aka NIGHT WARNING
dir. William Asher, 1981
96 min.

THURSDAY, MAY 2 – 10 PM
THURSDAY, MAY 9 – 10 PM
FRIDAY, MAY 10 – MIDNIGHT
WEDNESDAY, MAY 15 – 10 PM

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“A true gem of the decade – the 1980’s most twisted, bizarre cinematic vision of motherhood” – John Kenneth Muir, Horror Movies of the 1980’s

In honor of Mother’s Day, Spectacle is happy to present the crazed aunt-mother slasher-spectacular BUTCHER, BAKER, NIGHTMARE MAKER aka NIGHT WARNING.

Susan Tyrrell (Fat City, Cry-Baby) delivers an off-the-charts lead performance as Cheryl, a woman raising her nephew Billy as her own son—who she happens to have a deeply repressed sexual attraction to—after the accidental death of his parents.

When Billy decides to leave for college, Cheryl murders a man in their home—claiming he was trying to assault her—in a desperate bid to get Billy to stay. Her plan backfires when the virulently homophobic police detective (Bo Svenson, having a little too much fun) becomes convinced that Billy, caught up in a gay love triangle, is the real murderer.

A gonzo slice of Grand Guignol exploitation filmmaking from veteran TV director William Asher, BBNM is a strange beast —not quite slasher-y enough for horror and a little too lurid for the thriller crowd (it made the ‘video nasty’ list despite the relatively tame body count, and one negative review referred to it as “Tennessee Williams’ version of Psycho”).

Despite the exploitative trappings, and without spoiling too much, the film’s views on sexuality turn out to be surprisingly modern—particularly by 1982 standards—making this slasher oddity well worth another look.

NOISE
(ノイズ)
dir. Yusako Matsumoto, 2017
115 mins. Japan.
In Japanese with English subtitles.

WEDNESDAY, MAY 1 – 10 PM
FRIDAY, MAY 3 – 7:30 PM
MONDAY, MAY 6 – 10 PM
TUESDAY, MAY 14 – 10 PM

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Yusako Matsumoto’s ensemble drama NOISE revisits the Akihabara massacre of 2008, in which a young schizophrenic named Tomohiro Katō drove a truck into the posh Tokyo shopping district, then took to attacking pedestrians with a knife – ultimately injuring 10 and killing 7. In the tradition of SHORT CUTS and TRAFFIC, Matsumoto uses disparate, seemingly unrelated plot threads to weave together a damning portrait of Japanese society. Real-life pop star Kokoro Shinozaki stars as Misa, an aspiring “idol” whose mother was killed in Akihabara; Ken (Kohsuke Suzuki) is a delivery boy nearing the end of his patience while his alcoholic mother squanders all his money, indebted to a loan shark at whose club Misa performs. Rie (Urara Anjo) is a wandering teenager whose dreams of wealth and fame eventually lead her to the same dark nexus as the other two characters. First-time filmmaker Matsuomo was a teenager at the time of Akihabara and also suffered the suicide of a close friend the same week as the massacre; he has described NOISE as his attempt to put the tragedies in relation to one another. The result is a hypnotic, paranoid puzzle of a film, a indictment of the curbed possibilities and existential dread lingering behind the ever-smoothening facade of life in the modern megalopolis.

NUKE YORK VOL. 1: EAT THE RICH ON LSD
dir. Dracula O, 2019
NYC, 75 min.

FRIDAY, MAY 31 – 7:30 PM w/ filmmaker Q&A
FRIDAY, MAY 31 – 10 PM w/ filmmaker live commentary and Q&A
(These events are $5 with a canned food donation, $10 without.)

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Crawling through the sewers and out the shadows of subterranean New York City, this menacingly feral collage discloses the schismatic wildness of the city’s vital punk scene as it leads its vexed existence within a waking nightmare. The nightmare, of course, being a disgraceful police state among an ever-more sprawling cancerous gentrification. Against this bleak backdrop, NUKE YORK offers an inside look at a thriving renegade underbelly. Utilizing a raw assemblage of DV and found footage, we observe the essential punk dissatisfaction aligning its ideologies in solidarity with the distinctly marginalized. An ever-evolving subculture since its inception here four decades ago, the scene depicted demonstrates not only a pounding pulse of sonic survival, but its consistent claim to an eminent opposition to the foul and oppressive power structures which seek to subdue us.

New York ghost stories, grim on-the-street accounts from legit Brooklynites, yuppie harassment, and cameos by vintage horror fiends and legendary rock ’n’ rap artist abound, running a chaotic vaudeville interrupted only for a slew of inflamed performances by the cartel of Toxic State Records’ finest, including Warthog, Anasazi, L.O.T.I.O.N., Creeping Dose, Eyes Of Hate, Hank Wood & The Hammerheads, La Misma, Dawn Of Humans, Mommy, Sadist, Crazy Spirit, and other lewd acts. Encouraged by its makers to be bootlegged off the press, this film will serve as a incendiary time capsule documenting the NYC punk scene of yesterday, today, and forever for years to come.

[Canned food donations will be collected for Club A Kitchen, which distributes free community meals, warm clothes, sleeping gear, basic material necessities, and harm reduction supplies in Bushwick.]

SELEX
dir. Various, 2019
40 min.

THURSDAY, MAY 9 – 7:30 PM
ONE NIGHT ONLY!

Grow a new tongue to lick the saltwater off the second Savory Selections. Only the greatest grassroots vid zine cavorting down the render halfpipe since the days of Tellus, Target, or Toy Machine; the Vid Art Lifeguard with a “Message of the Medium” tank top is running to give you mouth to mouth syllabus: but then whoa, shotgun weed instead- so Be Kind and puffpuffpass to a friend your copy of this Actual Physical Mixtape of Modern Marvels. Savory II parasails off the Zeit-crest Kahuna wave of post-Mind’s Eye pixelklutz neo-Jacolby landscape, thus transforming into a condor-faced Art Video humor jet shark firing turbo horror film signifiers but never abandoning Kucharian cardboard can-do. Assembled with unparalleled curatorial dexterity by samurai whizkid Mike Jensen, steeped in teas of both coastal undergrounds and with a dollop of cream for academic werewolves churning butter for undergrads, SELEX is an array of jewels to put bower birds to shame and cause temples of trustees to collapse heave a sigh of “I give up- you win”, sexy and smart as a dolphin talking a scientist into a handjob.

-Matt Thurber

FEATURING:
Theodore Sefcik
Erica Magrey
Ololade Adeniyi
Lilli Carré
Maya Ben David
LJ Frezza
Saige Rowe
Xela Flactem
Barry Doupé

[A limited run of VHS tapes will be available for purchase at the screening, and through RANDOM MAN EDITIONS.]

Ken Brown, a New York filmmaker and illustrator, has been exuberantly documenting American pop culture, road side attractions, outsider art and all intersections thereof for over five decades. His documents of each decade fully embrace and embody the zeitgeist of their times, down to the medium on which his films were captured. Giving back to the wellspring from which he drew, his illustration and animation work permeated pop culture in the 1990s with work he and his partner Lisa Crafts created for MTV and Sesame Street. An evening with Ken Brown will goes on a breathless tour of Ken Brown’s work spanning the late 1960s to the present day.

Ken Brown attending for a Q&A!

THURSDAY MAY 23 – 7:30 PM: SELECTED SHORTS
(This event is $10)

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The shorts program forms a fabric of documentaries of road trip oddities, Ken Brown’s “Chika Chika” films with their frame by frame by frame captures of New York institutions such as Wigstock in 1990s Tompkins Square, shorts created for Sesame Street and MTV Idents, and recent work such as GIFs and films the artist shot on his phone. These films take us outside of time to view New York City and the artist’s work as a thematically linked continuum.

THURSDAY MAY 23 – 10:00 PM: PSYCHEDELIC CINEMA
(This event is $10)

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Ken Brown’s psychedelic films played regularly with the light show at the Boston Tea Party, and other music venues in New England, where they served as an accompaniment to some of the most notable musicians of the 1960s. In their original context these films were joined with slides, strobes and liquid projections. The version shown was filmed with a live score by Ken Winokur and the Psychedelic Orchestra.