“For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night. For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape.” 1 Thessalonians 5:2-3

Before APOCALYPSE, before LEFT BEHIND, there was one Evangelical film series willing to look at what became of the earth after the ascension of all good souls into heaven: A THIEF IN THE NIGHT. Shot in Des Moines, Iowa in the early 70s and screened in church basements, Campus Crusade for Christ mixers and the most late-night public access, these films have had a tremendous influence on generations of dispensationalist Evangelicals while generally ignored by godless Midnight maniacs. No longer! It is time you followed the long and winding path of Patty through the wilderness of darkness and learned the TRUTH about the Great White Throne Judgment that is to come!

 

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A THIEF IN THE NIGHT
Donald W. Thompson, 1972.
USA, 69 min.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 2 – MIDNIGHT
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 17 – MIDNIGHT

ONLINE TICKETS HERE

Young Patty Jo Myers awakens to discover the rapture has come and she hasn’t ascended, which is a drag, as the UN assembles United Nations Imperium of Total Emergency (UNITE) to give everyone the mark of the beast. With the infectiously catchy/dreary theme song “”I Wish We’d All Been Ready” (from which the Left Behind series takes its name!) and some of Des Moines’ most washed-out 70s bummer vibe, A THIEF IN THE NIGHT is where it all begins.

Watch the Series Trailer !! 

 

 

 

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A DISTANT THUNDER
Donald W. Thompson, 1978
USA, 77 min.

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 10 – MIDNIGHT
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 23 – MIDNIGHT

ONLINE TICKETS HERE

Patty’s refusal to take the Mark of the Beast has led her to execution, which then flashes back to how she was betrayed, caught, meets old friends, continues to deny Christ and learns an awful lot about theology. Will it lead to her salvation? Probably not, as there’s two more films to go!

Watch the Series Trailer!! 

 

 

 

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THE IMAGE OF THE BEAST
Donald W. Thompson, 1981
USA, 93 min.

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 3 – MIDNIGHT
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 16 – MIDNIGHT

ONLINE TICKETS HERE

If your job somehow involves a computer, and you spend a lot of time in front of a computer, and if you think maybe all that computer time is brainwashing you into doing the work of the Antichrist, then *this* is the movie for you. Famines, floods, nuclear blight, it’s all here in all its midwest splendor.

Watch the Series Trailer!! 

 

 

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THE PRODIGAL PLANET
Donald W. Thompson, 1983
USA, 126 min.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 9 – MIDNIGHT
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 24 – MIDNIGHT

ONLINE TICKETS HERE

In 1983, a crack commando unit was sent to wander the post-apocalyptic wasteland by a UNITE court for a sin they didn’t commit. These sad lost souls promptly escaped from rural Iowa to the New Mexico underground. Today, still wanted by the government, they survive as soldiers of fortune, fulfilling prophecy, spreading the good news in a modified motor home, so if you need help, if you have been forsaken, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire…THE PRAY TEAM!

Watch the Series Trailer!! 

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LUMUMBA
dir. Raoul Peck, 2000
115 mins. In French and Lingala with English subtitles.

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 10 – 7:30 PM
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 14 – 10 PM
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 20 – 7:30 PM
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 28 – 7:30 PM

ONLINE TICKETS HERE

“In the infinite nighttime beauty of the African savannah, two men have been given the task of cutting up three dead bodies. Then burn them. And then bury them. So ends Patrice Lumumba’s life, the man who was the first Prime Minister of the newly independent Republic of the Congo for just three months. But this is also where his story begins…”

On the occasion of Raoul Peck’s new THE YOUNG KARL MARX – to say nothing of a Black History Month celebrated under the most aggressively white-supremacist-friendly White House in at least one generation – it might be prudent to reexamine LUMUMBA, Peck’s breakthrough 2000 biopic of the Congolese pan-Africanist leader kidnapped and murdered by a CIA-backed Belgian death squad in 1961. Played by a fire-and-brimstone Eriq Ebounay, this Lumumba is a figure both complicated and heroic, whose oratory finesse sees him rising from mail clerk to beer salesman to Prime Minister by the age of 36; Lumumba narrates from beyond the grave, a radical flourish that only hints at the movie’s bigger analysis. Smeared as a symbol of Leftist impotence after failing to quell a separatist movement in his newly unified country’s rare-earth-mineral rich Katanga province to the north, Lumumba’s death sentence was carried out with the willful complicity of John F. Kennedy’s State Department (and a young Prime Minister named Joseph Kasa Vubu, played here by Maka Kotto.) His untimely death became the touchstone for U.S. interference in Africa in the name of anti-Communism, while Kasa Vubu would be overthrown by Army Commander Mobutu Sese Seko, who then lorded over Congo (then renamed as Zaire) with full American support for over three decades.

After making the 1992 documentary LUMUMBA: DEATH OF A PROPHET, Peck drew on newfound historical evidence to make LUMUMBA, which tackles the kind of backroom machinations typically left to Oliver Stone and Gillo Pontecorvo with the same red-hot, righteous anger that makes signature Peck’s later works like MOLOCH TROPICAL and I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO. Shot on location in Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Belgium, this is a sweeping biopic whose keen attention to detail and location-shot lushness initially appear to fit the mold of its Hollywood contemporaries – but to draw the comparison is to expose the milquetoast politics typical of big-budget, traditionally accessed narratives of power. Upon release, LUMUMBA was so incendiary that U.S. diplomat (and covert CIA officer) Frank Carlucci threatened to sue if his name was not removed from it, a challenge to which Peck rose by conspicuously bleeping mention of Carlucci out of an otherwise normal dialogue scene.

“It’s a flat-out thrill to see a movie about African politics that doesn’t condescend to audiences by placing a sympathetic white African at the center. Mr. Peck makes no plea for crocodile tears; his ambitions are as wide and encompassing as those of his subject. He’s out to make a film that exposes the ugliness of cold war politics and knee-jerk imperialism…” – Elvis Mitchell, The New York Times

“Ten years ago, Peck made a documentary, LUMUMBA: DEATH OF A PROPHET, tracing the history and intrigue that he revisits in the feature film, which he describes as a “political thriller” rather than a biography, capturing Lumumba’s speedy rise and fall with deft narrative strokes and riveting, beautifully composed scenes, shot by Bernard Lutic to create not only a sense of urgency, but also a heightened sensitivity to emotional details, light and shadows work together in a kind of sublime tension.” – Cynthia Fuchs, Nitrate

“While he seems to know precisely what type of martyr Lumumba was, Peck resists a full, absorbing summation of who he may have been as a mortal… The film feels like bare- bones docu-fiction, though, resisting the attendant drama until the bitter, grisly end.” – Wesley Morris, San Francisco Chronicle

Special thanks to Zeitgeist Films.

(poster by Tom Henry)

LIVING PROOF OF THE 1800’s (1995)
AN 1800S AFFECTUANT: A VISUAL VIEW OF HISTORY (200?)

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 3 – 7:30 PM
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 7 – 10 PM
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 23 – 7:30 PM
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 27 – 10 PM

ONLINE TICKETS HERE

STEWED ANGELS: CAROLINER ON TOUR from Spectacle Theater on Vimeo.

Described by an integral source (who wishes to remain anonymous) as “a collective of a bunch of denizens modeled in pitchfork clay and dipped in cowhide puree”, the band Caroliner began in San Francisco in 1983, apparently drawing their music from the songbook of an 18th century singing bull named, unsurprisingly, Caroliner.

Wielding bizarre pseudonyms, an uncomfortably mutating band name, and an ever-evolving roster, Caroliner blended Harry Smith’s dandruff, an obscurantist manner and the sound of a turntable playing Stockhausen at 3¼ rpm with intricate drawings + screenprinting of ergot poisoned half beast, not humans to complete their cardboard and cloth costumes, props, informational materials and what some have termed “Industrial Bluegrass” music.

Caroliner holds a special place in the heart of Spectacle, and presenting these tour videos from two different realms of the band’s career is a rare treat indeed. But what should you expect to see? Viewers should be aware that the answer is not for the weak of heart: STEWED ANGELS promises a lot of blacklight, sewn up street-found outlandish costumes, kids-book style animation, confused crowds, and potential acid flashbacks.

 

These eye poppin’ posters (design: Ben Tuttle) are available for sale ! At the theater or on Etsy !

 

 

 

 

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CUT-THROATS NINE
(aka: Condenados a Vivir)
dir. Joaquín Luis Romero Marchent, 1972
Spain, 90 min.

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 1 – 10 PM
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 7 – 7:30 PM
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 11 – 5 PM
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 19 – 7:30 PM

ONLINE TICKETS HERE

A wagon full of sadistic criminals is being chaperoned to prison through the mountains when they’re attacked by a gang of bandits seeking gold. What they didn’t realize is that it’s hidden in plain sight…in the very chains that shackle the men! When the dust settles only the sergeant, his daughter, and seven of the murderous prisoners remain. Without horse or wagon, the sergeant must face the elements, the trailing bandits, and the wrath of the seven men in tow while trying to reach their destination and protect his daughter, Sarah. Can Sgt. Brown get this motley crew to prison? Are one of the men the very same that murdered his wife? Is greed stronger than these golden chains?

Hailed as “possibly the most violent Eurowestern ever made” by Michael J. Weldon of Pyschotronic Magazine, CUT THROATS NINE surely lives up to it’s infamous reputation. A rare instance of a snowbound bloodbath, the film is as bleak as it is foreboding.

Presented by Hypercube Media.

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GOD DOES NOT PAY ON SATURDAY
(aka: Dio Non Paga Il Sabato, Kill The Wicked!)
dir. Tango Boccia, 1976
Italy, 95 min.
In English.

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 6 – 10 PM
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 17 – 10 PM
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 22 – 7:30 PM

ONLINE TICKETS HERE

When a stagecoach robbery leaves one of their gang wounded, the remaining bandits hide out in a nearby ghost town and begin kidnapping and torturing anyone who happens to come by…

Though later remade as the psychedelic freakout MATALO! this version, made by “the Italian Roger Corman”, uses every part of the buffalo to create a stunning example in the Spaghetti Western tradition. Peppered with bright colors and religious iconography, GOD DOES NOT PAY ON SATURDAY manages to make even the light of day filled to the brim with tension. The ghost town setting creates an underlying sense of dread that gets ramped up by Angelo Francesco’s score. Lead actor Larry Ward would go on to be the voice of Jabba the Hutt.

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CEMETERY WITHOUT CROSSES
dir. Robert Hossein 1969.
Italy. 85 min.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 2 – 10 PM
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 12 – 7:30 PM
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 18 – 5:00 PM
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 24 – 7:30 PM

ONLINE TICKETS HERE

After her husband is mercilessly hanged by a ruthless land baron, Maria implores Manuel, an old flame, to infiltrate the killer’s ranch and wreak vengeance. Manuel reluctantly leaves the ghost town where he lives to embark on the mission, but is ever haunted by his unrequited affection for Maria.

Prolific French actor Robert Hossein directed and starred in this inspired homage to his friend Sergio Leone. As sharpshooter Manuel, he dons one black glove (channeling the cool of garage rock band The Music Machine?) and imbues the whole production with laconic ennui. A visually striking and brooding picture, the requisite gritty and violent tropes are delivered with an artistic fervor ahead of its time.

“A French take on the Italians’ take on American genres — a “baguette western” ! Inspired by the international success of Sergio Leone’s DOLLARS trilogy, and armed with the catchiest of theme songs via international cult figure Scott Walker, CEMETERY WITHOUT CROSSES offers a Gallic spin on the Euro gunslinger pic.” – AGFA.

Presented by AGFA.

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THE WIND IS WHISTLING UNDER THEIR FEET
Dir. György Szomjas, 1976.
Hungary. 95 min.
In Hungarian with English subtitles.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 2 – 7:30 PM
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 13 – 7:30 PM
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 23 – 10 PM
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 28 – 10 PM

ONLINE TICKETS HERE

Original trailer from 2014:

György Szomjas brings exquisite style and pacing to this elegiac gallows western about a betyár — a kind of highwayman popular in 19th century Hungarian balladry — set amid the Great Hungarian Plain in 1937. It follows the path of a brooding, aging outlaw newly escaped from prison whose personal revenge quest dovetails with the interests of the landless herdsman who oppose the state’s building a canal through the fields on which they work their trade. He becomes an unlikely hero to unwashed vagabond workers while facing down a mutually-admiring adversary in the form of a forthright squire who had captured him before. Meanwhile, an opportunistic youngster attempts to work both sides to his benefit. As ditches are dug for canals and corpses alike, the state puts increasing pressure on the wistful squire, who realizes the social order is changing and his fortunes are in decline; and yet he remains dutifully attached to his mission.

Though carefully paced and based on historical documents, THE WIND IS WHISTLING UNDER THEIR FEET aims squarely for populist appeal. The autumnal palette, period imagery, and sudden outbursts of hysterical grotesquery recall Andrzej Żuławski’s THE DEVILS. Yet most of all it brings to mind the unlikely grouping of Woody Guthrie, Miklós Jancsó, and Akira Kuroswawa — or maybe Béla Tarr meets Sergio Leone. Whatever the comparisons, THE WIND IS WHISTLING UNDER THEIR FEET is a stirring, forgotten gem in classic Spectacle tradition.

MAGIC CRYSTAL (aka Mo fei cui)
dir. Jing Wong, 1986
95 min, Hong Kong
In Chinese with English subtitles

FRIDAY, JANUARY 5 – MIDNIGHT
SATURDAY, JANUARY 27 – MIDNIGHT

TICKETS HERE

A breakout hit at a recent FIST CHURCH screening, we’re pleased as punch to bring this uhhhh “loving homage” to films like E.T. and Indiana Jones but with 5000% more Cynthia Rothrock beatdowns.

Andy (Andy Lau), Pancho, and Pin Pin (an actual child named Bin Bin in real life) jet off to Greece to find Andys friend Shen after receiving an urgent message that his life is in danger. After a lengthy montage of them having A LOT of fun in Greece the come to find that sure enough the KGB and Interpol are chasing down Shen after learning of his discovery of an ancient artifact in the ruins. Pin Pin accidentally ends up with it and finds out that this is no ordinary hunk of jade but that it houses an alien who communicates via brain-waves. Pin Pin promises not to tell and the crystal grows a finger so they can pinky swear. Andy pairs up with Cindy (the inimitable Cynthia Rothrock) to track down the evil Karaov (Richard Norton star of GYMKATA which we have definitely never shown) who has vowed to do anything to get his hands on the treasure. Everyone ends up back in Greece for a showdown beneath the ruins as they navigate traps and tricks to return the crystal back to its rightful place – and…owner?

No exaggeration when we say that this film owes much to the work of Spielberg et al but these fight scenes are downright jaw-dropping. Fast, ferocious, and wonderfully filmed. If you missed this at FIST CHUCH now’s your chance to redeem yourself. Not to be missed!

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THE SEVENTH CURSE (aka: Yuan Zhen-Xia yu Wei Si-Li)
dir. Ngai Choi Lam, 1986
78 min, Hong Kong

SATURDAY, JANUARY 6 – MIDNIGHT
SATURDAY, JANUARY 20 – MIDNIGHT

TICKETS HERE

For Dr. Yuan adventure has become a way of life – though not one he asked for. On a routine mission to pick up some of the herb that cures AIDS the good doctor stumbles across a tribe deep in the countryside of Thailand. Unfortunately for them, the evil priest of this “Worm Tribe” is in the middle of resurrecting Old Ancestor with a ghastly human sacrifice! Furious that his ritual as been interrupted the priest puts a blood curse on Dr. Yuan and he narrowly escapes with his life.

Now a year later he must travel back to Thailand with his pipe-smoking professor friend (Chow-Yun Fat in the ‘Wisely’ role – something of Hong Kong’s Indiana Jones) must travel back to reverse the curse before his seventh vein bursts in his heart and kills him. To do this they must use an artifact called Buddha’s Eye. Along the way (with intrepid reporter Maggie at their side) they’ll fight monks, walking skeletons, monsters, rolling boulders, and the film’s true star – a small ghost that flies into people and then makes them explode.

A smash hit from a recent FIST CHURCH screening (every other Sunday at 3PM) that had the audience stumbling around in the dark, using their phones as flashlights, trying to find their jaws on the floor. From the director of THE STORY OF RICKY this film truly has it all. Though very much a CATIII Indian Jones film it owes a debt of gratitude to a bouquet of other influences including 1979’s ALIEN. If you’ve never been to FIST CHURCH this is the type of high quality mystery entertainment you’ve been missing.

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SCARLET STREET
dir. Fritz Lang, 1945.
USA, 102 min.

FRIDAY, JANUARY 12 – MIDNIGHT

TICKETS HERE

“How can a man be so dumb?”
The noir and the femme fatale will forever be bound together, merrily going to Hell, dragging all suckers, chumps, marks, rubes and shills into an endless abyss of suffering and death. As well they should! Noir, at its black heart, is about tearing a (seemingly) ordinary Joe to *nothing* while the audience howls for more. We’ll find that here, on SCARLET STREET, but with a director like Fritz Lang there’s more than one twist on the way to the noose. Based on Georges de La Fouchardière’s novel and play La Chienne (also the basis for the equally great Jean Renoir film by the same name), SCARLET STREET is, quite simply, one of the essential film noirs.

The great Edward G. Robinson plays Christopher Cross, the sap in question, at the end of a sad quarter-century of working as a cashier, enduring his wife and putting what little light still shines in him towards his painting hobby. Like most saps, Chris wants little more than to be some damsel’s white knight, and that chance actually arrives when he gets between va-va-va-voom Kitty (Joan Bennett, who was in everything from BULLDOG DRUMMOND to SUSPIRIA) and cheap hood Johnny (Dan Duryea of WINCHESTER ’73). Through a series of scams, lies, forgeries and tragedies, Chris and Kitty begin one of the darkest descents the screen has brought us, with Lang constantly, methodically twisting the knife, masterfully ratcheting up the tension all the way to the end. Fans of Lang’s earlier, more directly Expressionistic work like SPIES and the MABUSE films will find lots to love here, Robinson truly plays one of cinema’s great sad sacks, Joan Bennett is the embodiment of weaponized seduction, all combining to make a film absolutely perfect for a hot summer night when you can’t sleep and your soul cries for something, *anything* but the dreary monotony of our pointless lives. Great date film, too!

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HEADLESS EYES
Kent Bateman, 1971
78 min, USA

SATURDAY, JANUARY 13 – MIDNIGHT

TICKETS HERE

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.

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GALAXY DESTROYER
dir. Bret Piper, 1986
95 min, USA
In German w/ English subtitles

FRIDAY, JANUARY 19 – MIDNIGHT

TICKETS HERE

“I am the king, I am the king
One dead marine through the hatch
Scratch and scrape this heavenly body
Every inch of winning skin
There’s garbage in honeys sack again”

– The Birthday Party, “Junkyard”

In GALAXY DESTROYER, veteran character actor Matt Mitler (THE MUTILATOR, BASKET CASE 2) plays Harry Trent – a role he would reprise two years later in Piper’s MUTANT WAR – a spy who steals a spaceship. While attempting to return to Earth, Harry finds the controls are malfunctioning and is unable to land… After a grueling five years in orbit, Harry comes back around and manages to descend to the planet’s fertile surface. But upon his return, Harry finds his beloved homeworld has been taken over… And while hailed as a hero and savior, he’s tasked with saving the way of life he once held so dear – if only he can figure out how.

A jack of all trades, director Brett Piper (A NYMPHOID BARBARIAN IN DINOSAUR HELL) cut his teeth in the early Eighties, and continues doing so to this day. Piper’s work truly shines when he’s able to showcase his love of practical effects; in GALAXY DESTROYER alone crab monsters, spaceships, and melting faces abound.

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