Back to the Body

This defiantly crude concoction in poor taste, upon being viewed by David Secter's nephew Joel, is the activator for a documentary made by Joel, taking as his subject his uncle's uneven career as a filmmaker during which David recorded in his features what he supposedly lived and lived what he recorded, GETTING TOGETHER his third opus, the first a mildly successful debut entitled WINTER MADE US WARM. The quaint occurrences in this movie are purportedly gleaned from the gauche activity of an experimental cinema and free love collective organized by David and housed in a large loft in New York City's Lower East Side during the late 1960s, the setting where most of this piece (named FEELIN' UP for its U.S. video distribution) was filmed, the loft becoming not only a living space but also a studio site for the cast and crew, with the first half of the affair being only marginally better than the chaotic second, the total generally falling into the category of humour, although comedy pointing is poorly implemented. The narrative opens with David, a would-be motion picture director, cooking up a plan to quit his job and sell most of his possessions, such as a Porsche, in order to do what he craves most: "make movies"; however, the impracticality of this estranges his live-in girl friend, Sheila, and David therefore replaces her in his affections with two men and a woman as a bisexual commune-like arrangement that suffers here from a lack of direction for the performers. After a female psychotherapist joins the cozy group, along with a returning Sheila, they all lightly decide to marry each other as a sodality and raise multicultural children in symbiotic fashion, a coda taking the action ten years into 1985 when the original sextet, now augmented by numerous children, and sundry hippie type adults who apparently are desirous of escaping reality through the employment of chemicals and sexual activity, spend their time frolicking about in an infantile manner that will most certainly fail to entertain viewers of even the most minute mental capacity. To compound the film's weaknesses, it was cropped and released by exploitative Troma Entertainment that provides it with a VHS box cover and descriptive notes that are not remotely related to the production; but in any event, even with Secter's obvious knowledge of the kinetic capabilities of a camera and the editing process, and a too seldom utilized touch of self-spoofery, he and his nonsense saturated friends have brought about a quite dreadful picture, best to be avoided.

As I type this, some guy is selling a copy of "Feelin' Up" on eBay for $30 with four watchers. If you happen to be one of the suckers who are actually thinking of wasting their money on this piece of garbage, I can only suggest you watch it first and, if you have seen it and still want it, I would suggest you get your head examined, as this movie is simply awful in every regard. Don't get me wrong--I love bad movies, but this flick is such a pretentious piece of crap it easily makes its way onto my short list of worst movies I have ever seen.

I was just a kid when this came out, so it might be possible that there was some demographic at the time that this may have been geared to that I'm not aware of but, if that is the case, I can only award it some sort of justification for existence by having a target audience. Aside from that, what we have here is some of the must putrid, post-hippy, communal living, fake, goody-goody BS ever committed to film, with a hefty, kissy-poo NYC art school stink wafting through it, despite the Canadian director. I know back in the 70's there was a lot of experimentation with group marriage and communal living, almost all of which proved to be a massive failure, so I guess it's appropriate that this flick is a massive failure, as well. I first saw it about twelve years ago and was simply in awe of how bad it was and, after the initial viewing, spent about 45 minutes skipping through it again, like I needed some sort of affirmation that a stink-fest as bad as this movie does, in fact, exist. It took me twelve years to get up the nerve to watch it again and nothing has changed. I'm not going to get into it any more than I have here but, for the sake of comparison let me say that, if you liked "Deadly Drifter", you'll like this piece of crap--it's the only movie I can think of that comes close to being as bad, but "Feelin' Up" is much worse.

I admit the marketing for the video cracks me up, though. These guys knew the thing was garbage so they made it look like a teen sex comedy with two kids who aren't even in the movie on the cover. It's so cynical and lame, it makes me laugh and, yeah, it's the only thing funny about this garbage movie. Watch it for free if you are into self-abuse but keep your money in your pocket.