I Will Walk Like a Crazy Horse (DVD -
1973) 
Directed by Fernando Arrabal
Starring Emmanuelle Riva, George Shannon, Hachemi Marzouk
(Cult Epics) www.cultepics.com
Rogue Spanish film maker and crazed visionary Arrabal returns with a much more linear film than his earlier schizo-surrealist epic "Viva La Muerte" (1970). Aden (Shannon) is rich, handsome, and running from the law, after scaring his mother to death with a crab, as revenge for trying to crucify him as a child. He ends up roaming around the desert, where he chances upon a magical 10,000 year-old dwarf named Marvel (Marzouk), who feeds him goat shit wrapped in rose petals. Marvel is a kind of dustbowl Doctor Doolittle, able to communicate psychically with the animals, and seems more than happy to just dance around his arid neverland, shoveling sand into his mouth, and feeding baby snakes his own finger blood. Aden is enthralled with the enchanting simplicity of the strange little man, and convinces him to pack up his favorite goat Theresa and take off to the big city in his jeep.
This extremely odd couple take up residence in a luxuriously post-modern, Clockwork Orange-y apartment, but Marvel has trouble adjusting to a metropolitan existence, going so far as to smuggle in suitcases full of dirt to roll around in. Undaunted, Aden tries to show him off to society at large, but the tiny, hairy man with a goat doesn't quite make the splash Aden figured he would. One day, while Aden is off at his mother's now-empty house, trying on her underwear and simulating his own traumatic birth in the bathtub, Marvel unwittingly joins the circus, where he is placed in cage and forced to do funky dwarf dances. The guffawing gawkers find it less funny, however, when Marvel sics a lion buddy on them. Later on, the duo hit the road, and Marvel ends up marrying a she-male, who splits in the middle of the night, leaving him with nothing but a beetle to remember her by. It is obvious at this point that he really needs to get back to the fuckin' desert where he belongs, but the two are waylaid by the cops, who have finally caught up with Aden. It's pretty easy to trace somebody when they're travelling with goofy trolls and farm animals, after all.
All of this insanity leads to a graphic denouement back in the sand dunes, when Marvel must prove his devotion to his ill-fated friend in a most- let's say distasteful way.
Images of Arrabal's patented shock-surrealism are peppered throughout the whimsical tale, bleeding into the edges like an insistent arthritic throb, timed well enough so that you continually choke on your laughter, as Marvel's mishaps are cross-cut with scenes of penis mutilation, child assassination, grotesque sex, cannibalism, and that old Spanish surrealist standard, gratuitous animal slaughter. Why? Because Arrabal is a nut, that's why. Quite possibly a brilliant one, but a loon, nonetheless. At any rate, high praise should be given to Cult Epics for unearthing this amazing piece of cinema, a work of bleak, metaphor-heavy fantasy that is as bizarre as it is triumphant, as shamelessly ugly as it is startlingly beautiful.
This 'special edition' of "I Will Walk Like a Crazy Horse" also contains a fittingly confounding interview with Arrabal, who certainly lives up to the strangeness of his films. Whether it's all for show or not, it's affecting. Watching him spout off in angry French about absolute nonsense as he wrestles with a chair and downs glass after glass of red wine is almost as entertaining as watching the film itself. Don't expect much illumination into the inner workings of his mind and work, however, unless lines like "I dream of wearing my ass like a hat- a saint of saints!" makes perfect sense to you. - Sleazegrinder