If cinema is a mirror, this double feature smashes it and rolls around in the glittering shards. Outer Order’s latest Maniac May pairing is for the brave, the libidinal philosophers, and the trash-culture theologians. This is not your Netflix & chill lineup—this is exorcism via cinema. Flesh, fantasy, food, feces, and film-as-object all get thrown into the blender.
Sweet Movie (1974)
Dušan Makavejev’s Sweet Movie is the most beautiful punch to the face you’ll ever get from a movie. It’s part political satire, part bodily manifesto, part performance art horror show. You’ve got two narrative threads: one follows a beauty queen who marries a capitalist castrato and escapes into sexual psychosis; the other follows a revolutionary woman on a ship covered in sugar, full of refugees, dead bodies, and Lenin busts.
There’s literal vomiting, food orgies, a Marxist puppet show, and one of the most transgressive scenes in cinematic history in a giant pile of sugar and blood. This film is not here to comfort—it’s here to decompose you. Capitalism, repression, nationalism, innocence—it tears it all down with a grin and a ladle of chocolate pudding.
The Lickerish Quartet (1970)
Radley Metzger’s The Lickerish Quartet is erotic baroque, an art-house softcore dream swimming in mirrors and riddles. A wealthy trio—mother, father, and son—obsess over a mysterious stag film. Then, a woman from the film appears in real life and insinuates herself into their lives. Or does she?
It’s a sex film dressed like a decadent European mystery. Dialogue is circular. Reality is foggy. Every camera movement is a seduction. It’s pornography as puzzle box, pushing you to question what you’re watching and who is performing for whom.
This isn’t just arousal—it’s recursion. Metzger dares you to decode desire, to touch the untouchable through celluloid.
The Pairing
Where Sweet Movie is chaos incarnate—bodily fluids, revolution, and rupture—The Lickerish Quartet is sleek illusion, high-gloss cinema erotica masking deeper games of power and identity. One is radical cinema exploding the screen; the other is controlled elegance hiding a void.
Both films ask: what does it mean to watch? What does it mean to want? They seduce, confuse, and contaminate. This isn’t a double feature. It’s a philosophical trap.
Final Verdict:
10/10 – An exquisite collision of filth and form. Transgression meets tactility. The sacred is desecrated. The obscene is aestheticized. You leave the theater stained—in the best way.
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