Fantastic!

What a freaking movie. So many twists and turns. Absolutely intense from start to finish.

It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

One of those movie experiences that is so good it makes you realize you've been grading everything else on a curve.

Since hearing about the "No-Wave" movement in music in connection with Sonic Youth's Daydream Nation and Unwound's stunning Leaves Turn Inside You,I was surprised to recently discover that "No-Wave" had also become a film movement during its shortly active period.Seeing the credit list for the film display some strong to connection to one of the most well known US Punk bands of that period (X,Lydia Lunch),I felt that this movie would give me a chance to see the experimental No-Wave waves.The plot:Due to having an illness where she experiences an intense feeling of ecstasy whilst becoming a stigmata,Rose F. is put in a constant medical inductive coma,and only given a diet of the centre of a raw chicken egg being injected into her.During one of these medical inductive coma's Rose starts to think back to the troubles she faced in her childhood,and also begins to struggle in knowing where her nightmares end,and reality begins.View on the film:Having the first ten minutes of the film be narrated by a robotic voiced woman,whose vocal deliver really grated my nerves,director Gordon Stevenson, (who sadly died of Aids a year after making the movie)thankfully replaces the narration with a terrific strange,screeching No-Wave Jazz soundtrack which helps to build on the eerie feeling of the film,as Stevenson uses a man with two faces to show the two battling personality sides of Rose's psych,and also cleverly use school cloths to shows Rose's attempt to cling on to her troubled childhood.Complimenting Stevenson's weird directing,Mirielle "sister of Exene "X" Cervenka" Cervenka, (who died shortly after filming had finished in a horrible hit & run) gives a wonderfully on the brink,wild performance as Rose,in an interesting film,which displays the great,original skills of two new comers,who still had so much more to offer before their untimely deaths.

Ecstatic Stigmatic is an early product of the New York Cinema of Transgression movement which was active during the late 70s to late 80s. Directed by Gordon Stevenson (bass player for the seminal No Wave group Teenage Jesus and the Jerks) and starring his wife Mirielle Cervenka (little sister of Exene Cervenka of the band X), Ecstatic Stigmatic is the bizarre tale of Rose F., a stigmatic who is confined to a psychiatric hospital.The film opens with a reading from Krafft-Ebing's Psychopathia Sexualis which happens to include an entry on Rose F., a stigmatic who was formerly the leader of a dangerous blood-letting cult. We are then introduced to Rose at her current residence, a home for the mentally ill where she lies around in the crucifixion pose convulsing in ecstasy and speaking in tongues while bleeding from her hands, feet and mouth and refuses to eat anything but the Eucharist (this is all explained via narration).Inter-cut with the hospital scenes are flashbacks to Rose's childhood where we see young Rose (Mirielle Cervenka now wears pigtails and cute little dresses) interacting with her Father, a deranged preacher / tattoo artist and mother, a tattoo-covered performance artist. One night, while backstage at one of her Mothers performances poor little Rose is molested by a hilariously creepy and facepainted Arto Lindsay (of DNA "fame"). There also multiple visuals of religious imagery, gay pin-ups, tattoos of the crucifixion.As it goes on, the film gets increasingly harder to follow but is mainly made up of scenes of Roses parents, Rose convulsing and being drip-fed raw egg, Arto Lindsay doing his facepainted multiple personality act, and plenty of other oddities.It appears Ecstatic Stigmatic was shot mostly silent and then overdubbed with overly dramatic sound effects and a soundtrack of alternately screeching violin, No Wave-esquire rock, Jazz and short bursts of white noise. Sadly the picture isn't too hot as the only available copy of this film is a nth generation VHS dupe.All in all Ecstatic Stigmatic is a highly experimental film that manages in turn to shock, confuse and at times even amuse. Sadly it was Stevenson's one & only film as he died not long after from AIDS. A few years later, his wife and leading lady Mirielle was killed in a car crash.I'd highly recommend fans of transgressive, experimental and art-house cinema to seek out this obscure little flick. 7/10

One of the foremost classics of the original punk art-movement of the late 1970s. Created by Gordon Stevenson (band member of Lydia's Lunch's Teenage Jesus and the Jerks). The film includes acting by Mary Cervenka (sister of Exene Cervenka of the band X). This film really captures the dark and luminous delirium so prevalent during the upheaval of the punk art movement. Unfortunately, Mary died in a car crash in Los Angeles while traveling during the film's original tour. When Gordon Stevenson died a short time later, the film seems to have vanished into the forgotten corners of cultural history. I would love to see it again, as the memories of this visionary work have never left my mind since watching it several times in the late 1970s.

ECSTATIC STIGMATIC starts strong and immediately fascinates. Through the narration of someone, probably a doctor, maybe a psychiatrist, we are introduced to Little Rose, a young woman who is institutionalized in a mental hospital. We are told that she becomes stigmatized because of an "hysteric ailment" and that she was the leader of a blood-letting cult. Then, a new narrator starts talking about Little Rose much less scientifically and much more respectful, almost as if holding a sermon for a saint. All the while, we see Little Rose convulsing on her bed in one of her fits of ecstasy, which are always accompanied by stigmata.That's what happens in the first 20 minutes of the film. The film gets a little muddled or maybe just harder to decipher after that. There are several layers of flashbacks to Little Rose's childhood and her life with her parents, who were both performance artists.ECSTATIC STIGMATIC is pretty interesting, occasionally even fascinating experimental film that came out of the New Yorker "New Cinema" movement. It's certainly worth seeking out for lovers of strange, trippy, experimental art-house film-making.