By Sean Axmaker
Dec 13, 2016

Private Property (Cinelicious, theatrical and Blu-ray+DVD)

Long considered lost until it was restored by the UCLA Film and Television Archive and rereleased in 2016, Private Property isn’t a lost masterpiece, but it is a terrific little independently-produced thriller—both a handsome production and a visually evocative world, taut with palpable tension. The directorial debut by Leslie Stevens, a playwright, screenwriter, and protégé of Orson Welles, this 1960 American indie is a neat little sexually-charged psychological thriller starring Corey Allen and Warren Oates as drifters with a sociopathic streak crashing the sunny California culture of affluence and trophy wives. The simmering resentments of class and money, and the confusion of sex, desire, and power point this film forward to the socio-political concerns of late-sixties and early-seventies cinema.
Our coverage of the best of the year can’t overlook the “new old” movies—the ones that are finally enjoying a much needed push or have just become available to the wider public. These are eight of the essential items that saw restoration or re-release this year.

BELLADONNA OF SADNESS (Cinelicious, theatrical and Blu-ray)

This lost 1973 classic of Japanese animation is indeed an erotic drama, but perhaps not what you might think. Set in an unnamed kingdom in an abstracted medieval Europe, it’s part subversive folk tale, part rock-ballad musical, and part experimental filmmaking. Whatever you want to call it, it’s nothing like the manga serials or sexually explicit anime horrors that come to mind in the intersection of Japan, animation, and erotica. This has more in common with animated outliers like Fantastic Planet (France, 1973) and the Czech New Wave masterpiece Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (1970). From abstract sexual imagery to strobing Peter Max pop-art designs to delicate watercolors and Euro-style sketches, Belladonna of Sadness—restored to its full length and to its visual vibrancy and intensity by Cinelicious—is a unique artifact from a time when animated features could aspire to fine art and experimentation for adult audiences.

By Ignatiy Vishnevetsky
Dec 5, 2016

Movie culture has always been sustained by rediscovery and revaluation—that infinite process of expanding and redefining canons. There are two important factors at play here. The first is that film spread and developed faster than any creative medium that preceded it, meaning that the bulk of what survives of film history is still unexplored. The second is that film has always been a business, and that its commercialization can make release patterns and availability into tricky processes. Every year, some set of rights is finally negotiated or some negative is found after decades in a closet.

Our coverage of the best of the year can’t overlook the “new old” movies—the ones that are finally enjoying a much needed push or have just become available to the wider public. These are eight of the essential items that saw restoration or re-release this year.

Belladonna Of Sadness (1973)

A psychosexual freak-out of fairy-tale subtexts and obscene imagery, Belladonna Of Sadness stands as one of the most unusual and challenging animated features of its time—no small feat, given that its contemporaries include René Laloux’s Fantastic Planet and the early films of Ralph Bakshi. Directed by Eiichi Yamamoto, a close collaborator of the Japanese comics and animation legend Osamu Tezuka, in an array of limited animation styles that draw on art nouveau and expressionism, the film draws on the French historian Jules Michelet’s theories of witchcraft as a form of rebellion to create an anti-authoritarian parable of sex magic and sexual violence in medieval France. A commercial failure in its time, the film had never played American theaters before this year’s 4K restoration; it has since been released on Blu-ray and DVD.

By Bart Bealmear
June 30, 2016

The 1960 independent feature, Private Property, is a rarely seen, sexually tense thriller. Anyone who digs film noir, crime dramas, or vintage indie flicks is going to want to see this movie. Believed to have been lost for the ages, a 35mm print has been found and restored, so, lucky you, now you’ll have a chance to see it, as it’ll be released this week on home video for the first time.

Private Property is the work of writer/director, Leslie Stevens (he’d later create the sci-fi horror series, The Outer Limits). Shot in just ten days on a minuscule budget, the movie is a critique of classism and bourgeois suburban life. It’s also a beautifully photographed exploitation film. Stevens’ cast his own spouse, Kate Manx, as the doting ‘50s housewife Ann, and the majority of the picture was filmed on location at or near their Beverly Hills home. Much of the story takes place while the sun is blaring, but when the night comes, those same areas are transformed into creepy, shadowy settings.

Corey Allen and Warren Oates play criminal drifters, Duke and Boots. Allen worked primarily in TV, but will be familiar to many as Buzz, the lead delinquent in Rebel Without a Cause (1955). Oates is now remembered as one of Hollywood’s great character actors, having appeared in such revered pictures as The Wild Bunch (1969), Two-Lane Blacktop (1971), and Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974).

Though we know next to nothing about the backgrounds of Duke and Boots—factors that contribute to the ubiquitous tension in Private Property—it is clear from the get-go that Duke calls the shots. During a conversation early in the film, Boots admits to being a virgin, and Duke promises to find him a “twitch”. The first woman they spot is Ann, and they begin following, tailing her to the home in the hills she inhabits with her square husband, Roger. From there, Duke and Boots begin spying on her from a nearby vacant house, with the movie’s audience complicit in their voyeurism.

Duke then hatches a long game strategy to seduce Ann and pass her off to Boots. Duke, in his relentless, yet cool pursuit of Ann, exhibits such sociopathy that Donald Trump would praise him for his powers of skillful manipulation. Brilliantly portrayed by Allen, such a character is often seen as a heartless, one dimensional creature, but as Duke’s wicked plan to ensnare Ann progresses, there are hints that he is falling for her.

Kate Manx gives a nuanced performance as the lonely lady of the house. Ann is generally a cheerful person, but there is a discernible sadness that is just below the surface. Her husband, Roger, is frequently absent, and when he is around he callously disregards her frequent overtures for sex (“wife noises,” he calls them). She is faithful to her spouse, yet has been so deprived of tenderness and physical intimacy that she is seduced by the smarmy Duke, which challenges her morality. Knowing that Manx would commit suicide (in 1964, shortly after her divorce from Stevens), one can’t help but feel a heightened compassion and anxiety for the vulnerable Ann. The actress would star in just one other film—another written and directed by Stevens, in which Oates also appears—Hero’s Island (1962).

Warren Oates isn’t on screen as much as Allen and Manx, but he too shines here. Like Ann and Duke, Boots is a complex individual. He’s dopey, but not dumb; vicious, yet sensitive. He says he wants to be with a woman, but he may be a homosexual. Boots is actually the loneliest soul in the picture. For much of Private Property, he’s on the outside looking in.

Late in the film, Boots gazes lovingly at Duke (in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment), revealing he thinks of his partner in crime as more than just a buddy. As is the case with Ann, Boots needs Duke in a way that society will not accept, his confusion over who he thinks he’s supposed to want made clear in the riveting finale.

In many ways, Private Property was ahead of its time, especially in regards to the Ann character. Her descent into moral ambiguity, as well as her obvious—and at times kinky—sexual desires (in one scene, she drapes Duke’s belt around her neck and tightens it), were progressive components in Hollywood movies at that time. Not too mention the sexual tension between Duke and Ann that is so intense it threatens to boil over into your popcorn. The Motion Pictures Association deemed Private Property “unacceptable” due to, among other things, its overt depictions of “lust,” and was subsequently denied the MPA’s Production Code seal. In a few years, cutting edge films like Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf (1966) and Bonnie and Clyde (1967) would lead to the creation of a more modern ratings system, but it was too soon for Private Property. Even Manx’s “overly suggestive postures” rattled the conservative censors.

Without the all-important seal, Private Property was effectively doomed to obscurity. Passed over by major distributors, it was released by the independent Kano Productions in the spring of 1960, before quietly vanishing. Though lost for decades, a 35mm print was recently discovered by the UCLA Film & Television Archive and restored by Cinelicious.

The restored Private Property will be released in a limited edition Blu-ray/DVD combo pack by Cinelicious Pics on October 25th. Order it via the Cinelicious Pics website, or get it on Amazon.

By J. Hoberman
October 21, 2016
In late 1970, Alejandro Jodorowsky’s druggy, mystical western “El Topo” opened at the Elgin Theater in New York with no more fanfare than a small notice in The Village Voice. The film was to be screened only at midnight, according to the ad, because it was “too heavy to be shown any other way.”

A new outré cinema was born: The violent “El Topo” established the template for subsequent midnight blockbusters, like John Waters’s shockingly crude “Pink Flamingos” (1972) and David Lynch’s fantastically weird “Eraserhead” (1977). Had the Japanese animator Eiichi Yamamoto’s psychedelic, sexually explicit “Belladonna of Sadness” (1973) opened at midnight, it, too, might have entered the cult pantheon.

As it was, Mr. Yamamoto’s film was a commercial failure in Japan and, despite a screening at the 1973 Berlin International Film Festival, took more than 40 years to arrive in the United States; last spring, newly restored, it enjoyed brief theatrical runs in New York and Los Angeles and is now out on Blu-ray from Cineliciouspics. It’s also available for streaming from Amazon Video.

A product of countercultural magical thinking, “Belladonna” was inspired by “La Sorcière,” the 19th-century French historian Jules Michelet’s examination of the medieval witch mania as a rebellion, led mainly by women, against the feudal order and the Catholic Church. The movie is also something of a revolt — against constraints of good taste as well as conventional animation.

Mr. Yamamoto, an associate of Osamu Tezuka, the founding father of contemporary manga and anime, employs a variety of styles. Much of “Belladonna” unfurls like a scroll, with Mr. Yamamoto using forms of conventional cel animation and the “limited animation” associated with his television series like “Astro Boy” and “Kimba the White Lion,” panning across or zooming in on static drawings.

With its flat patterns, sinuous lines and entwining forms, “Belladonna” refracts traditional Japanese graphic art through the prism of the Art Nouveau or Vienna Secession, two movements that were in some ways inspired by Japanese woodcuts. It also echoes the candy-colored psychedelia of the Beatles’ “Yellow Submarine” (1968), the prurient French science-fiction comic book Barbarella and the late-1960s poster art associated with the San Francisco rock scene. “Belladonna” is eye-popping and ear-catching. The score, by the jazz pianist Masahiko Sato, might be characterized as “acid twang” in its evocation of Pink Floyd and Ennio Morricone.

The movie’s look is as flowery as its title. Still, the delicate lines and pastel splashes of color are frequently at odds with a sexual violence at once explicit and powerfully abstract. Reviewing “Belladonna” in The New York Times last May, Glenn Kenny called the movie “compulsively watchable, even at its most disturbing.”

The protagonist, Jeanne, an initially shy, sad-eyed damsel who might have been the subject of a song by a hippie troubadour, is raped on her wedding day by the demonic local lord — and then again, repeatedly, by Satan himself. (The Devil speaks with the deep, seductive voice of Tatsuya Nakadai, an actor best known in the West for his samurai roles, and appears in various guises, including that of a disembodied penis.)

Part abused victim, part avenging riot grrrl, Jeanne takes up witchcraft, ultimately becoming so powerful that the feudal lord who first violated her tries to enlist her as his ally. She refuses — or rather, she makes a demand he cannot satisfy — and is thus arrested and martyred at the stake. A brief coda added for an expurgated but still unsuccessful Japanese release flashes forward to the French Revolution, identifying Jeanne with Eugène Delacroix’s 1830 painting “Liberty Leading the People.”

“Belladonna of Sadness” — described in a Japanese trailer included as a Blu-ray extra as “a typical Romanesque anime of intense eroticism and lyrical sorrow” — is organically outré.

By Vikram Murthi
June 8, 2016

The film will anchor the The Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Warren Oates Retrospective this July.

Leslie Stevens’ 1960 film “Private Property” follows two Southern California drifters, played by Warren Oates and Corey Allen (“Rebel Without a Cause”), who wander into a seemingly-perfect Beverly Hills home of an unhappy housewife (Kate Manx, who was Stevens’ spouse at the time) and worm their way into her life. Thought to be lost for many years until the UCLA Film & Television Archive dug up some missing elements and Cinelicious Pics completed a full 4K restoration of the film. Now this eerie, voyeuristic neo-Hitchcockian thriller, shot almost entirely in Stevens and Manx’s own home, will finally see the light of day once again during the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Warren Oates retrospective running from July 1st through July 7th. Watch the trailer for the film above.

Warren Oates was a character actor best known for his work in the 1970’s. Some of his best known work includes Sam Peckinpah’s “The Wild Bunch” and “Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia,” Terrence Malick’s “Badlands,” Monte Hellman’s “Two-Lane Blacktop,” Peter Fonda’s “The Hired Hand,” and Ivan Reitman’s “Stripes.” Meanwhile, Leslie Stevens is best known for creating the 1960’s sci-fi anthology series “The Outer Limits” and directing the horror film “Incubus” starring William Shatner.

“Private Property” will open in New York on July 4th weekend. The Film Society Lincoln Center has also just announced an Oates retrospective, which you can find more about here. Check out the poster below.

By Jason Newman
May 11, 2016

Long-lost 1973 erotic anime ‘Belladonna of Sadness’ gets the restoration treatment — and finally, the audience it deserves

At the 1973 Berlin Film Festival, overenthusiastic parents, eager to take their kids to a “family-friendly” animated film, crowded into a German theater for a recently released Japanese anime film with an unusual title: Belladonna of Sadness. They expected something that might distract their kids for 90 minutes, a sort of proto-My Neighbor Totoro; instead, they were treated to an opening scene that climaxes with a brutal prima nocta gang rape, a devil disguised as an impish phallus worming his way between the heroine’s legs and, in between surreal orgy scenes, a meditative reflection on war, class structure and feminism.

A lost masterpiece for more than 40 years, Eiichi Yamamoto’s singular, psychedelic film was largely neglected (or outright derided) upon its release, ruined the studio that produced it and, in subsequent years, became a discrete curio passed around in bootleg form among anime fanatics. Never before released in the United States, the film has been restored by Cinelicious Pics, ready to shock a new generation of cult movie fans and outré animation aficionados. (It opens in Los Angeles on May 13th, and will be available on iTunes starting July 12th.)

The plot, as such: When newlyweds Jeanne and Jean approach the lord of the manor for blessings on their marriage, the lord and his courtiers viciously assault the new bride. Broken by the experience, the young woman begins conversing with an impish demon, who first appears as a playful penis. After war breaks out and most of the men (including the region’s regent) leave for battle, Jeanne makes a pact with Satan for supernatural powers and becomes a prominent, feared figure in the village; the Joan of Arc-like avenging angel eventually leads a rebellion against the ruling class.

But any attempt to describe the boundary-pushing narrative pales in comparison to Belladonna’s form and imagery, as the film blends still pictures of watercolor paintings and illustrations with surreal, trippy visuals. (Think Chris Marker’s La Jetée meets Fantastic Planet — or Yellow Submarine meets your worst acid freakout.) In one series of scenes, a man’s penis turns into a horse, a giraffe grows out of another man’s genitals, rabbits escape someone’s rectum, two tortoises 69 each other and several fish wriggle from a woman’s vagina. Pixar this is not.

Musician and composer Masahiko Satoh’s esoteric score only adds to the weirdness; a dizzying blend of atonal avant-garde jazz, lush ballads, psychedelic rock and dirty, wah-wah-driven funk. “The imagery of the film is very abstract, so I had to think abstractly,” Satoh says. “I had two routes when thinking about how to compose music for the film: try to find a sound that expresses the truth of the characters’ internal struggles or express it through a pop aesthetic. I ended up going between those two.”

Inspired by French historian-author Jules Michelet’s 1862 feminist witchcraft novel La Sorciere, Belladonna of Sadness remains that rare anime whose sense of transgression and shock value hasn’t diminished four decades after its release. At the time, film studios like Toei – whose best known protégé Hiyao Miyazaki would become one of the medium’s most celebrated directors – were well-known for its popular, yet largely anodyne offerings. Yamamoto’s film bucked that trend — and ended up paying the price for it.

“It was simply too hardcore for most animation audiences in the early 1970s,” Dennis Bartok, Executive Vice President, Acquisitions & Distribution for Cinelicious, writes in a new essay accompanying the film’s release. “It was, tellingly, too strange even for grindhouse distributors to take a crack at. [It’s] the first truly erotic animated feature film.”

“There was colorful stuff, but nothing that really pushed the envelope,” says Mike Toole, editor-at-large for Anime News Network. “[Mushi Productions head and anime godfather] Osamu Tezuka wanted to push the limits of the medium and make something targeted for adults. The public was not ready for Belladonna when it came out. It had a reputation as, ‘This is one of the worst animes ever made.’ But in retrospect, not so much. There’s a new appreciation for it.”

Mushi had long earned acclaim for creating the lovable, ubiquitous Astro Boy series in the 1960s. But Belladonna, the third film in the studio’s trilogy that also included 1001 Nights (1969) and Cleopatra (1970 — its American title was Cleopatra: Queen of Sex), was virtually ignored upon its Japanese release, sparsely distributed in Europe and never made it stateside. The studio, already teetering on the edge of solvency, went bankrupt, in part, because of its release. In subsequent years, however, it would become ground zero for a generation of beloved filmmakers (Osamu Dezaki, Gisaburo Sugii) and studios (Sunrise, Madhouse).

For the film’s creators, the second life of one of anime’s most shocking movies is as surprising to them as anyone else. “I hadn’t really thought about it at all in the past 40 years,” Satoh laughs. “I’m just glad it’s gotten another chance in the limelight.”
Asked how he would describe the film to someone who’s never seen it, Belladonna artist Kuni Fukai’s answer is swift: “To not watch it with your family.”