Mario Montez
Also Known As: René Rivera, Dolores Flores
Biography: René Rivera, (July 20, 1935 – September 26, 2013), known professionally as Mario Montez, was one of the Warhol superstars, appearing in thirteen of Andy Warhol's underground films from 1964 to 1966. He took his name as a male homage to the actress Maria Montez, an important gay icon in the fifties and sixties. Before appearing in Warhol's films, he appeared in Jack Smith's important underground films Flaming Creatures and Normal Love. Montez also stars in the Ron Rice film, Chumlum, made in 1964. Mario Montez, was "a staple in the New York underground scene of the 1960s and ’70s."
Department: Acting
Place of Birth: Ponce, Puerto Rico
Birthday: July 20, 1935
Deathday: September 26, 2013
Adult: No
Gender: Male
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Known For:
Flaming Twenties
Overview: Features underground film makers and stars Jack Smith, Charles Ludlum, and Bill Vehr. A satirical film, comprising a collection of vignettes of the entertainment personalities who were famous during the "Roaring Twenties". Included is a take-off of the Ziegfeld Follies girl-parade, which features Ava-Graph's own pretty girls. Original music of the twenties. In stunning color
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1968-01-01
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The Gypsy's Ball
Overview: Adventures of Lily Lonely, a wicked gypsy and a mischievous boy. In color.
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1969-01-01
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Harlot
Overview: Jean Harlow-lookalike Harlot (Mario Montez), Gerard Malanga, Philip Fagan, and Carol Koshinskie (with a cat) sit in a room eating bananas as the off-screen voices of Billy Name, Ronald Tavel, and Harry Fainlight discuss various topics.
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1965-01-11
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Reel Six: Charles Ludlam’s Grand Tarot
Overview: The New York underground linked the paths of the actor and playwright Charles Ludlam, the superstar of avant-garde cinema Mario Montez and the Argentine artist Leandro Katz. An underground community found refuge in a porn cinema that Ludlam rented at night to stage his theater of the ridiculous. In 1970 he premiered The Grand Tarot, an extravagant burlesque where the arcana became characters and a reading of cards before the performance began established the order of the scenes. Rollo Six materializes that furtive experience, recovering in its formal commitment the inventiveness of chance that guided Ludlam's work. Katz superimposes edited scenes in camera, fracturing the screen through the use of masks that cover the lens and allow him to separately expose each corner of the frame.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: xx
Release Date: 1987-01-01
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Lupe
Overview: The film — a mix of music, colors, abstract scenes and little dialogue — is based loosely on the life and death of Mexican-American actress Lupe Velez. The music, far more than mere background, borders on serving as the film’s narrative and ranges from classical to contemporary pop music.
Genres: Comedy
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1967-01-30
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Mario Banana II
Overview: Black-and-white version of Mario Banana I, in which Mario enjoys another banana.
Genres: Drama
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1964-12-07
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Mario Banana I
Overview: Mario Montez in drag eats a banana.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1964-12-07
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Hedy
Overview: Egotistical faded star Hedy Lamarr visits a plastic surgeon to be transformed into the "14-year-old girl" she believes herself to be. She is then caught shoplifting by Mary Woronov and is put on trial, with Tavel as the judge and her five ex-husbands the jury. Hedy remains self-centered and detached throughout, posing and primping and bursting out renditions of "I Feel Pretty" and "Young at Heart."
Genres: Fantasy Drama Comedy
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1966-03-03
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Occhio privato sul nuovo mondo
Overview: A film by Alfredo Leonardi.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: it
Release Date: 1970-01-01
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More Milk, Yvette
Overview: Warhol offers his own version of the notorious 1958 Johnny Stompanato murder case.
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1966-02-08
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Screen Test #2
Overview: Warhol and scenarist Ronald Tavel offer a brutal vision of the Hollywood casting couch with this record of ingenue Mario Montez performing a humiliating auditions for a dictatorial, unseen director.
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1965-06-12
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Flaming Creatures
Overview: Filmmaker and artist Jack Smith described his own film as a “comedy set in a haunted movie studio.” Flaming Creatures begins humorously enough with several men and women, mostly of indeterminate gender, vamping it up in front of the camera and participating in a mock advertisement for an indelible, heart-shaped brand of lipstick. However, things take a dark, nightmarish turn when a transvestite chases, catches and begins molesting a woman. Soon, all of the titular “creatures” participate in a (mostly clothed) orgy that causes a massive earthquake. After the creatures are killed in the resulting chaos, a vampire dressed like an old Hollywood starlet rises from her coffin to resurrect the dead. All ends happily enough when the now undead creatures dance with each other, even though another orgy and earthquake loom over the end title card.
Genres: Comedy Horror Fantasy
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1963-04-29
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Normal Love
Overview: The feature length Normal Love is Jack Smith’s follow up to his now legendary film Flaming Creatures. This vivid, full-color homage to B-movies is a dizzying display of camp that clearly affirms Smith’s role as the driving force behind underground cinema and performance art of the post-war era. The cast includes Mario Montez, Diane de Prima, Tiny Tim, Francis Francine, Beverley Grant and John Vaccaro. Smith was known to constantly re-edit the film, often during screenings as it was still unspooling from the projector.
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1963-01-01
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Jungle Island
Overview: A tropical island fantasy.
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1967-01-01
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No President
Overview: Smith's third feature film was originally titled "The Kidnapping of Wendell Willkie by the Love Bandit," in reaction to the 1968 Presidential Campaign. It mixes B&W footage of Smith's creatures with old campaign footage of Willkie, a liberal Republican who ran against FDR in the 1940's. The climax of the work appears to be the "auctioning" of the presidential candidate at a convention.
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1969-02-02
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Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis
Overview: In this entrancing documentary on performance artist, photographer and underground filmmaker Jack Smith, photographs and rare clips of Smith's performances and films punctuate interviews with artists, critics, friends and foes to create an engaging portrait of the artist. Widely known for his banned queer erotica film Flaming Creatures, Smith was an innovator and firebrand who influenced artists such as Andy Warhol and John Waters.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2007-04-11
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Face
Overview: The three faces (two women and one tranvestized man) in the series of close up, which are shot separately in their sexual process of the acting and the real, are intercut and edited making into a film. The sound is the voice of continuous laughing of a woman repeated from a loop-tape. What I try to realize in this film is the question of gender through the facial expression in sex between woman and tranvestized man, and the image in detail between the ac ting and the real life. When these factors are mixed, one can hardly distinguish one from the other.
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1969-04-10
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Camp
Overview: Shot at Warhol's Silver Factory, Camp features a group of Superstars putting on a "summer camp" talent show complete with singing, dancing, jokes, poetry, and Gerard Malanga as master of ceremonies.
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1965-11-22
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Dirt
Overview: Two nuns take a bath, then meet a sailor on the Staten Island Ferry.
Genres: Fantasy
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1965-09-25
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Batman Dracula
Overview: Batman Dracula is a 1964 black and white American film produced and directed by Andy Warhol, without the permission of DC Comics. The film was screened only at Warhol's art exhibits. A fan of the Batman series, Warhol made the movie as a homage. Batman Dracula is considered to be the first film featuring a blatantly campy Batman. The film was thought to have been lost until scenes from it were shown at some length in the documentary Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis.
Genres: Thriller Drama
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1964-07-01
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The Queen
Overview: In 1967, New York City is host to the Miss All-American Camp Beauty Pageant. This documentary takes a look behind the scenes, transporting the viewer into rehearsals and dressing rooms as the drag queen subculture prepares for this big national beauty contest. Jack/Sabrina is the mistress of ceremonies, and their protégé, Miss Harlow, is in the competition. But, as the pageant approaches, the glamorous contestants veer from camaraderie to tension.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1968-06-17
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Andy Warhol Screen Tests
Overview: The films were made between 1964 and 1966 at Warhol's Factory studio in New York City. Subjects were captured in stark relief by a strong key light, and filmed by Warhol with his stationary 16mm Bolex camera on silent, black and white, 100-foot rolls of film at 24 frames per second. The resulting two-and-a-half-minute film reels were then screened in 'slow motion' at 16 frames per second.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1965-11-28
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Escape From Rented Island: The Lost Paradise of Jack Smith
Overview: In his essay film, Jerry Tartaglia, longtime archivist and restorer of the film estate of queer New York underground, experimental film, and performance legend Jack Smith, deals less with Smith’s life than with his work, analyzing Smith’s aesthetic idiosyncrasies in 21 thematic chapters. It's a film essay about the artist’s work, rather than a documentary about his life. An unmediated vision of Jack Smith, an invitation to join him in his lost paradise.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2017-01-26
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Chelsea Girls
Overview: Lacking a formal narrative, Warhol's mammoth film follows various residents of the Chelsea Hotel in 1966 New York City. The film was intended to be screened via dual projector set-up.
Genres: Drama
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1966-09-01
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Diaries, Notes, and Sketches
Overview: An epic portrait of the New York avant-garde art scene of the 60s.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2013-11-23
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Chumlum
Overview: Ron Rice's Chumlum is one of those films in which the conditions of its construction are integral to the experience of watching it. It is a record of a cadre of creative people having fun on camera, playing dress-up, dancing, flirting, lazing around.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1963-12-29
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Satisfaction
Overview: Part of the Dirt Trilogy
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1966-03-31
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