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While the movies have mainly been popcorn entertainment for the masses, art film undergrounds have thrived since the beginning. By the late 1960s, cinematic madmen had fewer censorship limits and more audience appreciation then ever before. Around the world these peculiar visions zapped conventional society confounding, outraging and questioning everything. Some were pretentious and obscure to the point of ridiculous, but that doesn't mean they can't have an effect on the viewer.
There is nothing either fundamentally good, nor anything fundamentally evil; everything is relative, relative to our point of view….
As far as extreme visions go, nothing compared to Pier Palo Pasolini's notorious SALÒ or THE 120 DAYS
Along with Alejandro Jodorowsky (EL TOPO) and Roland Topor (FANTASTIC PLANET), fellow member of the 'Panic
While not as internationally notorious as other European avant guarde directors, Italian Alberto Cavallone has produced some unforgettable celluloid mindfucks. His SPELL (DOLCE MATTATOIO; SWEET ABB
Czech Dusan Makavejev's films are cutup meditations on politics, sex, and science. He hit the arthouse jackpot with WR: MYSTERIES OF THE ORGANISM 1971 exploring the theories of sexologist William Reich and his concept of orgone energy - the vital, blue lifeforce of sex. His next film, SWEET MOVIE 1974 was even more outrageous and it featured the taboo-twisting performance artist Otto Muehl. Some scenes to jolt the audience featured shitting, pissing, puking and a sexy dance with some kids. Speaking of Herr Muehl, many of his legendary performances were documented by Kurt Kren using a breakneck editing style blurring images of nude bodies, paint, feathers, balloons, paint, fluids.
Italian director Marco Ferreri (RIP) was an inspired nut. He scored an international arthouse hit with LE GRANDE BOUFFE 1973. He followed it up with BYE, BYE, MONKEY 1978. A real headscratcher about a man who finds a baby mo There's no dialogue in THEMROC 1973 just grunts and nonsense words. It's the story of a French factory worker who's fed up with the daily grind. He lashes out by making his room a cave, has sex with his sister and eats policeman. Our hero is played by the famous Italian actor Michel Piccoli who was no stranger to going out on a limb with daring roles in dementia like this and the equally outrageous outing THE DOLL (GRANDEUR NATURE; TAMANO NATURAL) 1974. In it, he plays a Parisian dentist who falls in love with his lifelike buxom blonde sexdoll. They do it all; eat, sh Even popular foreign directors sometimes took the road to abstract oblivion. Roman Polanski's all but forgotten WHAT? (DIARY OF FORBIDDEN DREAMS) 1972 is an interesting "Alice in Wonderland"- like odyssey of a young American nymphet in an Italian villa where in she encounters various strange sex-crazed men, including Polanski himself as the harpoon-wielding "Mosquito". Watch Louis Malle's BLACK MOON 1975 and just try to figure out what he was saying. The film is something of a riddle with no linear narrative. We follow a teenage girl escaping some unexplained war between the sexes by hiding in an isolated farmhouse in the woods. There she encounters a talking unicorn, Joe Dallesandro, and pack of naked kids chasing a pig.
Truly an amazing artifact of the super s What maybe the most well known '70s art film came from an unknown American. David Lynch's ERASERHEAD 1977 came from nowhere and grew to be one of the biggest midnight movies of all-time. Lynch spent 5 years making it, "one frame at a time" as Jack Nance (RIP), the Eraserhead himself, once said. Earlier, Lynch made THE GRANDMOTHER 1970 an incredible tale of a little boy, who looks like an embalmed ventriloquist dummy, who finds comfort in his grandmother who was born from a tree he grew on his bed. One of the only films that almost perfectly captures the feel of a dream/nightmare, especially the terrifying domestic scenes with his parents. Experimental film veteran James Broughton had been working since the '40s, in 1972 he helmed the symbolic epic DREAMWOOD. A man in an old industrial site is visited by a mysterious siren who leads him to a boat and he sails off to a woodsy island. There he finds a bearded The pop art agit prop anti-imperialist epic MISTER FREEDOM 1969 by fashion photographer turned director William Klein is a unique blend of comic book style and symbolic politics. Klein has a gifted eye and hyper stylized set pieces bursting with color are a constant feast for the senses. A biting satire of global Americanization and consumerism that's more topical than ever. The premise for CALMOS 1976, Bertrand Blier's follow up to his hit GOING PLACES 1974, is to reverse genders with the old "Not tonite dear, I have a headache" theme. Two men fed up with their own lust, women's lust for sex, and sex in general decide to rebel and head off to the countryside inspiring hundreds of men to do the same. But breaking free from the tyranny of the vagina is harder then they thought as they're captured by a female militia. The two are imprisoned in hospital beds and are forced to have sex with countless women. Years later, as old mountain men they shrink and wind up falling into a coochie. They just can't escape the lure of the triangle. . |
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OF SODOM 1975. Transposing the writings of the Marquis de Sade to Mussolini's "Italian Social Republic", this was THE seventies arthouse shocker. In the middle of the Second World War, four decadent fascist libertines kidnapped dozens of teenage boys and girls for a perverse sex and torture operation in an isolated Italian villa. There they subject their captives to a cornucopia of degradation from mutilation to coprophilia. After it's world premiere in Puerto Rico of all places, Pasolini's final film faced much critical abuse and it was not uncommon for audiences to walk out in droves. Countries all over the world banned the film out right, not even considering an edited version. Other than playing it at a few film festivals, United Artists rarely screened this cinematic hot potato. Over the years, it would periodically pop up as a midnight movie catching unassuming audiences off guard. Pasolini was murdered by a male teen prostitute right before it was released and some have compared the scenes of sexual violence in SALÒ to his private life. Some have said this film exposed Pasolini as a closet fascist pervert. Bullshit. SALÒ is a passionate cry against the cold, controlling amoral universe of absolute power. Polite, aristocratic, grotesque power. An unflinching look at how the powerful treat others like pets. Playthings for their pleasure and targets for their abuse. 
Movement' Spanish playwright Fernando Arrabal implemented Antonin Artaud's 'Theatre of Cruelty' theories and techniques to his stage productions in the avant garde '60s theatre scene. His first film VIVA LA MUERTE 1970 is a raw arthouse masterpiece that hasn't lost any of it's power over the years. Set in Spain during the Spanish Civil War, Fando is a young boy who has confused oedipal longings for his mother while having continual violent fantasies about his father who was recently imprisoned for being a communist rebel. The haunting Dutch children's song heard throughout the film actually became a hit single in France! After EL TOPO's cult success, VIVA played midnights at Manhattan's St. Marks Theater for ten weeks straight. 
ATOIR; MAN, WOMAN AND BEAST) 1977 is an obsession on themes of birth, death, Catholicism, communism, sex, repression and perversion. 
nkey in the arms of the giant King Kong dummy from the 1976 Dino De Laurentis fiasco. 
ower, dance and screw. Haunted by her silence and blank stare, he does anything to try and make her happy. Piccoli even dons fur n' stockings in a drag routine for her, videotaping all of these shenanigans so they can cuddle and reminisce. Things turn sour though when he discovers a repairman has molested his Barbie doll lover. His jealousy grows and obsession turns darker, moving the story beyond it's Playboy joke premise creating some real pathos. In fact, after awhile you almost forget he's hung up on a cold, synthetic piece of material. And, particularly with Piccoli's all-out tour de force performance, it becomes one of the more twisted love stories you'll see. Definitely not a good date movie, unless your mate is of the inflatable variety. 
tylish underground cinema scene in late '60s Japan, FUNERAL PROCESSION OF ROSES 1969 revisits the Oedipus story and sets it in the gay bars of modern day Tokyo. Jealousy develops between the bar's over-the-hill madam and its most popular hostess. Not in the least bit dated and still ahead of it's time, it's more ALIVE than most films you'll see. Wild editing, disorienting compositions, druggy interludes, and a bloody, haunting conclusion make it essential viewing.
re it's over he kills 'em, vomits, eats his own shit and hangs himself. The End. No dialogue, one person, one location. If you're in the right mood, alone and stoned at 4:30 in the morning, this can be an unforgettable experience. 
old man in a dress, nude children attack him, and a dominatrix in leather whips him. He ends his journey in Dreamwood by pissing and shitting on the ground, then he makes a hole and fucks the earth. All of this is to the tune of electronic composer Morton Subotnik's otherworldly score. Great stuff..gif)
