What does one call a film this original?  It’s a poetic documentary-investigation of Los Angeles culture circa 1958; it’s also a powerful proto-feminist essay. Ben Maddow, Sidney Meyers & Joseph Strick collaborated on this rare attraction. Barbara Baxley stars as a disaffected divorceé who sees the city as layers of Hell. She and Gary Merrill deliver a stream of consciousness on the progressive soundtrack. It’s sane, humanist and compassionate, and also quite adult; the credits are a roll call of talented individualists: Haskell Wexler, Irving Lerner, Verna Fields, Jack Couffer.

The Savage Eye
One of 4 movies in the House of Psychotic Women Rarities Collection Volume 2
Blu-ray
Severin Films
1959 / B&W / 1:85 widescreen / 67 min. / Street Date May 27, 2025 / Available from Severin Films / £99.95
Starring: Barbara Baxley, Gary Merrill, Herschel Bernardi, Jean Hidey, Elizabeth Zemach.
Cinematographers: Haskell Wexler, Jack Couffer, Helen Levitt
Technical Advisor: Irving Lerner
Sound Editor: Verna Fields
Composer: Leonard Rosenman
Produced, Written, Directed and Edited by Ben Maddow, Sidney Meyers, Joseph Strick

Note: The disc reviewed is one of four movies in Severin Films’ House of Psychotic Women Rarities Collection Volume 2.

A woman steps off a plane into the sunny, hazy light of Southern California . Her voiceover identifies her as Judith X, the ‘X’ being a cynical joke that she’s the ex- Mrs. McGuire, waiting out a year in Los Angeles to make a divorce decree become final. Unhappy and restless, Judith embarks on what we now call an attempt to find herself. The ‘X’ is also an effort to obliterate her existing identity, as the rejected spouse of a man who left her for another woman.

For 1959, the idea of a woman ‘finding herself’ is amazingly progressive, feminist. In an interview co-director Joseph Strick simply says that his (male) collaborators chose a woman as the focus of their film because women are more sympathetic and vulnerable. Judith X turns out to be a modern everywoman, disconnected from the established domestic path.

Judith becomes a witness to a visual analysis of Los Angeles in the late 1950s. The Savage Eye is a poetic collage documentary, highly selective, of L.A. as seen by those without roots or personal connections. The modern concept of a ‘documentary’ had yet to be codified; this visual essay is as fictional as a story with confected characters. But the dramatic conflicts remain minimal. The focus stays on Judith’s relationship to the city’s non-glamorous underside.

The Savage Eye is a real curiosity. It has elements of a ‘City Symphony’ art film, and also movies that  try to capture the essence of a culture through visual anecdotes. The focus on a fictional character bends the show towards psychodrama. Judith X is played by the accomplished Barbara Baxley, who wears the slightly weary, slightly hard look of a woman badly wronged. There is no synch dialogue; Judith doesn’t speak. Her story is told in tiny fragments, that she partly narrates. She makes her way by bus to downtown L.A. and finds an apartment in a building mostly populated, she says, by other women left on their own.

Alimony checks come twice a month. Judith knows that she’s emotionally conflicted. She says she hates her ex, but she’s also hoping that the next check will come with a note asking her to return. She describes the city and the strange limbo she’s experiencing. Eventually she buys a car. She sees a man named Kirk for a while, one who treats her like a lady (Herschel Bernardi). Judith ends up wondering if she’s lost the ability to really experience things, to feel them.

The picture has one of the best voiceover scripts we’ve ever heard. An unseen ‘poet’ (Gary Merrill) asks Judith questions, and chides her for her cynical responses; they discuss the city as a place unlike any other in America, a kind of purgatory. People that become ‘detached’ from other parts of the country seem to gravitate to Los Angeles. Yet the commentary is not a direct critique, with easy criticisms and put-downs. The roving camera doesn’t seek out the usual sites of interest. A mention of weird architecture is accompanied by one sphinx-like construction, not a string of goofy hot dog stands and gaudy billboards. All we see of Sunset Boulevard is one angle on a giant rotating statue of a cowgirl-majorette.

We observe people busy in non-descript parts of the city — beauty parlors, cafes, bars, on the street, waiting in line. It’s implied that Judith also visits a yoga class and a gambling club — in unincorporated L.A. County, of course. We see part of a procedure that might be plastic surgery, on a woman’s nose. We also see 2 a.m. action downtown, with cops dealing with drunks, and the aftermath of a couple of very fresh car accidents, with fatalities. For entertainment, Judith goes by herself or with her date to the Roller Derby and a wrestling arena, both of which provide opportunities to observe more ‘ordinary’ faces. We even get a respectful look at a pet cemetery, decades before Errol Morris’s  Gates of Heaven.

The Poet’s discussions with Judith are not filler or an excuse to string together disparate visuals … his words verge on the semi-abstract. Judith’s confessions of her mixed emotions and self-loathing are equally brilliant. She does try to call her ex, but is not at all pleased with what he tells her. Kirk takes her to a strip club, where both Judith and The Poet comment on the women that perform — ‘artificial creatures created by men.’

The contradictions are there: Judith says she feels best when she’s alone and hates human contact, yet she obviously needs companionship. Even that need is unfulfilling, when Kirk chooses a New Years’ ballroom to aggressively force Judith to make out with him.

When Judith talks about sex, she describes the experience as mechanical, empty. That’s the scary curse of being adrift and alone … in the middle of millions of people, so many are psychologically isolated.

The film’s one (I think) synch sound sequence is in an evangelical faith healing gathering, with a grotesque preacher receiving one older woman after another, each seeking a cure for a different ailment. The message is clear for Judith — old age is simply going to be decay and madness.

Is The Poet a guardian angel for Judith’s sanity?  He serves as more of a conscience or a devil’s advocate. The final reels don’t bring full closure to Judith’s situation but they do involve an accident, a hospital stay and at least one sequence that falls into the category of fantasy. Without making a big stylistic statement, Judith leaves her hospital room in a party dress, and drifts about several locations, in a dream of freedom. The filmmakers choose this section to introduce a visit to a club where drag queens perform. Judith no longer knows who she is, but these men change identities with elaborate masquerades.

In 1959 The Savage Eye must have played like radical propaganda against America. Almost every movie made, even dull documentaries, started from a baseline of optimism, with the assumption that life is grand for anybody who takes a positive attitude. Judith X is merely neutral, and she finds little in her surroundings to inspire other feelings. The Poet seems to be challenging her to find resources within herself — while they observe the banal-but-deplorable aspects of entertainments one would find by picking up the entertainment section of an L.A. newspaper. Judith is attractive but she’s not a Superwoman; women alone in a strange city need an entree into whatever stratum of social activity they’d like to join. We don’t know how she met Kirk, but we assume that they found each other in a bar.

The three directors of The Savage Eye also co-write and co-edit; they were all experienced professionals trying to do something different, and artistic. Ben Maddow started with documentaries in the 1930s, wrote the screenplay for the classic  The Asphalt Jungle plus interesting and edgy milestones like  Intruder in the Dust,  No Down Payment and  The Unforgiven.  He co-wrote the courageous docu  Native Land, which carries a poetic narration. Sidney Meyers was primarily an editor, for  Martin Ritt; and he directed an influential 1948 short subject called  The Quiet One. The third partner Joseph Strick also began as a maker of short subjects; after The Savage Eye he directed  The Balcony,  Ulysses and  Tropic of Cancer, and also the powerful Vietnam-era document Interviews with My Lai Veterans (included on this disc).

Haskell Wexler is the most famous of the film’s three credited cinematographers. Before this his only Hollywood feature was  Stakeout on Dope Street (which featured Herschel Bernardi). Jack Couffer was an expert nature photographer. He directed animal-oriented pictures for Walt Disney, and also his own features, like  Ring of Bright Water (produced by Strick). The third credited cinematographer Helen Levitt filmed Meyers’ The Quiet One, directed her own short subjects, and co-edited Emile de Antonio’s  In the Year of the Pig.

That so many cooks could cooperate this effectively indicates a loose group of artists that prioritized meaningful work. Writer Gavin Lambert ( Sons and Lovers,  Another Sky) was along as a camera assistant. Editing the film’s sophisticated soundtrack was none other than the great Verna Fields. And advising the show was Irving Lerner, who worked with Strick as far back as 1948 and whose name keeps popping up in creative contexts. His best-known directed film is the noir classic  Murder by Contract (written by Maddow).

The capper is Leonard Rosenman’s excellent music score, which sometimes hits a tone as dynamic as his (neglected) themes for  RoboCop 2. The connections draw tighter in this little creative group — Rosenman composed scores for two of James Dean’s feature films, and Edge of the City too.

As a child I remember seeing a newspaper ad that presented The Savage Eye as some kind of taboo adult film, maybe something horrific. There is some brief nudity, and the voiceovers go in for a bit of graphic verbage. It really is an original picture made without commercial compromise. It reaches for the truth in genuine cinematic terms, taking a high place on the avant-garde docu-essay spectrum, along with great works like  Native Land,  Strange Victory,  On the Bowery and  The Exiles. It has terrific input from Gary Merrill, and makes us want to see everything Barbara Baxley ever made, as well.

Severin Films’ Blu-ray of The Savage Eye is just wonderful, something we’ve wanted to see since nigh on forever. We’re pleased to finally find it in such a pristine presentation, looking brand new, flawless. The collaborative effort used three separate cameramen yet has a unified look, with a pleasing B&W surface. The audio track is also crystal clear. An opening text card says that Severin produced the remaster, from original elements left in care of an archive.

The movie won awards at two European film festivals. It received arthouse and adult theater distribution through Trans-Lux, the company that handled the U.S. release of  Godzilla. It does play as a work of art, and is a show we’d expect to be coveted by an outfit like Criterion. But there are now several disc boutiques producing top quality entertaining-academic home video releases, with quality extras.

Severin’s added-value items are unbeatable. The commentary is by filmmaker and historian  Elizabeth Purchell, who hits us with new info, such as the fact that Haskell Wexler, an established union cameraman in Chicago, couldn’t work as a cinematographer in Los Angeles … this may be why the cameramen are credited as photographers. Elizabeth has plenty of information on the film’s extended drag party sequence, identifying some of the entertainers and offering an overview of the entire underground drag scene.

Kim Cooper handles a video essay about the film’s locations, touching on generalizations but also nailing a lot of fascinating facts. That rotating cowgirl-showgirl statue on the Sunset Strip was soon lampooned by Jay Ward’s statue of Bullwinkle the Moose, right across the street. It popped up in an identical pose; Cooper explains that as the cowgirl changed costumes, Bullwinkle would be redecorated to match.

Very welcome is an extended video interview with Joseph Strick, from 2010. He answers many basic questions about the picture. It had several starts with different ideas, and finally came together as a group effort. Strick & Co. rejected the idea of a voiceover that ‘told the audience what to think,’ and ended up with that excellent back-and-forth poetic debate between The Poet and Judith X.

Two additional films are included. Joseph Strick’s Oscar-winning Interviews with My Lai Veterans is an important anti-war document from the Vietnam years, here in perfect condition. The cameraman Haskell Wexler captures the candid descriptions of ex-soldiers who talk about the massacre, and also the casual beatings, rapes and killings they witnessed or participated in.

Vincenzo Core and Fabio Scacchioli’s Miss Candace Hilligoss’ Flickering Halo is an avant-garde ode to Herk Harvey’s  Carnival of Souls, using an erratic repetition – double exposure – flicker effect to reduce scenes from the movie to a weird hallucinatory phantasmagoria. It comes with a warning to people affected by flickering images.

←  The Savage Eye is one title in the four-feature boxed set House of Psychotic Women Rarities Collection Volume 2. The other titles are Michael Winterbottom’s  Butterfly Kiss with Amanda Plummer and Saskia Reeves, Juraz Herz’s Czech thriller  Morgiana, and Eloy de Iglesia’s Spanish horror picture  The Glass Ceiling.

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

The Savage Eye
Blu-ray rates:
Movie: Excellent
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent
Supplements:
Audio Commentary with Elizabeth Purchell
Video Essay Judith X – Locations By Kim Cooper
Archival Interview With Co-Director Joseph Strick (2010)
Trailer
Trailers From Hell with commentary by Kier-La Janisse
Bonus films:
Interviews with My Lai Veterans by Joseph Strick (with optional Strick interview audio)
Miss Candace Hilligoss’ Flickering Halo by Vincenzo Core and Fabio Scacchioli (2011).
Deaf and Hearing-impaired Friendly? YES; Subtitles: English (feature only)
Packaging: One Blu-ray in Keep case
Reviewed: April 16, 2025
(7318eye)

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Here’s Kier-La Janisse on The Savage Eye: