Tag Archives: Obscure/Out of Print

Alfred Eaker's Fringe Cinema

JOHN WATERS’ MULTIPLE MANIACS (1970)

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Multiple Maniacs (1970) was ‘ second feature-length movie (his first was 1969’s Mondo Trasho). Shot in grainy black and white, it lives up to its “Cavalcade Of Perversions” tagline. Even for those familiar with Waters’ early work (and everyone should at least sample one of them), Multiple Maniacs may be considered an extreme challenge. Comparatively, Pink Flamingos (1972), Female Trouble (1974), Desperate Living (1977) and especially Polyester (1981) might be seen as -styled celebrations of white trash.

Shot on a two thousand dollar budget (Pink Flamingos came in at $5,000 and Polyester, $200,000), Multiple Maniacs opens with the camera panning down credits typed out on white paper.

, as a carny broker, introduces us to Lady ‘s “Cavalcade Of Perversions.” As the locals ready themselves in a canvas tent, Lochary, in best tent revival tone, assures us: “This is the show you want: the sleaziest show on earth. Not actors, not imposters, but real, actual filth. These assorted sluts, fags, dykes, and pimps know no bounds. They have committed acts against God and nature that would make any decent person recoil in disgust.”

These are not mere words, and before we can scream “,” we are privy to a woman licking a bicycle seat, a hippie eating a bra, two men licking the hairy armpits of a topless girl, a Human Ashtray, and two-cent choreography of a naked human pyramid that makes us thankful Adam invented the fig leaf.

Mere warm-up acts: “See two actual bearded queers French kissing! See a heroin addict in Fruit of the Looms, writhing among the leaves… Now I give you Lady Divine.”

After Divine robs the audience and killing one of its members (with a pop gun), Lochary, , and gang cruise and dance to Elvis (without permission to use the music, which is one of the reasons Multiple Maniacs has never been made available on DVD and only appeared briefly on VHS). All that 1950s devil music inspires even more hedonism, and soon Lochary and Pearce are doing the nasty, despite the fact that David is Divine’s lover. Enter to spill the beans to Divine in a phone call.

Hell hath no fury like an oversized drag queen scorned, but before Divine can get her hands on the cheating beau, she is accosted by rival queens. Fortunately,  she is consoled by her guardian angel, the Infant of Prague, who takes Lady Divine by the hand and gets her to the church on time.

With blasphemy rivaling L’ Age d’ Or or Viridiana, Divine gets a “rosary job” from on the sacred pews of St. Cecilia, as the narrative literally parallels St. Francis’ “Way Of The Cross.” Perhaps even more blasphemous than Stole inserting prayer beads into anal orifices is future egg-lady Massey as the virgin Mary, meeting Jesus on the way to Calvary. Like before him, Waters actually knows the orthodox dogma he satirizes, which makes the film effective guerrilla heterodoxy. Multiple Maniacs is Waters’ weightiest, most literal, penetrating, and spiritual film (yes, I said that). Divine (she is divine for a reason) delivers a voice-over narrative: a conjoined, meditative, idiosyncratic homily between actor and director, advocating for the societal outcast forever opposed by the smug, suburbanite Pharisees.

Made at the height of the Manson murders, Waters catapults Divine and Stole into the mayhem that had paralyzed American culture in a frenzy of fear. Caught in a perverse, religious fervor, our heroines are ordained as Waters’ SS Perpetua and Felicity, martyrs of the Multiple Maniacs.  Unlike his country, Waters was anything but appalled. Rather, his brand of faith remained lucid and unwavering.

Still from Multiple Maniacs (1970)You can rest assure that neither the kitsch martyrdom of Dick Burton or Vic Mature included being raped and stigmatized by a lobster on a passion play couch. Perhaps that is the reason Moses forbade shellfish, which actually makes sense in a Waters’ universe. If only the hopelessly self-righteous Cecil B. would have been demented enough to know, he might have spared us those 1950s Hollywood Bible epic pornos. However, given 20/20 camp-value hindsight, perhaps it is better that constipated hypocrite wasn’t in on a Waters joke. Multiple Maniacs may just be seen as a healthy response to a sanctimonious Ten Commandments (1956).

Capsules

CAPSULE: THIS FILTHY EARTH (2001)

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DIRECTED BY: Andrew Kötting

FEATURING: Rebecca Palmer, Shane Attwooll, Demelza Randall, Xavier Tchili

PLOT: A cruel framer destroys young Francine’s humble but idyllic life when he marries her sister for her land.

Still from This Filthy Earth (2001)
WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: This weirded-up anti-pastoral portrait of agrarian sin would certainly find champions among this site’s readers; but although it shows artistry, it lacks the necessary significance to be compete as one of the best weird movies of all time.

COMMENTS: The key images in This Filthy Earth occur in a postmortem montage: time-lapse photography of decaying corpses of a rabbit, fox and pigeon. Time is so compressed that their bodies seem to explode into a writhing mass of worms in an instant. Decay and rot are the movie’s reality, and the fecundity of the “filthy” earth is only implied by the massive sheaves of wheat that must be reaped in the farmers’ fields (which themselves lead to death from overwork, continuing the cycle). There are lots of time-lapse shots in this movie, along with blurry, out-of-focus shots, weaving drunken cameras, stock footage, and bits shot in Super-8 with out-of-balance color. These digressive video doodads, done in the experimental tradition of , are not always as meaningful as the rotting corpses, nor do they always fit well into the gritty naturalism of the story, any more than does the anachronistic electronica soundtrack. Combined with explicit shots of rutting cattle (and humans) along with pus, urine, and pigs rooting in filth, they do create a nightmarish pastoral, however, sort of an English countryside version of Gummo.

This Filthy Earth was loosely adapted from Emile Zola’s “La Terre” (“The Earth”), a sprawling novel about the 19th French peasantry that was deemed obscene on publication due to its depictions of casual sex, incest, blasphemy, and general degeneracy among the lower classes. This may explain some confusion in the plot; certain minor characters (like “Jesus Christ”), formally major players, serve no real function in the condensed narrative. The ending of the novel has been changed significantly, and, surprisingly, lightened; Zola’s truly horrific and disturbing rape here passes by as an almost mundane occurrence. However controversial, “La Terre” had a sociological purpose in documenting an agrarian society at a very specific place and time. This Filthy Earth is set in a nameless village in an indeterminate time period that could be anywhere from the 1960s to the present day. Unfortunately, rather than making the setting timeless, these dislocations in time and space remove context from the despair, making the movie unpleasantly nihilistic in tone.

This Filthy Earth was barely screened in Britain, and received virtually no distribution at all outside the country. Nonetheless, the film was released on Region 2 DVD by the British Film Institute with a thick pamphlet, one that unfortunately contains some of the worst examples of obscurantist academic film writing (along with one much better piece by John Roseveare and some humorous tidbits from Kötting). Americans with multi-region players may want to turn on close captioning to help with the accents, particularly when the toothless father speaks (to the untrained ear, his incoherent second-childhood babbling is often indistinguishable from the obscene insults he hurls at his children).

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“… mixes a grainy, indistinct celluloid and smudged sound with a kind of magic-lantern effect of still images, giving a faintly hallucinatory, ahistorical feel to an uproariously grim tale.”–Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian (contemporaneous)

(This movie was nominated for review by “kostman,” who described it as a “weird film based on Emil Zola’s novel La Terre with its grotesque country scenery and the sick relations between the village’s people .” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)

List Candidates

LIST CANDIDATE: THE THIRD PART OF THE NIGHT (1971)

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Trzecia Czesc Nocy

DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: Malgorzata Braunek, Leszek Teleszynski, , Jerzy Golinski, Anna Milewska, Jerzy Stuhr

PLOT: Set in occupied Poland during WWII, during a stay in the country, Michal watches helplessly as German soldiers murder his wife, Helena and son, Lukasz. Returning to the city, he involves himself with the Underground; during a meeting that goes wrong, another man is mistaken for him and shot and he ends up taking care of the man’s wife, Marta , who is a perfect double for his dead Helena.vlcsnap-2012-08-12-23h12m48s126

WHY IT SHOULD MAKE THE LIST: Its mix of historical recreation and surreal scenes was eye-opening for audiences at the time, and even more so for Western viewers who may not be aware of the background of the film’s setting. Even at this early stage, most of Zulawski’s tropes are present, and will only become more refined and extreme in the films to follow.

COMMENTS: When film enthusiasts are introduced to Andrzej Zulawski, the go-to film is usually (surprise, surprise) Possession. For good reason: it’s in English, so no subtitle-reading is involved; and, for quite a while, it was the only Zulawski film that audiences in the West could obtain relatively easily. But if you mean to seriously study Zulawski’s work , then, in my opinion, The Third Part of the Night is a far better entry point.

Zulawski scholar Daniel Bird points out that the two films share similarities: they’re both dramas that take place against chaotic and apocalyptic backgrounds; both feature actresses who play double roles; and both feature a degree of Surrealism – and stairways. One could argue that the two films can be seen as two sides of the same coin.

On its own terms, The Third Part of the Night is an eye-opening merging of the Polish wartime experience that could be found in the films of Zulawki’s mentor Andrzej Wajda (who is credited as “Film Supervisor”) with the Surrealism that was beginning to be a mainstay of Eastern European films. Co-written with his father, Miroslaw Zulawski (a diplomat and novelist), the core of the film draws on Miroslaw’s wartime experiences as a “louse feeder” at The Weigl Institute, a facility that manufactured typhus vaccine. To a Western audience, the scenes of lice feeding may seem to be part of the surreal landscape, but to audiences in Poland, those scenes are more like historical recreation, along with the scenes of people being herded and taken away or just shot point blank in the streets. The Surrealism is rooted in Michel’s grief and guilt in losing his family, and replacing them.

tumblr_le90nmRZAJ1qzcur6The Third Part of the Night does not have a current Region 1 DVD release; it is listed in the ‘Future Releases’ section of Mondo Vision’s website. As of this writing, the best release is a disc from Second Run DVD in 2007. It’s Region 0, but a PAL disc, so those with all-region players should have no problem – in addition to an excellent transfer, there is a 20 minute interview in English with Zulawski going into some depth on the film, and an informative 16 page booklet written by Daniel Bird.

The story of the Weigl Institute is fascinating in its own right and worth further examination. In 2014, W.W. Norton & Co. published The Fantastic Laboratory of Dr. Weigl: How Two Brave Scientists Battled Typhus and Sabotaged the Nazis, by Arthur Allen, which goes into the whole history and aftermath of the Institute. Both Zulawskis are referenced in the text, as is Third Part…

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WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Everything stands on a knife-edge between absurdity and the abyss. Rarely has a filmmaker begin his career by so boldly charting out the territory he intends to explore.”–David Cairns, MUBI Notebook (DVD)

Reader Recommendations

READER RECOMMENDATION: STEAK (2007)

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Reader recommendation by Caleb Moss

DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: , Ramzy Bedia, Johnathan Lambert

PLOT: After he is released from being institutionalized in a mental ward facility for seven years because he was accidentally framed for the murders committed by his high school friend Georges, Blaise is flung into a strange, incongruous near-future where 1950’s kitsch a la “Happy Days” and extreme body modification mingle together swimmingly.

Still from Steak (2007)
WHY IT SHOULD MAKE THE LIST: Quentin Dupieux, as readers of this website are fully aware, has a young, idiosyncratic film career replete with odd meta-humor and other peculiarities. This sadly maligned debut feature is no different: it distinguishes itself through its mixture of ageless plastic surgery disasters, masochistic cricket bat gang rituals, wryly absurd dialogue, and very warped buddy comedy dynamic.

COMMENTS: Blaise is a very unfortunate, albeit slightly dimwitted, individual to be friends with the likes of Georges, who is by all accounts a superficial opportunist who carelessly places Blaise into predicaments that cause his mind to slowly unravel until he becomes a disfigured shadow of the loser Georges once was. If the previous description makes it sound as if Quentin Dupieux created something along the lines of a heart-wrenching melodrama, then fret not: this film is incredibly funny, sporting strange conversational oodles which skewer humor trends, clique culture, and even a few self-referential jabs at Quentin’s own career as an electronic musician. Also noteworthy is what may be some of the finest use of shallow focus framing in Quentin’s output, quietly transforming the bandage-wrapped, post-op profile of Georges into something distorted and rather unnerving.

This film features some of Quentin’s most ambitious sound production as well, pulling together fellow French electro collaborators Sebastian Tellier and SebastiAn on board to produce a consistently eccentric and addictive soundtrack which fades and swells in and out of the film’s oddity-rife tapestry.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“In many ways Steak is a much weirder film than Rubber.”–Rich Haridy, Rich on Film (DVD)

 

List Candidates

LIST CANDIDATE: RUBIN AND ED (1991)

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DIRECTED BY: Trent Harris

FEATURING: Howard Hessman, , , Michael Greene

PLOT: Ed, an incompetent but devoted salesman in a cult-like real estate sales “Organization,” agrees to help shut-in Rubin bury his dead cat in hopes of getting him to attend a recruiting seminar.

Still from Rubin and Ed (1991)
WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE LIST: At heart it’s a simple quirky comedy, not too much different from the usual outing of the era, but Rubin and Ed has a few extra weird points in its favor: a sense of humor so eccentric that it’s been forced off road to become strictly a cult item, hallucination scenes with a water skiing cat, and Crispin Glover playing something very near the Crispin Glover-iest character ever written.

COMMENTS: “It’s going to get weird now, isn’t it?,” worries Ed after Rubin refuses to bury his decomposing cat in the desert because it’s “not the right spot,” despite the fact that, as Ed points out, “any cat in his right mind would be happy as a clam to be buried here!”

Although almost all of the film concerns Howard Hessman’s sad sack salesman Ed and Crispin Glover’s friendless weirdo Rubin, there are really three stars here: Hessman, Glover, and Trent Harris’ script. Glover is a no-brainer: dressed in skintight pinstripe bell bottoms and giant platform shoes (with magical martial powers), Rubin nearly defines Glover’s odd persona: the mentally ill nerd whose clueless awkwardness seems like it might explode into a burst of senseless violence at any moment. Given how broadly the character is written, Glover actually reigns in his performance, playing the oddness as much with a verbal shrug as with an outburst. Going over-the-top with such a already over-the-top character would have been a mistake, and Glover lets Rubin’s eccentricity come through naturally, rather than trying to force it.

A less expected success is Hessman, whose contribution here as straight man is under-appreciated, but possibly even more important to the film’s success than Glover’s wildness. Hessman  definitely leaves “Johnny Fever” behind for this portrait of a postmodern Willy Loman with anger-management issues, a disrespectful spouse, and an infatuation with the New Age sales teachings of a cult-like “Organization.” His Ed is a pure middle class loser, seeing himself as a trusted acolyte in the hierarchy of real estate guru Mr. Busta, while in actuality being closer in social standing to outcast Rubin.

Most of the laughs in Harris’ clever script result from Ed’s unsuccessful attempts to convert Rubin to the cause. His initial interview question—“are you 100% satisfied with your earning potential, 100% of the time?” is met with an unexpected “yep!” from penniless Rubin. Ed remains the saner of the duo, which is how the comedy dynamic works; the emotional arc of the film comes from his humbling realization that his own failings leave him with no right to judge oddball Rubin. Rubin and Ed was made in the early 90s, but the satire has a strong Reagan-era feel (Ed disappoints his mentor when suggests the best way to get money is “work” rather than the correct answer, “real estate”). The film flags a little at the coda, after Rubin’s storyline has been resolved, but in general Rubin and Ed is a sadly-forgotten, somewhat weird comedy gem that deserves rediscovery.

Rubin and Ed‘s pop culture reach may be limited to the answer to a trivia question: this is the movie Crispin Glover was promoting when he appeared, in character, on David Letterman’s late night TV show and almost kicked the host in the head. (Not knowing anything about Rubin and Ed, America assumed that Glover was wasted on powerful psychedelic drugs at the time).

Rubin and Ed was (sadly, unforgivably) never officially released on DVD, but (VHS-dub quality) copies can be purchased from writer/director Trent Harris at his personal site.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“While not sacrificing an iota of Rubin’s weirdness, Glover plays him with a dead-shot comic sureness, demonstrating admirable restraint and discipline. Hesseman similarly scores comic points with Ed by keying in on the character’s humanity while letting his own buttoned-down weirdness speak for itself. “–TV Guide

(This movie was nominated for review by “Caty.” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)