Ongoing Series – Page 8 – Spectacle Theater

KINETIC CINEMA: PRESSUR.ES

Posted on December 28, 2013December 22, 2019 by spectacletheater

PRESSUR.ES
Dir. Derrick Belcham
USA, 90 min.

THURSDAY, JANUARY 9 – 8:00pm

On January 9th, Derrick Belcham will present a night of excerpts from PRESSUR.ES, a 10 film dance series exploring the interaction of choreography, score and the edit and also select music videos. The night features music by Sarah Neufeld (Arcade Fire), Skye Skjelset (Fleet Foxes), Casey Dienel (White Hinterland), Marissa Nadler and Diane Cluck and choreography by Emery LeCrone, Miguel Gutierrez, Melanie Maar, Mariel Lugosch-Ecker, Lily Ockwell and Emily Terndrup.

Derrick Belcham is a Canadian filmmaker based out of Brooklyn, NY whose internationally-recognized work in vérité music documentary has lead him to work with such artists as Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Thurston Moore and Wilco. He has created works in concert with MoMA PS1, MoCA, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, The Whitney Museum Of American Art, Musee D’Art Contemporain, Brooklyn Academy of Music and The Contemporary Arts Centre of Cincinnati. His work has appeared in outlets such as The New York Times, Vogue, Pitchfork, MTV, NPR and Rolling Stone.

BEST OF SPECTACLE MIDNIGHTS

Posted on December 1, 2013April 26, 2023 by spectacletheater

VIDEO DIARY OF A LOST GIRL
Dir: Lindsay Denniberg, 2012.
96 min. USA.

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 6 – MIDNIGHT

An eye-popping punk rock horror fantasy where we meet the immortal Louise and her beloved Charlie. Charlie was her paramour from the 1920s, whom she accidentally killed before realizing she was a descendant of Lilith, the mother of all demons! This race of women must feed on the souls of men once every full moon, or they will menstruate to death. Now a hundred years later, Charlie returns reincarnated, and Louise must struggle with staying away from the love of her life, or risk losing him again!

A heart-felt love letter to VHS, German expressionism, and ’80s horror. PMS has never been this deadly! Come enjoy a psychedelic, horror rom-com that’s like a Jolly Rancher for your video-holic soul!

DEATH LAID AN EGG
Dir: Guilio Questi, 1968.
86 min. Italy.
In English.

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 7 – MIDNIGHT

Guilio Questi (Django Kill) took his only stab at the giallo genre with this trippy thriller set in a futuristic chicken factory farm.

Jean-Louis Trintignant is a scientist set on breeding a headless, boneless chicken. He is also cheating on his wife with a bunch of different women, and likes murdering prostitutes. He and his wife (Gina Lollobrigida) and her beautiful cousin (Ewa Aulin) are soon entangled in a love triangle, and a murder mystery to boot.

One of the weirdest gialli ever produced, Death Laid An Egg is equal parts chaotic and brilliant.

DEVILHELM
Dir. Craig Rahtz/Hibachi Chicken Films, 1999.
USA. 96 min.
English.

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 13 – MIDNIGHT

“When the Dark Elves, driven by hatred and greed, steal an evil relic known as the Devilhelm, chaos threatens the peaceful valley. Only three ninja have the power and courage to stop this evil, and protect the earth from the ravaging powers of the Devilhelm.”

“Intense martial combat combines with supernatural wizardry to make Devilhelm an unforgettable adventure.”

Made over the course of three years in the woods of southwestern Ohio in the late 90s, Devilhelm is a virtually unknown exemplar of autodidactic backyard moviemaking. Unconventional energy and invention is firmly on display, from the ambitious makeup and sets, to the primitive computer graphics and original soundtrack; most importantly, Devilhelm rides that right line of irreverence and sincerity that we all love when we hear the phrase “shot-on-video.”
‪Ninja stars are thrown, riddles are spoken, the re‬ ‪d stuff sprays freely, ‬ ‪and some pagan raver vomits up a ____.‬

Originally released on VHS mostly to family and friends, Spectacle Theater is excited to reintroduce Devilhelm into the audience and dialogue where it belongs.

BLACK PAST
Dir: Olaf Ittenbach, 1989.
85 min. Germany.
In German with English subtitles.

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 14 – MIDNIGHT

WARNING: XTREME VIOLENCE AND GORE

Tommy is a troubled teen trying to make friends in a new town without too much luck. He is bullied by his new school mates, and even his family pokes fun at him. As if this isn’t enough, the discovery of an ancient relic seems to release an evil that threatens to destroy him, and everyone he knows.

As his demonic visions grow stronger, dreams begin to confuse reality, and Tommy spirals downward. But is it all in his head, or are the nightmares real?

They are real. Everyone is slaughtered.

Before he directed The Burning Moon, German meistro Olaf Ittenbach cut his teeth on this SOV splatterfest.

BELLADONNA OF SADNESS
(aka: Kanashimi no Belladonna, The Tragedy of Belladonna)
Dir. Eiichi Yamamoto, 1973
89 min. Japan.
In Japanese with English subtitles

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 20 – MIDNIGHT

WARNING: This film contains scenes of animated sexual and bloody violence as well as persistent flashing colors which may be triggering to some viewers.

Shortly after marrying her beloved Jean, Jeanne is raped by a vicious baron in the rural village where she lives. Though she returns home to Jean who encourages her to move on with him and look towards their future together, Jeanne can’t escape these demons…literally. Soon she begins to be visited by a shape-shifting being whispering in her ear to seek revenge on the baron who treated her so cruelly. Jean has become a tax collector but when he can’t gather enough to make his quota, the baron has his hand cut off as a form of payment. Jeanne slips deeper into her hallucinations as visions of time and other worlds fly by her eyes, pushing her towards her ultimate goal. Driven away from the village and even turned away by her beloved – Jeanne makes a pact with a spirit in the woods (Spoiler alert: it’s the devil) and gains immense magical powers which she then uses against those who have wronged her.

Yamamoto’s swirling, hypnotic, visionary film seems to, at times, almost melt off the screen. So too will your brain as you witness this colorful and fluid masterpiece. Think of Fantasia by way of Pinku on the best drugs you’ve ever done and then add and funky psychedelic soundtrack and you’re getting close. Based loosely on a 19th century French tome called La Sorcière by Jules Michelet this brain-bender will transport you to places unknown and then back in time for Sunday brunch…but will you be the same? (No.)

BEST OF SPECTACLE 2013

Posted on November 25, 2013December 22, 2019 by spectacletheater

To mark the conclusion of Spectacle’s third full calendar year of operation, our programming collective has selected their favorites from among the regular series features each other showed throughout the past twelve months. The result, BEST OF SPECTACLE (aka BoS2K13), provides an opportunity to revisit some of 2013’s greatest discoveries, thrills and audience-pleasers.

As the year draws to a close, Spectacle would like to acknowledge the audiences, artists and distributors who have pitched in their support, vision and feedback. Thank you for another brilliant year! We’ll save you a seat in 2014.

ANTI-CLOCK
Dir. Jane Arden & Jack Bond, 1979
92 min. UK.

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 15 – 5:00 PM
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 21 – 7:30 PM

Part of the series Arden & Bond

A mixed-media riddle, fractured psychodrama and slow-burning sci-fi thriller all fused into one, Anti-Clock- the final feature born out of Arden and Bond’s collaboration and only one in which they are credited as co-directors- is the CCTV output of your most paranoid, hypnagogic distress.

Ostensibly a loose narrative about an experimental psychiatric procedure that deconstructs the past, present and future of a suicidal young man, Arden and Bond employ a variety of film and video processing techniques to conjure a world in which mind and screen are enigmatically intertwined. As described in the opening credits (appropriately buried in a sea of television static), Anti-Clock is a ‘time stop’ of obsessive self-revelation.

The film premiered at the London Film Festival in 1979 and experienced a short run in NYC in 1980 before being shelved in 1982 after Jane Arden’s suicide.

ASSA
Dir. Sergei Solovyov, 1987
Soviet Union, 153 min.
Russian with English subtitles.

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 1 – 7:30 PM
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 15 – 7:30 PM

Part of the series MOLODOST: Films on Soviet Youth

Assa came to recognition and cult status as one of the first films to bring underground rock culture into the Soviet mainstream, featuring songs by bands such as Aquarium, Soyuz Kompozitorov, Bravo, and Kino (whose lead singer Viktor Tsoi, also featured in Igla, plays himself in the film). Assa reflected a time of change in the USSR, as emphasized in Tsoi’s song “We Wait for Change,” consequently adopted by the real-life Russian opposition movement Solidarnost as its anthem. Set in Crimea during the late 1980s, Assa follows the story of Alika, a young nurse who is romantically involved with Krymov, her much older patient and the leader of an organized crime group. Despite her relationship with Krymov, Alika starts falling for a young rock musician named Bananan (played by the avant-garde artist Afrika). Bananan introduces Alika to his countercultural world of music and art. When the jealous Krymov begins to notice a change in Alika’s emotions toward him, he stages a plan to eliminate Bananan from Alika’s life forever. Assa has a playful, absurdist touch, combining sober moments with dreamlike sequences. Experimental scenes of hand-painted abstract patterns and inter-titles explaining youth slang are interspersed throughout the film. One amusing subplot that develops follows Krymov reading a book of the assassination attempt on Russia’s Tsar Paul I—the “Mad Tsar”. As he reads, a fantasy reenactment plays parallel to the main story. Perhaps this text foreshadows the inevitable fate of the Union: according to the assassins, they were only abolishing a power from Russia that had gone mad.

BOXER
Dir. Shûji Terayama, 1977
94 min. Japan.
In Japanese with English subtitles.

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 12 – 10:00 PM
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 18 – 7:30 PM

Dense with glorious tints and nail-biting moments, Shûji Terayama’s Boxer pits avant-garde and crowd-pleaser sensibilities against each other with downright jugular results.

The story is old as sin: a withered ex-champion, fueled by bitterness and drink, takes a young drifter under his wing. In a society that rewards cowardice and conformity, the student’s values are shaken by his mentor’s discipline and focus, but it’s hard to tell if the retired boxer is steady, or just plain berserk.

Spectacle favorite Terayama (Pastoral, Emperor Tomato Ketchup), who wrote boxing commentary as a hobby between plays and movies, gives the story a dazzling palette and lightning swiftness, but also a necessary sense of respect for the body – and the weight of its punishment.

THE EMBRYO HUNTS IN SECRET
Dir. Kôji Wakamatsu, 1966
72 min. Japan.
In Japanese with English subtitles.

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 12 – 7:30 PM
MONDAY, DECEMBER 16 – 10:00 PM

Part of the series Kôji Wakamatsu

One part art house, one part Grindhouse, The Embryo Hunts In Secret was made right after Wakamatsu left Nikkatsu. This classic film presents a brutal exploration of the Japanese psyche seen through a child-like megalomaniac’s perspective.

This is a man who keeps his girlfriend imprisoned in their small apartment, controlling her every move and torturing her in between bouts of denial and self-induced humiliation. In the end, she gets revenge.

DER FAN
aka Trance
Dir. Eckhart Schmidt, 1982
89 min. Germany.
In German with English subtitles.

MONDAY, DECEMBER 2 – 10:00 PM
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 14 – 7:30 PM

Part of the series Anti-Valentines 2013

In the wake of films like Christiane F., studies of displaced, dysfunctional German youth were plentiful. However, the frontrunner in the sweepstakes for the most memorable and disturbing entry would have to be Der Fan.

Like every other teenager in school, Simone has a crush on a rock star. And because this is Germany in the 80s, that rock star fronts a Kraftwerk-style new wave/minimal wave solo project. When the lead singer ‘R’ (lead singer of the real-life German pop group Rheingold) comes to town to make a television appearance, she’s suddenly gripped by a trance-like state… leaving school, friends and parents behind her. However, when Simone comes to realize the shallow nature of the ‘glamorous’ music industry and of ‘R’ himself, she plans a calculated revenge on her obsession that builds to one of the most shocking and brutal endings ever committed to celluloid.

An unsettling blend of new wave pop culture, adolescent angst, and full-blooded horror, this nasty little art-house shocker caught more than a few unsuspecting viewers off guard and earned a bit of a cult following in the process. Imagine a John Hughes vehicle with Michael Haneke in the driver’s seat and you’re getting close…

MARQUIS
Dir. Henri Xhonneux. 1989
78 min. France.
In French with English subtitles.

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 3 – 10:00 PM
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 20 – 10:00 PM

Clumped in your history book between the chapters on French Revolution and pioneering 18th century erotic fiction grows a horny, pornographic mold called MARQUIS.

Immersed in a world in which uncanny animal masks mirror the spirit of the character within, a canine Marquis de Sade serves a prison sentence for allegedly raping the bovine Justine… but the situation may be more complicated than it seems. In between bouts of banter with his anthropomorphic, meter-long penis Colin, the Marquis gets down to writing a few of his more infamous scenes—many depicted in surreal claymation. Before too long the Revolution has begun, but where will it leave the Marquis?

Co-written by Henri Xhonneux and Roland Topor—animator of 1973′s inimitable surrealist classic “Fantastic Planet”—MARQUIS’s bizarre tone swings at will between irreverent perversion and clear-headed satire, never failing to entertain and utterly confound.

“This is one of the strangest movies I have ever seen. I found it to be discomforting and just weird. It makes you squirm in your seat and wonder what the people making this are like in real life. It’s definitely entertaining and it sort of sucks you in, especially if you don’t know French and have to read subtitles. It is certainly not American and it is certainly very peculiar. I have never seen a movie where everyone is wearing life-like animal costumes and acting like humans in very abnormal ways. This movie gives me the chills. However, I would watch it again just because it is so fascinatingly WEIRD.” -IMDB user ‘ethylester’

“NOT FOR THE PRUDISH.” -Variety

MARY JANE’S NOT A VIRGIN ANYMORE
Dir. Sarah Jacobson, 1998.
98 min. USA.

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 6 – 7:30 PM
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 11 – 10:00 PM
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 19 – 10:00 PM

Part of the series You Can’t Keep Me Quiet!: Films by Sarah Jacobson

Sarah Jacobson (1971-2004) was an independent filmmaker who led a DIY filmmaking movement in the 90s. She wrote and directed several short films, documentaries, music videos and a feature film. She formed Station Wagon Productions with her mother and producer Ruth Jacobson and with her help, Sarah self-promoted and distributed her films all over the country. Originally from New Jersey and Minneapolis, Jacobson studied briefly at Bard College and then at the San Francisco Art Institute with George Kuchar.

She directed I Was a Teenage Serial Killer in 1993, which she described as the story of “a 19-year-old girl who has a series of run-ins with various condescending men.” Jacobson’s slap-in-the-face feminist interpretation of “sexy”/violent B movies found a cult following. Jacobson went on to make her feature Mary Jane’s Not a Virgin Anymore a few years later.

Too in your face to be an after-school special, Mary Jane’s Not a Virgin Anymore is a movie about sex from a girl’s point of view. After a gross and unceremonious “first time,” Jane learns about the joys of pleasing herself and asking for what she wants from her punky co-workers at a Midwestern movie theater (with Jello Biafra and Davey Havok cameos). the film debuted at the Chicago Underground Film Festival in 1997 and sold out at Sundance and SXSW; Jacobson promoted the film the year previous at the Independent Film Market with homemade “Not a Virgin” stickers that her and her mom made at Kinko’s.

After cancer ended Sarah Jacobson’s life in 2004, her mother Ruth and Sam Green established the Sarah Jacobson Film Grant to support young women “whose work embodies some of the things Sarah stood for: a fierce DIY approach to filmmaking, a radical social critique, and thoroughly underground sensibility.” Find out more about the Sarah Jacobson Film Grant here.

DAS MILLIONENSPIEL
Dir. Tom Toelle & Wolfgang Menge, 1970
96 min. West Germany.
In German with New English subtitles.

MONDAY, DECEMBER 2 – 7:30 PM
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 21 – 10:00 PM

Long before The Hunger Games, Battle Royale, Series 7: The Contenders and even The Running Man, 1970’s Das Millionenspeil portrays a deadly reality television contest in which a participant is given seven days to elude a trio of professional assassins and win a $1 million prize.

Based on a 1958 story by Robert Sheckley often cited as the first predicting the advent of reality television, Das Millionenspeil was itself made for German television and interspersed with convincing false advertisements, psychedelic studio interludes and man-on-the-street documentary bit. And moreso than all its followers, its a richly unsettling satire of government, broadcast and entertainment sectors colluding and engendering various alliances and sympathies among the public they entangle.

It also represents some of the first-ever recordings by the legendary CAN, then known as The Inner Space. Their propulsive title track and ambient interludes provide the backbone of an unusually polished, thrilling and subsequently little-seen production.

MOD FUCK EXPLOSION
Dir. Jon Moritsugu, 1994
76 min. USA.

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 6 – 10:00 PM
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 18 – 10:00 PM

Part of the series Postmodernism: Who Cares? The Complete Jon Moritsugu

Combining the tropes of 60s art-house cinema with the primitive punk aesthetics of the Cinema of Transgression, Jon Moritsugu has been making movies far outside the mainstream for over twenty-five years. While his work has screened at venues as high profile as the Sundance, Berlin and Toronto Film Festivals and even public television, he continually shirks convention and classification. After making his name with a series of hand-made 16mm features, he’s recently embraced video with a fervor and a freeness to which every young filmmaker should be paying attention. Moritsugu’s world is overflowing with eye-popping production design, eardrum-destroying rock ‘n’ roll, gross-outs aplenty and deadpan one-liners you’ll be quoting for weeks.

In this teen angst epic, London (Amy Davis) longs for love and leather jackets. Meanwhile, vicious Mods wage a turf war against a gang of lip-synched Asian bikers.

“A dynamic punk odyssey of a pair of innocent teens adrift in a violent urban world; Moritsugu unleashes a barrage of powerful images and hard-driving music.” – Los Angeles Times

LES SAIGNANTES
aka The Blood-lettes
Dir. Jean Pierre Bekolo, 2005
Cameroon. 97 min.
In French with English subtitles.

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 13 – 10:00 PM
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 19 – 7:30 PM

Part of the series Welcome to Applied Fiction: The Films of Jean Pierre Bekolo

Les Saignantes is the best African sci-fi vampire political satire with homoerotic overtones you’ve ever seen. Best friends Majolie and Chouchou are two beautiful young women trying to get ahead in a near-future Cameroon. After accidentally killing a powerful politician during sex, the two come up with a plot to dispose of the body, and get into the glamorous wakes that have taken over the local nightlife.

As the girls tear their way through the corrupt ruling class, using their their feminine wiles and magical powers, Bekolo drops inter-titles into the film, commenting on the difficulties of filmmaking in an oppressive political climate. With a feminist subtext and cinematography like a blacklight rave, Les Saignantes is a beautiful, disorienting, and truly original work.

SCHOOL OF THE HOLY BEAST
Dir. Norifumi Suzuki, 1974
91 min. Japan.
In Japanese with English subtitles.

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 13 – 7:30 PM
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 22 – 5:00 PM

Part of the series S†NDAYS

Something foul is afoot at the Sacred Heart Convent, as Yumi Takigawa discovers after cloistering herself to search for traces of her mother, who had disappeared into the monastery years before. Once there, she becomes privy to dark secrets and sadistic games. In the hands of brilliant director Norifumi Suzuki, Sacred Heart is a wonderful and terrifying world of sensuality and violence rendered with masterful visual panache. Equally notorious for its exploitational extremes as its stunning artistry, School of the Holy Beast is a twisted rabbit hole of sin and vice that absolutely lives up to its legendary cult reputation.

SWEET BUNCH
Dir. Nikos Nikolaidis, 1983
154 min. Greece.
In Greek with English subtitles.
New restoration presented in HD.

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 8 – 8:00 PM
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 22 – 7:30 PM

Part of the series Dead Wax: A Nikolaidis Double A-Side

Nikos Nikolaidis (1939-2007) is one of Greece’s most masterful and subversive filmmakers, yet his work remains inexplicably neglected abroad. Best known in the States for his transgressive, kinky horror-noir pastiche SINGAPORE SLING, his distinctive oeuvre encompasses many works embraced by radicals, outcasts and misfits, while earning an unexpected place within the pantheon of critically acclaimed national cinema of his native country.

Nikolaidis’s most acclaimed film charts a string of increasingly bizarre circumstances in the lives of four misanthropic housemates. An episodic, surreal, and offbeat paranoid epic in the spirit of Celine and Julie Go Boating, SWEET BUNCH weaves various plot strands as the characters cheat, steal, sleep, swindle and dance their way to oblivion, represented here by an extreme climax that clarifies the title’s allusion to Sam Peckinpah.

Veering between magical effervescence and hard-bitten cynicism, SWEET BUNCH is a neon-bathed yowl from a generation born into immediate obsolescence; what Vrasidas Karalis calls “an elegy and farewell to the innocence of a forgotten generation through poetic realism and colorful expression.” It’s further distinguished by nimble performances; a rich pop soundtrack; deftly choreographic sequences that would make Scorsese blush; and vintage-vortex production design encompassing offbeat knicknacks, Victorian junk, and jukejoint neons.

In it’s most recent list the Greek Film Critics Association (PEKK) ranked SWEET BUNCH among the country’s ten greatest films, and its idiosyncratic influence lingers in the work of Athina Rachel Tsangari and Giorgos Lanthimos. Nevertheless, SWEET BUNCH remains unavailable on DVD outside of Greece and previously had not been shown in New York in nearly 13 years. Here’s your chance to catch up on a national classic all-too overlooked outside its borders.

THE TELEPHONE BOOK
Dir. Nelson Lyon. 1971
80 min. USA.

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 3 – 7:30 PM
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 20 – 7:30 PM

Sexually frustrated gamine Alice (Sarah Kennedy) is freed from her apartment-bound malaise when she receives the world’s greatest obscene phone call from one “John Smith.” Setting out on picaresque journey through the Manhattan white pages in search of its maker, Alice encounters ego-crazed porn directors, perverted psychologists and priapic shut-ins. Her trip grows more and more deranged (interrupted by first-person interviews with phone freaks), climaxing in one of the nuttiest half-hours of 1970s cinema.

Directed by Saturday Night Live writer Nelson Lyon and produced by Merv Bloch, creator of some of the movie industry’s best ad campaigns, The Telephone Book is hilarious and disturbing in equal measure, featuring Warhol Factory regulars, a man with a never-ending erection, and a lurid animation sequence (that is mostly to blame for its X rating). This is the Everything You’ve Always Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid To Ask…for the porn-house crowd, with one caveat: it’s not porn and it never pretends to be.

THE WORKING CLASS GOES TO HEAVEN
aka La Classe Operaia Va in Paradiso
Dir. Elio Petri, 1971
112 min. Italy.
In Italian with English subtitles.

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 1 – 5:00 PM
MONDAY, DECEMBER 16 – 7:30 PM

Part of the series Elio Petri

“Such films should be burned.”
–Jean-Marie Straub

Shot in a factory occupied by striking workers, The Working Class Goes to Heaven is Petri’s investigation of the restructuring of capitalist social relations and the waning primacy of the mass worker as the holder of revolutionary agency (Gian Maria Volonté stars as “Lulu Massa”). Student militants and union bureaucrats battle over piecework at the factory gates, while the workers themselves remain in a state of fatal ambivalence.

The mutilation of the body and the consciousness of the worker here receives one of its clearest cinematic expressions. The worker’s total incorporation into the machine of large-scale industry also occasions the most Deleuzian moment in Petri’s oeuvre: “The machine starts to move. Arms, legs, mouth tongue … The food goes down, and here is the machine that crushes it. A shit-making factory!”

THE FUTURE WEIRD: SUPRA-PLANETARY SOVEREIGNS

Posted on November 11, 2013December 22, 2019 by spectacletheater

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 14 – 8PM
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 26 – 8PM

This November, the Future Weird returns loaded with the retro tropes of science fiction to pay tribute to space-age prophets, musicians and messiahs. We start with John Akomfrah’s The Last Angel of History, which packages historic Black sci-fi as a futuristic Pan-African venture. Eventually, it swaps techno-centric experiments for messianic characters who fight dominating narratives of science and progress for cosmic philosophies.

This time around we depart from our previous format (feature film + shorts) in order to include interviews, testimonies, and archival footage of magnetic, creative leaders who promise transcendence for their followers, and achieve intergalactic travel through prayer as well as funk.

We’ll mix photos, tape-recorded testimonies, and home videos from South African church services in with Akomfrah’s all-start cast of American musicians, charismatic space captains and Star Trek heroines in order to collectively consider belief, art, truth telling, and forms of authority.

The Future Weird is a bimonthly series exploring contemporary film from the global south – with an African bias. Our title, “the future weird”, is inspired by The State’s ongoing documentation of non-western futurisms: http://www.thestate.ae/

The Last Angel Of History is presented with special thanks to Icarus Films.

& OTHER WORKS: KEREN CYTTER

Posted on November 5, 2013December 22, 2019 by spectacletheater

WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 20

SCREENINGS AT 8 AND 10 PM

“& Other Works” is a series of screenings focusing on film and video from contemporary artists organized by C. Spencer Yeh. “& Other Works” is an informal communal viewing experience, away from the white walls and passwords.

For November, we welcome Keren Cytter, with a program surveying her short-form works from the last few years. We may be biased towards the silver screen, but we think these cinematic fever dreams are the paramount expressions of Cytter’s artistic practices – a restless trajectory traversing fiction, choreography, poetry, theater, etc.

VIDEO ART MANUAL
Dir. Keren Cytter, 2011.
DE. 15 min.
English, German w English subtitles.

OPEN HOUSE (3D)
Dir. Keren Cytter, 2011.
DE. 8 min.
English.

CORRECTIONS
Dir. Keren Cytter, 2013.
DE. 8 min.
English.

FOUR SEASONS
Dir. Keren Cytter, 2009.
DE. 12 min.
English.

LES RUISSELLEMENTS DU DIABLE (WHISPERS OF THE DEVIL)
Dir. Keren Cytter, 2008.
DE. 10 min.
French w English Subtitles.

DER SPIEGEL
Dir. Keren Cytter, 2008.
DE. 5 min.
German w English Subtitles, English.

SOMETHING HAPPENED
Dir. Keren Cytter, 2007.
DE. 8 min.
German w English Subtitles.

What’s that saying? Something about sticks and stones?

How often do you entertain that yearn “nothing is real” and that “nothing is happening”? Cytter employs the lurid signifiers of “action” as we’d call it in cinema. I wouldn’t necessarily say that she “makes it her own” – who wants to really claim ownership of the crappy gestures crafted by some other jerk-off dudes? What’s that thing about dramatic tension? Something about someone pulling a gun to get the conflict pumping? A drop of blood to get everyone’s attention? It’s ok – we are not being asked to question positions in the cultural hegemony – after all, one video contains the taboo-boo of a dude jerking off. It’s a cock, it’s hard, it’s being pulled. Adult content. The elephant in the room is being electrocuted. The spectacle is maintained. We’ll be providing the 3D glasses for Cytter’s “Open House.”

Let’s try this again – here’s some borrowed (not appropriated) excerpts from a 2011 press release:

“In her films, Cytter explores stories of love, violence, sex, jealousy, betrayal and murder told in non-linear narrative in which time overlaps and characters mutate. The actors repeat lines, switch roles and recite directions aloud creating a shared lexicon through repetition and rhyme. Cytter’s fractured stories, suggestive of dream and memory, are often inspired by direct experience and observation but are filled with literary references, cinematic quotes and clichés drawn from popular culture that result in works that are existential dramas composed from seemingly incompatible genres.

In the film (Video Art Manual), Cytter offers a historical analysis of video art and its development the last forty years, focusing on the conditions of how contemporary video art is produced, installed and consumed.

In addition to films and works on paper, Cytter is the author of several novels and an opera libretto and the founder of D.I.E. NOW (Dance International Europe Now), a dance and theater company.” – Zach Feuer Gallery

Keren Cytter was born in Tel Aviv in 1977. She studied at The Avni Institute in Tel Aviv and received her degree from de Ateliers in Amsterdam. Cytter’s work has been featured in solo exhibitions at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Moderna Museet, Stockholm;Tate Modern, London; Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam; Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig, Vienna; KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin and Kunsthalle Zürich. Her work was included in the 53rd Venice Biennial; Found in Translation, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; 8th Gwangju Biennale; Manifesta 7, Trentino; and Talking Pictures and K21 Kunstammlung Nordhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf.

Women Make Movies and Spectacle Present: LOVE & DIANE

Posted on November 4, 2013December 22, 2019 by spectacletheater

Women Make Movies and Spectacle co-present:

LOVE & DIANE
Dir. Jennifer Dworkin, 2002
USA, 155 min.

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 13 – 8PM
One night only!

Just over ten years ago, Jennifer Dworkin’s groundbreaking documentary broadly addressed issues of poverty in New York City though a sensitive portrait of one family and an unflinching chronicle of their experiences with the occasionally Kafka-esque government programs that were ostensibly meant to help them.

With a narrative constructed by following the Hazzard family – principally Diane, her daughter Love, and Love’s newborn son Donyaeh – for eight years, this documentary’s scope and breadth allow it to tell its story without resorting either to pure, soulless cinéma vérité or to bland “issue” filmmaking. There are no talking heads here. Instead, an immersive experience fairly captures the life of a family trying to persevere in the face of daunting challenges and a society’s pervasive indifference.

Visit the Women Make Movies website to read more about LOVE & DIANE. If you view the press kit for the film there is a full interview available with Jennifer Dworkin by Michelle Materre, a WMM program consultant! Special thanks to WMM!

NOVEMBER MIDNIGHTS

Posted on November 4, 2013December 22, 2019 by spectacletheater

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 1: NEKROMANTIK
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 2: NEKROMANTIK 2

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 8: EVIL TOWN
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 9: PICK-UP

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 15: SATAN’S SCHOOL FOR GIRLS
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 16: BELLADONNA OF SADNESS

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 22: THE BRIDE OF FRANK (HOSTED BY SCOOTER MCCRAE!)
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 23: THE PROWLER

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 29: SLASHG/V/NG: BLOOD RAGE
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 30: SLASHG/V/NG: HOME SWEET HOME

In the wake of Halloween, as Thanksgiving and the Holiday Season approach, it is not uncommon to feel a sinister wave of nostalgia for late-October’s frightful ceremonies and gleeful celebrations of the macabre.

At Spectacle we understand this feeling—we experience it too, particularly in the wake of our yearly SPECTOBER programming—and that’s why this first weekend of November is dedicated to a tradition of dark desire all too infrequently celebrated in today’s culture: necrophilia.

Also called ‘thanatophilia’ or ‘necrolagnia,’ necrophilia—a word derived from the Greek etymons ‘nekros‘ (“dead”) and ‘philia‘ (“love”)—is the sexual attraction to corpses. A rare yet potent paraphilia, the record of its existence has persisted throughout human history; it can be found in the most ancient of Egyptian and Greek texts as well as in today’s newspaper at your local corner store. Jeffrey Dahmer was a vocal proponent; wild animals love it.

Yet few depictions of necrophilia in popular culture are as humanizing and romantic as those found in pioneering transgressive German filmmaker Jörg Buttgereit’s two “NEKRomantik” films, from 1987 and 1991. With a limited budget and unlimited audacity, Buttgereit depicts marginalized characters without judgement or ridicule, left to their circumstances with a realism and directness that startles, perplexes and remains lodged in the brain.

Join us for two consecutive midnights immediately following All Hallow’s Eve in which we highlight two severe works that feature not only the most sacred act between man and corpse, but groundbreaking and challenging depictions of the extremity of the human condition.

Special thanks to Nico B., Jörg Buttgereit and Cult Epics in their cooperation with this program.

NEKROMANTIK
Jörg Buttgereit, 1987.
West Germany. 71m.
In German with English subtitles.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 1ST – MIDNIGHT
ONE NIGHT ONLY!

[TRIGGER WARNING: This film contains scenes of explicit sexual contact, mutilation, rear female nudity, violence, frontal male nudity, dark humor, disembowelment, nihilism, decapitation, deviant sex, depictions of murder, frontal female nudity, a depiction of the actual killing of an animal, ejaculation, mental illness, rear male nudity, criminal mischief, dismemberment, sexual perversion, blood, adult language and necrophilia.]

“What lives that does not live from the death of someone else?” -V.L. Compton

Rob and Betty are a perfect match: they bathe in blood, collect body parts and share a fetish for unresponsive flesh that neither can adequately satisfy for the other. Rob has a dream job working for Joe’s Cleaning Company, removing dead bodies from the scenes of public accidents. One day he brings home the mother lode and the couple’s sexual dynamic is changed forever… but paradise is fleeting.

Upon its release in 1987, NEKRomantik was of course immediately banned in virtually every country that became aware of it (across four separate continents). Although never officially banned in the UK—it even played at a number of film festivals, including Leeds in 2012—it was nevertheless confiscated repeatedly during bootleg video raids and customs inspections.

NEKROMANTIK 2
Jörg Buttgereit, 1991.
Germany. 102m.
In German with English subtitles.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 2ND – MIDNIGHT
ONE NIGHT ONLY!

“I want to master life and death.” -Ted Bundy

Picking up right where its predecessor left off, NEKRomantik 2 continues the saga of Rob and Betty while also focusing on like-minded grave-robber Monika. Once Monika strikes up a romance with Mark, a nebbish man who dubs soundtracks for porn films, the extent to which he is able to understand and tolerate her proclivities is tested.

Boasting a longer run-time and marginally greater production values than NEKRomantik, Buttgereit’s sequel remains, uh, not at all for the squeamish. Considerably higher-profile and therefore more controversial upon release, NEKRomantik 2 was confiscated by Munich police just 12 days after its premiere.

According to an interview with Buttgereit in 2006, “my films are not banned anymore in Germany. They are totally legal now and officially labeled as ‘art.’ We spent two years in court to get my films back on the market.”

In 2009, Hermann Kopp’s terrifying music for both NEKRomantik films—as well as Buttgereit’s 1990 film Der Todesking (The Death King)—was released on the vinyl LP compilation ‘Nekronology,’ released by Aesthetic Records.

NEKROMANTIK 2 (Jörg Buttgereit, 1991) NSFW from Spectacle Theater on Vimeo.

EVIL TOWN
Dir. Curtis Hanson, Larry Spiegel, Peter S. Traynor, Mardi Rustam, 1977
USA, 88 Min.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 8 – MIDNIGHT

A cult movie in search of a cult. This insane movie mash-up concerns young men and women who amble into the titular evil town (pop. 666 – that is not even a joke) and befall a multitude of bizarre deaths. There are psycho yokels capturing young women and using them as sex slaves, killer old people, and a doctor trying to experiment on the pituitary glands of (obviously) unwilling patients looking to unlock the secrets of youth.

Featuring some of the most mind-numbing dialogue, incredulous kill scenes, violence against old people, and a doctor who can’t correctly pronounce the word pituitary – which is central to his experiments – this is one of those cases of a film that needs to be seen to be believed.

PICK-UP
Dir. Bernard Hirschenson
USA, 80 min.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 9 – MIDNIGHT

“It’s sure gonna be a bad trip. I can feel it.”

Chuck is delivering a mobile home through Florida when he stops and picks up Carol and Maureen. Despite Maureen’s reservations, they board, only to get stuck in the Everglades, where they wander through the swamp, come across characters out of a Firesign Theater album, are visited by gods and clowns and, through a series of flashbacks, discover the plans fate has for them. A definite rural Florida freakout and at times close to a drive-in Fellini film, Pick-up was the only movie made by the majority of the cast (including all the main actors) and moves with the logic of a hash dream, combining tarot readings, modular synth and indian percussion songs, a *lot* of nudity and a constantly shifting vibe moving between bucolic hippie love-in and exploitation dread, Pick-up covers a lot of ground during its 80 minutes and offers something for every midnight movie fan.

[Trigger Warning: This film contains a scene of a church molestation and an implied rape & murder.]]

SATAN’S SCHOOL FOR GIRLS
Dir. David Lowell Rich, 1973.
78 min. USA.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 15 – MIDNIGHT

One day a screenwriter asked himself, “What would it be like if there existed a school for girls — run by Satan?” He turned this idea into money, and this movie is the result.

BELLADONNA OF SADNESS
(aka: Kanashimi no Belladonna, The Tragedy of Belladonna)
Dir. Eiichi Yamamoto, 1973
89 min. Japan.
In Japanese with English subtitles

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 16 – MIDNIGHT

WARNING: This film contains scenes of animated sexual and bloody violence as well as persistent flashing colors which may be triggering to some viewers.

Yamamoto’s swirling, hypnotic, visionary film seems to, at times, almost melt off the screen. So too will your brain as you witness this colorful and fluid masterpiece. Think of Fantasia by way of Pinku on the best drugs you’ve ever done and then add and funky psychedelic soundtrack and you’re getting close. Based loosely on a 19th century French tome called La Sorcière by Jules Michelet this brain-bender will transport you to places unknown and then back in time for Sunday brunch…but will you be the same? (No.)

THE BRIDE OF FRANK
Dir. Steve Ballot, 1996.
USA. 89 min.
Hosted by Scooter McCrae!

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 22 – MIDNIGHT

In some shadowy nether zone fluctuating between neorealism and surrealism is where you’ll find Steve Ballot’s one-and-only feature length excursion into the realm of SOV madness, THE BRIDE OF FRANK. Using non-actors and the warehouse location he was working at during the time he shot FRANK, writer and director Ballot paints an unforgettably Boschian panorama of hilarious atrocities that leave a viewer simultaneously laughing, shaking their head in disgust and nodding in empathetic understanding as the haplessly homeless hero of this epic tale, Frank, searches for his one true love amidst acts of killing, maiming and – most memorably of all – making good on his promise to rip off a head and shit down somebody’s neck (don’t worry, they deserve their fate). From the opening scene where a little girl is bludgeoned to death and had her brains eaten until the catchiest, most toe-tapping end credits song you’ll ever bop in your seat to, this is truly a movie NOT LIKE ANY OTHER. Offensive on every possible level while also retaining a charmingly warm view of the human condition under the most dire of circumstances, THE BRIDE OF FRANK needs to be seen and deserves to be elevated from the relative obscurity in which it has languished for too many years. Screening will be hosted by low budget stalwart Scooter McCrae, who will provide his own uncanny insights into SOV moviemaking and self-deprecating good humor to make the night unforgettable.

TRIGGER WARNINGS: Violence, abusive language, rape.

THE PROWLER
Dir. Joseph Zito, 1981.
USA. 89 min.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 23 – MIDNIGHT

June 28, 1945: having sent a Dear John letter to her soldier boyfriend, Rosemary attends the Avalon Bay annual graduation with her new squeeze — but before they can hit the punch bowl, a ghastly soldier plunges a pitchfork through the pair. Thirty-fire years later, the town prepares for its first dance since the tragedy: is the trauma due to repeat itself? This standout slasher is noteworthy for being described by legendary make-up artist Tom Savini — whose combat experience is an avowed influence on his work — as his proudest moment. Made at a time when more mainstream slashers were reeling back, THE PROWLER is a shocking bloodbath.

SLASHG/V/NG: BLOOD RAGE (1987) & HOME SWEET HOME (1981)

When it comes to holiday horrors there’s no shortage of slasher films that have left their bloody mark on the calendar of our collective memory: HALLOWEEN, SILENT NIGHT DEADLY NIGHT, BLACK CHRISTMAS, MY BLOODY VALENTINE, UNCLE SAM, hell — even APRIL FOOL’S DAY! So where’s the Thanksgiving slasher film? Eli Roth teased us in GRINDHOUSE and THANKSKILLING valiantly attempted to CARVE out a place in holiday horrordom, but there’s just something different about an anthropomorphic talking turkey that doesn’t quite provide the same satisfaction as an offensive caricature of a mentally ill murderer slicing and dicing teens in bloody and ritualistic fashion with pseudo-psychological underpinnings.

What Spectacle is offering up are two forgotten slashers set on TURKEY DAY! Come stuff yourself with a big ol’ sandwich loaded with the detritus of pop culture! CINEMATIC LEFTOVERS, lukewarm and soaked in mayonnaise baby!

BLOOD RAGE
John Grissmer, 1987
USA, 84 min.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 29 – MIDNIGHT

“It’s not cranberry sauce.”

Louise Lasser turns in a subtle, sympathetic performance in this otherwise ridiculous and notoriously gory slasher. This one has to be seen to be believed!

10 years ago one of two twin brothers, Todd and Terry, committed a violent murder, the problem is the authorities locked the wrong one up! Now Todd has escaped and is coming home for Thanksgiving dinner while his brother Terry is up to his old tricks, slashing and maiming like a low rent Patrick Bateman with popped collar and chilling preppie affect, and blaming Todd for his bloody handiwork. So now, it’s up to Todd to stop his murdering sibling before he fucks up Thanksgiving for everyone … PERMANENTLY.

Seen in a heavily cut version, BLOOD RAGE (NIGHTMARE AT SHADOW WOODS) is a slice of Florida shot weirdness that reaches new levels of jaw dropping, hyperactive bloodletting. Odd, bloody, laughably “psychological”, claustrophobic and heavy on the synth – this is one forgotten slasher treat worth giving thanks for.

HOME SWEET HOME
Nettie Pena, 1981
USA, 85 min.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 30 – MIDNIGHT

This one might as well be called BODY COUNT BY JAKE because our insane slasher is played by none other than fitness guru and Family Channel icon Jake Steinfeld!

It’s Thanksgiving and an escaped mental patient jacked up on PCP is on a gleeful, cackling rampage in southern California, and he’s making his way toward a Thanksgiving dinner at a secluded ranch populated by characters straight out of a shitty improv class.

Seriously, this one is from another planet.

HOME SWEET HOME was directed by porn veteran Nettie Pena and features ILSA director Don Edmonds, so the latent sleaze factor on this slasher is pretty high. Painful improv, confused characterizations, and a mime-faced magician with a backpack guitar amp running around, shredding and pissing off everyone — audience included. Sound weird? It is.

NEKRO WEEKEND

Posted on October 28, 2013December 22, 2019 by spectacletheater

Special thanks to Nico B., Jörg Buttgereit and Cult Epics in their cooperation with this program.

NEKROMANTIK
Jörg Buttgereit, 1987.
West Germany. 71m.
In German with English subtitles.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 1ST – MIDNIGHT
ONE NIGHT ONLY!

“What lives that does not live from the death of someone else?” -V.L. Compton

NEKROMANTIK 2
Jörg Buttgereit, 1991.
Germany. 102m.
In German with English subtitles.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 2ND – MIDNIGHT
ONE NIGHT ONLY!

“I want to master life and death.” -Ted Bundy

NEKROMANTIK 2 (Jörg Buttgereit, 1991) NSFW from Spectacle Theater on Vimeo.

Mr. Johnny Legend’s TV IN ACIDLAND

Posted on October 28, 2013December 22, 2019 by spectacletheater

TV IN ACIDLAND
Program 1: In the Beginning… (the birth of “live” TV late 1940s – 1955)
Program 2: The Modern Age (1955 – early ‘70s)
Dir. Johnny Legend, collected footage, 2012
USA, 153 min. with intermission

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 3 – 8:00PM
One night only with Johnny Legend in attendance!

GROUCHO MARX AND THE PROFESSOR OF HIPOLOGY
BETTY WHITE’S TIRED HOUSEWIFE BLOOD
MILTON BERLE WIGGLES WILDLY

“A hand-made montage of the most shudderingly strange and awesomely revealing moments early television could offer… the damndest thing you ever saw!” –Boho Beat

Mr. Johnny Legend is a savior of forgotten horror films, wrestling promoter, Rockabilly Hall of Famer, and director of documentaries, improvised happenings, hot tub pornos and collected ephemera. But of all his unruly projects in several decades of haunting Hollywood, Mr. Legend considers TV IN ACIDLAND “undoubtedly the most ambitious and incredibly entertaining of them all. The majority of the footage here has never been shown theatrically and has remained virtually unseen by most viewers for over half a century.”

This astounding time capsule of the golden age of “really live” television is a non-stop collection of classic variety shows, skits, commercials, and indescribable oddities featuring the biggest (and strangest) stars of the era, many making their broadcast debut. It is an unabashed cinematic “love-letter” to the first quarter century of televised insanity!

Starring Marilyn Monroe, Jack Benny, Peter Lorre, Ernie Kovacs, Steve Allen, Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Liberace, Groucho Marx, Lucy and Desi, Buster Keaton, Jonathan Winters, Rod Serling, Edward G. Robinson, Judy Garland, Jackie Gleason, James Dean… and many, many more!

PLUS…
Johnny Legend really live and in person to share his personal stories of Hollywood stardom and madness!

THE THIRD ANNUAL SPECTACLE SHRIEK SHOW

Posted on October 22, 2013December 22, 2019 by spectacletheater

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 26TH – ALL DAY!

For the third year in a row, Spectacle pays humble tribute to one of the most sacred of Halloween traditions – the horror movie marathon – with THE THIRD ANNUAL SPECTACLE SHRIEK SHOW! This year we have another fine spread of various genre staples and a couple wildcards that defy all categorization, a couple special guests and a smattering of shorts, cartoons, promos, tunes, and more to celebrate the best holiday of them all.

As always, we’ll start promptly at noon and keep rolling all through the day and into the witching hour!

Tickets are $25 for the full day or $5 each movie!

THE ABOMINATION
Dir: Max Raven (Bret McCormick), 1986
100 min. USA.

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 26TH – NOON

Presented by Massacre Video

Someone once said “Texas regional horror is the best regional horror.” It’s a bold statement, but it would be difficult to disagree. With a close community pushing the boundaries in pretty much every aspect of the genre, the output is impressive to say the least. Bret McCormick made THE ABOMINATION on Super-8 and edited it on 3/4″ and the result is a heartfelt, lo-fi, gut munching success. Disconnected sound, hallucinatory loops, chanting, droning, and a world of practical effects pepper this nightmarish vision of the Lone Star state.

Cody’s mother is very sick. Lung cancer, and it’s bad. At least that’s what the seedy televangelist Brother Fogg told her. In fact, she’s so sick that one night – in what can only be deemed a miracle from God – she coughs up the tumor that’s been ailing her. Naturally, she throws it in the trashcan. That night while Cody sleeps, the tumor crawls out of the trash, into his bed…and into his mouth. The tables have turned, as his mother regains her strength, Cody gets worse and worse. He coughs up blood and eventually hacks up a mass of gunk that he hides under his bed. Now, possessed by the titular Abomination, Cody must seek victims to appease his new master. The creature grows and grows until it fills up most of the house, a network of teeth and tentacles, always hungry for more!

THE ABOMINATION is presented by our pals at Massacre Video who have previously presented 555 (at our very first marathon) and DEMON QUEEN – a favorite from last year!

HORROR HOTEL
(aka The City of the Dead)
Dir: John Moxey, 1960.
76 min. UK.

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 26TH – 2PM

Horror films don’t come much more atmospheric than John Moxey’s dark, fog drenched HORROR HOTEL (The City of the Dead). Shot in Britain and set in the eerie, forgotten Massachusetts town of Whitewood, this tale of witchcraft, murder and ghosts bares a striking structural resemblance to Alfred HItchcock’s radical horror film PSYCHO, released the same year, but combines the narrative rupture of Hitchock’s film with a more familiar set of atmospheric horror tropes taken to their most dreamlike extreme – the result is one of the most gorgeous and unsettling horror films of all time.

Nan Barlow is studying the history of witchcraft and looking to do some firsthand research. Her professor (Christopher Lee) points her toward a small forgotten Massachusetts town, Whitewood, which was the site of witch trials in the 17th century. Nan checks into a ghostly old inn and begins to investigate the story of an accused witch, Elizabeth Selwyn. When Nan doesn’t return from her trip to Whitewood her brother joins forces with a local shop owner and heads to Whitewood for answers.

HORROR HOTEL represents a high point in atmospheric horror, giving Val Lewton a run for his money and standing as an anglo analogue to Bava and Margheriti’s gothic Italo-epics. Moxey’s film is unfailingly assured in composition, pace, tone and design, and stands as an early testament to its creator’s adroitness in handling the creepy and atmospheric supernatural detective story, as Moxey would do again and again throughout the 70s in such paradigms of made for TV horror such as THE NIGHT STALKER and A TASTE OF EVIL.

SPLATTER: ARCHITECTS OF FEAR
Dir: Peter Rowe, 1986
77 min. Canada.

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 26TH – 4PM

Presented by Slasher // Video

SPLATTER: ARCHITECTS OF FEAR can probably best be described as the DAY
FOR NIGHT of SOV horror. At first glance this no budget curio seems to be a post apocalyptic action fantasy, however it quickly reveals itself to be a behind the scenes documentary about the wild world of SFX splatter wizards. There’s something not quite right about this “documentary” though, and before long it becomes clear the movie we’re behind the scenes of,
does not exist, and characters we’re following are somewhere between the realistically banal and the unbelievably ridiculous – FANG, the hunchbacked, rat-eating Gory Productions mascot.

Is this strange mishmash of narrative vistas intentional? Probably not, but is this
sort of like F FOR FAKE for VHS creeps? DEFINITELY! SPLATTER: ARCHITECTS OF FEAR is an SOV fever dream that satisfies and stultifies on a few fairly interesting levels, AND it’s just really WEIRD and filled with tons of gore, synth and awesome Canadian accents!

Enjoy this absolutely bizarre, meta entry into the SPECTACLE SHRIEK SHOW!

SILENT MADNESS (in 3D!)
Dir: Simon Nüchtern, 1984.
93 min. USA.

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 26TH – 6PM

Most slasher movies fall somewhere in between bad jazz and good pizza – at their worst they can be an uninspired interpretation of a familiar standard, and at their best they make an art out of filling you up with things that aren’t very good for you. SILENT MADNESS does both…AND IT’S IN 3D! That’s right, hot on the heels of FRIDAY THE 13th PART 3 comes this odd and largely forgotten gem about a homicidal maniac, Howard Johns, who is accidentally released from a nightmarish mental hospital. Once John’s is out he makes a b line to the sorority house where he perpetrated a sepia toned, nail gun massacre years before and it’s up to a no nonsense Doctor, Belinda Montgomery (Man From Atlantis, TONS of other 70s TV), to stop him! Dragon’s Lair, animated axes, steam pipes, sledge hammers, exercise equipment – all are employed in a 3D killing spree that’s a MUST for any 80s horror or slasher fan!

Shot in Staten Island and Jersey City, SILENT MADNESS is an east coast, autumnal slasher with a mean streak. Not surprisingly this grim little film was made by Simon Nuchtern, a sleaze veteran who shot additional footage for the notorious SNUFF (try and shower that one off) and almost compulsively seems to suffuse the proceedings with an unsettling aggression that threatens to transform into something even darker at every turn. SILENT MADNESS has the folkloric tropes which make the genre what it is (the murder turned urban legend, the homecoming, the insane parent), but also enough unique weirdness to make it unforgettable, including some really out of place naturalism thanks to Viveca Lindfors (Creepshow, Exorcist III) and Sydney Lassick (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest), looking strikingly similar to a GHOULIE in a Sheriff’s uniform.

ONE dimension’s worth of substance in THREE DIMENSIONS!! (Glasses provided!)

SATAN’S STORYBOOK
Dir: Michael Rider, 1989.
85 min. USA.

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 26TH – 8PM

Presented by Horror Boobs

What do a well known porn star, the writer of THE HOWLING, and a former back-up dancer for Debbie Gibson have in common?

Satan.

This anthology film follows what is certainly the whiniest version of Our Dark Lord to ever grace the hallowed slabs of analog media. SATAN’S STORYBOOK claims to be 3 stories but that’s including the wraparound. Hey, get it how you can, you know? The first actual story (told to soothe a cranky Satan) is about a serial killer named The Demon of Death who picks his victims at random out of the phonebook (kind of like the William Lustig film RELENTLESS but with different haircuts). He meets his match in the form of a metal babe named Jezebell who summons some demons of her own! The other story is about an alcoholic clown who offs himself and comes face-to-face with Death himself…though not in his traditional form.

SATAN’S STORYBOOK comes to us hot off the presses as out longtime friends and guest programmers – those loveable knuckleheads at Horror Boobs – have just re-released this beauty on glistening white VHS tapes in a fresh new case. Be sure to pick one up!

HEADLESS EYES
Dir: Kent Bateman, 1971.
78 min. USA.

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 26TH – 10PM

You know how it is for starving artists, right? I mean, look at your clothes. Anyway, it used to be even harder! So hard that some of them turned to a life of crime. This is especially true in the case of Arthur Malcolm. Down on his luck, Arthur is caught robbing an apartment and loses his eye in the process. Once he’s healed he’s out on the streets and, brother, he is HEATED. Arthur sets about on a mad killing spree, gouging out the eyes of his victims with a spoon. He collects the eyes for his artwork, you see. This continues for some time with mixed results.

This film was directed by Kent Bateman, father of Jason and Justine, in the streets of a now long gone version of NYC. According to this film, it was a time when a hooker would approach a man covered in blood in the middle of the day in order to turn a trick. The good old days. In addition to this movie being totally batshit insane with a FIERCE mutant soundtrack, it’s a veritable snapshot of a city as nasty as they come. The performances are hammy and intense, like Easter dinner in a mental institution.

Not to be missed!

THE WNUF HALLOWEEN SPECIAL
????, 1987.
82 min. USA.

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 26TH – MIDNIGHT

Presented by Alternative Cinema

Chris LaMartina in person!

Is the legendary WNUF HALLOWEEN SPECIAL a heart warming time capsule of Halloween past replete with local commercials, holiday charm, and awkward news anchors? Is it the evidence of a strange and terrifying, occurrence caught on tape almost 20 years ago? Is it a sick hoax? Whatever it is, it’s one of a kind and IT’S ONLY AT THE SPECTACLE SHRIEK SHOW!

Taped off of WNUF TV-28 on Halloween Night, 1987, this strange broadcast follows local news personality Frank Stewart and a team of paranormal researchers as they set out to prove that the abandoned Webber House – the site of ghastly murders – is actually haunted through a fascinating live on-air program featuring shocking EVP recordings and one-of-a-kind Call-In seance.

This is a one of a kind,outrageously fun and unique Halloween treat! Is it real? You be the judge!

“It’s a legendary broadcast. Even though most collectors haven’t even
seen it, they’ve heard about it. With each passing year its cult
status grows.” – Robin Bougie, Cinema Sewer

“Holy crap – I remember this airing when I was a kid! Craziest thing
I’ve ever seen on live TV!” – Eduardo Sanchez, co-creator of The Blair
Witch Project