Lisztomania


In 1975, the worst director in the history of cinema, Ken Russell, made a movie so mindblowingly weird, so incomprehensibly odd, that you've never heard of it. It's called Lisztomania, and it stars Roger Daltrey as Franz Liszt.

Let me give that a second to process.......

Roger Daltrey as Franz Liszt. Like, that composer guy.
The tag line for this movie was "The erotic, exotic electrifying rock fantasy... It out-Tommy's TOMMY."

It also stars Rick Wakeman as Thor.

Let me give that two seconds to process............

Rick Wakeman as Thor. Like, that norse god dude.
Wakeman was responsible for all the non-Liszt music from this movie, and according to the internet, the LP of the soundtrack is pretty collectible.

This film appears (from stills, synopsis and reviews) terrifyingly bad. It looks lewd, inane, nonsensical and overblown. In short, it looks like my new favorite movie of all time. It's sadly not available on DVD, but I'm considering buying a VHS copy and getting someone with a VCR into running it to DiVX for me. I really must see it.


Oh, I almost forgot, Ringo Starr is the pope.

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As a side note, it seems that Ken Russell is OBSESSED with the sexual proclivities of the great composers, having made the film Mahler (1974) and all of these movies for British Television (via screenonline.org.uk):

Béla Bartók (1964)
-Ken Russell's portrait of the great Hungarian composer
Dance of the Seven Veils (1970)
-Ken Russell's controversial caricature of the composer Richard Strauss
Debussy Film, The (1965)
-Ken Russell's film-within-a-film about the French composer
Elgar (1962)
-Ken Russell's remarkably imaginative portrait of the composer
Gordon Jacob (1959)
-Ken Russell's portrait of the English composer at home and at work
Prokofiev (1961)
-Ken Russell's portrait of the great Russian composer
Song of Summer (1968)
-Ken Russell's moving drama about the last years of the blind composer Delius
Vaughan Williams (1984)
-Ken Russell's study of the great composer's nine symphonies

Sick, huh?
- posted by Mason @ 4:16 PM