Advance tickets for this year's Exhumed Films 24-Hour Horror-thon (11/27-11/28) will be on sale during this screening at the discounted price of $50 each ($40 for Lightbox members). Only at the box office, and only for ticketholders to this event - limit 2 per person.
In honor of his 80th birthday, Exhumed Films celebrates the career of groundbreaking director Paul Morrissey with two of his most beloved--and infamous--works. Morrissey’s career as an underground filmmaker started in 1960’s New York City, where he began making avant-garde shorts while also serving as manager for the legendary rock group The Velvet Underground. Morrissey later produced early arthouse classics like FLESH, TRASH, and HEAT before turning his attentions to arguably the two most iconic horror stories of all time. The result was a pair of shocking, transgressive, and satirical monster movies that serve as gruesome rebukes of the much tamer Universal Studios adaptations of the 1930’s. Despite attempts to attach credit for these films to other sources for the sake of publicity, FLESH FOR FRANKENSTEIN and BLOOD FOR DRACULA are clearly the works of Morrissey’s singular cinematic vision.
FLESH FOR FRANKENSTEIN 3D
1973 / 35mm / Dir. Paul Morrissey / 95 minutes
In 1973, Paul Morrissey travelled to Italy to produce a pair of grotesque, X-rated reimaginings of classic horror tales. As a further innovation, Morrissey chose to utilize 3D to bring his first tale of carnality and carnage right off the screen! FLESH FOR FRANKENSTEIN keeps only the bare bones (har har) of the Mary Shelley story--an obsessed scientist experimenting with the reanimation of the dead--and focuses instead on a tale of perversion and absurdity. Baron Frankenstein (legendary genre actor Udo Kier) is a mad doctor determined to create a master race of superbeings. To that end, he goes about harvesting body parts from attractive, virile young people and constructing a pair of sexually promiscous “zombies” to serve as his monstrous Adam and Eve. But the Baron’s plans go awry once his wife/sister begins an affair with a handsome servant (Morrissey’s frequent leading man Joe Dallessandro, whose New York accent seems decidedly out of place in 19th century Europe), setting the stage for a descent into depravity and destruction. Don’t miss this rare opportunity to witness Morrissey’s monster masterpiece on the big screen in beautiful stereoscopic 3D!
BLOOD FOR DRACULA
1974 / 35mm / Dir. Paul Morrissey / 98 minutes
Paul Morrissey’s twisted take on the legendary lord of the vampires features both bloody set pieces and a truly dark sense of humor. In this version of the oft-told tale, Count Dracula (Udo Kier, once again) is a sickly vampire who needs to drink the blood of virgins (or “wirgins,” in Kier’s parlance) in order to regain his strength. And since Romania is apparently fresh out of pure young girls, the count and his assistant take a trip to Italy, a nice Catholic country where he is sure he can locate some virtuous victims. Dracula soon finds himself in the home of an aristocratic family with several seemingly chaste young daughters to choose from. Unfortunately for the count, a strapping young Marxist agitator (the ever seductive Joe Dallessandro) has a bad habit of corrupting the girls before poor Drac can sink his fangs into them! BLOOD FOR DRACULA is a sanguine spoof of monster movie tropes that earns its status as a subversive cult classic.
