SUPPORTER DAY: The Lickerish Quartet (1970)

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When this movie was first released, at the dawn of what would be porn chic, Andy Warhol and Vincent Canby both spoke highly of it. Today, it wouldn’t seem so incendiary. In 1970, it was mind blowing.

An adult movie is watched by a wealthy couple played by Frank Wolff (The Great Silence) and Erika Remberg (Cave of the Living Dead) and their son (Paolo Turco, What Have They Done With Your Daughters?). That night, at a carnival, they meet a woman who they think is the actress — it’s actually Annie Carol Edel (Crazy Desires of a Murderer) — they’ve just watched. She’s played by Silvana Venturelli and she soon seduces the entire family, forcing them to admit their desires and secrets.

Shot Italian style — a plan to use live sound didn’t work out — and with a score by Stelvio Cipriani, this all becomes an exercise in style, like the scene in a library where words are zoomed into and books are thrown. I also am amazed that the girl who may or may not be the actress is willing to spend any time with the son, who seems devoted to magic tricks and telling people his strange myth-based dreams, much less making love to him in a field outside the castle he lives in.

Director Radley Metzger, who wrote the script with Michael DeForrest, this movie just hints at how far things would be taken in the future. As it is, in Pittsburgh, it played at The Guild, a theater in Squirrel Hill that became Gullifty’s, another place that is gone.