The late 1960s and early 1970s were a prolific time for American cinema, though not all of the groundbreaking films of that period have achieved the hallowed status of dangerous streets either badlands. One, at least, has been missing for nearly half a century. Emerging from San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury counterculture scene, Luminous Procuress is an enigmatic, transgressive, gleefully queer journey into the divine state of enlightenment that lurks beyond the carnal. And that can’t be said for The Godfather.
Steven Arnold’s first and only feature film caught the attention of Andy Warhol and Salvador Dalí, and seemed to ensure his path to cinematic greatness. It begins with two handsome young naives, one of them in a stupendous mushroom-colored full body suit, being welcomed into the lavish modernist home of the Procuress. Portrayed by Pandora, Arnold’s friend, with thick eyelashes and a horizontal pink wig shaped like a milkmaid’s yoke, is your guide through a maze of wacky attractions. In a room, they find the exhausted aftermath of an orgy; in other, San Francisco’s shaggy drag troupe, the Cockettes, they walk around the stage with their faces painted, posing with pineapple-shaped bags and breasts while a clown turns the lever of a music box. These same performers dress up after nuns and bishops for mischievous romps before a good old-fashioned food fight. Old school, that is, if they hadn’t taken LSD shortly before the cameras started rolling.
It would be disingenuous to say that the modern public will not have seen anything like Luminous Procuresswhich premiered briefly in 1971 And it just came out on Blu-ray. Anyone even remotely familiar with the films of Kenneth Anger, John Waters, Curt McDowell, and George Kuchar will immediately recognize that Arnold preaches to perverts. He was fully aware of the tradition in which he moved. When asked if he considered Cocteau an influence, he replied, “I am Cocteau!”
However, at the time the film was made, there was relatively little content in contemporary cinema with which it could be compared. “In a way, it’s kind of a relic,” says Steve Seid, former media curator at the Berkeley Art Museum and the Pacific Film Archive.. “But other than a few things like Jack Smith’s Flaming Creatures and the odd Genet movie, there was almost nothing that spoke so openly of a polysexual world. Men with men, women with women, women with men, it’s a sexual medley!” Arnold’s intent, as he put it in his original pitch for the film, was “to create a sexual fantasy that will stimulate all viewers, regardless of their sexual preferences.”
The film’s reputation preceded it by many years, if only because there was no way to see a print: it had been withdrawn from distributors, and its whereabouts were a mystery. “In the Bay area, it was legendary,” says Seid. “It existed more as a ghost than anything else. It was said to be innovative, but who knew in what sense? The remnants that I saw over the years used to be deteriorated pirate files that were circulating on the internet.”
Seid’s investigative work led him in 2014 to Harry Tsvi Strauch, a store owner in the Haight-Ashbury district, who together with his wife Hyla financed Luminous Procuressand that they still owned all the material. The film grew out of a late-night argument in 1970 between the Strauchs and Arnold.who had been designing window displays for the couple’s folk gallery and hippie boutique after graduating from the San Francisco Art Institute.
“Steven said, ‘Let’s make an erotic art film because there’s nothing on the market,’” Strauch tells me. “I was I Am Curious Yellowbut that was erotic. We wanted to show everything. My wife and I decided that we would raise the funds to make the film.” Among the investors in the film, Strauch explains, was a high-ranking individual from the Ernst tie fashion company, as well as “a dentist of ours, who worked on many of the famous hippie dentures here in the neighborhood.” Did Strauch himself ever venture onto the set? “Nope. Steven lived in a huge warehouse in the Mission district, which is where most of the movie was shot. We put up the money and the psychedelic materials for the mind, but we leave the rest to him.”
It soon became clear that the aesthetic virtues of the cast did not match their acting talent. “These people were statuesque, beautiful and elegant,” says Seid. “But they didn’t know how to interpret a dialogue.” There was also no sound insulation in the warehouse: “Every time a bus passed by on the street, you could hear it in the film.” It was necessary to apply a radical sound approach. Experimental musician Warner Jepson composed not only the effervescent synth score, in which robotic beeps and screeches emerge from the electronic noise like champagne bubbles, but also the unintelligible language heard on the soundtrack whenever the performers open the mouth to speak. It may be avant-garde cinema, however, fans of Pingu or the clangers they will feel at home.
One element that seems vaguely out of tune with the rest of the film is the hardcore heterosexual sex scene. The organizers of the 1971 San Francisco film festival requested that this scene be darkened before the film could be shown. Color levels have been restored for the Blu-ray edition, though everything seems plain compared to the more exotic items on the menu.
Rumors say that Strauch was the only one who insisted on this interlude, inserting it into the film without Arnold’s consent. “That’s a lie!” Strauch points out. “Steven was a pansexual person, and it was his idea to show all kinds of sex. Who else would he have come from? The only people who were there that night were the couple who had sex, plus Steven and the cameraman.” Later, I ask Seid if he thinks the movie would be stronger if the sequence were cut. “I think he would be fine without her,” he replies diplomatically.
Luminous Procuress did not receive much criticism outside of San Francisco, though the Village Voice’s Molly Haskell wrote a thoughtful assessment, calling it “not really erotic, not even sensual, but detached, stylized and theatrical.” She also pointed out that it was sold in limited editions to collectors, as if they were copies of a work of art. Seid seems surprised to learn this. “Eh, I’m not sure how successful they were. If they sold one or two, I’d be impressed.”
However, the artists reacted to Arnold’s film with interest and enthusiasm. Warhol was seen at a screening, while Dalí was so delighted after seeing it in 1974 that he organized a special screening for his circle. He then invited Arnold to Barcelona to collaborate on the design and conservation of the Dalí museum. They were seen holding hands in public. “It was almost like a love affair,” Arnold said. “I loved him very much.”
It is strange, therefore, that Arnold’s film career disappeared almost as soon as it began. After failing to secure funding for several subsequent projects, Seid explains, Arnold “seemed to retire from filmmaking. He never saw himself as a proper filmmaker, so he was able to forget that period of time and not look back.. She had sexual, spiritual, and divine interests that were the driving force behind her, and film was simply the medium through which she expressed them at the time.”
Arnold moved to Los Angeles, where he prospered in the realms of art, fashion, and photography. His friends included Warhol alum Holly Woodlawn and star of the Exorcist, Ellen Burstyn, who bought her work and today credits her with encouraging her to extend her creativity on screen to every aspect of her life. Arnold died of AIDS in 1994.
Strauch still remembers him fondly. “He was a beautiful person. Tall, thin, his movements were almost like dance. He dressed artistically and was never confrontational. He always had something interesting to say.” Why has his film endured? “It’s the masterpiece of a very talented artist, but it also represents a lot of what happened during the summer of love. There is spirituality, sex, art, color. It is a transcendental experience.”
For Seid, the film fits harmoniously into 21st century culture, which embraces the concept of gender fluidity. “What Steven was trying to show was that we shouldn’t be obsessed with the material world,” he explains. “We should follow a divine spirit to reach another plane. Why bother with all the definitions and redefinitions of gender when you can simply transcend your own gender?
Luminous Procuress is for sale on Blu-ray by Second Run.
Enigmatic, transgressive, gleefully queer: the 70s cult movie you’ve never seen