Flaming Creatures

Jack Smith called it a comedy set in a haunted movie studio, and it opens like one: men and women, mostly of no fixed gender, vamp for the camera and sell a heart-shaped lipstick that will not wipe off. Smith shot it on cheap, overexposed film stock, so faces bleach out and every glittering costume smears into the next. Francis Francine (Francis Francine) and Delicious Dolores (Sheila Bick) pose and preen, and none of them seem to expect the afternoon to turn.