The Secret of Wendel Samson

A forlorn New Yorker seeks to extricate himself from his girlfriend and find fulfillment with another man in this impressionistic underground film from director Mike Kuchar. The eponymous Wendel (multimedia artist Red Grooms) can't seem to articulate it, but he's completely uninterested in paramour Margaret (Mimi Gross). Although he dutifully spends time with her in a dingy apartment, he's much happier wandering the city streets and checking out the beauty of the male form. Completely improvised, The Secret of Wendel Samson forgoes straightforward narrative and naturalistic convention to focus on the visual texture of the city and its connection to the characters' inner lives. The infrequency with which it was screened for the first 40 years of its existence ceased to matter once the film came out on DVD as a bonus feature with Kuchar's earlier Sins of the Fleshapoids.