Negative Pleasure Publications (Felony Comics, Night Burgers)
celebrate the release of their latest comics anthology, Jeans 3, with
a night of erotic dread at Spectacle, featuring screenings of Death
Game (1977) and The Pit (1981), two twisted tales pulsating with lust
and rage, drenched in blood and guaranteed to hurt your emotions.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 21:
10:00 PM: DEATH GAME (1977)
MIDNIGHT: THE PIT (1981)
Separate $5 Admission for Each Screening

DEATH GAME
Peter S. Traynor, 1977

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 21 – 10:00 PM

In Death Game (1977) (10:00 PM), a suburban family (Seymour Cassel) man finds two
free-spirited teenagers (Colleen Camp and Sondra Locke) on his doorstep one stormy night.  What starts as a night of seduction turns into a morning of madness and murder.

Death Game, allegedly based on a true story, is sick a sleazy, but showcases a surprisingly prestige pedigree. Seymour Cassel was nominated for an Academy Award for his role in John Cassavete’s Minnie In Moskowitz in 1971 and would go on to work with the likes of Sam Peckinpah, Barry Levinson, Warren Beaty, Nicolas Roeg and Wes Anderson. Sondra Locke had appeared in The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter and Willard and would go on to become a frequent collaborator with Clint Eastwood (as well as the director of the bizarre “Ratboy”). Colleen Camp had roles in both mainstream (Smile, Funny Lady) and exploitation (The Swinging Cheerleaders) before Death Game, and would go on to appear in dozens of films, including Apocalypse Now, Clue, Wayne’s World and Election. Despite this aura of legitimacy, Death Game is pure trash in the best possible sense, a sweaty, feverish collision of sex, violence and outright insanity.

THE PIT
Dir. Lew Lehman, 1981.
97 min. USA.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 21 – MIDNIGHT

Death Game is paired with another tale of desire and despair, and one of the most mind breakingly weird movies ever made, The Pit (1981) (Midnight), a huge influence on the Negative Pleasure ethos.

FORGET KILL BILL, DEATH WISH AND STRAW DOGS: here is a revenge fantasy you can actually relate to. At 12-years-old, Jamie Benjamin already has a CV of torture that would make Dawn Weiner blush: the hot librarian at elementary school tears up the erotic collages he makes with her photos; the cool kid at recess splits his lip open; Jamie’s nubile live-in babysitter only has eyes for an indifferent jock; and even the old woman down the street tries to mow him down with her motorized scooter (“he’ll probably grow into one of those hippies…”). It’s not clear exactly what’s wrong with the kid—he shows signs of autism, and a creepily over-affectionate mother might have something to do with it—but he finds solace in friendship with his teddy bear and the afternoons he spends visiting a pit in the woods full of bloodthirsty, primordial trolls. The youngster does his best to see that they’re looked after, but a kid can only steal so much meat from the butcher truck before another solution is in order—and if it can satisfy two problems at once, so much the better.