews quickly for Stacey after she turns up the heat with both the club owner and his troubled son--unaware that her deranged husband has finally caught up with her. Competently-made B-movie was considered very risqué for 1962: it has fleeting nudity (very coy), gay and lesbian characters and a promiscuous protagonist. Still, it isn't all raunch. The plot is as top-heavy as most of the girls on display, and the score by Mundell Lowe is a delicious cinematic mix of cocktail lounge, bop and jazz. An entertaining dip into drive-in cinema's gutters. ** from ****
-
gridoon202421 December 2008Released by the "Something Weird Video" DVD label and promoted as a campy (s)exploitation flick, "Satan In High Heels" turns out to be, in reality, a slow, talky drama with touches of film noir (especially at the end) and a generally low-key tone apart from the musical numbers. Meg Myles is attractive (although she looks somewhat older than her age - 28 at the time) and has a throaty voice that makes her a good choice for the role of a cynical, sarcastic femme fatale: she clearly knows and enjoys her power over men, but when she meets one whom she is actually beginning to develop honest feelings for, will she be able to get him? All the performances are fair-to-good, and Sabrina, in a minor role, has a figure that will make your eyes pop out. The film has some lingerie shots and even some nudity, but it's very discreet and if you want more explicit stuff you can find it in the DVD extras! Not something I would watch twice in its entirety, but an interesting experiment nonetheless. (**)
-
Del Tenney fans MUST see this depiction of early-60's club life in which he plays Paul, a bisexual pianist (!). It's pretty hard to believe that this suave leading man later directed THE HORROR OF PARTY BEACH and I EAT YOUR SKIN. The main character though is Stacey, played to the bitchiest by sexy, husky-voiced Meg Myles. Stacey moves inner-city with her junky boyfriend and gets a job as a burlesque entertainer. There, she gets catty with Pepe (Grayson Hall), her female boss for wanting her own way and becomes involved in a romantic triangle with Pepe's son and husband.
The music was by jazz composer, Mundell Lowe who's album TV ACTION JAZZ has become a rare collector's item over the years. One of the songs from that album (a nice version of 'Naked City') as been issued on to CRIME JAZZ, a CD compilation avalible from Rhino. The music in SATAN IN HIGH HEELS is pretty mundane jazzamaspazz but I'm after the the original soundtrack (from Parker Records) just for one great song sung by Meg Myles (in leather clothes and a whip!), 'More Deadly Than the Male'. Also starring in the film is Sabrina, something of a poor man's Jane Mansfield, who sings a really bad number before Stacey's act. I was amazed to know that Sabrina was a real sensation down here in Oz! She was down here regularly starring in television commercials (one was for Amcal oil-cubes!) and was featured in lots of newsreel footage (always holding her poodle, just like Jane) and magazines. I even found reference to her in Peter Doyle's AMAZE YOU FRIENDS, a crime novel set in Sydney during the 1950's.
Aside from all these fascinating facts, SATAN IN HIGH HEELS is a fairly enjoyable little film with lots of class. It also remains a decent examination of sleazy, smokey inner-city burlesque clubs which will never again be seen or experieced. -
planktonrules11 February 2021"Satan in High Heels" is a relatively tame film, though for 1962, it was a very hot film....and not the sort of thing you might have expected from that time period.
The story begins with Stacy (Meg Myles) working as a burlesque-style dancer at a cheap carnival. But she has ambitions of working in a classier place...one where she can use her lovely singing voice and killer body to get what she really wants out of life. So, after cheating her ex-husband out of some cash, she disappears...flying to New York City to start this new life.
Once there, she quickly lands a job in a classy nightclub/strip club. It seems they want her for her singing ability...and the owner wants her for her killer body! But he's an old man...and Stacy finds the man's son MUCH more entertaining! What's next? See the film.
While this film is very low budget and you can easily find things wrong with it, it is entertaining and Myles' voice is beautiful...so much so that it isn't surprising to learn that she had a career as a singer in real life. In addition, while the film is a bit sleazy (and you get a very brief glimpse of her skinny dipping as well as a stripper's breast), it is well made for a cheapo production...as well as entertaining. Worth seeing...but probably NOT a film to watch with your kids! -
happytrigger-64-39051713 October 2018If you like movies from the sixties with jazzclub, sexy pinups, american cars, sex maniac situations, and of course treason, "Satan in high heels" is for you. It's not a junk movie, direction and cinematography are competent, Meg Myles is so sexy (especially in her leather number), but it's not a masterpiece. Jerald Intrator is a perfect unkown director to me, and looking after his filmography, his few movies are all connected with sex : Striporama, Naughty New-York, Strip Poker, Caught in the act, the Sexperts, la Vengenza del sexo. Some kind of Joe Sarno? Don't miss Del Tenney and Sabrina.
-
mark.waltz23 August 2017While some might call this obviously cheaply made trashy drama an exploitation classic, I became fascinated by its two leading female characters, actors I'd known from my soap opera viewing of the 1980's. When I first saw Meg Myles on my daytime TV screen, she was playing the kind-hearted tavern owner Sid on "The Edge of Night", dispensing advice along with coffee and pie and trying to find love in a violent, mob controlled town. Around the same time, Grayson Hall was playing the scheming Euphemia on "The Edge of Night", the turban wearing matriarch of a tragic Southern family vowing revenge on the wealthy Texan who had allegedly stolen her family fortune. In the middle of the night during the time, I caught Grayson in her Oscar nominated role as the nasty Miss Fellowes in "The Night of the Iguana" where she played a repressed lesbian whose sexuality was only assumed because of her desperation to keep teenage nymphet Sue Lyon "pure". In this drama, made two years prior, Ms. Hall plays Pepe, a sophisticated nightclub manager who is assumed to be a friend of Sapho's as well, although that is never spelled out.
Pin-up Meg Myles already had a singing career and some film experience when she was cast in this film which utilizes her busty hour glass figure to great advantage. Only 28 when she made this film, for some reason, she seems nearly 10 years older, so for men to go ga-ga over her and kill to keep her out of other men's arms seems absurd. She's first seen ripping off an ex who had earlier tried to kill her, flying to New York, picking up a man on a plane who sets her up with a singing career at Pepe's. Hall takes her in, dominates her time, introduces her to important people and promotes her as a new singing find. Myles does indeed have a good singing voice, but it's obvious that her tracks were dubbed and that she's lipsincing to loudly piped in recordings, especially in her final song, clad in leather and brandishing a whip.
Manipulating the suave Hall into getting hired, she also becomes involved with wealthy Mike Keene and his teenaged son (Bob Yuro) whom the audience is never sure of whether he is in high school (boarding) or college. He looks far older than college age, but the love scenes between Myles and Yuro still make her seem much older. Noila Chapman is great in her few scenes as the aging drunk whom Keene dumps to pursue Myles, and Del Tenney is fabulously bitchy as the obvious gay Paul whom Myles refers to as "Paulette".
This reminded me in some ways of the same year's "Walk on the Wild Side" where Barbara Stanwyck played the lesbian owner of a brothel, as well as 1965's "Who Killed Teddy Bear" where Elaine Stritch added even more glamour to her lesbian character who ran a bar just like Hall does here. There were even some elements of the 1933 Stanwyck film "Baby Face", although Myles seems slightly longer in the tooth here. The scene where Yuro and Myles end up at his father's country hideaway (complete with pool and waterfall) does give Myles a chance to show the desperation for a quiet, peaceful life, but her ambitions take over and back to New York it is where her betrayal of both men takes a sudden violent turn.
Myles really isn't "Satan in High Heels", but your average bad girl who takes several nasty turns (theft and the urging of one man to kill another), and as much as I like her, find her made to look cheap and vulgar and not really the ideal of any man's sexual fantasy outside the glimpse of her ample bust. I would have liked to have seen more of Hall on screen as she has that great raspy voice presence that made her seem like a fellow stage sister to Stritch and the equally raspy Eileen Heckart, showing that the "Baritone Babes" are often more fascinating than the sexually over-exploited blondes, here represented by the fairly amusing Sabrina as Myles' rival at Pepe's nightclub. -
The female of the species, is more deadly than the male!
Agreeably sordid melodrama is fine as a curiosity piece, although in truth, it's not titillating or sleazy enough to be of great use to hardcore exploitation fans. It stars Meg Myles ("Coogan's Bluff") as Stacey Kane. Stacey toils away as a burlesque show stripper at a carnival until her junkie ex-husband Rudy (Earl Hammond) shows up one night, wanting to start fresh. He's got a wad of bills with him (payment for a story he wrote), which is big temptation for her, so she steals it and takes off for NYC, where she soon starts a new life as singer in a nightclub, run by a lesbian character named Pepe (Grayson Hall of 'Dark Shadows') and owned by Arnold Kenyon (Mike Keene). Before too long, she's become involved with both Arnold and his ne-er- do-well son Laurence (Robert Yuro, "The Shakiest Gun in the West").
Overall, the movie is competently done, and certainly better acted than one might expect, with an especially fine, effectively bitchy performance by the sexy Ms. Myles. Hall and Keene are also quite good, but what's really amusing is noting that Paul, the suave, bisexual pianist, is played by Del Tenney. Tenney was better known as a cult director during the 1960s; he went on to helm "The Horror of Party Beach", "The Curse of the Living Corpse", and "Zombie" a.k.a. "I Eat Your Skin". English entertainer Sabrina (playing a character named Sabrina) rounds out the main cast.
Unfortunately for some, "Satan in High Heels" fails to measure up to that grabber of a title. It's not that the story isn't diverting at all, but the pacing is slow, and things never ever get that interesting, at least until Myles belts out her show stopping number near the end. In fact, the four songs in this movie are actually not bad.
Still worth a look, but it might not appeal to trash lovers across the board.
Six out of 10. -
jjcarr-490151 October 2017*Borderline Spoiler* Stacey (Meg Myles) works as a burlesque dancer in a carnival. When her ex-con, (ex?)junkie, ex tries to reunite with her and start anew she tricks him out of his money and flies to New York, wearing a trench coat over her burlesque outfit. She picks up another man on the plane. Hoping to become a nightclub singer at Pepe's she is willing to use and be used by such men (and women?) to do so. Pepe (Grayson Hall), the manageress who grooms her, is portrayed as a then-stereotypical lesbian, just as the piano player is shown as effete. Arnold (Mike Keene), the club's crooked owner, has paid off his last mistress (played with some dignity by Nolia Chapman) and sees Stacey as her replacement. Laurence (Robert Yuro), his Fredo-like son, falls for her. She tries to juggle the two.
When the ex, high, knife in hand and initially intent on revenge, finds her she sees the chance to play him for a sap yet again. Get him to kill the father supposedly so they can be together, then get the son, the father's money and the ex back in jail. Why a six? This is a competently made, if unexceptional, low-budget film with a noir feel to it. The characters are sordid but not portrayed in a sleazy fashion. There are elements of titillation, the femme fatale spends a lot of time in lingerie and/or leather and the British actress Sabrina, famed in her day for her natural Barbie-like figure, appears as herself as Stacey's rival in a series of glamorous outfits. -
kmorse84 June 2006The movie is well enough done, and for what it was, a kind of cinema noire sexploitation, one of the better ones, even though it is now distributed by odd-ball outlets . Myles is a very competent actress,but her generous figure has been her worst enemy , as far as being taken seriously. She got a similar rap in 'The Phoenix City Story". But Myes forte is as a sensuous singer and she can hold her own with O'Day and the rest. The most interesting thing about this movie is the liberal use fetishism. An alternate title was straight out of Sacher-Masoch, " Venus in Furs" Meg Myles has a shapely foot and the director and the cameraman know it and pander to the fetish in several scenes. and the skillful Sado Masochistic leather slant is handled nicely, as well.; I've seen it bungled badly in some recent high budget stuff of recent years. I think the supporting cast was good, and credible with special kudos for Grayson Hall. I knew the club scene in Baltimore and NY in the 50 's and this flick captures it better than most.
-
One of the great things about exploitation movies is that being made 'on the hoof', so to speak, using non-professional actors or at least actors without much talent, and often filmed in real locations and in black-and-white, there is often an almost documentary-like naturalism to proceedings. Of course, that doesn't mean they are necessarily any good; the scripts are often terrible and that lack of acting talent can be laughable but once in a while, one hits pay-dirt. If it's "Carnival of Souls" it can build up a critical and cult reputation that far exceeds its merits while others, like "Satan in High Heels", can slip through the cracks.
This is no masterpiece and the acting from its mostly Z-Grade cast is no better than we have any right to expect but hey, what's this, an Oscar nominee billed second from the top? Yes, this is the same Grayson Hall who only two years later would be nominated for her role in "Night of the Iguana". Here she's running the club that our heroine, (Meg Myles), ends up in and yes, once again Grayson is playing a somewhat butch lesbian. (Oh, and that really is the same Sabrina who was in "Blue Murder at St. Trinians" cast as 'herself').
This may be a cheapie but the direction values are surprisingly good and there's even a sprinkling of good lines and a few decent songs on the soundtrack. The director was someone with the unlikely name of Jerald Intrator but I often think movies like this direct themselves. It's not the gem I had hoped it might be but neither is it as big a dog as its lurid title and Poverty Row production values would suggest. -
Too bad this movie is so hard to find in rental stores. It's got underground cult classic all over it, and deserves an annual revival at the Film Forum with audiences dividing up between those who do Meg Myles' lines and those who chant along with Grayson Hall: "You'll EAT and DRINK what I SAY until you lose five pounds IN THE PLACES WHERE!"
Designed as an homage to the noir sensibilities of the late Forties (think Blue Dahlia), this movie was filmed at a bargain basement budget in New York's old La Martinique cabaret. The hachi-machi dialogue and ratty looking clothes seem like a prophetic foreshadowing of Valley of the Dolls; the sleazy atmosphere of coffeehouse decadence make this a much slicker variant on some of the themes canvassed by the better known British noirette Beat Girl (featuring Christopher Lee and Oliver Reed). Satan in High Heels is essentially a showcase for the talents of three women: Meg Myles, Grayson Hall and Sabrina. Suave Z-movie director Del Tenney ("Horror of Party Beach") contributes a deft turn as gay piano player Paul. Of the three female principals, Miss Myles distinguishes herself for her ability to wear some pretty sharp avant-garde leather ensembles and deliver some punchy salvos. Grayson Hall rules the roost as Pepe, cocking a jaundiced eye at every sad sack who wanders into her orbit with a l-o-o-o-n-g draw on that impossibly baroque cigarette holder, and the mordant comment, "Bear up, darling, I love your eyelashes." As Herself, Sabrina is some force of Anti-Nature. Don't miss her big production number which finds her pneumatically shoe-horned into Charlie the Tuna regalia pouting, "I CAHN'T be good!" The big Meg Myles number, "The Female of the Species (is more deadly than the male)" had its title riff quarried for the soundtrack of some pitiful Sixties retread last year.
This is the movie that proves the truth in the maxim that if the good die young, the bad are ALWAYS much more entertaining in their indecent old age. -
Uriah4315 October 2016"Stacey Kane" (Meg Miles) is a sexy and talented woman who has been reduced to performing as a stripper at a traveling carnival in California. She is also very selfish and manipulative. So when her ex-husband comes along with $900 dollars and asks her to go away with him she takes the opportunity to steal his money and flies to New York to start a new life. As luck would have it she meets a talent agent on the flight who convinces her to audition as a singer at a high-class nightclub and manages to get hired quite easily. She then becomes the mistress of the owner which results in all kinds of drama and intrigue from that point on. Now rather than reveal any more I can honestly say that I initially didn't expect too much from this film but that I was pleasantly surprised afterward. I especially liked the performances of Grayson Hall (as the nightclub manager "Pepe") and the previously mentioned Meg Miles who was quite attractive as well. That said, I recommend this film for those who might enjoy a movie of this type and I have rated it accordingly. Slightly above average.
-
melvelvit-122 December 2008Satan IN HIGH HEELS treads the same "noirish" territory as Beverly Michaels' 1953 WICKED WOMAN -so much so it could be considered an unintended upscale remake. Stacey Kane ruthlessly uses men and women alike to rise from Midwest carnival burlesque queen to Manhattan jazz club diva but, like BLAST OF SILENCE's Frankie Bono (made the same year on location in NYC), a semblance of tender feelings can prove disastrous. Tired of bumping and grinding on the midway, Stacey steals her junkie ex-husband's bankroll and heads for New York and a new lease on life. On the plane she seduces a man who introduces her to the lesbian manager of a Greenwich Village jazz club where she's hired on the spot after a smoky audition and the voluptuous vixen wastes no time ensnaring the club's wealthy owner in her sexual web as well. Things get complicated when his teenage son also falls for her but Stacey, forced to choose between love and money, sees a way to have it all when her hell-bent for revenge ex-husband reappears brandishing a knife...
The early 60s NYC jazz club scene provides an atmospheric background for the rise and fall of a wicked woman with the lesbian club manager (Grayson Hall from DARK SHADOWS fame) and gay pianist lending an air of "adult" authenticity. Pneumatic pin-up queen Meg Myles as the predatory Stacey makes a memorable sociopath and gets to growl "Deadlier Than The Male" decked out in leather breeches and riding crop. As a compliment to the breast and leather fetishes, British sexbomb Sabrina is also on hand as the club's star attraction and she warbles as well. What's not to like? -
jameselliot-18 August 2010Gritty, glum, moody, downbeat, depressing---all the elements that make black & white 60's sexploitation films based in New York City so much fun on a rainy afternoon. Superstacked sexbomb model and singer Meg Myles is perfect. Grayson Hall is great. Why Hollywood never utilized Myles' talents always puzzled me. Intrator lucked out casting her as a bitchy, cold-blooded user who gives an inch and takes a mile from everyone. He did a good job although his camera focuses more on Myles' feet than her famous 42-inches. Through sheer happenstance, she winds up at a Manhattan cabaret that's inhabited by a nest of spidery characters as jaded, rotten and nasty as she is. They try to mold her to their specifications. Her rebellion is futile because she wants to become the star of the club. Another 50's-60's bullet-bra icon, British blonde Sabrina, makes a rare film appearance as another club entertainer.
-
Delectably ditzy dames are deliciously decimated by fabulously fizzy high camp brinkmanship in this blood-pumpingly buxom, bra-burstingly blissful B-movie burlesque! The luridly lowbrow, boozy badinage explosively combine to fulsomely ferment an intoxicatingly impolite celluloid cocktail of scintillatingly shrill, gin-soaked, salacious sensation! Midnight movie madness abounds with unfiltered glee, with vulpine villainy so daringly unleashed in smut-master Jerald Intrator's rightfully celebrated, exquisitely acerbic, effervescently edifying, cat scratching classic 'Satan in High Heels'. 'With a breast fiend like sinuous Stacey Kane you don't ever need enemies, as this fabulously ferocious feline foot-stomper got a lascivious line in wickedly-whipping wit to match her creep-crushing killer heels!!!' You don't wanna miss out on taking a sneaky peek at this slinky 60s stag reel featuring the statuesque, sin-seeking, smart-mouthed broad rockin' the most bodaciously sequinned, eye-boggling bod you ever saw!