NO NAME IN NEW YORK

Dirs. Justin Clifford Rhody & Abigail Smith, 2021-2026.
US. 66 min.

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 10 – 7:30 PM (Special event with filmmakers)

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This film contains flashing lights and strobe effects that may affect viewers with photosensitive epilepsy.

From 2021-2026, Justin Clifford Rhody and Abigail Smith operated the now-defunct No Name Cinema in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Now, the duo of self-taught filmmakers is on tour across the East Coast, sharing a couple of the frantic, beautiful, frightful, and inventive films they made while running the aforementioned anti-capitalist warehouse microcinema.

The 65-minute program assembled this evening comprises a wide-range of artist films, from re-re-visionist westerns to strobe-fueled tone poems made with film stock and copy machines. Similar thematic, aesthetic, and formal interests abound across all of the works presented this evening. Key among these are the filmmakers’ attentive approach to the role sound plays in a film, the recurrence of collaborative filmmaking, and a continued investigation into the material qualities of film (its deterioration, mechanics, and texture). In much the same manner Rhody and Smith championed radical artist films via No Name Cinema, their own work also reflects a devotion to stressing the formal and material limits of their medium-of-choice. Each film in this program was made on its own terms, and together they represent a repudiation of what film is often limited to and a proposition of what it could be.

Justin Clifford Rhody and Abigail Smith will be in attendance to introduce this special screening.

THE INTERIOR FRONTIER

dir. Justin Clifford Rhody & Abigail Smith, 2023

USA. 20 min.

Shot on 16mm and Super-8mm film using a total of 9 different expired film stocks, Justin Clifford Rhody and Abigail Smith’s short explores the lost legacies of the American frontier as seen on film. Taking its name from a 16mm educational short titled The Frontier Experience (1975) and filmed in the same small town in Kansas where Barbara Loden shot her last directorial effort, The Interior Frontier presents a confused version of history, blending fact and fiction into a cinematic odyssey all of its own.

POTEMKIN PIECE

dir. Justin Clifford Rhody (and friends), 2022

USA. 1 min.

This 1-minute short was made between nearly 80 collaborators over lockdown. In order to create it, each collaborator was mailed a half-second long film strip from a 35mm trailer for Battleship Potemkin and instructed to do whatever they wanted with it. The final result regroups the discombobulated trailer and emblematizes the creative/chaotic spirit of its maker.

thread

dir. Abigail Smith, 2022

USA. 2 min.

In this 2-minute short, Abigail Smith explores the mechanics of film and draws similarities between the act of threading film and wielding a sewing machine. With its rough soundtrack and bouncing visuals, thread evinces the mechanical magic that defines film as a medium.

THE MONEY CURSE

dir. Abigail Smith, 2024

USA. 8 min.

This silent, Super-8 film from Abigail Smith concerns an avaricious man who is cursed by a gaggle of witches. Spooky, surprising, and anti-capitalist, it stands out as a wonderfully succinct expression of its maker’s talents and interests.

in dreams only

dir. Justin Clifford Rhody & Abigail Smith, 2023

USA. 11 min.

Justin Rhody and Abigail Smith employ a similar method to the one used to create Potemkin Piece in this short made from natural elements, food products, paint and toner. Blending all of these mixed elements with an audacious score from K/S/R and Wind Tide, in dreams only represents a unique collaborative effort for the duo. It is a film that stresses the preciousness of film as a medium, highlighting its fragility while underlining its tactility.

(another) Perfect film

Justin Clifford Rhody, 2026

USA. 5 min.

Dedicated to the late Ken Jacobs, Justin Clifford Rhody’s (another) Perfect film collects found footage to produce a new film (of sorts). With its rushes of a man holding a gun, it offers a haunting (re)discovery, disclosing secret scenes from the life of a cipher whose life survives on the big screen.

BRUISED FRUIT & UNDERFED FLORA

dir. Justin Clifford Rhody, 2022

USA. 6 min.

Bruised Fruit & Underfed Flora exemplifies Justin Clifford Rhody’s unique approach to the relationship between a film’s sound- and image-track. Working with his longtime collaborator Jeremy Kennedy, Rhody assembles a film that alternates in how its stresses one of the aforementioned tracks over the other, producing a kind of sonic-visual ping-pong for the viewer to delight in.

BLACK PALMS

dir. Justin Clifford Rhody, 2022

USA. 1 min.

The minute-long Black Palms was made with transparent 35mm film and a copy machine. Its stark, black-and-white images recall the patterns of Peter Kubelka.

drip

dir. Justin Clifford Rhody, 2023

USA. 4 min.

Per its eponymous motif, this short assembles scenes involving water as it falls and scatters on different surfaces. It is a poetic montage that coalesces all sorts of landscapes, stressing the once pervasive, now fading presence of water in the world.

EL RITO

dir. Justin Clifford Rhody, 2021

USA. 8 min.

An abstract film like Black Palms, this 8-minute short reflects on the loss of Lot 55, El Rito Estates (a now-defunct parking lot in Santa Fe). It is a film in which black and white orbs dissipate. It is a film of and about loss.

Special thanks to Justin Clifford Rhody, Abigail Smith and Kathy Del Beccaro.

MORBID WEEKEND
dir. Chris Shields, 2026.
United States. 68 min.
In English.

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 10 – 5 PM
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 14 – 10 PM
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 16 – 7:30 PM w/ Q&A
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 18 – 5 PM w/ Q&A
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 25 – 10 PM

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In California’s San Gabriel Valley a pizza delivery driver dies while on the job leaving three orders unfulfilled. Later, a young woman mourns the dead driver, taking on a number of personas as she grieves. With the specter of the driver haunting the night, the pizzas finally arrive to their intended customers–better late than never. 

“There is nothing like Morbid Weekend, an exquisite assembly, a-a-a-a-a-almost more of a curation, of mesmerizing urban tableaux cut together in the dreamiest rhythms that sound the sensual depths of the nocturnal subconscious” – Guy Maddin

“Morbid Weekend is one of those films that moves just a bit ahead of the viewer but comes together as it unfolds in a way that preserves its essential mystery. Shields shows us that the isolation of his characters is rooted in form. The photo scroll scene functions as a quotidian meditation on cinema, motion and the look of love. Have a lovely weekend.” – Christopher Harris

FILMMAKER STATEMENT:

Morbid Weekend is a love letter to the San Gabriel Valley with all its eerie other-worldliness, poetic cinema, and shitty jobs. In a way it simply flowed from my life, the people in it, and the way I see time and space artistically. The film was made by a group of friends. There was no script. There’s almost no dialogue. The biggest expense was, appropriately enough, ordering food for everyone.

In my video work, I have always attempted to make the stupid and banal a little more beautiful, and nothingness a little more emotive. My mantra while making Morbid Weekend was high and low without compromise. I tried to embrace the totality of my artistic interests (punk and experimental music, horror, duration, poetry, humor, ellipses, film writing, etc), synthesizing the utter crap I love (Ray Dennis Steckler, Don Dohler, and worse) with a more elegant mode of cinema (India Song, Lancelot du lac, What Time Is It There?, Last Chants for a Slow Dance, Serene Velocity, and so many more) that’s equally important to me. In the end, I hope Morbid Weekend is a unique experience for the viewer that reads like poetry on screen and opens possibilities for them. I like to say it’s Tsai Ming-liang meets Pizza Hut.

Chris Shields is a film critic and filmmaker based in Los Angeles. As a writer he frequently contributes to Sight and Sound, Reverse Shot, Film Comment, Screen Slate, Cineaste, Vinegar Syndrome, Cinematographe, LARB, and a host of other film publications. As a filmmaker he has a large body of experimental video work that has screened around the world including at Chicago Underground Film Festival and Winnipeg Underground Film Festival. His experimental film, Channels, is featured on the streaming platform Paracme. He is the co-writer and co-star of Lindsay Denniberg’s cult favorite Video Diary of a Lost Girl (available from AGFA and Vinegar Syndrome) and her forthcoming feature Killer Makeover. He is also a moderator for the American Cinematheque, conducting Q and As with filmmakers such as Jon Jost and Tsai Ming-liang. As a musician he performed for years as Mr. Transylvania, a punk/noise performance project, and in the bands United Waters and Alien Trilogy. He has also had every minimum wage job imaginable, including pizza delivery. Morbid Weekend is his feature directorial debut.

Distributed by Factory 25

Roberta Findlay once speculated that, had her late husband not been able to channel his anger and misogyny into his art, he may very well have become the exact type of violent criminal depicted in his films. And it’s in that spirit that Spectacle proudly presents to our loyal audience of perverts and weirdos the Ultimate Degenerate’s own magnum opus, Michael Findlay’s infamous “Flesh” trilogy.

The trilogy begins with what was originally intended as a one-off sexploitation “roughie” in THE TOUCH OF HER FLESH (1967), about a cuckolded New York City arms dealer named Richard (played by Findlay himself) who goes on a murderous rampage targeting all women he deems to be “immoral”. But following the film’s unexpected success, noted for its at-the-time unique blend of graphic sex and graphic violence, Findlay quickly got to work on a pair of sequels.

The two follow-up films, THE CURSE OF HER FLESH (1968) and THE KISS OF HER FLESH (1970), doubled and tripled down on the perversity and experimentation of the first entry. Where TOUCH featured a fairly straightforward proto-slasher narrative interspersed with sequences of striptease and bondage play, the two sequels take the opposite track, arguably acting as showcases for go-go dancing, BDSM, paraphilia & kinks of all kinds, sexual contraptions, stag films-within-a-film, and a truly applaudable amount of wordplay around one victim’s insatiable “pussy” (referring to her pet cat… get your minds out of the gutter…), rounded out with strands of plot detailing Richard’s quest for vengeance against his wife’s lover and promiscuous women at-large.

But apart from Findlay, the real “star” of the series is none other than his co-writer, cinematographer, and spouse, Roberta, whose work on the trilogy extends the material well beyond the grindhouse and into the arthouse. Each film is its own masterclass in economical filmmaking, thanks in large part to Roberta Findlay’s incredibly crisp and nimble black-and-white photography that adds a visual dynamism to every act, no matter how perverse, and accentuates the curve of each blade and bosom. So even if rampant misogyny and sexual violence isn’t really your thing, we can still guarantee that the visual feast each film presents is worth the price of admission alone.

Special thanks to Muscle Distribution, Distribpix, and Something Weird Video.

THE TOUCH OF HER FLESH
Dir. Michael Findlay, 1967
United States. 78 min.
In English.

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 1 – 10 PM
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 17 – 7:30 PM
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 23 – 7:30 PM
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 29 – 7:30 PM

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Richard Jennings (Michael Findlay) is a happily married weapons dealer getting ready to leave town for a little business trip. Everything in his life is great— until he swings back home to grab something he’s forgotten, only to catch his wife (Angelique Pettyjohn) in bed with another man (Ron Scardera). Overwhelmed by her betrayal, he staggers out into the street and right into the path of an oncoming car, losing an eye and gaining a limp in the process. Scorned and vengeful, Richard adopts a new identity and begins a murderous rampage against all women he deems to be “immoral,” with his former wife as his ultimate target.

THE CURSE OF HER FLESH
Dir. Michael Findlay, 1968
United States. 78 min.
In English.

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 4 – 5 PM
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 9 – 10 PM
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 17 – 10 PM
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 23 – 10 PM

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In this outrageous sequel to THE TOUCH OF HER FLESH, the maniacal weapons dealer Richard Jennings returns to continue his misogynistic quest to rid the world of sex-crazed women. Posing as the owner of a burlesque club, Jennings ups the ante— and the body count— by devising an array of increasingly gruesome methods of dispatching his victims, all the while planning the ultimate revenge against his wife’s lover, Steve.

THE KISS OF HER FLESH
Dir. Michael Findlay, 1970
United States. 69 min.
In English.

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 4 – 7:30 PM
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 9 – MIDNIGHT
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 17 – MIDNIGHT
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 23 – MIDNIGHT

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In this final installment of the trilogy, the maniacal arms dealer Richard Jennings has lost what little sanity he had left. Fully devoting his life to his quest to brutally slay any and every woman who crosses his path, Jennings finally meets his match in the form of his deceased wife’s sister, Maria (Uta Erickson), who might turn out to be even more deranged than he is.

OCTOBER COUNTRY
Dir. Donal Mosher & Michael Palmieri, 2009.
United States. 80 min.
In English.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 2 – 5 PM
MONDAY, OCTOBER 12 – 7:30 PM
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 21 – 7:30 PM
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 24 – 7:30 PM

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Shot over the course of a year (beginning and ending on Halloween), OCTOBER COUNTRY is a vérité-style documentary that follows members of the Mosher family, a working-class family in upstate New York as they reconcile with the hardships of their daily life that includes unplanned pregnancy, sibling estrangement, poverty, emotional despondency and war trauma. October Country examines and provides insight into the fraught intergenerational cycles that can pervade in blue collar households.

Beginning as a photo project, Donal Mosher (one half of the directing team that also includes Michael Palmieri) sought to “…interpret and make visible the place and people I came from,” an exercise that results in a distinctly personal and otherworldly investigation into memory, ghosts, and into the houses, neighborhoods, and families that retain long-past parts of ourselves well after we’ve left.

This Spectober, we pay tribute to one of the most prolific actors, stunt performers, and vampire hunters that Hong Kong ever produced: Lam Ching-ying.

Lam began his career as a stunt performer and martial arts coach for Shaw Brothers Studio before (as the story goes) a chance encounter with Bruce Lee— in which Lam challenged Lee to hit him as hard as he could, resulting in Lam being sent flying across the room— led to Lee hiring him as his personal assistant, and later a performer and co-choreographer on titles like FIST OF FURY, ENTER THE DRAGON, and GAME OF DEATH.

Following Lee’s passing, Lam joined up with Sammo Hung Stuntmen’s Association where his talents as a choreographer and martial artist were put to excellent use, resulting in more on-screen appearances and heftier roles, and culminating in Lam being hired as the lead role of the Taoist priest, Master Ko, in the Hung-produced MR. VAMPIRE (1985). MR. VAMPIRE became a sensation in Hong Kong and, combined with his appearances in several other box office heavyweights from that year including MY LUCKY STARS and HEART OF THE DRAGON, solidified Lam as a bona fide movie star.

In the years that followed, Lam built a cottage industry out of playing similar Taoist priest roles both within and beyond the MR. VAMPIRE sequels and spin-offs, often only appearing for a scene or two under a new moniker (Uncle Feng, Uncle Nine, Uncle Hua, Uncle Ying, Uncle Master, and sometimes just “Taoist priest”), but always donning the same trademark yellow robes, hat, and bagua insignia that became his signature look.

But Lam’s success was a double-edged sword, and he would eventually grow weary of the character and the typecasting that came with it. By the mid-90s, with the Hong Kong film industry already in decline, Lam had mostly pivoted to television roles and all but retired from feature film work upon completion of his passion project, a big screen adaptation of THE GREEN HORNET (1994) intended as a tribute to his close friend and mentor, Bruce Lee. Lam passed away in 1997 following an intense private battle with cancer, but his legacy in the Hong Kong film industry lived on, with his name and likeness still synonymous with Taoist ritual, tradition, and vampire busting of all kinds to this day.

THE MUSICAL VAMPIRE (音樂殭屍)
Dir. Wilson Tong Wai-shing, 1992
Hong Kong. 93 min.
In Cantonese with English subtitles.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 2 – MIDNIGHT
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 10 – 10 PM
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 22 – 10 PM

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An American mad scientist chemically reanimates a corpse, turning it into a superpowered jiangshi (“hopping vampire”) immune to most of your typical exorcism charms. As the jiangshi begins to wreak havoc on a local town, the town’s mayor calls on a Taoist priest and his two disciples to help stop the creature. Soon they discover that the only thing able to tame the creature’s aggressive power is the sound of sweet, sweet music.

THE MUSICAL VAMPIRE is one of the more peculiar entries in the MR. VAMPIRE Extended Universe, with Lam’s Taoist priest character not only playing second fiddle to Stanley Fung’s lead priest, but also taking on a much more broadly comedic tone than in his earlier appearances as the character. And yet, the pleasure of watching Lam try and imitate the mannerisms and language of an undead corpse is still more than enough to offset the incessant whistling of “London Bridge Is Falling Down”.

DEMONIC UMBRELLA (追魂伞)
aka MIDNIGHT CONJURE (零時十分)
Dir. Mao Chiang-pang, 1991
Taiwan/Hong Kong. 87 min.
In Mandarin with English subtitles.

MONDAY, OCTOBER 19 – 10 PM
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 24 – 5 PM
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 25 – 5 PM

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In the Warring States era of ancient China, martial artist Long Wu competes with his brother for the title of “Best of the Best”. He is ultimately victorious, but in the process draws the ire of his jilted ex-lover, the vicious enchantress Sherry, who frames him for the murder of his brother and Long’s wife, Su. While awaiting execution, Long learns he must transplant his soul into [checks notes] an umbrella so that he can exact his revenge on Sherry some 3,000 years later.

Fast forward a few millennia, and the reincarnated Sherry is now a Hong Kong drug queenpin keeping the reincarnated Su under her watchful eye. But when Su comes into possession of the [checks notes] umbrella containing the soul of her past self’s husband, the pernicious parasol sets off a chain of events that, with the help of an intrepid police officer and a mysterious Taoist priest, will take down Sherry once and for all.

Where the other two films in this series feature Lam in a more central role, DEMONIC UMBRELLA aka MIDNIGHT CONJURE epitomizes the “walk-on” nature of many of his Taoist priest appearances from the early-90s. Despite his top billing, Lam only appears in a handful of scenes in which characters literally leave the action to consult with him at another location. And yet, Lam’s presence still looms large over the entire film, with the mysterious “Taoist priest” figure referenced as the driving force behind several of the plot’s developments, building anticipation towards the reveal of this mysterious figure and making his appearances all the more satisfying.

THE CHINESE GHOSTBUSTER (鍾馗嫁妹)
Dir. Wu Ma, 1994
Hong Kong. 87 min.
In Cantonese with English subtitles.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 2 – 10 PM
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 24 – 10 PM
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 27 – 10 PM

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Ghostly siblings, Chung Kuey & Ah-May, venture out into the realm of the living to search for a suitable husband for Ah-May, in the hopes of bettering their chances for reincarnation. After finding a suitable candidate in the form of an unbeknownst-to-them gigolo named Simon, the pair mercilessly pursue him until he’s forced to seek out the help of a Taoist priest to exorcize the demons in his life.

When there’s something strange in the realm of the living, who you gonna call? Lam Ching-ying of course… even though he clearly doesn’t want to take your calls anymore. By this point in Lam’s career, he’d mostly grown weary of the Taoist priest character, but Lam was still willing to don the yellow robes twice more for veteran martial arts director and former Shaw Bros. mainstay, Wu Ma, in a pair of supernatural action comedies.

The two films, THE CHINESE GHOSTBUSTER and EXORCIST MASTER (the latter screened as part of our 2023 Fist Fright Marathon) would mark the last time Lam would appear on the big screen as his Taoist priest character, and curiously, both films provide a more in-depth look at Taoist ritual and practice than most of his previous appearances. CHINESE GHOSTBUSTER is largely a riff on the Taoist folk legend of Zhong Kui, a mythological demon slayer known as the “King of Ghosts”, while EXORCIST MASTER operates on a playful contrast between the religious traditions of its two leads, a Taoist priest played by Lam, and a Christian priest played by Wu. Together the films offer a fittingly spiritual coda to the career of a performer whose likeness inadvertently became synonymous with the Taoism itself.