A Woman Distressed
(1962, 8mm, Color, Sound, 12min.)
All films preserved by Anthology Film Archives through the Avant-Garde Masters program funded by the Film Foundation and administered by the National Film Preservation Foundation. Special thanks to Cineric, Inc.
Pre-dating SHOCK CORRIDOR, the Kuchars bring us this tantalizing tale of the inner workings of a very, very insane asylum.
"The [Metropolitan Motion Picture Club] put out a newsletter and one of my early, 8mm films A Woman Distressed, was the only picture that they ever panned in the pages of their cinematic rag. The film was a brash, reckless, comic-drama about the drug Thalidomide and its deforming effects upon the offspring of a big-city maternity ward. Stories of the horrors caused by the drug were permeating the newspapers at the time and I used the reported material as a basis for the comic-drama (or dramedy as it is now called by prime-time practitioners of the TV medium)... They found it completely tasteless." – George Kuchar