A Walloon language professor and his French set designer fiancée are at an impasse. While his Flemish students vocally protest against more Walloon influence at their uni, the couple – who superficially speak the same #language, #French – struggles to find the right words. They meet, part ways, then find each other again on a train that at morning turns out to be standing still in the middle of nowhere. The man, now without her, disembarks and with two acquaintances who also were on that train tries to find out where he and she are.

 

André Delvaux's Un soir, un train is a masterpiece about finding the right language in a fractured world.

An American tourist visiting Dorset is tricked by a prostitute, then falls victim to a youth gang controlled by volatile con King – a still very green Oliver Reed at his meanest. The trickster is King's sister, who confides in the American hoping to escape her brother's incestuous advances.

“I'm strange, all right! I'll show you just how strange I am!”

– King

The couple elopes to a nearby island, closely followed by King and his gang, where they find a group of #children, all contently living in an underground lab, with #AutomaticDoors only they can control.

 

They are the damned.

Various characters lose their shoes in Fellini's hedonistic La dolce vita, most famously Anita Ekberg after entering a freezing Fontana di Trevi with paparazzo Marcello Mastroianni.

“I like lots of things. But there are three things I like most: love, love, and love.”

– Sylvia

A young woman jumps out of a window, leaving behind her husband, an #antiques dealer. Sitting in their bedroom with the body lying in state, the widower remembers her. In his memory, she is nameless, abstract, a state not a life..

 

Une femme douce is closely adapted from Fyodor #Dostoyevsky Кроткая [Krotkaya / A Gentle Creature] (1876).

A slice of teenage bravura is just enough for a couple of kids to #dare each other to a drag race. Hours after the car of one of them had plunged from a bridge into the murky waters below, Mary Henry resurfaces.

“It's funny… the world is so different in the daylight. In the dark, your fantasies get so out of hand. But in the daylight everything falls back into place again.”

– Mary Henry

Carnival of Souls was Herk Harvey's sole feature length film. He's much better known – albeit mostly uncredited – for his short PSAs including Halloween Safety, ruining your kids' favourite holiday since 1977, and Shake Hands With Danger (1980).

 

You don't have to tell Three Finger Joe about taking no risks.

Frederick Wiseman is the fly-on-the-wall at Northeast High School, filming teenage angst and awkwardness. There's talk of #PromNight, and small dramas when it turns out that above-the-knee is not formal wear thankyouverymuchyounglady. The dance itself is never shown.

“I didn't mean to be individualistic.”

– student

This is High School. I'm glad I never have to set foot in one ever again.

Real-world female impersonator Leslie Marlowe plays Lt. Albert Rose, a military man forced into wearing lingerie and said wig and eventually embracing it as “Rose Albert”.

“IS HE? or ISN'T SHE?”

– tagline

Re-released by Something Weird you're forgiven to think that She-Man: A Story of Fixation will be a schlockfest. Instead it's a versatile as Bob Clark's filmography. She-Man – and do please forgive the wording – is part #fetish fest, part #mondo movie, part #queer liberation.

 

A lovely film that, reminiscent to Ed Wood's Glen or Glenda (1953), was made by people who lived the lifestyle and therefore forfeits the unnecessary, exploitative angle.

 

Read more about Marlowe and his/her peers in Avery Willard's wonderful Female Impersonation from 1971.

A carnival-like parade.

“Do you still go dancing at night? I've stopped going. There are no dance halls here. But that's not the only reason. I was used to dancing with you. I'm not comfortable with other girls.”

– Giovanni in a letter to Liliana

“People should fall in love with their eyes closed.”

– Andy Warhol