The Lonely Lady
Infamous Pia Zadora vehicle based on a novel by Harold Robbins. In the running for Worst Movie Ever.
Pia Zadora is Jerilee Randall, a high school graduate hoping to become a screenwriter. In Lonely Lady-land, this career path mainly involves literally whoring yourself to everyone in Hollywood. Sleazy sex scenes ensue and Jerilee responds with Dull Surprise. No, it is actually not intended as just straight porn. Probably.
Ray Liotta's film debut, though he probably hopes no one remembers.
You can find out more here.
Tropes used in The Lonely Lady include:
- All Men Are Perverts: The Lonely Lady was a Lifetime Movie of the Week before Lifetime. Also some lesbians are thrown in just so Jerilee can be treated like a sex doll by members of both sexes.
- Averted with Guy Jackson, who is practically the only male character who treats Jerilee with something resembling respect and doesn't try to get into her pants.
- You Fail Film School Forever: So, so much. Perhaps most egregiously the movie equates becoming a successful screenwriter with achieving A-List level Hollywood fame. Ha, ha, ha, ha!
- Big No ("Why? Why!" is considered brilliant dialogue)
- Black Comedy: One character charmingly compares Jerilee's new script to her aborted child.
- Brainless Beauty: Jerilee (who apparently has to learn the same lesson over and over and over again) and the bimbo girlfriend of Walter's agent.
- Brand X (the movie is bookended by scenes of Jerilee at
the Oscars"The Awards") - Break the Cutie/Corrupt the Cutie (whole premise of the movie)
- Broken Bird: (Very poorly) played straight throughout the movie with Jerilee's "misadventures."
- California Doubling: Literally -- is set in Hollywood, but was filmed in Italy of all places.
- Camp Gay: The rather flamboyant and effeminate Guy Jackson
- The Casanova: George Ballantine and Vinnie.
- Casting Couch
- Crapsack World
- Chatty Hairdresser
- Dawson Casting: Pia Zadora and Ray Liotta, both 29 at the time, start off the film as a High School students. It's not clear how old Zadora's character is meant to be by the end of the film, though.
- Dull Surprise
- The Eighties
- "Falling in Love" Montage
- Good Girls Avoid Abortion: Averted. Jerilee does have an abortion, but nobody shames her for it and it's only brought up once afterwards.
- Gratuitous Rape: With Ray Liotta in powder blue underpants and (of all things) a garden hose.
- Fan Service: We're apparently meant to be turned on by seeing the heroine get sexually used and abused for the whole movie. And the movie clearly, albeit narmtastically, portrays her being emotionally scarred by this.
- Heroic BSOD: Twice for Jerilee: the first after the garden hose incident, the second after she finds out Vinnie was just using her and has a nervous breakdown. The latter is preceded by one of the most unintentionally hilarious freak-outs ever caught on film.
- Hey, It's That Guy!: That's Dr. Carol Marcus as Jerilee's mother. By the way, she was only twelve years older than Pia Zadora.
- The actress in the restaurant who all but begs Walter for a job was Ferro in Aliens.
- Hey, It's That Voice!: Baby Herman is Jerilee's decent high-school boyfriend, whom she dumps in the first ten minutes of the movie. Okay, he doesn't have the voice he had in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, but it is the same guy.
- Horrible Judge of Character: Jerilee sleeps with a guy without noticing he's an obvious sleazeball. Then he dramatically backstabs her and she falls into the arms of another obvious sleazeball. The cycle continues for the whole movie.
- How We Got Here
- Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: The 6'3" actor who played George Ballantine practically had to get on his elbows to kiss the 5'0" Pia Zadora.
- The Ingenue: Jerilee takes this trope all the way to Who Would Be Stupid Enough...? levels.
- In Case You Forgot Who Wrote It: The full on-screen title is "Harold Robbins' The Lonely Lady". Ah, the giants.
- Informed Ability: Unsurprisingly, Jerilee's writing ability -- after all, this movie was the best the real screenwriters could come up with.
- Keep Circulating the Tapes: Never released on DVD, although it was released on VHS and laserdisc back in the day. Copies are hard to find, not that you'd want to find them.
- May-December Romance: The barely out of high school Jerilee and the 50-something Walter. Truth in Television as Ms. Zadora's husband at the time was 33 years her senior.
- Most Writers Are Writers
- One Steve Limit: Most bizarre aversion ever. During "The Awards" at the end of the film, one of the other best screenplay nominees also has the oh-so-common name of Jerilee. For no apparent reason. It's never commented on or joked about. The other Jerilee is just a random background character with no role in the plot.
- There are two characters named George, though they have nothing to do with each other and have no scenes together. Would it have been that hard to rename one of the Georges?
- Pet Homosexual: Guy Jackson
- Precision F-Strike: "I don't suppose I'm the only one who's had to fuck her way to the top."
- Sex Montage
- Shower of Angst
- Star-Derailing Role: Pia Zadora, who had only a handful of small roles and cameos after this film.
- X Meets Y: While on the promotional circuit, Pia Zadora repeatedly described this movie as a cross between Rocky and Emmanuelle.
