This movie is hardly ever brought up, but when it is I feel the need to fervently defend it. But that is not an easy thing to do when faced with the reality of quality of the film. I have no problems with slow films, in fact I love films that are delibrately difficult and slow paced, I consider it athlectic movie-going to watch things like Syberberg's "Hitler", or things like "Out 1" "Berlin Alexanderplatz", or movies of conventional length but maddingly slow like "The Disappearance" or the films of Bresson or Terrance Malick. This film is slow, and I can't take any points off for that, but at times it does feel like there is no purpose to the pacing. The most used word to describe the film is pretentious. There is not doubt the film "flirts" with pretension, but I feel there is validity to the idea, the plot and the story, but I can understand why people might be turned off by it. It is frivolous in its poetics, and if you are a person concerned with the immediate or the political, you'll probably hate this movie, but if you like loose or experimental narrative and ambiguity of motive this film will appeal to you. Two things the film has going for it is one; the acting. It's uniformly strong, and Richard Dreyfuss is in it more than most people will tell you, but he isn't the start as the box art would lead you to believe. And two; the use of music. Leonard Cohen's "Suzanne" is use to great effect in the film, and in a way that is the truest visual representation of the meaning of that song. But above all the greatest thing about the film is the concept it plays with. A man obsessed about making a film about the second coming of Jesus, but as a woman. it is fascinating to watch this unfold, but I do have to adimit the pay off is disappointing. In the hands of someone like Nicholas Roeg, Bunuel, Bresson, or Malick this might have been one of the greatest films of all time. As it is now it's an interesting film, and an infuriating viewing because your left wondering what could have been.
15 Reviews
Sondra Locke's Description of TSCOS
jamesericmcgee3 March 2009
These quotes are from The Good, The Bad & The Very Ugly; A Hollywood Journey, by Sondra Locke (1997). "The script of his (Barry's) upcoming film had been inspired by Leonard Cohen's haunting song "Suzanne" and was the story of three men- an artist and a director and a newsman- who all love Suzanne and are all changed in some way by her innate goodness and purity. The screenplay was quirky and dreamlike..." (123).
Locke was brave to take part in this abstract vision, and to risk possible injury in the shots captured from a helicopter. She shared her beautiful physical form with the world in two shots with Paul Sand, and these are very special now considering what Locke weathered later on in her personal life.
Instead of simply complaining, do a little research now and then.
Locke was brave to take part in this abstract vision, and to risk possible injury in the shots captured from a helicopter. She shared her beautiful physical form with the world in two shots with Paul Sand, and these are very special now considering what Locke weathered later on in her personal life.
Instead of simply complaining, do a little research now and then.
A weird acid trip of a movie
ruandyt3 July 2006
As a fan of obscure movies I found out about this little oddity and got a copy of it on DVD. I've always liked Sondra Locke and Richard Dreyfuss is OK in my book so I figure what the heck lets check it out.Man this film is a trip back in time for sure.All the surealness and hipness was very representative of the late 60's/early 70's era.As stated by another reviewer here it's story is incoherent and never does come together but you keep watching to see what happens in the end.It's bizarre but entertaining to a point.Dreyfuss was very young in this movie.Sondra Locke never looked better in any other movie I've seen her in.Maybe it was because she was being cast as a female Jesus but she does look divine as Suzanne.Handled by better filmmakers this could've been a really good film.As it is it's a good little novelty to see and reflect on how movie making has changed in the last 30+ years.A side note future director Penelope Spheeris is one of Logan's female disciples wearing mime style face paint.
Not only poor, but billed details are not accurate.
kilgren26 February 2006
Richard Dreyfuss is, indeed, in this flick, but in a rather small part. He is NOT the "obsessed" filmmaker - he's the group's business manager/accountant. Even the box describes the film inaccurately. There are no erotic scenes with Sondra Locke, as advertised, unless one uses the term "erotic" quite loosely. I would not have considered viewing the film without Richard Dreyfuss being in it as a major character. I might have, however, had I realized that the famous 60's anthem, Leonard Cohen's "Suzanne," was an artistic influence. Other than the brief recitation of lines from the end of James Joyce's "Ulysses", and an interesting visual reference to the end of Ingmar Bergman's "The Seventh Seal," I found it a poor attempt to meld symbolic elements and moods immortalized in films like "Last Year at Marianbad" and "Un Chien Andalou." If you like the idea of the eccentric artistic troupe, there are many superior films, ranging from "Bye, Bye, Brasil" to "Cecil B. Demented."
Art is whatever one thinks it is
sol-kay6 March 2006
Mindless dribble about the second coming of Christ in the form of a hippie and albino looking Sandra Locke. You have no idea what's happening on the screen with the irritating theme song "Suzanne" being played over and over throughout the movie until when "The Second Coming of Suzanne" is over you already know it by hard no matter how hard you try to forget the whole thing.
This off-the-wall armature movie maker Logan,Jared Martin, is out to make the movie of the century but is so rude and obnoxious that none in the banking world is willing to finance his project. Planning to go on his own Logan then spots this couple at a seaside café and is fascinated with the young woman Suzanne, Sandra Locke, who reminds him of someone he knew in another life: Jesus Christ.
With Logan's assistant and all around gofer Clavius, Richard Dreyfuss,somehow getting a $740,000.00 loan from the bank to finance Logan's masterpiece he starts to work on Suzanne by flattering her about her talent as an actress in order to get her interested to be in his film. This leads to Suzanne not only leaving her boyfriend artist Simon, Paul Sand, but later Simon being so depressed and feeling all alone takes a gun to his mouth and blows his brains out.
The movie also has two somewhat unrelated sub-plots in it that has to do with a young autistic girl Dorothy, Kari Avalos, who's cured of her autism by Suzanne after everyone else, at the psychiatric hospital that she was committed to,failed. It's not really known what exactly Suzanne was doing at the hospital but she seemed to be some kind of orderly or volunteer there; was this supposed to show us in the audience that she, like Jesus, could miraculously heal the sick?
There's also this newspaper columnist and big time businessman tycoon Jackson Sinclair, Gene Barry, who seems to be either going through a very difficult mid-life crisis or has seen a biblical-like vision that changed his life forever. Sinclair had been searching for the meaning of life as well as what it's all about all through the movie and wanted to know why there's all this suffering in the world, like this movie that he's in, and seemed to have found the answer when he first laid his eyes on Suzanne. Sinclair also got some sense knocked into his head when his private chauffeur David, Mark Rasmusser, who's gotten sick and tired of his weird and crazy hallucinations almost running him off a cliff in a kamikaze like drive along the Pacific Coast.
The movie "The Second Coming of Suzanne" goes on with a number of unrelated sequences, probably to fill or pad in some time by it's director and film editor, and then goes to it's final scene in a Christ-like crucification on a hill as Logan has all the cameras rolling. It turns out that the crazed Logan got so carried away with his masterpiece as he tried to replicate, on the helpless and tied up Suzanne, the actual crucification of Jesus Christ some 2,000 years ago.
Hard to sit through and almost impossible to follow "The Second Coming of Suzanne" puts you through the same kind torture that Suzanne is put through by Logan and the makers of the film. The movie tries to be arty but that's just an excuse to cover up it's brainless and non-existent storyline and even worse the terrible and amateurish acting by everyone in it.
This off-the-wall armature movie maker Logan,Jared Martin, is out to make the movie of the century but is so rude and obnoxious that none in the banking world is willing to finance his project. Planning to go on his own Logan then spots this couple at a seaside café and is fascinated with the young woman Suzanne, Sandra Locke, who reminds him of someone he knew in another life: Jesus Christ.
With Logan's assistant and all around gofer Clavius, Richard Dreyfuss,somehow getting a $740,000.00 loan from the bank to finance Logan's masterpiece he starts to work on Suzanne by flattering her about her talent as an actress in order to get her interested to be in his film. This leads to Suzanne not only leaving her boyfriend artist Simon, Paul Sand, but later Simon being so depressed and feeling all alone takes a gun to his mouth and blows his brains out.
The movie also has two somewhat unrelated sub-plots in it that has to do with a young autistic girl Dorothy, Kari Avalos, who's cured of her autism by Suzanne after everyone else, at the psychiatric hospital that she was committed to,failed. It's not really known what exactly Suzanne was doing at the hospital but she seemed to be some kind of orderly or volunteer there; was this supposed to show us in the audience that she, like Jesus, could miraculously heal the sick?
There's also this newspaper columnist and big time businessman tycoon Jackson Sinclair, Gene Barry, who seems to be either going through a very difficult mid-life crisis or has seen a biblical-like vision that changed his life forever. Sinclair had been searching for the meaning of life as well as what it's all about all through the movie and wanted to know why there's all this suffering in the world, like this movie that he's in, and seemed to have found the answer when he first laid his eyes on Suzanne. Sinclair also got some sense knocked into his head when his private chauffeur David, Mark Rasmusser, who's gotten sick and tired of his weird and crazy hallucinations almost running him off a cliff in a kamikaze like drive along the Pacific Coast.
The movie "The Second Coming of Suzanne" goes on with a number of unrelated sequences, probably to fill or pad in some time by it's director and film editor, and then goes to it's final scene in a Christ-like crucification on a hill as Logan has all the cameras rolling. It turns out that the crazed Logan got so carried away with his masterpiece as he tried to replicate, on the helpless and tied up Suzanne, the actual crucification of Jesus Christ some 2,000 years ago.
Hard to sit through and almost impossible to follow "The Second Coming of Suzanne" puts you through the same kind torture that Suzanne is put through by Logan and the makers of the film. The movie tries to be arty but that's just an excuse to cover up it's brainless and non-existent storyline and even worse the terrible and amateurish acting by everyone in it.
Another disappointment for Sondra Locke fans
moonspinner5529 November 2014
Woefully 'ambitious' low-budget sludge concerns a filmmaker and his hippie troupe involved in the production of a new-fangled religious saga, with a woman cast as Christ. Independently-financed drama, a would-be dream-like parable (apparently inspired by Leonard Cohen's song "Suzanne"), is so meager in budget--and so sloppy in execution--that the results are nearly unintelligible. After a promising start in films, Sondra Locke lost her way as an actress before Clint Eastwood rescued her career; this is the worst movie she ever appeared in (ditto Richard Dreyfuss, looking embarrassed in the small role of a production associate). Writer-director Michael Barry openly apes Bergman and Antonioni, but he either needed more finance to expand on his (ahem) poetic leanings to bring this picture off or he simply had to be told "No!" The finale, wrong-headed and ridiculously bizarre, strains for "meaning", while the threadbare budget hampers any chance the actors have of sustaining interest. NO STARS from ****
They sure wasted a lot of celluloid in the '70s!
BrettErikJohnson9 August 2002
"The Second Coming Of Suzanne" is yet another one of those surrealistic films that tries to come across as extremely sophisticated, yet all it does is put the viewer to sleep. Like other movies of this type, there is limited dialogue. Everyone is much more interested in the visual aesthetic of the shot. However, the cinematography stinks so there is nothing at all to keep your attention.
The video box states that this film is "one of the most exciting visual adventures ever seen on film." Yeah...sure. It's right up there with watching such stimulating events as a bucket of ice melting or a turtle walking for a mile. 1/10
The video box states that this film is "one of the most exciting visual adventures ever seen on film." Yeah...sure. It's right up there with watching such stimulating events as a bucket of ice melting or a turtle walking for a mile. 1/10
terrible, yet awesome. so bad its great.
grimshawmail19 November 2006
Warning: Spoilers
it was and a simpler time ( the seventies ), a simpler place ( San Francisco ), where a man could make a simple movie about a drug crazed psychotic re-Crucifixion of Christ as a woman on acid with never ending dream sequences and inter cut flashbacks while having a multi-racial inter gender orgies regardless of financial responsibilities or moral repercussion.
this movie, tedious, slow, boring, is the worst example of the kind of pretentious heavy handed art school dreck that passed as art in the midst of the 70's. and i love it ! once this train wreck of endless slow motion zoom ins and heavy reverbed echo chamber acid guitar licks starts you can't take your eyes off of it until the ridiculous and absurd end. its kind of a cross between Jesus Christ superstar, beyond the valley of the dolls, and a really crappy acid trip with your parents on a water bed. its simultaneously a train wreck, completely fascinating, and also a great snapshot of the worst ( or best ) elements of b-grade seventies phychadelic film genre.
the plot.
I'll just tell you the plot because you will hardly be able to tell whats happening due to the constant cross edited flashbacks to events that may or may not have happened to characters that may or may not be themselves, and the face painted hippy freak nicks endlessly cavorting about in banal sequences of performance art level mime like street theater.
"Logan" is a really annoying iconoclast film maker who yells at people allot and is surrounded by a mostly silent film crew who are always dropping acid and having what seem like really bad orgies. Richard Dreyfus has an ancillary role as what seems like the accountant. the film crew seems to hate him for some reason and break out into maniacal laughter perhaps to torment him. "Suzanne" the titular character is a willowy blond who stairs vacuously into space and comforts the totally insane "artist" character. "the artist" is going completely mad, by the way. either from his hamfisted overacting or the incredible awfulness of his paintings. all of course terrible nudes of Susanne. there are some other characters that randomly show up, a cigar chomping "the man" character. who also is all hot for Suzanne i guess. he has a monologue. i couldn't really ever figure out what he had to do with the story except everyone had to hate "the man" back then and you couldn't make a movie without one. there is also a mute girl. the mute girl pays off in the end trust me, its incredibly stupid.
this movie, tedious, slow, boring, is the worst example of the kind of pretentious heavy handed art school dreck that passed as art in the midst of the 70's. and i love it ! once this train wreck of endless slow motion zoom ins and heavy reverbed echo chamber acid guitar licks starts you can't take your eyes off of it until the ridiculous and absurd end. its kind of a cross between Jesus Christ superstar, beyond the valley of the dolls, and a really crappy acid trip with your parents on a water bed. its simultaneously a train wreck, completely fascinating, and also a great snapshot of the worst ( or best ) elements of b-grade seventies phychadelic film genre.
the plot.
I'll just tell you the plot because you will hardly be able to tell whats happening due to the constant cross edited flashbacks to events that may or may not have happened to characters that may or may not be themselves, and the face painted hippy freak nicks endlessly cavorting about in banal sequences of performance art level mime like street theater.
"Logan" is a really annoying iconoclast film maker who yells at people allot and is surrounded by a mostly silent film crew who are always dropping acid and having what seem like really bad orgies. Richard Dreyfus has an ancillary role as what seems like the accountant. the film crew seems to hate him for some reason and break out into maniacal laughter perhaps to torment him. "Suzanne" the titular character is a willowy blond who stairs vacuously into space and comforts the totally insane "artist" character. "the artist" is going completely mad, by the way. either from his hamfisted overacting or the incredible awfulness of his paintings. all of course terrible nudes of Susanne. there are some other characters that randomly show up, a cigar chomping "the man" character. who also is all hot for Suzanne i guess. he has a monologue. i couldn't really ever figure out what he had to do with the story except everyone had to hate "the man" back then and you couldn't make a movie without one. there is also a mute girl. the mute girl pays off in the end trust me, its incredibly stupid.
Great Movie? No. Worthy of Watching? Yes.
jbenante-388-96391712 September 2018
Look, I haven't seen this movie since around the late 70s when I rented it on VHS. It is probable that it hasn't aged well - but come on, it's basically a hippie flick.
However, I do remember liking it - a lot. Despite some of the silliness in the plot, despite the cavorting of the characters in some scenes. I thought there was a purity about it. Or as if the filmmaker was trying to capture a kind of purity that Christians associate with Jesus.
However, I don't recall it as being a religious movie. if it had been, I probably would not have liked it, because I was never religious. Rather, it seemed like an exploration of religious fervor... transposed to the "hippy late 60s."
And all these decades later, I still remember the ending. Maybe I shouldn't have been surprised, but I was.
It's tempting to rate this movie a 10 to make up for some of the rather clueless reviews others have posted. But I can't do that. It's simply not deserving. It's weird, occasionally vapid, and sometimes apparently for no real reason. I'm going by my memory here, but I think I'm being fairly accurate.
However, taken as a whole, it was memorable for me. And mostly in a good way. And I think that's enough to warrant my rating.
However, I do remember liking it - a lot. Despite some of the silliness in the plot, despite the cavorting of the characters in some scenes. I thought there was a purity about it. Or as if the filmmaker was trying to capture a kind of purity that Christians associate with Jesus.
However, I don't recall it as being a religious movie. if it had been, I probably would not have liked it, because I was never religious. Rather, it seemed like an exploration of religious fervor... transposed to the "hippy late 60s."
And all these decades later, I still remember the ending. Maybe I shouldn't have been surprised, but I was.
It's tempting to rate this movie a 10 to make up for some of the rather clueless reviews others have posted. But I can't do that. It's simply not deserving. It's weird, occasionally vapid, and sometimes apparently for no real reason. I'm going by my memory here, but I think I'm being fairly accurate.
However, taken as a whole, it was memorable for me. And mostly in a good way. And I think that's enough to warrant my rating.
Good thing I wasn't of sound mind when I viewed this....
dimason6155 October 2008
....because if I was, I may have wished it was me being crucified on a wooden cross! I'm still trying to determine the plot of this movie - and I'm being "generous" that there was even a plot to begin with. As previously mentioned, it's a misnomer on the cover of the DVD that Richard Dreyfuss is actually the star. He was barely in the movie. And if he was indeed "frustrated" as the back cover indicated he was, well, that's probably because he said YES to be in this disaster of a movie and couldn't get out of it! The movie really seemed to focus on Jared Martin, and what his role in the movie was supposed to be, other than the extreme close -ups, was not as big of a mystery as to what Gene Barry's role actually was - or wasn't. And speaking of "big"...whomever had the bright idea to fit Gene Barry in the Humpty Dumpty attire, which showcased his trousers literally pulled up to his chin, should be sentenced to hard time by watching this movie stoned sober. I could go on and on about how horrendous this movie was, from the dialogue not matching the "actors'" mouths (think Clutch Cargo), to the erratic jumping from scene to scene (again, being generous even calling the frames of pictures "scenes"), to the lack of a plot.... However, if you're into bad early 70s genre and if you're in a cottage in Michigan with nothing but this movie and a box of kid & cat pictures, I recommend having a good bottle of wine before you embark on this weird ride of a movie because you'll be thankful that you may not remember it the next day!
Interesting and not as difficult as some suggest
christy-196022 April 2017
I thoroughly enjoyed this film. Remembering that the film was first Proposed in 1970 and came into being in 1974, it is not really the hippy trip some suggest. Caught in the haitus between old and new cinema it attempts to explore the story of the passion through an impressionistic approach. The gender reversals are brave but work in the context of burgeoning feminism. Sandra Locke is as mysterious as she is effective, the three Mary's, here played by men are far more than they appear, and the dialogue whilst sparse is weighty. The production owes a lot to the late sixties populist style of say the Beatles films but also points forward to the work of Derek Jarman and Peter Greenaway. It is a shame that these early 70s films are judged on their ( deliberate) failure to conform rather than on their contemporary achievements. The much bigger budget filming of Jesus Christ Superstar, or the tangled rhetoric of Zabriski Point, are more accessible but fail to communicate in the same way that Suzanne does. As an exploration of innocence cynicism and faith I thought it worked well. The second theme behind the film is the nature of film making itself. Director as creator, divine in the created world. When the discussion of the eternity of the soul unfolds the contemporary flirtation with reincarnation is more a reflection of the directors role travelling between the lives he creates, than a simple populist diversion. Naive this might be, pretentious it is not.
You think that anybody is going to pay to see this?
mark.waltz16 September 2021
Warning: Spoilers
That's the opening line in this bizarre artistic film that after a beautiful credit sequence on the Pacific Ocean followed by a shot of the Bay Bridge as it heads towards San Francisco. The haunting song "Suzanne" is heard as we see a woman walking along the water then a town car crossing the bridge, preparing Jared Martin ("Dallas") for financial meetings regarding his movie script. We are then subject to pretentious conversations about what art is ("anything that is uniquely ours", Martin explains) and a series of strange photographic effects which concentrated on the uniquely beautiful Sondra Locke in the title role.
The idea of Jesus Christ actually being a woman is an interesting one (just as the idea of either the anti-Christ or false prophet being a female is, an idea that occurred to me after reading the "Left Behind" series), and perhaps one day someone will write a story surrounding either possibility, but hopefully it will be done without the pretentiousness or artistic overload of this film. Some of the location footage is gorgeous, particularly the old Victorian house in the northern California countryside. But outside of Locke, a good majority of the characters are hideously unlike able, particular an aging columnist turned media mogul who angrily spouts philosophies about the decay of society.
The film seems dated even by 1974 standards, with a method that seems to be part of the psychedelic 60's, not the more troubled mid 70's. It is the type of film that would have appealed to the flower children of the late 60's and very few others. Even the gentle scenes make no sense, and the film fluctuates moods extremely quickly from the start. It is one of those forgotten independent films that ended up on cheaply mass produced $1.00 DVD labels, and it sat dusty on my shelf for years. Unintentionally laughable, it's still a challenge to make through, and if there is a hidden meaning somewhere in the film, it must have escaped on the cutting room floor.
The idea of Jesus Christ actually being a woman is an interesting one (just as the idea of either the anti-Christ or false prophet being a female is, an idea that occurred to me after reading the "Left Behind" series), and perhaps one day someone will write a story surrounding either possibility, but hopefully it will be done without the pretentiousness or artistic overload of this film. Some of the location footage is gorgeous, particularly the old Victorian house in the northern California countryside. But outside of Locke, a good majority of the characters are hideously unlike able, particular an aging columnist turned media mogul who angrily spouts philosophies about the decay of society.
The film seems dated even by 1974 standards, with a method that seems to be part of the psychedelic 60's, not the more troubled mid 70's. It is the type of film that would have appealed to the flower children of the late 60's and very few others. Even the gentle scenes make no sense, and the film fluctuates moods extremely quickly from the start. It is one of those forgotten independent films that ended up on cheaply mass produced $1.00 DVD labels, and it sat dusty on my shelf for years. Unintentionally laughable, it's still a challenge to make through, and if there is a hidden meaning somewhere in the film, it must have escaped on the cutting room floor.
pretentious and obnoxious.
EyeAskance29 March 2004
One of those post-psychedelic burnout non-movies which emerged from the avant-garde independent cinema fringe in the early 70s. The hazy, Gordian narrative concerns three men obsessing over a dove-like and rather pasty-looking Sondra Locke, who has been cast as a female Christ figure for an indie film production. Chockablock with specious arty imagery and pseudo-spirituality, the most troubling thing about this movie is its smug air of self-importance. Truth is, this film is an oblique, audience-divorcing pipe-dream which struts embarrassingly through its duration with impudently splayed tailfeathers. Credit due, it does exhibit some bold editing technique and camerawork, and sets itself afloat with a lovely folk ballad by Leonard Cohen.
Honestly, I have never seen such a wide load of unharnessed grandiosity in all my life. I think it's safe to assume that median viewers will find themselves picking little fuzzballs off their sweaters withing fifteen minutes.
3/10
Honestly, I have never seen such a wide load of unharnessed grandiosity in all my life. I think it's safe to assume that median viewers will find themselves picking little fuzzballs off their sweaters withing fifteen minutes.
3/10
Better Than Expected. Better Than Leonard Maltin Said It Was.
dtweaver13 April 2005
I didn't even want to watch this movie after reading Maltin's review and 1 1/2 star rating. I watched it anyway on the advice of my son and found it much better than I expected. I would give it 2 1/2 stars out of a 4 star system. You have to watch the movie more than once to understand it all. If you don't know much about religion, you will miss a lot. I graduated from high school the year the movie was made, so maybe I can relate to it better. Yes, there is some pretension in the movie and it's weird to some extent, but that was the 70s so what do you expect. I can see why people might not like the movie; however, I cannot understand people saying it is boring. The movie is anything but boring. You will either hate it or love it. If you find it boring, you are probably brain dead.
This is really weird!
scarymovie70220 December 2000
I bought this movie off of EBAY, thinking since Sondra Locke and Richard Dreyfuss were in it, it should be good. They were both in it for like 35 seconds. This movie was way too bazaar and weird to follow. I bought it in July, started watching, got bored, and didn't finish it till October. The movie is really boring, and eerie cause EVERYONE in the whole film is obsessed with Sondra looking like a hippie. **** out of 10 stars.
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