‘BLOOD’S’ OFF-BEAT PULSE

A critic once wrote that Paul Morrissey has the face of a post-adolescence choirboy and on a good day, even at 47, that’s still partly true. But on this particular afternoon what he looks is perplexed.

Morrissey is not a name on the tip of every film-goer’s tongue. Indeed those who attend only mainstream movies may never have heard of him. But anyone who was around in the late ‘60s, when his collaboration with Andy Warhol produced films like “Trash” and “Heat,” knows that here is a movie-maker of original vision if rather limited funds.

And on this particular day he is looking perplexed because his new film “Mixed Blood,” which has opened to good reviews on both coasts, has just been banned in Ontario, Canada.

He finds that idiotic.

“Banned,” he repeated as if finding the word itself ludicrous. “Can you imagine? Here I am making fun of the drug wars and they ban me? All I tried to do was make the actions of these teen-age gangs seem laughable and silly. Couldn’t they see that?”

Apparently not. But he’ll survive. He’s hardly a stranger to censorship. France scissored 20 minutes from “Trash” before it was released there. And Italy always has censored his films.

“I’m not against censorship in principle,” he said. “Not at all. Some things should be censored. I watched ‘Sins’ the other night and there was a scene where they were hitting a pregnant woman around while her children cowered. Now I’d have censored that. But my film is a comedic look at street violence.”

“Mixed Blood,” which stars Marilia Pera (the Brazilian actress who starred with such acclaim in Hector Babenco’s “Pixote”), Linda Kerridge and Richard Ulacia, is about a drug war in Manhattan’s lower East Side and the activities of a female Fagin determined to grab her share of the business. Her gang of adolescent drug pushers share a loft with her and her dim-witted son and it is this, apparently, which upset Ontario’s Film and Video Review Board.

Citing “minors used in criminal activity and graphic and brutal violence and bloodletting,” the board gave an instant thumbs-down to the movie.

Even Morrissey can’t pretend that it isn’t graphic--”but you can’t take it seriously. That must count for something.”

What cheers him somewhat is that the movie apparently is doing reasonable business wherever it has opened.

“And that’s encouraging,” he said, “when you consider that nobody really knows how to market a film about Hispanics; one that doesn’t fit into any known category. Of course, I’m past the stage of expecting too much from my films. My last two were hardly seen--’Madame Wang’s’ (1979) and ‘Forty Deuce,’ (1981). Just in places like Belgium and Holland and Australia. You don’t get rich from that.”

There’s no rancor in his voice when he speaks. He’s not full of bile and anger because his movies are not widely seen. If anything, he seems to suggest it’s your loss, but never mind.

That’s interesting because movies are his life and you would think that he would be frustrated if they’re not seen. But right from the start, from the time he left Fordham University and began making one-reelers, there has been a dark tone to his work (his first one-reeler showed a priest saying Mass at the edge of a cliff and then throwing his altar boy over the side). Clearly his eyes were not set on commercial appeal.

His later meeting with Andy Warhol in 1965 produced a slew of underground movies, culminating in “Flesh” and “Heat” and “Trash.”

“The films were all made by me but financed by Andy,” said Morrissey. “The press didn’t seem to understand that. Because Andy was such a media name they thought he’d done it all.”

After Morrissey moved to Europe to make “Flesh for Frankenstein” (1973) and “Blood for Dracula” (1973)--camp movies more commercially oriented than his others--it looked at one point as if Hollywood might beckon.

It did.

William Friedkin went on record saying: “That young man will be one of the major film directors in the next 10 years.”

He then offered “Cruising” to Morrissey to direct. Friedkin himself would produce this story about a psychopathic killer of homosexuals and a rookie cop used as bait to catch him.

“But I didn’t care for the material,” Morrissey said. “The premise seemed just too simple-minded to me. So I said, ‘No.’ (Friedkin then directed the movie.)”

It was clear that Morrissey was wary of moving into the mainstream of Hollywood movie making. In a New York Times interview he called the town “an enormous rigidified organization of money.”

“But I’m not anti-Hollywood, not at all,” he said. “In fact I’m rather fascinated by everything that goes on here. When I get hold of a copy of ‘Variety,’ I read it cover to cover; I love to know what people are doing.”

Perhaps the business aspect depressed him?

“On the contrary. I enjoy that side. Don’t forget I was Andy’s business manager. I made all our distribution deals. And in 1966 I managed the Velvet Underground (the rock group formed by Lou Reed and John Cale).”

Morrissey is clearly proud of having persuaded Brazil’s Marilia Pera to star in his movie “as a sort of slum Carmen Miranda.”

“When I saw her in ‘Pixote’ I thought she gave the greatest performance by an actress in 20 years,” he said. “I thought she was quite extraordinary.

“So when someone suggested her for the mother in ‘Mixed Blood’ I thought it a marvelous idea. And when I was invited to Brazil for a film festival with ‘Forty Deuce’ I went to see her. She was doing a Somerset Maugham play there and was extraordinary. I told her my story and she said, ‘I’ll do it.’ I was delighted but I said, ‘You must get such a lot of offers since “Pixote.” ’ You know what she said? ‘None.’ ”

Morrissey, who said he owns 50% of his movies, has high hopes for “Mixed Blood,” called “his most outrageously effective comedy since ‘Trash’ and ‘Heat’ ” by The Times’ Kevin Thomas.

But he’s still irked by that ban in Ontario.

“Of course there’s violence in it,” he said. “But it’s funny. Can’t they see that. . . ?”