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The Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda
by Ira Cohen
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Ira Cohen 's 1968 film The Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda is brought to you by Boo-Hooray as a fully restored director’s cut DVD.

* Edition of 500 copies
* High-quality transfer from the original 16mm film, with color correction supervised by the director (22 min) with soundtrack remastered by Tim Barnes, featuring The Universal Mutant Repertory Company (Loren Standlee, Ziska Baum, Angus MacLise, Hetty MacLise, Raja Samayana, Tony Conrad, Henry Flynt and Jackson MacLow)
* “From The Mylar Chamber,” an original slideshow of 60 mylar photographs with soundtrack by Angus MacLise and original poetry by Ira Cohen.

“Part ‘Dr. Strange,’ part ‘Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome,’ ['The Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda' is] so High ’60s that you emerge from its 20-minute vision perched full-lotus on a cloud of incense, chatting with a white rabbit and smoking a banana…. ‘Invasion’ is a languidly opiated costume ball in which an assortment of masked and painted bohos, some sporting outsize elf ears, loll about a candlelit, Mylar-lined set, blowing soap bubbles and nibbling majoon. …In lieu of action, Cohen uses all manner of superimposition and prismatic image-splitting; his big effect, however, is the deliquescent Mylar reflection. What saves ‘Invasion’ from preciosity is the vague menace of Angus MacLise’s improvised pan-piping, tabla-tapping, creature-yipping score. Although this masterpiece of Tibetan-Moroccan-Druidic trance music was reissued on CD several years ago, it truly blossoms in conjunction with the exotic smorgasbord served at Cohen’'s psychedelicatessen.”