ICE-Vision: Sins of the Fleshapoids (Mike Kuchar, 1965)
Thursday, August 25 at 8 PM
Lamar Dodd School of Art Room S150
“Mike Kuchar’s first 16mm film, the sci-fi extravaganza Sins of the Fleshapoids, is set far in the future, when highly evolved robots take care of the daily chores while their masters lead lives of pleasure. But when two robots fall in love, it’s not just their circuits that go haywire. Starring George Kuchar as an evil prince and Bob Cowan as a love-seeking robot, Sins helped launch American underground cinema. Mike’s obsession with Hollywood artifice is lavishly on display in his vividly colorful costumes and sets. Mike calls it ‘my most dearest dedication to commercial American movies – or, to put it another way, it is a joke that cost me a thousand dollars.’ It is also one of John Waters’s favorite films: ‘Sins of the Fleshapoids really shows what an underground movie was . . . [George and Mike] were the first to do vulgarity in an almost opera style.'” -Pacific Film Archive
“No art form demands as much spontaneous, imaginative improvisation as low-budget filmmaking, and no American low-budget filmmakers are as imaginative as George Kuchar and his twin brother Mike. Major figures in the American Underground film movement of the sixties, they are the acknowledged pioneers of the camp/pop aesthetic that would influence practically all who came after them, from Warhol and Waters to Vadim and Lynch.” -Bright Lights Film Journal