Friday, May 2, 2014

Geek Maggot Bingo (1983)

aka Geek Maggot Bingo or the Freak from Suckweasal Mountain

How bad is it? It looks like a filmed improv class.
Should you see it? It's not essential.

Recognize the masks?
I'd heard that Nick Zedd was trying to be the next Andy Warhol, making experimental underground art films that involved punk rockers, hard-core sex and sadomasochism, filmed in 8 mm. This was filmed in 16 mm, had Richard Hell (of the Voidoids, but unrecognizable as such) and I'm told is unlike his other films. It has TV horror movie host Zacherle onscreen as a narrator and sets that are obviously a painted stage - but are meant to be obviously fake; the intentional badness I think was meant as parody, but the film is also unintentionally bad. The plot, involving characters named Dr. Frankenfurter (not very original) and the vampire Scumbelina (more original, but Zedd has a film called "They Eat Scum," so I see a theme) hangs so loosely as to seem made up as filmed. Hell plays a cowboy, probably because they had the costume and he was willing to wear it.

Apparently, regional filmmaking starts at Staten Island with Andy Milligan, but the same thing filmed in Manhattan is art.

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