Taylor Mead Movies

Too Young, Too Immoral proved to be too much for director, writer, actor, and editor Raymond A. Phelan who bowed in and quickly bowed out of his directorial career with this undistinguished drama about crime and drugs in the Big Apple. The story revolves around a young man who is a drug runner but has a change of heart after he falls in love. His suppliers are not in agreement with his new attitude, and their solution is to kill him. In steps his brother, who makes his own vow -- he is going to get the killers, or else. The melodrama continues until the violent finale. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Two 70 year old twin sisters are identical in every way except for their outlook on life. One gladly accepts her life as a grandmother working as a cashier in a grocery store. The other is an unhappy rich woman, superstitious and prone to complaining about imagined illness. Maybelle Nash plays the dual role of the women who are alike in appearance only in this independent film produced, directed and written by Jerome Hill. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

Viva make her film debut in this typical Andy Warhol exploitation film. She plays a waitress in a restaurant where, you guessed it, everyone is at least partially nude. Although she does not ignore the advances of men, they never get to have sex with her because of her incessant talking. All the men she meets seem to want nothing more than the pleasures of the flesh and make no effort to gain insight on her inane character. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

This Big Apple underground art film is based on the classic Greek play Prometheus Bound and presents assorted characters, symbolizing Greek gods and their daily actions that signify the relationship between homosexuality and urban living. Andy Warhol and his Factory members populate the piece. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

This experimental western from cult icon Andy Warhol concerns nine people in a ghost town looking for love. A truly twisted improvisational comedy should have emerged, but Taylor Mead's shrill screeching and some annoying in-camera editing results in a fairly grating experience. Ramona Alvarez (Viva) and her perpetually stoned nurse (Mead) run into five gay cowboys led by Louis Waldon. They all want to have sex with a handsome drifter (Tom Hompertz), except for the transvestite sheriff (Francis Francine), who can't be bothered about anything but his outfit. Ramona is raped by the cowboys then has sex with Hompertz and wants to form a suicide pact in the afterglow. Hompertz wants no part of such a pact, however, and rides off into the sunset with another man (Eric Emerson). All of this takes nearly two hours, and although there are some cute moments, it never comes together as a whole. Improvisation is difficult to stretch into a coherent feature-length film without at least some attempt at setting up individual scenes. Warhol does none of that here, although he would do better with later films directed by Paul Morrissey, this film's executive producer. His sole interest appears to be in putting attractive young men in front of his camera and having them seduce each other and act silly. Viewers will either be mildly amused, bored, or terribly annoyed, depending on individual tolerance levels. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide

Based on a James Leo Herlihy novel, British director John Schlesinger's first American film dramatized the small hopes, dashed dreams, and unlikely friendship of two late '60s lost souls. Dreaming of an easy life as a fantasy cowboy stud, cheerful Texas rube Joe Buck (Jon Voight) heads to New York City to be a gigolo, but he quickly discovers that hustling isn't what he thought it would be after he winds up paying his first trick (Sylvia Miles). He gets swindled by gimpy tubercular grifter Rico "Ratso" Rizzo (Dustin Hoffman) but, when Joe falls in the direst of straits, Ratso takes Joe into his condemned apartment so that they can help each other survive. Things start to look up when Joe finally lands his first legit female customer (Brenda Vaccaro) at a Warhol-esque party; Ratso's health, however, fails. Joe turns a final trick to get the money for one selfless goal: taking Ratso out of New York to his dream life in Miami. One of the first major studio films given the newly minted X rating for its then-frank portrayal of New York decadence, Midnight Cowboy was critically praised for Schlesinger's insight into American lives, with the intercut mosaic of Joe's memories and Ratso's dreams lending their characters and actions greater psychological complexity. While they may have been drawn by the seamy content (tame by current standards), the young late '60s audience responded to Joe's and Ratso's confusion amidst turbulent times and to the connection they make with each other despite their alienation from the surrounding culture. Midnight Cowboy became one of the major financial and artistic hits of 1969, winning Oscars for Best Picture (the first for an X-rated film), Best Director, and former blacklistee Waldo Salt's screenplay. Though the one-two punch of Midnight Cowboy and The Graduate (1967) proved Hoffman's range and Voight's Joe Buck made him a star, both lost Best Actor to classical cowboy John Wayne for True Grit. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide

In this film, outspokenly homosexual filmmaker Rosa von Praunheim has documented his encounters with friends in the New York "underground" arts movement, the better-known of whom are William Burroughs (who says nothing for the camera), Andy Warhol (seen in the distance) and Fernando Arrabal (who is interviewed in Spanish). The emigrants named in the title are notable Germans who left the country before World War II, such as Greta Keller and Grete Mosheim. Reviewers at the time of the film's release considered it to have been a sort of paid vacation for the filmmaker rather than a serious effort. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Mark Reichart wrote and directed this disturbing tale of mounting paranoia, based on a story by Cornell Woolrich. Harlan (Dennis Lipscomb) is a New Jersey businessman who becomes obsessed with trying to catch the person who has been stealing sips from the milk bottle delivered to his doorstep every morning. His wife Lillian (Debbie Harry) complacently puts up with her husband's increasingly bizarre behavior. Harlan finally goes off the deep end when he captures the culprit --a homeless Vietnam War veteran (Sam McMurray). He reacts with such fury that he bashes the man's head in. Then, to hide his crime, he conceals the body in a Murphy bed in the abandoned apartment next door. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

Tally Brown was a star of New York underground films and a denizen of its underworld in the late 1960s -- about as far away as one could imagine as the destination for this classically trained opera and blues singer. In this documentary, Rosa von Praunheim relies on extensive interviews with Brown, as she recounts her collaboration with Warhol, Taylor Mead and others, as well as her friendships with Holly Woodlawn, Divine, and others. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Fascinating documentary of artist and filmmaker Andy Warhol, combining rare footage with interviews with his friends and colleagues, including Dennis Hopper, David Hockney, Taylor Mead, and Sylvia Miles. ~ Nicole Gagne, All Movie Guide

Taking an avant-garde approach, experimental Russian painter turned director Ari Roussimoff creates an offbeat addition to the horror genre. Troubled, doomed Paul returns to his home in an oppressive and stylized Manhattan (filmed in black and white) after spending time with a traveling carnival. As he wanders the gloomy streets in search of love and acceptance, he muses about the correlation between the grim fates of his family and his own destiny. Both his brother and his mother killed themselves, and now Paul sees the Spirit of Death beckoning him to do the same. He does not realize that Death is really only offering him more of the same. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

This "neo-noir comic thriller" from director Amos Poe focuses on struggling actress Eva (Barbara Hershey), a waitress who moonlights by making collections for her ex-husband, loan shark Al (Robbie Coltrane). Her day job is at a Lower Manhattan diner owned by Quint (Ian Hart). Others on the scene are Eva's new boyfriend Zip (John Leguizamo), aspiring actress Myrna (Lisa Marie), Al's girlfriend Simone (Debi Mazar), tough thug Gascone (Ron Perlman), and Al's driver U.B. (David Deblinger). Eva is ready to drop both collecting and acting, dreaming of a picket-fence lifestyle with her son Augie (Zak Kerkoulas), but Al needs her for just one more job -- locating the missing $600,000 stolen from him by Flav (Justin Theroux). Al also plans to stage a production of David Mamet's American Buffalo, and he offers a role to U.B. -- if he will kill Zip. Shown at the 1998 Berlin Film Festival. ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide