Vinyl (1965)

Andy Warhol very very loosely adapts "A Clockwork Orange". Gerard Malanga tells us all how much of a juvenile delinquent he is and then furious dances to Martha and the Vandellas while Edie Sedgwick watches. Then Ondine, playing his buddy Scum Baby, turns him in to a cop who has been sitting in a chair and laughing the whole time. The cop turns him over to a doctor who tortures him, which seems to be a real S&M kinda deal ... no faking. Malanga is reformed. All of this happens on one set with the whole cast present the whole time. At just over an hour long, it's way too long ... but the peak moments, like Malanga's dance or any randomly selected minute of Sedgwick sitting on the sideline, make the whole thing worth watching.

"When I used to...do those things, it made me feel very good." Being an early (very loose) adaptation off of Anthony Burgess' dystopian novel 'A Clockwork Orange', Andy Warhol's 1965 American dirty, ragged black-and-white experimental film 'Vinyl' shot entirely on two thirty-three minute unedited reels is quite actually, though cheap and unrehearsed, rather ambitious. Featuring such songs as "Tired of Waiting for You" by The Kinks, "The Last Time" by the Rolling Stones, "Shout" by the Isley Brothers and, most notably, "Nowhere to Run" by Martha and the Vandellas (and danced with hyper head-bobbing and hair flailing by Factory regular Gerard Malanga as lead uni-browed Droog-greaser Victor) push the film forward more than the characters do, making up for the terrible acting. Though the film is endearingly testing, with other regulars including Robert Odine and a silent but sexy Edie Sedgwick seductively lazing about at the right side of the screen throughout, smoking and dancing, the shot lingering continuously as the voice audio is reverberating off of the studio walls, almost indiscernible. Fans would probably have a hard time at first recognizing the story best adapted by Kubrick amid Warhol's static mise-en-scène and the stilted, halting performances of his untrained actors. What makes this particular one worth seeing out of his many other works? Let's take a look.What makes it worth seeing perhaps just once or for study, despite the many other shorts Warhol had concocted before or after, is how it particularly stands out due to how it presents the series of images within the construct of its running time: sniffing poppers, JD flickers and SM masks per government-sanctioned torture and masochism to rehabilitate a bare-chested Victor, thus brainwashing him and sapping him also of his free will. Bearing many aslant hallmarks to Warhol's other works, this film can be disturbing, haunting, bleak and downright violent at times. In Warhol's version of the story, form and content are truly interwoven together. If Burgess' novel is a parable on the dangers of removing free will, Warhol sets this story in a framework within which the viewer has near-complete freedom. Not audience-friendly and tediously demanding, this cheap cinematic rendition, the polar opposite prior to Kubrick's deranged but brilliant futuristic masterpiece six years later, is certainly a must for experimental film buffs or underground cinema fans to go and check out. This is an alienating, attitude-based cinematic piece, providing no easy pleasures whatsoever. By replacing the conventional narrative drive with a cluttered mise-en-scène of inexperienced bodies on screen, Warhol achieved unusual effects not often seen in film, and certainly not in the (ostensibly) narrative venue of cinema. 'Vinyl' goes past the absurd and enters into the thin realm of which this avant-garde demands to be seen for regarding its dreamlike pacing and unrestrained energy of pure voyeurism, claustrophobia and daring progressiveness.

"Vinyl" is so bad that for a moment I almost enjoyed it when I realized what's his creator was intending to do. I almost feel bad in writing a negative review about it because I understood what Andy Warhol made here. The problem is the experience's result on me, how I felt until I reach a positive enlightenment about what this is all about. Seeing the whole picture as a whole it didn't satisfied me to look at it in a good way.Slowing down this confused thoughts, let me go from the beginning now. "Vinyl" is a free adaptation of Anthony Burgess revolutionary work "A Clockwork Orange". You read right. Kubrick wasn't the first to play with this material. Forget about Alex DeLarge, his rebellion, his mates and the violence and all. All we see here is the part of his "treatment" to become a good person and get nauseated with the things at once he used to love. In its one hour and so, "Vinyl" goes to show a young man being tortured by an eccentric group of people through some strange methods such as forced to hear loud music (among the songs there's "Nowhere to Run" - Martha Reeves and the Vandellas, OK, this is not really torture, that is such an uplifting and great song. Might work to the youngsters of today who can only listen to noise they call music), spanking, suffocation and other things. For the most part this young man will suffer physical and verbal abuse to finally reach his "cure". Yes, the characters speak but you can barely understand what they're saying.My enlightenment came after a long while and so many thoughts trying to figure out what's the movie's point. Warhol wanted that we feel all the pain, the misery, the annoyance his main character gets from those people. He succeed in that! We feel bored, hurt to a certain extent horrified by all the punishment the man gets (even if the camera is still and we don't have close ups to see what's happening to him in the background but there's his scream to be heard), we feel anguished, tormented, wanting for all that (the movie, the music and the beatings) to stop. The whole situation is like a damaged vinyl, it keeps going on and on repeating the same part until someone turns the player off, or change the record. Brilliant, isn't it? I got it!Here comes the problem in enduring such thing. It sounded pretentious and it didn't work. Warhol is cheating on us here. David Lynch can disturb us, present his shocking show, make it difficult to us but in the end we feel that we've got something there even if we didn't solve the whole charade. It's easier to enjoy and obtain something from his works. Can't say the same about the pop art master with this particular film that is too long with its allegedly message, it's exhausting and often you'll be closing your eyes, falling asleep but amazingly hearing all what's going on. It's funny that I made the comparison between Lynch and Warhol because it reminds of an overreacting criticism of a reviewer who said that Lynch treated badly his actors in "Blue Velvet", he tortured them by making them perform strange things. I don't see it that way in that movie, but here I do. There's no stunt doubles here, everything looks and sounds quite real (it might have been some technique, I don't know) every time the young actor gets spanked, bound to a chair, screaming and moaning. He was mistreated in so many ways to one can wonder how much money did he got for all of this (you can't get much of an indie project).Like I said before, I feel a little bad for disliking this. It's a bad movie for what it tries to make to us but it's not so lame like many disastrous Hollywood flicks that might had a good intention that got perverted on the way. Highpoint of this is listening to "Nowhere to Run" twice with the actors performing some crazy dance movements. Gladly, such scene appears when I thought this could have been a great movie, right in the first minutes. An experience for the courageous at heart and mind who can spare an hour of his life without getting anything in trade. I watched the whole thing, didn't like it but don't regret nothing. 2/10

The brilliance of this movie, is that, Andy Warhol created his version of the greatest film of all time (Clockwork Orange)...SIX YEARS BEFORE the greatest film of all time was even released.The Opening shot.The "Old Up Yours." The Violent "Flickers" If Kubrick never saw this film...I'd be amazed...