Author: Sam Moffitt

OUTRAGE: THE WAY OF THE YAKUZA – The DVD Review

Review by Sam Moffitt
I have watched a lot of gangster movies in my life, although that particular genre was never my favorite. Monster and horror movies always were and probably always will be that, but I have watched a good many gangster films, and enjoyed them

When I was a kid KPLR-TV, Channel 11 in St. Louis ran all the Warner Brother’s old gangster and film noirs on the weekends. In fact they had so many Bogart pictures for a while they ran Bogart Theatre on Sunday afternoons.

I saw a double bill of Public Enemy and Little Caesar at the Tivoli theater in the early 70’s, a double bill of White Heat and High Sierra at the Naro theatre in Norfolk, Virginia during my time in the Navy in the late 70s. I enjoyed a lot of the new wave of gangster pictures in the 80s and 90s. Just recently I have started watching the French gangster and caper movies from the 60s and 70s and have found that Johnny Hallyday is not only a terrific singer he’s a hell of an actor. Almost nobody does world weary and cynical like the French, except maybe the Japanese.

Which brings me to Outrage: The Way of the Yakuza, written by, directed by and starring Takeshi ‘Beat’ Kitano, a living legend in Japan who has made quite a few yakuza movies through the years. This was his return to the genre after several unsuccessful films. Outrage is his 15th film as a director.


In the past Kitano has made some amazingly offbeat yakuza films. Sonatine plays with the genre by having a long, slow middle part with no action what so ever in which Kitano and his gang hide out after being banished. When the big show down happens at the end we don’t get to see it, all the violence is off screen. In Brother, Kitano played a yakuza hitman banished to America where, instead of sitting on his ass and watching Wheel of Fortune he organizes the local home boys into a tight, mean money making gang, despite not being able to speak English very well.

I also will always remember Beat as the Sergeant Major in Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, a very weird British/Japanese prisoner of war movie and the man in charge of the Battle Royale in the movie of the same name. Beat is a strange looking, sad faced actor. He had a stroke a few years ago, so I’ve heard, which resulted in the right side of his face drooping somewhat, making him look even sadder. Amazingly he is also a popular stand up comic in Japan, whose humor, even he admits, does not translate well into English.

All of which leads me to admit I still was not prepared for Outrage. This is the most cynical, sadistic and depressing gangster movie I have ever seen, and that says a lot. Recounting the ‘plot’ would be useless, Beat himself admits he thought up the killings first, then wrote a ‘story’ to go with it.

In the movie, which starts at a yakuza funeral, appropriately enough, one member is told he made a wrong move by becoming ‘brothers’ with a member of another crime family. He is told to make it right which entails muscling in on that family’s business. From there it is one double cross and betrayal after another. I gave up on keeping a body count after 35 dead, bullet riddled, Japanese actors hit the ground.

This movie may be Beat’s way of finally saying good bye to the yakuza genre. I don’t know how else to explain the complete lack of passion or characterization in the whole project. These guys are not only interchangeable none of them seem to have any fun being gangsters. There is none of the fun times you see in a movie like Goodfellas or even Miller’s Crossing. These guys never seem to enjoy a woman’s company or good liquor or drugs or gambling. No strike that, there is a long casino gambling scene but nobody seems to be having any fun with it, even though if a yakuza gambles in his own house he automatically gets to win! No, these guys reminded me of the speech Al Pacino has in Donnie Brasco about when the hammer is cocked it’s not your worst enemy who whacks you or the cops, it’s your best friend.


These poor sad sacks of shit basically spend all their time betraying each other and killing or getting killed. There is not one sympathetic character in the entire movie and precious little humor. About the only clever touch is an African diplomat who is blackmailed into becoming a yakuza flunky. He and one of the gangsters speak perfect English and have conversations no one except the audience can understand. A little more of that humor would have gone a long way.

In Buddhist terms these guys are in perpetual states of Hell and Hunger. They gleefully push around any body weaker than they are and cringe like whipped dogs to anybody who has more power than they can muster. It is especially pathetic to see Beat’s character grovel in front of ‘The Chairman’ who calls all the shots for these different crime families and betrays each and every one he takes into his confidence.

I started to wonder half way through this why would anyone in their right mind would want to be a yakuza? Your career arc looks to be about 20 minutes in this movie! Being a ‘salaryman’ might be tedious but at least those guys (and women) get to go home at night without being whacked outside their front door.

And of course the killings are particularly brutal and sadistic. In one grueling scene a gangster is having a visit with his dentist. Beat and his minions come into the dentists office, grab the drill and make a wreck of the guy’s mouth and teeth. Later on Beat finishes the job in a steam room.

It is interesting to note in Japan the gangsters keep offices like regular businessmen. I have known a good many Japanese in my life (from practicing Buddhism) who have told me the yakuza are easy to find, they are listed in the phone book and have their own websites! If the reality of yakuza life is anything like this movie, and I have an idea it probably is, I wouldn’t go anywhere near these crews, too much chance of getting caught in the crossfire.
I honestly don’t know if I can recommend this movie or not, it is beautifully photographed, very well acted (even though the actors are not given much to work with) and Beat Takeshi himself is a fascinating character. But Outrage left me drained and depressed, and it takes a movie built way low down to the ground to do that!

Magnolia’s DVD (on their Magnet label) is loaded with extras, a cast interview at 18 minutes, a behind the scenes documentary at 36 minutes, a cast panel interview at 13 minutes, a world premiere Q & A interview at 23 minutes, and a Cannes premiere red carpet interview at 9 minutes. That is a whole lot of talk about a movie that is basically one long body count. Beat is a lot more animated out in public and seems to love meeting his fans. At the Cannes premiere he has to be led away from his fans and told to stop signing autographs! There is also the US trailer, some international trailers and 6 trailers for other Magnet releases. Magnolia/Magnet is a very interesting distributor of mostly independent and foreign films. All the previews on this disc look terrific.

NIGHT OF THE LEPUS – The DVD Review

Review by Sam Moffitt

Bad movies have been a cult all their own at least since the publication of the Medved Brother’s book The 50 Worst Movies of All Time. Although my bet is that it started with the publication of Joe Dante’s article the 50 Worst Horror Movies of All Time (Or was it 25?) in Famous Monsters of Filmland in the 1960’s I had that issue and had seen some of those movies. I assumed Joe Dante was a grown man and found out years later he was about the same age as me when he submitted that article to Forry Ackerman. I loved reading Famous Monsters and Monster World but it never occurred to me to write an article and submit it as Joe Dante did (and Stephen King as Forry later told in interviews, although he made it a point not to publish fiction).

After the Medved’s book it became hip to admit to watching Ed Wood’s entire resume and quoting from Plan 9 and Glen or Glenda at parties. While I was in college at Webster University in the early 80’s some friends and I went to the Tivoli Theater for a triple feature of Plan 9 From Outer Space, Cocaine Fiends and The Creeping Terror. Seeing Plan 9 on the big screen was a surreal experience to say the least, especially hearing an almost full auditorium laugh and applaud their favorite bits of dialog. I’m a big boy now Johnnie!”, “Inspector Clay is dead, murdered, and someone is responsible!”, “How about you and me balling it up in Albuquerque?”

Film fans started seeking out films from Phil Tucker (Robot Monster) Herschell Gordon Lewis (Blood Feast and 2000 Maniacs) and Jerry Warren (Frankenstein Island). This trend continued through the 70s and 80s on up to the present day when made for video schlock keeps finding an audience of viewers who will watch just about anything.

Which brings me finally to a movie so wrong headed as to defy belief. Night of the Lepus is a now legendary bad movie about – wait for it – giant killer rabbits! It gets better, Lepus not only stars four name actors it was produced by MGM! An A.C. Lyles production MGM released Night of the Lepus in 1972.

I have some personal, not so fond memories of this film. From 1975 to 1979 I was in the US Navy (you’ll see me refer back to those days in my reviews, for several reasons). Among other jobs I ran the ships’ TV station on board an aircraft carrier. Yes, they have TVon Navy ships, we ran TV series episodes and movies on 1′ reel to reel video tape and 16MM film, as well as doing a daily newscast from a tiny studio right underneath one of the launch catapults.

I considered it part of my job to see every movie I could when we were in our home port, Norfolk, Virginia, or any other port we happened to be in for liberty call. That way I could write reviews of the movies when we showed them on our station, WAMR. That and the fact that I had no social life to speak of, and loved movies anyway. Thus I saw more movies in theaters during that four year period than I ever would again. And this was during part of the now legendary grind house era that Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez immortalized in their double feature Grindhouse. I went to see anything and everything and at one Norfolk drive-in I saw a triple feature of Island of Dr. Moreau (the 70’s remake of Island of Lost Souls), Food of the Gods (One of Bert Gordon’s giant animals movies) and , yes, Night of the Lepus. It was that night, while watching Marjoe Gortner in Food of the Gods being attacked by a giant chicken that I pondered the fact that this was the best I could do on a Saturday night in Norfolk. It sounds funny now but at the time I was ready to cut my own throat. But I digress.

Night of the Lepus tells the tale of rancher and eco friendly guy Cole Hillman played by Rory Calhoun. He is being over run with rabbits now that their natural predators, wolves and coyotes have all been killed off. He looks for help from University President Elgin Clark played by DeForest Kelley. President Clark in turn asks for help from entomologists (huh?) Roy and Gerry Bennett played by Stuart Whitman and Janet Leigh. Roy Bennett (being an expert on insects) decides that some genetic tampering with rabbits will end their ceaseless breeding habits. And then the trouble starts.

Seemingly overnight the bunnies grow to the size of cross town buses and develop a taste for flesh, human, cattle and horse. The quartet of heroes, and the local sheriff played by Paul Fix (who played more sheriff’s than just about any actor) and finally the National Guard deal with the monstrous bunny rabbits in true B-movie fashion. The problem, of course with all this is, rabbits, even blown up to giant size and with a taste for flesh are NOT scary.

The rabbit’s are filmed in extreme close-up and in very slow motion on sets made to look like farms, stores and a drive in movie theatre. Which provides the biggest laugh in the movie, one of the deputies has the bizarre task of interrupting the patrons at the local drive-in (called The Miracle and showing Every Little Crook and Nanny, an MGM release naturally!) with his bull horn to announce that “A herd of killer rabbits is headed this way, we have to evacuate this theatre!”. And all the patrons comply! At the drive-ins we used to go to that deputy would have been laughed out to the street!

And, the giant slow moving bunnies are never seen to really interact with human actors. No, for that they actually put a guy in a bunny suit, I am not making this up! In any scene where an actor has to be seen being attacked by one of these fluffy marauders a guy in a bunny suit gets the miserable task of trying to look threatening and “scary!!”

I am hard pressed to think of any animal that would be less threatening if blown up to giant size, I don’t know, kitty cats? No, cats are natural predators, in giant size they would see us as just another mouse. Check out the classic The Incredible Shrinking Man when Snowball comes after him in his little doll house in the living room! Maybe the giant chicken that tried to eat Marjoe Gortner in Food of the Gods?

This movie is so wrong it continues to boggle my mind and fascinate me years after it was released. Directed by William F Claxton, about whom I know nothing, and written by Don Holliday and Gene R Kearney. Now, consider that, just for a moment, somebody picked up a pay check for writing this movie! And it gets better! Night of the Lepus was based on a novel! Year of the Angry Rabbit by Russell Brolen! I’d love to read that if a copy can be found. And another wonderful factoid, according to the imbd Lepus cost only $900,000 to make and grossed over 3 million! This movie turned a good profit for MGM when they were not doing very well, what if it had spawned a franchise?! Ultimately though this movie is not really much fun, it has not been given the MST3K treatment, to my knowledge although it begs to be held up to ridicule. Now watching this again after all these years I only felt a deep sadness. Here are four actors who were highly thought of at one time.

Stuart Whitman, at one time, was promoted as a new James Dean! Don’t believe me? Watch the trailer for a movie called The Mark in which he played a confused child molester, if you can find it. I distinctly recall seeing it on television years ago. Whitman was in many movies and TV shows, was the star of a pretty good western series called Cimarron Strip which I never missed when I was a kid. Each episode was 90 minutes, in effect a series of made of made for TV movies. Whitman played the local sheriff with hundreds of miles to cover, the Cimarron Strip of the title. In one excellent episode, written by Harlan Ellison he had to deal with Jack the Ripper! A horror episode of a western series! And it worked!

And Janet Leigh! Here was an actress who worked with both Orson Welles (on Touch of Evil) and Hitchcock (do I really have to name the movie?, she was the woman in the shower in probably the most famous scene in any movie in cinema history!) Janet Leigh also worked with Vincent Minnelli (Two Tickets to Broadway) and John Frankenheimer (The Manchurian Candidate!) and was in many other movies and TV shows as well as stage productions. And here she is dealing with – giant rabbits?

Rory Calhoun was in many westerns, both movies and television. Calhoun also had his own series The Texan. He seemed comfortable with genre films, his part in Motel Hell is a career highlight as far as I am concerned. And DeForest Kelley? A member of the original Star Trek crew he never quite got out from under the shadow of that space ship. In point of fact this was his last non-Star Trek movie role for the rest of his career. Please don’t think he couldn’t act, check out a film noir from the 40s, if you can find it, called Nightmare. He had the chops, he just did not get the opportunity to prove it very often, as happens to far too many actors.

It is just very sad to see any of these actors in this mess, you can see what they are thinking in almost every scene: ” I’m going to kill my agent if I ever get my hands on him!”
Warner’s DVD release is bare bones with only the theatrical trailer and a French language option. This version is now out of print but the same transfer is available through Warner’s Archive DVD-R program.

JOYEUX NOEL – The DVD Review

Review by Sam Moffitt

Christmas always brings lists. Lists of gifts to buy, cards to mail, lists of things accomplished during the year past and resolutions for the coming New Year. And, always, lists of everybody’s favorite Christmas movies. Some are so very well known; It’s a Wonderful Life, several versions of A Christmas Carol, (The version with Alistair Sim is my favorite) Miracle on 34th Street, A Christmas Story (24 hours of it every year on TBS!) National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, one of the newer ones that I enjoy, Bad Santa. Classics each and every one, and then bad one’s like Christmas with the Kranks.

But here’s a more recent film about Christmas that deserves to be more well known and ought to be revisited every year. Joyeux Noel (French for Merry Christmas) was directed by Christian Carion and released in 2005. It recieved got no theatrical release in this country that I am aware of and has very little cult following, to my knowledge. Yet it tells the incredible true story of a spontaneous truce and stand down that happened on Christmas Eve 1914 at the very beginning of World War One, also known as the War to End All Wars (Yeah! Right!)

A true ensemble Joyeux Noel tells of French (Guillaume Canet as Lt. Audebert) Scottish (Alex Ferns, Capt. Gordon) and German (Daniel Bruhl, Lt. Horstmayer) officers who come to an agreement for all men under their command to stand down, cease fire and get some small measure of relief from a miserable war on Christmas Eve, 1914.

The inspiration comes from a German soldier who left his career as an opera singer (Benno Furman as Nicholaus Sprink) who sings Oh Come All Ye Faithful, in the original German of course, from the middle of no man’s land between the two sides in that barbaric conflict. The Scottish troops give him a round of applause leading to the three commanders meeting and deciding on the truce.

A Scottish chaplain (Gary Lewis as Palmer) says Mass for all the troops assembled. The men share what little they have with each other, the Germans have chocolate (of course!) while the French have wine (naturally!) and wouldn’t you know the Scottish have bag pipes with them which they play at the slightest provocation. They argue over a stray cat as tow which side he belongs to, the French or the German. The cat shows no preference and enjoys the company of all the soldiers present.

They look at photos of each other’s wives and girl friends and joke about sex as men always do when they are far from home and in uniform. The problem is they get to know each other too well and have a very hard time picking up their weapons and going back to the war. The truce extends to Christmas day when they choose up sides and play football while the three officers get to know each other only too well.

And the truce continues the day after Christmas (Boxing Day in the UK) when the Germans come walking across no man’s land to talk to the French again, a scene that brought me to tears, and tell their sworn enemies that their position is about to be shelled by artillery fire and why don’t they and the Scots come over and sit with the Germans in their trench line until the shelling ceases?

The three armies sit together and then the Scots officer makes the suggestion that, tit for tat, the German position will now be shelled and shouldn’t they move to the other trench line?

Of course this starts all sorts of complications in the chain of command. How can you have a decent war if the two sides are getting friendly and don’t want to kill each other any more? The French officer comes from a military family and his Father gives him a lecture on Duty, Honor and Country before relieving him of his command. The Scots officer is also relieved of command and his men reassigned to other units who are more in tune with the program of killing instead of playing football. And the Germans? The entire unit is reassigned to the Eastern Front. The last words from their Division Commander: “hope you’re as friendly with the Russians as you are with the French and the God Damn Scottish”.

The Scottish Chaplain is likewise defrocked by his Monsignor and told he did a very Un-Christian thing by giving Mass to the Enemy. He tries to defend himself as doing exactly what a Christian is supposed to do, Forgive and not Judge, but of course that helps him not at all.

This movie is a heart breaker. Having served in the military, four years regular Navy (in peacetime) I can understand the reluctance of these guys to pick up a gun and shoot at people you don’t even know and who have done you no personal harm. During my time at sea we used to see the Russians every time we went to the Mediterranean . Some times their ships would get so close we could see their rank and insignia, who had a mustache and whose shirt tail was hanging out. They looked like fine fellows to me, I found out years later when I got to know some Russians, that they ARE fine fellows! I had no argument with them but the Cold War was still in full swing, I was on active duty from 1975 to 1979 and had no interest in combat what so ever.

Joyeux Noel is a fine Christmas movie, which illustrates what Christmas is supposed to be all about, Peace and Goodwill, to All Men, no exceptions! It is also one of the greatest of Anti-War movies, easily the equal of All Quiet on the Western Front, Wooden Crosses, Paths of Glory (these are all about WWI, any one see a pattern here?)

It is also wonderful to see a war movie in which the USA is not present, not even mentioned. We did not enter that war until 1917, when it was almost over. Here it is early in the war, the French and Scots do not even wear helmets yet. The French are wearing bright red and blue uniforms and everyone appears reasonably clean and healthy. All that would change, World War One took the lives of 9 million men, devolved into the dirtiest and most miserable affair and resolved nothing. It lead directly to World War Two and an even bigger misery visited on the human race.

The DVD has a making of documentary and several versions of the theatrical trailer. We learn that the French production crew wanted accurate period detail, the uniforms and weapons are genuine. Even more heart breaking, the entire movie is taken from letters and diaries written by men who served in all three Armies. And we learn that truces broke out every Christmas after that and that fraternization was considered a problem on both sides of the trenches.

Even more accurately, the officers and men are all very young. This is not like an American World War Two movie where the army appears to be made up of middle aged men. The French officer, especially well played by Guillaume Canet , looks like a little boy playing at being a soldier, his uniform and cap appear too big for him, maybe a deliberate choice by the film makers to emphasize his innocence.

And the biggest irony, here is a film made by the French, twice invaded by the Germans, which makes every effort to be fair to the Germans. I challenge anyone to watch Joyeux Noel without crying, it is that powerful and moving a statement that war fare is not a natural condition for men to be in and that given a chance to know the ‘enemy’ makes it that much harder to pull that trigger. This is a movie that should be seen by every man, woman and child on this planet, but many people will pass it by because it is partly subtitled. Still it brightened my last three Christmas, I hope it brightens yours and gives hope for the future. I’ll be watching it again on Christmas Eve, I hope you will give it a look, and I wish a very Merry Christmas to all!

PIE IN THE SKY: THE BRIGID BERLIN STORY – The DVD Review

Review by Sam Moffitt

I love anything about Andy Warhol! I must say that right out of the gate, I love Andy Warhol! I have followed Warhol since the Sixties. Growing up near St. Louis, Missouri in the Sixties my family had a subscription to Life Magazine and they seemed to always be running articles about Op Art, Pop Art, the emerging youth and drug cultures and underground films made by people like the Kuchar Brothers, Jonas Mekas, Taylor Mead and Andy Warhol. It seemed like Warhol was in the news constantly, especially the question of whether his stuff was really art or even had any real value.

I read avidly about his ‘Factory’ in New York and his crew of strange underground people who helped him turn out art works, like….well like a factory!

I have three documentaries about Warhol himself, and have read every book by and about him I could find. I saw Ciao, Manhattan! in a theatre and now own it on dvd, the strange, drug addled movie starring one of Warhol’s crew, the doomed upper class debutant and fashion model Edie Sedqewick and read the book Edie by Jean Stein (a good place to start if you want to learn about those years in the New York art scene.).

There have been several movies made in the last couple of decades with Warhol being a character. Basquiat with David Bowie, The Doors with Crispin Glover and my personal favorite, I Shot Andy Warhol with Jared Harris looking very impressive as Andy.


There have also been several books and documentaries about Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground, with and without Nico. The Velvet’s were the house band at the Factory and were both inspired by and inspired Andy Warhol in turn. All this and so much more seems to only be scratching the surface about Warhol, the artist from a working class background who wanted his fame and fortune NOW, today, not after his death. As they used to say about artists, they were only famous and rich after their deaths, Warhol wanted none of that.

Now comes this fascinating documentary about one of Warhol’s more famous and visible Factory members and ‘Superstars’ of his underground films, Bridgid Berlin, also known as Bridgid Polk, her own self applied nick name due to her habit of ‘poking’ herself with syringes full of amphetamines.

Bridgid was and still is a larger than life (literally) personality who has managed to slim down and somewhat calmed down, from her glory days in the Sixties.
We learn that she came from a very upper class family. Her Father ended up running Hearst enterprises and her counterpart, Patty Hearst, yes THAT Patricia Hearst, was brought up to hate the Berlin family and name. The two former debutantes are now good friends though, thanks to John Waters who introduced them.

Always overweight the young Brigid had tremendous pressure put on her to lose weight, be pretty and be a proper Long Island debutant and make her family, especially her Mother proud. Rebellious, right up to the present day, Brigid did no such thing. She ate whatever she wanted, took massive quantities of drugs, especially amphetamines, and ran loose like some force of nature run amok.

One major paradox and contradiction, speed freaks usually never eat and get rail thin, not Brigid. And just to piss off her Mother and Father she became thick as thieves with Warhol and his Factory crew during the height of the Sixties counterculture and was, among other things, one of the famous Chelsea Girls (a Warhol movie I still have not seen, Chelsea Girls allegedly ran 24 hours long and was two images projected side by side of the Chelsea Girls women who lived at the Chelsea Hotel in New York City.) (The Hotel itself is the subject of yet another documentary). The content of Chelsea Girls? Apparently, from the clips included in this documentary it was all improvised by the girls themselves while Warhol’s camera recorded every little nuance. Brigid can be seen chattering away some speed freak nonsense. She also can be seen in Ciao, Manhattan sitting in a toilet stall raving about how good speed cooks down to a crystal clear surface like an ice rink you can skate on!

Wait, it gets better – apparently Warhol took some ideas from Bridgid. Here is a woman who apparently photographed every person she ever met with a Polaroid camera, she also photographed herself hundreds, if not thousands of times. We see stacks of file boxes full of her photographs, Warhol ended up doing exactly the same thing. Bridgid also filled up hundreds of notebooks with her record of every little thing she ever did, every conversation, every bit of house keeping, every movie seen, every event ever attended, you name it .

And like a true speed freak, Brigid has all this material cataloged, indexed and filed. Her Manhattan apartment is spotlessly clean and obsessively arranged. This is no Crazy Cat Lady living in squalor.

Even more astonishing, despite all the drugs in her past, (Brigid does not get high anymore) her memory is apparently flawless. We hear her repeat verbatim entire phone conversations she had with her Mother, and other people, decades ago. Of course it might be a big help that she also tape recorded almost all of her phone conversations, starting in the Sixties. Another type of media obsessively filed away and yet another record of her amazing life. Tape recording conversations is another idea Warhol took from Brigid and claimed as his own.

Her self image was so bad it led to her eating disorder, which she still has to deal with. We see her weigh every bit of food and stick to a strict diet heavy on lettuce and yogurt. We also see her fall off that diet, hard, and eat about a dozen key lime pies in one sitting, no I am not making this up. Having my own eating disorder I can sympathize but I never went on a binge like that! The title of the documentary is from Brigid’s obsession with key lime pie, this woman likes her pie, do NOT get between her and a good key lime pie!

No where near as heavy as in her youth Brigid is quite presentable but, as she herself admits, says whatever comes into her head. She admits she was estranged from her Mother years ago and has sisters who she hasn’t spoken too in years. Yet we see no trace of self pity or loneliness, she seems to have lots of friends, and even better, fans.

For instance John Waters admits to stalking her when he came to New York City in the Seventies. He considered her a bigger star than Lana Turner or Vivien Leigh. We also hear from some of the other Warhol survivors who turn up in these documentaries, Paul Morrisey, Billy Name, Bob Colacello.

Recent photo of Brigid Berlin with John Waters
And another contradiction, for me anyway, in her youth she was also quite attractive. I have always liked big women and we see some nude shots of Brigid from the Sixties, she looked fine in my humble opinion.
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But it’s Brigid herself who dominates her own documentary, and rightfully so, it is her show and she runs with it. One might ask, if she really is an artist what is the art? You would have to say her life is a work of art, all the photos, notebooks, tape recordings record an amazing life lived exactly the way she wanted to live it. Spending time with Brigid Berlin by watching this documentary is time well spent, in my honest opinion, this is one fascinating personality and yet another piece of the puzzle that is Andy Warhol. Brigid was an upper class debutant, very much like Edie Sedgewick, who fell in with the Warhol crew, but there any resemblance ended. Brigid was and is a survivor and a fascinating one at that.

There are out takes on this DVD which present even more of Brigid and biographies of the two directors.