"The Looking Glass Murders" is an obscure, shot on video, made for Scottish TV version of the mime improv play "Pierrot in Turquoise," which Lindsey Kemp and David Bowie first staged in 1967. Pierrot is a freaky mime who ventures into a mirror where he falls in love and rolls around with the equally grotesque Columbine. But when Columbine beds black stallion (in half-assless spandex) Harlequin, Pierrot's jealousy takes over and drives him to murder. Cloud watches over the proceedings from his perch (on a ladder!) and narrates in song.
"Weird" doesn't begin to describe this one. It begins and ends with a man playing piano, but no sound is emitted. The sparse production doesn't betray its theatrical roots -- there's a grand total of two sets and they make no attempt to disguise the fact they're thrown together on stages. While I've never found mimes as unsettling as most, the trio in this film are REALLY creepy. And although it has a short running time of 26 minutes, it's so tediously strange and surreal that it felt like it was three hours long. When it comes to films I'm a bit of a masochist, opting for the strange, bizarre and reviled, but this one was almost too weird for me to appreciate.
The big redeeming quality here is Bowie. Whenever he sings, he pushes the story along -- and with the oddball visuals, it sort of feels like an early music video. However, the moment that Cloud falls silent, the whole thing drags until his next appearance. Fans of Bowie should absolutely seek it out. Everyone else should avoid it like the swine flu.
"Weird" doesn't begin to describe this one. It begins and ends with a man playing piano, but no sound is emitted. The sparse production doesn't betray its theatrical roots -- there's a grand total of two sets and they make no attempt to disguise the fact they're thrown together on stages. While I've never found mimes as unsettling as most, the trio in this film are REALLY creepy. And although it has a short running time of 26 minutes, it's so tediously strange and surreal that it felt like it was three hours long. When it comes to films I'm a bit of a masochist, opting for the strange, bizarre and reviled, but this one was almost too weird for me to appreciate.
The big redeeming quality here is Bowie. Whenever he sings, he pushes the story along -- and with the oddball visuals, it sort of feels like an early music video. However, the moment that Cloud falls silent, the whole thing drags until his next appearance. Fans of Bowie should absolutely seek it out. Everyone else should avoid it like the swine flu.
