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- Path: sparky!uunet!stanford.edu!agate!mprats
- From: mprats@ocf.berkeley.edu (Mario Prats)
- Newsgroups: soc.motss
- Subject: "Black Lizard": film recommendation
- Date: 10 Nov 1992 00:22:03 GMT
- Organization: U. C. Berkeley Open Computing Facility
- Lines: 45
- Distribution: world
- Message-ID: <1dmvbbINNate@agate.berkeley.edu>
- NNTP-Posting-Host: bigbang.berkeley.edu
- Keywords: Japanese 60's camp; Yukio Mishima
-
-
- For all of you fellow lovers of Almodovar & John Waters movies (and
- camp in general) there is a movie you must watch: "Black Lizard",
- a Japanese film from 1968, released this year in video cassette by Cinevista
- (hopefully it is available at your local video-rental store).
-
- The movie stars Akihiro Murayama (a transvestite actor), who plays the "Black
- Lizard", a sultry female criminal who kidnaps beautiful people to a
- secret island where she
- turns them into "living dolls" with whom she fulfills her sexual needs.
- However, she meets her match in an astute private detective who follows
- her trail.
-
- Murayama is beyond feminine, you can see him wearing
- campy wigs, expensive jewelry, fancy 60's dresses, etc. as he bosses
- everybody around him, brandishes a sword, sends messages to his
- subordinates by slowly making circles in the air with a
- cigarette lighter, and most heart-breaking of all,
- suffers in utmost campy style for the detective s/he loves but cannot
- have, bouncing against the walls in despair... A good introdution to
- transvestism for any aspiring drag queen (he is so good he almost makes
- you want to be one!).
-
- The script was written by Yukio Mishima.
-
- The atmosphere is dark, mysterious, and theatrical. It reminded me
- of the film "Querelle" by its use of richly colored lights.
-
- Other highlights of the film:
- Go-go dancers with psychedellically-painted bodies being groped by men
- High-speed car chases including pink-smoke-producing motorcycles in order to
- confuse the chasers
- Bizarre murder scenes
- The Black Lizard's high-pitch wicked laughter
- The classical-music (Vivaldi?) inspired soundtrack but with funky 60's organ
- sounds
- etc. etc.
-
-
- ________________________
-
- Mario Prats
- Romance & Asiatic Exchange Specialist
- Main Library
- University of California, Berkeley
-