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Spectacle MANDATORY MIDNIGHTS presents: I BURY THE LIVING

Posted on June 8, 2013December 22, 2019 by spectacletheater

Spectacle MANDATORY MIDNIGHTS presents:
I BURY THE LIVING
Dir: Albert Band, 1958.
76 min. USA.

FRIDAY, JUNE 14TH – MIDNIGHT
ONE NIGHT ONLY!

Albert Band contributed so much to the world of B-movies, not least of all his two sons, the Romulus and Remus of low budget genre cinema throughout the 80s and 90s, Charles and Richard Band. Long before Parasite, Re-Animator, Ghoulies, Puppet Master and the Full Moon video store onslaught of the 90s and 2000s, there was I BURY THE LIVING, a taphophilic delight starring Richard Boone (Have Gun Will Travel and the voice of Smaug in the 1977 Rankin & Bass version of The Hobbit) and directed by the head of the Band bunch, Albert.

I BURY THE LIVING plays like an E.C. horror comic come to morbid life. A new caretaker at the Immortal Hill Cemetery begins to believe he holds the power of life and death in his hands. When the pins used as grave markers on the ominous cemetery map appear to predict the deaths of those around him. Is it merely coincidence or are sinister forces at work?

A tense and atmospheric descent into madness, I BURY THE LIVING is a lean, low budget treat with art direction that’s equal parts Man Ray and poverty row. A must for lovers of great B movies and creepy cemeteries!

FMC PRESENTS

Posted on June 8, 2013December 22, 2019 by spectacletheater

The Film-Makers’ Cooperative Presents:
16MM FILMS BY JENNIFER REEVES & MM SERRA
1995-2002.
Approx. 43 min. USA.

FRIDAY, JUNE 28TH – 8PM
ARTIST IN PERSON!
ONE NIGHT ONLY!

Spectacle is proud to welcome back MM Serra to present an evening’s worth of rarely seen queer art-core on 16mm from the Film-Makers’ Co-op’s archives.

THE GIRL’S NERVY
Dir: Jennifer Reeves, 1995.
5 min. USA.

Cut, pasted, painted and cracked film frames. A rhythmic play of flickering film elements.

SOI MEME
Dir: MM Serra, 1995.
6 min. USA.

An erotic dance performance by Goddess Rosemary; soundtrack by Zeena Parkins.

DARLING INTERNATIONAL
Dir: Jennifer Reeves & MM Serra, 1999.
22 min. USA.

In noir New York, a metal worker’s femme fantasies are explored. Starring Jennifer Reeves and MM Serra.

“An evocative work whose sexual sadomasochistic scenario, grainy visual texture and layered soundtrack render it highly tactile, fairly begging to be touched.” -Shannon Kelly, Sundance Film Festival

FEAR OF BLUSHING
Dir: Jennifer Reeves, 2001.
6 min. USA.

7200 painted frames flash by “suggesting a cinematic free-association.” Recognizable shapes flirt with the eye behind color and a textured veil.

DOUBLE YOUR PLEASURE
Dir: MM Serra, 2002.
4 min. USA.
w/ sound by Jennifer Reeves

Part of the “Ad It Up” series of commercial parodies, and an homage to Andy Warhol’s Kiss. Starring Jennifer Reeves.

Jennifer Reeves is a New York-based filmmaker working primarily on 16mm film. Reeves was named one of the “Best 50 Filmmakers Under 50” in the film journal Cinema Scope in the spring of 2012. Her films have shown extensively, from the Berlin, New York, Vancouver, London, Sundance, and Hong Kong Film Festivals to many micro-cinemas in the US and Canada, the Robert Flaherty Seminar, and the Museum of Modern Art. Reeves has made experimental films since 1990. She does her own writing, cinematography, editing, and sound design. Her subjective and personal films push the boundaries of film through optical-printing and direct-on-film techniques. Reeves has consistently explored themes of memory, mental health and recovery, feminism and sexuality, landscape, wildlife, and politics from many different angles.

MM Serra is an experimental film/videomaker, curator, author, and Executive Director of the Film-Makers’ Cooperative, the world’s oldest distributor of independent media. She has produced, directed and edited more than fourteen works. Her own films, as well as her curated programs, have been screened at the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of Art, the Centre Pompidou, Cinematheque Francais, the London Film Festival, the Berlin International Film Festival, and the Oberhausen International Short Film Festival. Her most recent piece, BITCH BEAUTY, premiered at the 2011 New York Film Festival. Titillating, sumptuous, and always subversive, Serra’s short films focus on alternative cultures and intimate moments. They are simultaneously eye-opening and awe-inducing. Whether creating documentary portraits or colorfully dynamic exposés, Serra never fails to go where you would least expect.

The Film-Makers’ Cooperative is the oldest and largest archive and distributor of independent and avant-garde films in the world. Created by artists in 1961, as the distribution branch of the New American Cinema Group, the collection holds more than 5,000 films, videos and DVDs. The FMC is an active non-profit organization that hosts screenings and workshops for the public. MM Serra has been its Executive Director since 1991.

EPHEMERA: ACT NATURAL

Posted on June 8, 2013December 22, 2019 by spectacletheater

EPHEMERA: ACT NATURAL
1949-1972.
Approx. 80 min. USA.

SATURDAY, JUNE 8TH – 7:30PM
SATURDAY, JUNE 29TH – 7:30PM

No outlet served post-war American culture’s ebullient pride and prosperity better than that of the now-infamous educational film. Today these didactic artifacts are relegated to sideshow status by the likes of Pee-Wee’s Playhouse, Weird Al, MST3K and Adult Swim, all of whom freely lampoon these easy targets for their comically dated sensibilities.

Our monthly EPHEMERA program aims to present these documents to a contemporary audience in perhaps a more even light, ideally free from the ironic framing that can easily overwhelm some of their more interesting details. Fortunately, the humor is irrepressible.

June’s installment ACT NATURAL compiles moments from the common theme of psychological and emotional unease, particularly in adolescence. How best can Tom, Dick and Jane navigate the rough terrain of daily social interaction, family dynamics and self-actualization? If there must be something wrong with me, are things ever going to be okay?

Preceding the feature collage will be the short WHY DOESN’T CATHY EAT BREAKFAST? (1972, 4m, Color, USA), a puzzling and surreal PSA that manages to eerily dance around its core theme of childhood body consciousness.

Sources for ACT NATURAL include: Angry Boy (1950), Boy With A Knife (1956), Facing Reality (1954), Habit Patterns (1954), Jealousy (1954), Keeping Mentally Fit (1952), The Outsider (1951), Self-Conscious Guy (1951), Stage Fright (1949) and more!

Special thanks to the Internet Archive, Rick Prelinger and everyone at the Prelinger Archive.

Rick Prelinger began collecting “ephemeral films”—all those educational, industrial, amateur, advertising, or otherwise sponsored—in 1982, amassing over 60,000 (all on physical film) before his Prelinger Archive was acquired by the Library of Congress in 2002. Since then, the collection has grown and diversified: now it exists in library form in San Francisco and is also gradually being ported online to the Internet Archive (http://archive.org), where 3,801 of its films are currently hosted (as of this writing).

Of course, the content of the Prelinger Archive’s films varies in accord with the variety of mankind. Historic newsreels, mid-century automobile infomercials, psychological experiments, medical procedurals, big oil advertisements, military recruitment videos, political propagandas, personal home videos, celebrity exposes, amateur narratives, scientific studies, war bulletins, instructional films, special interest op-eds, safety lessons, hobby guides, travel destination profiles and private industry productions all sit comfortably together in one marginalized category.

AN EVENING WITH IAN SVENONIUS

Posted on June 8, 2013December 22, 2019 by spectacletheater

AN EVENING WITH IAN SVENONIUS

FRIDAY, JUNE 21ST – 8PM
ONE NIGHT ONLY!

Ian Svenonius, legendary figurehead of the D.C. Punk/DIY scene as well as noted author, will be appearing IN PERSON at Spectacle to present his newly completed short film entitled WHAT IS A GROUP?. According to Svenonius himself, the film “will dismantle previously held ideas about all society’s dearly held conceits. Not for the faint hearted!” Don’t say we didn’t warn you!

Afterwards, the floor will be open for discussion, pressing questions, or fanboy/girl musings!

Ian Svenonius was most notably a member of the bands Nation of Ulysses The Make-Up, Weird War, and Chain & The Gang; author of Supernatural Strategies for Forming a Rock ‘n Roll Group, Psychic Soviet, and host of the VICE talk show Soft Focus.

THE PATRIOT GAME

Posted on June 6, 2013December 22, 2019 by spectacletheater

THE PATRIOT GAME
Dir: Arthur MacCaig, 1979.
99 min. Ireland/France.

MONDAY, JUNE 17TH – 8PM
ONE NIGHT ONLY!

Special Thanks to Icarus Films and Donal Foreman

How to wield a camera in the service of a struggle? Not only to analyze, but to further it? How to implement montage as a weapon? To aid the insurgents, narratively and materially? Most importantly, how to get organized? How to win?

These are the critical questions that haunt The Patriot Game, through the historical lens of the Irish nationalist movement. It is not only the story of a people fighting for autonomy, but also of a documentarian following the irresistible call towards becoming a partisan.

“In The Patriot Game we try to show what is, in reality, happening in Ireland, to show what is certainly the most extensive, determined working-class struggle in Europe. And apart from the Basques and their organization ETA, it is the only struggle in which the entire population, armed and mobilized, has successfully faced up to the most sophisticated and brutal counterinsurgency techniques ever experimented with in an industrial, urban society.” -Arthur MacCaig, director, 1979

“This extraordinary and moving documentary reviews ten years of armed warfare by the IRA and places today’s headlines in their proper political and economic context. Through vivid footage of street battles and interviews with participants, THE PATRIOT GAME forcefully debunks the twin myths that the IRA is a ‘terrorist organization’ fighting ‘a religious war.'”—Kevin J. Kelley, The Guardian

“Informative, vivid, and partisan. The footage of urban guerillas is extraordinary. I’ve seen a number of films on Northern Ireland, none have depicted the situation this graphically.”—J. Hoberman, Village Voice

SWEET 16 PRESENTS: SYBIL

Posted on June 3, 2013December 22, 2019 by spectacletheater

SYBIL
Dir: Daniel Petrie, 1976.
198 min. USA.

SUNDAY, JUNE 16TH – 6:00PM
ONE NIGHT ONLY!
ON 16MM!

Based on a book almost as heavily groped by teenage girls as “Go Ask Alice”, the made-for-TV movie Sybil stars Sally Field as the titular split-personality basket case. Substitute teaching in New York City, Sybil finds the blackouts that have afflicted her for her entire life are coming on stronger – one minute she’s leading a game of Follow the Leader, next she’s knee-deep in a Central Park pond.

Her tendency of putting her wrist through windows lands her in the hospital and in the care of Dr. Cornelia Wilbur (Joanne Woodward, herself a multiple personality alum with The Three Faces of Eve) who quickly realizes she’s going to need a bigger band-aid. Quickly the other personalities start to emerge – Peggy, the frightened child; Vicky, the francophonic sophisticate; and Marcia, the suicidal artist, among others. Dr. Wilbur gets them talking, and here your own nightmares can begin as we’re introduced to Hattie, a mother that makes Joan Crawford seem straight-up cuddly. Actress Martine Bartlett plays the character with such playful menace, like a child torturing a reptile. Shot by cinematographer Mario Tosi, the very same year he did Carrie.

Hosts Tom Blunt and Cristina Cacioppo will guide you through the fugue induced by this three-hour undertaking. There will be snacks and an intermission, so you won’t have to hold your water.

FROM THE EAST

Posted on June 3, 2013July 23, 2015 by spectacletheater

FROM THE EAST
(aka D’Est)
Dir: Chantal Akermam, 1993.
110 min. France.
In French with English Subtitles.

Presented with Icarus Films

SUNDAY, JUNE 9TH – 10:00 PM
TUESDAY, JUNE 18TH – 8:00 PM

From footage gathered in the course of her travels throughout the former eastern bloc, Akerman created FROM THE EAST (D’Est), a still, solemn depiction of the twilight of Soviet society. The film’s pace and rhythm carry a unique message about a way of life that is now lost. By stepping away from the large political narratives of the Cold War and relying solely on the power of images and sequences, she created a film that will forever serve as the antibody to all easy generalizations about communist society.

MERCANO EL MARCIANO

Posted on June 3, 2013December 22, 2019 by spectacletheater

MERCANO EL MARCIANO
(aka Mercano the Martian)
Dir: Juan Antin, 2002.
73 min. Argentina.
In Spanish with English subtitles.

FRIDAY, JUNE 7TH – 7:30PM
SUNDAY, JUNE 9TH – 7:30PM
THURSDAY, JUNE 20TH – 10:00PM

In this often rude, adult-oriented, breathlessly-paced animated film, after a space-probe from Earth squashes his “dog,” angry alien Mercano flies his saucer to Earth—only to find a place so dysfunctional and illogical that it would give Mr. Spock a nervous breakdown!

The film is a twist on the “fish out of water” and “Martian Invasion” tropes, and uses the spaceman’s naiveté of our greedy and malevolent ways to drive the humor. Stranded in Buenos Aires, the sad and lonely Martian (who looks like a cross between a skinny Charlie Brown and a pickle) wanders through a city that has been devastated by poverty, violence and uncertainty, all the while chased by trigger-happy cops.

In an attempt to “phone home,” the extraterrestrial steals a laptop computer, but instead winds up befriending a Star Trek-obsessed teenager he meets on-line. Meanwhile, the kid’s yuppie-executive father is plotting total global consumer enslavement—and he intends to use Mercano’s outer space technology to get it.

The first independent Argentine full-length animated film in 30 years, MERCANO EL MARCIANO was originally created as a series of shorts for Argentina’s MTV. The film is certainly in a similar vein as South Park and Beavis & Butthead—but not just because of the outrageous gross-out humor, deliberately crude animation and propensity for musical numbers, but as a barbed and absurdist take on contemporary society.

Created while Argentina’s economy was melting down, the film has even greater resonance today with a global recession and nightmarish austerity measures forced down people’s throats ruining social services. “Now after ten years, the whole world started to collapsed and I am not surprised at all,” said director Juan Antin recently.

Featured in multiple international film festivals, MERCANO EL MARCIANO was the winner of the Audience Award at Spain’s Catalonian International Film Festival in 2002, as well as the Special Jury Mention at the Festival du Film d’Animation Annecy 2002 in France.

BETTER THAN JAWS WEEKEND

Posted on June 3, 2013December 22, 2019 by spectacletheater

Sometimes the success of a film can spawn a whole sub-genre. In the case of Jaws, for all its evil impact it did have one very positive effect:JAWS RIP-OFFS! And this weekend at Spectacle we have the best and most notorious of the bunch.

BETTER THAN JAWS WEEKEND! ONLY AT MIDNIGHT! ONLY AT SPECTACLE!

GRIZZLY
Dir: William Girdler, 1976.
90 min. USA.

FRIDAY, JUNE 7TH – MIDNIGHT
ONE NIGHT ONLY!

The film’s title star will be in attendance for Q&A with William Girdler expert Jon Dieringer of Screen Slate.

In 1975, Universal Pictures released a movie called Jaws. Okay, that’s pretty cool if you’re into the beach, I guess.

BUT in 1976 something really amazing happened. William Girdler (The Manitou, Day of the Animals), a filmmaker with the uncanny knack of improving upon the efforts of others created the masterpiece of BEAR-sploitation: GRIZZLY.

So, basically plot-wise we have … well, have you ever seen Jaws? Well, this is Jaws with a GRIZZLY BEAR — JAWS WITH CLAWS!

Tourists are out in record numbers to enjoy some camping and hiking in a National Park, but deforestation, pollution, and other terrible things that humans do when they go camping have caused this bear to lose its damn mind, and now this 7-foot mother is tearing the arms and legs off nature lovers faster than you can say “pic-a-nic basket.” Now, it’s up to Christopher George (City of the Living Dead, Graduation Day) to convince the greedy park supervisor to evacuate the park and get the grizzly before he saunters up to the human buffet for another helping.

But why is Grizzly better than Jaws? Why do we love the rip-offs more than the originals? Let’s just say William Girdler is our Pierre Menard but his Quixote has more BLOOD, FLYING LIMBS, and ROCKET LAUNCHERS.

In short, GRIZZLY kicks ass.

GRIZZLY is slick, fun, warm, and filled with familiar faces of the ’70s, including Andrew Prine and Richard Jaeckel. Don’t let the gloss fool you, though. This bear has claws, and Girdler’s got the goods when it comes to what we want from a good Jaws rip off: scenes of male bonding and plenty of vicious animal attacks!

Come enjoy this Exploitation-sploitation masterpiece by the master of high-class rip-offs that deliver!

THE LAST SHARK
Dir: Enzo G. Castellari, 1981.
88 min. Italy.
In English.

SATURDAY, JUNE 8TH – MIDNIGHT
ONE NIGHT ONLY!

From hard hitting Italian genre genius Enzo G. Castellari comes the most uncanny of all Jaws clones, THE LAST SHARK (L’ultimo squalo). This one swam so close to the original that Universal Pictures slapped a big fat lawsuit on the distributor and pulled the movie from American screens shortly after its release. Universal cried plagiarism, but we all know the real reason- they were scared!

Why?

Two reasons: this shark is really, really scary and VIC MORROW. That’s right, trash movie martyr Vic Morrow brings his intense presence to the aquatic proceedings as a grizzled shark whisperer. Is he Irish, is he Scottish? Who knows, but he’s got a brogue and he hates sharks. Sound familiar? Well, the similarities don’t end there, trust me.

You know the story, but it’s the style that makes this one shine. Castellari’s impeccable penchant for slow motion, gorgeous photography, and perfectly realized action all add up to a slick, ultra Italian entry into the “hey, this is pretty much Jaws” sub-genre.

And forget John Williams, Castellari’s frequent collaborators, the brilliant De Angelis brothers, provide their signature funky sounds to this baby, including the KILLER theme.

Unavailable on video in the U.S. for years, The Spectacle plucks THE LAST SHARK out of import laserdisc limbo and puts it back on the screen! Kick the summer off right and say “GO TO HELL BIG MOVIE STUDIOS!” The originals may be owned by the majors, but the rip-offs belong to the people!

MR. NO LEGS

Posted on June 1, 2013July 23, 2015 by spectacletheater

MR. NO LEGS
(aka The Amazing Mr. No Legs)
Dir: Ricou Browning, 1979.
86 min. USA.

SATURDAY, JUNE 1ST – MIDNIGHT
ONE NIGHT ONLY!

Set in the ugliest Tampa imaginable, MR. NO LEGS follows two self-righteous police detectives (one with the obligatory porn-stache) tracking dope dealers and corrupt fellow cops, while trying to stay out of the clutches of unstoppable mob enforcer. Mr. No Legs, a martial arts master with many a violent trick hidden up his sleeves—and wheelchair, including shotguns, switchblades and ninja stars!

Meanwhile, racists start a rumble in a bar involving midgets and drag queens, whores get into broken bottle fights, and everyone double-crosses everyone else. Mayhem galore!

Featuring a shameless cast of B- and C-listers, including Richard Jaeckel, Lloyd Bochner, John Agar, Rance (Ron’s dad!) Howard, and real-life double amputee Ted Vollrath as the snarling No Legs.

It’s a convoluted, ultraviolent, tasteless, trashy B-movie actioner that was directed by the Creature from the Black Lagoon! That’s right, director Ricou Browning was the former Olympian who found fame in Hollywood playing the Gill Man for Universal Studios, and later supervised the underwater sequences on the TV show Flipper.

Mean-spirited and vicious, Mr. No Legs is the finest sort of exploitation cinema.