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Crazy Love is a 1987 film directed by Belgian director Dominique Deruddere. The film is based on various writings by author and poet Charles Bukowski, [1] in particular The Copulating Mermaid of Venice, California, which contains necrophilia.
It was the first Flemish-Belgian film to receive a theatrical release in North America.
The film follows Harry Voss during three important days of his life. The first is as a youth, the second on the day of his high school graduation and the third as a lonely, middle-aged man.
The phases of his life show the destruction of hope and innocence and his descent into cynicism, alcoholism and hopelessness. Idealizing romantic love with a beautiful girl in his childhood, he is bitterly disappointed when the real world does not match the idealized images of love in his own imaginings. He then discovers as a teenager his peers consider him an outcast due to his chronic and physically disfiguring cystic acne, which covers his face, chest, shoulders and back in weeping pus-filled sores and repulses all who see him. He turns to alcohol to kill the pain and disappointment, losing all hope of finding true love, only to end up destitute, as an alcoholic in later adulthood. Only through a freak chance encounter late in his life is he transported back to his innocent memories of childhood and the idealized love of a beautiful girl that he craved in his youth. Finally fulfilled, he dies by wading out into the open ocean after finding his only "true" love - a "crazy love". The irony of the "hollowness" of this lost, idealized, love, and the tragic significance Harry places on this single event, sums up his lost life and finally makes him the hero of his own story.
Each of the three phases filmed involves a sexual encounter with a "passive" female. In the first phase, the child is pushed into a sexual encounter with a friend's attractive mother whilst she is sleeping, drunk, in her bed at home. In the second, a girl lies passively in the back seat of a car, uninterested, whilst he attempts to have sex with her. She does it only as a favor to her boyfriend who is friends with Harry, but cannot carry through in the end and turns away in disgust at his appalling cystic acne. In the third, as an older alcoholic, he and his drunk friend stumble upon a fresh corpse and "steal" it as a joke, only for Harry to find that the dead - but still warm - girl resembles the girl of his childhood dreams.
The next morning his friend finds Harry has committed suicide by intentionally walking out to sea with the corpse in his arms, apparently committing suicide after consummating his final desire.
When it was first released, first time director Dominique Deruddere's film divided critics and audiences. Some reviewers noted the quality of the photography and set design and acting. Others focused on the unacceptable nature of the film's subject.
On its American release, the film was championed by Madonna, Sean Penn and Francis Ford Coppola. Ultimately it proved too controversial for mass acceptance, and never received wide recognition.
It is now considered by some to be one of the classic films of world cinema from the 1980s.
Henry Charles Bukowski was a German-American poet, novelist, and short story writer. His writing was influenced by the social, cultural, and economic ambience of his adopted home city of Los Angeles. Bukowski's work addresses the ordinary lives of poor Americans, the act of writing, alcohol, relationships with women, and the drudgery of work. The FBI kept a file on him as a result of his column Notes of a Dirty Old Man in the LA underground newspaper Open City.
Mariel Hemingway is an American actress. She began acting at age 14 with a Golden Globe-nominated breakout role in Lipstick (1976), and she received Academy and BAFTA Award nominations for her performance in Woody Allen's Manhattan (1979).
Barfly is a 1987 American black comedy film directed by Barbet Schroeder and starring Mickey Rourke and Faye Dunaway. The film is a semi-autobiography of poet/author Charles Bukowski during the time he spent drinking heavily in Los Angeles, and it presents Bukowski's alter ego Henry Chinaski. The screenplay, written by Bukowski, was commissioned by the Iranian-born Swiss film director Barbet Schroeder, and it was published in 1984, when film production was still pending.
Ham on Rye is a 1982 semi-autobiographical novel by American author and poet Charles Bukowski. Written in the first person, the novel follows Henry Chinaski, Bukowski's thinly veiled alter ego, during his early years. Written in Bukowski's characteristically straightforward prose, the novel tells of his coming-of-age in Los Angeles during the Great Depression.
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Spud is a 2005 novel by South African author, actor, playwright and producer, John van de Ruit. A comedic sometimes sad yet straight forward novel that captures the humor of life in boarding school, through the diary of John 'Spud' Milton. The book is written in the style of a diary. The story begins on the morning of Spud's first day at a private boarding school, following his year and experiences with the often eccentric characters found in the school environment. The diary also follows Spud's family life.
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Necrophilia has been a topic in popular culture.
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Notes of a Dirty Old Man (1969) is a collection of underground newspaper columns written by Charles Bukowski for the Open City newspaper that were collated and published by Essex House in 1969. His short articles were marked by his trademark crude humor, as well as his attempts to present a "truthful" or objective viewpoint of various events in his life and his own subjective responses to those events. The series is published by City Lights Publishing Company but can also be found in Portions from a Wine-Stained Notebook, which is a collection of some of Bukowski's rare and obscure works.
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Two Loves is a 1961 American drama film directed by Charles Walters and starring Shirley MacLaine, Laurence Harvey, Jack Hawkins, and Nobu McCarthy. It is based on the book Spinster by Sylvia Ashton-Warner. It was entered into the 11th Berlin International Film Festival.
Shola Aur Shabnam is a 1961 Indian Hindi-language romance film written and directed by Ramesh Saigal. It stars Dharmendra, Tarla Mehta, Abhi Bhattacharya, Vijayalakshmi and M. Rajan in pivotal roles. It was one of the very early films of Dharmendra. The film is about a young man torn between love for his long lost childhood sweetheart, and devotion towards a friend who has helped set him up in his career. The film features music by Khayyam.
Charles Bukowski's work has influenced popular culture many times over in many forms, and his work has been referenced in film, television, music and theater.
Street of Sinners is a 1957 American crime film directed by William Berke, written by John McPartland, and starring George Montgomery, Geraldine Brooks, Nehemiah Persoff, Marilee Earle, William Harrigan and Stephen Joyce. It was released in September 1957 by United Artists.
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