Column Chronicles: Some more of my favorite esoteric films

Some more of my favorite esoteric films

Frank Cotolo
May 24, 2018

Through the decades of my storied life in and around show business I have always had an esoteric taste for film. I enjoyed many of the popular movies that have made industry history and I don't disparage any movie based on its lack of depth or artistry. It just so happens that some of my favorite films are abstruse works produced and performed by people that never made the mainstream league. Here are a few more of my favorites.

Paint Your Crime Lightly (1976)

Stiles Manifold made this stunning tale of a young man whose love for finger-painting gets him in a load of trouble with a local crime boss who is forging famous painters' works and selling them. Manifold filmed the move with every other scene sideways, giving the audience the illusion that they were watching it from a laying down position.

At Home At Last (1984)

A two-timing husband is a complex character in Fluffy Malone's dark story of a cheating husband who brings women to his home and puts them into his bed with his wife, who for some reason never knows they are there. The star, Derrick Woo, made only one movie, this one, because, he said, "I could never play another character like that guy, so why try?"

Baked Lightly (1985)

Sam Samworth made three films before he committed suicide by jumping from a Merry-Go-Round going at top speed; this is his best. Shot entirely in the rain, Sam explores the life of a drug-addicted baker in an ordinary town where people know his drugged personality and not his "straight self." Things get complicated when he decides to do half of the twelve-step program to detox. It co-stars Emily St. Overdrive in her first role.

Hooked And Driven (1991)

When a racecar driver loses his hands in a fistfight and has them replaced with hooks, his career is in jeopardy until a lovely anorexic girl takes a liking to him and starts to teach him how to do simple things with thin fingers. Early Stockholm plays the driver in Ridley Riley's written-directed film that was banned at the Cannes Film Festival for obvious reasons. The girl, played by Rita Stork, went on to be a key grip for major films after gaining a lot of weight.

Oddly enough, most of the movies I like best are so unknown that they didn't make the move to v ideos or later DVD or even to Netflix or YouTube. If you ever get a chance to see them, though, treat yourself to true underground film experiences.

Frank Cotolo can be found hosting the talk and interview programme Cotolo Chronicles. You can send him an e-mail at this address: frank@148.ca.