Because of Crypt of Dark Secrets and Mardi Gras Massacre, there's been a tendency to characterize Jack Weis as a trash-horror director, but he also made some poignant dramas as well. Quadroon, which appears to be his earliest film, is an involving and gut-wrenching examination of racial castes in 19th Century Louisiana, with little focus on exploitative or horrific elements at all. It's strange to watch Mardi Gras Massacre, Weis' attempt to clone Blood Feast, and then pop in something like Quadroon or Death Brings Roses, which seem at the very worst to be TV movies on a B-tier channel. They have an artistic flair to them which make Weis a director with many dimensions and capabilities. That he made comparatively few films will always be one of the minor injustices of movie history.
A Harrison Ford lookalike named Chuck Watts (suspend your Stones jokes here!) is an enforcer working for Max, a theatre agent/mobster. We follow Chuck in his adventures around New Orleans, palling around with bartenders and slapping around hookers. Chuck is cold to his girlfriend Laura, which she thinks is a product of his associations with Max, but Chuck has secret reasons for his behavior: years ago, Chuck and his friend Hal accidentally killed a man in a card game gone wrong in Kentucky. Chuck has cold feet about getting with Laura because there is an active warrant for his arrest. But Max soon solves this problem: he makes Chuck a partner in his organization, and wipes out both his and Hal's record. But shortly thereafter, Max himself is wiped out, and it's up to Chuck to find the murderer...as several organizations are now sniffing at the cracks in Max's outfit.
Like all of Weis' films, Death Brings Roses (apparently also screened or released under the title You Never Gave Me Roses) is a love letter to New Orleans. Like Satan's Touch, it allows its plot to snake in and out of its primary raison d'etre, a study/romantic framing of a particular city. This is a slice-of-life film, pure and simple, and while it is a slice of the lives of Chuck, Max, Laura, and Hal, it is also a slice of the life of New Orleans. This may not be the most interesting thing for some people, even when Chuck and Hal celebrate their age-old entertainment of blowing up cars at a junkyard. It seems to be a directionless film at times, but it's about the journey, not the destination. There's always something about it which keeps your eyeballs on the screen.
It's not a perfect film by any means. The acting definitely slips in places, though the main characters are always portrayed convincingly. There's a brief but awesome appearance by Maureen "Damballa" Ridley from Crypt of Dark Secrets, and yes, she does get naked again. The guy who played Ted Watkins in Crypt is an FBI agent here and he's as stoned as ever. But thematically, this movie slips too. It's a little hard to decipher what sort of story is exactly being told here. It's probably meant to be Chuck's tragedy, with his bad actions and bad fates being the product of his life of crime. Yet he does some things early on--beating up a bunch of people, for example--that make it hard for us to root for him entirely, even if generally he seems to keep his heart in the right place.
There's a token Weird Scene in the film, and that's when Henny Youngman shows up and starts doing his bit. I've seen wilder and more disturbing celebrity cameos but it's kind of remarkable to watch people laugh and cheer over some bits which really aren't that funny. No offense to the Youngman fans in the audience, but "Take my wife, please," was never as amusing as people thought it was. I suppose I've killed my fanbase now. Forgive me, servitors of Youngman. The sheer delirium of his cameo has left me confused and bamboozled, I know not what I do.
Death Brings Roses is a sprawling, fascinating drama which should get a release outside of the whole two copies that I know to exist. If you have a chance to see it, you're lucky indeed. Enjoy the moment while it lasts!
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