By Erin Free
FilmInk salutes the work of creatives who have never truly received the credit that they deserve. In this installment: actor, dancer, writer and director Gus Trikonis, who helmed Moonshine County Express, The Evil, Touched By Love, Dance Of The Dwarfs and more.
If ever a filmmaker was headed for Unsung Auteur status, it would have to be Gus Trikonis. This little-known talent has not just one, but several, career facets that often lead to a sorry lack of due celebration. Firstly, the later period of the now 87-years-old and long-retired director’s career was spent largely behind the camera on episodic television and telemovies, a near-surefire ticket to unfair obscurity. Secondly, Trikonis began his career in another creative field. Thirdly, he was one of the many, many, many filmmakers who was given a major career leg-up by the legendary exploitation producer Roger Corman; like so many others, he has been caught up in a very large mix, and struggled to really make his name. And fourthly, most currently available online reportage directs readers to the fact that Gus Trikonis was once married to a very, very famous woman. There is not, however, a hell of a lot out there on the fistful of very interesting films that Trikonis actually directed.
Of Greek and American heritage, Gus Trikonis was born in 1937 in New York City, and first staked his claim in the entertainment world as a dancer. After appearing in various stage productions, Trikonis scored a major coup by winning the role of gang member Indio (one of the Sharks) in the epic 1961 musical West Side Story, which he followed in 1964 with a major dance routine performed with Debbie Reynolds and Grover Dale in The Unsinkable Molly Brown. In dance terms, Trikonis achieved another major career milestone when he was chosen as one of just five male dancers to appear in the 1968 NBC-TV music special Elvis, which would, of course, later become known as The ’68 Comeback Special. Trikonis can be seen working it with precision and flair during the big gospel number in one of the highest rating TV specials ever aired.
Alongside these major moments in on-screen dance, Trikonis was also doing straight-up acting, booking minor roles on TV series like The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, The Fugitive, 77 Sunset Strip and The Virginian, and in films like 1966’s The Sand Pebbles, 1967’s The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre (directed by Roger Corman) and 1968’s The Hellcats. Trikonis made connections while appearing in said films, working again with The Hellcats actor Ross Hagen on his 1969 directorial debut Five The Hard Way, which Hagen also produced. A wild, violent biker exploitation flick, Five The Hard Way was a solid indication of where Trikonis would often go with his low budget work, frequently injecting moments of shock crudity and intensity.
After his directorial debut, Gus Trikonis experienced another major life change when he married actress and one-time dancer Goldie Hawn, whom he had met while they were performing in a play together in San Diego. Hawn’s star was well and truly on the rise after her breakout role in 1969’s Cactus Flower and her previous TV work on Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In. “Before you know it, she said to me, ‘Let’s get married because I’m becoming a star, and I don’t want to say I’m just living with a guy; I want a husband,’” Trikonis said in a 2014 interview. “She went off and did all kinds of wild, weird things. She was running around with Warren Beatty, Barbra Streisand and Jack Nicholson, the 1 percent. It was not my world; I was out of step with them. We grew apart and split, and then she called me one day and said, ‘I want a divorce.’ I ended up asking her for $75,000, and she screamed, ‘How dare you ask me for that kind of money?’ She was making millions, and I had $175 in my bank account. But after she had her freakout, she realised I wasn’t trying to gouge her, and that it was more than fair. The whole thing was painful, because I loved her. I last saw Goldie in the late 1990s, when we both ended up on the same flight to Germany. She looked good then, and she looks good now. She’s probably had a facelift or two, but whatever. We were always friendly and on good terms. I know she’s done some positive work with kids through her Hawn Foundation. Now she’s back making movies, and I say good for her!”
Trikonis didn’t deliver a follow-up to Five The Hard Way until 1975, and his debut was fairly tame when compared to Trikonis’ hilariously and very pruriently titled sophomore effort. The self-penned Supercock – yes, Supercock, though it was also released under the title A Fistful Of Feathers – was not a porno, but rather an exploitation flick about a cowboy (again played by Ross Hagen) in the cockfighting game who heads to the Philippines to make a killing. Proving himself more than adept at crafting strange, provocative little flicks for next-to-nothing while delivering on the appropriate sleaze quotient, Trikonis directed all manner of genre pieces, including 1975’s The Swinging Barmaids (a very peculiar flick about a serial killer targeting cocktail waitresses), 1976’s The Student Body (a sexy teen comedy) and 1976’s Nashville Girl (in which a young girl tries to make it as a country singer and quickly learns how sordid the industry can be).
In 1977, Trikonis delivered one of his best efforts with the rollicking, funny, exciting, high-energy crime car chase hicksploitation belter Moonshine County Express, a sexy winner starring John Saxon, Susan Howard, Claudia Jennings and Maureen McCormick aka Marcia from The Brady Bunch. Trikonis switched genres but kept the quality similarly high with 1978’s The Evil, a twitchy meld of psychological horror, haunted house creepiness and demonism boasting strong performances from Richard Crenna, Joanna Pettet, Andrew Prine and Victor Buono.
After The Evil, Trikonis began working prolifically in television, but still made the odd feature in amongst his mounting small screen work. Trikonis’ most obviously out of character feature came in 1980 with Touched By Love, a deeply moving (though many mock the film for its sentimentality) true-life drama about a teenage girl with cerebral palsy (Diane Lane) whose therapist (Deborah Raffin) encourages her to write to her favourite musical artist, Elvis Presley. Against all probability (the film is based on the therapist’s memoirs), The King responds and the two become unlikely pen pals. Sweet and positive, this is the glaring anomaly on the wild and woolly resume of Trikonis, who incidentally returned again to The King with the 1981 telemovie Elvis And The Beauty Queen, in which Presley is played by…Don Johnson!
Getting more and more busy with television, Trikonis only made two more feature films – the sly and excellently titled (after the Johnny Paycheck song) 1981 comedy Take This Job And Shove It, and the entertaining 1983 jungle monster flick Dance Of The Dwarfs with Peter Fonda and Deborah Raffin – before stepping back from the industry in 2001. A talented multi-hyphenate with a real knack for putting an interesting spin on genre fare, Gus Trikonis is a hell of a lot more than just a one-time Mr. Goldie Hawn.
If you liked this story, check out our features on other unsung auteurs Greydon Clark, Frances Doel, Gordon Douglas, Billy Fine, Craig R. Baxley, Harvey Bernhard, Bert I. Gordon, James Fargo, Jeremy Kagan, Robby Benson, Robert Hiltzik, John Carl Buechler, Rick Carter, Paul Dehn, Bob Kelljan, Kevin Connor, Ralph Nelson, William A. Graham, Judith Rascoe, Michael Pressman, Peter Carter, Leo V. Gordon, Dalene Young, Gary Nelson, Fred Walton, James Frawley, Pete Docter, Max Baer Jr., James Clavell, Ronald F. Maxwell, Frank D. Gilroy, John Hough, Dick Richards, William Girdler, Rayland Jensen, Richard T. Heffron, Christopher Jones, Earl Owensby, James Bridges, Jeff Kanew, Robert Butler, Leigh Chapman, Joe Camp, John Patrick Shanley, William Peter Blatty, Peter Clifton, Peter R. Hunt, Shaun Grant, James B. Harris, Gerald Wilson, Patricia Birch, Buzz Kulik, Kris Kristofferson, Rick Rosenthal, Kirsten Smith & Karen McCullah, Jerrold Freeman, William Dear, Anthony Harvey, Douglas Hickox, Karen Arthur, Larry Peerce, Tony Goldwyn, Brian G. Hutton, Shelley Duvall, Robert Towne, David Giler, William D. Wittliff, Tom DeSimone, Ulu Grosbard, Denis Sanders, Daryl Duke, Jack McCoy, James William Guercio, James Goldstone, Daniel Nettheim, Goran Stolevski, Jared & Jerusha Hess, William Richert, Michael Jenkins, Robert M. Young, Robert Thom, Graeme Clifford, Frank Howson, Oliver Hermanus, Jennings Lang, Matthew Saville, Sophie Hyde, John Curran, Jesse Peretz, Anthony Hayes, Stuart Blumberg, Stewart Copeland, Harriet Frank Jr & Irving Ravetch, Angelo Pizzo, John & Joyce Corrington, Robert Dillon, Irene Kamp, Albert Maltz, Nancy Dowd, Barry Michael Cooper, Gladys Hill, Walon Green, Eleanor Bergstein, William W. Norton, Helen Childress, Bill Lancaster, Lucinda Coxon, Ernest Tidyman, Shauna Cross, Troy Kennedy Martin, Kelly Marcel, Alan Sharp, Leslie Dixon, Jeremy Podeswa, Ferd & Beverly Sebastian, Anthony Page, Julie Gavras, Ted Post, Sarah Jacobson, Anton Corbijn, Gillian Robespierre, Brandon Cronenberg, Laszlo Nemes, Ayelat Menahemi, Ivan Tors, Amanda King & Fabio Cavadini, Cathy Henkel, Colin Higgins, Paul McGuigan, Rose Bosch, Dan Gilroy, Tanya Wexler, Clio Barnard, Robert Aldrich, Maya Forbes, Steven Kastrissios, Talya Lavie, Michael Rowe, Rebecca Cremona, Stephen Hopkins, Tony Bill, Sarah Gavron, Martin Davidson, Fran Rubel Kuzui, Elliot Silverstein, Liz Garbus, Victor Fleming, Barbara Peeters, Robert Benton, Lynn Shelton, Tom Gries, Randa Haines, Leslie H. Martinson, Nancy Kelly, Paul Newman, Brett Haley, Lynne Ramsay, Vernon Zimmerman, Lisa Cholodenko, Robert Greenwald, Phyllida Lloyd, Milton Katselas, Karyn Kusama, Seijun Suzuki, Albert Pyun, Cherie Nowlan, Steve Binder, Jack Cardiff, Anne Fletcher ,Bobcat Goldthwait, Donna Deitch, Frank Pierson, Ann Turner, Jerry Schatzberg, Antonia Bird, Jack Smight, Marielle Heller, James Glickenhaus, Euzhan Palcy, Bill L. Norton, Larysa Kondracki, Mel Stuart, Nanette Burstein, George Armitage, Mary Lambert, James Foley, Lewis John Carlino, Debra Granik, Taylor Sheridan, Laurie Collyer, Jay Roach, Barbara Kopple, John D. Hancock, Sara Colangelo, Michael Lindsay-Hogg, Joyce Chopra, Mike Newell, Gina Prince-Bythewood, John Lee Hancock, Allison Anders, Daniel Petrie Sr., Katt Shea, Frank Perry, Amy Holden Jones, Stuart Rosenberg, Penelope Spheeris, Charles B. Pierce, Tamra Davis, Norman Taurog, Jennifer Lee, Paul Wendkos, Marisa Silver, John Mackenzie, Ida Lupino, John V. Soto, Martha Coolidge, Peter Hyams, Tim Hunter, Stephanie Rothman, Betty Thomas, John Flynn, Lizzie Borden, Lionel Jeffries, Lexi Alexander, Alkinos Tsilimidos, Stewart Raffill, Lamont Johnson, Maggie Greenwald and Tamara Jenkins.
