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The action continues, with cutaways to a swaying ceiling lamp, a flash of lightning and, again, the vase of flowers. This rape sequence, to which the film returns, is a disturbing, cruel segment that seems out of place amid the otherwise offbeat but mellow exoticism. The camera moves to a close-up of her large, round, jiggling breast, as she gyrates and screeches. A drag queen wrestles down a woman, who is then ravaged by several people as she screams.
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People in the group run left-to-right, right-to-left across the screen. Is this a languid recovery from a sex orgy, or a drugged-out group who simply are enjoying slow-paced genital contact? Just as thoughts begin to arise of illicit lillied pipes in Limehouse opium dens, a lively, campy oriental-style song starts to play, and the action accelerates in pace. Soon we hear animal noises, as if from an out-of-control kennel. As the soundtrack announces that this indelible lipstick does not come off "when you suck cocks," viewers see a close-up of a penis at the face of a man wearing a large false nose. The group lies about, intermingling, and the camera wanders about the intertwined bodies at odd angles. This pair and others, including more drag queens, put on lipstick to the soundtrack for a lipstick commercial. A vamping woman and a drag queen wiggle, wave, and converse near a large vase of flowers. Then, with the effect of a needle hitting a phonograph turntable, the sounds of an old-fashioned, operatic rendition of "Amapola-Pretty Little Poppy" commence. Already difficult to read, the credits are further obscured by characters-a masked, helmeted man and a woman who sticks out her tongue-who walk left-to-right and right-to-left in front of the information. As the film unfolds, the viewer sees the faces of women from a harem and learns that Ali Baba "comes today." Then the small, handwritten credits become visible. Thus it is worthwhile to examine its content in greater detail. As a result, Flaming Creatures comes off as a homemade concoction-certainly not from the kitchen of Betty Crocker, but from the New York Greenwich Village rooftop where filmmaker Jack Smith and his friends converged to produce the film.įor decades, Flaming Creatures has rarely been seen and, for this reason, it has frequently been misinterpreted, misunderstood, and analyzed in generalities. Actors appear in costumes and trinkets gathered from the finery of their home closets or perhaps from a Washington Square or East Village five-and-dime store. In keeping with the beat aesthetic, the technical values of Flaming Creatures are more primitive than they need have been, the camera movements purposefully herky-jerky. In the 1950s, this generation of poets-unfairly enshrined en masse in popular memory garbed in stereotypical black turtleneck shirts and mohair sweaters-shunned the plasticized, sterilized, march-in-step order of the decade in favor of a more shaggy, offbeat lifestyle. Though it was produced in the early 1960s, Flaming Creatures-a seminal work of the American underground cinema movement of the mid-twentieth century-is a cinematic poem born of an earlier beat generation. Jerome, Judith, "Creating a World Waiting to Be Created: Karen Finley and Jack Smith," in Women & Performance (New York), no. Hoberman, J., "Treasures of the Mummy's Tomb," in Film Comment (New York), vol. Regelson, Rosalyn, "Where Are 'The Chelsea Girls' Taking Us?" in New York Times, 24 September 1967. Godard, Fire That Cameraman!," in New York Times, 29 January 1967. Levy, Alan, "Voices of the Underground Cinema," in New York Times, 19 September 1965.
#JACK SMITH FLAMING CREATURES MOVIE#
"Avant-garde Movie Seized as Obscene," in New York Times, 4 March 1964. Leffingwell, Edward, Carole Kismaric, and Marvin Heiferman, editors, Jack Smith, Flaming Creature: His Amazing Life and Times, New York, 1997. Suarez, Juan Antonio, Bike Boys, Drag Queens, Superstars: Avant-Garde, Mass Culture, and Gay Identities in the 1960s Underground Cinema, Bloomington, 1996. Tyler, Parker, Underground Film: A Critical History, New York, 1969. Screenplay: Jack Smith photography: Jack Smith.Ĭast: Francis Francine, Delores Flores (a.k.a. Released 7 December, 1963, New York City. Production: Distributed by Film-Makers Cooperative black and white, 16mm running time: 45 minutes.