If there is one word that is often synonymous with the work of Radley Metzger, it is, without a doubt, classy. Whether it is his softcore films of the 1960’s, including such classics as The Lickerish Quartet and Camille 2000, or his adult work under the non de plume Henry Paris, Metzger’s art is the champagne of erotic cinema. Champagne is just the term too, since it goes perfectly with Distribpix’s Rolls Royce of a release for Metzger’s most famous explicit work, 1976’s The Opening of Misty Beethoven.

Using George Bernard Shaw’s play, Pygmalion as a loose framework for the story, The Opening of Misty Beethoven is one of Metzger’s lightest films. Our titular heroine, Misty Beethoven (Constance Money), is a hooker working in the City of Lights itself, Paris. Don’t be fooled by the continental decadence, since when we first meet her, she’s bedecked in a bad wig, worse make-up and a tee-shirt slapped with assorted credit card logos. On top of the questionable fashion choices, there’s the fact that Misty is just not very good at her career of choice. While limiting yourself to giving hand jobs to old men dressed up as Napoleon does have a certain old world charm, it is not going to get you far in life.

It is when she, by the sheer touch of kismet, crosses paths with Dr. Seymore Love (the inimitable Jamie Gillis) one night in a porn theater, that her life is forever changed. Along for the ride is Love’s old colleague Geraldine (Jacqueline Beaudant), whom he encounters in a dingy brothel. In Misty, Love sees a delicious challenge. The goal? To take this seemingly passionless woman and transform her into the “Goldenrod Girl,” which is the crowning achievement for all that is female seductiveness and heat. Geraldine’s dubious but game for the experience and is enlisted as one of Love’s guides of sorts.

Along the way, we get a series of cute training sessions, with Misty, her hair pulled back and wearing a jogging suit, training like a champ. Yet, instead of running up stairs, it’s more recumbent bikes, candy colored phallus training and live action demonstrations. She’s slow at first, but soon gets her figurative feet wet when she seduces a homosexual art dealer (played by Casey Donovan, whom also starred in the gay adult ground breaker, Wakefield Poole’s Boys In the Sand, as well as Metzger’s own Score). This starts the wheel spinning for Misty, culminating at famed publisher,Lawrence Lehman’s (Ras Kean) decadent, jet set party. It’s there that Misty not only seduces Lawrence, but his sexy raven-haired wife, Barbara (Gloria Leonard), too, all for the rapt gaze of Lehman’s guests. Misty gets crowned the Goldenrod Girl, but there is a bittersweet tinge, when she overhears Seymour and Geraldine snickering.

It’s true that absence makes the heart grow fonder, which is exactly what happens with Seymour and his protege. There’s a playful twist to the original Shaw work that is a fitting ending to one polished gem of a film.

 
At the height of the porno chic wave in the 1970’s, there were two films that should have successfully bridged the genre of erotica into the realm of mainstream cineaste acceptance. The first being Gerard Damiano’s 1973 The Devil in Miss Jones and the second being The Opening of Misty Beethoven. The former truly broke ground and paved the way for Misty Beethoven to be highly regarded, not just by the Adult industry but by major critics like Roger Ebert.

Metzger’s work, more so than any other filmmaker of erotica, save maybe Candida Royalle years later, has often been considered to be “couples friendly.” While that kind of categorization depends on the individual couple, given Metzger’s sophisticated eye and touch, the attractive cast, the international locales and characters that are often treated with a semblance of respect, it makes sense. This is doubly so with Misty Beethoven, which is a light pastry of a film, especially compared to some of Metzger’s weightier past efforts, like The Imageand The Lickerish Quartet. Lacking the darker elements that tended to be a hallmark of a lot of the quality adult cinema being made, Misty is more like a delicious, saucy cocktail that is sweet enough to be alluring, strong enough to be heady but not so strong to be threatening.

The cast is top notch, featuring a typically strong performance from the dark prince himself, Jamie Gillis, as the Henry Higgins-esque Seymour Love. Here, Gillis gets to shine bright as the handsome, erudite Professor. He brings a breezy sophisticated charm, lacking some of the violent sleaze that became synonymous with his other roles. Love or hate him, there will never another like Jamie. Jacqueline Beudant, in her only role, is very earthy as the worldly and world-traveled Geraldine. Rounding out the main cast is Constance Money, as the titular Misty Beethoven. Money, whose work prior to Misty, amounted to a couple of loops and the 1975 film, Confessions of a Teenage Peanut Butter Freak, Money is initially not given a whole lot to do, with her character being more of a blank slate. Misty in the beginning has all of the lusty warmth of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, but gradually grows more passionate and comfortable with herself. Money not only conveys this but also displays hints at some good comedic timing. It’s too bad that she only ended up doing a tiny handful of films before retiring in the early 1980’s, because she definitely had the right mix to transcend the cult star status that she has to this day.

One star that emerged just as bright and in fact, even bigger than Money was Gloria Leonard. Any ill informed individual who assumes that women who acted in adult films back then were either victims or bimbos would have their ignorance demolished, if not flat out incinerated by Leonard. In addition to being one of the first notable older women in erotica, she has a background that includes copy writing for a then burgeoning Elektra records, working on Wall Street and serving as publisher for 14 years of High Society magazine. Even better, she is currently a chartered member of the non-profit group, Feminists for Free Expression. This is a whole lot of detail to illustrate the simple fact that Gloria Leonard is an inspirational badass.

Making a suitable companion to the glamorous Leonard is the enigmatic Ras Kean, as the ridiculously handsome and devil-may-care catalyst for Misty’s Goldenrod Girl status. Misty also has some notable actors in smaller roles, including the brilliant Michael Gaunt, who was so incredible in Roger Watkins American Babylon years later, as an escort of Geraldine’s. In a very small, non-sex role is character actor Mark Margolis, who has gone on to act in everything from 1977’s prison film Short Eyes all the way to TV’s American Horror Story.

One trademark of Radley Metzger’s work is how impeccable his films look. It’s not just the attractive cast, international locations and great set design, though all of them have these qualities in spades. But in addition to all of that, there is the cinematography, which is exquisite. When you can make something as wrinkly and awkward as a scrotum look lovely and refined, then you have more that done your job. All low-hangers talk aside, every frame in this film looks like art and really, it is. Not enough kudos can be heaped onto Paul Glickman, whose terrific work as a cinematographer can also be seen in Metzger’s equally lush looking Private Afternoons of Pamela Mann, as well as the Dennis Hopper character study, Tracks.

Speaking of kudos, Distribpix have done another stellar job, giving The Opening of Misty Beethoven every ounce of the love, respect and attention to detail it deserves. The restoration work that went into this transfer is beyond perfect, not to mention the cornucopia of extras, including the highly informative director’s commentary, with the man himself, as well as a separate one for the “cool” aka cable TV ready version of the film with Gloria Leonard. On top of that, there’s trailers, ephemera, a wonderful making of documentary and much more. This release is swanky in all the right places.

The Opening of Misty Beethoven is one fun, light-as-meringue film. While it may lack the plot and character layer that other Metzger films possess, it more than makes up for it with an old world charm, a new world sense of freedom and a polish to be envied.

 
As a fan of Harmony Korine’s over-the-top, raunchy, apocalyptic fun fest Spring Breakers and Lena Dunham’s brilliant TV series Girls, I unreservedly dig this mash-up put together by The Hollywood Reporter. By bouncing the unselfconscious, anything goes, fuck you approach of Korine’s film off the the over-analytical, to the point of paralysis, psycho-babbling Girls we end up with a third entity: hipster gangsta angsta.

They’ll be plenty of people hatin’ on Spring Breakers. I say ignore them. The movie is pure trash of a very sublime sort (purity is in short supply these days). Imagine a Girls Gone Wild video directed by Gaspar Noe and Godard. Harmony Korine’s critique of reality TV, gangsta shit and pop culture’s commodification of tweenybopper celebs is as scattershot as the gunfire at the movie’s climax, but when it hits its target it draws blood. Beach Blanket Bingo for the comfortably numb.

Since when did THP get into the mash-up business? I had no idea they had this level of coolness in them.
 

 
Film director, writer and actor, Peter Bogdanovich gave critic Michael Billington a brief introduction to his father, Borislav Bogdanovich’s art work in this short clip from 1979.

Born in 1899, Borislav Bogdanovitch was a Serbian Post Impressionist / Modernist artist, who was one of Belgrade’s leading artists, and exhibited alongside Jean Renoir and Marc Chagall. Prior to the outbreak of the Second World War, Borislav relocated with his family to New York, where he continued to work, though less successfully, until his death in 1970.

Before his death, Borislav saw Peter’s first major movie—the modern urban horror, Targets:

‘I don’t think he said more than 4 or 5 words about it, but he had obviously been very moved by the experience. It was a heavy movie, it was a tough movie, and it wasn’t very pretty about life in Los Angeles, or America, and he felt it was a tragic picture. I could see it on his his face what he thought about it—he didn’t have to say much.’

The film, which starred Boris Karloff, marked the arrival of Peter Bogdanovich as a highly original and talented film-maker, who was exceptional enough to direct, co-write and occasionally produce films as diverse as the superb The Last Picture Show; the wonderful screwball comedy What’s Up Doc? with Barbra Streisand and Ryan O’Neal; to the excellent Ryan and Tatum O’Neal comedy/drama Paper Moon; and the the greatly under-rated (and hardly seen on its release) Saint Jack with Ben Gazzara.

But Bogdanovich is magnanimous in his praise for others (see his books on Orson Welles and John Ford) and claims, at the start of this interview, that it was his father who was a considerable influence on developing his film-making skills:

‘I think it is unquestionably true that whatever I did learn, in terms of composition, or color, or the visual aspect of movies, I certainly learned from my father through osmosis—it wasn’t anything he sat down and taught me. The thing that my father was extraordinary, he had this way of influencing people—getting things across without saying, “This is what I am trying to teach you.” It wasn’t like that at all. My father wasn’t didactic in anyway, he was casual.’

From being one of the most interesting and original film-makers of his generation, Peter Bogdanovich has rarely had the opportunity to make the quality of films he is more than capable of producing. Last year, in response to the Aurora shootings, Bogdanovich wrote an article for the Hollywood Reporter in which he lamented the loss of humanity in films:

‘Today, there’s a general numbing of the audience. There’s too much murder and killing. You make people insensitive by showing it all the time. The body count in pictures is huge. It numbs the audience into thinking it’s not so terrible. Back in the ’70s, I asked Orson Welles what he thought was happening to pictures, and he said, “We’re brutalizing the audience. We’re going to end up like the Roman circus, live at the Coliseum.” The respect for human life seems to be eroding.’

 
With thanks to NellyM
 

Latrice Royale onstage at The Castro Theatre, photo by Robby Sweeny.

NOTES FROM THE NIALLIST

If you have not seen Paris Is Burning, you’re just not doing it right. I’m talking Life, honey.

I’ve written about Paris Is Burning before, and referenced it in my recent ballroom piece for Boing Boing, but the truth is that the impact of this film on gay culture, and by extension culture at large, cannot be overestimated. That a film about underground drag culture and voguing resonated so strongly amongst gays should not be a surprise, but what is surprising is how far its influence has spread in “straight” circles. Its language and imagery are now common parlance, and it won a recent PBS “best documentary” poll by an overwhelming landslide.

Which is why I was so delighted to see Paris Is Burning get recent a Midnight Mass screening in San Francisco, hosted by the queens Peaches Christ and Latrice Royale. Barring stars of the film itself (most of whom have sadly passed) I could not think of a better pair to present it. Peaches Christ is a legendary San Francisco performer and the regular Midnight Mass movie hostess, and is so obsessed with films, ickiness and camp that her boy alter ego, Joshua Grannell, recently directed the future-cult-classic All About Evil, starring Natasha Lyonne, Mink Stole and Elvira. Latrice Royale, meanwhile, was a competitor on last year’s season of RuPaul’s Drag Race, and through a combination of straight-talking and motherly warmth, went on to win the show’s “Miss Congeniality” prize, and has become one of the most popular contestants that Drag Race has ever seen.

I couldn’t waste this opportunity to ask two legends of drag about this legendary drag film, so I sent them both a set of questions to answer.
 

Peaches Christ and Latrice Royale
 
THE NIALLIST: When did you first discover Paris Is Burning?

LATRICE ROYALE: I believe it was 1995.. I know a little late, but again I was very new to the lifestyle at this time in my life.

PEACHES CHRIST: I was a junior in high school and the movie was such a huge indie hit in the urban markets that Miramax did a wide release, which meant it played at the local Maryland mall where I grew up. I remember going to see it with my closeted lesbian friend and my hands were literally shaking when I went to purchase a ticket—I was a closeted queen and was terrified someone would see me buying a ticket to the movie—that my secret would be revealed. I watched it wide-eyed and in awe and while there is clearly a tragic element to the film, especially ending with Venus’ murder, I found it to be inspiring, creative, loving, and it really showed me that there was a way people like “us” could find a family, create a world for ourselves, and that the world could be imaginative, unique, and FABULOUS. I went to see it three more times in the theatre and each time I did, my hands shook a little less when I bought a ticket.

TN: What kind of an impact has it had on your career, and how has it influenced you personally?

LR: Well from my own personal experience in life, I totally could relate to these young kids. As I was one of them. I was too scared to come out after being outed by my brother. But I did learn that you could rebuild your family with people to your liking.

PC: I kind of feel like there are two drag worlds- the one pre-Paris Is Burning and the one post-Paris Is Burning, because after the movie came out and was widely distributed, queers sought it out, understood it, embraced and appropriated its culture on all levels of queer culture. It’s effect on our language, style, dance, etc. can not be underestimated. Whether people know it or not, it changed queer culture and then of course popular culture because it’s my belief that most of the best parts of popular culture start with the queers.

TN: How do you feel time has treated the film?

LR: Knowing what I know now, and seeing how bullying is such the trend.. We need to have a world wide revival of this movie. So many are unaware of a crucial part of our history.

PC: I watch it today and am again- blown away by how much of everything we do and saw comes from this seminal film. It’s timeless.

TN: What would you say to younger queens who haven’t seen the film?

LR: Well as I stated earlier we need a revival!! Our youth should be aware of just how far we’ve come, while realizing we still have so much further to go. But with knowledge comes power, and hopefully our youth will learn that they too, have a voice.

PC: It’s a must see of course. Completely required viewing. I’m actually teaching a class in 2014 at the SF Art Institute that’s essentially “Drag In Cinema” and I’m building the course around this film.

Peaches Christ as Dorian Corey, photo by Nicole Fraser-Herron

TN: Who is your favourite character in Paris Is Burning?

LR: Pepper LaBeija LEGENDARY MUTHA!!

PC: I can’t choose one- seriously. I’m obsessed with Dorian Corey, Willi Ninja, Pepper LaBeija, Venus Xtravaganza, and Octavia St. Laurent. I love them all.

TN: Peaches, could you tell us about the process of getting Paris Is Burning to the big screen again?

PC: I’ve wanted to do a Peaches show around Paris Is Burning for years and years but really needed to do it the right way and create a show that felt authentic- so it took some time but I was able to seek out members of the West Coast ball scene who came on board to create the show with us. I reached out to Latrice because I really feel like she embodies the true spirit of the film—inspiring a new generation of queens to perform with style and grace, understanding their history while also serving it to audiences—making them eat it. I have been in touch with Jennie Livingston, the film’s director, and she’s been so supportive and WONDERFUL and we’ve been talking about how this Paris Is Burning zeitgeist will hopefully lead to more projects, more longevity, more celebration, and that this community’s legacy will live on forever.

TN: And finally, Latrice, how was the Paris Is Burning Midnight Mass screening?

LR: I must say the whole experience working with Peaches Christ was one thatI will never forget!!! So brilliant, and such an honor to be apart of more history in the making.

TN: History indeed!

To end, here’s another bit of history, the original 1991 TV trailer for Paris Is Burning, complete with that guy doing the voice-over:
 

 
For more info, and to view the picture gallery of images form the screening, visit PeachesChrist.com.

Previously on Dangerous Minds:

Paris Is Burning: Vogue Realness

Dorian Corey: the drag queen had a mummy in her closet

Dream Queens: ‘Voguing And The House Ballroom Scene Of NYC 1989-1992’

Deep In Vogue: an introduction to ballroom and modern voguing culture

Octavia St Laurent and the legends of voguing want you to ‘Be Somebody’

 
Some great shots of Bruce Lee during his competitive dancing years. The man was dashing in every endeavor, wasn’t he? There’s even a bit of footage, proving the versatility of his elegance and grace beyond fight choreography.
 

 

 

 
Miloš Forman discusses One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest with Denis Tuohy from 1976, where the multi-award winning director explains his views on Politics, Art and Film-making.

Tuohy appears not to be aware that One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was based on the novel by Ken Kesey, instead, he digs for some personal, East-West political subtext that relates to Forman’s past life in Czechoslovakia. (Though it’s not mentioned here, Forman’s parents died in Nazi concentration camps during the Second World War—his mother in Auschwitz in 1943, his father in Buchenwald, 1944; while after the war, Forman lived under the country’s brutal Communist rule.)

Was the film a metaphor about society? asks Tuohy. To which Forman replies, it was more ‘a metaphor for any kind of modern society today,’ as it revealed ‘how far has the power the right to crush an individual who is questioning the rules.’

‘The power has Politics on its side. Let the Art be on the side of individual.

Forman, who had left Czechoslovakia in 1968 to make films in Hollywood, describes himself as ‘apolitical’ and believes there is a division between Art and Politics.

‘I like to tell the stories of the society I live in. I don’t have an ambition to give advice, of how the society will be transformed or changed—probably because I have seen so many disappointments.

‘I am apolitical person. For somebody that is trying to make so-called Art that is political—is crippling. Because Art is always, should be objective, should be trying the best of being objective. Once you adopt a political doctrine that, well, you can call Art, but it is propaganda type of Art.’

 
With thanks to NellyM
 

 
In the above letter, Martin Scorsese asks New York’s city planners to protect the “grittiness” of the Bowery. As someone who has made Manhattan’s unique character an essential element in his films, Scorsese must be deeply saddened as the city continues to lose its glorious star quality to the encroaching blandness of chain stores and soulless glass and metal monstrosities. 

Listen you fuckers, you screwheads. Here’s a man who would not take it anymore. A man who stood up against the scum, the cunts, the dogs, the filth, the shit…”

Substitute “dogs” and “cunts” with “landlords” and “Realtors” and suddenly Travis Bickle’s rant starts to sound sane.

 
As announced by his close friend, Don Schenk, the well-known 70s porn actor and successful real estate broker Harry Reems (real name Herbert Streicher)  passed away yesterday afternoon, March 19, at the Salt Lake City V.A. Hospital.  He was 65.

Harry Reems came to pop culture notoriety as the male star of Gerard Damiano’s Deep Throat, the 1973 porno film that is the biggest XXX money earner of all time. Reems co-starred as the manic doctor who discovers that Linda Lovelace’s clitoris was located in her throat. He was the only actor ever tried and convicted of pandering obscenity for being in a porno movie.

By the 1980s, Reems had become a serious alcoholic and ended up homeless on the streets of Los Angeles, before turning his life around and becoming a very successful real estate broker in Park City Utah. He married his wife of 22 years, Jeannie, in 1991.

Reems appeared, as himself, in the 2005 documentary, Inside Deep Throat.

Via Don Schenk:

A few years ago Harry’s health began to deteriorate due to peripheral neuropathy and emphysema, forcing him to retired from real estate. This past summer he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, which the doctors discovered during a routine test for something else, and Harry went through months of chemo and radiation treatments.

On March 5th, Harry entered the VA Hospital due to jaundice. His liver was failing. Next his kidneys began to fail as his body started to shut down. My wife and I have been driving from Park City down to the Salt Lake City VA Hospital to visit with Harry and Jeannie every afternoon.

Harry slipped into a coma 4 days ago, and passed this afternoon.

Harry went from living a bizarre lifestyle, through a 180 degree, almost miraculous change to find a Higher Power he called God, and become a truly nice guy who cared for others, and helped a lot of people in Park City, UT.

 

 
Below, Al Goldstein interviews Harry Reems on Midnight Blue, 1982.
 

 
Thank you Steven Otero!

 
Quentin Tarantino screenplays re-imagined as Penguin books.

These fabulous designs were made by Sharm Murugiah, a Graphic Designer living and working in London. See more of his work here
 

 

 

 

 
H/T Penguin Books
 

 
1334 is, by its very nature, a wholly unique creature. Like a black pearl born out of the twins of experimental cinema and the exorcising of personal demons, 1334 is less of a sequel and more of an obtuse follow-up to 1998’s Pig. Both were helmed by Dutch filmmaker and Cult Epics founder, Nico B. Both films also featured the late Rozz Williams, though in some unique ways. Pig was a collaboration with Rozz, who created the music, artwork, parts of the story and played the Killer. 1334 is a work created from the aftermath of his death and both the literal and dramatic imprint it left for B. Further tying the two together is the incorporation of Williams’ brilliant collage art, often in the form of the Killer’s textbook, Why God Permits Evil, as well as some of his strikingly disturbing sonic ambient work too.

It is extremely fitting that the first shot is a male hand closing Why God Permits Evil, ending what was opened in Pig. Rozz’s quote, “All truth is parallel, therefore, all truth is untrue.” appears on screen. Which is brilliant, especially in this case, since while so many fact-based films are presented so pristinely and perfectly dramatic, as if real life ever functions like that. Memories and events, for most of us, tend to become more fragmented and dreamlike over time. So to craft a film like this that is so stark yet darkly ethereal in parts, is a bold and needed move.

The tarot card for “The Hanged Man” appears, giving instant foreshadowing as we see the Rozz figure (Bill Oberst Jr.), shirtless and wearing a mask of a wretched looking old man with a gunshot wound to the temple, Kennedy-style. There is vintage footage of Rozz’s actual apartment shot before he died, seamlessly blended in with the new footage, featuring an old desk with a typewriter, a fetal-looking stuffed pig, a black bird and a large Nazi flag. He hangs himself and his body becomes slightly transparent, perhaps indicating him dying and crossing into the next plane. As the act is done, a dark-haired man (Dante White-Aliano) tries to call.

The next tarot card appears, “Le Maison Diev” or The Tower. The music grows even more high strung, as the young man showers. His lover, the first of the number of lovely raven haired women, sleeps, her pregnant belly exposed. The phone rings and the news of suicide is broken. He falls down from shock and grief, as his partner starts to weep. This whole sequence is shot in dreamy, Maya Deren-esque b&w, in contrast to the more gritty look of the scenes with Rozz. It’s only fitting that the next shot, a naked baby crying in the grass, looks more like the grittier scenes.

What exactly does the crying baby mean? Is it a metaphor for how the man feels? Is is something more literal? Especially given that after this scene, there is no mention of the baby again. But that is the beauty of the nature of 1334. If all works of art came with automatic cliff notes, then where’s the fun in that? The decision is always subjective.

The man gets into a heated argument with his lover, now no longer pregnant. Things start to get pretty physical, with the screen suddenly solarized, as a black mist starts to flood through the background. The screen goes back to normal and his girlfriend/attacker has fangs. The sound and sight of sirens start to come through and the domestic disturbance lands her behind bars.

Another tarot card appears, “La Roue de Fortune.” The Wheel of Fortune. The young man, bedecked in suit and tie, sits on a couch while a different woman speaks to him, sitting across at a table. Her voice can be heard, but not necessarily her words, as she sounds distorted. Her face, though, is kind. The film stock gets scratchy again as a faceless man drives around the countryside, invoking strong shades of Pig.

The tarot card of “Death” appears. The young man sits with a woman on a couch. As they talk, the black mist from earlier reappears every time the screen is solorized. They retire to bed, where the woman ends up being strangled by an unseen force while the man struggles like he paralyzed. When the attack lets up, there are marks around her neck.

The young man walks to the bathroom and picks up a straight razor, cutting his own neck. Bleeding, he enters a trance-like state where he meets the Rozz figure, clad head to toe in black Plague doctor garb. With his arms outstretched, he takes the young man into a living version of Flemish painter Peter Bruegel’s work, “Triumph of Death.” The moving landscape of apocalypse and death is inescapable as the Rozz figure is wide-eyed and unblinking, while the young man looks wan and burdened. The final shot ends the 17-minute long film on a powerful, grim note.

1334 is part of a very under-looked type of non-fiction film. It eschews traditional, linear storytelling for a more surreal and at its core, pure approach. Instead of breaking things down by ABC’s, we get a more emotionally honest portrait of what this filmmaker has gone through. Sometimes, the hardest but more rewarding approach is just this, yet so few have done this. Other than Klaus Kinski’s controversial and brilliant Paganini and some of the biographical works of Ken Russell, it is hard to think of such a similar cinematic creature.

One thing of note, like Pig before it, is the fantastic score, thanks to both the archives of Rozz Williams as well as some additional contributions from Dante White-Aliano. It’s appropriately creepy, full of tension and sadness. 1334 is an incredibly brave film in a much different way than its predecessor. In some ways, one can’t help but get the feeling that while Pig dealt with indulging some demons, 1334 is more about exorcising others. Death can be hardest for the living, especially since we are the ones dealing with the aftermath.

Cult Epics has done another prime job, with putting both Pig, which had been severely out of print for years, and 1334 on both Blu Ray and DVD. What this release may lack in extras, it more than makes up for with presentation, from the detailed booklet that includes photos of the script and assorted notes, to the slipcover featuring the cover of Why God Permits Evil in gorgeous color. The cover for the actual disk will definitely look familiar to any fans of Williams’ band Premature Ejaculation, since it is very similar to the art used on their posthumous release, Wound of Exit.

1334 is a beautiful, haunted work that will ruin any preconceptions you may have going into it. This is a very good thing.