The dog days of Summer are upon us and it’s hotter than Hell in New York. The triumphant Knicks colors that kicked off the season giving way to orange haze billowing in from up North and blue floodwater swelling around our feet.

It’s high time we lit out for the coast, packed our things and hit the highway for sunnier shores. Maybe we’ll pick up a few friends along the way, throw in with the great mélange of maniacs, drifters, murderers, perverts, and thieves that this wretched country has to offer.

The American Interstate as an endless journey through Hell. A profusion of cherry lights, high beams, and overheads darting aimlessly across its black expanse. Lost souls driving straight on to oblivion, into the unknown terrors that lurk around every bend and behind every blind. All the while, the Devil sits pretty in the passenger seat.

HIGHWAY HYPNOSIS
Dir. Ken Camp, 1984
United States. 63 min.
In English.

SATURDAY, AUGUST 1 – 10 PM
THURSDAY, AUGUST 6 – 7:30 PM
SUNDAY, AUGUST 9 – 5 PM
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 26 – 10 PM
MONDAY, AUGUST 31 – 7:30 PM

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One year after our EZTV series, we return to the hallowed video gallery with the first shot-on-video feature by Ken Camp (MANTRA), a monumental work of narrative video art and queer horror, following the Los Angeles Freeway Killer (Leonard Lumpkin) as he stalks the desert highways between L.A. and Las Vegas in search of his next victim.

Camp once remarked that if film is a screen between ourselves and the world around us, then video is a window: A thesis which HIGHWAY HYPNOSIS takes to its extreme. In lieu of a traditional narrative, the film is mainly structured around the Killer’s silent, trancelike drives. Camp’s camera takes in countless real-life motorists, pedestrians, and passersby, all with the unsettling undercurrent that any one of them could end up a victim. As the film progresses, these drives are punctuated by acts of sex and violence that push the viewer to the fringes of the Killer’s impenetrable psychology, into “the frightening zone where lay the genetic codes and memories that make us all killers.”

Special thanks to Muscle Distribution.

HELL’S HIGHWAY
Dir. Jeff Leroy, 2002
United States. 70 min.
In English.

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 5 – 10 PM
THURSDAY, AUGUST 20 – 10 PM
SUNDAY, AUGUST 23 – 5 PM
SATURDAY, AUGUST 29 – MIDNIGHT

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While on a road trip through Death Valley, four college friends pick up a hitchhiker named Lucinda (Phoebe Dollar) who soon reveals herself as a bloodthirsty maniac. The group finally manages to rid her from their car, only for her to reappear around every corner and down every bend like a murderous desert mirage.

In the early years of the post-BLAIR WITCH found footage boom, DIY legend and Spectacle fave Jeff Leroy (RAT SCRATCH FEVER) gifted us this SOV horror gem that’s part-DV travelogue and part-low budget splatterfest. The film goes 0 to 60 right out the gate and doesn’t slow down from there, with Leroy packing it to the brim with crafty gore, exploding miniatures, in-camera tricks, and one iconic sequence in which Ron Jeremy gets his dick cut off (though, alas, not in real life). But the real star of the show is Phoebe Dollar, who turns in a multi-faceted multi-character performance that punches well above its micro-budget weight class and ranks among one of the all time great horror turns.

Special thanks to Jeff Leroy.

MANSON FAMILY MOVIES
Dir. John Aes-Nihil, 1984
United States. 87 min.
No spoken language.

FRIDAY, AUGUST 14 – MIDNIGHT
SATURDAY, AUGUST 22 – MIDNIGHT

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Once upon a time in Hollywood, a former Beach Boys affiliate-turned-amateur Beatles historian directed a few of his most impressionable friends to commit a series of grizzly murders across Southern California, in what became one of the defining moments of 60s popular / counter culture and the nation’s ever-growing, ever-morbid fascination with “true crime”.

Between the years of 1974 to 1979, not long after Manson Family trials had concluded, enigmatic artist and connoisseur of fringe culture, John Aes-Nihil, embarked on a project to “re-stage” the events leading up to the infamous Tate-LaBianca murders as a series of faux home movies, based on the legend that the Family had at one point stolen camera equipment to document their actions. The resulting feature— which, coincidentally, premiered in 1984 at EZTV alongside HIGHWAY HYPNOSIS— truly lives up to its filmmaker’s namesake Aesthetic Nihilism: Shot entirely on Super8mm and completely silent save for an accompanying soundtrack mostly comprised of music made by the Family itself (plus a little Patty Duke for good measure). The film re-frames the Manson Family story as a first-person travelogue across Southern California, imbued with chillingly realistic detail as we bear (false) witness to one of the most notorious events of the American century.

Special thanks to Aes-Nihil and Aes-Nihil Productions.

JANIE
Dir. Jack Bravman (and/or Roberta Findlay, depending on who you ask), 1970
United States. 65 min.
In English.

FRIDAY, AUGUST 7 – MIDNIGHT
SATURDAY, AUGUST 15 – MIDNIGHT

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Janie (Linda Vair) is your typical teenage girl. She likes boys, hates school, and thinks most adults are stupid and disgusting. One afternoon, she and her best friend decide to skip school and hitchhike out of their small nondescript town. But when her friend and their driver pull over for a little afternoon delight, Janie’s own psychotic impulses take the wheel, revealing to her the orgiastic pleasure she derives from murder and mayhem. Janie then heads back to the road to thumb another ride, soon to be another bloody corpse left in her wake.

Rounding out our series of nightmare travelogues is this gratuitously sleazy and psychedelic softcore affair, shot, narrated, co-starring, and allegedly co-directed by sexploitation filmmaker extraordinaire, Roberta Findlay (Bravman is the sole directorial credit on the film, though he himself has admitted that Findlay did most of the actual directing; ironically a claim which Findlay denies). Come for the (ahem) titillating encounters between Janie and her would be lovers, but stay for the spontaneous violence, deep fried acid rock grooves, and Findlay’s unhinged voiceover narration as Janie’s own conscience, as deeply poetic as it is disturbing.

Special thanks to Alpha Blue Archive.

SATAN’S MENAGERIE
dir. Gary Griffith, 2001
USA. 101 min.
In English with English subtitles.

SATURDAY, AUGUST 8 – MIDNIGHT
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 19 – 10 PM
MONDAY, AUGUST 24 – 7:30 PM
FRIDAY, AUGUST 28 – MIDNIGHT

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See – Vampires! Demons! Ghouls! And Satan Himself!

The monsters of the world gather at a one-of-a-kind gathering. Who will attend and what kind of carnage will break out?

Dr. Craymoor (co-writer Thomas V. Powers, doing his best hammy public-access-Vincent Price) is a paranormal talk show host who dabbles in the dark arts in pursuit of fame and riches. We’ll refrain from spoiling the (surprisingly convoluted) plot, but it involves, among other things, a Vietnam vet turned werewolf, a half-man half-amphibian who escapes from a carnival sideshow, and the disciples of a centuries old blood cult called the ‘Sons of Jeramin’.

Not released until the early 2000s and shot in the mid-90s on whatever money one-shot filmmaker Gary Griffith could scrape together (including cash from selling his own comic book collection), SATAN’S MENAGERIE approximates the feeling of channel surfing through B-movies late at night while in the grip of a severe fever.

This August, Spectacle presents four rarely-screened feature (or at least near feature-length) films from underground legend George Kuchar, all presented in 16mm.

From his first 16mm effort (Corruption of the Damned) to one of the most ambitious of the many films he made with his San Francisco Art Institute classes (Symphony for a Sinner), these four programs provide a neat (if not necessarily concise) survey of Kuchar’s work before his eventual transition into working with video in the 80s. So big in scope… so massive in emotional impact… join us and thrill to every buttock-numbing hour.

16mm prints courtesy of Anthology Film Archives

PROGRAM 1: CORRUPTION OF THE DAMNED

SATURDAY, AUGUST 15 – 5 PM

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CORRUPTION OF THE DAMNED
Dir. George Kuchar, 1965
In English, 55 min.

The film is a cross between The Silence, L’Aventura, and Terrytoons… In it there can be found beauty, glamour, sophistication and smut. An enormous amount of people were rounded up to participate in cameo-roles. For some it was the first time in front of a movie camera but that did not stop them from behaving just as wantonly as they would under normal circumstances. One thing of interest is that Donna Kerness meets Gina Zuckerman at the climax of the film. The motion picture screen’s greatest sexpots are together for the first time in the same scene! If you don’t know what the word sexpot means, wait until you see Donna Kerness’s frying pans! And, if you think they’re great, stay awake and you’ll get a peek at Gina Zuckerman’s noodle-strainer! – GK

Plus:

COLOR ME SHAMELESS
dir. George Kuchar, 1967
In English, 30 min.

This movie was made when I was a bit depressed which is nothing new, but also the main actor, Bob Cowan, happened to be depressed also and so we had a wonderful time working together. One of the actresses was also separated from her husband at this time and the movie solidifies into concrete the repressed desires of everyone who works with me, or more realistically, instead of concrete, the production becomes a frozen, brittle enema bag that slowly thaws and can only be appreciated along channels previously blocked by organic reality. – GK

PROGRAM 2: UNSTRAP ME

SATURDAY, AUGUST 15 – 7:30 PM

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UNSTRAP ME
dir. George Kuchar, 1968
In English, 77 min.

Starring Walter Gutman and a lot of women with a few elephants. This film is my longest movie in color because someone else produced it. It has a lot of scenery and the soundtrack has a lot of sound. I went to Cape Cod, New Jersey and Florida and got drunk in most of those places because Walter drinks a lot and I had nothing else to do between shooting. The drunkenness did not affect my shooting but many people think that it did. – GK

PROGRAM 3: THE DEVIL’S CLEAVAGE

SUNDAY, AUGUST 16 – 5 PM

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THE DEVIL’S CLEAVAGE
dir. George Kuchar, 1973
In English, 107 min.

This is my latest picture and it was pretty late in getting out because I’ve been sort of busy lately working in and out of the classroom and in and out of the gutter. It’s a black and white film and I wanted to make a really big picture… a mammoth drama of people in a jam. It took two years to make and got kind of constipated at times but I finally squeezed it out when I realized I had a feature film on my hands. The longest film I had previously made was 70 minutes… (Unstrap Me). It was rightfully labeled as flabby which is a word that wouldn’t fit The Devil’s Cleavage. Bloated would be a more suitable adjective for this film. To create a bloated fresco of people in emotional trouble sort of excited me but of course it was very exhausting since I wound up bloated and exhausted after the thing was finished. – GK

PROGRAM 4: SYMPHONY FOR A SINNER

SUNDAY, AUGUST 16 – 7:30 PM

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SYMPHONY FOR A SINNER
dir. George Kuchar, 1979
In English, 56 min.

The tuneful, tacky and lavish saga of an exotic dancer and her passionate relationship with her parole officer. Sprinkled throughout this colorful tale are cameo appearances, choreography, songs, and something for everyone. – GK

Plus:

BACK TO NATURE
dir. George Kuchar, 1976
In English, 10 min.

Scenes for this film were shot in Death Valley and Kings Canyon, Sequoia National Park. It’s a love story of betrayal, a search for happiness, fulfillment and misery among nature’s grandeur. – GK

AQUEERIUS
dir. George Kuchar, 1980
In English, 8 min.

Young men and women awash in the vital forces that gush forth from flaccid hoses or dribble relentlessly from nozzles. – GK

Despite his conception of the Gesamtkunstwerk (‘total work of art’), Richard Wagner died shortly before the inception of cinema, thus ensuring that any future Gesamtkunstwerks would have at least one more art form to potentially incorporate than he ever did. While many a film score’s use of leitmotifs would eventually grow out of his wake, cinematic adaptations of Wagner musikdramas (or, for that matter, any opera) are rarer on the ground. Attending the 150th anniversary of the Bayreuth Festival may be out of reach for most people reading this description, but Spectacle is pleased to offer a chance to see two rarely-screened Wagner kino adaptations. A one-time film director adapts the first mature Wagner work in Joachim Herz’s 1964 East German production of THE FLYING DUTCHMAN, and an arthouse legend adapts the last in Hans-Jürgen Syberberg’s 1982 West German production of PARSIFAL. Despite the contrasts, both utilize all the possibilities of cinema to create Gesamtkunstwerks for a post-Wagner world – right down to both needing to reckon with how his anti-Semitism had influenced the Nazis. Channel your inner Ludwig II and be a patron of Wagner’s arts this August at Spectacle.

Special thanks to Ruben Schwaben (DEFA Film Library) and Viviana Kammel (Filmgalerie 451).

 

 

THE FLYING DUTCHMAN
(DER FLIEGENDE HOLLÄNDER)
Dir. Joachim Herz, 1964
East Germany. 101 min.
In German with English subtitles.

SATURDAY, AUGUST 8 – 5 PM
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 12 – 7:30 PM
FRIDAY, AUGUST 21 – 7:30 PM
SATURDAY, AUGUST 29 – 10 PM

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In order to escape her narrow and restrictive life, Senta, the daughter of a rich shipowner, seeks refuge in her fantasies and dreams. In this realm of imagination, a bold and restless sea captain appears to her—the Flying Dutchman—who is cursed to wander the seas forever. In her obsessive dreams, Senta frees this man through her love for him.

“The only East German film to include elements of horror and vampire genres, The Flying Dutchman was the first complete Wagner opera ever made on film. The script clearly separated the real from the imaginary; in the original 35mm format, this was reflected visually by changing the image size—from Academy ratio for reality, to wide-screen for fantasy. The film was produced with a groundbreaking 4-channel magnetic soundtrack.” – DEFA Film Library

“DEFA’s The Flying Dutchman is considered the first attempt to film a Wagner opera in its entirety, although, in point of fact, it too reworks the story to suit both the cinematic medium and the political viewpoint of the GDR. It was directed by opera director Joachim Herz, who, perhaps because it was his first (and only) film, opted to experiment with state-of-the-art sound and film techniques. Director Herz dramatically changes Wagner’s opera from one about a ghostly event to the reveries of a young woman named Senta who is infatuated with the story of the Flying Dutchman. To separate reality from Senta’s imagination, Mr. Herz uses two different film aspect ratios. Whenever we are watching Anna in the real world, the aspect ratio is [in 1.67:1]. When the film shifts to Senta’s dream world, the screen slowly opens up to the 2.35:1 dimensions of DEFA’s Totalvision (the same as Cinemascope). In other films that use multiple aspect ratios, the change in screen aspect is handled as edits, but Herz wanted these switches in perspective to flow like the film’s lush score. To do this required sophisticated in-camera techniques involving animation frames and an American Mitchell camera that accepted double reels. This process meant that everything had to be shot with the larger format while the animation frame was simultaneously running through the camera. That this worked at all is a testament to cinematographer Erich Gusko’s skill with a camera.” – Jim Morton

PARSIFAL
Dir. Hans-Jürgen Syberberg, 1982
West Germany, France. 245 min.
In German with English subtitles.

SATURDAY, AUGUST 29 – 5 PM

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Please note that this film does NOT feature an intermission.

A psychological interpretation of the opera mixing in references to the history of Germany, Wagner’s life, German literature and philosophy. The action is centered on Wagner’s death mask. Syberberg’s version was made on the one hundredth anniversary of the opera’s first performance at Bayreuth in 1882. As in his earlier films, Syberberg shot his Parsifal completely in-studio.

“It’s as if Wagner’s hypnotic allure and Brecht’s intellectualized alienation have been somehow mystically united.” – John Rockwell

“Unlike the Ring or Der Meistersinger von Nürnberg, which were both gleefully embraced by the Nazi Party as expressions of good German nationalism, Parsifal already had a contended status among the upper-level Nazis: it was never “banned”-banned, but it was withheld from being produced at Bayreuth starting with the 1940 festival (that is, the first one after the outbreak of World War II), despite having been produced at the festival every year of the opera’s existence other than 1896. The obsession with Christology, the focus on spiritual and religious transcendence, and the embrace of non-violence and the rejection of earthly power all contributed to the opera being viewed with some suspicion by Nazi leadership, including, if we are to trust the word of Joseph Goebbels, Hitler himself. Which is perhaps part of why Syberberg picked it as the capstone to his ‘unwieldy epic-length cinematic dissections of Germany history’ project: the opera is in a paradoxical space, at once tainted by Nazism (as all Wagner operas pretty much have to be), and yet untainted by Nazism (because it was the one Wagner opera that made the Nazis nervous).” – Timothy Brayton

NOSTOS: THE RETURN
(NOSTOS: IL RITORNO)
Dir. Franco Piavoli, 1989
Italy. 87 min.
In a fictional language with no subtitles.

SATURDAY, AUGUST 1 – 7:30 PM
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 19 – 7:30 PM
FRIDAY, AUGUST 28 – 7:30 PM

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Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story
of that man skilled in all ways of contending,
the wanderer, harried for years on end
—Robert Fitzgerald

Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns
driven time and again off course
—Robert Fagles

Tell me about a complicated man.
Muse, tell me how he wandered and was lost
—Emily Wilson

For millennia, interlocutors have found diverse ways to interpret The Odyssey. Franco Piavoli’s version of the Homeric epic (his first fiction feature) translates its poetry through purely cinematic terms. The film forsakes literal intelligibility, its scant dialogue delivered in a conlang patois of dead languages, all unsubtitled. Piavoli takes for granted that we all know the story of Odysseus’ long journey home, even if we only recognize the broad strokes from its inescapable osmosis into popular culture. The movie’s episodes freely remix elements of the poem, its characters and events recalling rather than directly adapting the text, evoking the questing protagonist’s jumbled memory.

Piavoli aimed to create symphonic cinema, to express the timeless tale through vivid sensory experiences—the wine-dark sea, the terror of nature, the dread of war trauma, and above all else, the stubborn ache of homesickness. He conveys the myth in human terms while losing none of its wonder.

With a certain other adaptation of The Odyssey doing reasonably well around the world, Spectacle is thrilled to present this offbeat alternative to the blockbuster. Seldom screened and absolutely indelible, NOSTOS is not to be missed.

Special thanks to Steve Macfarlane and Cinecittà.