Uncategorized – Page 19 – Spectacle Theater

WARM BLOOD AND THE FILMS OF SIX STAIR

Posted on August 12, 2023September 12, 2023 by Zach Fleming

WARM BLOOD AND THE FILMS OF SIX STAIR

This September, Spectacle is proud to present a week long run of Rick Charnoski’s new experimental feature film WARM BLOOD, alongside skate films and documentary collaborations between Rick Charnoski and Buddy Nichols, founders of SIX STAIR FILMS, including FRUIT OF THE VINE, DEATHBOWL TO DOWNTOWN, and the roadtrip documentary NORTHWEST.

WARM BLOOD
dir. by Rick Charnoski, 2023
USA. 86 minutes
In English.

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 13 – 7:30PM
THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 14- 7:30PM
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 15 – 7:30PM, Q&A MODERATED BY JOHN VEIT
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 16 – 5:00PM, Q&A MODERATED BY JOHN VEIT
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 17 – 7:30PM
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 18 – 7:30PM
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 19 – 7:30PM

ALL WARM BLOOD SCREENINGS FEATURE A Q&A WITH THE FILMMAKERS / $10 TICKETS

SPECIAL EVENT TICKETS

Set in the underbelly of 1980s Modesto, California, Warm Blood uses the real-life diary of a teenage runaway named Red (newcomer Haley Isaacson) returning home to find her father. In his narrative feature debut, director Rick Charnoski’s history as a skate video director informs the frenetic storytelling style, as he combines Red’s nihilist musings with a collage of documentary and B-movie meta-narratives that paint a seedy picture of life on the outskirts of town. Talk-radio bits and punk music underscore the auditory cacophony of doom, while frequent Kelly Reichardt collaborator Christopher Blauvelt (First Cow, The Bling Ring) lends his immersive, naturalist lens shooting on gritty 16mm film. While Red searches the streets, a constant foreboding presence looms around the chemically toxic river polluting the town. Via a cable-access news reporter interviewing the local residents about its impact, Charnoski infuses today’s growing apathy around the insurmountable nature of our man-made ecological disasters into this raw, politically subversive tale.

FRUIT OF THE VINE
dir. Rick Charnoski and Buddy Nichols, 2002
USA. 74 minutes
In English

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 12 – 10PM – THIS EVENT FEATURES A Q&A MODERATED BY JOCKO WEYLAND
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 15 – 10PM
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 26 – 10PM

SPECIAL EVENT TICKETS

GENERAL ADMISSION TICKETS

FRUIT OF THE VINE is a super 8mm film that documents the incredible and often dangerous lengths that skateboarders go to in order to ride deserted, empty swimming pools. It is not a historical documentary, but a collection of stories shot in 1999 while Coan and Rick traveled from southern California to Seattle and around the east coast in search of pools to ride. FRUIT OF THE VINE profiles the people who search for, find, break into, and ultimately glean some use out of these pieces of the American suburban wasteland. With skate luminaries like Tony Alva, Lance Mountain, Steve Baily, Salba, Shaggy, Chris Senn, Pete the Ox, Tony Farmer, Tom Groholski, Mark Hubbard, Pat Quirk and many more. Soundtrack features Bad Religion, The Clay Wheels, Steel Wool, The Loudmouths and more.

DEATHBOWL TO DOWNTOWN
dir. Rick Charnoski and Buddy Nichols, 2008
USA. 86 minutes
In English

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 4 – 7:30PM
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 14 – 10PM
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 30 – 10PM

GENERAL ADMISSION TICKETS

On one level Deathbowl to Downtown is about street skating, but it’s also an overview of skateboarding’s shift from the parks and pools of the 70s, to the ramp skating in the 80s, to the street ascendancy of the 1990s and beyond. An entertaining, thought provoking take on why the action on New York’s hectic streets represents skateboarding to millions of people worldwide.

NORTHWEST
dir. Rick Charnoski and Buddy Nichols, 2003
USA. 74 minutes
In English

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 9 – 5PM
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 16 – 10PM
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 18 – 10PM

GENERAL ADMISSION TICKETS

In this real-life road movie, Coan Nichols and Rick Charnoski focus their lenses on hand-sculpted concrete skate parks, and the skaters who build and ride them, while making friends, visiting old ones, and wreaking havoc across the Pacific Northwest.

After the underground success of their first film, the super 8mm skateboard classic Fruit of the Vine (1999), Coan “Buddy” Nichols and Rick Charnoski founded the independent production company Six Stair, which operates under the same DIY ethics of the subculture that raised them: skateboarding and punk rock. Since 1999 Nichols and Charnoski have charted an unorthodox path, making a broad range of films that consistently go beyond tired tropes to illuminate deeper truths.

After catching the eye of renowned cinematographer Christopher Doyle for their specialty in Super 8mm and 16mm filmmaking, he tapped Charnoski and Nichols to shoot the dream sequences for Gus Van Sant’s Paranoid Park (2007). They have since worked with a wide range of respected artists and filmmakers including Cameron Crowe, Richard Serra, Peter Beard, Julian Schnabel, and NeckFace as well as on commercial projects for Vans, Nike, Converse, Mountain Dew and the Gold Effie Award winning Ouch! campaign for Tylenol.

Their documentary work includes Tent City (2003), which followed the notorious Anti Hero skate team throughout Australia; Pearl Jam‘s Vote for Change? (released 2008), capturing the band’s “Vote For Change” tour across America; the feature length Deathbowl to Downtown (2009) narrated by Chloe Sevigny as well as many other short films. Other subjects they have turned their attention and cameras to are Christo’s “Gates” project, fashion shows, music videos, surfing, airplane flight, and Jamaican dub pioneers.

They’ve shown their work worldwide at countless skate shops and hole-in-the wall venues, as well as the Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, The Graduate School of Architecture, at Columbia University, Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio, the MU Art Foundation in The Netherlands, the Melbourne International Film Festival in Australia, MOCA Tucson and MoMA New York.

Currently they produce and direct the popular web series “Love Letters to Skateboarding” for Vans and are in development of their first narrative feature (Warm Blood) and continue to work on a variety of both independent and commercial projects out of their back alley studio in Hollywood, CA.

Special thanks to Factory 25

THE FILMS OF STEPHANIE ROTHMAN

Posted on August 10, 2023August 23, 2023 by Dan Scanlon

This September, Spectacle Theater is honored to present this once-in-a-lifetime retrospective of the work of renowned independent filmmaker, Stephanie Rothman. Though often labeled as an exploitation filmmaker, Rothman’s work stands as some of the most politically and socially astute works documenting the period of transition between 1960s and 70s America.

Rothman got her start in the early 1960s working as an assistant to Roger Corman, tasked with performing a variety of odd jobs on his productions that ranged from casting and location scouting to re-writing and editing scenes. This experience would eventually land Rothman in the director’s chair on a couple of mid-60s Corman releases: Conducting reshoots on BLOOD BATH (for which she shares directorial credit with Jack Hill), and making her solo directorial debut with the beach party film, IT’S A BIKINI WORLD.

It wasn’t until the early 1970s, though, that Rothman would break out with her work on THE STUDENT NURSES (1970) and THE VELVET VAMPIRE (1972) for Corman’s newly-established production and distribution company, New World Pictures. With few opportunities available to woman directors at the time, Rothman was relegated to making exploitation films with a high volume of sexual content. Despite this, and with the creative freedom afforded to her at New World, Rothman was able to suffuse these works with her own ideological positions and ethics, incorporating plots— and by extension, her own commentary— that openly tackled issues of abortion, drug use, immigration, policing, and sexual empowerment; issues directly relevant to contemporary audiences but that largely absent from major studio productions.

Rothman and her husband, fellow Corman alum, Charles S. Swartz, would eventually leave New World to establish Dimension Pictures alongside Lawrence Woolner, where she continued her streak of progressively-minded productions with GROUP MARRIAGE (1973), TERMINAL ISLAND (1973), and THE WORKING GIRLS (1974). Each of these works expanded the scope of her films’ social politics further, now incorporating topics of queerness, sex work, polyamory, domestic abuse, incarceration, and capital punishment.

Rothman struggled to find work with major studios after leaving Dimension Pictures in 1975, discovering, rather ironically, that she had been stigmatized by her earlier exploitation-adjacent work, despite the obvious filmmaking talent behind them. Regrettably, Rothman wound up leaving the industry less than a decade later, though the legacy of her filmmaking career, its cultural relevance and its importance in the history of women’s filmmaking labor, endures to this day.

Join us on Sunday, 9/17 for a remote Q&A with Stephanie Rothman following a special screening of her final film, THE WORKING GIRLS.

THE STUDENT NURSES
dir. Stephanie Rothman, 1970
United States. 82 min.
In English.

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 1 – MIDNIGHT
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 8 – 7:30 PM
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 24 – 7:30 PM
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 30 – MIDNIGHT

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Chronicles the romantic and comedic adventures of four young women living together in California and studying to become nurses. Each forges their own wild path through their final year of nursing school: Sharon falls in love with a dying patient, Lynn becomes involved with a Chicano revolutionary, Phred falls into trouble with a young doctor, and Priscilla has an affair with a drug addict. All the while, graduation and the beginning of life in the Real World lie just around the corner.

Rothman’s second solo directorial effort was a landmark release for New World Pictures. The film was only the company’s second release, but would go on to become a box office hit, grossing upwards of a million dollars on a $120,000 budget, and establish New World’s extensive “nurses” cycle of releases (PRIVATE DUTY NURSES, NIGHT CALL NURSES).

For her part, Rothman turned what was originally envisioned by Corman and Larry Woolner as a tawdry sexploitation cash-in into a work of incisive social commentary. With Corman out of the country for most of its production, Rothman was given free reign over the tone, style, and content of the film, so long as it maintained the studio-mandated quotas of nudity and violence.

THE VELVET VAMPIRE
dir. Stephanie Rothman, 1971
United States. 80 min.
In English.

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 1 – 7:30 PM
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 6 – 7:30 PM
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 10 – 7:30 PM
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 15 – MIDNIGHT
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 29 – 10 PM

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Lee and his wife, Susan, accept the invitation of the mysterious vixen, Diane LeFanu, to join her at her secluded desert estate. Tensions begin to arise when the couple, unaware at first that Diane is really a centuries-old vampire, realize that they’ve both become the object of the temptress’ seductions.

Following the success of THE STUDENT NURSES, Rothman and Swartz reteamed with Larry Woolner on this unorthodox modern-day vampire tale. Rather than approach it as a straightforward horror story, Rothman used the film as an opportunity to subvert common vampire tropes by making the vampire figure a woman, equally deadly and desirous, and painting Susan’s character as a protagonist rather than a victim.

Visually, the film is Rothman’s most surreal, drawing inspiration from works of Cocteau and Franju as much as it did the adjacent European erotic vampire scene (DAUGHTERS OF DARKNESS, VAMPYROS LESBOS). Rothman’s vampire is less a horror icon than a totem of limitless pleasure, one who eschews a coffin for a lush king-size bed, large enough for three.

TERMINAL ISLAND
dir. Stephanie Rothman, 1973
United States. 88 min.
In English.

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 5 – 10 PM
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 8 – 10 PM
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 23 – MIDNIGHT
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 28 – 7:30 PM

GET YOUR TICKETS!

In the wake of a Supreme Court decision that deemed the death penalty unconstitutional, California passes an initiative that designates San Bruno Island as a dumping ground for dangerous convicts, free to do whatever they want except leave. When a new group of women convicts is taken to the island prison they must fight to protect themselves against the iron-fisted rule of the tyrannical Bobby and take control of the island for themselves.

Ironically, the film that seems like it would be most outside of Rothman’s wheelhouse— a provocative action-thriller with touches of women-in-prison and blaxploitation fare— wound up arguably being her most explicitly feminist film: It’s plot centering around a group of women’s literal fight for agency within a sado-patriarchal dystopia.

THE WORKING GIRLS
dir. Stephanie Rothman, 1974
United States. 81 min.
In English.

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 9 – 7:30 PM

GENERAL ADMISSION TICKETS

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 17 – 5 PM with filmmaker Q&A (This event is $10.)

SPECIAL EVENT TICKETS

Honey arrives in Los Angeles in search of a new life, and soon moves in with Denise and Jill. Honey is broke, but resourceful, eventually convincing an eccentric millionaire to hire her as his companion and confidant. Meanwhile, Denise falls in love with a shady musician while nightclub waitress, Jill, winds up in over her head when pressured by her boss to take on other responsibilities. All three women become endangered by the activities of the men in their lives, before realizing that they have to take matters into their own hands.

Rothman’s final film, and the only one for which she is the sole credited writer (or as she puts it, “means I take all the blame for it.”), may just be her masterpiece. By the end of her tenure in the film industry, the political subtext that had colored her earlier works had become the outright text, with sex work, equity in the workplace, and abuse becoming the focal points to each of her characters’ conflicts. What the film may lack in production values compared to her New World productions, it more than makes up for in the sophistication of Rothman’s compositions. While still undoubtedly a sex comedy, Rothman finds subtle ways of visually expressing the film’s themes. Case-in-point: With Jill being a nightclub waitress-cum-manager, of course the film includes gratuitous sequences of women stripping on stage (including a pre-“Elvira” Cassandra Peterson), but before Rothman makes a point of including POV inserts of the hideous men in the club’s audience, their presence lingering over what, in another director’s hands, would have been a lustful rather than dangerously leery affair.

Special thanks to Vinegar Syndrome and to Dr. Alicia Kozma of Indiana University, author of The Cinema of Stephanie Rothman: Radical Acts in Filmmaking, without whom this program would not be possible.

THE REVOLT OF NATURE

Posted on August 10, 2023August 10, 2023 by Ben Tuttle

The Revolt of Nature sub-genre, also known as Natural Horror, consists of humans fighting for survival against plants, animals or other ecological terrors. Modern Natural Horror films trace their heritage back to two films, Alfred Hitchcock’s THE BIRDS (1963) and Steven Spielberg’s JAWS (1975), but the sub-genre has been around since the dawn of cinema.

The box office success of JAWS in the late 70s started a wave of Natural Horror movies, inspiring low-budget imitation films such as ORCA (1977), THE PACK (1977) and PIRANHA (1978). By the 90s, Natural Horror movies were common among summer blockbusters, with films like JURASSIC PARK (1993), ANACONDA (1997) and ARACHNOPHOBIA (1990) dominating the box office.

By the 2010s, the rise of digital cameras, cheap CGI and straight-to-DVD movies paved the way for micro-budget Natural Horror movies. Aided by these and other technological advancements, filmmakers sought to create movies from the 90s with budgets from the 70s, flooding the home video market with familiar favorites like MEGA SHARK VERSUS GIANT OCTOPUS (2009), SHARKNADO (2013) and ZOMBEAVERS (2014).

This August, Spectacle invites you to The Revolt of Nature. Return to where it all began with three 70s era Natural Horror films, only at Spectacle.

RAZORBACK
Dir. Russell Mulcahy. 1984.
Australia. 95 mins.
In English.

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 4 – 10 PM
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 9 – MIDNIGHT
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 20 – 10 PM
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 22 – MIDNIGHT

ADVANCE TICKETS

An American wildlife activist goes missing in a town besieged by razorback boar attacks, and her husband travels to Australia to find her. When no one can tell him what happened to his missing wife, he soon suspects something even more sinister at play.

RAZORBACK is not a typical 80s creature feature. The influence of WAKE IN FRIGHT (1971), an Ozploitation staple, takes center stage as sweat and dirt ooze from the celluloid. The stunning visuals, shot by Academy Award-winning cinematographer Dean Semler, showcase the vastness of the Australian outback, creating an inescapable hellscape more deadly than the monster itself.

Australia is famous for its dangerous animals and miles of inhospitable land, so naturally some of the best Natural Horror movies were produced there. RAZORBACK was made during the peak of Australian exploitation cinema, also known as Ozploitation, and draws clear influences from its predecessors. RAZORBACK places you in a hallucinogenic fever dream of sand, sweat and dirt that will make you want to shower as soon as the credits roll.

BEN
Dir. Phil Karlson. 1972.
United States. 94 mins.
In English.

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 6 – 10 PM
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 12 – 7:30 PM
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 22 – 10 PM
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 25 – 7:30 PM

ADVANCE TICKETS

A lonely boy named Danny befriends Ben, the rodent leader of a killer rat pack.

BEN (1972) is an exceptional sequel that aimed to capture the success of its predecessor, WILLARD (1971). The first movie tells the story of Willard, a young man driven mad by his grief, loneliness, and insufferable boss, who befriends a rat and attempts to train it in his basement. Where WILLARD is a character study of an introverted man, BEN documents the rodents that ravage the city, and its residents, while tracing the emotional relationship between Danny and Ben.

Michael Jackson’s “Ben” was written for the movie and is performed by Danny in a sweeping serenade to Ben during the film. The song earned BEN an Academy Award nomination and was the titular track of Michael Jackson’s second solo album.

DAY OF THE ANIMALS
Dir. William Girdler. 1977.
United States. 97 mins.
In English.

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 8 – MIDNIGHT
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 16 – MIDNIGHT
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 20 – 7:30 PM
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 25 – 10 PM

ADVANCE TICKETS

Fluorocarbon gasses from aerosol cans damaged the ozone layer, and the dangerous level of ultraviolet rays affected animals in high altitudes. A group of hikers must fight for their lives as they experience the consequences of environmental apathy first-hand.

DAY OF THE ANIMALS (1977) was directed by Wiliam Girdler one year after his hit film GRIZZLY (1976). Both films share similar DNA, featuring live wild animals running amok, beautiful woodland settings, and Christopher George trying to save the day. Whereas GRIZZLY is widely considered a JAWS (1975) rip-off, DAY OF THE ANIMALS is an ecological thriller that showcases an environmentally conscious perspective.

When the movie was released, many critics were, unsurprisingly, dismissive of this ‘sci-fi’ film for its on-the-nose environmental themes. In one sense, the critics were indeed correct: DAY OF THE ANIMALS does place environmental themes front and center, with the opening title card reading, “This motion picture dramatizes what COULD happen in the near future IF we continue to do nothing to stop this damage to Nature’s protective shield for life on this planet.” Almost fifty years later, amid a climate of near-constant environmental catastrophe, DAY OF THE ANIMALS is more poignant than ever, and ready for reevaluation.

A PRAGA

Posted on August 9, 2023August 16, 2023 by Dan Scanlon

A PRAGA (THE CURSE)
dir. José Mojica Marins (Coffin Joe), 2021
Brazil. 51 min.
In Portuguese with English subtitles.

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 23 – 7:30 PM
THURSDAY, AUGUST 24 – 7:30 PM – Remote Q&A with Brazilian Film Critic Filipe Furtado, moderated by Isaac Hoff
FRIDAY, AUGUST 25 – 7:30 PM
SATURDAY, AUGUST 26 – 7:30 PM

GET YOUR TICKETS!

Rediscovered and restored by Heco Produções in 2021, A PRAGA represents an essential addition to the Jose Mojica Marins (1936-2020) aka “Coffin Joe” canon, filling a critical gap in the filmography of one the most important and prolific genre filmmakers from Brazil.

Shot on Super-8 in 1980, A PRAGA became the last glimpse of Marins’ supernatural horror before he adhered to directing pornochanchadas up until his final film, Embodiment of Evil, which was released in 2008. A PRAGA tells the story of a young couple who stumbles upon an exotic old woman who throws a curse which leads to terrible nightmares, irritable violence and a perpetual state of delusion and paranoia. Spectacle is proud to present, in collaboration with Cinelimite & Heco Produções, A PRAGA, in a new restoration for a one-week run.

Screening with:

MOJICA’S LAST CURSE
dir. Cédric Fanti, Eugenio Puppo, Matheus Sundfeld, & Pedro Junequeira
Brazil. 17 min.
In Portuguese with English subtitles.

MOJICA’S LAST CURSE depicts the process of restoring and completing José Mojica Marins’s 1980 film, A PRAGA. Thought to be lost and filled with never-before-seen material including behind-the-scenes footage, exclusive interviews, & scenes from the original production from 1980.

THE SPY WHO DOSED ME

Posted on August 7, 2023August 13, 2023 by Ben Tuttle

It seems that the only group who took to LSD more fervently than the hippies were the spooks. The spies. The CIA. LSD was first synthesized in the late 1930s and only by the early 1950s the US government started experimenting with the drug’s potential on human subjects with or without their knowledge or consent. The experiments were brought to light in the 1970s as Projects Bluebird/Artichoke, and most famously, MKUltra. But as you’ll see, this open secret was already the basis of spy thrillers in the late 1960s.

Do you like a good mystery? Are you open to entertaining a good conspiracy theory every now and again? Have you read one too many David McGowan books? This September come to Spectacle and scratch that itch as we highlight three films that explore the connection between covert ops, the search for mind control, and LSD.

MINDFIELD
LA MÉMOIRE ASSASSINÉE
Dir. Jean-Claude Lord, 1989
Canada. 92 min
In English

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 2 – 10 PM
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 13 – 10 PM
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 23 – 10 PM
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 27 – 7:30 PM

ADVANCE TICKETS

Not to be confused with the Alien Workshop video of the same name, MINDFIELD stars Michael Ironside as the hard-nosed sergeant, Kellen O’Reilly, who is fresh from a divorce, and at the center of a brewing police union strike. Errant memories, depression, and flashbacks plague O’Reilly who deals silently with his ongoing history of mental health issues.

The police union’s legal representative, Sarah Paradis (Lisa Langlois), is splitting her time between the strike and prosecuting an ongoing case against the medical facility Coldhaven and its head doctor, Satorius (Christopher Plummer). Paradis alleges that Satorius used CIA funds to “play with human brains” and conduct experiments on unsuspecting patients. But Sarah is not the only degree of separation that Sergeant O’Reilly has with Coldhaven. If O’Reilly can regain his memories, thwart a group of company men up from the states, and unlock the killer implanted deep inside, will he be able to close the books on Coldhaven once and for all?

Leave it to the Canadians to have the realist take on Project MKUltra. Jean-Claude Lord’s MINDFIELD is surprisingly grounded and gritty with Ironside giving possibly the most accurate on-screen performance of someone under the effects of LSD. Nailing that “oh fuck” moment when the peak hits and you realize any simple task is just too much to ask for. The CIA operatives are also not exaggerated to the levels of tinseltown sexiness seen in the likes of Ethan Hunt or Jack Ryan. They appear as they are, schlubs. Evil terrorist schlubs intertwined with organized crime. The CIA would never let Hollywood get away with such a portrayal.

THE NET
DAS NETZ
Dir. Lutz Dammbeck, 2003
Germany. 115 min
In English and German with English subtitles

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 7 – 10 PM
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 24 – 5 PM
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 27 – 10 PM
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 30 – 7:30 PM

ADVANCE TICKETS

“How do computers, LSD, and hippies fit together?”

Hovering in a space between documentary and film essay, German multidisciplinary artist Lutz Dammbeck’s THE NET is a meandering line connecting the various dots between the recently deceased Ted Kaczynski, LSD, the CIA, hippies, and the internet. Structurally the film acts as a concept map, following word bubbles and their connecting lines as Dammbeck literally draws them.

THE NET uses Kaczynski and his backstory (a subject of CIA experimentation while a math student at Harvard?) to explore the loss of reality and its replacement with the virtual. Kaczynski’s refusal of this world is contrasted in the film by the characters of that ilk that he sought to destroy. Those who accepted and championed the global network and interconnectedness; like Whole Earth Catalog author Stewart Brand, literary agent (and Epstein pal) John Brockman, the physicist and philosopher Heinz von Foerster, and even computer scientist David Gelernter, a victim himself of the Unabomber.

LSD: FLESH OF THE DEVIL
LSD – INFERNO PER POCHI DOLLARI
Dir. Massimo Mida, 1967
Italy. 86 min
In dubbed English

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 2 – MIDNIGHT
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 29 – MIDNIGHT

ADVANCE TICKETS

For the completists, this late sixties Italian Bond rip-off is complete with waterskiing, LSD, peeping, blow darts, helicopters, LSD, explosions, car chases, scuba diving, guns, and LSD.

The film starts off with a literal bang as a small boy takes out an entire cadre of ne’er do wells abducting a little girl, with only a toy car and some curare darts. This is our introduction to the film’s protagonist: Rex Miller. Flash forward and Rex is a fully grown secret agent, played by 1950s American TV actor Guy Madison. Working for an agency that is never named outright—but the name of his to-be-discovered coworker in the field may be a clue—Rex is up against a “secret organization with a strange name: ECHO”, and it’s mysterious kingpin, Mr. X. What is their evil plan? LSD baby.

The film’s “Flesh of the Devil” subtitle is a disappointing example of a studio attempting to sell the movie as something else to English speaking audiences. The original Italian title, which translates more closely to “LSD: Hell for a Few Dollars”, is far more enticing. Wait, you mean I get to see cool colors and people’s heads turn into animals? And it’s only a coupla bucks!? Far out man.

CATS 2 (Unauthorized)

Posted on July 27, 2023July 31, 2023 by Dan Scanlon

CATS 2
dir. Jake Jones, Curran Foster, Coltan Foster, Colleen Fitzgerald, & Danny Natter, 2023
United States. 65 min.
In English.

ONE NIGHT ONLY!

SATURDAY, AUGUST 19 – 7:30 PM with filmmaker Q&A (This event is $10)

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“We know that a cat is a cat… but is it ever anything other than that?”

In December 2019, 5 best friends went together to see CATS at the movies in Seattle, WA. They were astounded by the bewildering film they had encountered. Keep in mind, several of these friends had starred in a small town theater production of Cats (and this theater was run by a cult) when they were growing up.

When the quarantine of 2020 hit these friends vowed to put their creative minds together to create CATS 2. The film is an experimental romp through the world of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s CATS, or as we like to call it, “CATS 1”. Through the mystery of light and form, CATS 2 chronicles the metaphysical transformation of Macavity, as told by former community theater child stars. CATS 2 is simultaneously a meta-commentary on the truths of fear and desire and a vessel of pure love carefully crafted to be the singular representation of our collective soul. It also has puppets and stuff.

You will laugh til you cry at times, be delighted, and a little scared. The CATS 2 crew invite you to enjoy this little pandemic infused masterpiece.

Seeing CATS (1) is not required.

RA: PATH OF THE SUN GOD

Posted on July 27, 2023August 4, 2023 by Dan Scanlon

RA: PATH OF THE SUN GOD
dir. Lesley Keen, 1990
Scotland. 72 min.
In English.

SATURDAY, AUGUST 5 – 5 PM with director Q&A! (This event is $10)

SPECIAL EVENT TICKETS

MONDAY, AUGUST 7 – 10 PM
FRIDAY, AUGUST 11 – 7:30 PM
TUESDAY, AUGUST 22 – 7:30 PM
SUNDAY, AUGUST 27 – 5 PM

GENERAL ADMISSION TICKETS

A three-part animated feature film on themes from ancient Egyptian art and mythology.

Four years in the making, RA was created and shot entirely in Glasgow by Persistent Vision Animation, Scotland’s only animation studio at the time. The film combines traditional animation techniques with special optical effects to produce a dream-like evocation of Ancient Egyptian beliefs about the Creation and Man’s place within it.

DAWN: The Creation
The first part of the film is given over to the Egyptian Genesis. The Egyptians had many gods and goddesses and creation myths. Ra brings these myths together in a single version and concentrates on the story of Osiris and Isis and their battle with their evil brother Set.

NOON: The Year of the King
Part two shows the intertwining of the world of the gods with that of the Divine Pharaoh, whom the ancient Egyptians believed to be the son of the Sun God Ra. The life of the Divine Pharaoh is depicted as a journey through the rituals which surround his initiation into temple life.

NIGHT: The Gates of the Underworld
In death, the Pharaoh continues his journey in the Underworld in the boat of the Sun God Ra, traveling through the twelve hours of night and conquering the powers of darkness before being resurrected at the dawn of the new day.

Join us on Saturday, August 5th for a very special remote Q&A with the animator and director, Lesley Keen!

Screening with:

TAKING A LINE FOR A WALK: A HOMAGE TO THE WORK OF PAUL KLEE
dir. Lesley Keen, 1983
Scotland. 11 min.
In English.

ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE
dir. Lesley Keen, 1984
Scotland. 6 min.
In English.

BURRELLESQUE
dir. Lesley Keen, 1990
Scotland. 7 min.
In English.

THE PLAINS

Posted on July 27, 2023August 4, 2023 by Dan Scanlon

THE PLAINS
dir. David Easteal, 2022
Australia. 180 min.
In English.

SATURDAY, AUGUST 12 – 5 PM with filmmaker Q&A (This event is $10)

SPECIAL EVENT TICKETS

FRIDAY, AUGUST 4 – 6:30 PM
THURSDAY, AUGUST 31 – 7:30 PM

GENERAL ADMISSION TICKETS

“In Easteal’s first feature, the Australian director adopts a durational model of filmmaking that arguably hit its peak around the turn of the 2010s, but he parlays the conceptual framework into a casually engrossing work free of slow cinema’s more trying aspects (e.g., long passages of silence; quasi-symbolic characters on seemingly endless quests toward enlightenment). Running 180 minutes and set almost entirely inside a car, The Plains depicts the daily commute of a middle-aged businessman from the parking lot of a Melbourne law office to his home in the city’s outer suburbs. Every day, at just after 5 p.m., Andrew (Andrew Rakowski) gets into his Hyundai, calls his wife, and checks in with his ailing mother, before listening to talk radio for the remainder of the hour-long drive. Occasionally, he offers a lift to a coworker, David (played by Easteal), who’s going through a breakup and is generally dissatisfied with his personal and professional life. Over the course of the film— told recursively, beginning at the same time and location each day—Andrew and David reveal themselves in casual, offhand conversations (apparently scripted but delivered so naturally as to evoke the feel of a documentary) that accumulate into an acute portrait of modern life—one in which otherwise unarticulated beliefs, regrets, and anxieties bring to light a shared humanity too often lost in the commotion of the world.”
—Jordan Cronk, Film Comment

Join us on Saturday, August 12th for a special screening and Q&A with director and star, David Easteal.

WORLD WAR WILLY: 3 FILMS BY WILLY MILAN

Posted on July 27, 2023August 4, 2023 by Dan Scanlon

Has the ongoing environmental collapse that’s scorched the planet and turned marine life against us got you feeling down? Do you pine for the days when our fears of Armageddon were driven more by nukes than nature? Do you dream of post-apocalyptic wastelands dotted with palm trees and pristine beaches? Then come join us at Spectacle this August for a look at the work of Filipino filmmaker and master of “Maxsploitation” cinema, Willy Milan.

Milan came up among the same wave of Filipino filmmakers that included Eddie Romero, Bobby Suarez, and Cirio Santiago, whose careers were boosted by foreign studios’ interest in the Philippines as a haven of lax regulation and low-cost labor in the 1970s and 80s. Yet while his contemporaries’ work was shepherded by the likes of Roger Corman and Samuel Arkoff for distribution to North America’s drive-in and grindhouse circuits, Milan’s films were largely domestic affairs, produced and distributed primarily for Pinoy audiences.

Milan was arguably the Philippines’ earliest adopter of “Maxsploitation” cinema— The subgenre of dystopian action movies sparked by the success of MAD MAX and its sequel— at a time when the genre was dominated by Australian and Italian filmmakers. Milan’s early films helped put the Philippines on the post-apocalyptic map, with the country’s beaches and jungles making for a fascinating alternative setting to the barren deserts and decimated cityscapes preferred by the Aussies and Italians.

Surprisingly, to this day much of Milan’s output has yet to see stateside theatrical or home video releases, with many of his films surviving solely via dusty Paragon VHS releases from over 30 years ago. In other words, perfect Spectacle summer viewing, replete with high body counts, logic-defying action, awkward dubbing, and killer soundtracks.

W IS WAR
dir. Willy Milan, 1983
Philippines. 91 min.
In English (dubbed).

TUESDAY, AUGUST 1 – 10 PM
SUNDAY, AUGUST 6 – 5 PM
MONDAY, AUGUST 14 – 10 PM
SATURDAY, AUGUST 26 – MIDNIGHT

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The Weapons of Death, The Vehicles of Destruction, The Army of Terror… Together they spread their evil across the land. But then there was… W!

Filipino action staple, Anthony Alonzo, stars as W (inexplicably referred to as “W2” throughout), a rogue police sergeant who winds up the victim of evil cult leader-slash-opium supplier-slash-castration enthusiast, Nosfero, after his corrupt department… ahem… drops the ball on their investigation. Newly testicle-less, W vows his revenge on the crime lord and his army of mind-controlled biker thugs, willing to engage in all-out war with or without the help of his department.

Milan came out the gate firing on all cylinders with his first Maxsploitation feature, which features some of the best “tooling up” montages and literally explosive climaxes of its era.

MAD WARRIOR
(aka CLASH OF THE WARLORDS)
dir. Willy Milan, 1984
Philippines. 75 min.
In English (dubbed).

THURSDAY, AUGUST 3 – 10 PM
FRIDAY, AUGUST 11 – 10 PM
SATURDAY, AUGUST 19 – MIDNIGHT
MONDAY, AUGUST 28 – 10 PM

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In the battle for life, you have to kill or be killed.

Anthony Alonzo returns as Rex, a survivor living in the aftermath of World War III. Most of the world has been rendered uninhabitable, save for a small fortified island colony in the Pacific led by the sadistic Maizon, a one-eyed cyborg who gets his kicks forcing his legions of gladiators to fight each other to the death. After a botched escape attempt, Rex’s wife and child are killed at the hands of Maizon, setting our hero off on a bloodthirsty quest for revenge.

Willy Milan’s Maxsploitation trend continued full-force with this spiritual sequel to W IS WAR, reuniting many of the same performers, locations, costumes, and armored battle tricycles featured in its predecessor.

ULTIMAX FORCE
dir. Willy Milan, 1987
Philippines/United States. 82 min.
In English (dubbed).

FRIDAY, AUGUST 4 – 10 PM
SATURDAY, AUGUST 12 – MIDNIGHT
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 16 – 10 PM
TUESDAY, AUGUST 29 – 10 PM

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The Ultimax Force is an elite group of operatives, each a trained U.S. Commando and card-carrying member of the Ninja Society of California. Their mission: To liberate a Vietnamese POW camp run by a sadistic colonel who’s mercilessly slaughtering prisoners in a display of rabid madness.

With the Maxsploitation trend mostly languishing by the late-80s, Willy Milan turned his sights towards two other VHS market-friendly subgenres that were gaining popularity abroad— Ninjas and ‘Nam— in this co-production between the U.S. and Philippines. The two are combined with about as much subtlety as the heroes’ bandanas emblazoned with both the American and Japanese flags, but what it lacks in nuance it more than makes up for with its incredibly well-choreographed fight sequences and a truly ridiculous amount of explosions.

“Several of Michael Dudikofs mates with swords and guns. American Ninja meets Missing in Action. Fank u”
—Literally the IMDB synopsis

NORBERT PFAFFENBICHLER’S 2551 SERIES

Posted on July 27, 2023July 28, 2023 by Dan Scanlon

2551.01 – THE KID
dir. Norbert Pfaffenbichler, 2021
Austria. 65 min.
No spoken dialogue.

THURSDAY, AUGUST 10 – 7:30 PM
MONDAY, AUGUST 14 – 7:30 PM
FRIDAY, AUGUST 18 – 10 PM
TUESDAY, AUGUST 22 – 10 PM

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One-hundred years lie between Chaplin’s first feature-length film and Pfaffenbichler’s very loose interpretation of it. The Kid, filmed in 1920, is a story from the realm of the “lumpenproletariat”, a tragi-comic moral tale of an abandoned child and police brutality. 2551.01 is all of that, too—and is, after all, at a distance of 100 years and all kinds of breaks in cinematic history and countless wars from Chaplin’s bittersweet patchwork comedy. The director calls his toxic genre blend a “dystopic slapstick film.” Pfaffenbichler has already shaped two of his short films from Chaplin material, and the “daemonic screen” is his passion. He devoted a film to the silent film quick-change artist Lon Chaney, and he called his 2013 Boris Karloff tribute A Masque of Madness. Now, in 2551.01, a lot more than one mask of madness can be seen. The false clown, sod, and nightmare visages, which the amateur ensemble wears, define this low-budget grotesque, which is set in the passageways of a sewer system, bunkers, and dark cellars, without windows, without daylight, without escape. Chaplin’s tramp turns into a man in a monkey mask, who takes in an abandoned child and hesitantly looks for a place for his charge in the violent and zombie world he inhabits.

A series of genuinely obscene images makes the pulse quicken: nauseating meals are served at a decadent candlelight dinner in the wreckage, disturbing rituals are carried out in a nursery school of horrors, and on the hero’s path through the underground hell, we witness Abu-Ghraib-like torture. Along with the complex textures of silent films, Pfaffenbichler also uses elements of splatter and exploitation films and sitcoms—and an extremely eclectic soundtrack of music. In this way, this episodic drama leads us to the peripheries of punk and shock comedy, to territories that are practically non-existent in Austrian cinema. For that reason, with all luck, the Orgy of the Damned, which is announced at the end as Episode 2 of this wicked tale, will soon become a reality. (Stefan Grissemann)

2551.02 – THE ORGY OF THE DAMNED
dir. Norbert Pfaffenbichler, 2023
Austria. 82 min.
No spoken dialogue.

THURSDAY, AUGUST 10 – 10 PM
TUESDAY, AUGUST 15 – 7:30 PM
FRIDAY, AUGUST 18 – MIDNIGHT
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 23 – 10 PM

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The mad saga about the man in a monkey mask wandering through the torture garden of deviant delights continues. The second part of an intended trilogy, Norbert Pfaffenbichler’s 2551.02 – Orgy of the Damned picks up exactly where 2551.01 left the stunned viewer craving continuation, and as with all great sequels you needn’t have seen the previous film to be thrilled by this one. Especially if you like slapstick violence, sick sex and pitch-black humour. The opening image of a faceless sitting nude whose penis surprisingly retracts into a vagina announces that you’re entering a fantastic world where conventional constraints have no meaning: There are no taboos in the grotesque underground realm of Pfaffenbichler’s 2551 movies, which cross all borders, especially those of good taste.

Reviving the original punk spirit of true independent filmmaking, Pfaffenbichler and his ingenious collaborators have concocted another marvel of no-budget ingenuity, in which all characters wear crazy masks and society has regressed into subterranean caverns filled with resplendently obscene details. No words are needed to express the pain felt by the unnamed protagonist as he traverses this wacky wasteland, hunted by a police corps headed by a plague doctor and repeatedly crossing paths with a seductive mystery woman, while he is looking for an abandoned child (their relationship a loose perversion of Chaplin’s silent classic The Kid), which is literally trapped in a school of hard knocks. Awesome music and enthusiastically exaggerated performances propel the hapless (anti-)hero forward, as he drunkenly stumbles on, only to be knocked out repeatedly, especially by the lady of his dreams.

The lovingly staged set pieces include an “ultimate fighting contest” with wrestlers from hell (staged as a slap dance to electro beats), a brawl in a barroom that serves cut-off fingers as snacks, and a tour de force of the universal meat market to which no act of sexual transgression is alien. When a dreamy interlude (scored to Henry Purcell’s “Cold Song”) finally allows a vision of sexual healing you can bet that it ends with a money shot of the limp ejaculation of maggots. This Orgy of the Damned finally delivers on the age-old promise that you will witness things no man has ever seen before. Even your own vomit may stare back at you. Probably because it also can’t wait for 2551.03. (Christoph Huber)

Special thanks to Nicolas Pedrero-Setzer, Jonida Laçi, and sixpackfilm.