Flaming Creatures (1963)

Director:

Jack Smith

Writer:

Jack Smith

Stars:

Francis Francine, Sheila Bick, Joel Markman

Cast

Cast overview:
Francis Francine	...	Himself
Sheila Bick	...	Delicious Dolores
Joel Markman	...	Our Lady of the Docks
Mario Montez	...	The Spanish Girl (as Dolores Flores)
Arnold Rockwood	...	Arnold (as Arnold)
Judith Malina	...	The Fascinating Woman
Marian Zazeela	...	Maria Zazeela

Storyline

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Plot Keywords:

cult film | drag queen | queer | transsexual | underground film | 

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Genres:

Drama

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Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

29 April 1963 (USA)

Also Known As:

Flegomena plasmata

Filming Locations:

New York City, New York, USA

Company Credits

Technical Specs

Runtime:

45 min

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Black and White

Did You Know?

Trivia

The film caused a national scandal upon its original underground release; it was banned in 22 states and in four countries. The critic Jonas Mekas brought the film around to various screenings in the 1960s, but at several screenings was arrested for screening the film.

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Quotes

[first lines]
Francis Francine: Today Ali Baba comes. Ali Baba comes today.

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Connections

Featured in Divine Trash (1998)

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Soundtracks

"Siboney"
1930s Cuban bolero

User Reviews

The blasphemous autism that was Jack Smith

His own performance style--half dashing, half mongoloid--is better preserved in the Jack Smith routine that caps off Andy Warhol's CAMP: the great man, looking dapper as a Lower East Side Clark Gable, does a ten-minute performance piece about, literally, coming out of a closet. And the late, great Ron Vawter's extraordinary "Roy Cohn/Jack Smith" preserves the molasses, the stupor, and the head-thumping epiphanies that made up a live Jack Smith performance.

CREATURES, one of the most notorious of all American "avant-garde films," seems at first to be a queer-theory seminar avant la lettre. Then Smith's processional of silent-movie-looking waifs and queenies repeats and repeats. I find George Kuchar and even Kenneth Anger more interesting on similar territory; but Smith is a man-god, and CREATURES should be seen...once.