HYMNS OF THE GOLDEN BAT
In Search Of The Original Caped Crusader

Various. 100 minutes.

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 24TH – 8PM
ONE NIGHT ONLY!

Consistent with SPECTOB3R’s enveloping mist of strange-smelling macabre, please join us for a one-off tribute to Japan’s Ōgon Batto (alias Fantaman / Fantasmagórico / Phantoma.)

A flying, self-teleporting and invincible “god of justice” (whose family is originally from Atlantis), the Bat was frozen in an Egyptian sarcophagus for two thousand years before being rediscovered by a little girl and announcing himself – reanimated by her tears – as a “protector of the weak.” Wraithlike and never not grinning, the Bat strikes fear into the hearts of his enemies and metes out punishment before retreating to his maximum security hideout somewhere in the Japanese alps in a snap.

Although the Bat first became famous across Japan for his appearances in manga, his initial origins are something of a mystery. It has been proposed that the Bat was adapted from a series of no-name pulp novels reaching back to the era of World War I; alternately, some have theorized that the Bat was born in a type of serialized Japanese street theater called kamishibai, appearing on watercolor-painted slides run in and out of a portable stage.

Whatever his true origins, it’s worth remembering that the Bat always existed as an image first – a visual punch to the brain, really – with any number of plots and stories conveniently wrapped around him. By the 1950s and 60s, the Bat was a force for Japanese pop culture, and soon fans were clamoring to see him emblazoned on both big and small screens. Priming audiences for the Bat’s hugely successful anime series on Saturday morning TV, Toei released Hajime Satô’s brassy, shimmering widescreen Golden Bat in 1966.

Slathered in lush you-can’t-make-this-up eye candy, the film sits at the zenith of gonzo postwar Japanese phantasmagoria. Chock full of laser beams, spaceships, teleportations, photon-clones, giant drills, a space-crab villain with two giant iron vice-grips for hands, a sinister cult of scarred-flesh mutant scientists and the Bat’s unstoppable prowess in hand-to-hand combat, Golden Bat is unmissable for fans of Godzilla, Ultraman, Kamen Rider or Ishirō Honda’s masterful space opera Gorath. (With a very young Sonny Chiba!)

Prior to Satô’s film, we’ll be hopscotching around the Bat’s mysterious perennial appearances/evaporations in the anime world over the last five decades as well – because some legends never die.

(Poster by Andrew “Drinkman” Cimelli)

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 19 at 7:00 and 9:30 PM

Two shows! One night only! Turner in attendance for discussion at both shows with Rebecca Cleman, Distribution Director, Electronic Arts Intermix

Tickets available at the door

Spectacle is pleased to welcome Tommy Turner for a very special screening of works made in the mid-1980’s and the Brooklyn premiere of his latest video, THE BLACK KNIGHTS OF SKILLMAN. Among the other work, we’re pleased to offer a pristine, restored 16mm presentation of WHERE EVIL DWELLS, made in collaboration with David Wojnarowicz.

An artist working in print, performance, photography, and film, Turner is considered a key figure of Downtown No Wave Cinema. The New York native rose to prominence through his zine Redrum and collaborations, both in front of and behind the camera, with David Wojnarowicz and Richard Kern. In the mid-1980’s, Turner directed a number of arresting small gauge films that have in the intervening years only gained the ability to inspire shock, awe, revulsion, and — depending on the audience member’s orientation — deeply satisfying laughter. In a cinematic oeuvre running approximately feature length, his subject matter has touched upon Satanism, family dysfunction, heresy, taxidermy, addiction, dismemberment, dumbshit rock ‘n’ roll, arcane mysticism, torture, Evangelicism, murder, and misspent teenhood, all rendered in sadistically graphic detail that verges between clinical detachment and sardonic irreverence.

Among them is WHERE EVIL DWELLS (Super 8-to-16mm, 1986, 31 min.), co-directed with Wojnarowicz. The pair of friends became fixated on the recent story of Ricky Kasso, teenage heavy metal fan and self-described “Acid King” of Northport, Long Island, who became the subject of media hysteria when he committed the pseudo-ritual-satanic murder of a fellow teen in the woods while wearing an AC/DC t-shirt. Shooting off a script based on interviews with Kasso’s friends, the pair ultimately edited their footage into a 30-minute “trailer” that represents an anarchic, assaultive, and wildly expressionistic take on what Wojnarowicz described as “the imposed Hell of the suburbs.” It’s complemented by a spectacular title song by Wiseblood (a collaboration between Roli Mosimann of Swans and J.G. Thirlwell of Foetus) and distorted hard rock radio jams.

In the unsettling, absurdist SIMONLAND (Super 8-to-video, 1984, 11 min.), made with Richard Kern, a televangelist leads his studio audience and isolated viewers through a psychotic game of Simon Says with grotesque results. THE MAGICIAN (Super 8-to-video, 1998, 9 min.), shot with Rick Rodine, features a chaotic melange of documentary, performance, and found footage to riff on the destruction of elements fire, water, air, and earth.

The program culimates in the Brooklyn premiere of THE BLACK KNIGHTS OF SKILLMAN, an HD experimental narrative shot on location at Flynn’s Garden Inn, a neighborhood pub in Sunnyside, Queens, located around the corner from Turner’s current residence. Cast with a colorful selection of roughneck regulars and freaks, SKILLMAN is an off-the-wall, gory gangster fantasy that is as much a neighborhood portrait as a journey into Hell. Having more in common with Blood Feast than Cheers, SKILLMAN has the feel of a collaborative effort while maintaining Turner’s distinctive signature.

The films in this program are graphic and disturbing. Audience discretion is strongly advised.