Special Event – Page 15 – Spectacle Theater

DASH SHAW & LIMITED ANIMATION

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

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 8TH – 8PM
ONE NIGHT ONLY!

In conjunction with Comic Arts Brooklyn, cartoonist and animator Dash Shaw (New School) presents an evening of “limited” aka “low budget” animation.

Dash will be showing and discussing some of his own work, like the Sigur Ros video and Sundance selection Seraph, the “fast slideshow” Blind Date 4, and others, plus a bonus cartoon that’s inspired him: the “best episode” of the anime Robotech! Come watch some cartoons on a Friday night. This is not to be missed.

VETERANGEANCE

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

They say old soldiers never die… in observance of Veteran’s Day, Spectacle teams up with Blue Underground to present three tales of martial vengeance from beyond the grave. On Veteran’s Day itself, we run the gory classics THE PROWLER and DEATHDREAM back-to-back. They return for an encore presentation on Saturday, November 23, along with UNCLE SAM, presented by filmmaker, Blue Underground CEO, and legendary raconteur Bill Lustig.

DEATHDREAM
Dir. Bob Clark, 1972.
USA. 88 min.

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 11 – 10:00 PM
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 23 – 7:00 PM

He promised he’d come back! Brilliantly directed by Bob Clark (BLACK CHRISTMAS, A CHRISTMAS STORY), DEATHDREAM weaves allegory for Vietnam soldiers returning as PTSD-afflicted heroin junkies with unsettling oedipal conflict by telling the story of a soldier, declared dead, who surprises his grieving family by suddenly returning home. Andy looks and sounds the same, but he isn’t quite right: an emotionless husk, unable to reconnect with his family and friends, and suffering from some unknown physical ailment. Yet it’s not TLC that Andy needs to regain his sense of self, but blood — preferably fresh, human blood, mainlined via syringe — and when Andy’s parents have no choice but to face facts, they are horribly divided as to how to treat their darling boy’s affliction.

Often cited as an overlooked genre classic, DEATHDREAM benefits from a smart script, assured direction, and pitch-perfect performances. As Andy, Richard Backus brings an understated menace to his role that strikes a resoundingly creepy note. It’s effectively contrasted by the outstanding performances of John Marley and Lynn Carlin, recent co-stars of Cassavetes’s FACES, who treat the material with dignity, elevating it to the status of a rare horror film that manages to blend graphic gore with almost overwhelming emotional impact. And as in A CHRISTMAS STORY, Clark directs with a familiar sensitivity to domestic situations and the nuances of suburbia. The result, as genre aficionados have long known, is one of the most well-rounded and affecting masterpieces of horror cinema.

THE PROWLER
Dir. Joseph Zito, 1981.
USA. 89 min.

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 11 – 7:30 PM
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 23 – MIDNIGHT

June 28, 1945: having sent a Dear John letter to her soldier boyfriend, Rosemary attends the Avalon Bay annual graduation with her new squeeze — but before they can hit the punch bowl, a ghastly soldier plunges a pitchfork through the pair. Thirty-fire years later, the town prepares for its first dance since the tragedy: is the trauma due to repeat itself? This standout slasher is noteworthy for being described by legendary make-up artist Tom Savini — whose combat experience is an avowed influence on his work — as his proudest moment. Made at a time when more mainstream slashers were reeling back, THE PROWLER is a shocking bloodbath.

UNCLE SAM
Dir. Bill Lustig, 1996.
USA. 89 min.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 23 – 9:30 PM – BILL LUSTIG IN ATTENDANCE!

Re-teaming MANIAC COP director Lustig and screenwriter Larry Cohen, UNCLE SAM is a cult favorite 1997 slasher about a soldier killed by friendly fire during Desert Storm who busts out of his casket to kill flag burners and other unpatriotic types. Bearing Lustig and Cohen’s idiosyncratic blend of social commentary and no shortage of gore, UNCLE SAM is further distinguished by appearances by William Smith, Isaac Hayes, P.J. Soles, and the electrifying Robert Forster.

Mr. Johnny Legend’s TV IN ACIDLAND

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

TV IN ACIDLAND
Program 1: In the Beginning… (the birth of “live” TV late 1940s – 1955)
Program 2: The Modern Age (1955 – early ‘70s)
Dir. Johnny Legend, collected footage, 2012
USA, 153 min. with intermission

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 3 – 8:00PM
One night only with Johnny Legend in attendance!

GROUCHO MARX AND THE PROFESSOR OF HIPOLOGY
BETTY WHITE’S TIRED HOUSEWIFE BLOOD
MILTON BERLE WIGGLES WILDLY

“A hand-made montage of the most shudderingly strange and awesomely revealing moments early television could offer… the damndest thing you ever saw!” –Boho Beat

Mr. Johnny Legend is a savior of forgotten horror films, wrestling promoter, Rockabilly Hall of Famer, and director of documentaries, improvised happenings, hot tub pornos and collected ephemera. But of all his unruly projects in several decades of haunting Hollywood, Mr. Legend considers TV IN ACIDLAND “undoubtedly the most ambitious and incredibly entertaining of them all. The majority of the footage here has never been shown theatrically and has remained virtually unseen by most viewers for over half a century.”

This astounding time capsule of the golden age of “really live” television is a non-stop collection of classic variety shows, skits, commercials, and indescribable oddities featuring the biggest (and strangest) stars of the era, many making their broadcast debut. It is an unabashed cinematic “love-letter” to the first quarter century of televised insanity!

Starring Marilyn Monroe, Jack Benny, Peter Lorre, Ernie Kovacs, Steve Allen, Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Liberace, Groucho Marx, Lucy and Desi, Buster Keaton, Jonathan Winters, Rod Serling, Edward G. Robinson, Judy Garland, Jackie Gleason, James Dean… and many, many more!

PLUS…
Johnny Legend really live and in person to share his personal stories of Hollywood stardom and madness!

COMMITTED (on 16mm!)

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

COMMITTED
Dir. Sheila McLaughlin & Lynne Tillman, 1984
USA, 77 min. 16mm.

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 19 – 7:30PM – ONE NIGHT ONLY!
MCLAUGHLIN & TILLMAN IN ATTENDANCE FOR Q&A!

Special thanks to the New York Public Library!

My favorite patient, a display of patience,
Disease-covered Puget Sound
She’ll come back as fire, And burn all the liars,
leave a blanket of ash on the ground
“Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge on Seattle” — Nirvana

No one ever came to me and said, “You’re a fool. There isn’t such a thing as God. Somebody’s been stuffing you.” It wasn’t a murder. I think God just died of old age. And when I realized that he wasn’t any more, it didn’t shock me. It seemed natural and right.
From God Dies — Frances Farmer

Frances Farmer was born in Seattle in 1913. The myths surrounding her life are perhaps better known than the details. She was an actress on stage and screen through the mid 1930’s-40s, and was the subject of multiple scandals and sensationalized accounts. Despite her attempts at launching a serious career in the theater, Farmer was often cast as a harlot in B-movies at Paramount Pictures. After arrests for drunk driving and assault, Farmer was involuntarily committed to a mental institution. She spent the next seven years institutionalized, five of those years in Western State Hospital in Steilacoom, WA, receiving insulin shock and shock therapy, and even, rumor has it, a transorbital lobotomy (though there are many deniers and little proof.) Farmer was released in 1950 under her mother’s custody and her full civil rights weren’t restored until 1953.

COMMITTED (1984), co-directed by Sheila McLaughlin and Lynne Tillman, is a narrative film of the story of Frances Farmer. Highly scripted and shot in the style of 40s noirs, McLaughlin and Tillman construct a film narrated by Farmer (played by McLaughlin), in which she tells her side of the story, as “neither victim nor heroine.” COMMITTED focuses on the troubled relationship between Farmer and her mother, and examines social and political norms of the time, including the burgeoning use of psychiatry to cure “undesirables” and “disturbed” women.

The kind of horror we were dealing with was an institutionalized horror, not necessarily the most virulent physical violence, but a different kind of violence, which is the violence against ideas and the violence of the family, or the violence of psychiatry in its treatment of patients. — Lynne Tillman

Directed by Sheila McLaughlin and Lynne Tillman and starring McLaughlin, Victoria Boothby and Lee Breuer, a 16mm print of COMMITTED (1984) will be presented one night only on Tuesday, November 19th, 7:30 PM. McLaughlin and Tillman will be in attendance for a Q&A!

Poster by Barbara Kruger

COMMITTED courtesy of the Reserve Film and Video Collection of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

*Read the full essay God Dies by Frances Farmer, written as a high school senior, which won her First Place and $100 in a contest sponsored by The Scholastic in 1931. “If the young people of this city are going to hell,” one Baptist minister reportedly told his congregation, “Frances Farmer is surely leading them there.”

Other quotes from:
Lamche, Pascale. “Committed Women.” Framework 0.26 (Jan 1, 1985): 39.

Hamilton Morris Presents DEADLY FORCE

Posted on October 24, 2013December 22, 2019 by spectacletheater

DEADLY FORCE
Dir: Richard Cohen, 1980
USA, 60 mins.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 1 – 8:00 PM

Special International Drug Day Screening!

Deadly Force is a rare documentary about rampant corruption in the LAPD directed by Richard Cohen. The doc revolves around the controversial 1977 killing of an arctic explorer turned rolicyclidine chemist named Ronald Burkholder who was found nude, masturbating, and stabbing himself with a candelabra in a busy LA intersection…and then fatally shot.

Cohen’s documentary follows the aftermath of Burkholder’s killing through court testimonies by both police officials defending their decision to use deadly force, and Burkholder’s friends and family, accusing the LAPD of brutality, corruption, and constructing a massive cover-up.

Followed by an original short by Hamilton Morris.

THE THIRD ANNUAL SPECTACLE SHRIEK SHOW

Posted on October 22, 2013December 22, 2019 by spectacletheater

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 26TH – ALL DAY!

For the third year in a row, Spectacle pays humble tribute to one of the most sacred of Halloween traditions – the horror movie marathon – with THE THIRD ANNUAL SPECTACLE SHRIEK SHOW! This year we have another fine spread of various genre staples and a couple wildcards that defy all categorization, a couple special guests and a smattering of shorts, cartoons, promos, tunes, and more to celebrate the best holiday of them all.

As always, we’ll start promptly at noon and keep rolling all through the day and into the witching hour!

Tickets are $25 for the full day or $5 each movie!

THE ABOMINATION
Dir: Max Raven (Bret McCormick), 1986
100 min. USA.

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 26TH – NOON

Presented by Massacre Video

Someone once said “Texas regional horror is the best regional horror.” It’s a bold statement, but it would be difficult to disagree. With a close community pushing the boundaries in pretty much every aspect of the genre, the output is impressive to say the least. Bret McCormick made THE ABOMINATION on Super-8 and edited it on 3/4″ and the result is a heartfelt, lo-fi, gut munching success. Disconnected sound, hallucinatory loops, chanting, droning, and a world of practical effects pepper this nightmarish vision of the Lone Star state.

Cody’s mother is very sick. Lung cancer, and it’s bad. At least that’s what the seedy televangelist Brother Fogg told her. In fact, she’s so sick that one night – in what can only be deemed a miracle from God – she coughs up the tumor that’s been ailing her. Naturally, she throws it in the trashcan. That night while Cody sleeps, the tumor crawls out of the trash, into his bed…and into his mouth. The tables have turned, as his mother regains her strength, Cody gets worse and worse. He coughs up blood and eventually hacks up a mass of gunk that he hides under his bed. Now, possessed by the titular Abomination, Cody must seek victims to appease his new master. The creature grows and grows until it fills up most of the house, a network of teeth and tentacles, always hungry for more!

THE ABOMINATION is presented by our pals at Massacre Video who have previously presented 555 (at our very first marathon) and DEMON QUEEN – a favorite from last year!

HORROR HOTEL
(aka The City of the Dead)
Dir: John Moxey, 1960.
76 min. UK.

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 26TH – 2PM

Horror films don’t come much more atmospheric than John Moxey’s dark, fog drenched HORROR HOTEL (The City of the Dead). Shot in Britain and set in the eerie, forgotten Massachusetts town of Whitewood, this tale of witchcraft, murder and ghosts bares a striking structural resemblance to Alfred HItchcock’s radical horror film PSYCHO, released the same year, but combines the narrative rupture of Hitchock’s film with a more familiar set of atmospheric horror tropes taken to their most dreamlike extreme – the result is one of the most gorgeous and unsettling horror films of all time.

Nan Barlow is studying the history of witchcraft and looking to do some firsthand research. Her professor (Christopher Lee) points her toward a small forgotten Massachusetts town, Whitewood, which was the site of witch trials in the 17th century. Nan checks into a ghostly old inn and begins to investigate the story of an accused witch, Elizabeth Selwyn. When Nan doesn’t return from her trip to Whitewood her brother joins forces with a local shop owner and heads to Whitewood for answers.

HORROR HOTEL represents a high point in atmospheric horror, giving Val Lewton a run for his money and standing as an anglo analogue to Bava and Margheriti’s gothic Italo-epics. Moxey’s film is unfailingly assured in composition, pace, tone and design, and stands as an early testament to its creator’s adroitness in handling the creepy and atmospheric supernatural detective story, as Moxey would do again and again throughout the 70s in such paradigms of made for TV horror such as THE NIGHT STALKER and A TASTE OF EVIL.

SPLATTER: ARCHITECTS OF FEAR
Dir: Peter Rowe, 1986
77 min. Canada.

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 26TH – 4PM

Presented by Slasher // Video

SPLATTER: ARCHITECTS OF FEAR can probably best be described as the DAY
FOR NIGHT of SOV horror. At first glance this no budget curio seems to be a post apocalyptic action fantasy, however it quickly reveals itself to be a behind the scenes documentary about the wild world of SFX splatter wizards. There’s something not quite right about this “documentary” though, and before long it becomes clear the movie we’re behind the scenes of,
does not exist, and characters we’re following are somewhere between the realistically banal and the unbelievably ridiculous – FANG, the hunchbacked, rat-eating Gory Productions mascot.

Is this strange mishmash of narrative vistas intentional? Probably not, but is this
sort of like F FOR FAKE for VHS creeps? DEFINITELY! SPLATTER: ARCHITECTS OF FEAR is an SOV fever dream that satisfies and stultifies on a few fairly interesting levels, AND it’s just really WEIRD and filled with tons of gore, synth and awesome Canadian accents!

Enjoy this absolutely bizarre, meta entry into the SPECTACLE SHRIEK SHOW!

SILENT MADNESS (in 3D!)
Dir: Simon Nüchtern, 1984.
93 min. USA.

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 26TH – 6PM

Most slasher movies fall somewhere in between bad jazz and good pizza – at their worst they can be an uninspired interpretation of a familiar standard, and at their best they make an art out of filling you up with things that aren’t very good for you. SILENT MADNESS does both…AND IT’S IN 3D! That’s right, hot on the heels of FRIDAY THE 13th PART 3 comes this odd and largely forgotten gem about a homicidal maniac, Howard Johns, who is accidentally released from a nightmarish mental hospital. Once John’s is out he makes a b line to the sorority house where he perpetrated a sepia toned, nail gun massacre years before and it’s up to a no nonsense Doctor, Belinda Montgomery (Man From Atlantis, TONS of other 70s TV), to stop him! Dragon’s Lair, animated axes, steam pipes, sledge hammers, exercise equipment – all are employed in a 3D killing spree that’s a MUST for any 80s horror or slasher fan!

Shot in Staten Island and Jersey City, SILENT MADNESS is an east coast, autumnal slasher with a mean streak. Not surprisingly this grim little film was made by Simon Nuchtern, a sleaze veteran who shot additional footage for the notorious SNUFF (try and shower that one off) and almost compulsively seems to suffuse the proceedings with an unsettling aggression that threatens to transform into something even darker at every turn. SILENT MADNESS has the folkloric tropes which make the genre what it is (the murder turned urban legend, the homecoming, the insane parent), but also enough unique weirdness to make it unforgettable, including some really out of place naturalism thanks to Viveca Lindfors (Creepshow, Exorcist III) and Sydney Lassick (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest), looking strikingly similar to a GHOULIE in a Sheriff’s uniform.

ONE dimension’s worth of substance in THREE DIMENSIONS!! (Glasses provided!)

SATAN’S STORYBOOK
Dir: Michael Rider, 1989.
85 min. USA.

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 26TH – 8PM

Presented by Horror Boobs

What do a well known porn star, the writer of THE HOWLING, and a former back-up dancer for Debbie Gibson have in common?

Satan.

This anthology film follows what is certainly the whiniest version of Our Dark Lord to ever grace the hallowed slabs of analog media. SATAN’S STORYBOOK claims to be 3 stories but that’s including the wraparound. Hey, get it how you can, you know? The first actual story (told to soothe a cranky Satan) is about a serial killer named The Demon of Death who picks his victims at random out of the phonebook (kind of like the William Lustig film RELENTLESS but with different haircuts). He meets his match in the form of a metal babe named Jezebell who summons some demons of her own! The other story is about an alcoholic clown who offs himself and comes face-to-face with Death himself…though not in his traditional form.

SATAN’S STORYBOOK comes to us hot off the presses as out longtime friends and guest programmers – those loveable knuckleheads at Horror Boobs – have just re-released this beauty on glistening white VHS tapes in a fresh new case. Be sure to pick one up!

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

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 26TH – 10PM

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 WNUF HALLOWEEN SPECIAL
????, 1987.
82 min. USA.

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 26TH – MIDNIGHT

Presented by Alternative Cinema

Chris LaMartina in person!

Is the legendary WNUF HALLOWEEN SPECIAL a heart warming time capsule of Halloween past replete with local commercials, holiday charm, and awkward news anchors? Is it the evidence of a strange and terrifying, occurrence caught on tape almost 20 years ago? Is it a sick hoax? Whatever it is, it’s one of a kind and IT’S ONLY AT THE SPECTACLE SHRIEK SHOW!

Taped off of WNUF TV-28 on Halloween Night, 1987, this strange broadcast follows local news personality Frank Stewart and a team of paranormal researchers as they set out to prove that the abandoned Webber House – the site of ghastly murders – is actually haunted through a fascinating live on-air program featuring shocking EVP recordings and one-of-a-kind Call-In seance.

This is a one of a kind,outrageously fun and unique Halloween treat! Is it real? You be the judge!

“It’s a legendary broadcast. Even though most collectors haven’t even
seen it, they’ve heard about it. With each passing year its cult
status grows.” – Robin Bougie, Cinema Sewer

“Holy crap – I remember this airing when I was a kid! Craziest thing
I’ve ever seen on live TV!” – Eduardo Sanchez, co-creator of The Blair
Witch Project

TIME AND TEMPERATURE score LA PERLE / THE PEARL

Posted on October 7, 2013December 22, 2019 by spectacletheater

LA PERLE (THE PEARL), 1929
Dir. Henri d’Ursel
Belgium. 33 min.
Silent with a live score by TIME AND TEMPERATURE

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 18TH – 8PM & 10PM
One night only!

Val Glenn (aka TIME AND TEMPERATURE) stops through on her most recent tour to provide an all new, haunting and beautiful score to the criminally unheralded slice of Belgian surrealism that is d’Ursel’s LA PERLE.

What begins as simply as a man attempting to purchase a string of pearls for his fiancee quickly becomes a strange journey home as he discovers doors leading to forests, living photographs, and a mysterious seductress that finds him at every turn.

Despite it being released almost 85 years ago, LA PERLE is strikingly ahead of it’s time. While we live in what often feels like a cinematic recycling bin, filled to the brim with tepid “re-imaginings” and “loving homages” have replaced genuine ideas. Callbacks in 1929 were downright unheard of, so the references to the works of Man Ray or Buñuel and other visually familiar cues found in LA PERLE were (are) exciting. The whole of Belgian surrealism owes much to those that came before, but the world is no worse off for it.

Join Spectacle and TIME AND TEMPERATURE as we celebrate this unsung gem for one night only in the most holy month of Autumn.

Val will have her tour cassette Fur on Fur (and other merch) for sale at both performances.

HYMNS OF THE GOLDEN BAT

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

HYMNS OF THE GOLDEN BAT
In Search Of The Original Caped Crusader

Various. 100 minutes.

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 24TH – 8PM
ONE NIGHT ONLY!

Consistent with SPECTOB3R’s enveloping mist of strange-smelling macabre, please join us for a one-off tribute to Japan’s Ōgon Batto (alias Fantaman / Fantasmagórico / Phantoma.)

A flying, self-teleporting and invincible “god of justice” (whose family is originally from Atlantis), the Bat was frozen in an Egyptian sarcophagus for two thousand years before being rediscovered by a little girl and announcing himself – reanimated by her tears – as a “protector of the weak.” Wraithlike and never not grinning, the Bat strikes fear into the hearts of his enemies and metes out punishment before retreating to his maximum security hideout somewhere in the Japanese alps in a snap.

Although the Bat first became famous across Japan for his appearances in manga, his initial origins are something of a mystery. It has been proposed that the Bat was adapted from a series of no-name pulp novels reaching back to the era of World War I; alternately, some have theorized that the Bat was born in a type of serialized Japanese street theater called kamishibai, appearing on watercolor-painted slides run in and out of a portable stage.

Whatever his true origins, it’s worth remembering that the Bat always existed as an image first – a visual punch to the brain, really – with any number of plots and stories conveniently wrapped around him. By the 1950s and 60s, the Bat was a force for Japanese pop culture, and soon fans were clamoring to see him emblazoned on both big and small screens. Priming audiences for the Bat’s hugely successful anime series on Saturday morning TV, Toei released Hajime Satô’s brassy, shimmering widescreen Golden Bat in 1966.

Slathered in lush you-can’t-make-this-up eye candy, the film sits at the zenith of gonzo postwar Japanese phantasmagoria. Chock full of laser beams, spaceships, teleportations, photon-clones, giant drills, a space-crab villain with two giant iron vice-grips for hands, a sinister cult of scarred-flesh mutant scientists and the Bat’s unstoppable prowess in hand-to-hand combat, Golden Bat is unmissable for fans of Godzilla, Ultraman, Kamen Rider or Ishirō Honda’s masterful space opera Gorath. (With a very young Sonny Chiba!)

Prior to Satô’s film, we’ll be hopscotching around the Bat’s mysterious perennial appearances/evaporations in the anime world over the last five decades as well – because some legends never die.

(Poster by Andrew “Drinkman” Cimelli)

CHROME CANDLES VIEWING HOUR: An A/V Salon

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

MONDAY, OCTOBER 21ST – 8PM
ONE NIGHT ONLY!

A new series! Artists include:

> Eric Barry Drasin
>> Sofy Yuditskaya
>>> Chris Jordan
>>>> Matthew Romein
>>>>> Grayson Earle

+++ curated by Eric Barry Drasin

Chrome Candles Viewing Hour is a beta-space where artists working in experimental audiovisual performance can exhibit work. The purpose of the beta space is to provide a discerning but open context to perform works in progress, discuss work, and receive valuable feedback.

The emphasis for this salon is experimental video and sound performance, live cinema, and interactive instrument design. We are interested in works centered around performers utilizing and building interfaces to generate and manipulate media in real-time.

The format will include performances and artist talks about process and performance techniques.

We hope to stimulate conversation about how we can push the boundaries of our work into new directions, in a context that is conducive to the presentation of audiovisual and new media performance.

AN EVENING WITH TOMMY TURNER

Posted on October 1, 2013December 22, 2019 by spectacletheater

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 19 at 7:00 and 9:30 PM

Two shows! One night only! Turner in attendance for discussion at both shows with Rebecca Cleman, Distribution Director, Electronic Arts Intermix

Tickets available at the door

Spectacle is pleased to welcome Tommy Turner for a very special screening of works made in the mid-1980’s and the Brooklyn premiere of his latest video, THE BLACK KNIGHTS OF SKILLMAN. Among the other work, we’re pleased to offer a pristine, restored 16mm presentation of WHERE EVIL DWELLS, made in collaboration with David Wojnarowicz.

An artist working in print, performance, photography, and film, Turner is considered a key figure of Downtown No Wave Cinema. The New York native rose to prominence through his zine Redrum and collaborations, both in front of and behind the camera, with David Wojnarowicz and Richard Kern. In the mid-1980’s, Turner directed a number of arresting small gauge films that have in the intervening years only gained the ability to inspire shock, awe, revulsion, and — depending on the audience member’s orientation — deeply satisfying laughter. In a cinematic oeuvre running approximately feature length, his subject matter has touched upon Satanism, family dysfunction, heresy, taxidermy, addiction, dismemberment, dumbshit rock ‘n’ roll, arcane mysticism, torture, Evangelicism, murder, and misspent teenhood, all rendered in sadistically graphic detail that verges between clinical detachment and sardonic irreverence.

Among them is WHERE EVIL DWELLS (Super 8-to-16mm, 1986, 31 min.), co-directed with Wojnarowicz. The pair of friends became fixated on the recent story of Ricky Kasso, teenage heavy metal fan and self-described “Acid King” of Northport, Long Island, who became the subject of media hysteria when he committed the pseudo-ritual-satanic murder of a fellow teen in the woods while wearing an AC/DC t-shirt. Shooting off a script based on interviews with Kasso’s friends, the pair ultimately edited their footage into a 30-minute “trailer” that represents an anarchic, assaultive, and wildly expressionistic take on what Wojnarowicz described as “the imposed Hell of the suburbs.” It’s complemented by a spectacular title song by Wiseblood (a collaboration between Roli Mosimann of Swans and J.G. Thirlwell of Foetus) and distorted hard rock radio jams.

In the unsettling, absurdist SIMONLAND (Super 8-to-video, 1984, 11 min.), made with Richard Kern, a televangelist leads his studio audience and isolated viewers through a psychotic game of Simon Says with grotesque results. THE MAGICIAN (Super 8-to-video, 1998, 9 min.), shot with Rick Rodine, features a chaotic melange of documentary, performance, and found footage to riff on the destruction of elements fire, water, air, and earth.

The program culimates in the Brooklyn premiere of THE BLACK KNIGHTS OF SKILLMAN, an HD experimental narrative shot on location at Flynn’s Garden Inn, a neighborhood pub in Sunnyside, Queens, located around the corner from Turner’s current residence. Cast with a colorful selection of roughneck regulars and freaks, SKILLMAN is an off-the-wall, gory gangster fantasy that is as much a neighborhood portrait as a journey into Hell. Having more in common with Blood Feast than Cheers, SKILLMAN has the feel of a collaborative effort while maintaining Turner’s distinctive signature.

The films in this program are graphic and disturbing. Audience discretion is strongly advised.