FRIDAY, AUGUST 23 – 7 PM
Author Erica Shultz comes to Spectacle for a special one-night event to celebrate the release of her new book, The Sweetest Taboo: An Unapologetic Guide To Child Kills In Film, a comprehensive compendium of films that dare to depict the death of a child. The book contains entries on nearly 1200 films, ranging from mainstream blockbusters like JAWS and STAR WARS: EPISODE III – REVENGE OF THE SITH to noir classics like Fritz Lang’s THE BIG HEAT to the darkest depths of exploitation cinema from Italy, Spain, Hong Kong, the UK, and beyond, and featuring many Spectacle favorites like WHO CAN KILL A CHILD?, BURIAL GROUND and THE REDEEMER: SON OF SATAN!.
In the author’s own words: “This is not a book for everyone; it will probably make some people mad, especially those who need trigger warnings and frequent doesthedogdie.com. But this book is not an endorsement of the act, it is an appreciation of those films which had the guts to break the taboo of killing a child in a film and my enjoyment of that. Remember folks, these are movies, not real life.”
To celebrate the release, Spectacle will be screening Billy Tang’s notorious and gleefully grisly Hong Kong Category III shocker RUN AND KILL (1993), a prime example of a film which dares to indulge in the sweetest taboo, followed by a discussion with Erica about the film, its relation to her book, and the book and her research in general. The Sweetest Taboo will be available to purchase at the event.
RUN AND KILL
Dir. Billy Tang, 1993.
Hong Kong. 90 min.
In Cantonese with English Subtitles.
When a family man played by Kent Cheng gets drunk and accidentally has a hit put out on his wife, he incurs a debt to a local gang led by CAT-III’s most terrifying psychopath Simon Yam, placing his family in the eye of the storm, and setting off a savage spiral of violence and brutality in RUN AND KILL, a darkly comic but ferocious thriller from the peerless and fearless Billy Tang.