Languorous warm bodies, sweat dripping down necks, the glistening cold water of pools...the elements that make the summer sensuous and appealing, can easily flip and turn into something horrifying, and they do in Leslie Stevens’ Private Property. The rarely seen film (which received a glorious 4K restoration for its 2016 theatrical release) came out in 1960, the year of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, and like the much more established classic it uses black and white to paint a red-blood portrait of the fears and anxieties that threatened America. In Property it’s the fear of upward mobility and class struggle, seen through the eyes of two drifters (played by Warren Oates and Corey Allen) who set their sight on a beautiful Beverly Hills housewife (Kate Manx).
The two drifters shack up in an abandoned house next to hers from which they watch her and her husband (Robert Ward) preparing their move. When the husband leaves town the men offer their services to the lonely woman, setting in motion a disturbed plan that goes from sensuous to nightmarish in no time. Private Property is a film that lives essentially on a tightrope, each cut and frame bordering between desire and fear. Ted McCord’s cinematography cleverly captures the pleasure of watching as we see the drifters creating a movie out of the scenes of blissful bourgeoisie life they observe through the window (yet again making the drifters spiritual siblings to Norman Bates).
If the film’s aesthetics are worthy of an essay all their own (McCord and Stevens create something akin to an aquatic look on land through sheer curtains, glass windows and shadows), there is also an element of homoerotic-ness that elevates it into something beyond the noir-ish thriller it seems to be. Oates and Allen develop a chemistry that’s even more erotically charged than the desire their characters feel for the housewife. At times it’s as if they are pursuing her so badly, only because they know their dark desires would make them unfit to inhabit her world of creature comforts.
The film not only reminds one of Hitchcock, but also seems to predate the images conjured in the works of De Palma, Scorsese and even Mike Nichols in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Worlds of shadows and damaged creatures trying to seek comfort in the dark. In terms of summer movie watching, Private Property is meant to be the precursor to a hangover caused by one too many pina coladas and bad decisions, it gets under your skin and will haunt you for days.
Private Property will be available on DVD/Blu-ray on November 8. For more information visit CineliciousPics.
