User Reviews

This film really straddles the line between art and pornography. I feel the need to praise it for its uniqueness and beautiful surrealism, but I don't think I would want to watch this film again. Between these two points of view, I'll never forget this film.

There are some great images: a skeleton in a nest at the top of a steel pole; sex between two people wearing gas masks; the protagonists being rolled around in a plastic sphere.

Then there are some absolutely unpleasant images. The midget places a rose into a woman's crack, pulls it out covered in s--t, and licks it clean. This and similar scenes have done nothing but disturb me. This fascination with human waste seems fetishistic and pornographic rather than artistic. Also, the film features some oedipal scenes that just feel uncomfortable. I have to reflect that Un Chien Andalou, which is considered a masterpiece of its genre, deliberately went for shock value in its day, so I forgive this film somewhat. But at the same time, I feel unwilling to see it again.

Some scenes have me on the fence. In a nativity scene, the Christ child has his genitals skewered. A young boy gets shot to death by a firing squad. There is a scene of cannibalism. The scenes are both artistically striking and difficult to watch.

I wrote in an earlier review for Blockbuster.com, "This film really is a troublesome one. It is at turns a sublime menagerie of images and a grotesque carnival geek show. The director is at turns a genius and a pervert. The works of genius make the film worth seeing." As before, you have the right to be curious.

The first impression you get when watching this film is quite impressive with random glimpses through the narrative (a giant spider hovering over the boy for instance). However you fail to derive any social commentary that the various segments are trying to make.

Within 20 minutes the movie already seems an hour long. If you switched-it off at this point you should be glad because very soon it begins to try every trick in the book to gross the audiences out. There are extreme close-ups of various internal organs being consumed, a number of scenes fixated on various bodily secretions and scenes of people passing stools, coprophilia, various scenes involving incest, abuse of women, portrayal of people using stereotypes, gratuitous male nudity and employment of disfigured people in the attempt to 'shock' audiences.

Even if you feel that perhaps Arrabal is trying to bring people face to face with all things offensive, the process of doing this is far too lame. There are too many scenes that linger for far too long or are repeated on a couple of instances.

Surrealism was an attempt by a small group of artists to change social norms and highlight bourgeoisie hypocrisy. Arrabal, obviously is far away from this. For instance, this movie is pro-Christianity whereas surrealism was anti-religion.

By the time the movie ends, you hate yourself for sitting through it. And then you notice that the DVD contains an interview with the film-maker. You convince yourself that perhaps the interview will give you an insight that you missed.

The interview, you notice, is one long monologue. Arrabal is sitting in a plush house enjoying a glass of presumably expensive red wine and explaining how 'different' he is and his art is from the rest of society. He claims that newspapers announced that Arrabal had created a scandal. He is a poet, you see, and poets do not creates traps which is what a 'scandal' means in Greek. You hear him mentioning that he would like to kiss society on the mouth and have a pornographic affair with it. Its pretentious garbage. That's when you realise that he is self-centred, arrogant, a show-off, has total disregard for other humans and lacks humility. You forward it a bit and then see him making a phone call and speaking with God. That's when I lost my patience and wanted to throw the DVD out of the house, but couldn't because it was on rental.

J'irai comme un cheval fou is a ridiculous piece of work that goes nowhere and says nothing. It is a medium that is used by Arrabal to deliberately create sensationalism.

Keep away from it. You will thank me for it.

In saying that, it still isn't the worst movie I've ever seen. That award goes to The Brown Bunny. At least this one has guts and is imaginative.

This is the type of cinematic oddity that you don't know what to write about. You can stop talking about it rather quickly, or you can discuss the deeper meaning and various types of symbolism for hours and hours. One thing's for certain: "I Will Walk like a Crazy Horse" is one of the weirdest movies ever made, with a level of bizarre that is practically on par with Alejandro Jodorowsky's "El Topo", Andrzej Zulawski's "Possession", David Lynch's "Eraserhead" and Shinya Tsukamoto's "Tetsuo – the Iron Man". The story is pretty much impossible to describe, let along summarize, but I'll try anyway. Aden Rey is a 30-something man, with a serious Oedipus trauma, on the run for the police. He flees into the desert where he makes an acquaintance with a lonely midget prophet named Marvel. This little guy sort of represents Jesus Christ and Mother Earth, because he can turn day into night like he's using a light switch and floats through the air on cherubic music. Aden falls in love with Marvel's purity and brings him back to civilization. Marvel is very curious to find out about our supposedly civil lifestyles, but the pollution, overpopulation, aggression, barbarity and exploitative nature of our society also makes him very miserable. They even try to make Marvel an act in a traveling circus because he's so cheerful and naive. And whilst Marvel slowly becomes "contaminated" by our cruel world, Aden gradually finds redemption. "I Will Walk like a Crazy Horse" is a mysterious and unfathomable metaphor on the deterioration of our society. The symbolism, although sometimes very far-fetched and grotesque, is brilliant and writer/director Fernando Arrabal obviously doesn't know any taboos. The imagery in his film is shocking, explicit, confronting, perverted, nauseating and cynical. There's footage of child executions, cannibalism, religious blasphemy (Jesus Christ statues coming to life etc), fascism and copious perverted sexual images (including fellatio, feces-fetish and loads of homosexual innuendo). The music is fantastic, the acting performances perplexing and the use of scenery is staggering. This film is simultaneously fascinating and hypnotizing to stare at, but you simply can't comprehend everything that you see. Probably not even after a dozen of viewings. Don't even think you've seen weird before you've seen "I Will Walk like a Crazy Horse". Personally, I thought I had seen my share of weird stuff already, but that was before I witnessed the sight of a midget sticking a flower inside a hermaphrodite's posterior and licking off the feces of the stem.

This degenerate twaddle is merely another example of shock cinema, with the usual blend of perversion and fake profundity. If movies had a stupid-scene alarm, this film would be ringing constantly. And the "symbolism"! This movie has more skulls than the booklet of a Manowar album.

I pity every fool who was suckered into financing this. I pity the fool who wrote and directed this. I pity the fools who agreed to make asses of themselves in front of the sperm-stained camera-lens in this. But most of all, I pity the fools who actually enjoy this crap. (These are the people who walk around children's parks in large coats – and those who fantasize about doing that.) Whose more foolish, the fool who makes a foolish film or the fool who believes him that's it's a piece of art?

Then again, I also envy any fool who enjoys this flick. Fools have it easy: they live in a Disney bubble.

A stupid movie title that sounds like a pompous indie rock album? Check. Two men defecating together? Check. A man biting off the heads of chickens? Check. A mother lighting up her son's erection? Check. A small boy's penis having nails thrown at it? Check. A boy watching her mother get spat on during sex and then getting an epileptic seizure? Check. A woman getting cum all over her face? Check. A man putting on his mother's lingerie and then "giving birth" to a skull? Check. A man eating sand and goat turds? Check. A noble-savage midget with god-like powers? Check. A midget collecting goat urine? Check. A women getting her tongue nailed to a table? Check. Another woman later on having her tongue pulled? Check. (Probably "symbolizes" censorship or some such Marxist fetish topic.) A boy playing with the erection on a wooden doll? Check. A woman cumming all over legs after her young son bites her on the shoulder? Check. A rooster getting its head lopped off for this shitty film? Check. White-clad priests wearing gas-masks dancing stupidly in a desert? Check. A naked woman French-kissing a skeleton? Check. Fake testicles and penis attached to a naked actress's body? Check. Close-up of a penis urinating? Check. A guy killing a prostitute because she refuses to have sex with a bad-smelling virgin midget? Check. Cannibalism? Check. A dwarf sticking a flower between a woman's bum-cheeks? Check. The dwarf pulling out the flower from her ass, seeing that its petal is dung-stained and eating the dung? Check. Idiotic Nazi songs played over random scenes? Check. A man getting quartered by camels while a kindergarten song doodles? Check. Naked men being rolled in a large plastic bubble by angry church-goers? Check. Imbecilic religious imagery thrown in completely randomly throughout the movie? Check. A man devouring photos and letters? Check. A man counting the number of a midget's nail-clippings? Check. A midget spontaneously offering to chop off his finger to prove his friendship to a guy he just met? Check. Me shaking my head at tons of Euro-trash nonsense posing as profound art? Triple-check.

Pretentious pseudo-philosophical left-wing propaganda thrown in every 30 minutes to try and convince dupable morons (hipsters and film students) that this isn't just a cheap snuff film? Check.

Now take into consideration that the movie only lasts under 90 minutes and you get some idea what a cluster-duck of random "arty" scenes this movie is. Every hipster's wet dream personified. This idiotic trash offers the self-loathing modern wimpy male (the hipster) an endless possibility of film essays. He can weave poetic for years, writing up delusional gibberish about what this movie allegedly means and even more importantly how it helped him get through a very emotional and turbulent part of his life (like the time his pizza came an hour late).

If the list of "checks" I gave you make you watch this dumb film instead of warning you not to, I both pity and envy you. Keep enjoying the bubble.