Color, 1973, 90 mins. / Directed by Fernando Arrabal / Starring George Shannon, Hachemi Marzouk / Cult Epics (US R0 NTSC) / WS (1.85:1) (16:9)
Haunted by violent, eroticized memories of his domineering mother, businessman Aden (Sugar Cookies' George Shannon) retreats in his jeep to the desert where he encounters Marvel (Hachemi Marzouk), a diminutive, shaman-like being who possesses the ability to fly through the air and change day to night. Smitten with his savior, Aden convinces Marvel to return to the industrialized city, where Marvel experiences a number of bizarre encounters including being rolled around naked in a giant plastic ball. Disillusioned by their environment, the two men return to the desert for a gruesome, transcendent finale, but not before Aden reveals the entire story behind his inner torment.
Color, 1970, 87 mins. / Directed by Fernando Arrabal / Starring Mahdi Chaouch, Nuria Espert / Cult Epics (US R0 NTSC) / WS (1.85:1) (16:9)
During the Spanish Civil War, young Fando (Mahdi Chaouch) lives with his protective mother (Nuria Espert) and, due to his arrested father, endures the taunts of his schoolmates. Though he loves his mother, Fando begins to indulge in bizarre, sadistic fantasies when he suspects that his father did not kill himself in prison as she claims. In fact, as a discovered letter proves, she herself may have been responsible for his sorry fate. Fando begins to experience perilous health problems as the line between fantasy and reality begins to blur, and his reveries become increasingly violent and depraved.
Cult Epics' beautifully mounted DVD offers a welcome opportunity to finally see this often discussed but rarely seen
Three years after the incendiary cinematic bomb of Viva la Muerte, surrealist Fernando Arrabal returned with this more thoughtful, character driven study of nature versus society, though as usual his visuals are no less outrageous. More sexually explicit but less violent than its predecessor, I Will Walk like a Crazy Horse (J'irai comme un cheval fou) has remained rarely seen since its European debut,
making it a jaw-dropping surprise for those brave enough to brave its waters.
Typical of avant garde films from the period, Crazy Horse studs its mostly linear storyline with a series of peculiar, interstitial-style reveries which comprise some of its most memorable moments: a cross-dressing Aden in a coffin giving birth to a skull, a couple in gas masks making love, and so on. Visually slick and making admirable use of the striking desert locales, Arrabal's film is polished enough to pass for mainstream product even when it's strictly at odds with the content, which is still extreme enough to pack a punch.
Cult Epic's DVD sports a spotless anamorphic transfer, with sharp detail and beautifully saturated colors. The French dialogue (with the American Shannon looped by an other actor) sounds fine, while the optional English subtitles are always legible and well written. The disc includes extensive liner notes by critic Rayo Casablanca, a trailer for Viva la Muerte (while that disc contains the trailer for this film), a lobby card gallery, and of course, a video interview with Arrabal, which is even more endearingly irrelevant than its companion piece on the Viva DVD. His anecdotes about the two actors are priceless and more than a little puzzling, while he once again resorts to posing with his chair, apparently to prove a point.
Along with the notorious Alejandro Jodorowsky (El Topo) and animator Roland Topor (Fantastic Planet), the short-lived but scandalous "Panic Movement" in Mexico and Europe was begun by Fernando Arrabal, an artistic renaissance man who began his film career with Viva la Muerte, based on his autobiographical novel, Baal Babylone. The result is one of the strongest films in the 1970s surrealist movement, fit to be shown in art house theaters but packed with some of the more extreme imagery outside of an Italian cannibal film.
A technically fascinating film, Viva la Muerte (Long Live Death!) begins with a credit sequence designed over Boschian pen and ink drawings of sexual torture, then proceeds with a mixture of beautifully shot 35mm ("real life") and videotaped footage processed to film and chromatically manipulated (the fantasies), with a little scratchy, real-life surgery footage thrown in at the end for good measure. Arrabal's film would probably make a good double bill with either Spirit of the Beehive or The Reflecting Skin, though the harsh nature of its content will probably limit its appeal to viewers with iron stomachs. Though the human brutality is fairly stylized (human line-ups are gunned down mostly out of frame, eyes are gouged out via jump cuts), the occasional animal brutality is definitely real and provides some of the most upsetting moments: Fando casually slicing up a beetle at his school desk, a lizard's head bitten off at the moment of a woman's sexual climax, and most memorably, a cow's protracted slaughter transformed into a bizarre, surrealist tableau with a man stitched inside the carcass.
oddity, which still packs a punch decades after the fall of Franco. The anamorphically enhanced video quality looks terrific, apart from the deliberately dupey-looking video sequences; the bulk of the film boasts razor sharp detail and perfectly balanced colors. The soundtrack was originally recorded in French (with some dialogue still looped later judging from the erratic audio quality), so that first audio option is preferable (with optional English subtitles); however, the dubbed Spanish track is also included for reference. The disc also includes a bizarre, 17-minute interview with Arrabal (in French with optional English subtitles), in which he punctuates his comments by holding up a chair in artistic poses, then later removing his shoe, sniffing it, and observing, "My feet smell good." The offscreen interviewer does not seem to concur, however. In between he offers a thumbnail history of the Panic Movement, argues that his film is not violent or extreme, and explains his own artistic agenda in sometimes rambling detail. It's quite a supplement, to say the least. The disc also contains a French lobby card gallery, a jaw-dropping trailer for Arrabal's second film, I Will Walk Like a Crazy Horse (forthcoming on DVD), and an informative insert essay by Shock Cinema's Rayo Casblanca. Simply put, if you love Jodorowsky or Spanish surrealism, this disc is a must see.
