The Warhol/Morrissey Years
Joe News
Films 1967-1974
Films 1974-1980
Films 1984-
Docs/Shorts
Television
Undress Rehearsal
Joe-Pourri
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Book Info
Documentary
Joe Links
Dir. Andy Warhol/Paul Morrissey
An 18-year old Joe walked right off the streets and into film history when Paul Morrissey asked the teenager who stopped by to watch filming to step into the scene. On-screen for 23 minutes, Joe steals the film by stripping down to his jockey shorts and wrestling speed-freak Ondine in a Greenwich Village apartment. Unavailable on video at this time, but frequently screened at The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh and fully detailed in the book Little Joe, Superstar.
Lonesome Cowboys (1968)
Dir. Andy Warhol/Paul Morrissey
Proof that Warhol and Morrissey were interested in the kid, Joe was invited to Tucson to join a cast of Warhol irregulars in a campy western romp about a band of “gay” cowboys in a desolate one-woman town. Subject to review by the F.B.I., which was investigating claims of obscenity and rape, the film was seized by police in several cities and offers a scene in which Joe shakes his groove thing to "Magical Mystery Tour." Currently available through Raro Video (Italy) and Xploited Cinema (US) on DVD for those who have the all-region, PAL-conversion players.
Dir. Andy Warhol/Paul Morrissey
The only unreleased Warhol feature, this ultra-rarity finds the Factory players improvising a tale about surfers and surfer-wanna-bes in La Jolla. A 90-minute cut was preserved by the Warhol Foundation and Joe's appearance is limited to just 16 minutes. Not available on video, but fully detailed in the book Little Joe, Superstar.
Dir. Paul Morrissey
Joe's personal fave of the Morrissey trilogy, it's the film that made him a star. Joe plays Joe, a sweet young married man whose wife sends him out on the streets to hustle sexual favors so she can pay for her girlfriend's abortion. With stylistic nods to Warhol's experiments, it's dominated by Morrissey's desire to tell a story, though it was shot over a couple of weekends without a script. An underground film classic, it not only introduced cinema to the male as frontally-nude sex object, but it did so by fleshing out the flesh and transcending exploitation. Joe gives an entirely sincere and natural and charismatic performance in an influential, touching and funny film. This is where a generation of filmgoers fell in love with him...and where subsequent generations continue to do likewise. Now available on DVD.
Dir. Paul Morrissey
The critics' fave of the Morrissey trilogy, this one tells the tragicomic tale of Holly Santiago (played with great gusto by Holly Woodlawn) and her boyfriend, Joe, an impotent junkie, as they wrestle with making their relationship work while struggling to achieve their goal of getting on Welfare. Zoned out much of the time, Joe so convincingly portrayed a dope-addict that fans wrote him at the Factory imploring him to get off the stuff. Agonizing close-ups of him shooting up probably didn’t help. Though Woodlawn's film in many ways, Joe's contributions are not to be overlooked, particularly during a sequence with the incomparable Jane Forth as a young newlywed whose house he's come to rob. Poor guy! Everybody in the film, boy or girl, seems to want to have sex with him...but he's just not up to it. Morrissey's anti-drug comedy continues to amaze with how sharp his non-actors are in improvising dialogue and fashioning unforgettable characters out of themselves. Now available on DVD.
Dir. Paul Morrissey
The most "Hollywood" of Morrissey's trilogy was shot there and takes on a faded Tinsel Town by presenting the tawdry story of a has-been actress, played by Sylvia Miles, being taken advantage of by a long-haired young stud named Joe, a former child actor and singer looking for a new start. Appearing in the prime of his beauty, Joe is called upon to play a callous Hollywood hustler who uses sex in a fruitless attempt to rejuvenate his career. Pat Ast is hilarious as the motel landlady who gives him a massage, and the irreplaceable and legendary Andrea Feldman shrieks and whines and freaks her way into your heart as Miles' schizophrenic would-be lesbian daughter. Those who've never seen a Warhol/Morrissey film and are interested in Joe should probably start here, only because its unconventional convention should whet your appetite for both its star and his earlier, more challenging and experimental work. Now available on DVD.
Dir. James H. Kay
Joe's first outing away from Warhol/Morrissey is this horror flick, also known as Seeds of Evil, about a monotone and deeply tanned gardener (Joe) who raises killer plants and winds up turning into a tree. Shot in Puerto Rico, the film is otherwise notable for Joe's hair at its longest. Now on DVD with a commentary by Joe and director Kay, as well as a featurette with Joe, Katherine Houghton and the director. See the Joe Links page, as well as our full review.
Flesh for Frankenstein (1974)
Dir. Paul Morrissey
Known in a myriad of edited versions as Andy Warhol's Frankenstein and ignorantly derided by horror film scholars, this very funny take on the German egocentric's attempt to create a super-race was originally presented in 3-D and made more money than any of Warhol's films. It is, in fact, an Andy Warhol film in name only, since that's all he lent to the Italian production. Udo Kier gives a career-defining performance as the sex-negative Baron married to his nymphomaniac sister. Joe manages to bring down the house the very first time his hunky field hand delivers a line, his New York accent cutting a path of hilarious incongruity through a film thick with European tongues and Old World flavors. Gory and demented and a whole lot of fun! Available on DVD.
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Dir. Paul Morrissey
Andy Warhol's Dracula comes complete with several of the same cast members as Frankenstein, but is in many ways a more poetic and beautiful film. No 3-D this time, but Udo Kier is back as the sickly Count who goes looking for virgin blood amongst a financially-ruined Catholic family in Italy. Joe shows up as the spiteful and chronically irritable Marxist handyman who ridicules the pretensions of the rotting upper class and deflowers the daughters before the vampire can satisfy his desperate lust. Ironically, most of the blood we see in the film is being vomited in great heaves and spasms out of the vampire's own mouth. Available on DVD.