Corruption of the DamnedCorruption of the Damned
George Kuchar, 55 mins, USA, 1965, B&W
Noir action drama Corruption of the Damned, George Kuchar's first film shot on 16mm, starred a cast of friends and collaborators among whom was featured one Francis Leibowitz, a real-life, middle-aged Bronx 'mom' (her son Larry Leibowitz appears in a number of Kuchar films) happily flying her freak flag in the name of no-budget filmmaking and filial relations!
The synopsis published in the American Film Institute's 1961-1970 Catalog of Feature Films barely begins to cover the film's thematic concerns: "a youth searches for his unfaithful lover and along the way encounters orgies and various forms of sexual depravity". In the notorious junkyard scene, said 'mom' threatens to shoot her on-screen sons with a machine gun - George Kuchar is the one sporting earflaps - if they don't come home for dinner, setting the scene for a quest towards self-actualisation and hard-won catharsis.
Color Me Shameless
George Kuchar, 30 mins, 1967, 16mm, B&W
Produced two years after their first film, Color Me Shameless teams Kuchar 'stars' Donna Kerness and Bob Cowan (from Sins of the Fleshapoids) with Gina Zuckerman, a local Gina Lollobrigida wannabe. George had originally devised a sci-fi film but instead ended up making a film "with a similar theme, alienation, about a person who has a secret and can't socially connect with others". Look out for Warhol scenester Edie Sedgwick in a party scene.
Films screen courtesy of Canyon Cinema.
