A man, his dog, and the regions they inhabited, each leaving his own distinctive mark on the landscape. Not even time can wash the residue of what they left behind.
"One of Kuchar’s few feature-length works is this ribald pastiche to postwar Hollywood melodrama, that period when the studios were trying very hard to be adult. The intricate, overheated plot involves a nurse trapped in an unhappy marriage who escapes the big city in search of greener pastures in Blessed Prairie, Oklahoma. Swerving from earnest homage to dark satire, Kuchar simultaneously imitates and savages the legacy of Sirk, Preminger and Minnelli that inspired him, gleefully intertwining the suggestive and the scatological, while also pointing towards the later postmodern parodies of Cindy Sherman. The Devil’s Cleavage is also a rich time capsule of 1970s San Francisco, replete with cameos from Curt McDowell and Art Spiegelman." —hcl.harvard.edu
This movie was made mostly in Brooklyn during some very hot and empty evenings. Since the evenings were so empty, Jane Elford, the star, urged me to get started making another movie (we had completed PAGAN RHAPSODY the year before). I said "okay," and launched her in a photographed series of telephone calls, not really knowing who was going to be on the other end. I was interested at the time in irrational, neurotic responses and so the heroine was put into unstable situations that I dreamt up because I was making a movie with a plot and there should be some action .... Many of the stars appear nude and all I can say is that because of the heat and the general, overall feeling of the film which is one of the usual desperation and explosive emotions, I couldn't see any other way of them playing it. The general tone of everything was ... "Why even bother to get dressed?"
" ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE BLESSED culminates my involvement with artist Red Grooms and Mimi Gross. It is a diary of our work as we head for the Pacific Ocean in a suicidal plunge for theatrical infamy. The film traces the construction of two craven images made in the likeness of myself by Grooms and Gross. Then it switches to the sandhills of Nebraska where fat cattle walk around. There the film explores Grooms' biggest construction, "The Chicago Installation." The film rolls relentlessly onward to the West Coast showing, for the first time on any screen, a theatrical production we three put in the University of California. It marks my directorial debut on the stage and Red Grooms' comeback after ten years of exile from live theatre." - George Kuchar
The rising moon is the main theme in this short movie of three people and an animal going about their nocturnal rituals. This movie is evidently part three of my trilogy that started with HOLD ME WHILE I'M NAKED and ECLIPSE OF THE SUN VIRGIN. It evidently is, since part three never really came out. This seems to look like it could be part three. — GK (anthologyfilmarchives.org)
A desperate, married woman meets a mysterious man who she blatantly desires. Through some twists and turns, things do not go over as well as she seems to wish.
