The Devil’s Cleavage

This hilariously debased scuzz opera from DIY renegade George Kuchar is a deliriously overheated homage to/send-up of Golden Age histrionics. The head-spinningly convoluted plot follows a hard-boiled, Joan Crawford–esque nurse (Ainslie Pryor, displaying a scowl for the ages) who, with her trusty jar of fake vomit, flees her grubby husband and hits the road, where she crosses paths with a parade of clothes-rippingly horny weirdos, including a moony motel clerk (Curt McDowell). With its barrage of deliciously overripe dialogue (“At least stalks of corn have ears and aren’t deaf to the desperations of the damned!”), The Devil’s Cleavage plays like a 1940s Otto Preminger film writ in filth and sleaze.

Preceded by:
Hold Me While I’m Naked
George Kuchar, USA, 1966, 16mm, 17m
A stone-cold classic of underground cinema about a filmmaker who finds himself in a crisis when his lead actress quits, Hold Me While I’m Naked is a candy-colored treatise on the humor and pathos of sexual hunger.