spectacletheater – Page 63 – Spectacle Theater

A BOY AND HIS DOG

Posted on August 26, 2014December 24, 2019 by spectacletheater

A BOY AND HIS DOG
Dir. L.Q. Jones, 1975.
USA, 91 min.

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 5 – 7:30 PM
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 11 – 10:OO PM
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 20 – 10:00 PM
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 28 – 5:00 PM

Each screening will be followed by a video Q&A with director L.Q. Jones recorded exclusively for Spectacle!

In 1975, Harlan Ellison’s award-winning short story, “A Boy and His Dog” (featured in the 1969 collection called The Beast that Shouted Love at the Heart of the World) was adapted to film by actor L.Q. Jones, a relatively novice director. A BOY AND HIS DOG stars a very, very young Don Johnson as Vic, an impulsive and callow scavenger living in a ruined, post-apocalyptic Arizona circa 2024 A.D. Vic is accompanied on his journeys by Blood (Tiger from THE BRADY BUNCH), a canine with whom the lad shares a most unusual telepathic link.

A BOY AND HIS DOG may be the weirdest “buddy” movie ever made, thanks to the fact that one of the pals is a telepathic mutt who uses his psychic abilities to help his human friend satisfy his carnal desires in exchange for food. This dsytopian film takes a strange turn when Vic follows a beautiful woman whom he recently rescued, Quilla June Holmes (Susanne Benton), back to her underground “suburban” home called Topeka. This civilization, of a satirical sort, has survived the holocaust underground, where what appear to be a band of Lutheran farmers have recreated Norman Rockwell’s “America” in an eternal twilight.

SEPTEMBER MIDNIGHTS

Posted on August 24, 2014December 24, 2019 by spectacletheater

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 5: BLACK DRAGON’S REVENGE
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 6: BLACK SAMURAI
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 12: DON’T GO IN THE HOUSE
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 13: DON’T GO IN THE WOODS
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 19: SUPERCHICK
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 20: LAS VEGAS LADY
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 26: THREE ON A MEATHOOK
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 27: INVASION OF THE GIRL SNATCHERS

THE BLACK DRAGON’S REVENGE
Dir. Chin-Ku Lu, 1975.
USA/Hong Kong. 87 min.

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 5 – MIDNIGHT

In the 1960s, Ron van Clief was dubbed “The Black Dragon” by Bruce Lee. After Lee’s death, a whole wave of Hong Kong cinema dubbed “Brucesploitation” sought to cash in on the star’s death. Unlike many of them, THE BLACK DRAGON’S REVENGE, also known as THE DEATH OF BRUCE LEE, doesn’t feature a lookalike. Rather, van Clief is summoned on an international mission to uncover the truth behind Lee’s death. He’s joined by the Bronx’s Puerto Rican “White Dragon” Charles Bonnet.

Everything about THE BLACK DRAGON’S REVENGE is shamelessly, gloriously derivative, including the score that inexplicably rips off Ennio Morricone’s theme from THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS. What puts THE BLACK DRAGON over the top is the awesome fighting by van Clief and Bonnet, both at the top of their form. (Also, uh, their hilariously stilted dialog exchanges.) The action is beautiful and brutal, particularly a scene in which Bonnet takes on a group of killers after tearing a large dart out of the side of his neck.

BLACK SAMURAI
Dir. Al Adamson, 1977.
USA. 88 min.

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 6 – MIDNIGHT

ENTER THE DRAGON’s “Kicking-rhymes-like” Jim Kelly stars in this amazing attempt to cram every possible comic book conceit into a single blaxploitation kung fu occult spy movie. Kelly is Robert Sand, Agent of D.R.A.G.O.N., coerced by shady government operatives into traveling around the world in pursuit of evil warlock Janicot and his legion of henchmen (notably including several little people, some of whom know karate, and others who just wield large shotguns). He’s going to need all his kung fu skills to get through this mission–along with shotguns, supercharged trick cars, a mariachi band, decorative live snakes, and an actual JETPACK. I honestly didn’t even know jetpacks were real until I saw the Jim Kelly flying around in one, plain as day, without any apparent special effects, and looked up jetpacks on Wikipedia.

Anyway: that platonic-ideal, balls-to-the-wall, kitchen-sink exploitation movie you’ve always wanted to see but never knew how to find? It’s showing at Spectacle tonight.

DON’T GO IN THE HOUSE
Dir. Joseph Ellison, 1979.
USA. 82 min.

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 12 – MIDNIGHT

D. Boon asked, “What makes a man start fires?” Donny’s coworkers at the garbage disposal plant call him a fag and a sicko when he stands coldly transfixed as the incinerator envelops a co-worker in flames. He returns home to find his mother dead: his long-suffering guardian, who punished him as a child by holding his arms over the stove’s open flames. The curdled scars on his arms say nothing of the hideous psychological brand on his brain. His homicidal passion ignited, Donny does what any frustrated man would do: buys a flamethrower, builds a steel room, and lures women home so he can set them ablaze then arrange their charred corpses in his sitting room.

A decidedly sick ripoff of PSYCHO, DON’T GO IN THE HOUSE is perhaps less along the lines of a cheapie slasher than a film that seems to at least some extent be legitimately interested in creating a character portrait around a disturbed mind. (When Donny decides he’s been cured and changes from his working class duds into a new leisure suit, you almost want to believe he’s going to find true love at the discotheque instead of lighting a bunch of people on fire.) Consider it TAXI DRIVER with a blowtorch and the grindhouse version of a Scorsesean Catholic guilt complex. Future SOPRANOS wiseguy Dan Grimaldi turns in a memorable performance as Donny, and the film has some truly creepy moments and shocking scares.

DON’T GO IN THE WOODS
Dir. James Bryan, 1981.
USA. 82 min.

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 13 – MIDNIGHT

Possibly a conceptual art project to make the most consummately inept slasher film ever, DON’T GO IN THE WOODS is totally riveting for its singular oddball charm. Even if the filmmakers couldn’t figure out how to load the camera correctly (as evinced by occasional flares on the side of the image), they sure-as-F knew how to unleash buckets of blood. The sort of plot-like thing is basically something to do with this giant grizzly survivalist guy running around killing a ton of people. That’s basically it.

Like Godard’s 2 OR 3 THINGS I KNOW ABOUT HER, there isn’t really a central protagonist, just an endless stream of campers, lovers, ornithologists, painters, roller skaters, and whatever kind of chilling and doing their thing before their guts are ripped out or their heads are smacked by swinging bear traps and stuff — under a bed of what is surely some of the most offensive use of synthesizer ever. Do we even need to tell you that this is essential bad-movie viewing?

SUPERCHICK
Dir. Ed Forsyth, 1973.
USA, 94 min.

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 19 – MIDNIGHT

Tara True (Joyce Jillson, better known today as Nancy Reagan’s astrologer) spends her days as a flight attendant, where she wears a wig to downplay her attractiveness, but by night she’s a free-wheeling karate-wielding lady with a different man in every town! Between water skiing, reefer parties and mocking trenchcoated perverts, one of her gentleman callers wants her to help in a bank heist.

John Carradine as a creepy sadist and Dan Haggerty as (you guessed it) a biker! Sex on a piano! All the nudity you’d expect from an early 70s Crown International film (there’s a short buy sweet Uschi Digard cameo) make this a more action-packed counterpart to the AIP Stewardesses series!

LAS VEGAS LADY
Dir. Noel Nosseck, 1975.
USA, 87 min.

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 20 – MIDNIGHT

More glitzy 70s capers with casino hostess Lucky (TV stalwart Stella Stevens) planning to rip off Circus Circus for millions in LAS VEGAS LADY!

With supporting roles by Andrew Stevens (who, a year later, played Mark in the Spectacle fave Massacre At Central High), George DiCenzo (Helter Skelter) and Frank Bonner (WKRP’s Herb Tarlek)!

THREE ON A MEATHOOK
Dir. William Girdler, 1973.
USA, 80 min.

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 26 – MIDNIGHT

“But I would have remembered it.” “You didn’t remember the others, Billy.”

Based loosely on the life and crimes of Ed Gein, William Girdler’s second feature (after the amazing ASYLUM OF SATAN) is a bleak, grainy look at backwoods dread and familial madness. Starting with a stock trope (four young women go backpacking in the Kentucky woods), the film hits its stride when Billy Townsend discovers the girls camping by their farmhouse and invites them to stay with his father and himself. Pa has convinced Billy he’s actually a psychotic killer and warns Billy against the women staying over, but things are not quite as they seem…

Containing gore effects by spookshow magician and H.G Lewis associate Pat Patterson, it’s a film well-saturated in deep red, and certainly those looking for some skinny-dipping nudity won’t be disappointed. Shot in the same farmhouse used in INVASION OF THE GIRL SNATCHERS (later burned to the ground by arsonists convinced it was used for Satanic rites), THREE ON A MEATHOOK contains much of the same blank-eyed stare as Frederic Friedel’s film AXE — it’s definitely one to catch for fans of 70s rural horror.

“The VHS revolution made it possible for folks my age to see fellow Louisvillian William Girdler’s indelible (blood-stained), instantaneous period piece THREE ON A MEATHOOK, which had long been the subject of rumor and speculation. And somewhat as expected – and like many other things from the Bluegrass State – it became cause in equal parts for perverse pride and horror.” – David Grubbs

INVASION OF THE GIRL SNATCHERS
Dir. Lee Jones, 1973.
USA, 93 min.

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 27 – MIDNIGHT

“Nice glyphs!”

New wave parody? Secret truth about UFOs? Stoned goof? INVASION OF THE GIRL SNATCHERS is all three and more to boot. Made using some of the same sets, equipment and crew as Three On A Meathook, this film was originally titled The Hidan Of Maukbeiangjow (Hidan meaning “high place”) by Don Elkins and Carla Rueckert, two UFO researchers (see here for more info) asked by director Lee Jones (who produced SUPERVAN, GRIZZLY, and HONEY BRITCHES) to write any script they wanted so long as it had sex and violence.

With befuddled aliens, tracking devices hidden in bras, a safecracker named Freddie Fingers, body-switching, topless sorcery and more, GIRL SNATCHERS is like a zero budget MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE with metaphysical digressions, goofball puns and a lovely rural Kentucky quality that puts more self-conscious parodies to shame.

EXPEDITION: AN EVENING OF EXOTICISM & ARMCHAIR TRAVEL

Posted on August 24, 2014December 24, 2019 by spectacletheater

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 4 – 8:00 PM
ONE NIGHT ONLY!

For the Edification and Pleasure of the Audience: In Order to Please the Eye and Excite the Imagination!

A very worthy adjunct to our regular EPHEMERA series, we present an evening of exoticism and armchair travel, imagery and sound, with artist, writer, and inveterate exot Evan Crankshaw, also known as Flash Strap of the FLASH STRAP blog. Come and embark on a journey—conveyed by means of synaesthetic virtual-voyage—to the heart of timeless darkness and beyond; embrace the numinous monolith of the exotic immensity.

CLICK HERE FOR THE FACEBOOK EVENT

EXPEDITION’s program will consist of Three Parts:

I: MILLIONS OF YEARS AGO: A PRIMEVAL BOLERO (CONCERNING THE ORIGINS OF MAN AND THE SAVAGE EARLY DAYS OF THE EARTH)

A trio of educational video tapes of stop-motion dinosaurs subjected to extensive re-edits and fitted with a new soundtrack of exotica, library music, and cosmic synthesizers.

II: “EXPEDITION”

EXPEDITION is a 104-page collage book that loosely follows an archetypal expedition narrative, simultaneously reveling in exotic fantasy and offering both a critique and surrealist/ethnographic culture-history of Western exoticism. Each page has dozens of collaged components, genuine artifacts of authentic exoticist 20th century culture, drawn from a vast collected archive; each of these parts and their sources are detailed in the book’s dense index, along with their original context and some historical info. The book will be presented by the artist as a slide show—using an analogue slide projector—with a soundtrack of exotica music and field recordings.

III: VOYAGE TO THE PREHISTORIC PLANET (PORTS OF PARADISE)

A re-cut of a 1965 Hollywood re-cut (“Voyage To The Prehistoric Planet” with Basil Rathbone) of a 1962 Soviet science fiction film “Planet of Storms,” using some footage from an additional 1968 B-picture re-cut, “Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women.”

The film is re-edited (in chronological order, but greatly shortened and with redesigned sound) to reveal the classic nature of the expedition narrative at its core, with a preference for the sensory over the sensical. The result is a woozy narrative more in line with dream-state story-telling, surrealist strategies, or the psychedelic logic of midnight movies.

POCKET HOLIDAY: AN A/V PERFORMANCE BY ZONK VISION

Posted on August 24, 2014December 24, 2019 by spectacletheater

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 18 – 8:00 PM
ONE NIGHT ONLY!

CLICK HERE FOR THE FACEBOOK EVENT

POCKET HOLIDAY is a 1 hour audio visual performance presented by Danny Wild with Australian collective Zonk Vision. Using the pocket as a symbolic motif, Pocket Holiday explores the flux between intimacy and distance in relation to place. This playful event incorporates performance, film screening and live music into a hyperreal world of humor and color.

Shorts by Greg Holden, Jason Galea, Danny Wild, Ben Jones, Kat Martin, Grace Blake, Kate Geck, Luke Penders, Kiah Reading, Sarah Bryne, Rachel Archibald, Sarah Nathan-Truesdale, Oscar Capezio, Timothy D, Elliot Schultz, Riley Post, Caitlin Franzmann, Raw Nature Films and more.

/THE_CEIBAS_CYCLE: CYCLES AND VOIDS WITH EVAN MEANEY

Posted on August 24, 2014December 24, 2019 by spectacletheater

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 16 – 8:00 PM
ONE NIGHT ONLY!

CYCLES AND VOIDS, a short lecture on the computational value of zero as it applies to art-making and communication, is followed by a screening of Evan Meaney’s recent work /THE_CEIBAS_CYCLE.

“While our bodies decay, while our data erodes, while our attempts to stem this tide ultimately fail, no-matter how redundant or healthy; we will find ourselves together again. All together. Beneath the shade of the trees. Finally ready to address that horizon.”

The Mayans believed the ceibas trees to be points of connection, setting up protocols to connect this world to the next. This series contains variations on that theme, perhaps even instructions; finding the echoing liminality of the tree in each new, failing, interface and allowing for a personal recognition by archival proxy.

Evan Meaney is an assistant professor of new media and gaming at the University of South Carolina. His work concerns ghosts, glitches, and the computationally undead. He has been an artist in residence at the Wexner Center for the Arts, a founding member of GLI.TC/H, and a contributor to the Atlantic.

IN OUR OWN WORDS: FEMINIST NON-FICTION FILMS OF THE 70S

Posted on August 24, 2014December 24, 2019 by spectacletheater

In the years after the birth of second-wave feminism in the 1960s, female directors began incorporating the spirit of the movement into their films. In particular, female directors began turning their cameras on themselves, and other women, in order to tell their own stories without interference.

With IN OUR OWN WORDS: FEMINIST NON-FICTION FILMS OF THE 70S, Spectacle presents a collection of (mostly) female-directed films, each with the aim of shedding light on underrepresented stories of women’s lives. From girls growing up, and women incarcerated, in the United States, to Native matriarchal societies in Canada, to a repressive boarding school in England, these films tell women’s stories, with minimal narration or outside voices.

Even though these films were made 40 years ago, they beg the question: how much has actually changed, and what has stayed the same?

THREE LIVES
Dir. Kate Millett, 1971
USA, 70 min

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 12 – 10:00 PM
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 23 – 7:30 PM
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 27 – 10:00 PM
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 30 – 7:30 PM

“Kate Millett’s Three Lives is a moving, proud, calm, aggressively self-contained documentary feature…” – Vincent Canby, The New York Times

Feminist author Kate Millett was a second-wave powerhouse; in 1970, she published Sexual Politics, called by Norma Wilson “one of the first feminist books of this decade to raise nationwide male ire,” and which, obviously, made her an enemy of Norman Mailer. In 1971, Millett brought together an all-female crew, under the name Women’s Liberation Cinema, to film three women’s remembrances of their lives.

THREE LIVES portrays three women: Robin Mide, an artist; Lillian Shreve, a chemist; and Mallory Millet-Jones, Millett’s own sister. The camera is a quiet observer, letting the women, from three different paths and generations, tell their own stories without outside interference. Through these women’s personal revelations, a narrative of living under the patriarchy is revealed. The personal is political, indeed.

Courtesy of Kate Millett.

GROWING UP FEMALE
Dir. Jim Klein & Julia Reichert, 1971
USA, 50 min.

Screens with MOTHER OF MANY CHILDREN

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 9 – 7:30PM
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 12 – 7:30 PM
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 15 – 10:00 PM
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 23 – 10:00 PM

“One of those painful experiences that’s good for you…I wish every high school kid in America could see this film.” – Susan Sontag

GROWING UP FEMALE proclaims itself as “the first film of the women’s movement,” and while that claim might be questionable, there is no double that the film proclaimed a new frontier in non-fiction filmmaking. GROWING UP FEMALE is the first major documentary about what it means to be a woman in America, and particularly, what it means to be a young girl, and how girls are de facto trained by society to live under the patriarchy.

Directed by documentary filmmakers (and partners) Jim Klein and Julia Reichert, GROWING UP FEMALE consists of a series of vignettes, in which women tell their own stories about, well, growing up female: schooling, social conditioning, and the eventual awakening to the dissatisfaction and frustration that accompanies being female in America. It’s often painful and heart-wrenching, but a powerful document of what female socialization actually looks like. Chosen by the Library of Congress for the National Film Registry, the film was used by consciousness-raising groups in the 70s to convince dubious audiences of the need for the feminist movement.

Courtesy of New Day Films and Jim Klein.

MOTHER OF MANY CHILDREN
Dir. Alanis Obomsawin, 1977
Canada, 58 min.

Screens with GROWING UP FEMALE

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 9 – 7:30 PM
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 12 – 7:30 PM
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 15 – 10:00 PM
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 23 – 10:00 PM

As a counterpart to the American girls from GROWING UP FEMALE, Abenaki director-singer songwriter-artist Alanis Obomsawin trained her cameras on Canadian Native women and girls in MOTHER OF MANY CHILDREN. Obomsawin films women from different First Nations to portray the life cycle of a series of Native women in Canada, where the women’s traditionally matriarchal societies feel the pressure to conform to Canadian values.

Through interviews with women of many First Nations, we see the struggle between these women’s traditional values and those of white society, adding another layer of conflict between these women and the culture around them. The women interviewed in the film include an 108-year old Cree elder, and the film is a loving, subtly (yet radically!) political portrait of First Nations women.

Courtesy of Women Make Movies.

INSIDE WOMEN INSIDE
Dir. Christine Choy & Cynthia Maurizio, 1978
USA, 28 min.

Screens with PRIDE OF PLACE

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 9 – 10:00 PM
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 15 – 7:30 PM
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 29 – 7:30 PM

While the girls of PRIDE OF PLACE may often have felt, understandably, as if they were in prison, filmmakers Christine Choy and Cynthia Maurizio took their cameras to the North Carolina Correctional Center for Women and the Correctional Institute for Women’s at Riker’s Island to document the daily lives of female prisoners in INSIDE WOMEN INSIDE. The result is a gut-wrenching piece of cinema verite that reveals the barbaric conditions for women in these prisons.

From forced manual labor and unhealthy food to the substandard care for ill or pregnant women, INSIDE WOMEN INSIDE details the daily punishments and humiliations doled out at women in these institutions.

Courtesy of Third World Newsreel.

PRIDE OF PLACE
Dir. Kim Longinotto & Dorthea Gazidis, 1976
UK, 60 min.

Screens with INSIDE WOMEN INSIDE

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 9 – 10:00 PM
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 15 – 7:30 PM
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 29 – 7:30 PM

With PRIDE OF PLACE, director Kim Longinotto (the subject of a Spectacle series in March of this year) made her intensely personal directorial debut, co-directed with Dorthea Gazidis. Made while Longinotto was a film student, PRIDE OF PLACE is a non-fiction revenge film against a boarding school she was forced to attend as a teenager. Longinotto has said about her time at the school: “You were never told that anything you did was good; in fact, you were always told what was bad. The result was that I came out of that place with very low self esteem.” Longinotto returns to the school as a filmmaker, wielding her camera as a weapon against this place that systematically put girls down.

The film exposes the girls’ boarding school as a dark, dour place with inexplicable rules, repressive punishments, and even inedible food. Through interview with the students, Longinotto gets an inside perspective of the school as a place that crushes girls’ spirits. Thankfully, a year after PRIDE OF PLACE was released, the school was shut down, but the film still stands tall as a portrait of institutional rage against young girls.

Courtesy of Women Make Movies.

NEGATIVE PLEASURE LABOR DAY MASSACRE

Posted on August 15, 2014December 24, 2019 by spectacletheater

NEGATIVE PLEASURE LABOR DAY MASSACRE

SATURDAY, AUGUST 30 – 10PM & MIDNIGHT
ONE NIGHT ONLY!

Hot off the heels of June’s Felony Comics Crime Spree, Spectacle Theater and Negative Pleasure Publications presents the Negative Pleasure Labor Day Massacre, a screening of two twisted horror movies in anticipation of the release of NPP’s newest book, Night Burgers, a day-glo comic experience featuring all new work by Victor Kerlow (Everything Takes Forever, The New Yorker), Josh Burggraf (Kid Space Heater, Future Shock), Anthony Meloro (Misper), Jason Murphy (Me Nut Nut Nut), Amy Searles (Jeans Comics) and Ken Johnson (The New York Times).

Join the creators and Negative Pleasure publisher Harris Smith for screenings of SCREAM BLOODY MURDER at 10pm and THE SATAN KILLER at midnight. Start your autumn drenched in blood!

SCREAM BLOODY MURDER
Dir. Marc B. Ray, 1973
USA, 90 min.

SATURDAY, AUGUST 30 – 10PM

A troubled young man with a hook for a hand (he lost it as a boy while killing his father with a tractor) and a serious aversion to sex murders anyone who gets in the way of his love for a prostitute in this grimy slasher flick from 1973. Much in the vein of films like THE WITCH WHO CAME FROM THE SEA and CRIMINALLY INSANE, SCREAM BLOODY MURDER seems to have crawled directly from the gutter, (though actually it was made by the writers of Ann-Margret and Raquel Welch TV specials) with a warped internal logic that effectively drags you into it’s bleak, blood-drenched world. From the creators of THE SEVERED ARM.

THE SATAN KILLER
(aka DEATH PENALTY)
Dir. Stephen Calamari, 1993
USA, 90 min.

SATURDAY, AUGUST 30 – MIDNIGHT

A boozy addled, revenge-driven cop squares off with a crank fueled, devil-worshipping biker the hardboiled, mind-ruining crime flick THE SATAN KILLER. Filmed entirely on location in Virgina Beach, VA, and directed by the questionably named Stephen Calamari (most likey the film’s star, Steve Sayre) THE SATAN KILLER (aka Death Penalty and Rampage) features a little bit of something for everyone- murder, machine guns, drugs, drag queens, private eyes, beach babes, former male nurses, a frequently-visited t-shirt shop, punks, pimps, a frequently-visited coffee shop, strippers, a haunted house and a scene where the killer screams at a church, “You never fooled me!”

NEW MOVIES VOL. 2

Posted on August 1, 2014December 24, 2019 by spectacletheater

NEW MOVIES VOL. 2

TUESDAY, AUGUST 5 – 8PM
ONE NIGHT ONLY!

NEW MOVIES VOL. 2, the second in the already legendary series of screenings by noted wise-guys Charlie Judkins and Owen Kline, will feature a brand new movie by each of the two fellows. Owen’s brand new short feature “Jazzy for Joe” stars TV legend Joe Franklin as an unlikely papa to a particularly wacky baby that shows up on his doorstep. When Joe puts on a “big show” to entertain the little tyke, hilarity ensues and a whoopin’ good time is had by all!

Also featured is the latest Fancy Mouse movie cartoon by Charlie Judkins, titled “The Circus Connection”. Fancy and his pals are judges at a circus talent show, with a genuine gig at the “big top” and so much money as the reward! Unfortunately, things don’t go as planned…. until a certain special someone shows up and steals the show!!!

COLLATERALIZED DAMAGE (REMIX)

Posted on August 1, 2014December 24, 2019 by spectacletheater

COLLATERALIZED DAMAGE (REMIX)
2014. Edit by Jean-Louis Piquette / Live DJ set by Zed The Professor.

FRIDAY, AUGUST 29 – 10PM
ONE NIGHT ONLY!

Spectacle is thrilled to welcome Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx to our humble theater for a live DJ set to mark the 10th birthday of Michael Mann’s beyond-moody crime thriller COLLATERAL. As an essay on the nature of indifference, the film tends to belabor existentialist clichés about the value of living in the present and the need for improvisation. But as an experiment in the potential for digital video to capture the distinctive glow of Los Angeles? It’s an indispensable addendum to the constant, almost bionic repicturing of America’s most populous, smog-encrusted megacity, with Dion Beebe and Paul Cameron’s HD cameras careening down blackened arterials, capturing backlit plastic signs and streaking white-hot neon from one lonely strip mall to the next.

To commemorate 8.6.04, the mysterious video editor Jean-Louis Piquette – a cat who cut his teeth on Spec trailers, so cool he doesn’t even attend his own screenings – will realign the film’s frames, while Zed the Professor (The New School) will provide a live-DJ set rescore. The result is a new kind of cinema-as-wallpaper, in which noir fantasies about the City of Angels are digitalized and compressed almost to the point of un-recognizability. (And it started like any other night….)

AUGUST MIDNIGHTS

Posted on July 31, 2014December 24, 2019 by spectacletheater

FRIDAY, AUGUST 1: SPECTACLE ROULETTE
SATURDAY, AUGUST 2: ATOM AGE VAMPIRE
FRIDAY, AUGUST 8: TROMA’S HORROR BOOBS
SATURDAY, AUGUST 9: THE FOREST
FRIDAY, AUGUST 15: DESPERATE TARGET
SATURDAY, AUGUST 16: LITTLE MARINES
FRIDAY, AUGUST 22 & SATURDAY, AUGUST 23: DON’T GO IN THE WEEKEND – CANNIBAL CAMPOUT / WOODCHIPPER MASSACRE
FRIDAY, AUGUST 29: SCIENCE TEAM

SPECTACLE ROULETTE
Dir. ???, 19??/20??.
????. ??? min.
In any number of languages.

FRIDAY, AUGUST 1 – MIDNIGHT

Once again it’s time to spin the chamber! What are we going to show?

Cooking shows hosted by puppets from Iceland? Italian dancefighting epics? Hologramsploitation? Hostage situation bloopers? Dog Wedding Massacre? Open heart surgery? Prison slime fights?

Well, that’s up to you.

The first 6 people to show up with a movie will be given the chance to lobby by showing 5 minutes of that film. After all 6 are shown, everyone votes and that’s what we watch!

If you want to participate, please do the following:

1. Show up at least 15 minutes BEFORE midnight with your proposed film. (Either a DVD or digital copy!)
2. Be prepared to introduce your 5 minute clip and lobby hard for your candidate.
3. COME CORRECT. Bring the craziest thing you can find, no half-steps!
4. Tell your friends!

ATOM AGE VAMPIRE
(aka Seddok, l’erede di Satana)
Dir. Anton Giulio Majano, 1960
Italy, 87 min.
Dubbed in English

SATURDAY, AUGUST 2 – MIDNIGHT

From the annals of public domain comes a tale of shocking science gone awry, a damsel in distress, and ***SPOILER ALERT*** absolutely no vampires.

Yes, 1960’s ATOM AGE VAMPIRE – originally released in Italy as SEDDOK, L’EDREDE DI SATANA – contains no vampires whatsoever.

Instead – a beautiful singer is horribly disfigured in a car accident and opts for a very unusual treatment. Under the care of the crazed Dr. Levin, she agrees to be injected with an experimental serum designed to restore her beauty. However, during the course of the treatments, Dr. Levin falls madly in love with her and as the serum gradually fails and her beauty deteriorates in front of him – he vows to go to any length to get it back, no matter how dastardly.

Spectacle will be screening this beast from the LOONIC VIDEO VHS, the way God intended.

TROMA HORROR BOOBS
dir. John Brennan
USA, 80 mins

Spectacle’s favorite perverts are back at it again! This time Horror Boobs have teamed up with America’s oldest independent movie studio, Troma! A union defined by an appreciation for exposed flesh on film. Their mission: to bring you the breast nude scenes from the depths the Troma catalog!

Honestly with titles like THE TOXIC AVENGER, TERROR FIRMER and SGT. KABUKI MAN NYPD, it wasn’t very hard for the HB Crew to stuff this video mix to the max! We’re talking about the bare bosoms of Michelle Bauer, Julie Strain, Debbie Rochon, Carmen Electra’s Body Double and many, many more! With guest appearances by Kevin Costner, Trey Parker, Ted Raimi, Ron Jeremy, and Lloyd Kaufman.

Come experience horror & boobs of all sizes on the big screen. Seriously what more could you ask for? Penises. Well you never know, Lloyd Kaufman is involved, and you know how he likes his penises.

THE FOREST
Dir. Don Jones, 1982
USA. 85 min.

SATURDAY, AUGUST 9 – MIDNIGHT

DESPERATE TARGET
Dir. George Vieira, 1980
USA, 90 min.

FRIDAY, AUGUST 16 – MIDNIGHT

Starring Christopher Mitchum

“A Russian scientist who discovers the formula for a new synthetic fuel becomes the ‘Desperate Target’ of a group of desperate men.”

LITTLE MARINES
Dir. A.J. Hixon, 1991
USA, 87 min.

SATURDAY, AUGUST 16 – MIDNIGHT

Awkwardly shot like a pervert peaking on these kids in the woods, A.J. Hixon’s LITTLE MARINES is the story of three turds that go camping. It’s not really an adventure film since it is mostly just a series of mishaps and fuck-ups and offers no resolutions to these kids problems. Most famous for its really long shaving scene featured at the Found Footage Film Festival, LITTLE MARINES has many more precious moments including bizarre flashbacks to their friend who died of cancer, a cool dude that tries to give them a handful of joints, a not so cool dude that is probably a child molester, a bully that has a gun, and a moment when the fatty admits that his father never said he loved him and the fatty’s friends say nothing. Its what you can expect from good ol’ Christian entertainment.

For this screening, the Spectacle will be screening the VHS tape that features the original music they probably couldn’t get the rights to when it came out on DVD!

Spectacle & Alternative Cinema present:
DON’T GO IN THE WEEKEND!

CANNIBAL CAMPOUT – FRIDAY, AUGUST 22 – MIDNIGHT
WOODCHIPPER MASSACRE – SATURDAY, AUGUST 23 – MIDNIGHT

GHASTLY SHOT ON VIDEO GORE (AND A LITTLE BIT OF SINGING) DEEP IN THE WOODS! NO ONE IS SAFE! DON’T SAY WE DIDN’T WARN YOU!!!!

Alternative Cinema/Camp Motion Pictures website: alternativecinema.com

CANNIBAL CAMPOUT
dir. Tom Fisher/Jon McBride, 1988
89 mins, USA
In English

FRIDAY, AUGUST 22 – MIDNIGHT

CANNIBAL CAMPOUT (1988) is the tender and terrifying tale of a band of man-eating maniacs. Desperate to survive, the deranged orphans honor a deathbed promise to dearly departed mother never to eat junk food again. Instead, they work up frenzied appetites that will only be satisfied by the taste of young flesh. When Amy and her college friends arrive for a fun-filled weekend of camping in the desolate wilderness, they quickly learn the horrors of being on the wrong end of the food chain. Only brutal murder, torture and mutilation await as one by one they are stalked and terrorized by this brood of bloodthirsty mountain dwellers who will stop at nothing to appease their hunger for sliced, diced and barbecued camper.

“I love this movie…perhaps it’s the completely tasteless ending that was so sickening that I couldn’t help but enjoy it enormously”. – DeadLantern.com

“…the grossest scenes this side of H.G. Lewis… will probably repulse even the staunchest vidiot.” – Fangoria Magazine

WOODCHIPPER MASSACRE
dir. Jon McBride, 1989
90 mins, USA
In English.

SATURDAY, AUGUST 23 – MIDNIGHT

It’s The Brady Kids meets the Texas Chainsaw Massacre in this heartwarming, stomach-churning tale of a not so typical American family that unexpectedly finds itself caught up in a web of death, deceit and dismemberment. And what better way for this trio of demented siblings to discard of fresh human remains than turn it into garden variety mulch…by way of the biggest woodchipper ever to chop’n’grind a grown man into ground meat. In this family, blood really is thicker than water.

SCIENCE TEAM
Dir. Drew Bolduc, 2014
82 min, USA

FRIDAY, AUGUST 29 – MIDNIGHT

Way back in October of 2011 at the first annual Spectacle Shriek Show, we played host to a film called THE TAINT directed by Drew Bolduc & Dan Nelson. THE TAINT polarized not only the audience at the event but mired many of the Spectacle programmers in weeks of lengthy email chains leaving the film right on the tip of everyone’s brain long after the screening was over. Now, Bolduc has returned to the directors chair for SCIENCE TEAM and we couldn’t be more excited.

SCIENCE TEAM is a completely independent sci-fi feature length motion picture produced and shot in Richmond, Virginia. The film was partially funded by crowd-sourcing through Indiegogo and is a great example of how high-quality films can be created with a micro-budget.

When Chip returns home to visit his beloved mother, he finds himself caught in the middle of an interstellar war between a telepathic space alien and a bureaucratic government organization bent on incinerating all alien life. Chip must fight to survive this ego-shattering drama of epic proportions.