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SPECTACLE SHRIEK SHOW V

Posted on October 23, 2015December 26, 2019 by spectacletheater

For the fifth year in a row, Spectacle is proud to present our 12ish hour horror marathon – The Spectacle Shriek Show. Throughout October midnight screenings have paid tribute to presenters from the last five years and this years line up is one of the most diverse yet. We’ve got 60’s spectral horror, German gut-munchers, made for TV Frankensteins, Mexican Satanists, cannibals who talk to their fish, dark Easter rituals, and surreal Italian brain-liquifiers.

Settle in for a full day of terror that you “can’t” escape! As always it’s $25 for the full day or $5 per film.

NOON – THE GHOST a.k.a. Lo Spettro
1:30 PM – ANTHROPOPHAGUS 2000 presented by Massacre Video
3:00 PM – DEAD MEAT presented by Horror Boobs & Wild Eye
5:00 PM – FRANKENSTEIN (I SWEAR ON MY MOTHER’S EYES) THE TRUE STORY presented by Lunchmeat VHS Fanzine
7:30 PM – John Russo’s MIDNIGHT
10:00 PM – GRAVE ROBBERS a.k.a. Ladrones de Tumbas
MIDNIGHT – Cosmotropia De Xam’s INFERNO VENEZIANO presented by Negative Pleasure & Phantasma Disques

THE GHOST
A.k.a. Lo Spettro
Dir. Riccardo Freda, 1963
Italy, 97 min.

Spectacle marathon and midnight mainstay Barbara Steele and her giant eyes return for another tale of deceit, deception, and MURDER MOST FOUL! Steele plays Margaret Hichcock (no “T”) the wife of the wheelchair bound Dr. Hichcock. Not content to wait around for her husband to die of natural causes, Margaret and her lover decide to take matters into their own hands. Before his body is even cold, strange events befall the mansion and the two adulterers are shaken to their very core! Has Dr. Hichcock returned from the grave to reap a horrible vengeance? (Kind of!) Is this gothic tale of madness and betrayal the perfect kickoff to this years festivities? (YES.) A harkening back to last year’s opening screening of NIGHTMARE CASTLE, this one sets the mood/doom for the rest of your day.

ANTHROPOPHAGOUS 2000 presented by Massacre Video
Dir. Andreas Schnaas, 1999
Germany, 80 min.
In German with English subtitles.

Massacre has been going five years strong (555, DEMON QUEEN, THE ABOMINATION, MONDO MAGIC) as presenters in the Shriek Show and this years entry is…something else.

Nikos and his family are trapped during a heavy story in a boat, leading to the unfortunate death of their daughter Vicky. Nikos becomes mad with the desire to survive, and he begins to kill and eat his own wife. Nikos manages to reach the shore of a small island, but his appetite for human flesh has consumed him. A group of young people on vacation have an unfortunate meeting with Niko. Will these youngsters make it out alive? (No.)

Massacre Video proudly presents, ANTHROPOPHAGOUS 2000, from the German Splatter master Andreas Schnaas (of the VIOLENT SHIT series), fully uncut for the first time ever in America!

DEAD MEAT presented by Horror Boobs & Wild Eye
Dir. Tom Vollmann, 1993
USA, 107 min.

A true VHS rarity from the early 90’s DEAD MEAT was heavily bootlegged so it must be good, right? RIGHT. Think of all the classic characters from this slab of analog insanity – Sgt. John “Mo” Mentum, First Victim, Pizza Boy, and the rest! Basically a serial killer named The Senses Taker (guess what he takes from his victims) is running amok and these cops HATE it!

Filled to the brim with great gore, angry stock police characters, VERY long chase scenes, and a lot of scenes of a truly insane person talking to their pet fish this is a rare treat. Horror Boobs and Wild Eye will be officially releasing this lost clas-sick and we’ve got the premiere!

FRANKENSTEIN (I SWEAR ON MY MOTHER’S EYES) THE TRUE STORY presented by Lunchmeat VHS Fanzine
Dir. Gary Cohen, 1983
USA, 90 min.

The hoots and howls of Halloween excitement are nearly in full swing as our favorite holiday fast approaches, Tapeheads, and in order to ring in the radical rewind VHSpirit right this Halloween, Lunchmeat has been keeping busy in the kitchen cooking up a super-sweet VHS treat for all the voracious Videovores out there. So, without any further analog ado, we proudly present some of the most exciting fresh VHS news of the season: Lunchmeat is absolutely elated to announce the unprecedented home video release of the ultra-obscure, shot-on-video, made-for-cable production FRANKENSTEIN (I SWEAR ON MY MOTHER’S EYES) THE TRUE STORY!

We’ve teamed up with the great Gary Cohen, director of cult SOV classics VIDEO VIOLENCE 1 & 2 to unearth this long lost slice of shot-on-video horror comedy insanity. Gary co-writes and stars in this utterly unknown film that debuted on Cablevision on Halloween night in 1983, and after a single airing, has since fell into complete obscurity. And now, over 30 years later, Lunchmeat is bringing this never-before-seen low-budget trashterpiece take on the classic tale of Frankenstein back from the grave!

The print used for the release comes directly from Gary’s archives (the only known surviving print!), keeping intact all of the grit and grain of the original analog-shot broadcast. The release will also include a video intro from Josh Schafer (yours truly!) talking about the inception of the release, and an exclusive intro from star and co-writer Gary Cohen, explaining how the production came to be, and why it’s been obscured for all these years. Here’s an excerpt from that intro with Gary Cohen, just to give you a little taste of history on this flick:

“I must admit, this whole project is shrouded in secrecy… at the time, what is now Comcast, I believe it was Cablevision back then… had a studio in New Jersey, and they were advertising, I think, for people who wanted to do some kind of cable access shows… my friend Richard Dominick (of Jerry Springer fame) decided he would pitch a project for Halloween, and write this version of Frankenstein. We got together, he wrote a script about Frankenstein, and we used a lot of the actors who you’ll recognize from Video Violence, who were all a part of Celebration Playhouse, this theater group in New Jersey. I believe we had about a day to film this thing, filmed on video, on three and a quarter inch video… and if memory serves, we were high or drunk or something when we we’re doing it… Once it aired, everybody disavowed any knowledge of the project. It is truly unique; it’s an oddity. I can’t believe here in 2015, it’s resurfaced, but so be it! I hope you get a kick out of it.” –Gary Cohen

MIDNIGHT
Dir. John Russo, 1982
USA, 91 min.

Special thanks to John Russo.

We’re just gonna go ahead and say that if you only see one movie in this marathon (like an idiot)–make it MIDNIGHT.

A teenager runs away from home after her pervo cop stepdad (Laurence Tierney) puts the moves on her. She’s California bound when she meets up with two fellow travelers. Things go from pretty much ok to outright horrible when they stop in a small town and run into a family of Satanists who keep their dead mother in the attic. The paranoia is thick enough to cut with a knife (like a number of throats in the film) and no one is safe as the days run on to that most unholy of holidays – Easter. Cynthia looks great and has a pentagram on her forehead and there’s a lot of blood drinking and people in cages. Also some other truly sadistic and harrowing shit goes down. The film is based on Russo’s novel of the same name and was followed by a sequel–MIDNIGHT 2–many moons later. DO NOT MISS THIS ONE.

GRAVE ROBBERS
A.k.a. Ladrones de Tumbas
Dir. Rubén Galindo Jr., 1990
Mexico, 87 min.
In Spanish with English subtitles.

Directed by Rubén Galindo Jr. who also made the unbelievable DON’T PANIC, GRAVE ROBBERS concerns a bunch of dumb teens who mess around in a graveyard and summon Satan and get their just desserts. Rather than prattle on about it, it’s probably best to let the copy from the back of the Mexican VHS tell the tale:

“LADRONES DE TUMBAS–It’s about four young boys who pretend to assault the tombs in the cemetery of a small town. But these boys were not aware that this place was surrounded by a strange evil force.

LADRONES DE TUMBAS–will take you to the unknown world of the evil where no human being has ever been able to escape! This time be prepared for the most exciting and violent film. Starring the best actors.”

The ultimate penultimate film for this years Shriek Show in the perfect sandwich between MIDNIGHT and INFERNO VENEZIANO.

INFERNO VENEZIANO presented by Negative Pleasure & Phantasma Disques
A.k.a. Hell of Venice
Dir. Cosmotropia de Xam, 2015
Italy, 65 min.

Negative Pleasure & Phantasma Disques team up to end our marathon with a bang presenting the third part of the ANIMA PERSA trilogy from Cosmotropia de Xam. Waaaaaaaaay back in 2011 Spectacle screened a midnight double feature of ACiD and INAUGURATION OF SNOW WHITE. Negative Pleasure has been killing it lately with double and triple features to coincide with comic releases (FELONY COMICS CRIME SPREE, etc) and this will be a sweet goodnight kiss to wrap up Shriek Show V!

Scientists vanishing and mutating to Zombies. A door to another dimension. A blind woman who keeps a secret. Mysterious surreal connections that prepare an Inferno for the city of gondolas.

SPECTACLE HALLOWEEN 2015

Posted on October 21, 2015December 26, 2019 by spectacletheater

SPECTACLE HALLOWEEN 2015
A.k.a. The Best Halloween of Your Life
Dir. Spectacle, 2015
@ Hopes & Fears
200 Morgan Ave.

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 31 – 9:00 PM
** TICKETS NOW AVAILABLE! **
** FACESPOOK! **

Join Spectacle in celebrating the most Spectacular of holidays this Spectober and the end of our Kickstarter campaign!

<FREE CRAFT BEER>
COURTESY OF LAGUNITAS AND SECRET ENGINE

<MUSIC BY>
SLEEP ∞ OVER
JANTAR
MIL KDU DES
DANIEL KLAG

HOSTED AT HOPES & FEARS

hopesandfears.com

FELONY COMICS 4: FELONY COMICS MOST WANTED

Posted on October 16, 2015December 26, 2019 by spectacletheater

For the past year, Negative Pleasure has proudly brought the best in overlooked, underappreciated crime, action and horror films to the screen at Spectacle Theater in celebration of the release of our comics, such as Felony Comics 1, 2 and 3, Jeans 3 and Night Burgers. Now, with the release of Felony Comics 4, and in celebration of this weekend’s Comic Arts Brooklyn Festival, we’re more pleased than ever to bring you FELONY COMICS MOST WANTED, a selection of three of our favorite films from our past screenings, as selected by both Negative Pleasure publisher Harris Smith and the Illuminati of Spectacle Theater.

For this monumental occasion, we’ve selected three films from south of the border – US/Mexican co-productions NEW DRUG CITY and DRUG RUNNERS, and Mexican horror epic THE THRONE OF HELL (EL TRONO DEL INFIERNO). Hosted by Harris Smith and featuring surprise appearances by Felony Comics’ rogues gallery of creative contributors, this night promises to be our most frenzied yet, with comics giveaways, Q&As, and other special surprises in store.

NEW DRUG CITY
(aka: Narcotrafico)
Dir. Raúl de Anda Jr, 1985
Mexico, 90 min.
Dubbed in English

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 6 – 7:30 PM

It’s the Feds vs. the Cartel as both sides of the law race through the desert to snag a hidden dope stash in New Drug City. Originally released in 1985 as Narcotrafico, New Drug City was retitled to cash in on the popularity of the popular Wesley Snipes/Judd Nelson crime flick New Jack City for its American dubbed VHS release by Magnum Video. Pure exploitation through and through, New Drug City features a bargain basement Crockett and Tubbs trading awkward, vaguely homoerotic banter as they blast their way through Mexico’s badlands, leaving behind a trail of the prerequisite blood, bullets, bodies and babes. Directed by Raul de Anda Jr. and starring his brother, Rodolfo de Anda, both legends of Mexican action cinema.

DRUG RUNNERS
Dir. Alan Kuskowski, 1988
USA/Mexico, 86 min.
in English.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 6 – 10:00 PM

EL TRONO DEL INFIERNO
(aka: The Throne of Hell)
Dir. Sergio Goyri, 1994
Mexico, 94 min.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 6 – MIDNIGHT

In THE THRONE OF HELL (EL TRONO DEL INFIERNO), from Mexico, an archeological dig unleashes Beezelbub, forcing the Vatican to call in master exorcist El Hombre. In a battle of stop Armageddon, the forces of good call upon the power of the Seven Seals and the sword Excalibur to take on the devil himself. Bloodshed ensues. A lot of it. Guts, too. And some brains. Starring and directed by Sergio Goyri, star of the Mexican stage version of MEN ARE FROM MARS, WOMEN ARE FROM VENUS and creator of the Black Stallion and Still Loving U fragrances.

Felony Comics #1 was featured in Best American Comics 2015 (edited by Jonathan Lethem) with Alex Degen’s “Crime Chime Noir,” and received a notable mention for Ben Urkowtiz’s “The Facts” and Pete Toms’ “In Post,” (originally appearing in Jeans 3), and Alabaster Pizzo’s “Mimi & the Wolves” (excerpted in the now out-of-print Jeans 2). Other contributors to Negative Pleasure Publications include such comics luminaries and up-and-comers as Benjamin Marra, Rich Tommaso, Josh Burggraf, Victor Kerlow, Leah Wishnia, Lale Westvind, Zach Mason, Laura Callaghan, Jason Murphy, Michel Fiffe, Amy Searles, Claire Donner, Ken Johnson (Ball and Cone), Anthony Meloro, Brigid Deacon, Ben Passmore, Laurie Pina, Laura Perez-Harris, Thomas Slattery and numerous others.

Felony Comics #4 features stories and artwork by Alex Degen, Odin Cabal, Pete Toms, Derek Marks, Anthony Meloro, Thomas Slattery and Poland’s Lukasz Kowalczuk. It debuts at this year’s CAB festival in Brooklyn.

HERE’S TO THE FUTURE!

Posted on October 16, 2015December 26, 2019 by spectacletheater

HERE’S TO THE FUTURE!
Dir. Gina Telaroli, 2014
USA, 76 mins.

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 5 – 10:00 PM – FILMMAKER IN PERSON!
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 7 – 7:30 PM
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 10 – 10:00 PM
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 11 – 7:30 PM
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 12 – 7:30PM

Filmmaker Gina Telaroli will join us for HERE’S TO THE FUTURE!, preempted by a screening of her 2011 feature TRAVELING LIGHT and her 2015 short SILK TATTERS, on November 5th. Buy tickets here.

In conjunction with the independent online release of Kurt Walker’s HIT 2 PASS and Gina Telaroli’s HERE’S TO THE FUTURE!, Spectacle is thrilled to host the latter for a limited (and rare) run on the big screen.

In her follow-up to the acclaimed TRAVELING LIGHT (2011), Telaroli again combines fictional, documentary, and experimental filmmaking modes to create a beguiling group portrait of people coming together for a daylong journey. After recording the hushed quiet of an Amtrak train, HERE’S TO THE FUTURE! finds Telaroli turning her attention to a much wilder, more hectic environment: a bustling film set.

On a late-summer Sunday in 2011, a female director (Telaroli herself) gathers a team of filmmakers, writers, musicians, artists, critics, and friends in an apartment to recreate a scene from Michael Curtiz’s Depression-era drama THE CABIN IN THE COTTON. Over plates of pasta and glasses of red wine, a round robin of non-professional actors take turns performing the same scene, again and again, in different permutations. With a freedom influenced by pre-Code Hollywood, cameras, phones, and laptops are scattered around the set at almost every possible angle, documenting the action – both in front of and behind the camera – as it unfolds, from rehearsals to equipment adjustments to the banter between takes. An intimate, playful, and spontaneous look into the collaborative cinematic process emerges, a snapshot of the filmmaker’s perennial struggle to capture fleeting moments before the day (and light) slip away.

HERE’S TO THE FUTURE! is a hybrid work that blurs several lines – between reality and fiction, between a movie and its “making of,” between Old Hollywood and present-day independent cinema, between film criticism and filmmaking, between structuralist rigor and a loose hangout vibe inspired by Howard Hawks’s HATARI! – to create something strange and new.

“Though HERE’S TO THE FUTURE! leaves the “finished” product an open question, it suggests that by allowing greater transparency with our methods, we may find new ways to discover that movies really are about (and made by) real people. Telaroli has crafted the most generous kind of experiment: it doesn’t know what comes next, but it reveres collaboration and feedback on a micro level, and shares the joy of that process.” —Micah Gottlieb, The Fanzine

“Transition, in this case, may be a bit of a misnomer: here, conventional distinctions between narrative and documentary are washed away. What remains is the armature of filmmaking itself, a deeply collaborative process reliant on the legwork of its individual participants.” —Caroline Golum, The L Magazine

TRAVELING LIGHT
Dir. Gina Telaroli, 2011
USA, 58 mins.

with SILK TATTERS
Dir. Gina Telaroli, 2014
USA, 17 mins.

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 5 – 7:30 PM – FILMMAKER IN PERSON!

Filmmaker Gina Telaroli will join us for a screening of her 2011 feature TRAVELING LIGHT and her 2015 short SILK TATTERS, followed by HERE’S TO THE FUTURE on November 5th. Buy tickets here.

An Amtrak train pulls out of Penn Station in New York City on a cold, sunny February morning. The train moves forward as the landscape changes—the East Coast giving way to the Midwest. Passengers fill their roles, the snow begins to fall and the next train station is announced, all while the light continues shifting, bouncing, swelling and slouching into eventual darkness.

“A narrative abandoned twice—first when the cast and crew were halted by a snowstorm halfway through their journey and forced to split; later when GT eschewed all narratives at the editing table to figure only their traces—Traveling Light plays as erstwhile fiction and erstwhile documentary, a travelogue of nothing more than the conditions of it’s making. Deceptively simple, a kind of found piece of concrete dialogue between track sounds and a dwindling light that halfway through turns the movie from half-representational to half-abstract, it’s one of the only recent films, narrative, avant-garde, or otherwise, that seems to have sacrificed itself to its subjects to determine its course.” —David Phelps, The L Magazine

“Trains have long served as a metonymy for cinema—a tradition that dates back to Lumiere’s famous short films—but Telaroli’s conceit underscores their phenomenological similarity: sitting still while observing motion. Telaroli restages the dissolving of space into light and texture. Her movie taps into a variety of natural and found rhythms, from the thoroughly rationalized timetable of arrivals and departures to the cosmic ebb and flow of seasonal and circadian cycles.” –Tom McCormack, Altscreen

SHELF LIFE

Posted on October 15, 2015December 26, 2019 by spectacletheater

SHELF LIFE
Dir. Paul Bartel, 1993.
USA. 80 min.

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 1 – 7:30 PM
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 3 – 7:30 PM
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 7 – 10:00 PM
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 12 – 10:00 PM

1963 suburban America – a typical family gathered around the TV (conservative dad, gently inebriated mom, 2.5 kids) learn President Kennedy’s been assassinated. Dad knows it’s only a matter of time before the Commies, aliens, or whoever’s responsible reach their lawn, so down into the bomb shelter they go, sealing themselves off from the world until it’s safe to come out.

Thirty Years Later: Mom and Dad are long-dead from botulism, their skeletons neatly laid out in bed. It’s another day in the life of their now-grown (but not adult) children in the bomb shelter as they bounce fluidly from game to game to self-invented ritual, popping on records to set the proper tone for Egyptian Slave, Clean-Up Mom, Restaurant and Mighty Car (among others). Capturing the full weirdness of actual kids at play, the siblings (O-Lan Jones, Andrea Stein, and Jim Turner) feed off each other’s reactions, shifting allegiances and authority on a whim, incorporating everything absorbed and at hand (right wing propaganda, jingles, worn comic books, half-memories) into their hermetically sealed microcosm. Unconscious sexual tension hovers but never really breaks through. Brief bursts of modern television occasionally make it through 40 ft. of concrete to their old Philco Predicta, but can’t link the siblings to a world they have absolutely no awareness of or interest in – the only fascination is as new fodder for their games.

In addition to consistent film and television acting, Paul Bartel directed a handful of offbeat classics, including EATING RAOUL and DEATH RACE 2000. 1993’s SHELF LIFE was his last directorial feature before he passed away in 2000. The single set, limited players, and musical numbers hint at SHELF LIFE’s stage-play origins, but the actors’ total commitment and Bartel’s focus on their dynamics keep it from ever feeling static. Never having had a proper theatrical release, we’re very proud to present SHELF LIFE to the wider audience it deserves. Special thanks to Anne Kimmel and Wendy Bartel for all their help.

LITTLE MAD GUY

Posted on October 14, 2015December 26, 2019 by spectacletheater

LITTLE MAD GUY
aka Chao Zhou xiao han
Dir. Hsing-Lai Wang, 1982
China/Australia, 102 mins.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 7 – MIDNIGHT
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 13 – MIDNIGHT

From the dusty abyss of chopsocky marginalia comes Hsing-Lai Wang’s 1982 LITTLE MAD GUY, projected off of a discount-rack VHS dubbed into Australian English – perhaps the only extant version of the film today. Ming-Tsai Wu stars as shirtless field-urchin Little Fatty, the titular Mad Guy on the hunt for Wu (Tiger Yang) – a notorious outlaw with a severe bounty on his head. Wang’s film is essentially one long tilt-a-wheel of skull-crushing, capillary-busting wall-to-wall action, interspersed with some attempts at comedy and occasional glimpses of the Chinese countryside. Wikipedia would have us believe Little Mad Guy is “labeled as the madcap tale of a simpleton who fights for the people” – but really, what film isn’t? Featuring a prolonged cameo from “Simon” Yuen Siu-tien – the original DRUNKEN MASTER, and father of Yuen Woo-Ping!

“A bandit pretends to be a master in a small county. He causes chaos with all the villagers by doing tricks on them and cheating. The bandit picks on the Little Mad Guy without knowing what it will mean, and Little Guy gets crazy, at which point a hot pursuit begins that takes you through hilarious action-adventures. How will this chase end? One thing you know is that you’ll be in stitches.” – Cobra Video

“Hilarious storyline, many humorous interactions between ‘Little Fatty’ and anyone who he comes in contact with, including bowing down to a frog and chanting ‘I worship the toad’ and falling face first into a pile of crap in his quest to earn a living bringing in a criminal.” – WilliamSchweizer, IMDB

“Almost entirely fighting from start to finish between a core trio of antagonists, Master Ma, Little Fatty and Chun Wu. Little Fatty appears to be the central character, owing his martial arts ability to a life long study of frogs and toads. The bandit Wu is portrayed by Tiger Yang, who the opening credits claim was Muhammad Ali’s martial arts instructor. Funny, but I don’t recall ever hearing of Ali having an interest in the martial arts.” – classicsoncall, IMDB

“The movie also tries to be more than just your average martial arts movie too, by incorporating some comedy elements into it. However, the movie is only funny for about the first 10 or 15 minutes, and then it just gets way too serious.” – Rob Battersby, Geeksquisite

SATAN PANONSKI: DOKUMENTARAC & ZINE RELEASE

Posted on October 14, 2015December 26, 2019 by spectacletheater

SATAN PANONSKI: DOKUMENTARAC and ZINE RELEASE
Dir. Milroad Milinkovic, 1990.
Yugoslavia, 34 min.
In Croatian with English subtitles

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 10 – 8:00 PM

A release of a new fanzine about Croatian punk Satan Panonski, who lived a life of violence and poetry before being killed in the outset of the Balkan wars in 1992. The event will feature a newly translated documentary, clips from performances, and readings from a biography by A.M. Gittlitz, newly translated poetry and lyrics by Nikolina Lazetic, and an essay on the relationship between nationalism and punk in Yugoslavia by Patrick Offenheiser.

SATAN PANONSKI: DOKUMENTARAC is a Serbian student film featuring the best footage of Panonski’s “Hard Blood Shock” Body Art performance, which mixes self-mutilation, chaotic punk rock, and spoken word. Also captured are a radio interview where he outlines his dreams of creating a communal “rock n’ roll state”, and his return to the mental asylum where he spent the better part of the 80s for murder. Self-identifying as “Punk by nationality, friend by profession” we see his full tragic range of emotions that lead to comparisons with both Marina Abramovic and GG Allin. If Panonski was Yugoslavia’s GG, then this is their HATED. Like his albums and the myths of Panonski’s life and death, it has up until now only circulated underground on VHS tapes traded at flea markets across Eastern Europe, and has likely never before been screened in the United States.

CRYPTIC CAROUSEL: SEMIOTIC RECIPES

Posted on October 6, 2015December 26, 2019 by spectacletheater

CRYPTIC CAROUSEL: SEMIOTIC RECIPES
Dir. Various, 2014-2015

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 8 – 8:00 PM
** ONE NIGHT ONLY! **

Hey look it’s a Facebook event

A night of experimental sound and video featuring the premiere screening of ‘Semiotic Recipes’—the first in a series of limited edition VHS releases from tape label Cryptic Carousel.

Live A/V Performances from:
Long Distance Poison
Sara Goodman + Beatrice Schleyer
Muscular (Ginny Benson and Ryan Soper)

Screenings:
Victoria Keddie
The Nudist – Film by Kevin J. Shipp, Music by Auntie Depressant
Photosyntheglitch by Jon Timm
City Lights [Pixelated Passion Phase One Remix] – Music and Video by Dakota Reed
Heavy Afternoon Buzz – Video by Luke Jumes, Audio by Eric Copeland
Under the Bad Light – Music by Isa X, Video by Ginny Benson
It Sounds Like Time Inside by Long Distance Poison
Voids by Jonas Bers
Landegger by Special Interest
Untitled by Matt Kimmel
ＭＯＮＤＡＹ by nıhıl mınus
Mourning Tide – Music and Video by The Soft Spots
Pedro Magina by Logan Owlbeemoth
Penetrable Walls by Ian Grant
German Army & Major Outlet by Rob Feulner
Glip Trich by Ryan Legge / Corey Bauer
Waiting by Sara Goodman
The Call of Duty EP (side B) – Video by Toby Kaufmann-Buhler, Music by Daryl Waller
2 Much Cocaine – Film by Ruby Nekk, Music by The Doll
Cash For God by Hardbody
June 4th by Don Haugen

SPECTOBER MIDNIGHTS

Posted on October 3, 2015December 26, 2019 by spectacletheater

FRIDAY, SPECTOBER 2: 555
SATURDAY, SPECTOBER 3: WILD SIDE

FRIDAY, SPECTOBER 9: THE UNDERTAKER AND HIS PALS
SATURDAY, SPECTOBER 10: BALLET DOWN THE HIGHWAY

FRIDAY, SPECTOBER 16: HEADLESS EYES
SATURDAY, SPECTOBER 17: THE NIGHT BEFORE

FRIDAY, SPECTOBER 23: MARLEY’S REVENGE: THE MONSTER MOVIE
SATURDAY, SPECTOBER 24: FIFTH ANNUAL SPECTACLE SHRIEK SHOW

FRIDAY, SPECTOBER 30: TROUBLE EVERY DAY
SATURDAY, SPECTOBER 31: COMING SOON

Massacre Video presents: 555
Dir. Wally Koz, 1988.
90 min, USA.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 2 – MIDNIGHT

From The First Annual Spectacle Shriek Show. (2011)

A hippie killer with a sex-fueled, murderous bloodlust is on a rampage and he’s brutally murdering innocent young couples! A nationwide trend of killings with the same m.o. happens to catch the eyes of Detective Haller and Sergeant Connor. Every five years, within five days of each other, the killer strikes! Now it’s up to Haller and Connor to find out who is behind these grisly murders. Who is this crazed, blood thirsty hippie? And more importantly, what is the significance of the third ‘five’?

Written by Roy Koz and directed by Wally Koz, this rare SOV splatter-classic has recently been given the royal treatment by Massacre Video with a DVD, special edition DVD, and an already eBay fodder clamshell.

WILD SIDE
Dir. Donald Cammell, 1995.
U.S., 110 min. (Director’s cut); 95 min. (Nu Image re-edit)

Nu Image Re-edit
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 3 – MIDNIGHT

Director’s Cut
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 3 – 10:00 PM
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 16 – 7:30 PM
MONDAY, OCTOBER 26 – 7:30 PM

Donald Cammell’s fourth film in as many decades, the brilliant and berserk WILD SIDE is a beyond-salacious slab of psycho-noir starring Anne Heche as “Alex”, a Long Beach investment banker-cum sex worker for the rich and powerful. Tonight, that means Bruno – a shadowy millionaire money launderer (Christopher Walken, plus wig) – and perhaps also his valet, a sleazy undercover cop by the name of Tony (Steven Hauer, of Scarface fame). Cammell’s signature refracted narrative comes into play when Alex meets Bruno’s wife Virginia (Joan Chen), up-turning audience expectations for late-nite sleaze into a surprisingly tender, psychologically astute, and crushingly desperate queer love story. (There’s also a sublime Ryuichi Sakamoto score, and a concurrent subplot about a virus on a floppy disk that, if it fell into the wrong hands, would bring the western world to its knees.)

After Nu Image Productions wrested control of WILD SIDE away from Cammell and recut the film into the schizoid quasi-porn they thought they had paid for, the filmmaker saw fit to take his own life. In 2000, Kong supervised a painstaking, posthumous recut with editor Frank Mazzola; this October, Spectacle is thrilled to present both the damned and saved versions of WILD SIDE.

“Games are again played with power and identity, dangerous games but not fatal ones this time; if there is one difference between the Cammell of 1968 and of 1995 that stands out above all others, it is the replacement of Artaudian cruelty with an affectionate generosity towards his characters.” – Maximilian Le Cain, Senses of Cinema

“When this film was premiered at last year’s Edinburgh Festival, it was accompanied by a remarkable on-stage talk from Mazzola and Kong, who were able to show extracts from the butchered, and utterly different ‘TV version’: furnishing us with an unmissable masterclass in the realities of film editing and a radical essay in the textual aspects of cinema. I hope that Mr Mazzola and Ms Kong can be persuaded to repeat this lecture all over the country.” – Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

Lunchmeat VHS Fanzine presents: THE UNDERTAKER AND HIS PALS
Dir. T.L.P. Swicegood, 1966.
63 min, USA.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 9 – MIDNIGHT

From The Spectacle Shriek Show II. (2012)

Two degenerate café owners cook up a depraved alliance with a demented Undertaker and run amok through town on their motorcycles, hacking up hot dames and cleaving craniums. Select portions of the corpses are served up as daily specials at the café and The Undertaker gets to bury the leftovers. But when a pair of local detectives smell something fishy afoot, the trio’s reign of terror runs into some trouble.

One of Lunchmeat Publisher and Editor-in-Chief Josh Schafer’s all-time favorite flicks, this pioneering pitch black comedy is a kitschy slice of pure drive-in delirium that plants its tongue firmly in cheek, then bites it off and spits it out onto a sizzling hot plate ready for you to enjoy. Once you’ve ingested the wacky slab o’ cinema cheeze that is THE UNDERTAKER AND HIS PALS, you’ll never get the taste out of your mouth!

Dig it!

BALLET DOWN THE HIGHWAY
Dir. Jack Deveau
USA, 93 min, 1975

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 10 – MIDNIGHT
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 14 – 10:00 PM
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 20 – 7:30 PM

Opposites attract when a New York ballet dancer’s car breaks down on the highway and he is rescued by a closeted truck driver. An ambivalent romance blossoms until he finds the city apartment he shares with his boyfriend, a fellow dancer, filled with horny truckers. Filled with sadness and unrequited longing, BALLET DOWN THE HIGHWAY is directed by Jack Deveau, whose disco-tastic DRIVE screened at Spectacle in 2014.

Spectacle Midnights presents: HEADLESS EYES
Dir. Kent Bateman, 1971.
78 min, USA.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 16 – MIDNIGHT

From The Third Annual Spectacle Shriek Show. (2013)

You know how it is for starving artists, right? I mean, look at your clothes. Anyway, it used to be even harder! So hard that some of them turned to a life of crime. This is especially true in the case of Arthur Malcolm. Down on his luck, Arthur is caught robbing an apartment and loses his eye in the process. Once he’s healed he’s out on the streets and, brother, he is HEATED. Arthur sets about on a mad killing spree, gouging out the eyes of his victims with a spoon. He collects the eyes for his artwork, you see. This continues for some time with mixed results.

This film was directed by Kent Bateman, father of Jason and Justine, in the streets of a now long gone version of NYC. According to this film, it was a time when a hooker would approach a man covered in blood in the middle of the day in order to turn a trick. The good old days. In addition to this movie being totally batshit insane with a FIERCE mutant soundtrack, it’s a veritable snapshot of a city as nasty as they come. The performances are hammy and intense, like Easter dinner in a mental institution.

Not to be missed!

THE NIGHT BEFORE
Dir. Arch Brown
USA, 72 min, 1973

MONDAY, OCTOBER 12 – 7:30 PM
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 17 – MIDNIGHT
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 20 – 10:00 PM

THE NIGHT BEFORE gets its straightforward gay porn “narrative” out of the way in the first half before getting on with being exceptionally odd and psychedelic. There’s body painting, someone sucking a disembodied cock that appears out of a bowl of fruit, a woman dancing in Central Park for no reason, and if you want to see an orgy scene
where a dildo goes in so deep it comes out someone’s mouth, this film is highly recommended. Also appearing: kittens.

Horror Boobs presents: MARLEY’S REVENGE: THE MONSTER MOVIE
Dir. Jet Eller, 1989.
83 min, USA.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 23 – MIDNIGHT

From The Fourth Annual Spectacle Shriek Show. (2014)

“I don’t know about you, man, but I’m still huuuuungry.”

Two bozos get picked up by a gang of vigilantes out to scrub the streets of scum after mistaking the men for drug smugglers. The problem is they’re actually smuggling in their aunt and uncle. The four are whisked away to the local island where they murder all the other drug smugglers. You know what though? None of this even matters because once they get to the island things get really out of hand. Zombies rise from the grave, a giant hell monster shows up, and the vigilantes aren’t too pleased either. How will anyone escape this island alive?

Another marathon mainstay and VHS monolith, Horror Boobs has been providing not only marathon fare but midnight fodder at Spectacle for over a decade!^{[citation needed]} This years entry is…well, something special indeed.

Featuring a completely new transfer and other goodies. If you saw this at the marathon last year, you still haven’t truly seen it. A house favorite and rare treat!

TROUBLE EVERY DAY
Dir. Claire Denis, 2001
France, 101 mins.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 2 – 10:00 PM
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 13 – 7:30 PM
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 30 – MIDNIGHT

An American doctor (Vincent Gallo) arrives in Paris with his new wife (Tricia Vessey). They are ostensibly on honeymoon, but he is strangely distant and preoccupied with finding a former a colleague. Meanwhile, a French couple live in seclusion, the husband (Alex Descas) both caring for and imprisoning his wife (Béatrice Dalle, exuding a primal power) whose mysterious illness has reduced her to a vehicle for her own bloodlust. Connections between these characters reveal themselves slowly; exposition here is a distant second to a deep sensuality in the truest sense of the word. Denis’ tactile approach to filmmaking is in full effect, the camera mapping out fragile bodies with careful, almost predatory attention, creating a discomfiting sense of intimacy. TROUBLE EVERY DAY is a film felt as much as viewed, and when it reaches its bloody apex, that’s a truly frightening thing.

I AM A KNIFE WITH LEGS

Posted on October 2, 2015December 26, 2019 by spectacletheater

I AM A KNIFE WITH LEGS
Dir. Bennett Jones
USA, 84 min, 2014

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 2 – 7:30 PM – FILMMAKER IN PERSON!
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 3 – 10:00 PM
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 11 – 10:00 PM
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 13 – 10:00 PM

On the run from an assassin, international rockstar Bené and his manager, Beefy, hide out in Los Angeles and prepare for a showdown with death.

“Bennett Jones’ perfectly titled film is either a masterpiece – it had the audience laughing along with every bizarre gag throughout – or a niche comedy manifesto so bizarre that only sleep-deprived festival-goers hot-wired on caffeine and alcohol and/or Kevin Smith’s not-so-secret stash could handle the “everything and the kitchen sink” weirdness. I’m leaning toward the former, seeing as how Jones, a standup comedian and songwriter from Los Angeles, created pretty much the whole thing out of thin air. Wacky doesn’t even begin to describe the finished product.” – The Austin Chronicle