User Reviews

This brand of experimental theater is considered stilted and melodramatic by standards 50 years later, and the film utilizes so many different theater and film techniques it borders on a 'kitchen sink' approach. Some of these techniques work, but even when they do the flow is interrupted by something else that doesn't work as well. The famous cameraman deserves his accolades, that being said; the editors deserve a combat medal for somehow maintaining any semblance of a storyline through this mess. One can only imagine what they cut! The two major challenges with this film are following the story through the cavalcade of locations, and the multitudinous methods of dialog delivery. These include; actors randomly speaking passages written in a biblical style ("Trying hard to have his water wash the skinny sin from her wretched body") , the cast delivering exposition in a greek chorus ("A little later - everything is the same"), other times a divided greek chorus wherein 5 or 6 of the cast will each speak a few words of a single sentence ("1*Majorie Satz... 2*It's another day... 3*she's in the store with two men... 4*Father... 5*and brother), and at other times a member of the chorus will read the stage directions aloud ("Cy plays a tom tom with his feet and salutes the sun"). This is in addition to the often stilted dialog of characters who sometimes speak in the third person ("They look at each other as if he were a toddler learning to walk"), or are suddenly voiced through internal dialog ("Pigs is a lot better smelling than you Futz") or speak to the camera as if it were a pig ("Amanda... you are of this world. Knowing two kinds of male animal; Pigs and Men"). Though there's omnipresent Old Time music, rarely does anyone sing an entire verse of anything, in the manner most other productions of the time did (Godspell, JCSuperstar, JatATechnicolor Dreamcoat, etc), which would break out into full fledged songs that anchored a development in the plot and give the audience a catchy hook to hum. No, there's none of that. Many times the chorus, or a character inexplicably break into modern dance; which appears to serve no other purpose than maintaining audience attention (or perhaps it's to distract - hard to say). Likewise there are moments when the entire cast suddenly make death mask faces, as though they were gallows hung. Through quick editing, a young lady's face momentarily becomes quite elderly... or is it the other way around? The film suddenly explodes into psychedelic dream imagery. Oscar the girl killer, somehow possesses the cure for old age and then he evokes Shiva. Suddenly everyone of any gender is paired off and kissing. It's certainly a smorgasbord for the senses (excepting singing). The plot appears to be anchored around an outdoor performance of the play, in front of farm hands mixed with hippie friends of the cast, who the camera cuts away to show either; mesmerized by the proceedings, laughing at something we seem to have missed, or looking around in bewilderment. However, this anchor is ultimately upended by the addition of such a wild array of cutaway dramatizations in various places around the town that it's unnecessarily disconcerting. One must understand that this type of performance is all about challenging the audience, and as such it is much further along the 'difficult/challenging' spectrum than other similarly filmed theatrical productions. Under the weight of all this staging the plot fairly simply involves Cy, a man who after having lived around the folks of this town (and having slept with many of the women), has sequestered himself from the 'meanness' of those around him and directs his love toward a pig named Amanda. The townsfolk, feeling slighted and judged by his self-removal, choose to imagine him in the worst light; casting his Agape (benevolent charity) toward a pig, as Eros (sexual love). Then there's the Oedipus side of the story, involving Oscar - another townsman who's raped and murdered a young woman. Cy is accused of being to blame for that man's madness, as well as the condition of Majorie; a free-loving girl he bedded. Similarly Majorie, the girl who still loves Futz (but hates him for his pig love), is persecuted for having been used as 'a slot machine' for all the boys in town and is reviled by her own family (even as they bed her themselves). "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned for a pig!" Cy's preference for an innocent style of love and his penchant for pointing out others failings to their faces, makes him an enemy and a scapegoat for all the town's sins. Cue mass hysteria. Resolve with a smattering of applause. Though FUTZ is certainly more Greek (by way of hillbillies) in it's scope, this story is likely better served in a film like Billy Jack (1971), and falls in with other social critiques of this time period like Leo The Last (1970); but if this brand of challenging performance is your thing it's worth checking out once.

When it comes to movies, you occasionally come across someone saying something along the lines of, "They don't make 'em like they used to." That is certainly true to a large degree, but in the case of the movie "Futz", one can be thankful they don't make 'em like they used to! The movie is almost indescribable, one reason being that it seems to often be an attempt to replicate the stage origins of this story on the silver screen. That may not sound too difficult, but with this story, the narrative jumps way all over the place from start to end. As a result, the story is often incoherent, and I only got the basic idea of what was going on - a man in love with a pig. Yeah, I wonder how that premise would fly over with audiences today, though it was apparently somewhat popular on the off-Broadway stage. Anyway, the movie today is a real chore to sit through, and its only worth may be that it is a cinematic document of the stage play. Though even if you are into experimental and avant-garde movies or stage plays, you'll likely find this to be a headache to endure from start to end.