Format: Streaming video from Ubu.com on laptop.
Oh…shit. Another one of these films. Just when I thought it was safe to go into uncharted territories again, I opted for Jack Smith’s Flaming Creatures, a short experimental art film that, like many films in the genre, doesn’t make much sense. This is an interesting one, though, because Flaming Creatures was banned upon release in New York for being obscene. It’s not hard to see why this was declared obscene for its time—in the opening 10 minutes of people putting on lipstick, there are multiple mentions of oral sex and shots of flaccid penii, frequently in the immediate proximity of the lipstick-adorned mouths of men. There are also a lot of disturbing kissy noises, more flopping penii…really, the things I do for this blog.
This is a plotless film running something under an hour but feels like a lot more. For long stretches of the film nothing really happens. Then there are moments of bizarre imagery (flopping penii overlaying naked breast), a horde of transvestitism and (I think) hermaphrodism and something that looks and sounds quite a bit like a rape, close-ups of bouncing nipples. I’m baffled, and that’s just the first 15 minutes.
