Friday, January 13, 2012

movie inspiration: the spanish cape mystery (1935)

The Spanish Cape Mystery (1935) should be great - it's Ellery Queen and the costumes (gowns by Lettie Lee) are really very good.. but it sucks. Like watch-in-fast-forward-for-the-clothes-alone sucks. What you should watch is the Mandarin Mystery (1936) even though it is the absolute stupidest mystery ever. Eddie Quillan as Ellery Queen is just so flipping charming. Almost as charming as Ray Milland as Bulldog Drummond, though little has ever in the universe been quite that charming. Anyway watch Mandarin Mystery if you can find it, then go ahead and watch the Big Sleep again so's you can't say you didn't have any meat.
But you want to see the dresses... I know.



Bias-cut silk satin with surprise criss-cross back. Major neckline - I think that's part of the dress and not a necklace.




Taking bets on what color it is. I'm going to say emerald green.



silly frilly shoulders over sweeping black velvet


...with another surprise back. I'd love this dress.



Of course when you walk to the water with a gentleman you go ahead and shimmy your shoulders on out of there -





OK so there's apparently no natural way to stand in this but I do love a good nuts jumpsuit.



Yeah that looks natural.

4 comments:

AJ said...

I would still love to see it. Just signed up for Netflix. Any more suggestions?

Sunshine said...

Hi AJ,
I am FULL of suggestions! There's a column to the left <<< with keywords - click on "movie inspiration" for 55 other movie posts. Most are on Netflix at least some of the time.
Enjoy!

AJ said...

Thanks! Also, I'll guess sapphire or cobalt blue for the color of that bias-cut number. That dress is KILLING me.

Sunshine said...

I changed my mind to rust/topaz