Flaming Creatures

I've just seen the movie and his first (only ?) quality is to make me writing my first commentary here. Like a previous writer here, I have nothing against avant-garde especially transgressional one but I think we are in this picture far away from an interesting point of view on the subject of eroticism or whatever the purpose is. On such works as Bataille's books or Bunuel's movies, the transgression was upon the things we're hiding when our representation is giving us something to look at (and eroticism is only one of the way to reveled the invisible and constitutive side of art) ; and I think jack smith made a huge mistake with this "cliché" orgiac scenes where everything is explicitly directed to "shock the bourgeois". The line about the lipstick on the male attribute is just the first wave of the so-called sexual "liberation" which is only a new way to stay under the alienation of what is obvious. This film has probably an historical interest but it's the better way to have no artistic one. ps : sorry for my English which is not fluent.

Jack Smith's 1963 short Flaming Creatures might be one of the most sexual perverse film ever made. It has ever amount of sexual deviance that made up the New York underground in the 1960's- transexuals, S&M, lines such as "do they make a lipstick that doesn't come off when you s*** c****?", drug use, and a radically innovative orgy scene that plays more like a Greek tragedy than a work of pornography. On the surface, Flaming Creatures appears to be art at its lowest, but a closer examination of the film proves that Flaming Creatures is not only high art, but a siminal piece of film in the cannon of The New American Cinema. Filmed on top of Smith's New York studio on a basic 16mm camera, Flaming Creatures embodies the true independent spirit of The New American Cinema. The orgy scene in the film is perhaps the greatest combination of art and film. The "creatures", as Smith puts them, engage in a rape-orgy scene of sailors and a transexual. The orgy plays like a tragic meeting the old America with the freshly birthed new morality in America. What is even more remarkable is the "earthquake", caused Smith's shaking camera at the end of the orgy. It as if the world is opening up on Smith's creatures and swallowing them and all their perversions. No one can deny that Flaming Creatures is a difficult film to watch- both in its content and deep artistic meanings, but the spirit of the film is the reason it should be preserved for generations to come.

Funny story about how this movie was loved by police forces in the 60s is much better than movie. Enormous tons of drag, bizarre scenes of sex, lots of dancing... In 42 minutes it's easy to feel a bore just to watch this stuff. Of course a long time ago this would be very shocking for public who grew up on Leave It To Beaver or The Honeymooners. But today...

Today homosexual people can marry each other, drag can't surpirse anyone and avant-garde filmmakers make better pictures. Seeing this today is like see a very old home movie made by crazy psychopats who never knew better things to do with 300$.

So, is this movie can make you change your opinion about sex or sexuality? You can be that stupid asking questions like this. It never tries and you should never try to watch this.

His own performance style--half dashing, half mongoloid--is better preserved in the Jack Smith routine that caps off Andy Warhol's CAMP: the great man, looking dapper as a Lower East Side Clark Gable, does a ten-minute performance piece about, literally, coming out of a closet. And the late, great Ron Vawter's extraordinary "Roy Cohn/Jack Smith" preserves the molasses, the stupor, and the head-thumping epiphanies that made up a live Jack Smith performance.

CREATURES, one of the most notorious of all American "avant-garde films," seems at first to be a queer-theory seminar avant la lettre. Then Smith's processional of silent-movie-looking waifs and queenies repeats and repeats. I find George Kuchar and even Kenneth Anger more interesting on similar territory; but Smith is a man-god, and CREATURES should be seen...once.

Though every film on this list is supposed to have some kind of importance in the history of movie making, I have struggled to find merit in a number of the pictures I have watched. Some films, like Dog Star Man, were made from interesting ideas. While others, like Jack Smith's Flaming Creatures, do not seem to have any redeeming qualities at all. Flaming Creatures is a film like none that I have ever seen. It is perverted, trashy and important only because it helped define cinematic vulgarity.

Flaming Creatures was directed and written by the provocative filmmaker, Jack Smith. Here is a man that had no interest in entertaining the masses. I am not sure that his films could even entertain himself. He was a major proponent in simple aesthetics. He was the godfather of the underground film world, and he is credited with creating the drag-queen culture as we now know it. Smith was also a major influence on the films of Andy Warhol and the movies of John Waters. All of his films, with Flaming Creatures being the most incendiary, were shot under incredibly small budgets. But Smith was never worried about how much money it cost to make a movie.

According to underground legend, Smith filmed Flaming Creatures on stock film that he had actually shoplifted. It has also been said that he paid his actors in either gay sex or drugs. True or not, this still remains one of the most bizarre films I have ever seen. It is a parade of camp-queens, transvestites, hermaphrodites and prostitutes mixed in with the occasional flaccid penis or saggy breast. There is no noticeable story being told, but Smith had said that his work was showing you "a comedy set in a haunted music studio." I must have missed this, because all I saw was the showing of some very questionable acts amongst one of the cheapest looking sets I have ever seen.

If I have to give this film any credit, I will say that the images were exhaustively challenging for my poor Midwestern eyes. I was made uncomfortable almost immediately, and I would go as far as to say I was disgusted at times. Flaming Creatures is one of the most emotionally disturbing works in film that I have seen. But it does not frighten you. It uses music and absurd imagery to make you uncomfortable. You would have to be a pretty weird person to not be challenged by Jack Smith.

In one of the only secular moments of Flaming Creatures, we see an actress getting raped by way of cunnilingus. We are treated to the intense visual of a woman being held down and violated by more than one male figure. Of course, these men are naked and performing all sorts of "hand acts" on each others limp penises. This type of perverted sexuality becomes normality throughout the 45 minute running time. It is not an easy film to sit through.

Obviously, any film that features this type of rough imagery comes with loads of controversy. In fact, Flaming Creatures was seized by New York police directly following its debut screening. Along with Jack Smith, the film became a target of the infamous idiot, Strom Thurmond, during his crusade to end all pornography. Do not get confused – this is not a pornographic film. It is a classic work in performance art. And though we would all love to pretend that this genre does not exist…we still know that it does. And in terms of successful endeavors in the genre – Flaming Creatures isn't really all THAT bad. I will never watch it again, but some esteemed opinions, like Frederico Fellini, hail this picture as a masterpiece in trash cinema.

Yes, Jack Smith may be an under credited influence on the Waters' and Warhol's of the world, but this does not make his films entertaining in any conventional sort of the word. This is the type of film that a pedophile would enjoy. And though I defend Smith's right to make trash, I also understand why the backlash forced him to withdraw from making films. Smith would go on to become a major pioneer in surrealist theatre. He worked in this field until his death of AIDS related complications in 1989. He was 56 years old.