A major, though forgotten, work from New York’s underground film scene of the late 60s and early 70s, Nelson Lyon’s The Telephone Book tells the story of Alice, a sex-obsessed hippie who falls in love with the world’s greatest obscene phone caller and embarks on a quest to find him. Her journey introduces her to an avant-garde stag filmmaker, a manipulative psychiatrist, a lesbian housewife, and more. Photographed in high-contrast black-and-white, and punctuated with a remarkable, surreal color animated sequence, The Telephone Book is one of the greatest cult films you’ve probably never heard of.

The Telephone Book is part of our Nitehawk Naughties 2014 program in partnership with Vinegar Syndrome – intended for mature audiences.