Flaming Creatures1963

Name: Flaming Creatures
Genre: Comedy Horror, Vampire, Supernatural, Gothic
Released: 1963-04-29
Rating: 5

Directed by Jack Smith

5.0

Crypt Score

Blended from 2 sources

IMDb 4.6TMDB 4.7

✍ Review

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Year

1963

Runtime

42 min

Box Office

Budget

$300

The premise

Filmmaker and artist Jack Smith described his own film as a “comedy set in a haunted movie studio.” Flaming Creatures begins humorously enough with several men and women, mostly of indeterminate gender, vamping it up in front of the camera and participating in a mock advertisement for an indelible, heart-shaped brand of lipstick. However, things take a dark, nightmarish turn when a transvestite chases, catches and begins molesting a woman. Soon, all of the titular “creatures” participate in a (mostly clothed) orgy that causes a massive earthquake. After the creatures are killed in the resulting chaos, a vampire dressed like an old Hollywood starlet rises from her coffin to resurrect the dead. All ends happily enough when the now undead creatures dance with each other, even though another orgy and earthquake loom over the end title card.

Horror Vault's take

Jack Smith's audacious 1963 underground film unfolds like a fever dream inside a crumbling Hollywood fantasy, where gender-bending performers blur the line between the living and the undead. Part absurdist comedy, part nightmarish tableau, it revels in excess and provocation with a gleefully irreverent spirit. Rooted in classic monster-movie iconography, Smith transforms familiar horror tropes into a vehicle for avant-garde expression and queer liberation. Few films are as difficult to categorize — or as impossible to forget.

Content: Sexual Content, Non-Consensual Scenario Depiction, Nudity, Transgressive And Provocative Imagery