IT CAME FROM THE BOTTOM SHELF!

Every Memorial Day weekend, film fans and collectors gather in Columbus, Ohio for the annual Cinevent classic film convention to experience four days of near-continuous 16mm screenings of rare silent and sound films from the first half of the 2oth Century.  No one can attend all of the screenings, especially if you want to spend any time in the vendor room, so the first thing most attendees do is peruse the film schedule to flag the movies they don’t want to miss.

When looking over last year’s schedule, I highlighted the title Sweater Girl for the sole reason that it featured Eddie Bracken, the star of my favorite film, The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek.  I didn’t have high hopes for the movie.  The title promised a college musical of the “Hey, kids, let’s put on a show” variety, and to a certain extent it was.  Happily, the film turned out to be much more than that.  In fact, Sweater Girl is a wonderfully bizarre hybrid — a serial killer mystery dressed up as a campus musical.

The film starts out innocently enough with college senior, Jack Mitchell (Eddie Bracken), and a bevy of campus coeds rehearsing a production number for their upcoming spring musical (also named “Sweater Girl”).  However, it takes very little time for things to go completely wackadoodle.  Popular school reporter and the author of the stage show, Miles Tucker (Kenneth Howell), is found poisoned after promising to reveal some juicy gossip over his campus radio program.  Initially, the death is ruled a suicide, but a police detective (Charles D. Brown) starts to question that ruling when a second college student associated with the stage show is found strangled.  When the cop complains of a lack of evidence, Jack and his dancing partner, Susan (June Preisser), decide to investigate the case themselves… between musical interludes, that is.  Along the way, they encounter multiple suspects, additional attempted murders, and dark secrets that tie the victims together.

As I sat in the screening room, viewing Sweater Girl for the first time, I was repeatedly astonished by the plot similarities between this World War II era musical and the Italian Giallo thrillers of the 1960s and 70s (which I had recently binged).  The Giallo genre, accidentally created by Mario Bava with The Girl Who Knew Too Much (1963) and Blood and Black Lace (1964) and then cemented in the minds of the Italian public with Dario Argento’s The Bird With the Crystal Plumage (1970), established an incredibly specific set of attributes that quickly became cliches — serial murders, black gloved killers, amateur detectives, dark secrets from the past, multiple suspects (and often multiple perpetrators or accomplices), revenge or insanity motives, and long, lurid titles.

While Sweater Girl does not have the Italian setting or lurid title of a Giallo, most of the other primary elements are in evidence.  To avoid spoilers, I won’t rattle off the similarities; but I will reveal that a Giallo-like figure, wearing a fedora and black gloves, appears from out of the shadows during one critical scene.

To be honest, Sweater Girl is no masterpiece.  It’s rather silly at times, and the swings in tone are a bit abrupt (as are some of the choppy edits).  Still, the picture is never boring.  The cast is game, especially Bracken and his spunky co-star Preisser, whether they are called upon to croon, dance acrobatically, or to emote histrionically.  The film is a lot more fun than I expected; and if you go along with movie’s bizarro twists, you’ll probably enjoy it too.

USA/B&W-77m./Dir: William Clemens/Wr: Eve Greene & Robert Blees (based on a story by Beulah Marie Dix & Bertram Millhauser)/Cast: Eddie Bracken, June Preisser, Betty Jane Rhodes, Phillip Terry, Nils Asther, Frieda Inescort, Kenneth Howell, Johnny Johnston, William Henry, Ella Neal, Minerva Urecal, Charles D. Brown,  Isabel Withers, Robert Cherry, William Cabanne

For Fans of: Lovers of the giallo cinema of Mario Bava, Dario Argento, Sergio Martino, and Lucio Fulci will likely be pleasantly surprised at the many genre tropes found in Sweater Girl.

Video: Cinevent often focuses on screening films that aren’t easily accessible otherwise, and Sweater Girl is no exception.  You may be able to dig up a bootleg copy of the film on DVD, but it has never had an official release in any video format.

Streaming: At the time of this review, Sweater Girl was unavailable to stream on any of the subscription services or to rent or purchase through video-on-demand.

More to Explore: Sweater Girl is actually a remake of College Scandal (1935), which I would love to see if only for the sake of comparison.  Unfortunately, the earlier film version is also M.I.A. on home video.   Hopefully, both titles will eventually get an airing on Turner Classic Movies.

Trivia: Sweater Girl did not fare well a the box office (most likely due to the odd mashup of genres).  However, it does have a single claim to fame.  The popular standard “I Don’t Want to Walk Without You,” by Jule Styne and Frank Loesser, made its debut in the film; and the tune became a #1 charting hit that same year.  The song is still well-known to this day, and it has been recorded memorably for film and record album by artists as diverse as Bing Crosby, Olive Oyl (Mae Questel), Phyllis McGuire, Barry Manilow, and Mia Farrow.

For More Info: One of the best places to get up to speed on the repeated traits found in Gialli is the website GialloScore.com, which also has a podcast on the subject.  In addition, I’d highly recommend Troy Howarth’s film guides, So Deadly, So Perverse: 50 Years of Italian Giallo Films Vol. 1 and Vol. 2.