The Foreigner (1978)

Directed by

Amos Poe

Genre

thriller, drama

Country

United States

Runtime

1h 31m

Rating

6.0 of 10 from 10 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A man known as the Foreigner arrives in New York City and gets caught up with a group of eccentric underground characters. The film mixes improvised scenes with a deliberately disjointed story that mimics old detective movies.

low-budgetno waveoffbeatnon-linearstylizedrawpost-punkexperimental

What happens

The Foreigner is a 1978 American independent no wave film directed by Amos Poe starring Eric Mitchell with semi-improvised appearances by Patti Astor, Anya Phillips and Debbie Harry. Its postmodern faux film noir style was influenced by the French New Wave films of Jean-Luc Godard (particularly Alphaville) and the low budget Underground films of Andy Warhol and Jack Smith and the ensemble casting of Rainer Werner Fassbinder and John Cassavetes. It also was heavily influenced by No Wave DIY post-punk style of music and contains an onscreen appearance of The Cramps in a scene shot in CBGB's. This early version of The Cramps, billed in the film as The Erasers (not the actual No Wave band Erasers), perform a live version of the Iggy Pop/David Bowie song Funtime. Prior to that, Debbie Harry of Blondie sings a cappella a Kurt Weil song in the alley behind the Mudd Club. Ivan Král, of the Patti Smith Group, provided the ambient electro soundtrack. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

More like this

• Little Stabs at Happiness (1963)
• Blank City (2010)
• Let's Kill All the Lawyers (1992)
• Stop! (1970)
• Mondo Hollywoodland (2021)
• Talking to Strangers (1988)
• The Offenders (1980)
• I Am a Knife with Legs (2014)