Unitalicized texts below are all written by Peter Mays (with some minor spelling corrections/edits by me (Mark Toscano), though I’ve retained his characteristic spelling of the word “imagry”), taken from his various assembled filmographic notes. Any italicized texts are additions by me.
Peter Mays produced multiple filmographic documents over his career, often with different descriptive and contextual texts. The primary blurbs I’ve transcribed below are from the latest created filmographies he produced (ca.2000), but in a few cases I’ve added alternative texts from earlier filmographies (noted as such) for historical and contextual diversity and thoroughness.
VISION (1960-62)
8mm, bw, silent 16fps, 50m
Part I: “The End.” Three surrealist dreams are enacted in a strange night. In the following day, the world is set on fire by lightning; the fires are put out by ocean waves.
Part 2: “Resurrection.” The dead are raised from their graves. They ascend upward, pulled by a pulsating light. They are judged, chastened horribly, and resurrected into the body of Christ.
Vision is heavily influenced by Cocteau, Anger, Eisenstein, and especially Carl Dreyer. Vision is an imaginary adaptation of the Book of Revelation.
From Mays’ 1980s filmography:
A journey thru the three levels of mind of the young film-maker. A dream-work initially undertaken to dis-mantle Christianity by assuming it to be true. Inspired by The Seventh Seal and Eisenstein, and dedicated to the Cocteau of Blood. Unintentional Freudian imagry (due to use of family members as actors — my father wielded the sword) merges with imagry of the Apocalypse. Heavily influenced by Fireworks in that the film-maker enacts his own destruction: I put myself thru the Last Judgement, coming out with only symbolic wounds. On another level the film is an exorcism against pain. Vision is an almost unbearable film experience due to the intentional lack of a sound-track. I was nearly crucified at the only public screening of the psychic epic.
From another undated filmography (probably 1990s):
Originating as a study of Durer’s Apocalypse woodcuts, my first film soon expanded into a surrealist dream epic. After a brief prologue in which Saint John sees the wounded Christ, a “Night” section begins, and the eye passes to a hidden region where three dreams are seen. “Day” follows with closeups of the world set on fire by lightning; then ocean waves put the fires out. Part II portrays the raising of the dead from their graves, an ascent to Heaven and a ghastly enactment of the Last Judgment by the same Christ seen in the prologue, but who is now a sword.
THE ONE BEDROOM APARTMENT (1963)
16mm, bw, sound, 25m
Cast: Judith Batton, William Alpert, Marvin Hardin
A young couple with sexual problems is visited by a friend. The evening ends with a startling revelation. Inspired by the New Wave, this short story, lyric and vulnerable, is told without dialogue but accompanied by music.
From Mays’ 1980s filmography:
The opposite of the preceding dream-epic, this neorealist film was a minute examination of my dwelling, starring the girl I later married. Sound-track of music and occasional effects. Apartment has never been seen publicly.
STREAM (1964)
8mm, color, silent, 15m
The 8mm version represents the film’s original cut. At some point after Mays blew up the film to 16mm in 1964-65, he recut the blowup, particularly shortening the second half.
The meanderings of a mountain stream are followed for a few miles. Recorded on 8mm Kodachrome and “cluster” edited to create a highly formal, fugal experience.
From Mays’ 1980s filmography:
Stream completes this triad of films of innocence, and it is perfect except for one problem, its extremely close resemblance to the work of Brakhage. A mount stream is followed for a couple of miles thru some of its changes.
THE STAR CURTAIN (1965)
16mm, color, sound, 20m
Mays reworked this film into The Star Curtain Tantra in 1969. The original The Star Curtain only survives as one extant print. For further information, see The Star Curtain Tantra
From Mays’ 1980s filmography:
A trance film about the settling and relaxation of the senses after a climax. An homage to Ron Rice and Jack Smith, and again to Cocteau for his image of woman as a mediator and Idea-Queen, the Star. The first film that ever made me any money, at the Cinematheque-16 on the Sunset Strip in 1966 when the creatures were out and it was all beginning. Curtain is a film as hypnotic experience in which aether visions are glimpsed. Curtain reveiled [sic] itself as The Star Curtain Tantra in 1969, when I added a final long, didactic visual/aural series of sentences, glyphs strung together like jewels, to bespeak my Lady as a Seer. Apocalyptic imagry along Siva/Shakti lines, more cosmic and playful than the grim sentences of Vision. My first use of sound to suggest things heard but not seen, resulting in dialectic of track and picture.
THE DEATH OF THE GORILLA (1966)
16mm, color, sound, 16m
A sight/sound combine of exotic imagry shot semi-randomly in superimposition off a TV and then cut to make a fast moving but extremely ambiguous “story”. Gorilla moves through modern man’s myth mind like a runaway train bursting at the seams.
Prize at Ann Arbor Film Festival, 1967.
From Mays’ 1980s filmography:
A sound/sight combine of the farthest-out imagry on TV — mostly sci-fi and adventure B-movies — as seen thru color filters semi-randomly superimposed and then cut to make a fast moving but extremely ambiguous story. There are so many intertwining levels, that you see in it what your unconscious wants to. Gorilla moves thru modern man’s myth mind like a runaway train bursting at the seams. Best section is space war at end. This is kidvid. The first film screenings in which I became aware of the audience as a kind of mass gorilla mind. With this film I begin my career as an entertainer.
VAMPIRE FLASH (1968)
16mm, color, sound, ca.20m
This film is apparently lost, according to Mays. This short actually comprises an edit of Parts 3 and 4 of Mays’ then-unfinished film The Time Beyond Thought, released as its own short film through “a soft-core distributor on Hollywood” per Mays’ notes. This excerpted short was then reworked by Mays, apparently using material only from Part 4, and sold to Creative Film Society for distribution as Night of the Vampire.
NIGHT OF THE VAMPIRE (1968)
16mm, color, sound, 9m
This short actually comprises the “final climactic scenes” of Mays’ then-unfinished film The Time Beyond Thought, released on its own and distributed through Creative Film Society.
“A New American Cinema ‘black drama’ in which a nude Miss Dracula dines on the blood of her victims, who have been conveniently stashed away in her cave. Peter Mays is a member of the Los Angeles light show group, The Single Wing Turquoise Bird, and utilizes his experience with that group to create special lighting effects in this film.” (Creative Film Society catalog description, 1975)
SOFA-FIRE DEATH-SONG (1968)
16mm, color, sound, 11m
This film was made by Mays as a commission from Robert Pike/Creative Film Society. Mays did not consider it one of his personal films, and did not think much of it, generally excluding it from his filmographies.
“A psychedelic cinepoem using special color effects on the nude female form, with emotions of sensuality and horror expressed in a Poe-like atmosphere. Peter Mays is a member of the Los Angeles light show group, Single Wing Turquoise Bird, and has utilized creative lighting effects accordingly in this painterly motion picture.” (Creative Film Society catalog description, 1975)
THE STAR CURTAIN TANTRA (1969)
16mm, bw & color, sound, 17.5m
This film was distributed for a few years by Bob Maurice/Paradigm Films. Sam Francis purchased a print of this film from Mays as well, in 1972-73 (“he is the only person to have collected my work; this is the only work he purchased”)
A trance film originally released in 1966 as The Star Curtain, about the settling and relaxation of the senses after a climax. “Sentences” of cosmic imagry were added in 1969 to form the vision glimpsed in the trance. Dialectic opposition of picture and sound. Tantra played at the San Francisco Film Festival of 1970.
THE DEATH OF THE GORILLA (APE OF THOTH VERSION) (1970)
16mm, color, sound, length uncertain
Mays refers to this as a “second, darker version”. The first answer print of The Death of the Gorilla was completely recut into this version of the film in 1970, and then the film’s original picture and sound rolls matched to this new “Ape of Thoth” cut and one print was made. In 1981, Mays recut the film back to its original 1966 version. The “Ape of Thoth” version only exists in the one extant print, and according to Mays’ notes, “was never seen anywhere”.
SINGLE WING TURQUOISE BIRD LIGHT SHOW FILM (1969-70)
35mm, color, 4m
Single Wing Turquoise Bird were a light show group originally active in Los Angeles between 1969-1973. This film represents footage created for a sequence in the James Bridges feature film The Babymaker (1970). A copy of the footage was provided to the group as a filmed record representing their characteristic light show work, and has been shown as a short film in the years since.
This film has been shown with different separate soundtracks on different occasions, including “Waiting for the Sun” by The Doors, Grateful Dead music, and “Astronomy Domine” by Pink Floyd.
SISTER MIDNIGHT (1967-74)
16mm, color, sound, 65m
Cast: Kristen Weimann, Lance Richbourg, Victoria Bond, Jeffrey Perkins, Susan Atkins
Five young adults meet on a rainy night in Los Angeles, smoke something, and enter as a group into a series of dreams. One of the girls starts going around naked and pretty soon they all get into sex. Sister Midnight seduces one of the guys into entering her mind. As a result of this invasion of her privacy, she is reborn.
From Mays’ 1980s filmography:
Originally a feature of 75 minutes but unreleased, this is my heart-break film, a real sob story. My impressions of pre-Kubrick romanticism, inspired by hippies on the Strip. Five young adults meet on a rainy night in west Los Angeles, smoke something and enter as a group into a multi-plexed dream/nightmare. They come down the next morning, and feel bushed. The next day feels – sad.
Due to the extremely sexist, almost sadistic, nature of the acts portrayed in this fantasy, the film does not play to a mixed audience. Sister Midnight is like Little Egypt, a sex moppet who traveled around in Faires in the 6th century as a Fairy Dancer. She is very, very beautiful, but cold as ice. She is also known as The Chalice, which is actually the name of her central part, a Mystery. As a woman on display she is a gift to the male even as she is an Adultress [sic] for women. Branded thus with an X, she is cursed, and darkened out.
She is also called Vau’s Film.
A lot of my life is contained in this Chalice. There is blood, my blood, in the Chalice. This sacrificial offering to the God of Life, Love, Mating, and Mammal-Making, i.e. sex, is a hidden gambol. There is a lot of Death in the film as well, largely symbolic. The whole Universe is in Sister Midnight. This is my Universe film.
Midnight opened with Lucifer Rising as partner on July 25, 1975 at the Fox Venice Theater. She played one night only. There has been only one other public screening of this film maudit, which became an albatross around my neck. Her remains are in a vault in Hollywood to which I am the key. The film is dedicated to Mario Bava.
SISTER MIDNIGHT TRAILER (1975)
16mm, color, sound, 2.5m
THE WAR BETWEEN HEAVEN AND EARTH (1982)
slides + tape on video, 24m
The war between Israel and Lebanon in 1982 is recounted. Religion and politics are mixed with war in a witch’s brew of indigestible broth.
A GRAVEYARD TALE (1982)
slides + tape on video, 7m
A record of thoughts in a graveyard in Ojai, California, culminating in a revelation of the reality of the spiritual in the physical world.
THE WAR OF THE ROSES (1988-92)
slides + tape on video, 90m
This Goethean novel, shot in Topanga, California, attempts to balance and equate the realms of human beings, plants, the sky and light. The birth, blossoming, decay and death of plants is seen as a parallel of our own existence. The roses, red and white, intertwine and may or may not mate; they may as likely be at war as at peace. The theme is Mahler’s “The Song of the Earth”.
From another undated filmography (probably 1990s):
A “video novel” on the depths of my passions and the lengths of my art to endeavor to tell a tale unfolded like a rose of love, life, air, flowers, children, natives, and other influences and local plasmatic disturbances in the Aether. A work in progress in which each successive stage fixes and seals the preceding, and in which I don’t know what comes next. This Goethean novel of the wild longings and burning frustrations, the storm and strife, and peace and love, of the heart, declares my relationships with four women: Alison, Davina, Troy, and my mother.
THE DRAGON (1994)
video, color, sound, 97.5m
This video illustrates certain entries in the film-maker’s audio journal of January, 1994. It is an expression and exploration of the feelings of being “burned” by the doings of a close friend; inchoate, “outside of life” feelings which lead to revelations of how the Dragon releases bits and pieces of the primal life force to keep us in line and the engine of society going.
THE TIME BEYOND THOUGHT (1966-99)
16mm/digital, color, sound, 23.5m
Cast: Herb Elsky, Kristen Weimann, Susan Atkins, Pat O’Neill, Judith Batton, Louise Leak
The sixties kids are hanging out. An Angel appears who stops time. The kids follow him into an underground fantasy. They go through numerous adventures (not shot), and wind up at the center of the earth. Here the Angel sedates each kid and kills himself. From the Angel’s blood arises a naked vampire girl. The god of the underworld changes the kids into zombies preparatory to eating them. One girl escapes to tell the tale.
Partially shot in 1966, the climax was released in 1968 as Night of the Vampire. In 2000 the original film was completed in video with the original title.
From Mays’ 1980s filmography:
The final climactic scenes of this unfinished proto-feature have been released as Vampire Flash and Night of the Vampire. Proto-commune group of teen-agers are seduced by an Angel and go underground as in Journey to the Center of the Earth. I only shot a few scenes of this rambling Jungian adventure in plasticland with red light bulbs, slide backdrops and lots of vapors. The kids are finally butchered by a naked girl raised up by the Angel; she slaughters them as food for her god, a gigantic crab. Vampire is this horrid sensual climax. Then I decided to write a film for the girl [Sister Midnight], not knowing that she had meanwhile entered a mental institution, and her mother wouldn’t let her be in any more nude movies. Vampire completes the corruption triad of my work. She received some distribution as soft-core porn.
Some of Peter Mays’ notes on the four parts comprising this film:
Part 1 was shot first at Herb Elsky’s studio in Venice in 1966, of a group of kids in a “home” who are led by an angel underground. They pass through a window in a sequence titles “intermediate”. This is followed by a tracking shot down a model of a series of caverns, called “descent”, shot in my laboratory in Inglewood. All ECO.
Part 2 was shot in this apartment in Inglewood. This is sleepy action in a cavern, and ends with the kids escaping through a window. Shot in ECO, darkly.
Part 3 was shot in [Ektachrome] ER at Herb’s studio. It shows the angel, played by Herb, knocking out each kid and placing the unconscious body before an altar.
Part 4 was shot in ER at Herb’s studio the same night I believe. It shows a naked vampire girl rise up from the coffin/altar, drink a potient, and slit each kid’s throat and drink the kid’s blood. Before she can slit the last throat she is called back to her maker. The kids rise up as zombies (the living dead) and approach the altar. One kid, Kirsten, escapes like Ishmael to tell the tale, and at the end we see her watching this movie in TV.
Parts 1 and 2 were never printed. This movie was to be a feature but was not completed. In 1967 the “hot” nude girl sequence, as well as the angel sequence before, now Parts 3 and 4, were released as Vampire Flash by a soft-core porn distributor in west Hollywood. This version is now lost. Electronic sound was on the mag, not used in current version.
In early 1968 I made a deal with Bob Pike, who owned Creative Film Society, for three prints of the final nude girl sequence, Part 4, as Night of the Vampire. He also financed a short titled Sofa Fire Death Song, of which he owned the original. Both these films have electronic tracks I produced on the Moog synthesizer.
ASTRAL MAN: A MEMORY FILM OF THE SIXTIES (1968-2000)
16mm/video, color, sound, 44.5m
The past is recaptured in this memory film of the sixties. A house in Hollywood off the Sunset Strip serves as a metaphor for a reconstruction of time based on cycles. The film-maker lives in a cell-like room just off the living room. Fragments of this existence recur and build and are confused with an affair with a witch in Topanga in 1970. An archetype emerges in the form of a mountain. The acid experience congeals the reptilian self, and the film-maker repairs to the beach in Venice to recover.
In his 2000 filmography document, Mays wrote: “The mountain sequence will be released separately as The Ascent of Mount Carmel”, but he does not seem to have gone ahead with this plan, as far as I can tell.
From Mays’ 1980s filmography:
A diary film of my life after Midnight, to be intercut with a rite of passage. Astral Man, like Sister Midnight, is a being, created by and in the film. Astral Man will be my last experimental film.
ARRIVAL OF THE PURPLE LEGIONS (2005)
video, color, sound, 5.5m
This short story is a metaphor, based on a dream, about death.
CLEOPATRA (2006)
video, color, sound, 18m
This computer generated experiment expresses the interplay of the ancient cultures of Egypt, Greece and Rome in the story of Cleopatra and her two Roman lovers, Julius Caesar and Marc Antony. Ancient artifacts and paintings are animated, colorized and merged to convey this classic story.
MOTION PAINTINGS (2006-09)
digital
This series of short digital animation sequences were referred to as Motion Paintings by Peter Mays, and were found by friend David Lebrun on his hard drive around the time of Peter’s death, and recommended for archiving by David. Year is estimated based on the dating of the original files (one from 2006, three others from 2009).
DARK ISLAND (2009)
digital, color, sound, 24m
YOGA-SUTRAS (2010)
digital, color, sound, 17m
ALEPH (2012)
digital, color, sound, 16.5m
THE CONVERSATION OF EIROS AND CHARMION (2014)
digital, color, sound, 7.5m
TURN (2019)
digital, color, sound, 8m
Just before Peter Mays died, his longtime friend, filmmaker David Lebrun discovered this unfinished work on Peter’s computer, and they worked together to finish it before his passing.
INSTRUCTIONAL/INFORMATIONAL WORK
EUROPE ONE (1983)
slides + tape, 20m
Sketch of Part 1 of a three-part series outlining the history of the West. Europe One discusses the birth of our civilization in the Near East, its archaic growth to young Aryan manhood in ancient Greece, and the fatherhood of ancient Rome, and the original [sic] of the Papacy, and the dissolution of Rome and her conquest by the German tribes, led by the Goths, the Visigoths, the Huns, the Vandals, and the French.
BREAKTHRU YOGA (1988)
video, 74m
Davina Shaw, an Aryan girl of excellent English stock, teaches Yoga like a Yogini. Davina’s method is based on a number of local teachers and disciplines, particularly the school of Billy Porter in Hollywood. She studied with Yogi Bajam while co-producing this Kundalini video.
OVERVIEW OF WORLD WAR I (1983-89)
multimedia, 30m
Covers the beginning of the twentieth century, emphasizing military strategy as the determinant of the causes, courses, and conclusions of war. The Schlieffen Master Plan emerges as the chief cause of many of our present woes. The primary visual is computer-generated map animation; elements of multimedia (stills, footage, graphs, key-words) are included when useful to document or “see” information.
UNFINISHED WORKS
XING (ca. late 1960s)
16mm, color
This was a short film Mays shot and printed (comprising zooms into tree branches that were subsequently printed through color filters), but then cut up to include partially in Sister Midnight. It probably didn’t have sound, and was probably never screened publicly.
SISTER BLOOD (1977) (unfinished)
slides + audio on video
Portrait of a witch at a Renaissance Faire. Slides are matched to dialogue, music and effects to make an inexpensive video.
LIGHTSTRUCK 