a_chinn The Sex Pistols had it right. Never Trust a Hippy. A spoiled hippie chick and her far out boyfriend give LSD to her former actress stepmom (Lana Turner) in an attempt to kill her and gain her inheritance. "The Big Cube" is a laughably bad psychedelic freakout of a movie that depicts the dangers of drugs, hippies, and the lack of good roles for actresses in their 40s. The film features ludicrously awful dialogue, such as:Johnny: Do you know you really turn me on? Girl: Since when? Johnny: Since now. I belong to "The Now Generation."or Butler: Anything else you wish? Bibi: There might be, if you were 80 years younger, you sexy thing.orBibi: Sweetness, baby. Float with the tide, that's my bag. This is a pop art world, baby!orJohnny: I know a new place. The club, The Trip. Girl: Does it swing? Johnny: Swing? It wails!This movie does not wail, but it does fall into that ignominious category of so-bad-it's-good, so if you're in the mood to watch classic Hollywood royalty slum, hear unintentionally hilarious dialogue, and see some of the silliest drug trip sequences committed to film, you might enjoy "The Big Cube.

treeline1 Adriana Roman (Lana Turner), a successful actress, retires from the stage to marry a wealthy man (Dan O'Herlihy) but there's an inheritance involved and his jealous daughter and her greedy boyfriend (George Chakiris) decide to get rid of Adriana.The title refers to sugar cubes laced LSD, and this terrible, awful, no-good, very bad movie was an attempt to be cool and with-it in a psychedelic, free-love a-go-go, happening sort of way, but it fails miserably. It's not even fun in a camp way; it's just bad. What was Lana Turner thinking when she signed on for this disaster? The script is a joke, the direction is amateurish, and she's terrible in it, as are all the other actors. The poor lady is dressed in silly clothes with an even sillier collection of hairpieces piled high on her head and overacts pitifully. It's horrible to think of how far she had fallen from her glory days to this rubbish. The American step-daughter is played by someone with a very thick Nordic accent who simply can't act. George Chakiris looks good but sleepwalks through the inane dialogue. The whole 'ultra cool drug-scene' is phony and the mind-altering special effects are junior high stuff. Not fun, not recommended, just sad.

Kenneth Anderson When cineastes look back at Hollywood's second "Golden Age" that started in the late 60's, it's a cinch they're remembering films like "Rosemary's Baby" and "Bonnie & Clyde" while willfully blocking out mind-blowing atrocities like "The Big Cube." Surely the late 60's must have been a weird time for fading glamour queens if Jennifer Jones ("Angel, Angel, Down We Go"), Eleanor Parker ("Eye of the Cat") and, in this mess, Lana Turner, felt the need to debase themselves in inferior product for the sake of a paycheck. Was it ego? Desperation? Perhaps without those fatherly moguls overseeing every step of their careers, these ladies had no idea of what a decent script looked like. What is certain in Lana Turner's case is that without a strong director at the helm, she is incapable of giving a performance at all. She is so absolutely terrible in "The Big Cube" that I have a hard time associating her with the actress who dazzled in "The Postman Always Rings Twice." What's most embarrassing is that she can't even play what she is…a bad actress. Cast here as Adriana Roman, darling of the stage, Turner (who looks like she starved herself for the role and is shot through heavy gauze) pops her eyes and gives outlandishly artificial readings of equally outlandish dialog. Example: Adriana- (speaking of her stepdaughter) "The resemblance is remarkable. We even look alike!" That sentence makes no sense! To cut her some slack, she IS holding a drink during the scene, so perhaps she is so drunk she forgot that the word resemblance actually means to look like someone.Turner would win prizes for her cartoonish acting if she wasn't trumped in every scene by the almost superhuman ineptness of one Karin Mossberg. A woman of great beauty whose face is allergic to expression and whose accent and odd vocal emphasis makes for one dicey ingénue.Not to be outdone, Academy Award winner George Chakiris (who, as the villain, appears to have been inspired by Mighty Mouse's Oil Can Harry) thoroughly embarrasses himself throughout, but especially in a big drug freak-out scene. I guess the reason that Pamela Rodgers' campy, ditzy act comes off so well is that she doesn't even try to act. She seems to know she's wading hip-deep in crap and gives the film the level of performance it deserves.Shot in the overlit, circus color style of a Russ Meyer film, "The Big Cube" does offer the pleasurable fascination of getting a glimpse at the dances, hairstyles, fashion and architecture (not to mention the derisible slang) of an era so over the top that Lady Gaga looks tame in comparison.

davepitts TCM ran this at 2 a.m. last night on their Underground series. It's a berserk moral fable about LSD and bratty stepchildren. Retired stage star Adriana Roman (Lana Turner) tangles with her stepdaughter, Lisa (Karin Mossberg) and Lisa's sleazy boyfriend, Johnny (George Chakiris), who comes up with the plan to dose Mommy. Chakiris is in full-blown career hell here, especially in his fadeout, lying crucifixion-style on the floor of a torn-up apartment with a pet ant in his pocket. Because the other posters have covered the plot twists ably, I'll skip around to...KARIN MOSSBERG, who lisps through the picture like she has a bon-bon stuck to her palate. When she confronts her father in the early scenes, he answers her thick Heinie accent in Paul Harvey midwestern. Truly wonderful. The real fun in watching this film is deciding how aware the cast was -- or far along they were, before they knew -- that they were stuck on a toilet raft that wasn't going to sell any tickets anywhere. Which brings us to Lana Turner, who didn't age well. Was she a boozehound -- or was it bad genes? Here, four years after her frumpy turn as Madame X, she's thinner, bonier, with the Lenin's Tomb look of late Mae West. She looks a lot like the 1969 Mae, although they had a 30-year age difference. Her acting is foggy and schoolgirlish. Best line of dialog comes about 5 minutes in, when Richard Egan approaches Lisa at her stepmom's wedding.Egan: Lisa, did you study acting? Lisa:No.That could be described as the one searing moment of truth in this expose of our times.