KUROTOKAGE

KUROTOKAGE (“Black Lizard”) Production: Japan, 1968 Director: Fukasaku Kinji Category: Crime Based on a novella of the criminal underbelly by Edogawa Rampo, and starring fascist author Yukio Mishima with transvestite Akihiro Maruyama. An earlier version of Kurotokage, starring the glamorous Machiko Kyo, was a more straightforward but still stylized “crime Continue Reading

LA VERITÉ SUR L’IMAGINAIRE PASSION D’UN INCONNU

LA VERITÉ SUR L’IMAGINAIRE PASSION D’UN INCONNU (“The Truth Concerning A Stranger’s Imaginary Passion”) Production: France, 1974 Director: Marcel Hanoun Category: Experimental Produced by radical science-film director Eric Duvivier, Hanoun’s film is the most crucial cinematic vision of the Passion according to St John. After a man is found crucified at the entrance of Continue Reading

BLOOD FEAST

BLOOD FEAST Production: USA, 1963 Director: Herschell Gordon Lewis Category: Gore Lewis invents the splatter movie with this outrageous, milestone offering; girls’ limbs are cut off, tongues pulled out by the roots, eyeballs gouged out, brains removed, bodies flayed, etc etc, in lurid color and loving detail. A primitive masterpiece, which Continue Reading

THE VELVET UNDERGROUND

THE VELVET UNDERGROUND AND NICO Production: USA, 1966 Director: Andy Warhol Category: Popular Music 70-minute film of the Velvet Underground performing an instrumental jam at Warhol’s Factory, with much zooming in and out – a sometimes frustrating but still exciting glimpse of this seminal rock and roll band at their very inception. The Continue Reading

INABA NO SHIROSAGI

INABA NO SHIROSAGI (“The White Rabbit Of Inaba”) Production: Japan, 1970 Director: Kato Yoshihiro Category: Documentary/Experimental Kato was co-founder with Shinichi Iwata of Zero Dimension (Zero Jigen), the notorious street performance sect who scandalized 60s Tokyo with nude street interventions and garish “art terror ceremonies”. Inaba No Shirosagi documents the history Continue Reading