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The Queen of Sheba Meets the Atom Man

Screening on Film
Directed by Ron Rice.
With Taylor Mead, Winifred Bryan, Julian Beck.
US, 1963, 16mm, black & white, 109 min.
Print source: Anthology Film Archives

As the title characters, Winifred Bryan and Taylor Mead are a comic-strip Adam and Eve in a distinctly non-Edenic industrial wasteland. Made shortly before his death in 1964 at age 29, Ron Rice's magnum opus also features an all-star supporting cast: Jack Smith, Jonas Mekas, Judith Malina, Julian Beck and many others, including Rice himself. Mead's performance exhibits the charm and impish physicality of the great silent comedians. His Atom Man is no superhero but rather a Cold War-era everyman at play. Unfinished at the time of Rice's death, Mead created the present version from available footage and added a soundtrack in the 1980s with the assistance of Anthology Film Archives. – DP

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