ABOUT THE AUTHOR: A.C. Nicholas, who has a sketchy background and hails from parts unknown in Western Pennsylvania, was once a drive-in theater projectionist and disk jockey, Currently, in addition to being a writer, editor, podcaster, and voice-over artist, he contributes to Drive-In Asylum. His first article, “Grindhouse Memories Across the U.S.A.,” was published in issue #23. He’s also written “I Was a Teenage Drive-in Projectionist” and “Emanuelle in Disney World and Other Weird Tales of a Trash Film Lover” for upcoming issues.

Director Brian DePalma has had an amazing career in diverse genres. He’s best known for his horror films, like Carrie and The Fury, and giallo-esque suspense thrillers, the greatest being Blow Out and Dressed to Kill, but he’s also done a fantastic musical, Phantom of the Paradise, a moving war film, Casualties of War, and a trio of classic gangster films, Scarface, The Untouchables and Carlito’s Way. Early in his career, he dabbled in comedy with mixed results, and he’s stumbled with science fiction, Mission to Mars, and adapting a couple of beloved best-sellers for the screen, A Bonfire of the Vanities and The Black Dahlia. I’m pleased that B & S About Movies is devoting a week to one of my favorite directors of all time, even though he hasn’t had a success in decades, and I’ve come to realize that he’s probably lost his touch. For my contribution to this special retrospective, we’ll look at DePalma’s least-seen film, Dioynsus in ’69 from 1970.

Even for early-career DePalma, this was a weird project, a film of an avant-garde stage production of The Bacchae by Euripedes, performed in a garage, by a New York City experimental theater group called The Performance Group. The film’s direction is credited to DePalma, Robert Fiore and Bruce Rubin, but you can tell by looking at any five minutes of the film that it was mostly DePalma calling the shots behind the camera. Indeed, the immersive nature of the staging—making the audience part of the performance—calls to mind the famous “Be Black, Baby” sequence in DePalma’s other 1970 release, Hi, Mom! But apart from that, the biggest tell is the use of split screen throughout, a DePalma trademark if ever there was one. 

Today, while the film remains little more than a curio for DePalma completists and those who like ancient Greek tragedies and avant-garde theatre, it did foreshadow that DePalma would, by the end of the 70s, become a world-class director. The black-and-white camera work is crisp, and the split screen allows you to take in different perspectives simultaneously, becoming a voyeur as in so many DePalma films to come. Best of all, the play stars DePalma regular William Finley as Dionysus. Finley’s terrific—as you’d imagine—and the performance ends with the wonderfully insane segment “William Finley for President.” Roger Greenspun, in his New York Times review, wrote: “DePalma, a witty, elegant, understated young director (for example, Greetings) seems to have found new ease and vigor and a taste for risks in meeting the challenge of this film.” I wholeheartedly agree.

Dionysus in ’69 has been a challenge to view over the years. Its distributor, Sigma III, had released a classic 60’s Euro-horror double feature, The Horrible Dr. Hichcock and The Awful Dr. Orloff, as well as DePalma’s Greetings and Hi, Mom!, but didn’t seem to have much enthusiasm for the film, which snagged an unfortunate X-rating for its pervasive nudity. As far as my research uncovered, it played one New York City theater in March 1970, but had few, if any, other bookings. It has languished, surfacing only for a long out-of-print North American DVD and an appearance in a French DVD box set of DePalma’s earliest films. A few years ago, I was delighted to discover that it was available for free streaming on a New York University website. For me, that was like a gift from the Greek gods: the ability to check off the last film in DePalma’s filmography.

Even the least of Brian DePalma’s films has things of interest for true film buffs. I, for one, am glad that I found Dionysus in ’69. My life is now complete. Well, okay, not quite. There’s still Jerry Lewis’s The Day the Clown Cried.