THE MYSTICAL ROSE (1976) (Church of Film)

A dark and challenging operatic tornado of animation, a grim and surreal knot of sex and violence in meticulous designs. Vagina dentatas and self-annihilating phalluses crawl over terrain alien and familiar in this perverse recreation of a Catholic Mass! Michael Lee made his magnum opus,

THE MYSTICAL ROSE, as a response to his conflicted feelings about his own strict religious upbringing, just as he was colliding with the spirited counter-culture in Melbourne. The result is an often hilarious, often disturbing, and always awe-inspiring bohemian howl against malevolent rituals and traditions. (CW: intense visual stimulation, strobe, graphic imagery, both real killing of livestock and simulated animal violence).