SATURDAY, AUGUST 19TH- 7:30PM
ONE NIGHT ONLY!
COMP USA Live is an experiment in digital performance. The COMP USA Live team tells stories that take place on the desktop computer itself and explores relationships between actor, audience, environment, and computer user. Utilizing a desktop armed with custom software, talented actors, the Internet, and a well hung green screen, COMP USA Live creates a stage unlike any other that came before.
The summer of 2017 marks the 50th anniversary of 1967’s Summer of Love and, um, yeah…guess that shit didn’t work out so well? In honor of the Baby Boomer’s failed attempt at worldwide good vibes or whatever, Spectacle presents these three made-for-tv movies from the 1970s highlighting the less groovy side of tuning in, turning on and dropping out.
Katherine
dir. Jeremy Kagan, 1975
USA, 96 minutes
English
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 1 – 10 PM
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 6 – 10 PM
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 11 – 10 PM
After her heartbreaking turn in Terence Malick’s Badlands and before achieving icon status in Brain DePalma’s Carrie, Sissy Spacek (who early in her career had recorded a novelty song about the shamefulness of Yoko Ono and John Lennon’s nudity on the cover of Two Virgins) played the title role in this made-for-TV movie about a wealthy debutante who heads down a self-destructive spiral of drugs and dire circumstances as she embraces the revolutionary counterculture of her time.
In additon to Spacek, the film stars Art Carney (known mainly as the sidekick on the Honeymooners, but in fact a terrific actor), a pre-Fonzie Henry Winkler, Julie Kavner (a star on the show Rhoda at the time and later the voice of Marge Simpson) and Jane Wyatt (Lost Horizon, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home).
Director Jeremy Kagan would go on to somewhat lighter fare, including the noir comedy The Big Fix, the Hassidic drama the Chosen, the sequel to the Sting and childhood favorite the Journey of Natty Gann.
In Search of America
dir. Paul Bogart, 1971
USA, 75 minutes
English
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 4 – 7:30 PM
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 12 – 10 PM
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 20 – 10 PM
College dropout Mike Olsen (Jeff Bridges, mere months away from the Last Picture Show and Fat City would cement his status as one of the greatest actors of his generation), a college dropout, convinces his family to pack up a refurbished Greyhound bus and go off in search of what’s “going down” in the “real America” (apparently Mike also dropped out of Easy Rider before seeing the last scene). They don’t make it very far, but, hey, who does?
Originally made for TV, In Search of America has a fantastic cast including Bridges, Vera Miles (The Searchers, plus the Wrong Man and Psycho with Hitchcock), Kim Hunter (A Streetcar Named Desire, Planet of the Apes), Sal Mineo (Rebel Without a Cause and later Escape from the Planet of the Apes with Kim Hunter), Tyne Daly (who went from this to the Susan Sontag scripted Play It As It Lays to the Dirty Harry sequel the Enforcer to a long stint as Lacey on TV’s Cagney & Lacey), Gylnn Turman (later in Cooley High and Bergman’s The Serpent’s Egg, then on A Different World and The Wire) and Tom Baker (of Warhol’s “I, A Man”).
Director Paul Bogart was a TV stalwart who made a number of interesting films including the post-noir Marlowe (with James Gardner as Raymond Chandlers titular detective), the socially conscious race drama Hall of Anger (with Bridges and Calvin Lockhart), and the inexplicably popular religious comedy Oh God,You Devil, starring Bob Denver and George Burns.
Screenwriter Lewis John Carlino seemed to specialize in post hippie bummers- his other credits include Frankenheimer’s Seconds, The Mechanic (possibly the best Charles Bronson film) and the relentlessly downbeat 1970s adaptation of Yukio Mishima’s The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea.
Maybe I’ll Come Home in the Spring
dir. Joseph Sargent, 1971
USA, 74 minutes
English
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 5 – 7:30 PM
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 11 – 7:30 PM
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 23 – 5 PM
After her stints as Gidget (great show btw) and the Flying Nun, Sally Field took on a more serious role as Dennie, a hippie burnout who tires of eating garbage (literally) with her boyfriend David Carradine (a year before his breakout role on Kung-Fu) and returns to her disapproving suburban family, only to find her younger sister starting to stray down the same path of hippiedom that can only lead to eating garbage (literally) with David Carradine. The square parents are played by Jackie Cooper (once a Little Rascal, later Perry White in Superman: The Movie) and Eleanor Parker (The Sound of Music). Director Joseph Sargent was a TV vet (Star Trek, The Man from UNCLE, Larry Cohen’s the Invaders) and would go on to make the superior technothriller Colossus: The Forbin Project. Sally Field would go on to appear with Jeff Bridges in a breakthrough role in Stay Hungry in 1976, going on to win two Oscars and three Emmys throughout her long career. Despite appearing in The Long Goodbye and Death Race 2000, as well as numerous blockbusters and cult films, things would not work out as well for the impulsive David Carradine.
DANCE GODDESS
dir. Hamid Khan, 1987
82 min, USA
In English.
In Urdu w/ English subtitles.
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 2 – 7:30 PM (English) – DIRECTOR Q&A !!
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 8 – 7:30 PM (Urdu)
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 16 – 10 PM (English)
FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 22 – 7:30 PM (Urdu)
FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 29 – 7:30 PM (Urdu) – DIRECTOR Q&A !!
FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 29 – 10pm (English) – DIRECTOR Q&A !!
Over the years, the Grand Ballroom at 124 S. 3rd St. has played host to many a lost musical – the nearly-mythical ROCK N’ ROLL HOTEL, the dearly melancholic DOOMED LOVE – and now, it is with great pleasure that we announce the world premiere of a film orphaned for 30 years…Hamid Kahn’s DANCE GODDESS.
After moving to America and having a successful career as a real estate attorney, Hamid found he missed the culture of India, particularly the movies and music. He dreamed of making the first American Bollywood movie, and so he wrote, produced, and directed DANCE GODDESS. Sparing no expense, he hired the best cinematographer, best dancers, and obtained permits to shoot scenes all over the city. To market the film internationally, all of the original actors dubbed their lines in both English and Urdu, and Kahn filmed alternate versions of every song in both languages. We will be presenting both versions of the film throughout the month.
The film follows Julie, who arrives at New York City’s Kahn Dance Studios from London with but a simple dream – to be the greatest dancer in the world. She has a fire in her heart and believes with the right connections, she won’t need luck. Julie immediately strikes a rapport with lead dancer Mike…much to the chagrin of Mike’s dance partner and secret/not-so-secret girlfriend and weed addict Maggie. Julie and Mike mesh so well from the jump they begin singing the film’s first song, “Dream On”, to the applause of their classmates. Has Doc (the director himself, Hamid Kahn) found his proverbial DANCE GODDESS?, he wonders aloud. Soon, Julie finds herself embroiled in a struggle between her heart’s desires (Mike) and her dreams (dance). Why can’t she have both, she wonders aloud a number of times? With the help of Doc, Julie meets up with Jack – a famous producer – who promises to get her all the way to Broadway.
DANCE GODDESS hits the ground twirling (ever twirling) around 80’s Manhattan with a huge dance sequence taking place in the middle of Times Square (“It’s the heart of New York!” Mike tells Julie), complete with gawking tourists and rubbernecking locals. Marvel at the marquees of long lost theaters advertising hits like THE LOST BOYS, DISORDERLIES, WARRIOR OF SHAOLIN, THE TORMENTORS, and more! Delight in typefaces gone by and cheer for banks that no longer exist. The fashions, the passions, and the beat of the city abound in DANCE GODDESS’ all-singing, all-dancing kaleidoscope.
We’re pleased to announce director Hamid Kahn will be on hand for several screenings for an intro and Q&A about the film.
Special thanks to the director and to David Ginn without whom this would not have been possible.
TUESDAY AUGUST 22ND
ONE NIGHT ONLY – 7:30 PM
Jack Waters in attendance
MATCH CUTS PRESENTS and Spectacle Theater present a trio of works by visual artist, filmmaker, writer, media artist, choreographer and performer Jack Waters.
THE MALE GAYZE
dir. Jack Waters, 1990.
USA, 11 min.
THE MALE GAYZE presents an individual’s observation of sexuality and power relations between men, a young African American dancer’s reminiscence of his encounter with a famous Dutch choreographer. Approached from a personal perspective, the story is told in a casually direct voice-over that is read by the author/director. Issues of authority clash in a pedagogical combat zone. The depiction of seemingly random home movie-esque visuals cause the structures of text (“masculine”) and image (“feminine”) to form a contrapunctual relationship of identities. Waters constructs a theater where Black/White, European/American, Younger/Older; Experience and Beauty interact. Platonic in the original sense, the movie invites the viewer to engage in the process of experience itself, where one must make one’s own reactive decisions.
Like gender role playing itself, some viewers determine the postulation of form and content in THE MALE GAYZE as competitive. Others sense the image/text relationship as complementary whereby the descriptive narrative can be absorbed unimpeded by undue intellectualization.
INTRODUCING MR. DIANA
dir. Jack Waters, Peter Cramer, 1996.
USA, 27 min.
A video short documenting the arrival of controversial comic book artist and illustrator Michael Diana – the hottest astral flame to scorch New York City’s creative underbelly – to New York City.
DIOTIMA
dir. Jack Waters, 1993.
USA, 30 min.
A cinematic essay on the great pornography debate. A classically stylized setting expounding the contrasting views of noted scholars, with the inclusion of text generated and delivered by the cast.
Thanks to Visual AIDS and the Film-makers’ Co-op
MATCH CUTS is a weekly podcast centered on video, film and the moving image. Match Cuts Presents is dedicated to presenting de-colonialized cinema, LGBTQI films, Marxist diatribes, video art, dance films, sex films, and activist documentaries with a rotating cast of presenters from all spectrums of the performing and plastic arts and surrounding humanities. Match Cuts is hosted by Nick Faust and Kachine Moore.
Boy, it’s a hot one. This August, Spectacle is pleased to celebrate (?) the dog’s-breath days of summer by exhibiting three unsung classics of criminality in the (dehydrated, varicose) vein of 2013’s OUT IN THE STREETS series. Shove the money under your mattress, grab a jumbo seltzer and put your halfway-broken piece of crap phone in airplane mode – because in the words of a longtime Spectacle volunteer: it’s not the heat… it’s the humanity.
KEEP COOL
dir. Zhang Yimou, 1997
China. 90 mins.
In Mandarin with English subtitles.
SUNDAY, AUGUST 6 – 5 PM
TUESDAY, AUGUST 15 – 10 PM
FRIDAY, AUGUST 25 – 7:30 PM
SUNDAY, AUGUST 27 – 7:30 PM
A tale of luck, hate and perhaps also love in a hot place, KEEP COOL straddles the distance between Zhang Yimou’s early arthouse and later crowd-pleasing sensibilities – a deranged pop-romance shot entirely on location in the sweltering, hypermodernizing streets of Beijing. Jiang Wen (an accomplished filmmaker himself, and mainland China’s biggest movie star at the time) stars as Shuai, a real-life bookthug whose ambitions are way above his overhead. After falling in love with a gangster’s moll named An Hong (played by Qu Ying), Shuai hatches a scheme to win her over – but only before An Hong mysteriously vanishes. Making the first non-historical film of his career, you’d never guess this is the same director who would square Matt Damon off against goblins two decades later on THE GREAT WALL: KEEP COOL ping pongs from scabrous black comedy to biting, insistent humanism. Every sensation tingles: the revving of a motor scooter, the striking of a match, the splash of a bucket of icewater dumped from a twenty storey apartment building. Even though it was censored by Chinese authorities and probably owes a little something to Wong Kar-Wai’s collaborations with Christopher Doyle, what really sticks is the antic nature of Zhang’s camera – free-wheeling yet moored by consequence, the characters’ fortunes shifting on a dime.
“Cutting is jagged, asymmetric, and discontinuous, not the serene conventional pattern Yimou heretofore employed. Imagine David Lean taking ten tabs of acid and turning himself into Richard Lester in his Beatles period and you have some notion of how astonishingly risky this new film is. What amazes most about KEEP COOL is finally how funny and human it is.” – Larry Gross, BOMB
DOG DAY
(aka CANICULE)
dir. Yves Boisset, 1984
France/United States. 100 mins.
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 9 – 7:30 PM
THURSDAY, AUGUST 17 – 7:30 PM
MONDAY, AUGUST 21 – 19 Pm
Lee Marvin probably looked weatherbeaten from womb to tomb – but in one of his very final roles, Hollywood’s last no-bullshit leading man crawls to the finish line with his dignity just-barely intact. DOG DAY (or CANICULE/”heatwave” in its language of origin) is a wild, gnarly piece of work – a European financed crime thriller starring Marvin as Jimmy Cobb, a bank robber-flaneur on the run in Normandy with one last job’s worth of greenbacks. What’s interesting is the way Cobb recedes into the background as his farm-family keepers begin to debate over what to do with him: the mashing up of hard-boiled noir tropes (vis-a-vis Marvin, who more than a few critics presumed got a hefty tax break for his trip to France) and rural ensemble drama (embodied by Jessica, a bored young sexpot played my the inimitable Miou-Miou) will keep you guessing what kind of film DOG DAY wants to be. The answer, in the end, is a bloodbath: Cobb’s inevitable trudge towards death approaches the seriocomic as nearly everybody else is massacred, giving the film a ruthlessness that would never make it out the gate of a Hollywood studio.
PIZZA BIRRA FASO
dirs. Adrián Caetano and Bruno Stagnaro
Argentina. 93 minutes.
In Spanish with English subtitles.
THURSDAY, AUGUST 10 – 7:30 PM
TUESDAY, AUGUST 15 – 7:30 PM
MONDAY, AUGUST 28 – 10 PM
“Four friends. One city. One single exit.” Adrián Caetano and Bruno Stagnaro’s extraordinary PIZZA BIRRA FASO (translating roughly to PIZZA, BEER AND SMOKES – but what kind of smokes?) is a major work of Spanish-language cinema, a cornerstone of New Argentine cinema that was sadly never released in the states. Shiftless teens Pablo, Frula, Magabom and El Cordobés eke out a living committing pick-up robberies on behalf of a cab driver (who then docks their pay) in the slums of Buenos Aires; the film chronicles their attempts to survive hand-to-mouth, and Cordobés’ flirtations with going straight – moving to Uruguay and starting his own small-time crime syndicate. If you can believe it (this being a film with the balls to straight up restage a sequence from Buñuel’s LOS OLVIDADOS), fate has other plans.
Like Victor Gaviria’s RODRIGO D: NO FUTURO and Teresa Villaverde’s OS MUTANTES, PIZZA BIRRA FASO debut sees the spirit of neorealism gone neoliberal: the film diagnoses a particular strain of disenchantment among teenagers in the shadow of congolomeratized capitalism, trapped in poverty while their home cities only get richer. Made when Caetano and Stagnaro were only just in their early twenties, PIZZA BIRRA FASO uses a lightweight handheld camera to create a fast-paced atmosphere that’s itinerant, jittery, claustrophobic. This is a tough, depressing film whose listless aesthetic embodies its characters’ dissatisfaction in total, only to belie the humanism held, until the unforgettably bleak finale, by the filmmakers at arm’s length.
DARNA vs. THE PLANET WOMEN
dir. Armando Garces, 1975
Philippines, 101 minutes
Tagalog with English subtitles
SAT AUGUST 5 – 10:00 PM
SAT AUGUST 12 – 7:30 PM
WED AUGUST 16 – 10:00 PM
FRI AUGUST 25 – MIDNIGHT
Darna is the Philippines’ most celebrated superhero. Appearing in comics, films and tv series siunce 1950, she is the Filipino Wonder Woman- a deceased extraterrestrial warrior magically manifesting herself through a human girl from Earth, named Narda. After Narda swallows a magic white stone, she transforms into the mighty warrior by shouting “DARNA!”. As Darna, she stands up for those who cannot fend for themselves. She fights against both common criminals as well as greater forces of evil, often accompanied by her younger brother, Ding.
1975’s Darna Vs. The Planet Women, directed by Aramando Garces (who made more than 140 features between 1952 and 1980), is the ninth Darna movie, and the third starring Vilma Santos (aka the Grand Slam Queen, one of the Philippines most beloved actresses, now a popular politician), who would come to personify the character in Filipino popular culture. In the film, Vilma’s Narda is portrayed as a disabled teenager who has been given a magical stone from the planet Marte which allows her to transformer into the powerful Darna. The Planet Women (Noche, Elektra, Orang, Maia and Kara) are a band of bikini-clad space amazons, each coded with a different shade of primary-hued body paint. They arrive on Earth armed with a shopping list of Earth scientists whom they plan to abduct, so it’s up to Darna and her dorky brother Ding to save the world from their evil scheme!
THE PINK EGG
Dir. Jim Trainor. 2016
USA, 71 min.
THE BATS
Jim Trainor, 1999
USA, 8 min.
THURSDAY, AUGUST 3 – 7:30 PM (Q&A with director!)
MONDAY, AUGUST 7 – 7:30 PM
SUNDAY, AUGUST 13 – 5:00 PM
FRIDAY, AUGUST 25 – 10:00 PM
TUESDAY, AUGUST 29 – 7:30 PM
Luis Buñuel’s observation – “You can find all of Shakespeare and de Sade in the lives of insects” – was the bulb that drew chronicled Chicago-based anthropomorphic animator, Jim Trainor, to illuminate this troublingly experimental entomology, in which human actors wordlessly enact the emotional life-cycles, ever-complicated sex lives, and savage dinner plans of wasps and bees. Once quoted as saying, “If my films were live-action, I’d probably be jailed,” Trainor unearths this puzzlingly stylized depiction of nature in all her deceitful HD glory.
SILENT LOVERS
Dir. Julie Orlick, 2017
10min., USA
16mm, color
[VARIOUS WORKS]
Dir. Julie Orlick, 2017
approx 30min., USA
16mm & 8mm, color & b&w
FRIDAY AUGUST 18 – 7:30 & 10PM
ONE NIGHT ONLY
Q&A with cast and crew in appearance
As if trapped in a warbly snow globe at the bottom of an ocean (probably not far off Coney Island), we peer into a crystalized void where ageless and speechless souls of elegant despair longingly linger. Obedient to the sovereign ruler of his silent universe, a hopeless mime plays lap dog to a covetous queen in their silky echo chamber of imprisonment. As revelations befall upon the crestfallen clown, he realizes his disenthrallment through a shattering escape with the hand of a pirouetting harlequin, while Her Majesty’s empire and identity spiral into vibrant agony. Caught in a fantasy of abstract and eternal heartache, their faces are forever enslaved to express, or mask, what they cannot say.
Filmed in a dingy Brooklyn basement, as well as one of our own beloved d.i.y. venues, Julie Orlick and her team of unsung romantic weirdos bring to Spectacle her latest and most enterprising short film, Silent Lovers, within a retrospective of Orlick’s works all shot in New York, and on glorious and grainy 16mm. An encounter with her films feels something like slipping out to the speakeasy and tending to a surreal bender with Kenneth Anger. Come indulge in a lavish feast of cake and cruelty, mermaids washed ashore, lecherous gazes, ladies lost in double exposure, murder and sugar cubes, and endless flowers all hot off the reel.
HORROR OF SPIDER ISLAND (aka. Ein Toter hing im Netz, The Bodies Hang In Nets)
Dir. Fritz Böttger (as Jamie Nolan) (1960)
West Germany/Yugoslavia, 80 min.
In (dubbed) English
SAT AUGUST 5 – MIDNIGHT
FRI AUGUST 11 – MIDNIGHT
FRI AUGUST 19 – MIDNIGHT
We’ve seen burlesque dancers on the stage, we’ve seen burlesque dancers behind the scenes, so how about burlesque dancers crash-landing on a tropic island and facing off against an evil spider-ma…erm, man-spider? Welcome to Ein Toter hing im Netz (The Bodies Hang In Nets), a weird little German film which we in the west know as HORROR OF SPIDER ISLAND! A talent agent named Gary (Alexander D’Arcy, THE ST. VALENTINE’S DAY MASSACRE, HOW TO MARRY A MILLIONAIRE) pulls togeteher a dance troupe to head to Singapore and certain success when catastrophic engine failure ends up with all hands in the ocean, leading to a Lord Of The Frauleins situation on a torrid island where a radioactive spiderbite turns Gary into a bug-eyed killing machine! You may think this is all just a pretext to see leggy blondes languidly draped in makeshift bikinis, and you would not be wrong, but it’s worth noting one of those blondes is none other than the great Barbara Valentin (here named Babs Valentine), known and loved by Fassbinder fans worldwide, and she’s just as wonderfully salty here as ever. This print compiles best available sources to include all the scenes cut from the international release, so you get all the nude swimming and dancing the American cut promised and never delivered, making this a perfect film for long hot summer nights when sleep is impossible and danger lurks around every turn.
QUEEN OF BURLESQUE
Dir. Sam Newfield, 1945
USA, 63 min.
WED AUGUST 2 – 7:30 PM
WED AUGUST 16 – 7:30 PM
THU AUGUST 30 – 7:30 PM
“She’ll be pin-up girl in the nursing home when I’m still doing kick-ups!”
To call Samuel Newfield, director of TERROR OF TINY TOWN, THE MAD MONSTER, I ACCUSE MY PARENTS and *many* more a king of the B-films is an understatement: in 1946 alone he made sixteen films (some under pseudonyms). Dolly DeVoe is back in town, the hubba-hubba-hubbiest, and unsurprisingly other dancers are none too happy, particularly current headliner Crystal McCoy (Evelyn Ankers, who creature feature kids know from THE WOLF MAN and THE GHOST OF FRANKENSTEIN), but is she unhappy enough to commit MURDER? How about that shady gossip reporter Steve Hurley(Carleton Young), currently working on his own murder mystery? Or perhaps fellow dancer Blossom Terrain (American burlesque star Rose La Rose!)? You think we’re gonna spill the beans, bub? You best shuffle off to Buffalo!
A *ton* of salty, saucy fights, plenty of great stage numbers, all kinds of backbiting schemes and a race to the truth as the glamorous bodies start piling up! Don’t forget to PLAY IT ON THE G-STRING!
LADY OF BURLESQUE
dir. William A. Wellman, 1943.
USA, 91 min.
THU AUGUST 3 – 10:00 PM
SAT AUGUST 5 – 5:00 PM
SAT AUGUST 12 – 5:00 PM
MON AUGUST 28 – 7:30 PM
“This is my first experience with burlesque. It’s a surprising profession.”
Daisy Hoople, better known to the crowds down at the burlesque house as Dixie Daisy, but better known to youse and mes as the amazing Barbara Stanwyck, is making quite a name for herself as the new girl in town, drawing bigger crowds than Dolly Baxter and Lolita La Verne, gaining her few friends she can trust. Unsurprisingly, she’s the first suspect when other dancers start to turn up DEAD!
Written by Burlesque star Gypsy Rose Lee under the more lurid title The Strip-Tease Murder Case (and NOT ghostwritten by Craig Rice, no matter what dumbness you may have heard), this film is arguably the best dancer-turns-detective tale you’ll see, with director William Wellman (A STAR IS BORN, the *fantastic* NIGHT NURSE, and THE OX-BOW INCIDENT, made later in 1943!) keeping all the subplots moving, balancing great Sammy Cahn-written stage numbers, behind-the-scenes intrigue and suspense until the final revelation! Presented in an excellent quality print, you’ll definitely want to PLAY IT ON THE G-STRING!
August 2012 was a simpler time: America was watching both the Harlem shake and Mitt Romney’s 47% video (a worthy successor to Glenn Danzig’s library tour, or Henry Rollins’ Dutch TV interview) with equally rapt attention. Here at Spectacle, we programmed a head-banging action series called SUMMER OF SHRAPNEL that scorched a proverbial hole in the screen… and burned through all our Julio Medem money after a lower-octane-than-expected turnout. In that battered spirit we are pleased to blow the dust off of four chopsocky non-classics, equalling out to TWO LOAVES OF KUNG FU: because there’s no better time than a summer night to watch guys get kicked upside the spine, ideally while sipping a frosty beverage.
HARD BASTARD
(aka RAGING RIVALS)
dirs. Godfrey Ho, 1982
Hong Kong/South Korea. 95 mins.
WEDS AUGUST 2 – 10 PM
SAT AUGUST 12 – 10 PM
MON AUGUST 14 – 7:30 PM
WED AUGUST 23 – 10 PM
SPECIAL SEPTEMBER SCREENING:
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 16 – MIDNIGHT
With trembling and battered hands (of lightning), this mile-a-minute unauthorized kung fu remake of THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY carves THE HARD onto that film’s lodestar in blood… and a hell of a lot more. Directed by cut-and-paste auteur Godfrey Ho (UNDEFEATABLE, CAT-MAN ON LETHAL TRACK, RAGE OF NINJA), HARD BASTARD tracks two traveling musicians in “the darkest period of Shanghai”, muxing inimitable 70s fashions (white-toned shoes, insanely popped collars) with a backdrop of feudal poverty – perhaps anticipating KUNG FU HUSTLE? They pick up a beautiful girl as a shipment of gold pulls into the pier; the map plotting its coordinates is cut into three pieces, and a chase ensues. Meanwhile, a well-to-do college student (played against type by legendary kickboxer Hwang Jang Lee, of SNAKE IN THE EAGLE’S SHADOW) returns to his hometown… only to discover his father’s dojo has become a canasta joint for the mobsters running the city. HARD BASTARD culminates in a beachside battle royale which, like the climactic moments of so many other cheap-ass genre grenades of the 70s & 80s, accidentally tip-topples itself into the realm of the avant-garde.
“Contemporary martial arts remake of “the good, the bad and the ugly”, although with a wooden, unlikeably incompotent hero, and little morality of any kind… Hwang Jang Lee portrays an immoral card-sharp with a strong sense of self preservation, and kicks his way through a few dullish fight sequences. Unremarkable, but reasonably high energy film with more emphasis on betrayals and double crosses than on conventional kung-fu action.” – Clockwork Avocado, IMDB
“Although the production values were appalling and the dubbing gave the impression that this was a carry on film a few beers or whatever your poison may be and you will laugh so much you will nearly crap yourself. ‘Where are you going?’ ‘To kick sh#t out of them’” – george crowther, IMDB
FLASH FUTURE KUNG FU
(aka HEALTH WARNING, MR. DIGITAL)
dir. Kirk Wong, 1983
Hong Kong. 78 mins.
SATURDAY, AUGUST 5 – 7:30 PM
FRIDAY, AUGUST 11 – 7:30 PM
SUNDAY, AUGUST 20 – 5 PM
THURSDAY, AUGUST 30 – 10 PM
SPECIAL SEPTEMBER SCREENING:
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 30 – MIDNIGHT
“In the early part of the next century there was enormous advancement in science and technology. This created extreme sluggishness (in people). Civilization experienced complete destruction; society collapsed; industry and commerce ground to a halt. People became decadent; without goals, their strength collapsed. They began to build stamina through exercise and became engrossed in underground boxing matches. The world of martial clubs became young people’s only home.”
Calling all fans of HOLOGRAM MAN, DIGITAL MAN, NEON CITY and Reince Priebus: you wanted dystopia? You got it! From the director of THE BIG HIT and CRIME STORY comes a future-world that glistens harder than anything dreamed up by Ridley Scott or Denis Villanueve: This. Is. HEALTH WARNING, MR. DIGITAL (aka FLASH FUTURE KUNG FU): Wong’s throwdown epic takes place in the early part of the next century, where Nazism has inexplicably (as in, the movie doesn’t bother explaining it) become the law of the land… and to paraphrase the ad campaign for 2003’s THE CORE, the only way out is through (via punching.) Most of FLASH FUTURE KUNG FU unfurls in a smog-suffocated arcade proscenium that muxes boundaries between man and tech; as in the “house of dust” from the Epic of Gilgamesh, Wong’s denizens are doomed to spend their days with gas masks and contractor bags draping their heads (and souls) in ignorant darkness. Don’t let that be you – come see the Nazis lose one last time in FLASH FUTURE KUNG FU, before reality outpaces 1980s Hong Kong!
“In a setting somewhat similar to Mel Gibson’s THE ROAD WARRIOR, Johnny Wang Lung Wei and Ray Lui play friends who train all day to fight some Neo Nazis. And Eddy Ko has a nice role as their master. This is definitely not a well made movie, but I loved it. It’s one of Wang Lung Wei’s best fighting performances, and there’s just something about seeing him in a black rain coat going off on people that gets me excited. A lot of his punches and kicks actually connect. I can’t even count how many times I said “ouch” outloud. The choreography is done 80’s Hong Kong kickboxing style, and it fits Wang Lung Wei like a glove. The bottomline is, if you are a fan of Wang Lung Wei, you have to see this. You won’t be disappointed with his performance, trust me.” – gortho, IMDB
EAT MY DUST
(aka DRUG TIGER)
dir. Philip So, 1993
Hong Kong/Taiwan. 94 mins.
FRI, AUGUST 4 – 7:30 PM
WED, AUGUST 9 – 10 PM
SUN, AUGUST 13 – 7:30 PM
THU, AUGUST 24 – 7:30 PM
SPECIAL SEPTEMBER SCREENING:
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 2 – MIDNIGHT
When he was a child, Hank (Michael Tsang) witnessed the murder of his parents at the hands of drug kingpin Bill Yang (Johnny Chiu). By 1993, Hank has grown up – and Philip So’s rip-roaring martial arts actioner follows his path to revenge. But the film’s true hero is the gorgeous undercover supercop Wendy, played Cynthia Lam in an April O’Neil-worthy yellow parka; she’s on her own collission course with Yang, but only in meeting and falling in love with Hank (via much breathtaking ass-kicking) can the audience discover both hearts sharing one path… to revenge. Past a plethora of Australian-dubbed “bastard”s, “rat”s and “rat bastard”s, EAT MY DUST also boasts a remarkable sense of physical comedy: there’s backflip-intensive Kawasaki chase, TVs hurled off of balconies, an abandoned factory incinerating with a snap of the fingers and at least one utterly insane shootout/massacre that harkens to the “balletic” slo-mo splendor of John Woo and Tsui Hark (if not Busby Berkeley), while also foreshadowing the “homage” (read: ripoff) fight scenes in the MATRIX sequels. Like 99% of other movies, EAT MY DUST leaves that trilogy where it belongs – the dust.
“In some ways, DRUG TIGER plays like an underachieving Jackie Chan film. But it’s just too disjointed to recommend strongly. It would be much better to watch a Chan film you haven’t seen, but if you’re a serious connoisseur of those types of movies and you’ve seen most of them, this isn’t a bad choice for a lazy Sunday afternoon.” – Brant Sponeller, IMDB
“Beyond MIAMI VICE, TRAFFIC, TRAFFIK, EL SICARIO: ROOM 114 and Johnnie To’s DRUG WAR… EAT MY DUST is arguably the best war-on-drugs film ever made.” – Steve Macfarlane, Northside Media Group
LITTLE MAD GUY
(aka RAGE OF THE MASTER)
dir. Hsing-Lai Wang, 1982
China/Australia, 102 mins.
FRI, AUGUST 4 – 10 PM
MON, AUGUST 7 – 10 PM
SAT, AUGUST 19 – 10 PM
From a resin-stained abyss of outerboro marginalia gallops LITTLE MAD GUY, projected off of a discount-rack VHS dubbed into Australian English – perhaps the only extant version of the film today. Ming-Tsai Wu stars as shirtless field-urchin Little Fatty, the titular MAD GUY on the hunt for Wu (Tiger Yang) – a notorious outlaw with a steep bounty on his head. Wang’s film is essentially one long tilt-a-wheel of skull-crushing, capillary-busting wall-to-wall wuxia, interspersed with some attempts at comedy and occasional glimpses of the Chinese countryside. Wikipedia would have us believe LITTLE MAD GUY is “labeled as the madcap tale of a simpleton who fights for the people” – but really, what film isn’t? Featuring a prolonged cameo from “Simon” Yuen Siu-tien – the original DRUNKEN MASTER, and father of Yuen Woo-Ping!
“A bandit pretends to be a master in a small county. He causes chaos with all the villagers by doing tricks on them and cheating. The bandit picks on the Little Mad Guy without knowing what it will mean, and Little Guy gets crazy, at which point a hot pursuit begins that takes you through hilarious action-adventures. How will this chase end? One thing you know is that you’ll be in stitches.” – Cobra Video
“Hilarious storyline, many humorous interactions between ‘Little Fatty’ and anyone who he comes in contact with, including bowing down to a frog and chanting ‘I worship the toad’ and falling face first into a pile of crap in his quest to earn a living bringing in a criminal.” – WilliamSchweizer, IMDB
“Almost entirely fighting from start to finish between a core trio of antagonists, Master Ma, Little Fatty and Chun Wu. Little Fatty appears to be the central character, owing his martial arts ability to a life long study of frogs and toads. The bandit Wu is portrayed by Tiger Yang, who the opening credits claim was Muhammad Ali’s martial arts instructor. Funny, but I don’t recall ever hearing of Ali having an interest in the martial arts.” – classicsoncall, IMDB
“The movie also tries to be more than just your average martial arts movie too, by incorporating some comedy elements into it. However, the movie is only funny for about the first 10 or 15 minutes, and then it just gets way too serious.” – Rob Battersby, Geeksquisite
“The film earned first-time actor Jonathon Shaw a Golden Heart Nomination at the 1983 Golden Heart Awards in China. Despite not playing the main part, it was this nomination that earned Shaw the enduring nickname of ‘The Little Guy’.” – Wikipedia
