Mixed Blood (New 4K Restoration)

Following his vérité-exploitation trilogy of FLESH (1968), TRASH (1970) and HEAT (1972), as well as the one-two gore-soaked punch of FLESH FOR FRANKENSTEIN (1973) and BLOOD FOR DRACULA (1974) would have been a daunting task for most filmmakers, but most filmmakers were never quite as enterprising, resourceful or constantly ahead of their time as Paul Morrissey was. Spiritually and, in a sense, geographically tethered to 1982’s FORTY DEUCE, Morrissey’s freewheeling, vitriolic crime comedy MIXED BLOOD (1984) is the filmmaker at his most propulsive and, dare say, endearing.

A family film in the same sense as John Waters’s similarly acerbic FEMALE TROUBLE (1974), MIXED BLOOD concerns a Brazilian matriarch (played with zeal by Marília Pêra) in New York’s Alphabet City, who lives with her son and his gang of juvenile delinquents. In an attempt to control the drug trade below 14th Street, she starts a turf war, which only becomes more complicated due to a budding romance between her son and an outsider. The result is an impossible-to-taxonomize burst of urban decay that is often punctuated by gallows humour and propelled by the histrionic performances of its largely unprofessional cast, including the first screen role for John Leguizamo. Despite the squalour often on display, Morrissey shows an unflinching appreciation for the city of New York and its denizens; a palpable time capsule of a city in transition and the people who made it what it once was. Never released digitally or in HD in any territory, this new 4K restoration from the original 35mm negative, presents Morrissey’s film as it was originally meant to be seen. Scan and restoration done in-house by Vinegar Syndrome. A Cinématographe release. – Justin LaLiberty

Introduced by Owen Kline 8/15.

Introduced by Michael M. Bilandic 8/16.