The dog days of Summer are upon us and it’s hotter than Hell in New York. The triumphant Knicks colors that kicked off the season giving way to orange haze billowing in from up North and blue floodwater swelling around our feet.

It’s high time we lit out for the coast, packed our things and hit the highway for sunnier shores. Maybe we’ll pick up a few friends along the way, throw in with the great mélange of maniacs, drifters, murderers, perverts, and thieves that this wretched country has to offer.

The American Interstate as an endless journey through Hell. A profusion of cherry lights, high beams, and overheads darting aimlessly across its black expanse. Lost souls driving straight on to oblivion, into the unknown terrors that lurk around every bend and behind every blind. All the while, the Devil sits pretty in the passenger seat.

HIGHWAY HYPNOSIS
Dir. Ken Camp, 1984
United States. 63 min.
In English.

SATURDAY, AUGUST 1 – 10 PM
THURSDAY, AUGUST 6 – 7:30 PM
SUNDAY, AUGUST 9 – 5 PM
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 26 – 10 PM
MONDAY, AUGUST 31 – 7:30 PM

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WARNING: This film contains sequences of intense strobe effects.

One year after our EZTV series, we return to the hallowed video gallery with the first shot-on-video feature by Ken Camp (MANTRA), a monumental work of narrative video art and queer horror, following the Los Angeles Freeway Killer (Leonard Lumpkin) as he stalks the desert highways between L.A. and Las Vegas in search of his next victim.

Camp once remarked that if film is a screen between ourselves and the world around us, then video is a window: A thesis which HIGHWAY HYPNOSIS takes to its extreme. In lieu of a traditional narrative, the film is mainly structured around the Killer’s silent, trancelike drives. Camp’s camera takes in countless real-life motorists, pedestrians, and passersby, all with the unsettling undercurrent that any one of them could end up a victim. As the film progresses, these drives are punctuated by acts of sex and violence that push the viewer to the fringes of the Killer’s impenetrable psychology, into “the frightening zone where lay the genetic codes and memories that make us all killers.”

Special thanks to Muscle Distribution.

HELL’S HIGHWAY
Dir. Jeff Leroy, 2002
United States. 70 min.
In English.

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 5 – 10 PM
THURSDAY, AUGUST 20 – 10 PM
SUNDAY, AUGUST 23 – 5 PM
SATURDAY, AUGUST 29 – MIDNIGHT

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While on a road trip through Death Valley, four college friends pick up a hitchhiker named Lucinda (Phoebe Dollar) who soon reveals herself as a bloodthirsty maniac. The group finally manages to rid her from their car, only for her to reappear around every corner and down every bend like a murderous desert mirage.

In the early years of the post-BLAIR WITCH found footage boom, DIY legend and Spectacle fave Jeff Leroy (RAT SCRATCH FEVER) gifted us this SOV horror gem that’s part-DV travelogue and part-low budget splatterfest. The film goes 0 to 60 right out the gate and doesn’t slow down from there, with Leroy packing it to the brim with crafty gore, exploding miniatures, in-camera tricks, and one iconic sequence in which Ron Jeremy gets his dick cut off (though, alas, not in real life). But the real star of the show is Phoebe Dollar, who turns in a multi-faceted multi-character performance that punches well above its micro-budget weight class and ranks among one of the all time great horror turns.

Special thanks to Jeff Leroy.

MANSON FAMILY MOVIES
Dir. John Aes-Nihil, 1984
United States. 87 min.
No spoken language.

FRIDAY, AUGUST 14 – MIDNIGHT
SATURDAY, AUGUST 22 – MIDNIGHT

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Once upon a time in Hollywood, a former Beach Boys affiliate-turned-amateur Beatles historian directed a few of his most impressionable friends to commit a series of grizzly murders across Southern California, in what became one of the defining moments of 60s popular / counter culture and the nation’s ever-growing, ever-morbid fascination with “true crime”.

Between the years of 1974 to 1979, not long after Manson Family trials had concluded, enigmatic artist and connoisseur of fringe culture, John Aes-Nihil, embarked on a project to “re-stage” the events leading up to the infamous Tate-LaBianca murders as a series of faux home movies, based on the legend that the Family had at one point stolen camera equipment to document their actions. The resulting feature— which, coincidentally, premiered in 1984 at EZTV alongside HIGHWAY HYPNOSIS— truly lives up to its filmmaker’s namesake Aesthetic Nihilism: Shot entirely on Super8mm and completely silent save for an accompanying soundtrack mostly comprised of music made by the Family itself (plus a little Patty Duke for good measure). The film re-frames the Manson Family story as a first-person travelogue across Southern California, imbued with chillingly realistic detail as we bear (false) witness to one of the most notorious events of the American century.

Special thanks to Aes-Nihil and Aes-Nihil Productions.

JANIE
Dir. Jack Bravman (and/or Roberta Findlay, depending on who you ask), 1970
United States. 65 min.
In English.

FRIDAY, AUGUST 7 – MIDNIGHT
SATURDAY, AUGUST 15 – MIDNIGHT

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Janie (Linda Vair) is your typical teenage girl. She likes boys, hates school, and thinks most adults are stupid and disgusting. One afternoon, she and her best friend decide to skip school and hitchhike out of their small nondescript town. But when her friend and their driver pull over for a little afternoon delight, Janie’s own psychotic impulses take the wheel, revealing to her the orgiastic pleasure she derives from murder and mayhem. Janie then heads back to the road to thumb another ride, soon to be another bloody corpse left in her wake.

Rounding out our series of nightmare travelogues is this gratuitously sleazy and psychedelic softcore affair, shot, narrated, co-starring, and allegedly co-directed by sexploitation filmmaker extraordinaire, Roberta Findlay (Bravman is the sole directorial credit on the film, though he himself has admitted that Findlay did most of the actual directing; ironically a claim which Findlay denies). Come for the (ahem) titillating encounters between Janie and her would be lovers, but stay for the spontaneous violence, deep fried acid rock grooves, and Findlay’s unhinged voiceover narration as Janie’s own conscience, as deeply poetic as it is disturbing.

Special thanks to Alpha Blue Archive.

Once upon a time in China and America, there lived two distinct genres of action cinema fated to cross paths. On one side of the world, the western, which combined stylized violence, stoic masculinity, and American cultural mythology to tell tales of honor, loyalty, and vengeance across the Old West. On the other end, the martial arts picture, which combined stylized violence, stoic masculinity, and Chinese cultural mythology to tell tales of honor, loyalty, and vengeance throughout the Middle Kingdom. Two genres operating, two sides of the same coin, separated only by a mere 7,000 miles of distance between countries.

By late-1960s, the traditional western was well past its prime, mostly sustaining via the “spaghetti” westerns coming in from abroad or the New Hollywood and countercultural revisionism taking root at home. At the same time, the martial arts film was in the midst of its own renaissance with the global ascendency of Bruce Lee, Shaw Brothers Studios, and Hong Kong action cinema at large. It didn’t take long for western filmmakers to recognize the thematic overlap between the two genres, and before long the Spanish and Italian film industries began turning out spaghetti westerns with a kung fu twist, beginning with Enzo Peri’s James Shigeta-starring feature, DEATH WALKS IN LAREDO (1967).

The kung fu western trend would arguably hit its peak in 1972 with the major studio release of Terence Young’s RED SUN, a spaghetti western-samurai movie crossover starring Toshirō Mifune and Charles Bronson (coincidentally, stars of both SEVEN SAMURAI and its western reimagining, THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN), and the debut of the popular television serial KUNG FU, featuring David Carradine as a Shaolin abbot journeying through the Old West. But the trend didn’t end there, nor did it die out as the spaghetti western craze of the 60s & 70s began to flag. On the contrary, Italian and Spanish studios had leaned even heavier into the hybrid-genre gimmick as a way to sustain appeal, leading to a small mid-70s boom of martial arts-spaghetti western crossovers: A final stand of sorts, in classic western fashion.

THE STRANGER AND THE GUNFIGHTER (LÀ DOVE NON BATTE IL SOLE)
aka BLOOD MONEY
Dir. Antonio Margheriti, 1974
Italy/Hong Kong/Spain. 100 min.
In English

WEDNESDAY, MAY 6 – 10 PM
MONDAY, MAY 11 – 10 PM
TUESDAY, MAY 19 – 10 PM
SATURDAY, MAY 30 – 7:30 PM

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Martial artist Ho Chiang (Lo Lieh) travels to the Wild West on a life-or-death mission to recover his family’s hidden fortune, after his uncle is mistakenly killed by the outlaw Dakota (Lee Van Cleef) during a botched robbery attempt. Since Dakota is the only man alive with clues to the fortune’s location, Ho breaks him free from the hangman’s clutches, and the unlikely allies set off on a mission to track down the uncle’s four widows, each of whom holds another piece of the puzzle.

THE STRANGER AND THE GUNFIGHTER is notable for being one in a series of international co-productions by Shaw Brothers Studios, as part of an attempt to branch out into other territories and genres. But unlike their first two Italian co-productions, SUPERMEN AGAINST THE ORIENT (1974) and THIS TIME I’LL MAKE YOU RICH (1974), this one is actually good for a change. An offbeat action buddy comedy that can clearly be seen as the template for a similar Jackie Chan vehicle decades later.

THE WHITE, THE YELLOW, AND THE BLACK (IL BLANCO, IL GIALLO, IL NERO)
aka SHOOT FIRST… ASK QUESTIONS LATER
aka SAMURAI
Dir. Sergio Corbucci, 1975
Italy. 106 min.
In English

TUESDAY, MAY 5 – 10 PM
FRIDAY, MAY 22 – MIDNIGHT
SATURDAY, MAY 30 – 5 PM

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In the 19th century, a delegation of Japanese samurai travels to the United States to present the president with a gift from the Emperor, in the form of a divine pony. But when the delegation is attacked and the pony is kidnapped for ransom, the group’s inept servant— and wannabe samurai— Sakura (Tomas Milian) turns to the local Sheriff Gideon (Eli Wallach) for help delivering the ransom money. Along the way, they’re joined by the notorious Swiss outlaw Blanc de Blanc (Giuliano Gemma) who has his own plans for the money.

For reasons inexplicable, legendary spaghetti western director Sergio Corbucci (THE GREAT SILENCE, DJANGO) decided to end his tenure in the genre with this slapstick-y buddy comedy, conceived as a send-up of Terence Young’s samurai-western crossover RED SUN, though with some obvious parodic shades of THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY. Action-wise it’s one of the more polished additions to the kung fu-western canon and is altogether a compelling end to Corbucci’s western career… that is, so long as you can stomach Milian’s Sakura in a performance that borders on Mickey Rooney-levels of offensive Asian caricature (viewer be warned).

MANCHURIAN AVENGER
Dir. Ed Warnick, 1984
United States. 88 min.
In English

TUESDAY, MAY 12 – 10 PM
SATURDAY, MAY 23 – MIDNIGHT
SATURDAY, MAY 30 – 3 PM

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Joe (Taekwondo champion and “Korean Charles Bronson,” Bobby Kim) returns to his Colorado hometown after many years to reconnect with Kim, the man who helped raise him after Joe’s father was murdered by a gang of outlaws. When Joe learns that Kim has been killed by the villainous Cheng and his henchmen, he teams up with Kim’s sister, her husband, and a local outlaw for revenge.

MANCHURIAN AVENGER is a rare homegrown addition to the kung fu western canon, filmed on location in Fairplay, Colorado and sourcing a large cast of extras from the surrounding South Park region. Despite its modest scale, the film shoots the moon with its production values, featuring a ton of creative special effects work, charmingly anachronistic costuming, visibly dangerous stunt work, and some genuinely breathtaking footage of its Rocky Mountain surroundings.

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 21 – 10 AM to 2 AM

ADVANCE DAY PASSES ON SALE NOW!

For the past two years, Spectacle’s brought the tradition of the hesuipian贺岁片 to New York audiences with our recurring series of Lunar New Year crowd pleasers that highlight the festivities, teachings, and customs typically associated with the holiday.

This year, to mark the end of Golden Week, we’re doubling– no, tripling– no, octupling down on our New Year showcase with an all-day mystery marathon featuring EIGHT holiday classics spanning over half a century of Chinese-language cinema. A veritable babaofan八宝饭 of comedy, romance, action, and fantasy guaranteed to bring you good fortune in the year ahead. Bring friends, bring family, bring food (yknow, since we likely won’t be able to work in a dinner break…), or just bring yourself and a healthy appetite for filmic comfort food.

Advance day passes are on sale now for $25. Single film tickets are $5 each and will be available at the door.

Our program begins at 10am and runs through midnight. Programming notes and anticipated start times are below.

NOTE: Given the length of this program, each screening will begin promptly at its listed start time. Seating is available to both passholders and single-film ticketholders on a first-come, first-serve basis, and is not guaranteed for late arrivals.

10 AM
XXX XXXXX XXXX
Dir. XXXXX XXXXXXXX, 1937
China. 94 min.
In Mandarin with English subtitles.

Our marathon begins at the beginning with one of the earliest features to be marketed around its Lunar New Year subject matter, following multiple characters as they share in the same token of prosperity.

12 PM
XXX XXXXXXXX XXXXX XXX XX XXXXX
Dir. XXXX XXX-XXX, 1961
Hong Kong. 108 min.
In Cantonese & Mandarin with English subtitles.

For our second feature, we jump forward in time to the Hong Kong film industry’s nascent years with a comedy classic that mines hilarity from an era of changing cultural, social, and material values, helmed by the father of one of the territory’s most prolific future filmmakers.

2 PM
XXX XXX XXX-XXXXX XXXXXXXXX
Dir. XXXXX XXXX, 1971
Hong Kong. 98 min.
In Mandarin with English subtitles.

A new decade, a New Year, a new take on an iconic wuxia character.

4 PM
XXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXX
Dir. XXXXXXX XXX XXXX-XXX, 1981
Hong Kong. 91 min.
In Cantonese with English subtitles.

Nothing and no one is safe in this fast-paced comedic masterpiece, canonically considered to be one of the (if not thee) very first modern Lunar New Year films.

6 PM
XXXX XXX XXX XXXX
Dir. XXXX XXXX XXX, 1985
Hong Kong, 91 min.
In Cantonese with English subtitles.

The New Year spirit spreads through Hong Kong like wildfire in this comedy about gods, gangsters, and ghostbusters.

8 PM
XXXX XX XXXXXXXX
Dir. XXX XXX-XXX, 1994
Hong Kong. 93 min.
In Cantonese with English subtitles.

Hong Kong’s greatest comedic talent takes a bao in this action-comedy that solidified his status as king of the New Year box office.

10 PM
XXXXXXXX
Dir. XXXXXXX XXX XXX-XXXX, 1999
Hong Kong. 120 min.
In Cantonese & Mandarin with English subtitles.

Our penultimate feature is an action-tinged rom-com in which Hong Kong’s favorite son holds his own against two dramatic heavyweights. A long-in-development labor of love for its star, completed just in time to help ring in the new millennium.

MIDNIGHT-ish
XXX XXXX XXXXXX
Dir. XXXXXXX XX XXX-XXXX & XXX XX-XXX, 2002
Hong Kong. 97 min.
In Cantonese with English subtitles.

What better place to end our marathon than on another Year of the Horse release. 24 years later still the pinnacle of Lunar New Year comedies in which no gamble is too risky and no gag too ridiculous.

In the wake of Bruce Lee’s passing in 1973, the Hong Kong film industry found itself at a crossroads. How was the industry supposed to sustain the newfound global popularity of kung fu movies in the absence of the country’s most bankable and recognizable star?

Though the “Bruceploitation” trend that followed saw some moderate success, the “Lee-alikes” that populated the genre— mostly marketed on their resemblance or adjacency to Lee himself, by definition incapable of reaching the same heights of fame as their predecessor— could only placate and/or dupe audiences for so long. For studios not named Shaw Brothers or Golden Harvest, the need for an alternative path forward soon emerged.

This July, we look at three radically different approaches Hong Kong studios took towards moving the industry out from under the long shadow cast by Lee’s legacy. Whether falling back on the old masters of the genre, pushing to coin another star of the same caliber, or allowing his very same clones the creative freedom to establish themselves apart from their namesake, each of these films is its own reflection of an industry’s need to reinvent itself following a world-shattering shake-up.

THE CHINESE STUNTMAN (龍的影子)
aka COUNTER ATTACK
Dir. Ho Tsung-tao, 1981
Taiwan. 94 min.
In English (dubbed)

WEDNESDAY, JULY 2 – 10 PM
MONDAY, JULY 7 – 10 PM
WEDNESDAY, JULY 16 – 7:30 PM
FRIDAY, JULY 25 – 10 PM

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An insurance salesman (who also happens to be a martial arts master) becomes a stunt double for a popular Hong Kong action star, unwittingly throwing himself into a murderous plot by the film’s producers and director to cash in on the star’s insurance policy.

For his final film as both a director and star, Ho Tsung-tao crafted a meta-masterpiece largely drawing from his own experiences as the former Lee-alike “Bruce Li”. By the late-1970s, Ho had made no bones about his displeasure with being pigeonholed as a Bruce Lee clone, all of which is poured into this cathartic, biting satire of the Hong Kong film industry. The film is as cynical as it is action-packed, with Ho pulling no punches in his depiction of the disposability with which the business treats its below-the-line physical performers who have devoted their entire lives to their martial artistry.

MAGNIFICENT BODYGUARDS (飛渡捲雲山)
Dir. Lo Wei, 1978
Hong Kong. 103 min.
In Cantonese & Mandarin with English subtitles

WEDNESDAY, JULY 9 – 7:30 PM
MONDAY, JULY 14 – 10 PM
SATURDAY, JULY 26 – 10 PM

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A wealthy noblewoman assembles a team of fierce bodyguards to escort her ailing brother to a specific doctor who holds the cure to his illness. Together they must traverse dangerous wild country infested with roving gangs of bandits, savages, and demonic monks intent on his capture.

While much of the industry was preoccupied with maintaining Bruce Lee’s presence via the Bruceploitation trend, Lo Wei, the very filmmaker who directed Lee in his breakout roles in THE BIG BOSS (1971) and FIST OF FURY (1972), turned his sights towards finding the Next Big Thing. Within a few years, Lo would find his new leading man in a fresh-faced stunt choreographer and background performer named Jackie Chan, providing him with his very first starring roles in NEW FIST OF FURY (1976) and MAGNIFICENT BODYGUARDS.

Though not quite Chan’s breakout role (those would come later in the same year via Yuen Woo-ping’s DRUNKEN MASTER and SNAKE IN THE EAGLE’S SHADOW), it’s easy to see why Lo viewed Chan as the heir apparent to Lee’s stardom. Even as a smarmy, hot-headed bodyguard— a far cry from the comedic roles for which he became known— the same charisma, finesse, and obsessive detail that Chan would bring to his later work are still undeniably present.

If Chan’s born stardom weren’t enough to carry the film, MAGNIFICENT BODYGUARDS was also marketed as the first kung fu movie to be presented in 3D, replete with multiple shots of fists, feet, spears, swords, and arrows flying directly towards the camera (alas, though, Spectacle will only be presenting this one in 2D).

RETURN OF THE CHINESE BOXER (神拳大戰快鎗手)
Dir. Wang Yu, 1977
Hong Kong/Taiwan. 99 min.
In English (dubbed)

SATURDAY, JULY 5 – 10 PM
FRIDAY, JULY 11 – 5 PM
WEDNESDAY, JULY 16 – 10 PM
MONDAY, JULY 21 – 10 PM

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In the wake of the First Sino-Japanese War, a cabal of Japanese ninja warlords contemplate their takeover of China using an array of exotic weaponry and supernatural forces at their disposal. The only thing standing in their way: A master martial artist whose studio was decimated by those same warlords and who’s hellbent on getting his revenge..

Prior to Bruce Lee’s ascension, arguably the only Hong Kong action star that had achieved a shade of the same recognition abroad was Jimmy Wang Yu, star of Shaw Brothers Studio’s international breakout, THE ONE-ARMED SWORDSMAN (1967). As Lee’s stardom began to eclipse his own, Wang turned to roles behind the camera as the director of seminal kung fu classics like ONE-ARMED BOXER (1971), BEACH OF THE WAR GODS (1973), and MASTER OF THE FLYING GUILLOTINE (1976).

After Lee’s passing, some studios fell back on Wang’s legacy as the one-time undisputed king of kung fu cinema, marketing the releases of FLYING GUILLOTINE and RETURN OF THE CHINESE BOXER around the tagline, “Before there was Bruce Lee…”. Unfortunately, dogged by alleged ties to organized crime and legal troubles involving his broken contract with Shaw Bros. (eventually resulting in Wang being banned from making films in Hong Kong), RETURN ended up being Wang’s final film as director, though his legacy as a one-man New Wave who brought a unique cinematic flair to otherwise standard wuxia proceedings has made him as vital a figure in the history of kung fu cinema as Lee.

BOB MORGAN’S JUST GOING TO TELL SOME STORIES
Dirs. Grayson Tyler Johnson & Tom Marksbury, 2024
United States. 86 min.
In English.

THURSDAY, JUNE 5 – 7:30 PM
TUESDAY, JUNE 10 – 10 PM
FRIDAY, JUNE 20 – 7:30 PM (w/Q&A)
THURSDAY, JUNE 26 – 7:30 PM

SPECIAL EVENT TICKETS (6/20)

GENERAL ADMISSION TICKETS

Bob Morgan’s Just Going to Tell Some Stories… about art and garbage, sex and drugs, aids grief, cultural subversion and being an outsider turned community icon.

Meet Bob Morgan, hoarder, collector, assemblage artist, candid photographer, local legend, friend to Lexington icons Henry Faulkner and Sweet Evening Breeze, raconteur, archivist, activist, historian, a builder and chronicler of queer Kentucky, and the most interesting man you’ll meet on the silver screen this June.

In this fascinating documentary profile and winner of the Research Award (given by the jury to a film exhibiting a strong engagement with research) at the 2025 Athens International Film + Video Festival, Bob Morgan invites you into his home to give you his story, and the stories of those lost and found on the way.

Join us at Spectacle for a special screening of the film on June 20th, followed by a Q&A with the film’s co-director Grayson Tyler Johnson.