Marquis (1989) – Henri Xhonneux [Amazon.com]

Last week I found out that my local library owns a copy of Roland Topor and Henri Xhonneux’s 1989 animation film Marquis. This is a film I had wanted to watch for some time. I can’t remember exactly where or how I found out about it, since there is not much info available on the internet. Which brings me to the site I want to introduce: ‘The Science Fiction, Horror and Fantasy Film Review’ written by Richard Scheib, 3,500 pages of reviews and film criticism about which the author says:

Fantastic Cinema is an umbrella label that covers material of great diversity. Here you will find coverage of films as far apart as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Bambi [a five star film, according to Scheib], of directors that range from Ingmar Bergman to Edward D. Wood Jr – all are represented here and each discussed in terms of their own merits. Fantastic Cinema is not always easy to define in terms of thematic boundaries and a deliberately broad interpretation of what constitutes genre material has been taken in the hope that it will provide interesting discussion.

On Richard’s site you can read a plot synopsis and appreciation of Marquis.

Richard Scheib apparently lives in New Zealand (re website address), but other than that I can’t find much about him. His site has been online for several years, and is still updated regularly. He’s been writing film reviews at least since 1998, here is his IMDB rec.arts.movies.reviews profile page.

Richard, I have a question for you. would you please start a blog and tell us what you’re watching?

See also: fantastic film – SF films – horror films

P.S. Marquis features extensive conversations of Sade talking to his genital (and the genital talking back), other fictions which employ the trope of the talking body parts are  Naked Lunch (1959) – William S. Burroughs and the The Indiscreet Jewels (1748) – Denis Diderot.