Tongue (K.B., 1976)

Quasi (Al Poe) cannot talk but he has a nine-inch tongue. He lives in an apartment with a charcoal grill and a toilet tank full of beers. His only companions are a pet frog and an inner voice that taunts him mercilessly albeit bafflingly (two consecutive lines: "You are the biggest turkey in life. She loves your dirty drawers."). Quasi hooks up with Cherry (Brigitte Maier) whose apartment is a temple of black fetishism (poster of Jimi Hendrix, Jet cover with article about Black Panthers, racist cast-iron money bank). Cherry later throws an orgy but that's not Quasi's scene. So he wanders back home and reminisces about the murders he committed which may have led to his current state of muteness.

I could be wrong about that last part, though. One reviewer claims the murders are happening in the present. And I'm totally guessing about the muteness because I may have missed an explanation for it. Written, produced, starring (and possibly directed by?) Niva Ruschell, Tongue has much more important matters in mind than tight storytelling. Ruschell clearly had aspirations towards art cinema. Many shots are beautifully composed aquariums worthy of Fassbinder. The orgy begins with a confounding (360-degree?) pan filmed through a decorative mirror; its starting and ending points do not delineate a coherent narrative space. Quasi plays chess by the water just like the knight in The Seventh Seal. The music is ever-more brittle electronics and original funk songs. Incredibly, a soundtrack album was released and goes for $200 as of this writing. As usual with these cracked porn classics, you always feel as if you just walked into a theatre screening this film even though you've been dutifully watching it from the beginning. I was transfixed throughout.

Grade: A-minus