Film/Video BLACK LIZARD (KUROTOKAGE) DIRECTED BY KINJI FUKUSAKU FRIDAY, JANUARY 8, 1999, 9:15 PM OPENING-NIGHT TICKET SPECIAL: $6 ($3 WALKER MEMBERS) AUDITORIUM

Eye-popping, gender-bending, and not infrequently jaw-dropping, Black Lizard was a pet project of author Yukio Mishima, who makes a very rare guest appearance. Famous onnagata (a male Kabuki theater actor who plays female roles) Akahiro Miwa plays a glamorous jewel thief who is obsessed less with gems than with ideal beauty. She "collects" the most beautiful people she espies (including a hunky Mishima), embalms them, and adds them to her museum of living dolls in a far-off grotto. Shot in retina-ripping Pop Art colors and effects-filled GrandScope, this cracked camp classic can be enjoyed as a specimen of the wildest period of Japanese cinema, or it can be appreciated as "a radical critique of the dominant culture's attitude toward sexuality," as scholar David Desser has characterized it. 1968, Japan, 86 minutes.