Cinema: Nuts from Underground

The Chelsea Girls. Andy Warhol, the 38-year-old poppa of pop art, is also the Cecil B. DeSade of underground cinema. In the past 3½ years he has made over 60 films that range in length from three minutes to eight hours and in depth from below the belt to beneath discussion. Such films have traditionally been shown in private or at pot-art parties, but Chelsea Girls is currently on view for a $3 admission charge at a mid-Manhattan theater. What the customers are seeing is a very dirty and a very dull peep show. Or rather, two of them—Warhol runs two films side by side on the screen simultaneously. The characters are all homosexuals and junkies, and they spend most of their screen time lying around and trying to think of something to say or do.

When they do think of something, it is pretty sure to be infantile. A couple of sacked-out homosexuals in dirty underwear fondle each other incuriously. Another homosexual does a striptease. One lesbian beats another with a big-buckled belt. Another lesbian who is also a junkie jabs herself in the buttock with a hypodermic. A faggot who calls himself "the Pope" advises a lesbian to sneak into church and do something obscene to the figure on the cross—"It'll do you good."

There is a place for this sort of thing, and it is definitely underground. Like in a sewer.