The Grand Daddy of dirty old pervert movies, Lolita features the salubrious Humbert Humbert - a Professor who lodges with Charlotte Haze for the summer and ends up falling for her nymphet daughter Dolores - whom Humbert names Lolita. Charlotte doesn't cotton on to the fact that Humbert is in love with her daughter and she demands that Humbert marry her, or vacate his lodgings. Humbert wants to be around Lolita so he marries her mother. Charlotte finds Humbert's diary ridiculing her and detailing his love for Lolita. She runs out of the house in a fit of hysteria and gets killed by a car. Humbert picks up Lolita from school but doesn't tell her about her mother. They go travelling across the States and begin a sexual relationship. Humbert settles in for his professorship and enrols Lolita in a high school. They pose as father and daughter but suspicions are raised and they go travelling again, followed by a mysterious car. Lolita gets sick and has to go to hospital where she vanishes. A few years later, Lolita contacts Humbert to ask for money. She is pregnant and married, living a humdrum existence. Humbert asked her who took her at the hospital and she informs him it was Clare Quilty - a playwright who offered her glamour but really wanted her to star in dirty movies. Nobody in the film has a happy ending. Some critics believe that Humbert is too likeable in the film compared to the book. He is debonaire and erudite. Furthermore, Humbert's obsession with young girls is not fleshed out and Lolita's age is raised to fourteen from twelve and a half. But despite the considerable toning down of the novel, Humbert, however sophisticated and urbane Kubrick made him, is still a colossal pervert who, in the second part of the movie, does the dirty deed with Lolita and desperately tries to manipulate and control her. Humbert has a rival in the Dirty Old Pervert stakes in the shape of Clare Quilty. Some would argue that Humbert is rather benign compared to Quilty, who tries to induct Lolita into depraved sex in his 'art' films, luring her in with a promise of glamour. Both men have a serious case of hebephilia - uncontrollable sexual desire for adolescents - in this case a girl. A remake in 1997 promised to be more faithful to the book. It was directed by Adrian Lyne but it flopped at the box office - from a budget of 62 million dollars, it only recouped one million. The original 1962 Humbert Humbert - played by James Mason - will forever go down in history as the ne plus ultra of Dirty Old Pervert movies.
My first film watched was Carrie aged 2 on my dad's knee. Educated at The University of St Andrews and Trinity College Dublin. Fan of Arthouse, Exploitation, Horror, Euro Trash, Giallo, New French Extremism. Weaned at the bosom of a Russ Meyer starlet. The bleaker, artier or sleazier the better!
