George Kuchar, the Bronx-born filmmaker whose campy, low-budget films inspired generations of underground directors, died on Tuesday, Sept. 6, 2011, at the age of 69 from prostrate cancer.
Kuchar began making films in the late 1950s with his twin brother Mike Kuchar, using the 8mm camera they received from their parents for their 12th birthday. With their neighborhood and family’s apartment as backdrops, friends and neighbors as actors and their parents personal items as props, the pair cranked out dozens of short films in their early years. That number that would ultimately grow to more than 200 as the boys began shooting in 16mm film.
By the early 1960s, the Kuchars’ spirited, deliciously “low-fi” work began making some noise in the underground and cult film community, alongside such avante moviemakers of the day as Stan Brakhage, Kenneth Anger and Andy Warhol. Usually clever, occasionally bawdy and always fun, the films of the Kuchar Brothers often aped the genre pictures that they would flock to at their local theater when they weren’t making their own movies.
A scene from George Kuchar's 1965 film The Sins of the Fleshapoids.
A love of schlocky Hollywood movies coupled with their own send-up sensibilities yielded such campy flicks as The Thief and the Stripper (1959), I Was a Teenage Rumpot (1960), A Town Called Tempest (1962) and the unforgettably titled Eclipse of the Sun Virgin (1967). As a solo filmmaker, George directed the 1966 short film Hold Me While I’m Naked, a semi-autobiographical piece about an addled softcore filmmaker.
Among the filmmakers George’s movies inspired are John Waters (Hairspray), David Lynch (Dune) and Todd Haynes (Poison), not to mention a flock of D.I.Y. YouTube auteurs.
Frustratingly, the Kuchar brothers’ filmography is essentially unavailable on DVD, save for 1965’s Sins of the Fleshapoids, a 40-minute post-apocalyptic science-fiction extravaganza that plays like an insane collaboration between Ed Wood (Plan 9 From Outer Space), Douglas Sirk (Magnificent Obsession) and George Pal (1960’s The Time Machine).
There is, however, a fine recent documentary on the Kuchar brothers, 2009’s It Came From Kuchar, directed by Jennifer M. Kroot and released by IndiePix. It features interviews with George and Mike, as well as talking head bits from Waters, The Graduate writers Buck Henry and others.
Leave a Reply