CORMAN’S EYEDROPS GOT ME TOO CRAZY
(O COLIRIO DO CORMAN ME DEIXOU DOIDO DEMAIS)
dir. Ivan Cardoso, 2020
18 mins. Brazil.
In Portuguese with English subtitles.

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“Cinema films death at work, it’s the only art form which shows death devouring actors; the characters made immortal remain stronger in our memory than the memory of living souls.” – Jean Cocteau, Entretiens sur le cinématographe

Shock maverick Ivan Cardoso (THE SECRET OF THE MUMMY, THE SCARLET SCORPION) is one of the titans of Brazilian cinema, and so we are honored to platform his new short film CORMAN’S EYEDROPS GOT ME TOO CRAZY to conclude another year spent freaking out in front of screens in the dark.

CORMAN’S EYEDROPS GOT ME TOO CRAZY is the end product of a decade Cardoso spent scratching, drawing on and staining various dribs and drabs of 35mm film – many of them taken from tail and foot leaders, cigarette burns and minus-ten countdowns. The resulting freakout is hilariously staged as the consequence of a congenial (and obviously pre-pandemic) visit to Cardoso’s home from another living legend of cine-sploitation, his 95-year old friend Roger Corman (whose feel-bad classic X: THE MAN WITH X-RAY EYES is included in Cardoso’s psychotronic bricolage.) The film becomes a lettrist anti-history of Brazilian cinema and a spectral memorial to Cardoso’s mentor José Mojica Marins (COFFIN JOE), who passed on in 2020. CORMAN’S EYEDROPS must be seen to be believed, but even then you’ll ask if it really happened: a screeching, ecstatic eulogy party for the eternal death and rebirth of cinema.

“This is an excellent piece of work. The combination of the abstract imagery with the direct reality on the camera, in which sometimes one blends into the other and in other times one contradicts and fights the other. It’s fascinating. The cutting, the imagery, the whole examination of various forms of art combined with a very good musical score, it is one of the best I’ve ever seen.” – Roger Corman

Special thanks to Ivan Cardoso and William Plotnick.