purplemeat9 It's the Velvet Underground in 1966 so it would be difficult to make this bad. Pretty much the only way it could be ruined is if the cameraman zoomed in and out rapidly for 10 minutes... 20 minutes... 30 minutes... which, in fact, is the case. It's absolutely nauseating. While this might not bother some, it certainly bothered me.I guess what the cameraman was trying to do was treat the camera like it was an instrument. The other effects don't detract from this document, and the zoom wouldn't even be that bad if it was used a little more sparingly. On occasions, though, I really wish the camera was strictly used as a means to record this moment in time. John Cale plays something really wicked looking at one point, but you never really get a good look at it with all the zooming in and out and the tendency to not be focusing on what you want to see.It is still a film worth seeing for any Velvet Underground fan, and if you're a fan of Warhol's films, well, I guess you're used to things that are difficult to watch, so go for it. I definitely understand why this isn't commercially available. I'm glad I saw it, but I wouldn't be disappointed if I never saw it again.

Inflintare I had access to a print of this back in highschool days, and would steal away with friends to screen it whenever possible.Great document.But it's not the only film on the subject that should be listed at IMDb.Someone's neglected to enter the 12-22 minute (depending on the version) "Andy Warhol's Exploding Plastic Inevitable with The Velvet Underground" mini-featurette ...if I've tagged it right! What I've recently seen is a fragment of live 'performance' footage... as in dancer-performers against lightshow and bits and pieces of Velvets' soundtrack further edited into stroboscopic oblivion. The "look" is that of the stills from the show reproduced on the band's first LP.It's very much a "Morrisey with Warhol" product of the times, a real film in itself, and explains a LOT about how the band worked as an extension of the Warhol Trip in the great man's own fantasizing Svengali imagination. Heard this way (which means heard only but seen 'enacted' with fractured clips of dancers and ecstatics whippers and whippees), the onslaught is a sensual barrage of drugged out cool, Heroin on Speed.Vocal roles go to Cale doing the one about "boots of shiny, shiny leather", Venus in Furs, and just possibly European Son (where was Lou that night?), and Nico in the middle on a snatch of It Was a Pleasure Then. Gerard and Inga fling themselves around with abandon. Great stuff!

InjunNose Certainly not the best introduction to the Velvet Underground, this extended, monotonal jam filmed at Andy Warhol's Factory still has hints of the band's weird, fractured magic. It's difficult to watch (god, that "cinematography"!) but footage of the Velvets is so scarce that any true fan will gladly watch this film time and time again. After all, where else can you see Lou Reed, John Cale, Sterling Morrison, and Moe Tucker in their black leather and sunglasses? (They didn't look like this in the 1993 reunion film!) Aside from scraping one of Warhol's palette knives against the strings of Cale's bass, Nico doesn't really contribute much, but that's okay. The music sounds similar to the instrumental sections of 'Run Run Run' and 'European Son (To Delmore Schwartz)' on the band's first album. There are no vocals. Listen to the first two records by the Velvets--"The Velvet Underground and Nico" and "White Light/White Heat"--and you'll be able to appreciate the film much more keenly.

jesusatan2001 I just recently saw a film print of this for the first time at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Warhol retrospective a few weeks ago and was floored. If you are an artist or a musician, or both, then this is a particularly important film to see. It exists as the perfect time-capsule of 1966 in the Warhol Factory and completely lacks pretension. Even though it's original intention was to be wall paper (un-edited, moving images of The Velvet Underground, projected onto themselves as they actually played live), it still managed to take me though just about my entire range of emotions. Throughout the course of the film I thought about life, death, art, love, sex, and nearly everything in between. If you are expecting a concert film, think again...If you are lucky enough to find it, watch it with an open mind.