Flaming Creatures

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).

Film is serious business, but useful in so, so many ways.

One way is as a path to discover who people are, which is why, I think, movies are such popular date activities. I mean, on the face of it, you are two isolated souls in the theater. The bonding comes in how you share the experience.

You can tell a great deal about your future lover by discovering what sort of comedy he/she penetrates.

The next step will be the arts and perversion. Not what he or she considers perverted — that's uninteresting, where the line is. But once you cross over, you move into territory that has artists here and there forming things that may have merit.

So if you are serious about your partner, and serious about a life in film, you'll drudge through many of these "experimental" films. Some will stick and some not.

Some, like this, rely on the casual and accidental while referencing "old" art. Perversion in several dimensions, adding to enchantment, or so it is intended.

Whether this is one you will use is a matter too personal for me to fathom. But for my taste, it tries too hard in the wrong directions. Perhaps in the 60s it was useful to just fart loudly and musically for the effect. But those days are past. If you want one to look at after this, try one of Derek Jarman's little films from the 70s.

Oh shucks. I was going to recommend one but I see that some unappreciative reader has arranged to have all my comments of those removed. You can see them as extras on the DVD of "The Tempest," which is suggested viewing in any case.

Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.

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.

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.

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.