Sexual Sideshow

By * Mark Goodman

Otto Preminger has always had a certain flair for irrelevant melodrama (Bunny Lake Is Missing, Hurry Sundown), but never in his mercurial career has he made anything quite as tacky as Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon. Adapted from an oddly beguiling novel by Marjorie Kellogg (who could be justifiably outraged if she had not written the deadly screenplay herself), Junie Moon is at base an egregious attempt to exploit both sentimental and kinky appetites.

Junie (Liza Minnelli) is a wild young thing with a penchant for what may be restrainedly described as the wrong kind of guy. Her date asks her to strip for him in a cemetery and, after she has a good laugh about that, he tops off a halcyon evening by dragging her into a used-car lot and pouring battery acid over her face. Naturally she is scarred for life. She takes up residence in a dilapidated shack with two other freaks (as they flippantly refer to themselves). One is a crippled homosexual (Robert Moore) and the other a good-looking, good-natured bumbler (Ken Howard) who throws horrible fits just often enough to keep the action moving. Of course, everyone in town despises them except the local fishmonger (James Coco), who springs for a weekend romp on the beach. There the fortunate viewer gets to see a sexual sideshow that includes Junie and the fit-thrower dancing in the nude, and the gay cripple going from bar to bar slung over the shoulder of a husky black named Beach Boy. The point? None whatever. The film's only redeeming social value is that it has prompted the Massachusetts legislature to ban the filming of nude cemetery scenes.

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