FUTZ! (1969)
Article #1587 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-17-2005
Posting Date: 12-16-2000
Directed by Tom O’Horgan
Featuring John Bakos, Seth Allen, Peter Craig

This movie is about a man who is in love with a pig. I also found it to be well nigh unwatchable. The amazing thing is that these two facts aren’t really connected. As offensive as the bestiality story line is, the movie is so stylized and packed with audience distancing techniques that you never once really believe that you’re watching real people engaging in real acts; as a consequence, it never seems real enough to offend. No, the reason I found it nearly unwatchable is that stylization is so excessive the movie becomes actively annoying. It’s based on an avant-garde stage play that tried to combine stylized acting, music, poetry, dance and contortionism to create a thrilling new art form; in other words, it’s pretentious and self-indulgent. It may have worked better on stage than it does on the screen, but I certainly wouldn’t waste my time trying to mount a stage production of it to find out if that’s true; I can only see so many scenes of people delivering lines and making pig sounds while standing on their heads before my mind rejects the experience. I also suspect that the message of the movie may be a little too trite to merit this level of artiness, but I’m not even sure there is a message or whether I’m just reading something into it. The only reason I’m covering it for this series is that the ending has some horrific touches to it, but it’s by no means a horror movie. It’s not even good for campy laughs, for that matter. This one is only for fans of screen versions of avant-garde theatre.