MAGNET contributing writer Jud Cost is sharing some of the wealth of classic films he’s been lucky enough to see over the past 40 years. Trolling the backwaters of cinema, he has worked up a list of more than 100 titles—from the ’20s through the ’80s—that you may have missed. A new selection, all currently available on DVD, appears every week.
Mystery Train (1989, 110 minutes)
A young Japanese couple infatuated with ’50s American culture has arrived in Memphis on the train in search of a rockabilly scene that vanished three decades earlier. Decked out in a green sports coat, loose black slacks and an Elvis Presley haircut, Jun (Masatoshi Nagase) prefers Carl Perkins to “the King.” In love with Elvis, Mitsuko (Youki Kudoh) wears a black leather jacket whose back screams out something lost in translation: “Mister Baby.” They drop by the original home of Sun Records, the same studio used by Presley, Perkins, Roy Orbison, Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee Lewis. “She talked too fast,” complains Mitsuko afterward of the tour guide’s machine-gun delivery.
With high-rise hotels and the nightlife of Beale Street off in the distance, they walk down cracked sidewalks through a deserted neighborhood of boarded-up movie theaters and dilapidated shops before arriving at the seedy Arcade Hotel. The desk clerk (Screamin’ Jay Hawkins) is dressed in a flaming-red hipster’s suit with a black tie and a crimson shirt. The bellboy (Cinqué Lee), with a bellboy’s pillbox hat perched atop his Afro, tells the clerk, “At the time of his death, if Elvis was on Jupiter, he’d have weighed 648 pounds.”
Mitsuko asks in broken English if they have a cheap room and, straight from a Berlitz tourist’s handbook, she tells the clerk politely that the price is too high even before he can quote a figure. “All rooms for two people are the same rate, $22 payable in advance,” he says. Jun peels cash from his wallet, and the clerk hammers the bell for the startled bellboy, sitting right next to him, and barks out, “Room 27.”
A “starving-artist’s” portrait of Elvis glares down at the double bed in room 27. “No Carl Perkins, and no TV,” notes a disappointed Jun. The bellboy stands awkwardly near the door, expecting a tip. “Please wait,” says Mitsuko, rummaging through their tomato-soup red Samsonite suitcase. She hands him something shiny and purple. “This plum is from Japan,” she says excitedly. As he retreats bewildered downstairs, she tells him, “I like your hat.”
“I don’t think you should eat that thing,” warns the desk clerk. “You’re probably right. I ain’t gonna eat that thing,” says the bellboy. The desk clerk pops the fruit into his mouth. “Hey, my plum!” says the bellboy.
With a blue moon shining in the window, Mitsuko asks her companion, “Why do you look so sad?” She fishes a lipstick from her purse and layers it on heavily. While kissing him, she smears the red makeup all over his mouth, leaving him with a garish clown’s grin painted over his melancholy mug. Unmoved, Jun puts a cigarette between his lips, and Mitsuko lights it, then returns the lighter to his shirt pocket, using nothing but her toes.
