Flaming Creatures

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.

I consider myself a fairly open-minded person. In principle I have nothing against a movie featuring a pack of transvestites frolicking around and--this is what it looks like--acting out parodies of bad silent movies. It's just not all that interesting to me. I can only take camp in small doses, and there's just way too much here. By the way, did the Everly Brothers even know one of their songs was used in this thing? (P.S. If you ever see Warhol's "Screen Test #2," you'll hear Mario Montez talk briefly about his (her?) role in this movie.)

US 43m, B&W Director: Jack Smith; Cast: Francis Francine, Sheila Bick, Joel Markman, Mario Montez, Arnold Rockwood, Judith Malina, Marian Zazeela

Flaming Creatures is an often comedic sexually explicit experimental film which begins with an "advertisement" for lipstick which features close-ups of men and women applying lipstick adjacent male genitalia. Deemed "obscene" upon its release, Flaming Creatures is a surreal jumble of moving sexual images, often shot in close-up which serves to further confound the already sexually ambiguous participants, including a vampire in drag who rises from the coffin to the unlikely country vocal styling of Kitty Kallen and 'It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels". Irreverent and shocking, Flaming Creatures might be described as pop pornography, and along with the likes of Scorpio Rising (1964), inspired the films of Andy Warhol and John Waters (Klaus Ming July 2013).

Somewhere in between the poetic and manic lies "Flaming Creatures", Jack Smith's infamously odd avant garde classic. I find this to be a movie that is very difficult to rate because it really isn't a typical movie. Even for experimental underground cinema, it comes across as really weird and unsettling.

The first half is easily the highlight. The notorious "rape" sequence is one of the most f*cking crazy and disturbing scenes I have ever witnessed. The chaotic atmosphere is only boosted by Smith's drunkenly soaring camera, capturing the ear piercing shrieking of the film's "creatures".

The second half is less compelling, but still interesting. It is the much more positive and comical half, as the "creatures" joyously dance with one another behind old pop music. It is entertaining and amusing to an extent, despite dragging on a bit.

Most people probably will not enjoy this little oddity nearly as much as I have, which is totally okay. This movie is so damn bizarre, graphic, unsettling, confusing, and chaotic that it is almost surprising that ANYONE could appreciate it that is not mentally ill. However, I did manage to find much within Jack Smith's mad masterpiece to adore.