Slumming/'tis the Season: Mesa of Lost Women!
Every so often, you see a movie that is just, there’s no other way to put it, bad. It’s a wretched non-construct of script, acting, and direction. Every so often, you come across one, though, that calls you to question if that’s not the very point of the film. I love - that's right: love - Mesa of Lost Women . It is deliriously bad. And yet, and yet, if you venture into it with the right approach, it can prove to be a challenging work of avant-garde cinema, interrogating plot structure, characters, the passage of time, and interspecies/environmental relationships. Does that sound like a stretch? You bet it does! But look what happens when we take that approach. C’mon down! Let’s start with the opening of two people trudging across a desert with rambling narration that stops when the couple, a man and woman, find safe haven, and resumes when they are surrounded by other characters who may or may not have parts to play in their narrative. When the camera dollies in on one, Pe...
