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
THE BIG BIRD CAGE
THE BIG BIRD CAGE Production: USA, 1972 Director: Jack Hill Category: Women-In-Prison Posted by Rictus-23
CHARLIE IS MY DARLING + 1
CHARLIE IS MY DARLING Production: UK, 1965 Director: Peter Whitehead Category: Documentary An early hybrid of cinema-verité, rockumentary and road movie, Charlie Is My Darling lies at the forefront of all these genres with regards to the history of film in the UK. Whitehead went on the road with The Rolling Stones, filming Continue Reading
ANGELI BIANCHI… ANGEL NERI
ANGELI BIANCHI… ANGELI NERI Production: Italy, 1969 Director: Luigi Scattini Category: Mondo/Occultism Scattini’s original Italian mondo film was a compendium of scenes of witchcraft and black magic across the modern world, including the Church of Satan, voodoo rites, and naked exorcisms. In 1970 Lee Frost, leading director of both “roughies” and Continue Reading
TUTTI I COLORI DEL BUIO
TUTTI I COLORI DEL BUIO (“All The Colors Of The Dark”)Production: Italy, 1972 Director: Sergio Martino Category: Giallo/Horror A bizarre, trippy giallo, set in London and infested with elements of sex, Satanism and psychedelia, filled with hallucinatory sequences as well as bloody murders and ample female nudity. The film opens Continue Reading
3 NUTS IN SEARCH OF A BOLT
3 NUTS IN SEARCH OF A BOLT Production: USA, 1964 Director: Tommy Noonan Category: Sex Farce Pseudo-nudie screwball farce, notable only for including the sensational Mamie Van Doren who appears nude on screen for the first time, albeit in an extremely brief bubble-bath scene. Noonan doubtless got the idea after acting in Promises Promises 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