Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

Admirable film.

Absolutely brilliant

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

While some might call this obviously cheaply made trashy drama an exploitation classic, I became fascinated by its two leading female characters, actors I'd known from my soap opera viewing of the 1980's. When I first saw Meg Myles on my daytime TV screen, she was playing the kind-hearted tavern owner Sid on "The Edge of Night", dispensing advice along with coffee and pie and trying to find love in a violent, mob controlled town. Around the same time, Grayson Hall was playing the scheming Euphemia on "The Edge of Night", the turban wearing matriarch of a tragic Southern family vowing revenge on the wealthy Texan who had allegedly stolen her family fortune. In the middle of the night during the time, I caught Grayson in her Oscar nominated role as the nasty Miss Fellowes in "The Night of the Iguana" where she played a repressed lesbian whose sexuality was only assumed because of her desperation to keep teenage nymphet Sue Lyon "pure". In this drama, made two years prior, Ms. Hall plays Pepe, a sophisticated nightclub manager who is assumed to be a friend of Sapho's as well, although that is never spelled out. Pin-up Meg Myles already had a singing career and some film experience when she was cast in this film which utilizes her busty hour glass figure to great advantage. Only 28 when she made this film, for some reason, she seems nearly 10 years older, so for men to go ga-ga over her and kill to keep her out of other men's arms seems absurd. She's first seen ripping off an ex who had earlier tried to kill her, flying to New York, picking up a man on a plane who sets her up with a singing career at Pepe's. Hall takes her in, dominates her time, introduces her to important people and promotes her as a new singing find. Myles does indeed have a good singing voice, but it's obvious that her tracks were dubbed and that she's lipsincing to loudly piped in recordings, especially in her final song, clad in leather and brandishing a whip. Manipulating the suave Hall into getting hired, she also becomes involved with wealthy Mike Keene and his teenaged son (Bob Yuro) whom the audience is never sure of whether he is in high school (boarding) or college. He looks far older than college age, but the love scenes between Myles and Yuro still make her seem much older. Noila Chapman is great in her few scenes as the aging drunk whom Keene dumps to pursue Myles, and Del Tenney is fabulously bitchy as the obvious gay Paul whom Myles refers to as "Paulette". This reminded me in some ways of the same year's "Walk on the Wild Side" where Barbara Stanwyck played the lesbian owner of a brothel, as well as 1965's "Who Killed Teddy Bear" where Elaine Stritch added even more glamour to her lesbian character who ran a bar just like Hall does here. There were even some elements of the 1933 Stanwyck film "Baby Face", although Myles seems slightly longer in the tooth here. The scene where Yuro and Myles end up at his father's country hideaway (complete with pool and waterfall) does give Myles a chance to show the desperation for a quiet, peaceful life, but her ambitions take over and back to New York it is where her betrayal of both men takes a sudden violent turn. Myles really isn't "Satan in High Heels", but your average bad girl who takes several nasty turns (theft and the urging of one man to kill another), and as much as I like her, find her made to look cheap and vulgar and not really the ideal of any man's sexual fantasy outside the glimpse of her ample bust. I would have liked to have seen more of Hall on screen as she has that great raspy voice presence that made her seem like a fellow stage sister to Stritch and the equally raspy Eileen Heckart, showing that the "Baritone Babes" are often more fascinating than the sexually over-exploited blondes, here represented by the fairly amusing Sabrina as Myles' rival at Pepe's nightclub.

"Stacey Kane" (Meg Miles) is a sexy and talented woman who has been reduced to performing as a stripper at a traveling carnival in California. She is also very selfish and manipulative. So when her ex-husband comes along with $900 dollars and asks her to go away with him she takes the opportunity to steal his money and flies to New York to start a new life. As luck would have it she meets a talent agent on the flight who convinces her to audition as a singer at a high-class nightclub and manages to get hired quite easily. She then becomes the mistress of the owner which results in all kinds of drama and intrigue from that point on. Now rather than reveal any more I can honestly say that I initially didn't expect too much from this film but that I was pleasantly surprised afterward. I especially liked the performances of Grayson Hall (as the nightclub manager "Pepe") and the previously mentioned Meg Miles who was quite attractive as well. That said, I recommend this film for those who might enjoy a movie of this type and I have rated it accordingly. Slightly above average.

The female of the species, is more deadly than the male!Agreeably sordid melodrama is fine as a curiosity piece, although in truth, it's not titillating or sleazy enough to be of great use to hardcore exploitation fans. It stars Meg Myles ("Coogan's Bluff") as Stacey Kane. Stacey toils away as a burlesque show stripper at a carnival until her junkie ex-husband Rudy (Earl Hammond) shows up one night, wanting to start fresh. He's got a wad of bills with him (payment for a story he wrote), which is big temptation for her, so she steals it and takes off for NYC, where she soon starts a new life as singer in a nightclub, run by a lesbian character named Pepe (Grayson Hall of 'Dark Shadows') and owned by Arnold Kenyon (Mike Keene). Before too long, she's become involved with both Arnold and his ne-er- do-well son Laurence (Robert Yuro, "The Shakiest Gun in the West").Overall, the movie is competently done, and certainly better acted than one might expect, with an especially fine, effectively bitchy performance by the sexy Ms. Myles. Hall and Keene are also quite good, but what's really amusing is noting that Paul, the suave, bisexual pianist, is played by Del Tenney. Tenney was better known as a cult director during the 1960s; he went on to helm "The Horror of Party Beach", "The Curse of the Living Corpse", and "Zombie" a.k.a. "I Eat Your Skin". English entertainer Sabrina (playing a character named Sabrina) rounds out the main cast.Unfortunately for some, "Satan in High Heels" fails to measure up to that grabber of a title. It's not that the story isn't diverting at all, but the pacing is slow, and things never ever get that interesting, at least until Myles belts out her show stopping number near the end. In fact, the four songs in this movie are actually not bad.Still worth a look, but it might not appeal to trash lovers across the board.Six out of 10.

Too bad this movie is so hard to find in rental stores. It's got underground cult classic all over it, and deserves an annual revival at the Film Forum with audiences dividing up between those who do Meg Myles' lines and those who chant along with Grayson Hall: "You'll EAT and DRINK what I SAY until you lose five pounds IN THE PLACES WHERE!"Designed as an homage to the noir sensibilities of the late Forties (think Blue Dahlia), this movie was filmed at a bargain basement budget in New York's old La Martinique cabaret. The hachi-machi dialogue and ratty looking clothes seem like a prophetic foreshadowing of Valley of the Dolls; the sleazy atmosphere of coffeehouse decadence make this a much slicker variant on some of the themes canvassed by the better known British noirette Beat Girl (featuring Christopher Lee and Oliver Reed). Satan in High Heels is essentially a showcase for the talents of three women: Meg Myles, Grayson Hall and Sabrina. Suave Z-movie director Del Tenney ("Horror of Party Beach") contributes a deft turn as gay piano player Paul. Of the three female principals, Miss Myles distinguishes herself for her ability to wear some pretty sharp avant-garde leather ensembles and deliver some punchy salvos. Grayson Hall rules the roost as Pepe, cocking a jaundiced eye at every sad sack who wanders into her orbit with a l-o-o-o-n-g draw on that impossibly baroque cigarette holder, and the mordant comment, "Bear up, darling, I love your eyelashes." As Herself, Sabrina is some force of Anti-Nature. Don't miss her big production number which finds her pneumatically shoe-horned into Charlie the Tuna regalia pouting, "I CAHN'T be good!" The big Meg Myles number, "The Female of the Species (is more deadly than the male)" had its title riff quarried for the soundtrack of some pitiful Sixties retread last year.This is the movie that proves the truth in the maxim that if the good die young, the bad are ALWAYS much more entertaining in their indecent old age.