Welcome to Café Flesh, home of Dada xxx, a place where the genetically warped are entitled to gendered identities, in accordance with a decree from the United Mutations. This is a film about freaks, by freaks, for freaks. Taking Cabaret (1972) as its template, Café Flesh reconfigures the MGM musical as a parodic, pornographic set of numbers, switching Weimar Germany for a Reagan era post-apocalyptic nightmare. Drawing attention to the mechanisms of both the production of pornography, it is all about how it is consumed, as well as the power dynamics between capitalist, worker and consumer. Whether it’s prostitution or therapy, the key to any business is to keep punters wanting more. Straight out of the Brecht/Keaton playbook, director Sayadian (aka Rinse Dream) takes what should be hot and serves it cold. When Café Flesh hit cinemas in 1982, it was the fag end of the Cold War, when things were heating up, just before Gorbachev, Perestroika, and all that jazz. Director Sayadian, like Bob Fosse, is Chicago born and bred. The title evokes Chicago’s stockyards, along with the meatpacking industry, immortalized by the socialist muckraker Upton Sinclair in the terrifying The Jungle (1905). Sayadian also references The Band Wagon (1953) starring Cyd Charisse, along with Small Town Girl (also 1953) featuring Ann Miller. Well ahead of the curve when it came to postmodernism, Sayadian’s imagery, both visual and verbal, has a hard edge nihilism, stemming from unrestrained free associative play of both signs and signifiers. Los Angeles vice laws meant the filmmakers could be prosecuted for prostitution, hence the use of pseudonyms amongst most (but not all) of both cast and crew. The proximity of Sayadian’s studio to both LA club The Masque, and a nearby methadone clinic, gave Café Flesh a look that appears to straddle both punk and heroin chic. It betrays both the director’s roots in still photography (Sayadian started his career as creative director of “Hustler”), and his love for the Hollywood golden age, both film noir and MGM musicals. Lit by a broken fridge lamp while being hammered the way of all Weiner schnitzel, the digitally over fucked porn princesses of today suffer the inhumane LED look of days-old raw chicken. Whether it’s Eluard or Ballard, Café Flesh recalls a lost horizon, when the blue movie possibilities, entertained by everyone from Southern to Bresson, were endless, only to be subsumed by the crushing banality of pimps with cameras.

Daniel Bird