After working as a set designer and visual effects artist for the likes of Luigi Cozzi and Ruggero Deodato in the 1980s, Alvaro Passeri directed a series of singularly bizarre sci-fi features around the turn of the millennium. His films were the inverse of the popular genre blockbusters of the period – never scaling his ambitions to meet his budget, Passeri developed a distinct style based on rubbery body horror and a permanently canted fish-eye lens. While he is best known for the video rental staple CREATURES FROM THE ABYSS (aka PLANKTON), Spectacle is proud to present two of his lesser-known features for a one-night blowout.

These films will screen in-theater as well as simultaneously at stream.spectacletheater.com.

FLIGHT TO HELL
Dir. Alvaro Passeri, 2002
86 min. Italy.
In English.

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 24 – 7:30 PM
ONE NIGHT ONLY!

The obnoxious inhabitants of a flying casino face an infestation of parasitic bugs in Passeri’s followup to MUMMY THEME PARK. Abandoning the latter’s near-exclusive reliance on practical effects, FLIGHT shows Passeri experimenting with digital animation – his trademark visual style translates surprisingly well to the medium, offering a unique take on the sub-ILM polygonal creations which were rife among direct-to-video horror offerings in the early 2000s.

As per the DVD box:

Don screams out as a horrific monster is about to eat him alive! But then he wakes up. It’s only a dream! That day he boards his private plane, a flying casino, that caters to the needs of fantastically rich clients who want to play for high stakes at high altitudes. But then the plane is engulfed in a strange thick fog that seeps into the cabin. The evil mist transforms the passengers and crew one by one into monstrous half human, half insect creatures with a ravenous appetite for human flesh. Don realizes that it is his nightmare come true – it is his FLIGHT TO HELL!

MUMMY THEME PARK
Dir. Alvaro Passeri, 2000
86 min. Italy.
In English.

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 24 – 10 PM
ONE NIGHT ONLY!

“It would not be too bold to declare this film the Francis Ford Coppola’s BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA of Italian mummy movies.” – Senseless Cinema

A garish amalgam of Westworld and The Mummy, Passeri’s 2000 masterpiece addresses the controversial practice of planting microchips in mummies in order to staff fantasy theme parks. Transcending its influences, the film boasts a uniquely queasy visual style crafted from greasy animatronics and a painfully saturated color palette. The plot concerns two dimwitted American journalists caught in the meltdown of the titular Mummy Theme Park – this, of course, is of secondary significance aside the exercise in discount worldmaking achieved through Passeri’s fabric-store scenography and a script rife with non-sequiturs.