SATURDAY, MARCH 1: MORON MOVIES

FRIDAY, MARCH 7: LET ME DIE A WOMAN
SATURDAY, MARCH 8: EVERYTHING IS TERRIBLE

FRIDAY, MARCH 14: A NIGHT TO DISMEMBER
SATURDAY, MARCH 15: SLAYGROUND

FRIDAY, MARCH 21: THE BRUTE MAN
SATURDAY, MARCH 22: ORIGINAL SINS

FRIDAY, MARCH 28: GO DOWN DEATH
SATURDAY, MARCH 29: GO DOWN DEATH

Feeling left out? Can’t find common ground with your kids during those long, awkward dinners of meatloaf and self-loathing? Criminally unversed in the works of David A. Prior? Missing all those CANDY SNATCHERS references around the water cooler? Be honest, would you even be able to recognize an INTREPIDOS PUNK if you saw one?

Feeling woozy, it’s getting dark, this is the end…

NOT QUITE.

Spectacle Presents MANDATORY MIDNIGHTS (aka Turkish Netflix)! Fall in love for the first time or all over again with the best of Spectacle Midnights! Every month The Spectacle is showcasing one of our beloved midnight classics like ROCK N ROLL HOTEL, KILLER WORKOUT, HOLOGRAM MAN and so many MORE!!! Don’t yawn your way through another screening of Rocky Horror, half heartedly throwing rice and lip syncing through tears of boredom. Come get kicked in the chest by the AMERICAN HUNTER and lose a quart of blood to a BLOODSUCKER FROM OUTER SPACE!

You haven’t seen a Spectacle Midnight until you’ve seen it twice! Come Get Weird and Stay Weird at MANDATORY MIDNIGHTS!

MANDATORY MIDNIGHTS presents:
MORON MOVIES
Dir. Len Cella, 1985
USA, 58 min.

SATURDAY, MARCH 1 – MIDNIGHT

Sometime between “The Table’s Turned on the Gardener” and “The Hangover” came Len Cella’s MORON MOVIES. These really short films prefigure YouTube while recalling the gag films of early cinema. Originally shown on the Tonight Show and eventually on TV’s Bloopers & Practical Jokes, MORON MOVIES constitute an unparalleled cinematic joke book. Len Cella stars in his own micro masterworks (most clocking in under a minute) and imbues each with his own curmudgeonly outlook and grouchy charm. Crude, absurd, clever, brief, and absolutely hilarious — The Spectacle is proud to present the work of a great American humorist and filmmaker, Len Cella’s MORON MOVIES.

LET ME DIE A WOMAN
Dir. Doris Wishman, 1977
USA, 79 min.

FRIDAY, MARCH 7 – MIDNIGHT

Wishman’s sole foray into non-fiction is a disorienting, explicit, forward-thinking time capsule of sex-changes in the 70s. Combining interviews with noted surgeon Dr. Leo Wollman and his patients, soft porn dramatic re-enactments, and graphic surgery footage, LET ME DIE A WOMAN manages to be both exploitive and enlightening. Amidst its sleazy shocks and ramshackle sets, the subjects’ sincere desire to tell their story earns our genuine empathy. Like all of Wishman’s films, WOMAN is one of a kind, and must be seen to be believed.

Courtesy of Something Weird Video.

THE RISE AND FALL OF GOD
Dir. Everything is Terrible!, 2013
USA, 60 min.

SATURDAY, MARCH 8 – MIDNIGHT

In our short time on this planet, Spectacle has played host to a veritable Who’s Who of Who On Earth? type guests – bodybuilding computer hackers, stop-motion royalty, literal Oscar winners, sonic gurus, political revolutionaries, etc. – and now, we can add one more to that list as we welcome the found footage titans of EVERYTHING IS TERRIBLE! for the New York premiere of their cut-and-paste sermon THE RISE AND FALL OF GOD!

Join us for an evening of deep spiritual reflection as we examine the apocalypse, eternal punishment, images of the divine in everything from snack food to slop buckets. EVERYTHING IS TERRIBLE! takes the wheel for an entire evening of guilt and death bed recanting.

See you in Hell.

Everything Is Terrible! is this world’s only psychedelic found footage comedy website that tours the earth with face-melting live shows that include puppets, Jerry Maguires stacked to the heavens, and adoring cloaked followers begging EIT! for more!

Find DVDs, the Daily Terrible, and more at everythingisterrible.com

A NIGHT TO DISMEMBER
Dir. Doris Wishman, 1983
USA, 69 min.

FRIDAY, MARCH 14 – MIDNIGHT

It’s almost impossible to adequately explain the effect A NIGHT TO DISMEMBER has on the brain. Wishman had completed her first foray into 80s horror when the processing lab declared bankruptcy and a disgruntled employee destroyed most of the footage. Contractually bound to distributors, she finished the movie by any means necessary – using every frame of the remaining footage, re-writing the script, and shooting new scenes. What remains is a singular achievement in the history of motion pictures. It’s a non-stop, blood-soaked, nudity-packed assault on the senses, and like all great train wrecks, it’s impossible to look away.

SLAYGROUND
Dir. Terry Bedford, 1983
US/UK, 89 min.

SATURDAY, MARCH 15th – MIDNIGHT

Kinda-but-not-really adapted from a novel by noir hero Donald Westlake (alias Richard Stark), you can see three different movies cannibalistically clawing at each other in Terry Bedford’s Slayground : a gritty potboiler, a moody midlife relationship drama, and a slasher picture. After putting undue faith in an untested getaway driver who ends up flip-crashing into an Oldsmobile carrying an innocent young girl, Stone (Peter Coyote) flees the United States. But the victim’s industrial hockey magnate father calls up some dodgy underworld contacts, and soon the worst of the criminal worst are seeking retribution for her life. It doesn’t take long for Stone to realize he’s about three names down the list.

Stone successfully fakes his own death, but it makes no difference. As he hides out in the UK, the screenplay assumes Stone’s struggle to find the meagerest shred of an identity – any identity, let alone one worth preserving. The final showdown takes place at a derelict amusement park, where Stone’s estranged friend Terry (Mel Smith) leads him in the hopes that the men will be able to reconnect – but they’re not alone. Between the lines of dialogue conspicuously missing from the characters’ conversations – probably cut to make more room for car chases and murder scenes – and the intensity of its jerry-rigged brutality, Slayground adds up to a breathtaking monument to grotesquerie, hopelessness and nihilism. Like a giallo remake of Fritz Lang’s Scarlet Street vomited through an old VCR, the film will linger in your mind late at night for its bookending, psychedelic-action set pieces.

THE BRUTE MAN
Dir. Jean Yarbrough, 1946
USA, 58 min.

FRIDAY, MARCH 21 – MIDNIGHT

Never has the callous disregard for human tragedy backfired so magnificently. Hired to play the eponymous lead character because of his grotesque facial deformities, star Rondo Hatton winds up delivering a subtle, soulful performance—the actor adding much shading and depth that was obviously not in the script compared to the rest of the movie.

Hatton is the only character who feels “real”—everyone else is a wiseacre (especially the cops), a stiff bourgeois suburbanite, a saint, or a damn fool. Meanwhile, like with all good serial killer flicks, The Brute Man stacks the deck against the victims: Never are they kind or decent people, but snooping and meddling jerks that deserve to get their necks snapped.

In this bleak (but fun) noir-horror mash-up, a series of brutal murders—with the victims’ spines crushed—has paralyzed a city with fear, and the police are clueless. They know the killer is ‘The Creeper’, but have no idea where the hideously ugly maniac could be. When the majority of victims are found to be old college pals, the authorities suspect someone from their past seeking revenge…

Like Tod Browning’s FREAKS or Michael Winner’s THE SENTINEL or some of Coffin Joe’s movies, 1946’s THE BRUTE MAN is sleazy and exploitative—in other words, wonderful—in how it uses genuine human deformity for our entertainment and sick fascination, if not our empathy and relief.

In this case, star Rondo Hatton (RIP, 1894-1946), whose infamous mug was courtesy of the disease acromegly (a pituitary gland disorder), had acting ability that was genuine, guileless and directly from the soul. His inner pain turns the tables, making the murderer the most sympathetic character in the film.

Hatton’s character’s authenticity is solidified by his ‘mad love’ for a blind chick he meets while hiding out in her apartment. His dialog with her is contradictory and obtuse, but the way it is delivered is exquisite: dopey scripting approaches the level of intricate Mamet inarticulateness, and the overall screenplay begins to feel as if Charles Bukowski had a hand in it, with Hatton’s merciless assassin coming off like a slightly more-homicidal/less-alcoholic Henry Chinaski, a lonely, ugly but sensitive slob/everyman (living below Skid Row!), at odds with the world and only wanting to be left alone—left alone so he can kill!

Meanwhile, the flick’s zero budget engenders an artlessness that becomes a strict formalism—a dream-like aspect increased by the relentless use of stock (or recycled) footage in a variety of neo-montages. And at only 58 minutes, man-oh-Manischewitz, does this picture move! Blink, and you’ll miss the ending!

The last film of Rondo Hatton’s long career, THE BRUTE MAN was originally produced by Universal, but unceremoniously dumped by the studio after the actor’s death. They were already under fire for ‘exploiting’ Hatton’s deformity, and didn’t want any more hassles.

Celebrate B-movie deity Rondo Hatton at the Spectacle at Midnight! Or else The Creeper might get you…

ORIGINAL SINS
Dir. Howard S. Berger & Matthew M. Howe, 1996
Italy/USA, 108 min.
In English.

SATURDAY, MARCH 22 – MIDNIGHT

HOSTED BY SCOOTER MCCRAE!

“What can I say about ORIGINAL SINS that will make you, dear potential viewer, realize that you NEED to see this insanely bizarre, once-in-a-lifetime cinematic festival of atrocious taste (graced with a magnificently dark sense of humor) made by talented moviemakers with ZERO sense of social responsibility?  I’m loathe to get too specific with plot points as I’m not a spoiler-heavy kinda’ guy, but if you’ve ever wanted to see a movie where a trio of lovely religious ladies become naked sex slaves to a Jesus apparition, a crummy death metal band summon a furiously frivolous demon from Hell for reasons too stupid for me to type (did I mention that yours truly plays said demon?), and NOTHING is considered too sacred to be metaphorically ass-raped before your disbelieving and sin-drenched eyeballs (oh good lord, the comatose girl….!), then ORIGINAL SINS is the depraved no-holds-barred double-barreled blast of low-budget moviemaking FUCK YOU that you need to experience in a room full of people so you can just keep on repeating (to comfort your immortal soul before it thumps its way into the lowest portals of Hell) ‘it’s only a movie…. It’s only a movie…….!’

Still not enough for you?  This fucking monstrosity was banned from video release in the U.K. for three consecutive years before it was finally released over there (with a little bit more than 6 minutes chopped out of it).  And it damn near caused a riot at the FantaFestival in Rome back in 1994 after a chaotic sold out screening that led to a second screening needing to be added to appease the angry crowds.  Was the Pope himself in attendance?  I cannot be sure as I was not there myself, but since he’s long since dead I can only assume he was present (even if it finally took 11 years for John Paul II to pass on).

Released on video in the U.S. by Something Weird Video for a short window of time back in 1996, it quickly disappeared and has never been available here ever since. This rare screening will feature at least one of the two writer/directors in attendance (there’s a chance, schedule permitting, that they will both be attending), and I will be there as well to help answer whatever questions you might have about the whole sordid and wonderful production.  If you’ve attended past events I’ve hosted at the Spectacle, you’ll know what to expect in terms of attitude, enjoyment and refreshments.  Looking forward to seeing you there- if you dare!” -Scooter McCrae

GO DOWN DEATH
Dir. Aaron Schimberg, 2013
USA, 87 min.

ONE WEEK WORLD THEATRICAL PREMIERE RUN!
FRIDAY, MARCH 28 – THURSDAY, APRIL 3, 2014
CLICK HERE TO PURCHASE TICKETS

FRIDAY, MARCH 28 and SATURDAY, MARCH 29
10:00 PM (Filmmakers in attendance!) and MIDNIGHT (In SMELL-O-VISION!)

For its first–and only?–narrative feature run, Spectacle is pleased to present Aaron Schimberg’s staggering debut feature GO DOWN DEATH. Acclaimed as one of the most distinctive, visually stunning, and greatest undistributed films of the past year, it sits uneasily among rote indie festival programming. Naturally, we feel we make a great pair.

GO DOWN DEATH is a wry, sinister realization of a strange new universe, a cross-episodic melange of macabre folktales supposedly penned by the fictitious writer Jonathan Mallory Sinus. An abandoned warehouse in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, stands in for a decrepit village haunted by ghosts, superstition, and disease, while threatening to buckle under rumblings of the apocalypse. Soldiers are lost and found in endless woods; a child gravedigger is menaced by a shape-shifting physician, a syphilitic john bares all to a young prostitute, and a disfigured outcast yearns for the affections of a tone-deaf cabaret singer. Highlighted by offbeat narrative construction, stunning black-and-white 16mm cinematography and immaculately detailed production design, GO DOWN DEATH is a distinctively original film informed by American Gothic, folk culture and outsider art.

Accompanying the weeklong run will be appearances by writer/director Aaron Schimberg, producer/editor Vanessa McDonnell, and other surprises and performances including a pair of live SMELL-O-VISION midnights concocted specially for Spectacle’s audiences.

CRITICAL PRAISE FOR GO DOWN DEATH

#1 Best Undistributed Film of 2013
– Christopher Bell, IndieWire’s The Playlist

“An astonishing, out-of-nowhere film. Amidst all the cookie-cutter indies, Aaron Schimberg’s GO DOWN DEATH casts a mysterious spell. A dreamy, highly stylized affair recalling early David Lynch. Highly recommended.”
– Scott Macaulay, Filmmaker Magazine

“A unique, strange, unforgettable film, a half-remembered dream that will trouble and beguile the subconscious long after you’ve moved on. (A-)”
– Gabe Toro, IndieWire’s The Playlist

“One of the best films of the year! An uncompromising feast of vision and atmosphere.”
– Kentucker Audley, NoBudge

“Robert Altman meets Tod Browning…an immaculate, offbeat triumph. Rarely do homespun independent filmmakers convey such a distinctly original vision.”
– Jon Dieringer, Screen Slate

“Irresistible! Evokes the great novels of William Faulkner, even as GO DOWN DEATH offers us a resolutely modern filmic experience. Schimberg appropriates the language of cinema and obeys only the rules he sets out for himself. The result is a thrilling leap into the unknown.”
– Simon Laperrière, Fantasia

“GO DOWN DEATH is as eccentric and daring as American indie cinema gets.”
– Matthew Campbell, Starz Denver

LASER MISSION
Dir. BJ Davis, 1989
USA, 84 min.

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 1 – MIDNIGHT

On Saturday February 1st at MIDNIGHT, we are celebrating what would have been the 49th birthday of BRANDON LEE. Who is that, you ask? You’re reading this on a computer, right?

Before he was THE CROW (but definitely after his LEGACY OF RAGE), Lee was Michael Gold – a cocky, self-righteous asshole who upends his fully free agent status and chooses to accept a LASER MISSION on offer from the CIA (but, like, eschewing CASH MONEY USA in favor of action man SWAGGER ethics). There’s something about the WORLD’S LARGEST DIAMOND gone missing, along with some LASER expert (expertly lazied by ERNEST BORGNINE) being held in Angola (or somewhere) by the KGB (or Cuban military or some Austrian madman or something). All this adds up to is TROUBLE and the potential END of the WESTERN WORLD as we KNOW IT. When not donning gross disguises to fool bumbling cartoon humans, Gold is totes in NEGGING WAR III with terminal television episoder DEBI MONAHAN (who may or may not be portraying a daughter or a double agent or whatever).

Even if you HAVE seen LASER MISSION, you won’t want to MISS our special WIDESCREEN presentation, with all the EXPLOSIVE action (and sometimes admittedly great wide tracking shots) as NEVER BEFORE SEEN in domestic US BARGAIN BINS and FIFTY-FILM DVD collections. Unfortunately we weren’t able to get our hands on the legendary FULLY UNCUT version on GERMAN VHS, but if you come by SATURDAY FEBRUARY 1ST, maybe we’ll SHOW you some STILLS AND talk you THROUGH THE cuts.

If you HAVEN’T seen LASER MISSION, then grab your favorite brand of adult diapers and head the hell over here. Sounds appealing? Then make like an ORANGE and GET JUICED.

ARTIFACT VIDEO CLUB PRESENTS
PIZZA
Karthik Subbaraj, 2012
India, 127 min.
In Tamil with poor yet remarkably effective English subtitles

Artifact Video Club is conceptually premised upon screening international bootlegs of popular cinema. See end of description for notes on quality.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 7 – MIDNIGHT

What is two hours long and kicks ass? PIZZA.

You have never seen a movie like PIZZA. This charming and offbeat Kollywood romantic horror comedy thriller is sort of like a mix between Edgar Wright, Luis Buñuel, Henri George Clouzot, Nora Ephron, and pizza. It’s about a guy who delivers pizza and is compelled to marry his live-in girlfriend, an aspiring horror novelist, following an unexpected pregnancy. But after the protagonist suddenly finds himself participating in the exorcism of his boss’s daughter, really weird stuff — like, weirder than randomly participating in the exorcism of his boss’s daughter — starts to happen.. Forty minutes in, PIZZA ruptures into an extended, hallucinatory, and terrifying horror film sonata before taking another left turn or two through mystery and thriller genres and delivering a hot, satisfying conclusion. It leaves one feeling really, stupidly great. Movies really don’t get as sweet, terrifying, strange, smart, and funny as PIZZA.

Audiences agreed. PIZZA was a huge critical and commercial success in Tamil cinemas and has already been remade in Kannada, Bengali and Hindi, dubbed into Telugu, and followed up with a generally unrelated sequel, PIZZA II: VILLA, in which the title food, pizza, appears to play an even more tangential or perhaps even non-existent role.

Anyway, as with life itself: Kollywood cinema simply does not get better than PIZZA.

This is the second screening of Spectacle’s unauthorized contemporary international pop cinema bootleg midnight screening series ARTIFACT VIDEO CLUB. Nodding to our international colleagues running Ghana movie clubs and VCD videotheques, AVC is an intrepid exploration of vernacular cinema from around the globe. Intentionally half-baked in concept and execution, AVC dwells in the ether between armchair anthropology, misapplied critical theory, and superfried midnight madness.

Please be advised that PIZZA will be served with piracy-prevention watermarks and superimposed anti-smoking warnings that appear every time anyone smokes a cigarette. Which is a lot, ‘cause delivering pizzas is stressful!!!

SAMURAI REINCARNATION (Makai tenshô)
Dir. Kinji Fukasaku, 1981
Japan, 121 min.
In Japanese with English subtitles

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 8 – MIDNIGHT

“I don’t want a sword that can only kill human beings. I want to kill devils.”
Director Kinji Fukasaku (Battle Royale, Graveyard of Honor) teams up with his old pal Sonny Chiba (The Street Fighter series) facing off against Kenji Sawada (The Happiness of the Katakuris) for all the supernatural swordfighting you can handle in Samurai Reincarnation. After the defeat and massacre of his troops, a general renounces God and sells his soul for the ability to bring the dead back to life, building an undead army. Meanwhile, swordsman Yagyu Jubei seeks an evil sword able not only to kill people but demons as well. From here, there’s swordfights aplenty (no surprise this film was the inspiration for the video game Samurai Showdown), crazy effects, jaw-dropping award-winning art direction and more of everything — those expecting a staid Edo-era period piece might not like it, but any cold-as-ice Chiba fan will be delighted. There’s even an unhealthy dollop of nudity and Roman porno-style sexual depravity for the midnight trenchcoat crew! Keep an eye out for a small role by Tomisaburo Wakayama (Lone Wolf & Cub)!

VASE DE NOCES
(aka Wedding Trough, aka The Pig Fucking Movie)
Dir. Thierry Zéno, 1974
Belgium, 79 min.

Special thanks to Thierry Zéno

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 15TH – MIDNIGHT

40TH ANNIVERSARY! • FIRST US SCREENING IN 20+ YEARS!

[TRIGGER WARNING: Contains simulated scenes of animal cruelty, animal killings, bestiality, defecation, coprophagia, and unsimulated scenes of vomiting and live animal birth.]

A nightmarish, haunting dirge with an often-maligned reputation, VASE DE NCOES is a notorious 1974 film concerning a lone farmer’s sexual relations with his favorite sow. And while the subject matter is shocking, it’s certainly not in the name of exploitation. In fact, there’s a fair amount going on for a film infamously bestowed the US title of ‘The Pig Fucking Movie’…

Set in a post-apocalypse rural farm, the unnamed man tends to his daily activities, before eventually fixing his eye on a large sqealing pig. A few fantasies later, the farmer finds himself alone with his love interest and they copulate, with the pig eventually giving birth to three piglets. When he takes an invested interest in raising them, the piglets try to rejoin their mother, setting off a chain of events that push the film into darker and more phantasmagorical territories…

Completely devoid of dialogue, fermented in Year Zero bleakness, shot in monochromatic black-and white and featuring a raucous sound design of Gregorian chants, early electronic synthesizers, and animal wailings of all kinds, the film feels beamed from another plane of existence. Indeed, its comparisons to Eraserhead are justified in the technical and aesthetics departments, though interestingly it was released two years prior to David Lynch’s debut.

The last exit on the fringe film highway, VASE DE NOCES is a film more whispered about than actually seen, chiefly due to its extremely limited screenings since its initial festival run (which included Cannes and New Directors/New Films, amongst others). Finally, in 2009, German distributor Camera Obscura granted the film its first-ever official release and a new restoration, though the film is still not commercially available in the US. Working with director Thierry Zéno, Spectacle is proud to present the new restored digital version of this legendary arthouse oddity on the occasion of its 40th anniversary.

“Both obscene and spiritual… not for the squeamish.” -MoMA

“A journey to the end of the night… a mystical allegory… continuously fascinating, continuously disquieting.” -Film Comment

“This bizarre, hypnotic, humorless tale of a demented farm boy and his four-legged barnyard sweetheart may be the ultimate in solipsistic filmmaking. Whatever one’s reaction to it… it cannot be passed of as a mere piece of cinematic sensationalism… a combination of grand-guignol, theatre-of-cruelty and demonic mysticism…” -Buck Henry

ANIMAL PROTECTOR
Dir. Mats Helge, 1988
Sweden/USA, 96 min.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 21 – MIDNIGHT

Like Spectacle after-dark idols Godfrey Ho (HARD BASTARD) and Arizal (AMERICAN HUNTER), Swedish filmmaker Mats Helge singlehandedly helmed dozens of cornea-crushing Z-grade action pictures in the 70s and 80s, only a fistful of which are accounted for today. Perhaps second-famous after his much-whispered-about THE NINJA MISSION, ANIMAL PROTECTOR sees Helge standing at the cynosure of 80s late-night movie financing. Shooting in and around a Scottish castle, Helge’s camera betrays a magnetic pull towards David Carradine’s demented hardass Colonel Whitlock. Lording over an operation guarded by special ops, infantrymen and non-American Green Berets, Whitlock is no mere animal-experimenting megavillain but a damn Reagan-era Doctor Moreau.

For a time, Helge’s bleak vision is like watching a powerful Bond villain with no comeuppance anywhere near to the horizon. But justice does indeed touch down at Whitlock’s doorsteeple in the hands of C.I.A. agent Santino (A.R. Hellquist), plus a bevy of uzi-gun toting blondes in shredded jeans and camo. Impassioned to free Whitlock’s mammalian victims (if without an escape plan beyond the island), the crew chews up scores of foot soldiers and flunkies before running smack into its greatest obstacle: Whitlock. Carradine the order-barker suddenly morphs into Carradine the wild man of kung fu, exploding out of the castle and onto the beach. There, Santino’s mission vanishes into the sunrise in a one-on-one deathmatch that can only define both men as animal.

ROAR
Dir. Noel Marshall, 1981
USA, 102 min.

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 22 – MIDNIGHT

Made over the course of 10 years and with a reported 70 crew injuries – most notably a tiger mauling that resulted in what was perhaps Melanie Griffith’s first (and certainly not last) plastic surgery — ROAR emerges in hindsight as one of history’s most expensive home movies, a Hollywood albatross never released theatrically in the US.

Tippi Hedrin (THE BIRDS) and husband/producer Noel Marshall were at the time noted animal rights activists with a menagerie of cheetahs and tigers kept in waiting at their Acton, California ranch, “The Shambala Preserve”. They doubled the Golden State location as exotic Africa and cast themselves as an animal researcher and estranged wife, respectively, who reconnect against a backdrop of escaped tigers and evil game hunters, pouring $17 million dollars into a still-unrecovered black hole in the process.

But of course none of that counts in a film where Tippi Hedrin gets flipped upside down by an elephant en route to a would-be heartwarmer of an ending that lands closer to perverse surrealism. The notorious production had trouble corralling its fauna, and it shows all over: everything and everyone is out of control here. Perhaps most important is that however dunderheaded it may be, ROAR is exactly what it purports to be: a naïve safari picture in the tradition of Trader Horn and Hatari! whose raw encounter with the animal species triumphs over narrative, ethical, and – yes, hygienic – concerns.

NUKING OZ AT MIDNIGHT: SMOKE ‘EM IF YOU GOT ‘EM & OTHER SICK HUMOR VISIONS OF THE APOCALYPSE IN AUSTRALIA 

SMOKE ‘EM IF YOU GOT ‘EM
Dir. Ray Boseley, 1988
Australia, 48 min.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 28 – MIDNIGHT

With:
DUCKED & COVERED: A SURVIVAL GUIDE TO THE POST APOLCALYPSE
Dir. Nathaniel Lindsay, 2009
Australia, 8:26 min.

I LOVE SARAH JANE
Dir. Spencer Susser, 2007
Australia, 14 min.

SPIDER
Dir. Nash Edgerton, 2007
Australia, 9 min.

From ON THE BEACH to THE ROAD WARROR to TOMORROW, WHEN THE WAR BEGAN, Australia has figured prominently in cinematic depictions of the events surrounding total war, including the use of thermonuclear weapons.

Maybe it’s something to do with the “Convict Stain,” but Oz has also found itself to be ground zero for some of the more twisted takes on atomic destructions (if not physical, then spiritual). Not quite bummers from Down Under, these shorts view The End of Civilization, whether overtly or not, with a bleak, black humor—this evening, the Spectacle presents two atomic war perspectives, one zombie apocalypse, and one relationship apocalypse, because sometimes a breakup really feels like the end of the world.

“So what are we going to do? Take it easy and conserve our strength, or are we gonna run ourselves ragged?!?”, demands party-thrower Jon (Rob Howard) in his well-stocked bomb shelter in Ray Boseley’s marvelous SMOKE ‘EM IF YOU GOT ‘EM (at 48 minutes, a sort of cinematic novella). The bombs have dropped, the land is scorched, and the heavy radiation is penetrating the bunker, dooming everyone.

At the shelter, all who survived are invited to knock back a few, chow down, and puff a bong. “This is a casual affair: Come as you are, smoke ’em if ya got ’em,” he says.

Released and highly praised by Chris Gore’s Film Threat in 1988, SMOKE ‘EM IF YOU GOT ‘EM was promptly lost and forgotten. Snappy and stylish, wearing its Aussie Punk Rock heritage on its sleeve (the singer in the film’s band has that Birthday Party look about him), it’s the best soiree you could ever be invited to—lots of good food, great booze and drugs, wanton sex—it’s just too bad the End of the World is happening.

Made in the Reagan-Bush Era when nuclear war was expected at any moment—Whew! Sure glad those days are over — SMOKE ‘EM IF YOU GOT ‘EM is infused with pitch-black, yet often dry or absurdist humor, which, as Slow Radiation Death creeps upon the characters, becomes philosophical, bittersweet and even sentimental sometimes.

Joining SMOKE ‘EM IF YOU GOT ‘EM are three additional short films, all of which are sick, sick, sick.

Nash Edgerton (director of 2008’s acclaimed THE SQUARE) helms the first short of the program: SPIDER (2007), where a hapless, immature prankster might as well be dropping an atomic weapon into his love life.

The Zombie Apocalypse makes its way Down Under in Spencer Susser’s I LOVE SARAH JANE (2007), but not even that can stop the serious crush young Jimbo has on classmate Sarah Jane (current “It Girl” Mia Wasikowska in a very early role) in this DAWN OF THE DEAD/LORD OF THE FLIES mash-up.

Early-1980s public safety films are expertly spoofed in Nathaniel Lindsay’s animated DUCKED & COVERED: A SURVIVAL GUIDE TO THE POST APOCALYPSE (2009) in this evening’s penultimate short. Now you will know what to do when the killer robots show up, or if you have too many skulls lying around.