Sundays this August, Spectacle presents three classic tapes by Raymond Pettibon.

Know mostly for his prolific production of profound, abrasive pen-and-ink drawings that pitch-perfectly skewer the confounding, sickening and day-to-day aspects of modern American existence, our program features Pettibon’s filmic examinations of a long-term obsession of his: the incestuous and nefarious worlds of American Subculture, its private languages, aesthetics, ideologies — and its specific and violent contradictions .  These films train Pettibon’s singular black humor, his scrappy DIY approach, and his biting, incisive dialogue on three of the most notorious subcultures of recent history: The Manson Family, Patty Hearst and her Symbionese Liberation Army, and The Weather Underground.  Starring, among others, Thurston Moore, Kim Gordon, Mike Watt, Pat Smear, Dez Cadena and other legends of California’s underground scene of the 1980’s.

Special thanks to Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI). Catalogue texts reprinted with permission.

THE WHOLE WORLD IS WATCHING: WEATHERMAN ’69
Dir. Raymond Pettibon, 1989
USA. 122 mins.

SUNDAY, AUGUST 4th – 7:30PM & 10PM

Featuring a cast that includes Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore, Mike Watt of the legendary hardcore band Minutemen, and Pettibon himself, this deadpan narrative pays dubious homage to the 1960’s radical underground. In this crudely rendered home video of a commune of stoned revolutionaries, the cameras are hand-held, the edits in-camera, and the dialogue is wryly on-target. Pettibon’s band of outsiders reenacts a countercultural moment defined by rock music, drugs, and ideological paradox — and in so doing, captures their own late-80’s West Coast grunge milieu as well.

JUDGMENT DAY THEATER: THE BOOK OF MANSON
Dir. Raymond Pettibon, 1989
USA. 118 mins.

SUNDAY, AUGUST 11th – 7:30PM & 10PM

A day in the life of Manson and his dysfunctional family, as filtered through Pettibon’s distinctive sensibility. In this fictional verite drama, Pettibon and co-director Dave Markey envision the paranoid obsessions and violent anomie of an apocalyptic cult in the waning of the 1960s. As in all of Pettibon’s tapes, the sense of insularity (they all appear to be shot in one living room), the slacker/punk aesthetic, and the deadpan ensemble of amateur actors combine with Pettibon’s startlingly original writing to form a bleakly ironic, if often outrageous, evocation of an American subculture.

CITIZEN TANIA
dir. Raymond Pettibon, 1989
USA. 87 minutes.

SUNDAY, AUGUST 25th – 7:30PM & 10PM

The 1970’s saga of heiress Patty Hearst’s abduction by the Symbionese Liberation Army — and her subsequent transformation into a gun-toting radical — is told as an absurdist drama of countercultural alienation. The tape’s raw, deliberately home-made execution provides an abject theater for the crude sexual and racial politics of the would-be revolutionaries.

AACHI & SSIPAK
Dir. Jo Beom-jin, 2006.
South Korea, 88 min.
In Korean, with English subtitles.

FRIDAY, AUGUST 2 – 10:00 PM
THURSDAY, AUGUST 8 – 7:30 PM
FRIDAY, AUGUST 30 – 10:00 PM

Rude, but very smart and funny, with extremely fast-paced animation that’s slick and distinctive, Aachi & Ssipak (2006) follows its eponymous petty crooks as they try to get rich in a world where feces is money. Literally.

It’s an action “Buddy Movie” from another dimension—as if Gary Panter, Takeshi Miike and Paul Verhoeven collaborated on a Hope & Crosby flick: “The Road to Shit City.” Aachi is the short one, with more plans than brains, and Ssipak is the big, bald bruiser who thinks with his fists—and he’s fallen hopelessly in love with a wannabe-porn starlet, the very pneumatic Beauty (who’s much smarter than our heroes, and belongs next to Jessica Rabbit or Tex Avery’s Red Hot Riding Hood in the Sexy Cartoon Bombshell Hall of Fame). After her anal-chip is tampered with, Beauty becomes the “MacGuffin” of this movie, the object everyone will kill for.

It seems the rulers of the future need human excrement for both fuel and building materials, and in exchange for each dump, citizens with an implant get one delicious and mind-altering “juicybar.” But these yummy narco-popsicles are so addictive that some people are turned into blue mutant dwarves, the “Diaper Gang”—who cause chaos with their juicybar raids and demands to rule society. “Did they appreciate us for our crap!?!” bellows the megalomaniacal Diaper King rhetorically as he calls for rebellion.

A government that would stick ID-chips up people’s rectums would do anything to maintain power, and so have unleashed a sadistic and homicidal cyborg to enforce their draconian alimentary laws by slaughtering the Diaper Gang wantonly.

When sleazeball porno-producer Jimmy’s plan for Beauty’s “magical anus,” uh, backfires, all these forces are aimed at each other in a pulse-pounding climax that rips off—and totally improves on the coal-car chase from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

Obsessed with defecation but tasteful enough never to show any brown ploppies,Aachi & Ssipak is lysergic speedfreak anime for the mayhem crowd—that’s surprisingly good natured (when it’s not willfully gross or gory). The violence is so excessive and over-the-top, it is hilarious, but (thankfully) explicit scatological scenes are nowhere in sight—which in itself may be a socio-political comment as well… But the movie also has heart: the two hoods care about each other; Ssipak’s love of Beauty is genuine; pathetic Jimmy is funny but human; and even the grotesque Diaper Gang deserves some sympathy—they didn’t ask to be mutated and addicted.

Almost an exhausting movie, and overloaded with delightful eyeball kicks, Aachi & Ssipak is packed with multiple cultural references (including graffiti—keep your eyes open for “Neckface”!), but especially to action films: Structurally, the film is much like Robocop (plenty of rewarding “media blasts”), with tributes/spoofs of John Woo, Hitchcock and Terry Gilliam—as well as countless anime—littered throughout.

This South Korean production combines a tight and twisty script (equal to the best episodes of The Venture Bros. or The Simpsons), with exciting animation (characters look hand-drawn; and the backgrounds are a combo of CGI and hand-painted) to create a crazy, non-stop, almost sacrilegious meta-movie: “An animator isn’t a real director!” screams a character before kicking someone’s face in.

Aachi & Ssipak is hyperactive, but hardly incomprehensible—even when trying to read the subtitles and keep up with frenzied cartooning at the same time—and looksreally good: The movie reportedly cost only $3.5 million—a low amount for an animated flick (Pixar’s Cars, also released in 2006, cost $120 million)—and every cent is on the screen. But aside from the anarchic 1970s work of Ralph Bakshi, it’s almost impossible to think of Pixar or any other U.S. animator making a film so, ummm, “earthy.”

Like all good B-movies, there’s a metaphorical political message here, but it’s surrounded by so much quasi-exploitative “good stuff,” that even action fans with one-track-minds will be satisfied.

Aachi & Ssipak is manic, unadulterated weirdness that deserves a massive cult following!

WARNING: If the synopsis didn’t give you a hint, this is not a movie for small children or easily-offended adults!

British filmmaker Adam Curtis has been producing documentary works for the BBC for nearly 30 years. Employing collage-film aesthetics towards journalistic ends, his politically subversive works trace complex and unexpected webs of connection between seemingly far-flung historical events.

Curtis has been quoted as saying, “If you ask me what my politics are, I’m very much a creature of my time. I don’t really have any.” Come and decide for yourself, as we present two of Curtis’s films that explore the concept of social control from economic and political perspectives.

The Century of the Self
Dir. Adam Curtis, 2002
UK, 240 mins

MONDAY, JULY 8 – 7:00 PM
MONDAY, JULY 22 – 7:00 PM

“This series is about how those in power have used Freud’s theories to try and control the dangerous crowd in an age of mass democracy.” – Adam Curtis

Curtis’s best known and most critically acclaimed work, The Century of the Self traces a thread from the publication of Sigmund Freud’s theories of the mind through their development and exploitation at the hands of his American nephew, Edward Bernays, the founder of public relations, and the resulting creation of the modern “self” as the primary agent of contemporary society.

Originally presented as a four-part mini-series on BBC, we’ll be presenting the film in its entirety with a brief intermission.

Part 1 – Happiness Machines
Part 2 – The Engineering of Consent
Part 3 – There is a Policeman Inside All Our Heads: He Must Be Destroyed
Part 4 – Eight People Sipping Wine in Kettering

The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear
Dir. Adam Curtis, 2004
UK, 180 mins

MONDAY, JULY 15 – 8:00 PM
MONDAY, JULY 29 – 8:00 PM

“In the past, politicians promised to create a better world. They had different ways of achieving this, but their power and authority came from the optimistic visions the offered their people. Instead of delivering dreams, politicians now promise to protect us from nightmares.” – Adam Curtis

Curtis’s follow-up to The Century of the Self chronicles the simultaneous rise of the neo-conservative and Islamic fundamentalist movements, and how the “War on Terror” was sold to the public through a series of exaggerations and myths.

Originally presented as a three-part mini-series on BBC, we’ll be presenting the film in its entirety with a brief intermission.
Part 1 – Baby It’s Cold Outside
Part 2 – The Phantom Victory
Part 3 – The Shadows in the Cave

OVERREACHING IMAGINATION: THE TWISTED FILMS OF CHARLES PINION

Supersaturated with eyeball kicks and a non-mainstream aesthetic, psychedelic splatterpunk is one way to describe the underground films of low-budget auteur Charles Pinion. Consensus reality just gives up after a certain point and the nudity, madness, sacrilege and gore—lots of gore—spills all over the floor, slithers up your legs and eats your brain.

“Pinion’s imagination occasionally overreaches his limited budget, but the results are always impressive,” Shock Cinema’s Steve Pulchalski accurately pointed out in 1997.

Shooting on video, the frighteningly handsome director (and occasional actor in his own films) has called his work “the modern exploitation cinema,” otherwise known as “Pulp Video…where the narrative limits for sex, violence and depravity can be expanded and transcended…. Gruesome and prurient surface narratives combined with affordable reproduction techniques.”

As weird and disturbing as they are, Pinion’s movies are inclusive and fun: Don’t worry if it doesn’t make sense, just try and keep up and all will be revealed. Script may always be subservient to pacing, mood and the inclusion of any sort of exploitation element, but there is a sense of purpose, a propulsive drive to his pictures.

Keeping busy in a variety of mediums since 1996’s We Await, Pinion is now finishing his magnum opus, American Mummy—to be shown in 3-D!

The Spectacle wants to thank Charles Pinion with his assistance for setting up these screenings.

Showing at the Spectacle will be Pinion’s three films:

TWISTED ISSUES
1988, 80 min. USA

WEDNESDAY, JULY 10 – 10:00 PM
FRIDAY, JULY 19 – 10:00 PM

What began as a documentary covering Gainesville, Florida’s hardcore punk rock scene rapidly mutated into a weird and kinetic tale about a zombie skater seeking gory revenge, while still being a love-letter to and a slice-of-life of the skatepunks from the director’s hometown.

Full of more youthful energy than sense, Twisted Issues’ pace is breathless, covering lots of ground: skateboarding, astral projection, mad doctors and much more are thrown at the viewer, all scored to a hardcore soundtrack. According to punk-rock movie encyclopedia Destroy All Movies!!!, “the gore is relentless… Things take a decidedly psychedelic turn by the end, but homemade viscera and general creative drive triumph in a brutal intestine-war finale.”

Meanwhile, Film Threat Video Guide called Twisted Issues one of the “25 Must-See Underground Movies of the 1980s.” Featuring Pinion as a “dimension-hopping mastermind” who’s also the frontman for grindcore band Psychic Violents! Come and celebrate the 25th Anniversary of Twisted Issues!

RED SPIRIT LAKE
1993, 69 min. USA

SATURDAY, JULY 13 – 10:00 PM
SUNDAY, JULY 21 – 7:30 PM
SUNDAY, JULY 28 – 10:00 PM

Red Spirit Lake has been described by Basket Case creator Frank Henenlotter as “a disgusting art film: Poetic and elegant.”

Marilyn (played by the sexy Amanda Collins, the film’s co-author) has inherited a supernatural estate after her aunt’s mysterious death. Nude apparitions prance daily, while the groundskeepers are tormented every night by their memories of alien abduction.

Using any and all excuses for gore or nudity (male and female), Pinion’s unholy tribute to late-1960s/early-1970s exploitation films (especially those created by H.G. Lewis and Lucio Fulci) could also be packaged as “Clive Barker’s Last House on the Left,” where sexy poltergeists derail a home invasion with blood-splattered results.

While the subplots pile with reckless abandon, Marilyn’s visions grow more intense, and during a debauched weekend with some stoner/nudist pals, the gangsters who killed her aunt show up. But the ghosts and phantoms (and maybe even the aliens) have an agenda of their own—because Marilyn is the last of a long line of witches, and Red Spirit Lake is the center of their power.

Featuring underground filmmaker Richard Kern as an evil henchman and cult icon Kembra Pfahler as a naughty but goofy spook, Red Spirit Lake has plenty of “the good stuff” fans of B-movies desire: nudity, mayhem, hallucinations, nudity, psychotic violence—including murder by fisting!—and plenty more nudity in the snow. It’s the 20th Anniversary of this wild, wild movie, and it may be another 20 years before you see something like this again. With a surprisingly haunting soundtrack by Cop Shoot Cop, Clint Ruin and Lydia Lunch, Lunachicks and others.

WE AWAIT
1996, 54 min. USA

MONDAY, JULY 1 – 7:30 PM
SUNDAY, JULY 14 – 10:00 PM
TUESDAY, JULY 30 – 7:30 PM

We Await has been described as “an urban Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” but that’s only half the story—you’ve got to add, “as if written by Terrence McKenna,” because there’s a heavy “magic mushroom” vibe to this short, but very dense and thought-provoking film.

A con man gets embroiled with a family willfully communing with a sentient transdimensional jewel whose spores are highly psychoactive green fungus—that encourages a “group mind,” as well as a taste for human flesh! The family, including a “dog” who has chosen to be one, needs a vessel for the birth of “The Wise One,” and our hapless con man is the candidate. But first he must be prepared…

Calling We Await “beautifully edited and executed,” and Pinion’s “best, most playfully disturbing work yet,” Shock Cinema’s Pulchalski noted how “Pinion also captures a genuine sense of nightmarish, societal chaos.”

The director really has the knives out for televangelists and their disciples, showing family member Barrett (well-played by Pinion himself) getting himself all worked up into a killing frenzy while watching multiple, simultaneous TVs (a reoccurring audio-visual overload with the director), all broadcasting overwrought religious programming—before he goes out and slaughters some holy rollers by kicking their heads in.

There’s a real gnarly primordial vibe going on in We Await, as if ancient texts and mystic rites were not just being obeyed, but imprinted on the videotape, waiting to infect its viewers…

“Far darker than its predecessors,” writes Jack Sargeant, author of Deathtripping, “We Await reiterates Pinion’s fascination with mytho-poetic thematics, most clearly manifested when the family undertakes a ‘spirit drive’—a psychedelic journey in which they come face to face with a gigantic blood-smothered grimacing Jesus” (in a tribute to 1950s giant radioactive monster movie The Amazing Colossal Man).

Set in San Francisco’s Mission District but with enough bad vibes to send the City by the Bay to bottom of the sea, We Await features music by Crash Worship, Unsane, Eugene Chadbourne and many others.