Sins of the Fleshapoids (1965; Mike Kuchar)

Mike Kuchar’s underground classic, Sins of the Fleshapoids was released to DVD by Craig Baldwin’s great Other Cinema label, with the bonus of two shorts that are of equal importance, all with very entertaining full-length commentary by their creator; all gleefully absurd morality plays, with dark overtones, cautioning one’s pursuits of pleasure. 

 

Twin brothers George and Mike Kuchar (b. 1942) began making films in their native Bronx on Super 8 while still in their teens, with such alluring titles as Pussy on a Hot Tin Roof or Night of the Bomb. Before graduating to 16mm, they had already found their niches in bargain-basement trashy valentines to campy B-movie melodramas of yore, replete with over-acting, garish sets and props, and screaming colour palettes, all as otherworldly and artificial as the films they adored.  And if you could see the seams coming through the production, like a 1965 soap dish in a supposedly futuristic bathtub, well, such things only called attention to the artifice of cinema- a theme that consistently fascinated the brothers, even as they continued to make many films separately. Sadly (also unsurprisingly) their prolific catalog is under-represented on video. A handful of George’s films are collected for the VHS compilation,  Color Me Lurid, and as of this writing, just three of Mike's films are the only ones to appear on DVD. George passed away in 2011, but after the brothers gained some more well-deserved popularity in 2010’s excellent documentary It Came from Kuchar.

Sins of the Fleshapoids (1965), made while Mike Kuchar was earning a living at retouching pictures for “Harper’s Bazaar”, is a science-fiction satire set “a million years in the future”, but despite some silver paint here and there, this melodrama could easily have been sent in Ancient Egypt (which its loud décor faintly resembles).  In fact, this flick would make a terrific double bill with the no-budget cult sci-fi film Creation of the Humanoids.   Both movies tell tales of class revolt in the future, and yet take place in stifling interiors, all done with a home-movie aesthetic.  In Sins, the idyllic humans sit around all day eating fruit and fornicating, while the everyday chores are carried out by the Fleshapoid series of robots (basically, human actors walking around as rigidly as Woody Allen in Sleeper’s “orb” sequence.).  Yet the human beings are so hedonistic to the point that they are dispassionate, and it is the robots that are revealed to have “true feelings”, especially when they decide to revolt against their masters.

Hard-working Kuchar regular Bob Cowan (who also narrates) plays the central Fleshapoid who begins to exhibit signs of rebellion when he/it refuses to turn around to face the queen (played by Maren Thomas).  “Obey me, or I’ll get you wet and make you rust!” she threatens.  (This monumental scene is actually Mike’s bedroom, decked out with orange paintings.) Donna Kerness (starlet of George’s classic, Hold Me While I'm Naked) is the vixenish Vivienna who makes out with some stud (played by Julius Middleman, hired for the “beefcake quotient” of the film, which makes sense as this plays like some futuristic thrift store sword and sandal epic).  (Squint at the window in this scene, and you will see the brick walls of the apartment building next door.)  Then in the throes of passion, she realizes she must get home to her husband the king Gianbeno, played by brother George Kuchar, who meanwhile is barking orders about dinner.  Gianbeno soon gets wise to her dalliances, over the case of a missing necklace. During all of this squabbling, the robot slaves discover love on their own.  Sparks literally fly when their metallic fingers touch.  “Man has created this new race of creatures, now it must pay the price of vengeance it has sentenced upon him,” reads Cowan on the soundtrack, as though the narration is the New Old Testament.  The robots, one positive, one negative, (brilliant) “fry” the king with their conductivity.  

Sins Of The Fleshapoids

And while the human world is crumbling over jealousy, materialism and deceit, the robots have a miraculous event… a baby Fleshapoid is borne into the world!  The film climaxes with the mommy robot endlessly writhing on the floor, and then a toy robot all covered in goo walks out from between her legs!  “Where the humans failed to find love, the machines succeed.” This film is very funny, especially in its ending, and understandably was a midnight cult hit in its day. Even so, while clocking in at a mere forty minutes, many scenes play too long after their points are made. For example, the overlong dance sequence with the queen, performed while fruit drops on her, comments on the excess of these dispossessed souls, yet continues well after driving that home.  But the true purpose of the scene is because underground starlet Maren Thomas’ husband insisted that she must have a dance sequence in every one of her pictures.  

Kuchar customarily made the movie up as he went along (he maintains that if he knew what the movie was all about beforehand, he wouldn’t make it- it is the mystery that matters).  Sins is most enjoyable for its childlike tone, with bizarre, anachronistic or artificial props that destroy whatever reality this mad soap opera may have had.  The buffoonish nature is complimented by credits made from crayon, and dialogue told with comic strip balloons matted onto the images (and if the balloons don’t always match up to the speaker, well that just adds to the scruffy nature).

The Secret Of Wendel Samson

Arguably, the DVD's two bonus films are better than the star attraction. The Secret of Wendel Samson (1966) is a 33-minute wonder featuring avant-garde visual artist Red Grooms (best known for his pieces which comment on pop culture) as Wendel, who is first seen bound in a spider web made from rope.  He is “tangled up psychologically”, confused about his sexual identity, keeping his homosexual encounters from his girlfriend Margaret (played by Mimi Gross, daughter of artist Heim Gross).  

Kuchar typically began this film with only a germ of an idea (the spider web), after he met Grooms at a party and decided to make a movie with him, and customarily built the film as shooting went along.  What results is a fascinating psychological mood piece, which is for the most part a straight melodrama, with only slight comic relief (as we chuckle at the Brechtian feel of it all, with rubbery post-sync sound dubbed by Kuchar months later), campy voiceovers (Donna Kerness as the voice of Margaret) and thunderous canned music overemphasizing the drama.  It is also a marvel of storytelling with its fragmented narrative, weaved much like a web itself, as the story is several splintered moments of time, being told at once, as though they were fleeting impulses from Wendel’s mind.  

Wendel is walking with Margaret when he spies two mysterious guys looking at him from across the street.  After he has a fling with a man named Terry (an actor that Mike Kuchar befriended on the daily commute), and a bravura performance in front of the mirror rehearsing ways to break up with him, he leaves the man’s apartment (in real life, Heim Gross’ apartment, splendidly decorated with artifacts and paintings), while Margaret and the two mysterious guys secretly spy on him.   

One fateful night, Wendel fibs about having to stay home to fix the kitchen shutters, and goes to have a homosexual tryst instead.  Margaret pays him a surprise visit, and (gasp) the shutters aren’t done!! Wendel’s voiceover, “Something tells me she’s here for more than just a chitchat”, proves correct, as she spends an inordinate amount of time snooping around while he tries to paint.  (In this interesting moment, Kuchar had just asked Grooms to start painting anything- and he makes an off-the-cuff picture of a bird, which is actually fitting, representing Wendel’s yearning to fly away, break free of this indecision.)  

Alas at this point, Wendel can only woo Margaret in his dreams, as evidenced by the fantasy sequence, where he snuggles up to her while they drink wine in a restaurant.  (In real life, Mimi actually had the hots for Red, but he wasn’t interested in her.)  Yet, it is also in dreams where Wendel confronts the truth about his identity.  

The film pulls out all the stops (“…like a badly dubbed Hercules movie…”) for a completely outrageous sequence, (admittedly influenced by Orson Welles’ The Trial), as Wendel experiences a nightmare while Margaret’s demands for copulation ring on.  As Bob Cowan’s trippy electronic music enhances all the weirdness, the two mysterious men seen earlier (one played by brother George) put a Luger pistol to his head, and he is taken to a room filled with a bunch of creepy people.  Wendel is accosted by a middle-aged blond woman toting a Super Patrol laser gun, who strips down to a swimsuit, dances provocatively and demands “Make love to me”.  (This woman is played by starlet Floraine Connors, later the star of The Craven Sluck, who today still acts in Mike Kuchar’s movies. By the director’s own confession, she is “still a glamour puss at 80”, even though she can only work for an hour or so before getting tired).

This fantasy woman shoots a laser beam at Wendel’s leg, and these sleazy voyeurs throw him onto the bed.  This sequence's ironic comment on machismo is brilliantly underscored by the introduction of the “Superman” TV series on the soundtrack.  Our hero naturally fails at “manhood”, and is pinned against the wall while people shoot toy cowboy guns and plastic machine guns with sparklers.  In hilarious pixilation, bullet holes appear on the wall.  This sequence is made even weirder by Kuchar’s wobbly post-dubbing.  Then we end where the film begins, where the shots of Wendel tied up, walking the lonely streets, and a decisive moment on a field, all logically converge in its own neatly designed web.

The Craven Sluck

Somehow Wendel veers from a fascinating psychological study to an absolutely ridiculous climax.  Like all three of the films reviewed here, this picture is a study about the outrageous ways in which people pay the price for their sins.  Even so, this movie feels like an Ingmar Bergman film compared to the astounding The Craven Sluck (1967), a completely wild and wonderful look at infidelity.

This film was unseen for many years, because Mike Kuchar had disliked it so much.  However, he reluctantly agreed to have it shown after a German programmer requested it for a retrospective, and was surprised to find that the movie had not at all been as bad as he had remembered, and it became the hit of the program.  This re-discovery is certainly our gain, as it may be the best work on the disc.

“Sluck” is a malapropism that Mike heard on a TV show, as no one could say “slut” on the small screen back then, and still carries enough innuendo to make its point, but it is also a playfully juvenile word that perfectly captures this movie’s very nature.  The Craven Sluck opens with some black-and-white stills of Floraine Connor in garish makeup, appropriated from the starlet’s own attempt at a modelling career (which got her as far as a lurid detective magazine cover).  In this tale, Connor plays Adele, an unhappy housewife whose ineffectual husband Brunswick (played by the indefatigable Bob Cowan, who also narrates) “makes me ashamed of my torso, and ignores my womanly charms”.  While he’s at work, she decides to end it all by drowning herself in the bathtub.  Brunswick returns home just in time, pulls the stopper out of the tub and yells: “You could have at least fed the dog before you took your bath.”

“If only someone, something could liberate me from my life” she muses, and her prayers are answered in the dubious guise of some creep named Morty (played by George Kuchar, decked out in a Mod wig).  As the Bacharach-sounding music chimes on the soundtrack, Adele thinks this fellow is Heaven on Earth.  The viewer discovers otherwise, as this cad is married to a shrew named Florence (played by Bob Cowan in drag): he even gives her toilet water to drink!  Not only that, Morty also has a fling with Donna Kerness!  Anyway, Morty calls up Adele while hubby is at work.  Florence hears him on the phone, and then she grabs the receiver and yells at Adele.  She is so distraught that she has been used, and then, as is typical of Kuchar, the tinny melodrama just gets weirder.

The Craven Sluck ends with one of the most hilarious sequences in recent memory.  In a climax that would make Ed Wood salivate, Adele is pursued by UFOs!!!  Considering this movie is as bargain basement as they come, the effects actually aren’t bad, but are just silly enough to compliment the absurdity of this cracked melodrama.  The UFO fires its laser beam, and the Biblical narrator completes the film with “See how the pieces of life fall into their true meaningful places”.  Then the film ends with more publicity photos of Floraine.  One picture with “The End” scrawled on it falls from the wall on which it hangs, and an offscreen hand appears to put it back up.  It is a perfectly sarcastic way to end the movie, symbolic of Adele’s downfall and that no one really cares, yet the added touch of the offscreen hand calls attention to the “cut and paste” nature that went into the making of these films.  

Mike Kuchar’s films are playful, pitch black comedies that upturn the conventions of those old Saturday afternoon costume melodramas.   Yet for all of the pessimism and ugly human behaviour on screen, where love and happiness give way to perversion and deceit, these otherworldly moral tales remain playful and enjoyable, thanks to their game, Fisher Price invention.  These outrageous soap operas become even more artificial with thrift-store props, cartoonish acting, and tinny production values.

After all, it’s only a movie.

Availability: as of this writing, Other Cinema has brought this set back in print on DVD.