News

Adolfas Mekas made his mark in American independent filmmaking with this avant-garde comedy that shook up film festivals circa 1963. Although it is said to have inspired Andy Warhol, it’s its own animal entirely, eighty minutes of cinematic frivolity that’s too sincere to be a parody of the filmic conventions it so happily celebrates.

Hallelujah the Hills

Blu-ray

Kino Classics

1963 / B&W / 1:37 Academy / 82 min. / Street Date October 30, 2018 / available through Kino Lorber / 24.95

Starring: Peter Beard, Sheila Finn, Martin Greenbaum, Peggy Steffans, Jerome Raphael, Blanche Dee, Jerome Hill, Taylor Mead, Ed Emshwiller.

Cinematography: Ed Emshwiller

Film Editor: Louis Brigante, Adolfas Mekas

Costumes: Bathsheba

Original Music: Meyer Kupferman

Produced by David C. Stone

Written and Directed by Adolfas Mekas

Trying to describe Adolfas Mekas’ Hallelujah the Hills is a real chore. It is avant-garde in a way that no longer seems all that ‘avant,’ yet its impact in 1963 was very strongly felt in independent filmmaking everywhere.

What is this? Sex-oriented movies with believable psychodramatics, made by a committed artist with taste and talent? Joe Sarno’s pictures still aren’t suitable for grandma, but he’s way, way above the exploitation grindhouse competition of his day. His ’60s B&W pictures are not only watchable, they’re involving. Restored to pre-print condition, they’re — how can I best put this? — artistically respectable.

All the Sins of Sodom + Vibrations

Blu-ray

Film Movement

1968 / B&W / 1:66 widescreen / 161 min. (combined) / Street Date September 26, 2017 / 39.95

Starring: Maria Lease, Dan Machuen, Marianne Prevost, Peggy Steffans, Cherie Winters; Maria Lease, Marianne Prevost, Rita Bennett, Dan Machuen, Peggy Steffans, Geri Miller.

Cinematography: Steve Silverman, Bruce G. Sparks; Steve Silverman

Film Editor: Joe Sarno; Kenn Collins (?)

Original Music: none; Sandy Vane (Michael Colicchio)

Produced by Morris Kaplan; Morris Kaplan, Ken Collins

Written and Directed by Joe Sarno

I know you’re anxious for this review...

In the Spring of 1964, Los Angeles theater manager Michael A. Getz was arrested and placed on trial for screening Kenneth Anger‘s Scorpio Rising. Below are several articles the Underground Film Journal has found that follow the progression of the case.

From the Los Angeles Times, March 3, 1964:

Festival Entry Scheduled for Cinema’s Screen

“Hallelujah the Hills,” American entry at the first New York Film Festival last September, will begin an engagement at the Cinema Theater on Wednesday.

The comedy also represented the U.S. at Cannes, Montreal, Locarno, Mannheim, and London.

This comedy which stars Peter H. Beard, Sheila Finn, Marty Greenbaum and Peggy Steffans was shot in Vermont.

“Scorpio Rising,” a short subject will accompany the feature.

From the Los Angeles Times, March 21, 1964:

Anger’s ‘Fireworks’ Screening at Cinema

The Cinema Theater has added “Fireworks” by Kenneth Anger to its current bill featuring “Hallelujah the Hills.

Joe Sarno may be, in the words of performance artist Annie Sprinkle, "the Ingmar Bergman of porn," but A Life in Dirty Movies doesn't dwell on his accomplishments as a pioneering sexploitation moviemaker. Instead, director Wiktor Ericsson makes Sarno's career (Confessions of a Young American Housewife, The Wall of Flesh, All the Sins of Sodom) of secondary importance to his relationship with wife Peggy Steffans. Ericsson's focus on Sarno's marriage is striking since Sarno himself, then 89 and a month away from death, focused much of his energy on a never-realized return to the softcore pornography he mastered in the 1970s. Sarno's work is generally unexamined here but presented in an uncritically positive light. For example, Sarno objects to hardcore porn...