Iva Janzurová plays two roles, opposite herself, in Morgiana.
Iva Janzurová plays opposite herself in Morgiana, which screens this afternoon, and on Tuesday and Wednesday, at the Beacon.

If you're craving a film that epitomizes 1970s-era stylistic excess—swooping cameras, Freudian set decoration, swooning women in heavily embellished dresses—you've arrived at the right place.

Morgiana, directed in Czechoslovakia by the underappreciated auteur Juraj Herz, casts Iva Janzurová as a virginal beauty and her jealous, Mrs. Danvers-esque sister who's slowly poisoning her to death. In both roles, she wears enough makeup to provision a small army of drag queens. Morgiana's either a ridiculous, hallucinatory melodrama or a Jungian parable of self-destruction. Either way, it's a lot of fun.

The Beacon is showing Morgiana—whose titular character is an adorable Siamese cat with a sinister role to play—as part of their "Folklore Phantasmagoria" series, which will continue with the quintessential Russian horror Viy — Spirit of Evil (Oct 19 & 22–23) and the insane Shaw Brothers action movie, The Boxer's Omen (Oct 26 & 29–30).