God knows, this is far from being a "good" picture. It's an ultra-trashy, ultra-ridiculous Hollywood soap opera based on Harold Robbins' novel. One may bemoan the fact that the material should yield for better results. Certainly, even those of us who are not in "the business" know that it can be mean, manipulative, selfish, and cruel. Some good people get hurt.

Pia Zadora may never have been one of the great talents to ever come down the pike, but she does try as hard as she can, in the role of Jerilee Randall, a promising young writer. Jerilee does manage to get a few books published, but screenwriting is an entirely different matter. There's no shortage of vile males (and even females) looking to take advantage of her, while she courts the vague hope that they might actually be able to (or want to) help her career get going. She has stormy relationships with a variety of flawed men: veteran, renowned screenwriter Walter Thornton (Lloyd Bochner),self-centred film star George Ballantine (Jared Martin),and club owner Vincent Dacosta (Joseph Cali).

It would be hard not to feel some sympathy for this Jerilee character. There are few supportive influences in her life, and there are so many rotten men. At first, Walter seems to be a good catch, even if he IS old enough to be her father. But even he suffers from a fragile male ego. The film actually aims its lowest early on, when a creep played by Ray Liotta (in his film debut) molests Jerilee with a garden hose. I kid you not.

Some of the cast do struggle to keep their dignity intact. Bochner is pretty good, under the circumstances, as is Anthony Holland as a film director who befriends Jerilee.

It's usually standard practice for me to give "so bad they're good" movies a five out of 10. As long as they entertain, even if it's not in the manner intended, then the experience isn't a total loss.

It wraps up with one of the funniest lines in movie history, at a mock "awards" ceremony, as Jerilee decides to do away with decorum and be at her most brutally, painfully honest.

Five out of 10.

Harold Robbins' book The Lonely Lady is dedicated to Jacqueline Susann, who created the greatest written ode to little red pills ever, Valley of the Dolls. She had been inspired by Robbins and how he wrote, added in her crazed ability self promote and became a star. The book was his tarted up version of how he saw her life.

I discovered that book hidden on my parents shelf in the 1980's and was amazed by it. How did they fit so much sex and depravity between its pages? And when I learned that HBO would be showing the movie adaption at 4 AM, well, look out!

Jerilee Randall (Pia Zadora!) is an innocent waif living in the San Fernando Valley with a dream of being a screenwriter and a trophy for creative writing. Then, she meets Walter Thornton (Mr. No Legs, Crystal Heart),a famous screenwriter. She's kind of, sort of is dating his son, but she slowly falls in love with him. But before all that, Ray Liotta rapes her with a garden hose.

You know how they say that you need to take a shower after some movies? You need to continually shower during The Lonely Lady. In fact, I would recommend putting your TV in the hallway and watching the film from the shower.

Walter and Jerilee marry, despite the protests of her mom. He gets her a job as an on-set writer, but when the one word she adds to his script (WHY!?!) improves the film, their marriage starts to fail. He's unable to satisfy his wife. Also: his chest hair is like a perilious thatch of salt and pepper steel wool.

Walter accuses her of enjoying the rape with a garden hose and that's the end of their marriage (well, they stay married, but she leaves). Jerilee starts sleeping her way through Hollywood, including getting pregnant by George Ballantine (Jared Martin from Fulci's Warriors of the Year 2072!) and then getting an abortion before falling for a nightclub owner. He lies to her all along the way, until she finds him having sex with two other women. Lost and hopelessly addicted to pills, she has a nervous breakdown in a bravurra sequence.

Every single agent that Jerilee meets with wants to sleep with her. Seriously, every single one. Well, I take that back. Some of them want her to sleep with their wives. Even a woman tries to take advantage of her.

Finally, Jerilee's script is produced - and it has to star George Ballantine - but it wins a major award that is not an Oscar.

Jerilee goes off during her speech, admitting to her ex-husband that she never learned anything about self-respect and that she's slept her way to the top. She refuses the award and walks out with dignity to the strains of her theme song. That's not as good as the book, which ends with her tearing off her clothes to reveal the Oscar painting upside down with his head resting inside her pubic hair.

Meshulam Rikls, Pia Zadora's billionaire husband, spent $5 million to get this made and spent several million more for Universal Pictures to release it in the U.S. But you gotta give it to Pia - despite half of the audience being voters for the Razzie Awards who laughed throughout the film - she showed up and stayed for autographs in the lobby. I would have been right there in line, ready with a supportive hug if she needed it!

One must envy Oediphus for having the nerve of taking his eyes out, to me the act in itself just sounds painful enough, and it's unimaginable. For those who aren't versed in the classics, forget Oediphus, and let us go back to not long ago: I envy the British man who ripped his eyes out, apparently possessed while attending a mass in Rome. I envy him more than the literary character not only because he's real but because while doing it he said to the doctors he didn't felt a thing while doing it. No pain at all! Why am I being grotesque while criticizing this movie? Well, simply because "The Lonely Lady" is one of those things that makes you wanna commit those acts. The atrocity your eyes are put to see are so shocking that one has two options: to go blind and vow to never watch a movie again or erase your memory because all of those terrible moments stays with you for a long while. But since the company who provides the memory erasing device from Michel Gondry's "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" doesn't exist (YET but one day will),your eye must be put to death.

Let us be frank, I'm responsible for committing such crime to myself, guilty as charged. Often listed one of the worst stinkers ever made, I just felt the need to see it with my own eyes how bad this could get, reserving some hope this might a bad good film or maybe not that bad as they say. It turned out be to a sickening, gut-wrenching and almost pointless experience. I say almost because I learned a few things from it: 1) I don't have the strength nor the health to watch those kind of films. It's life threatening and from now on I'll try to avoid at all costs when I sense a movie is going terrible. I'll allow myself more and more walkouts. 2) to trust a little more when a whole bunch pans something, go forward it with them, join them. They're right! Why bothering wasting time with garbage? You're being warned as I was, just don't go one step beyond like I did. You'll feel better afterwards. My advice: read all the reviews written in here about this thing, you'll find some funny material of the highest quality.

The average easy reading book written by Harold Robbins was translated to the screen as a corny, almost soap-operish flick ruined from practically scene one. To the director, writer and producer of this it must have been quite a luck that Robbins was suffering from aphasia at the time of the release of this, otherwise I think he would sue those people, ask for his name to be risked from the credits and would disown this with passion. Weird soundtrack, insanely bad script and lousy acting by almost the entire cast (poor Ray Liotta in one of his earliest roles, and here's an infamous one as the main character's rapist). What's this all about? The adventures and misfortunes of Jerilee Randall (Pia Zadora) trying to establish herself as a serious screenwriter, fighting against Hollywood's misogynist conventions, learning that the only way to get to the top in the entertainment business and being a successful person is to be ON top of a bunch of cruel, hedonist yet powerful man (and some women!). It's almost like if this was a silly biographical account of someone relatively famous who had to go through the same experiences the main character had to.

Won't go further in details on why this fails because this is almost common knowledge for those of us who know about films out there. From the one line written by Jerilee changing a whole film written by her husband (WHY?) to the hilarious montage sequence with her breakdown smashing objects, not a single moment was good in this junk. We can almost forgive the acting problems but we can't forgive how negative the script is towards women and their representations of being needy, naive and with limited talents, and we certainly cannot forgive the infamous hosing rape scene which was, in the lack of a better word and reaction, laughable. This isn't a funny issue in life but somehow everything (terrible music combined with the awful editing and lousy acting) contributed to such laughable reaction (in my defense, never during the scene but a little afterwards to quickly disappear with shock when of Jerilee's mother reaction to the event - the doctor quoting "She was attacked" to which she replied "But not raped!").

The only redeeming quality of this is the final scene. Yes, they made something good out of that which was better than was in the book. I almost felt something for the character in that moment. She wins the Oscar, after going through hell trying to sell her script, and in the acceptance speech she gives the movie's best bad line and gets booed of the stage. In Robbins novel, it's the same thing except...she strips naked painted in gold as the Oscar and addresses herself against the men in Hollywood. Can you imagine this scene filmed? They would probably erase the mentions of this film as if never existed in history. Too bad it exists and can be found out there. Thankfully, not that easily. 1/10