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STARTS WITH DAD: HALLOWEEN SCARY DADS

Posted on September 30, 2013December 22, 2019 by spectacletheater

STARTS WITH DAD: HALLOWEEN SCARY DADS!
One night only!

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 12 – 8:00 PM

STARTS WITH DAD is a loose group with two goals: shoot something, show something. No need to be a filmmaker, an artist, or an actor. It’s all about the impulse to create, no matter how unprofessional.

This month it’s Halloween, so expect a whole new slate of short films SATURDAY, OCTOBER 12, AT 8 PM. All the spooky Dads will be out. The theme is Advance and Ascent… into hell, probably. We expect fright and other loathsome feelings to prevail. But, as usual, Starts with Dad is all about the unexpected.

You can see previous Starts With Dad films at www.startswithdad.tumblr.com. You will find human tissue obsessed housewives, deicidal squirrels, claymation testicles, jump rope gurus, blatant plagiarism, and lots else besides.

If you’d like to make something for our next screening contact Will at wswelles@gmail.com for additional details. Or just come and watch all the films. Some very well may be creepy, but all will be created by creeps, for creeps.

INTO THE THIRD DIMENSION WITH ZOE BELOFF (16mm in 3D!)

Posted on September 30, 2013December 22, 2019 by spectacletheater

INTO THE THIRD DIMENSION WITH ZOE BELOFF

CHARMING AUGUSTINE (2005) in Stereoscopic 16mm!
SHADOW LAND OR LIGHT FROM THE OTHER SIDE (2000) in Stereoscopic 16mm!

MONDAY, OCTOBER 14 – 8:00PM

One night only! Director Zoe Beloff in attendance!

Spectacle is proud to welcome back Zoe Beloff, whose Coney Island Amateur Psychoanalytic Society Dream Films combined found footage, early Freudian analysis and the history of Coney Island into a series of films by turns hilarious, poignant and mysterious. She returns with further journeys into possession, hysteria and the virtual with two 16mm films in 3D! Rarely seen in this format, this is an opportunity to experience these films as originally intended, an opportunity not to miss.

CHARMING AUGUSTINE, 2005
Stereoscopic 16mm B/W, 40 min.

Beloff’s works regularly combine historical research and flights of imagination, both of which play into Charming Augustine, an exploration of the effect the invention of motion pictures had on psychology. Augustine, an inmate at the Parisian asylum the Salpetriere, suffers from hysterical attacks of a very theatrical nature. Over the course of the film, what begins as a medical document of a patient’s attacks changes into a subjective examination of her own experience as she becomes the “star” of the film at a time when notions of how cinema works had yet to be codified, finally concluding with her removing herself from the role she had created. Utilizing the stereoscope format similar to daguerreotype images, the viewer looks into a world where Sarah Bernhardt, D.W. Griffith and Eadweard Muybridge find connections in ways we in the 21st century might not otherwise find.

SHADOW LAND OR LIGHT FROM THE OTHER SIDE, 2000
Stereoscopic 16mm B/W, 32 min.

Inspired by Elizabeth d’Esperance’s autobiography, this investigation of spiritualism, projection (in multiple senses) and the virtual looks at how subjective notions of insanity can be. It’s also a look at the parallels between early cinema and stage magic, as “spook shows” incorporated lenses and projections to create the illusion of spirits interacting with the living. A young girl conjures imaginary friends, finding companionship until she is declared mad, later discovering her madness has a home in the vast spiritualist movement of the late 19th century. Compiled from magic lantern slides, stereoscopic recreations of documentary films and glass negatives, Shadow Land examines the female medium from both the passive sense (in that women were considered ideal subjects for possession due to their “docile” nature) and active, even transgressive sense (much of spiritualism connected with sexuality in ways terrifying to Victorian sensibilities).

MISS MUERTE (AKA THE DIABOLICAL DR. Z)

Posted on September 30, 2013December 22, 2019 by spectacletheater

MISS MUERTE (AKA THE DIABOLICAL DR. Z)
Dir. Jesus (Jess) Franco, 1966
84 min. France/Spain.
In French with English subtitles.

MONDAY, OCTOBER 28, 8PM

{*NOTE*: This screening was originally scheduled to have been presented by author/Illustrator/scholar Tenebrous Kate—of the web comic Super Coven and the film review site Love Train For The Tenebrous Empire—but her flight yesterday was unfortunately cancelled. She will be with us again soon!}

Taking cues from Feuillade and Franju, 1966’s MISS MUERTE—known to American audiences as THE DIABOLICAL DR. Z—is Jess Franco’s take on his often-examined “mad scientist rejected by the medical community is avenged by a love one, mostly through sexy cabaret numbers” theme, and one of his most succinct and accessible introductions to his work. Dr. Zimmer creates a mind control machine which his fellow scientists reject as mad, causing him to die of a heart attack. His death is avenged by his daughter Irma Zimmer (Mabel Karr), who uses the device to brainwash go-go dancer Nadia (Estella Blain) and use her to seduce and murder everyone she considers responsible for her father’s death. With dialogue by Oscar-winner (and Bunuel collaborator) Jean-Claude Carriere, MISS MUERTE is certainly a film for fans of such films as Les Yeux Sans Visage, but there’s plenty of characteristic Franco touches, from death by poisoned fingernails to Miss Death’s spider costume. With Franco regular Howard Vernon as one of the dismissive scientists and Franco himself as Inspector Tanner (it’s not really a Franco movie if he doesn’t at least have a cameo) and shot in beautiful black and white, this film is one Franco fans definitely won’t want to miss, but anyone looking for Halloween creeps should definitely find what they’re looking for here.

WHEN MICHAEL CALLS on 16mm!

Posted on September 29, 2013December 22, 2019 by spectacletheater

WHEN MICHAEL CALLS
Dir. Philip Leacock, 1972
USA. 73 mins. 16mm.

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 12 – 5 PM
ONE NIGHT ONLY!

There was a time in the universe, specifically 1972, when a TV movie starred Ben Gazzara and Michael Douglas. Together!

An ABC Movie of the Week, the plot concerned a woman Helen (Elizabeth Ashley) who begins to receive creepy phonecalls from her died-too-young nephew. “Auntie-my-Helen, why didn’t you pick me up? Am I DEAD?!” Her ex-husband Doremus (Gazzara), still hanging around because of joint custody of their daughter, and Craig (Douglas), brother of Michael, step up to try to figure out who can be making the calls. It goes beyond being a cruel prank when some of the locals wind up dead, by bee attack or other gruesome ways, and other secrets are unearthed about the death of Helen’s sister and Michael’s disappearance. The dread of the unknown caller and potential inherited insanity have most definitely been plot points in Law & Order or some other TV craptrap, but this movie has a frankness about it that is hard to come by in popular media these days. It is also genuinely creepy, and a bunch of fun. Come watch it with us on 16mm film!

OCTOBER MIDNIGHTS!

Posted on September 29, 2013December 22, 2019 by spectacletheater

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 4: SPECTOBER ROULETTE: HALLOWEEN EDITION
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 5: SHINOBI INFERNO

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 11: MANDATORY MIDNIGHT: BLOODSUCKERS FROM OUTER SPACE
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 12: HORROR BOOBS

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 18: DR. BLOODBATH (BLEEDING SKULL MIDNIGHTS)
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 19: OGROFF (BLEEDING SKULL MIDNIGHTS)

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 25: A POLISH VAMPIRE IN BURBANK
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 26: THE THIRD ANNUAL SPECTACLE SHRIEK SHOW

SPECTACLE ROULETTE: HALLOWEEN EDITION
Dir. ???, 19??/20??.
????. ??? min.
In any number of languages.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 4 – MIDNIGHT

If there are two things we love at The Spectacle they’ve got to be desperate games of chance where there can be no winner AND Halloween! So with that in mind…

IT’S SPECTACLE ROULETTE: HALLOWEEN EDITION!

Here’s how it works this time, similar rules EXCEPT, everything must be HALLOWEEN and or MONSTER related! Aerobics tapes for poltergeists, Yetti skate videos, Zbigniew Cybulski as Dracula, America’s Funniest Home Exorcisms – YOU BRING THE CRAZY, WE BRING THE CANDY CORN!

Here’s the the breakdown:

The first 6 people to show up with a movie will be given the chance to lobby by showing 5 minutes of that (HALLOWEEN AND OR MONSTER RELATED) film. After all 6 are shown, everyone votes and that’s what we watch!

If you want to participate, please do the following:

1. Show up at least 15 minutes BEFORE midnight with your proposed film. (Either a DVD or digital copy!)

2. Be prepared to introduce your 5 minute clip and lobby hard for your candidate.

3. COME CORRECT. Bring the craziest (HALLOWEEN and or MONSTER related) thing you can find, no half-steps!

4. Tell your friends/ have a jack-o-lantern carved in your soul!

Come get HALLOWEEN STARTED EARLY at SPECTACLE ROULETTE: HALLOWEEN EDITION!

SHINOBI INFERNO (AKA THE SHINOBI INFERNO: NINJAS IN HELL)
Dir. Hibachi Chicken Films, 1997
USA. 57 min.

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 5 – MIDNIGHT

“SHINOBI INFERNO tell(s) the tale of a man turned ninja who is forced to fight his way out of hell. Along with the ninja clan, he eventually must confront Satan in order to save the planet. These are the times of high adventure!” – courtesy HCF

They say “time heals all wounds.” They also say “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” They clearly were thinking about the MIDNIGHT programming at the SPECTACLE THEATER as they etched those sayings into the sides of caves and temples – particularly when we unearthed (i.e. finally unpacked that last U-Haul box in storage) and presented DEVILHELM. Yes, DEVILHELM, only one of two shot-on-video epics about ninjas vs. demons to come out of pre-Y2K Southwest Ohio. Why one out of two? Because DEVILHELM has a damn PREQUEL and it’s COMING TO SPECTACLE THIS SPECTOBER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

ZOMG it totally makes sense we’re showing this. Because it’s like DEVILHELM except like it’s all way more scrappy crappy, but like they go apeshit even harder and like !!!. Dude it’s like some shirtless bro-cult suburban backyard ethnographer’s WET DREAM. Checklist: the rundown EP MODE image quality desaturates and dreamily smears like Gen X’s version of sepia-tone; the WTF sampling of various uncited genre films and popular music pops ecstatic dissonance between the homemade and the million-dollar made; the macabre chewed-paper duct tape panty hose costumes evoke Rebecca Horn armed with smokeless tobacco and Black Cat firecrackers.

Why bother spending your garbage-bagged precious teenage years raiding and re-enacting someone else’s magnum opus? Blow that shit up and CREATE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE. Just don’t call it THE SHINOBI INFERNO: NINJAS IN HELL because that shit is TAKEN.

Warning: Scenes contain use of strobe lights.

MANDATORY MIDNIGHTS

Feeling left out? Can’t find common ground with your kids during those long, awkward dinners of meatloaf and self-loathing? Criminally unversed in the works of David A. Prior? Missing all those CANDY SNATCHERS references around the water cooler? Be honest, would you even be able to recognize an INTREPIDOS PUNK if you saw one?

Feeling woozy, it’s getting dark, this is the end…

NOT QUITE.

The Spectacle Presents MANDATORY MIDNIGHTS (aka Turkish Netflix)! Fall in love for the first time or all over again with the best of Spectacle Midnights! Every month The Spectacle is showcasing one of our beloved midnight classics like ROCK N ROLL HOTEL, KILLER WORKOUT, HOLOGRAM MAN and so many MORE!!! Don’t yawn your way through another screening of Rocky Horror, half heartedly throwing rice and lip syncing through tears of boredom. Come get kicked in the chest by the AMERICAN HUNTER and lose a quart of blood to a BLOODSUCKER FROM OUTER SPACE!

You haven’t seen a Spectacle Midnight until you’ve seen it twice! Come Get Weird and Stay Weird at MANDATORY MIDNIGHTS!

BLOODSUCKERS FROM OUTER SPACE
Dir. Glen Coburn, 1984.
USA. 79 min.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 11 – MIDNIGHT

In BLOODSUCKERS FROM OUTER SPACE a strange and eerie wind is blowing across the plains of Texas, and not the metaphorical kind. Local folks are being transformed into depraved, insatiable bloodsuckers by an extraterrestrial force found in the very air they breath and it’s up to a young would-be artist and his Camaro-driving cohort to stop them — in between hits of nitrous oxide, of course.

Texas has long been a hotbed for weird and inspired horror (Tobe Hooper) and low-budget insanity (Larry Buchanan) and BLOODSUCKERS FROM OUTER SPACE is no exception. Combining lonesome landscapes of Nowhere,
Texas, with parodic humor, sex, recreational drug use, martial arts, splatter, a rocking title song, and the occasional aside to the camera, Glen Coburn’s Bloodsuckers From Outer Space is low/no-budget regional horror at its finest. Come check out the film that put Texas on the map!

HORROR BOOBS BIRTHDAY BASH
Matt D’s 32nd Birthday

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 12 – MIDNIGHT

Spectacle Theater welcomes their favorite group of perverts back with open arms and full palms… we’re talking about us and we’re talking about jerking off, duh! This October 12th marks the 2 year anniversary of Horror Boobs Hosted Midnights at the Spectacle Theater as well as Horror Boobs main man Matt D’s 32 Birthday and this time we promise a viewing experience unlike none other! A loving tribute to one of our favorite forms of film the Horror Anthology with… The Ultimate Horror Anthology! We’ve taken some of our favorite segments from some classic (and some not so classic) horror anthologies and sewn them together into one big lumbering Franken-FILM! Monsters, Murder and Maybe a bunch of BOOBS… Who are we kidding? There will definitely be a bunch of BOOBS! So come down and celebrate the beginning of Horror
Boobs’ Terrible Twos at Spectacle with a never before seen mind melting original composite Horror Anthology. Bring presents or forever be a dick!

BLEEDING SKULL WEEKEND!
Book Launch & Screening: DOCTOR BLOODBATH and OGROFF
October 18th & 19th! MIDNIGHT

This weekend’s witching hours are very special indeed, creeps! Spectacle is proud to team up with BLEEDING SKULL (BLEEDINGSKULL.COM), the authority on trash-horror cinema from the VHS gutters, as they host 2 special screenings to celebrate their new book, BLEEDING SKULL! A 1980s TRASH-HORROR ODYSSEY.

Join authors Joseph A. Ziemba and Dan Budnik in person as they present DOCTOR BLOODBATH and OGROFF, projected from VHS!

BLEEDING SKULL! A 1980s TRASH-HORROR ODYSSEY features 300 in-depth reviews of movies that have escaped the radar of people with taste and tolerance. BLACK DEVIL DOLL FROM HELL, A NIGHT TO DISMEMBER, HEAVY METAL MASSACRE, THE LAST SLUMBER PARTY — this book gets deep into no-budget horror, from shot-on-video revelations (DOCTOR BLOODBATH) to forgotten theatrical casualties (FROZEN SCREAM). Jam-packed with rare photographs, advertisements, and VHS sleeves (most of which have never been seen), BLEEDING SKULL! is an edifying, laugh-out-loud guide through the dusty inventory of the greatest video store that never existed.

DOCTOR BLOODBATH
Dir. Nick Millard, 1988
VHS

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 18 – MIDNIGHT

Gordon runs a health clinic that specializes in abortions. After each operation, Gordon visits the patient’s home and murders them. Nick Millard’s methods (terrible compositions, non-stop jump cuts, complicated plotlines about nothing in particular) reject convention and the world-at-large. This 60 minute SOV opus caps off a long legacy that repeatedly transformed mundane elements into exhilarating, anti-human events. Did you know that abortions are achieved by waving an ear-flushing kit in front of a vagina?

OGROFF
Dir. Norbert Moutier aka N.G. Mount, 1983
VHS

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 19 – MIDNIGHT

Ogroff is a WWII veteran who wears a metal mask and ski cap. He murders anything that enters his magical forest. This includes a lumberjack and a Volkswagen Bug. A plotless slasher perversion from the foothills of France, OGROFF is a benchmark in the halls of accidental, no-fi surrealism caught on Super 8/video/whatever. If you agree that the epitome of life-enhancing cinema may lie somewhere between Eric Rohmer’s MY NIGHT AT MAUD’S and Doris Wishman’s A NIGHT TO DISMEMBER, Ogroff is your man.

A POLISH VAMPIRE IN BURBANK
Dir. Mark Pirro, 1985
USA, 84 minutes.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 25 – MIDNIGHT

In the Mad Libs tradition of film titling, A _____ _______ in __________ is one that usually yields some great, or at least memorable, results ( A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, An American Werewolf in London). So it’s no surprise that A POLISH VAMPIRE IN BURBANK is about as memorable and great as a Super 8 feature film can get. Part early Woody Allen gag film, part Playboy cartoon, part Nathan Schiff and Nanni Morretti, and owing an openly expressed debt to the work of John “The Schlocktapus!” Landis, Pirro’s POLISH VAMPIRE is a Petrie dish full of horror film, B movie and comedic cross contamination which faces vampire cinema inundation and takes the next logical step: reflexive vampire film with vampire protagonist.

Oh, and it’s very, very cheap. Like $2,500 cheap. Like so cheap EDDIE DEEZEN walked off the set. Yeah, too cheap for Eddie fucking Deezen.

At first glance A POLISH VAMPIRE IN BURBANK appears to be another filmic curio so abominably cheap that it’s enough to stare at the big beautiful super 8 grain and contemplate the phenomenological there-ness
of it all (see DRACULA DIRTY OLD MAN for more). But like all great no budget films, the coarseness of the materials and method fuse with authorial ingenuity and passion, and quickly Pirro reveals himself to be a filmmaker with a voice and A POLISH VAMPIRE ends up being an oddly tender film experience. And maybe what’s even more odd, this film was seen by A LOT of people and made a A LOT of money (relatively speaking) owing to the then hungry and booming home video market.

Mark Pirro ( taking over after Mr. Deezen split) plays Dupah, a young vampire who’s content to watch TV all night in his bat spangled pajamas. Dupah’s hollow cheeked vampire daddy decides it’s time for Dupah to start fending for himself though and make that painful transition into vampire-adulthood. So Dupah cruises LA and meets a nice young lady, Delores, who just happens to LOVE vampire movies! But Dupah isn’t the old school lady killer his dad is, he’s sensitive and just can’t seem to bring himself to bite Delores. A gag-filled misadventure follows in LA’s moribund world of swinging singles as Dupah tries to follow his heart and his fangs, all before sunrise!

This is no budget super 8 horror comedy at its finest! The legendary A POLISH VAMPIRE IN BURBANK! Only at The Spectacle! Only at MIDNIGHT!

STRONGMAN w/ Director Zachary Levy!

Posted on September 29, 2013December 22, 2019 by spectacletheater

STRONGMAN
Dir. Zachary Levy, 2011.
USA. 113 min.

MONDAY, OCTOBER 8 – 8:00 PM
One night only! Director Zachary Levy in attendance!

Strongman tells the story of Stanley “Stanless Steel” Pleskun, “The Strongest Man in the World at Bending Steel and Metal”. A man who can lift dump trucks and bend US pennies with his fingers, but struggles daily to transcend his chaotic New Jersey home life. Aging parents, an alcoholic brother, a timid beauty of a girlfriend, show-biz agents and strength rivals; pressure mounts on Stan as he feels time slipping away. However, what starts as a portrait of an eccentric outsider soon becomes a deeply universal story about trying to find a better life in the scraps of modern times.

This screening is in conjunction with the October 15th release of Strongman on DVD, available here.

“an outsider tale of lilting poignancy” New York Times

“I watched with quiet fascination” – Roger Ebert

“A strange and strangely beautiful movie” John Anderson, Variety

HABIT with Larry Fessenden in attendance!

Posted on September 29, 2013December 22, 2019 by spectacletheater

HABIT
Dir. Larry Fessenden, 1995.
USA. 113 min.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 11 – 8:00 PM

One night only! Director/star Larry Fessenden in attendance!

Spectacle is pleased to welcome acclaimed horror filmmaker Larry Fessenden for a special screening of HABIT, his breakout 1995 independent vampire film.

Breaking up has never quite sucked like this: shortly after splitting with his girlfriend, Sam (Fessenden) heads to a party, where a mysterious woman, Anna, catches his attention. After losing each other, the pair reconnects, and Sam quickly finds himself bewitched. While Sam continues to cope with the recent death of his father, breakup of his relationship, and struggles with drinking, he increasingly finds himself lost in his relationship with the seemingly omnipresent Anna, even as their relationship moves beyond the usual kink.

Haunting, funny, and insightful, HABIT brilliantly mixes metaphors for relationships, vampirism, co-dependency, and addiction, all wrapped in a vital independent filmmaking ethos. Seen today, it not only represents the best of a certain kind of New York filmmaking, but is one of the great unheralded portraits of the city. Recognizably shot on location in and around the East Village, Lower East Side, Soho, NoLIta, and Battery Park, it’s location provides a crucial layer within rich contemporary urban horror story. HABIT is a must-see.

WORLDS WITHOUT NUMBER: THE FILMS OF STEPHEN GROO

Posted on September 28, 2013December 22, 2019 by spectacletheater

WORLDS WITHOUT NUMBER: THE FILMS OF STEPHEN GROO
A Shoot the Lobster event
Organized by Jason Metcalf (will be in attendance!)

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 9 – 7:30 PM & 10:00 PM

Spectacle Theater and Shoot the Lobster are pleased to present a selection of music videos, shorts, and a feature film by the Utah based filmmaker STEPHEN GROO. Many of the selected works will be screened publicly for the first time.

Creating his work as Utah Wolf Productions for over fourteen years in the city of Provo Utah, Stephen Groo has been described by the filmmaker and artist Chris Coy as “an enigma—a highly prolific filmmaker with a body of work that speaks to his force of will and creative vision while exposing the limitations of the backyard blockbuster. His 125+ short films, music videos, feature films, and training videos have it all: mermaids, vampires, elves, angels, sailors, schoolgirls, devils, damsels, zombies, soldiers, she-hulks, and real-life action heroes. These figures populate worlds without number, a pastiche of popular culture collaged from Michael Bay movie posters and Saturday morning cartoons.

As a viewer, it’s natural to laugh at the limitations of a film by Stephen Groo. We laugh as we recognize the obvious imperfections in his homespun narrative fabrics. We laugh at the production gap between Hollywood and Utah County. We laugh because Fantasy is uglier than casting agents have led us to believe. We laugh (nervously) at the possibility of our own inclusion as actors in a Utah Wolf Production. We laugh, immensely pleased with our advantaged position as passive spectators. Like the royals in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, we laugh as Bottom’s amateurish theatre troupe faithfully performs “a most lamentable comedy.” But if we succumb to laughter only, we miss what’s crucial: the implicit belief that art can save the world. That imagination is real.

Art is, in fact, saving the world for Stephen Groo. It’s saving the world for his players, too. It’s saving all of our worlds—circumscribing them inside a shared universe that desperately needs Fantasy to fight back the Dark Lords of Reality. Like Bottom, Groo freely cavorts with the humans and the fairies, modeling the transformative potential of art and the euphoric freedom of abandonment to the wildness of make-believe.

From “Groo and His Players” Chris Coy, Utah Biennial Catalogue, 2013. Utah Biennial: Mondo Utah curated by Aaron Moulton at Utah Museum of Contemporary Art

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 9 – 7:30 PM

SELECTIONS FROM MUSIC VIDEOS, VOLUME ONE
Dir. Stephen Groo, 2010
USA. 15 min.

From clones to European Men in Black, this selection from Utah Wolf Productions’ Music Videos Volume 1 features some of the earliest works of Stephen Groo. The special effects and 3D animations are out of this world. Sit back and enjoy the ride!

RUBI
Dir. Stephen Groo, 2012
USA. 75 min.

The most recent Stephen Groo film, Rubi is the story of a young woman who has everything taken from her that she holds dear by the evil criminal Richard Lions (Dallin Haws). After mourning the loss of her family, and under the guidance of the skilled mercenary Henry (Stephen Groo), Rubi (Hailey Nebeker) trains to destroy her nemesis, ultimately preparing for the battle of her life. Utah Wolf Productions has announced that Rubi will their “last full length feature”.

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 9 – 10:00 PM

MUSIC VIDEOS, VOLUME 2
Dir. Stephen Groo, 2010
USA. 28 min.

Music Videos, Volume 2 features some of the best music videos of Stephen Groo. In Tribute to Utah, (publicly broadcasted on a local Utah television news station) Groo travels with his wife and children to a significant number of towns in the Beehive State in order to stand in front of welcome signs that bear the name of each municipality, all in sync with his lyrical adaptation to the Beach Boys’ Kokomo. Other music videos from Volume 2 feature Groo and company dancing and singing to popular songs as sailors, boy bands, fairies, and frogs.

LION BEAR WHALE?
Dir. Stephen Groo, 2008
USA. 4 min.

Lion Bear Whale? was Utah Wolf Productions’ first commercial project, commissioned by the Provo Utah based band, Mathematics Etcetera. The video literally interprets Mathematics’ song by casting the band members as a lion, a bear, and a whale as they sing lyrics that coincide with their costumes. Lion Bear Whale? is one of Utah Wolf Productions’ only works that does not feature Stephen Groo.

TALE OF MERMAIDS
Dir. Stephen Groo, 2006
USA. 4 min.

In Tale of Mermaids, a New York City reporter Will (Aaron Parker) is sent to Ireland to catch the story a lifetime. While investigating the legend of mermaids, fantasy and reality meet as he falls in love with a mysterious woman who isn’t what she seems. Will must decide what matters most, his heart or his career.

SHIKITO
Dir. Stephen Groo, 2007
USA. 10 min.

Anime realms come to life in this classic Stephen Groo film pitch trailer. While mourning and forgiving himself for the loss of his wife, Shikito must face his evil rival Drachen with the aid of his friends Connor and Tenki. Filmed in the snowy alpine mountains of Utah, Shikito is filled with action-packed samurai sword fighting, suspenseful confrontations and powerful energy balls.

EDITH CARLMAR: The Comedies

Posted on September 27, 2013December 22, 2019 by spectacletheater

A singularly witty and dexterous auteur, Norway’s pioneering female filmmaker Edith Carlmar is ripe for a reappraisal in world cinema. Carlmar and her husband Otto co-managed their own production company, Carlmar Film A/S, with which they collaborated with a diverse community of technicians, artists and performers – including the then-teenage Liv Ullman, whose debut lead at 21 was Edith’s final film as director, The Wayward Girl. Making ten movies in as many years, the Carlmars built an astonishing resume in the 1950s before abandoning filmmaking forever when they were at the top of their game.

Today Edith’s legacy suggests a nearly clear split between flinty, ice-cold film noirs – often evincing a rare female perspective – and romantic comedies that’ll make your jaw drop even today with their sexual candor. She was in particular a master of eroticized close-ups and devastating quiet moments, never flinching from emotions (pleasurable or painful) most American directors wouldn’t touch with a fork.

That said, Carlmar Film A/S was an unabashedly commercial enterprise, at a time of deeply felt prudishness in Norway. The Carlmars made hits for a popular audience, and proudly paid all their grants back to the government. Never betraying her blue-collar roots, Edith left the distribution rights to her entire catalog to FILMVETERANENE, a union of Norwegian industry veterans. Alongside them, Spectacle is thrilled to team up with the Norwegian Film Institute to blow the dust off these classics of Scandinavian cinema this autumn.

( Series poster by Adria Mercuri )

LEND ME YOUR WIFE
(Lån meg din kone)
dir. Edith Carlmar, 1958
83 mins. Norway.
In Norwegian with English subtitles.

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 5 – 7:30pm
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 15 – 10pm

Bjorn, a clueless and coiffeured young executive in Norway’s most prestigious company for all things baby – toys, diapers, pacifiers – is angling for a promotion. There’s just one little problem: his company trades on an especially conservative imprimateur, and no young executive can advance himself without proving beyond a shadow of a doubt his own family-man status. For poor Bjorn, this means going out and finding a fake “wife” whom he can bring to company functions. Anita, the wife of Bjorn’s woebegotten best friend, is more than game – but her addition to the seedy society of top-brass cocktail parties proves too much for both her husbands (fake and otherwise) to bear. As the young businessman falls deeper and deeper into his “innocent” white lie, his “wife” becomes the toast of the company for the widowed, horndog CEO – while his daughter falls head over heels for Bjorn, in a classic “complication comedy”.

Carlmar’s final comedy approaches male-female relations with a razor-sharp skepticism, immediately sniffing out both the perverse (the boss’ obsession with his young, hotshot executive’s sexpot wife) and profound (Bjorn’s longing for a sweet, innocent girl) in equal measure. The filmmaker pulls no punches in her depiction of a backwards society that calls on men to be fake-macho and women to be fake-whorish in order to achieve higher career aspirations, the only relief doled out to the audience who are (rather generously) in on all the jokes. Lend Me Your Wife is a bruising, scintillating comedy in the tradition of Billy Wilder and Preston Sturges, sure to resonate with anyone ducking for cover in the eternal war between men and women.

FJOLS TIL FJELLS
(Morons in the Mountains)
Dir. Edith Carlmar, 1957
90 mins. Norway.
In Norwegian with English subtitles.

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 8th – 10pm
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 13th – 7:30pm

“You are a disgrace to the Norwegian hotel trade.”

Fjols til Fjells concerns an overworked concierge named Poppe (Leif Juster) at the swankiest ski lodge in the country, who takes on a bellboy to mitigate his stresses. Unbeknownst to Poppe, young “Rudolf” is actually Ruth, the bored socialite daughter of the lodge’s owner, out to prove herself to her skeptical parents and get a taste of the working stiff’s life. At the same time, renowned actor and playboy Teddy Winter checks in – ostensibly for some fresh mountain air, but in fact to prey on his legions of adoring female fans on skiing holiday.

A dour ornithologist checks in as well – only wrinkle is, Poppe can’t tell him and the movie star apart (both characters are played by the same actor.) Hijinks, highballs and even a little romance ensue. Warm-hearted yet remarkably saucy, Fjols Til Fjells was one of the most biggest box office successes in Norwegian cinema and has endured as a cherished TV staple every Easter.

BETTER THAN THEIR REPUTATION
(Bedre enn sitt rykyte)
Dir. Edith Carlmar, 1955
87 mins. Norway.
In Norwegian with English subtitles.

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 2nd – 7:30pm
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 20th – 7:30pm

A high school story every bit akin to Dazed and Confused or Can’t Hardly Wait, Better Than Their Reputationfollows a sweet-natured French student named Dag in love with his 20-something teacher Tone. But Dag’s love is complicated by his hard-charging overachiever ex, Karin – and her ongoing liaison with Roald, Dag’s best friend. Dag’s classmates are quick to tease, but the film explores the ins and outs of the concept that their skepticism might have more to do with jealousy.

The screenplay (written by Carlmar and her husband Otto) doesn’t miss a step, giving every character just enough gravity to make every class period and Friday night get-together loaded with the potential for an emotional – or comedic – blowout. Encircling the exam-obsessed final month of senior year, Carlmar paints a tender portrait of solidarity among friends nevertheless subject to change. Her teenagers are neither monsters nor squeaky-clean; just, the boys are boorish, and the girls are bored.

CAPITALIST VAMPIRES & KINKY WITCHES: Corrado Farina’s Counterculture Horror

Posted on September 27, 2013December 22, 2019 by spectacletheater

In the spirit of our annual Spectober horror film series, we present a retrospective on the Italian director Corrado Farina. Primarily known in his native Italy for his work as a novelist and a plethora of directing gigs outside of the film industry (television, news, documentary, industrial, advertising, etc), Farina also made two feature horror films in the early 70s that perfectly encapsulate the era’s counterculture headiness in surreal fashion.

Following a stint at an advertising agency as a copywriter and commercial director, Farina moved to Rome to concentrate on pitching films. THEY HAVE CHANGED THEIR FACE, his first feature, transported the Transylvanian Dracula myth to the Italian countryside for a scathing satire of ‘vampires-as-capitalists.’ His follow-up, BABA YAGA, was even more ambitious, adapting adult comic legend Guido Crepex’s surreal adventures of sexy Valentina and her be-witching compatriots to the big screen.

Farina faced difficulty in getting his third feature off the ground (the subject mater of his proposed third film- a variation on The Phantom of the Opera– eventually became his first novel, A Place In The Dark). Following his dissatisfaction, he soon returned to the world of advertising and documentary, and to this day remains active in Italy’s media landscape: in 2006, Farina and his son, Alberto, completed a documentary called “Motore!” designed to be shown in Turin’s “Museo del cinema” during the Winter Olympic Games!

His successful career notwithstanding, it’s a shame that Farina wasn’t able to secure financing for a third proper horror effort, as both THEY HAVE CHANGED THEIR FACE and BABA YAGA are unique anomalies in Italian horror. Less concerned with scares than exploring themes like anti-establishment and repressed sexuality, Farina employed the classic horror tropes of vampires and witches to channel the political, social, and sexual turmoil of early 70s Italy into two deliciously strange and subversive films.

Working with Italian distributor Videa CDE and US distributor Blue Underground, Spectacle is proud to present a two-film retrospective on a bold but neglected genre contortionist.

Special thanks to Corrado Farina, Alberto Farina, Federica Funaro, and William Lustig

THEY HAVE CHANGED THEIR FACE
(aka …Hanno Cambiato Faccia)
Dir: Corrado Farina, 1971.
91 min. Italy.
In Italian with English subtitles.

Special thanks to Videa CDE

U.S. PREMIERE!
WITH CUSTOM ENGLISH SUBTITLES CREATED BY SPECTACLE!

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 4TH – 7:30PM
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 20TH – 10PM

Mild-mannered Dr. Alberto Valle is a diligent but low-level employee of a car company. Out of the blue, he is summoned to the estate of Giovanni Nosferatu, the company owner, to discuss a potential large promotion. Following an encounter with a topless hippie hitchhiker, Dr. Valle arrives at the gothic mansion and exchanges pleasantries with Nosferatsu, but then the boss mysteriously disappears for large chunks of time, leaving Dr. Valle to enjoy the company of Nosferatu’s obedient, extremely pale secretary Corrina (played by Deep Red‘s Geraldine Hooper). Soon enough though, Dr. Valle discovers a casket crypt on the outskirts of the villa and a mysterious chamber with newborn children and a large book containing his own baby photo with an inscription: C.E.O.

Complimented by classic vampire film staples (endless heavy fog, superstitious villagers), Farina manages to breathe new life into the genre with a strong current of sly humor throughout the film, including an eerily foretelling running gag involving advertising slogans blasting through speakers whenever Dr Valle uses a household appliance. However, the film’s dark nature comes not from the amount of on-screen deaths, but its scathing political tone.

While infused with a devilish wit and satirical edge (including a showstopper boardroom scene that brilliantly riffs on organized religion, deceptive sloganeering, legalized drug use, Jean-Luc Godard, Federico Fellini, AND Marquis de Sade), THEY HAVE CHANGED THEIR FACE unveils itself as a harsh critique of consumerism as vampirism, portraying corporate heads as bloodsucking capitalists hellbent on ensuring marketplace dominance and the eradication of individual freedom. Instead of biting necks to keep living, its to convert the free spirits to a submissive, business-minded lifestyle. Ultimately, Farina suggests the true horror is that the current system will never be defeated, but inevitably grow and accumulate more lobotomized victims.

Unreleased in America for over 40 years, Spectacle is proud to host the US premiere of a vital piece of 70s Italian horror cinema, complete with custom English subtitles created exclusively for these screenings!

BABA YAGA
(aka Kiss Me Kill Me)
Dir: Corrado Farina, 1973.
91 min. Italy.
Dubbed into English.

Special thanks to Blue Underground

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 3RD – 10PM
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 27TH – 7:30PM

Loosely based on the incredible black & white erotic fumetti comics of Guido Crepax, Farina brings to life the story of Valentina (doe eyed Isabella de Funes), a liberated fashion photographer who finds herself unwittingly thrown into a psychedelic nightmare of sapphic proportions.

On her way home from a soiree one evening, Valentina is almost struck by a vehicle while attempting to save a stray dog. It’s there she crosses paths with the peculiar Baba Yaga (legendary sex symbol Carroll Baker), a mysterious, brooding woman who soon fixates upon her. Unsettled by their encounter, Valentina begins to suffer a surreal collection of erotic and fetish-inspired dreams featuring executions, Nazi soldiers and dark holes with no bottom.

One of the most stylish and hallucinatory horror offerings of the 70s, BABA YAGA sees Farina trying out bold editing techniques (including a sex scene that incorporates Crepax’s comic strips) and interweaving Valentina’s reality with her dreams until their indistinguishable, leading to a kinky and mind-bending climax.

Awash in impeccable, zeitgeist-y costume design and a slick layer of soft core playfulness, BABA YAGA is Euro-mod-sleaze at its most entertaining and bizarre.