Page 119 – Spectacle Theater

TERROR FANTASIA: THE FILMS OF CASSANDRA TROYAN

Posted on January 5, 2015December 24, 2019 by spectacletheater

Cassandra Troyan is a poet, filmmaker, and artist from Chicago. Spectacle is proud to present a selection of Cassandra’s work from since 2011; a selection of short films, as well as a feature-length experimental pieces. Cassandra’s work, in the artist’s own words, “develops out of a deep curiosity for uncovering situations of trauma in the every day.”

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 10 – 7:30 PM & 10 PM – **Cassandra Troyan in person!**
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 25 – 7:30 PM & 10 PM

PROGRAM 1:
YOU SEEK FOLLOWERS? SEEK ZEROS.
Dir. Cassandra Troyan, 2013-2015
USA, 88 min.

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 10 – 7:30 PM – DIRECTOR IN PERSON

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 25 – 7:30 PM

WHERE THE SUN NEVER SHINES
(HD Video, 37:42, 2013)

A hysterico-environmental dreamworld set at the edges of capitalism, WHERE THE SUN NEVER SHINES, cycles through endless rabbit holes of Midwest despair and absurdity only to find further economic collapse, failure of masculinity, the ever-present bee plight, psychological trauma. This post-utopian rust-belt drama exists in a landscape where destruction is a form of creative release.

WHERE THE SUN NEVER SHINES is part of the A CURE FIT FOR A KING series. Featuring performances by Fred Schmidt-Arenales, Katherine Harvath, Eero Somers, Paul Gerard Somers, Cassandra Troyan and Danny Volk.

MY DAUGHTER, NEVER MORE
(HD Video, TBA, 2015)

A hummingbird never returns. Anticipation, rage, and melodramatic ecstasy take the stage through longing’s articulation in the spheres of opera, historical monuments, and animals at rest as ciphers for intuited knowledge. A capacitative zoology, never questioning the tongue. I love you daughter, until you betray me.

THE WHOLE FORMS A SYNDROME
(HD Video, 12:19, 2013)

THE WHOLE FORMS A SYNDROME, is a meditation on the mediated subject gone raw, as this work explores residual matter in the politics of resistance, and what it means to be out of sync, in opposition. Historical vamping of prominent figures of authority (a gay Nietzsche, Slavoj Zizek, the Godfather, Karl Marx) this work questions the nature of collectivity and radical gestures as a correspondence between Theodor Adorno and Herbert Marcuse interrogates the practice of theory put into violence. The performance of the political experienced as a trace, as the AK-47 that gets brandished, is the same weapon shooting a barely visible target, the punctures marked only by puffs of dust and hot shells flying out of the weapon in a soundscape of explosions.

DUSK AT THE GALLOWS
(HD Video, 24:18, 2013)

A Tuscan horror film pared down to its affective tropes, both in the Italian landscape and filmic genre. Cinematic feelings are constructed out of the remnants of a quotidian world, making it all the more terrifying by what is hidden, and what is revealed. Torture, allure, mystery, and the sacred create an unconventional narrative where the characters’ motives might unfold, yet the viewer can only experience them as a series of traces. The women are left as ruptures surfacing in the residue of an environment, attempting to voice some desired intensity, violence, or hysteria until they are stifled and pushed into another unknown world.

What is to be feared within this terrain? Must the element causing terror always surface, or reveal itself like the monster or psychopath lurking around the shadowy corner? Or might it exist in some other semblance of meaning, remaining visually unrepresentable? In DUSK AT THE GALLOWS, what cannot be seen holds the greatest threat, and means for discovering a deeper notion of trauma and historical violence in the dark heart of Italy’s mysterious influence.

Performances by (in order of appearance): Kirsten Bockrath, Cody Troyan, Sarah Mendelsohn, Danielle Rosen, Nausicaa Renner, Katherine Harvath, Sophia Rhee, and Chelsea America Torres.

I WAS HAPPY THEN
(HD Video, 14:48, 2013)

The Italian filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni made “L’eclisse” in 1962. The film begins at dawn on a summer morning inside a modernist apartment located on the suburban fringes of Rome. In the opening scene a beautiful young literary translator named Vittoria ends a relationship with her writer lover, Riccardo. Riccardo’s final plea: he only wanted to make her happy. Vittoria listlessly responds, “When we first met, I was 20 years old. I was happy then.” She subsequently emerges alone from his home into a barren, interstitial landscape. For the remainder of the film Vittoria is a tourist figure traversing the urban, architectural and economic landscapes of Rome.

“I was happy then” is both a book and film by Bureau for Open Culture that unites the filmic spaces of Antonioni’s “L’eclisse” and the present-day reality of Siena, Italy. Through the framework of a tourist guide that focuses on the topics of alienation, architecture, economy, love and urbanization, this work drawn from research and lived experience is a means to explore postwar and contemporary life in Siena.

Produced by Bureau for Open Culture with support by the Siena Art Institute in Siena, Italy.

PROGRAM 2:
WITH THE TRUE WORLD WE ABOLISHED THE WORLD WE HAD HERE

Dir. Cassandra Troyan, 2011-2015
USA, 95 min.

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 10 – 10 PM – DIRECTOR IN PERSON

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 25 – 10 PM

THE SACRIFICIAL TEMPTATION OF THE VOID (AS NIGHT SLOWLY FALLS, WE MAKE LOVE)
(HD Video, 01:14:08, 2012)

THE SACRIFICIAL TEMPTATION OF THE VOID (AS NIGHT SLOWLY FALLS, WE MAKE LOVE) explores the terror of becoming female amidst the accelerated haze of contemporary popular culture. Through evoking potentially abject worlds of ecstasy and pain within rap culture, Gothic fetishism, and 90s music videos, the film looks for ways to derive pleasure from the horror in surrender, and the romance in submission.

Sound production and mastering by Andrew Rahman
Featuring performances by Rachel Ellison, Nabiha Khan, David Giordano, and Cody Troyan

GROAN
(HD Video, 6:13, 2011)

Repetition makes its own meaning as a reflection is a kind of soundtrack. Soaring voices of The Red Army Soviet Choir inflect a visual landscape that is at once stroboscopic as it is clear. Selection from the full album and video of its unfolding.

RENDER ME THIS BLOODY HAND
(HD Video, TBA, 2015)

A soldier removed from the domain of war, a hunter searching for authenticity on an atavistic terrain. He is wandering, wanting to know what it would mean to return.

RENDER ME THIS BLOODY HAND is part of the A CURE FIT FOR A KING series. Featuring performances by Fred Schmidt-Arenales, and Paul Gerard Somers.

THE PUSH TO PULL THE FLOW FROM LIFE’S DISTURBANCE (TERROR FANTASIA)
(HD Video, 05:18, 2012)

The nausea.

A scene constructed out of a negatively saturated world. There is a frontal collide of two figures at a table which explodes into another set of figures performing a strange play-acting on the beach. Gestures of abandon shown by gleefully running and rolling in the sand builds a desirous landscape reminiscent of 90s music video tropes only to morph into the stickiness of rap. What is more absurd than wanting to be that which you cannot be? Of having to find one’s self in a language that is not just indecipherable, but the code is the language itself. It is only in using the language that initially seems foreign, can one begin to translate.

Featuring performances by Rachel Ellison, Nabiha Khan, and Cassandra Troyan.

WHEN WE DOZE OFF IN THE BLAZE (PLEASURE THROES)
(HD Video, 10:32, 2011)

Where does desire exist within the absurd, as a suburban backyard becomes an emotional landscape of both accumulation and disappearance? Screams turn to black, darkness dims fire, as the viewer is implicated in a potential world of familiar yet pleasured terror.

Featuring performances by Cody Troyan and Lawrence Troyan.

PUMPING IRON II: THE WOMEN

Posted on December 31, 2014December 24, 2019 by spectacletheater

PUMPING IRON II: THE WOMEN
Dir. George Butler, 1985
USA, 107 min.
In 16mm

Screening with MASTER MUSCLES
Dir. Efrén Hernández, 2014
USA, 14 min.

ONE NIGHT ONLY
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 19 – 8 PM

MASTER MUSCLES
A peek at a most unusual road trip. Like reality television for an alternate universe.

PUMPING IRON II: THE WOMEN
Following Arnold Schwarzenegger’s introduction to the world with PUMPING IRON, the sequel focuses on body building as it was for women in 1983. At the time the standard was for femininity to be maintained, even while flexing, but when Bev Francis comes onto the scene rippling to the max, questions arise about what kind of curves are the most desirable. While we can’t time-machine back to Cannes in 1985 when this debuted with some of its stars present, wowing the crowd who are used to willowy, pale girls, we can gather to watch what turns out to be certainly more interesting than Arnie’s doc. You won’t just oggle tan bodies – you’ll see into an unusual culture that captures another way that women’s bodies are scrutinized.

TWO FILMS BY GIUSEPPE ANDREWS

Posted on December 31, 2014December 24, 2019 by spectacletheater

TOUCH ME IN THE MORNING
Dir. Giuseppe Andrews, 1999
US, 80 min.

FRIDAY, JANUARY 16 – 7:30 PM
MONDAY, JANUARY 19 – 10 PM
THURSDAY, JANUARY 22 – 7:30 PM

In this truly independent Coming-of-Age story from Troma, Giuseppe Andrews stars as Coney Island, a young man who is dealing with a lot of the issues facing today’s youth: divorce, unemployment, sexual inadequacy and a gigolo father who has just been released from prison!

Ever the optimist, Coney Island spends his days singing songs of hope to senior citizens and riding miniature broncos at his favorite playground. Pushed by his unfulfilled girlfriend to grow up, Coney Island turns to Daddy Bill (Bill Nowlin) for advice in the ways of love and embarks on a grotesque and wildly hilarious journey of self-discovery.

TRAILER TOWN
Dir. Giuseppe Andrews, 2003
US. 80 min.

FRIDAY, JANUARY 16 – 10 PM
MONDAY, JANUARY 19 – 7:30 PM
THURSDAY, JANUARY 22 – 10 PM

TRAILER TOWN is a unique motion picture experience, truly unlike anything you’ve seen before. A sexual interpretation of inner violence, about out-of-work comedians living in a trailer park run by a soap opera star. The old comedians cannot work anymore due to their addictions, and come up with the filthiest, most offensive routines they can devise, to strike out at mainstream society, their only audience being themselves. When Bill receives an eviction notice for having too many wild parties, he takes to the roof of his trailer with a rifle, and declares he is a victim of an “aluminum holocaust.”

BEST OF SPECTACLE 2014 – PART 2

Posted on December 25, 2014December 24, 2019 by spectacletheater

To mark the conclusion of Spectacle’s fourth full calendar year of operation, our programming collective has selected their favorites from among the regular series features each other showed throughout the past twelve months. The result, BEST OF SPECTACLE (aka BoS2K14), provides an opportunity to revisit some of 2014’s greatest discoveries, thrills and audience-pleasers.

This is the second half of our selections, the first half can be viewed here.

ANNA
Dir. Pierre Koralnik, 1967
France, 85 min.
In French with English subtitles

With custom English subtitles created by Spectacle!

THURSDAY, JANUARY 8 – 7:30 PM
THURSDAY, JANUARY 15 – 10 PM
SATURDAY, JANUARY 24 – 10 PM
~~TUESDAY, JANUARY 27 – 7:30 PM~~ **closed due to inclement weather**
THURSDAY, JANUARY 29 – 7:30 PM

Part of the How Anna Got Her Groove Back: Karina After Godard series.

A kaleidoscopic, energetic burst of bright colors, infectious musical numbers, and absurdly charming performances, ANNA is a pop-art musical masterpiece that has been locked away for far too long.

Originally made as the first color film for French TV, Anna Karina stars as a shy artist who is unknowngly photographed one day and soon becomes the obsession of an advertising executive (played by French New Wave stalwart Jean-Claude Brialy). He plasters her image up all over town in an attempt to discover the mystery girl, whom he doesn’t seem to notice is the same girl that he keeps bumping into whose wearing those nerdy-chic glasses…

But really, this is all just an excuse for zany, irrestistable fun. The Yé-Yé music, scored and soundtracked by French pop icon Serge Gainsbourg (who also makes several on-screen appearances), is some of the most infectious and catchy work of his career, with Karina’s vocals shining throughout, including the famous ‘Roller Girl’ number that has since been referenced in countless fashion spreads. Every sequence features candy-coated visuals and sumptuous costuming soaked in the era’s impeccable style, all supported by ace contributions from key Godard personnel, including editor Françoise Collin (BAND OF OUTSIDERS, PIERROT LE FOU, 2 OR 3 THINGS I KNOW ABOUT HER) and DP Wally Kurant (MASCULINE FEMININE). Impossible to resist, the film feels like a pitch-perfect melding of Godard’s A WOMAN IS A WOMAN and Demy’s THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG, with Karina’s adorable beauty and effervescent charm as the center of attention. And be on the lookout for a Marianne Faithfull cameo!

The film was a hit on French television in the late 60s and received a brief Japanese theatrical run in the 90s, but has since vanished and, to the best of our knowledge, has never screened before in the US. Working with Universal Music, Spectacle is enthralled to present this lost gem of 60s French cinema.

A RAINHA DIABA
aka The Devil Queen
Dir. Antonio Carlos da Fontoura, 1974
Brazil, 99 min.
In Portuguese with English subtitles

SUNDAY, JANUARY 4 – 7:30 PM
SATURDAY, JANUARY 10 – 7:30 PM
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 21 – 7:30 PM
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 28 – 10 PM

Part of the Out in the Streets series.

[TRIGGER WARNING: Drug use, violence, sexual slurs, and a disturbing scene of torture.]

It was six years between Antonio Carlos da Fontoura’s stunning debut, COPACABANA ME ENGANA, and it’s follow-up, A RAINHA DIABA. If the former film bears the stylistic tropes of François Truffaut, then it might be said that the later was clearly influenced by weed. In a stunning change-up, the gritty, black-and-white, often loosely-choreographed cinematography is abandoned in favor of a shocking explosion of bright color to tell the story of The Devil Queen, a ruthless, pansexual, drug-pushing queen who runs Rio de Janeiro’s favelas with a velvet-gloved fist.

A RAINHA DIABA is loosely based on the persona of Madame Satã (“Madam Satan,” a name adapted from the Cecil B. DeMille film), ex-slave, drag performer, self-described homosexual, biological father of seven, convicted murderer, and legendary cabaret performer who was an outlaw hero in Rio’s 1930’s underground. Fontoura’s contemporary seventies riff is also shaped by the director’s admission that every time he smoked a joint, he wondered about the bloodshed that came with it. And the movie has no shortage of it, in garish, Hershchell Gordon Lewis red, chronicling the war that erupts in the streets after The Queen and his henchmen attempt to frame a small-time street hustler to take the fall for his boyfriend. Milton Gonçalves dominates the title role with a ruthless, wry performance that garnered him Brazil’s preeminent Best Actor award. And Odete Lara (star of COPACABANA ME ENGANGA and Glauber Rocha’s ANTONIO DAS MORTES) is also spectacular as the hustler’s nightclub singer girlfriend.

Just as COPACABANA predates Scorsese’s soundtracks and self-styled tough guys (motifs further developed here), A RAINHA DIABA is startlingly prescient of Pedro Almodóvar’s subject matter and kitschy aesthetic approach, populated with a cast of hustlers, street walkers, addicts, and outcasts that would make fine Warhol superstars. (Come to think of it, this film also predates the Scorsesean montage where people run around with guns and slaughter each other over a thin wire of searing, acid-rock guitar.) A RAINHA DIABA was one of the first films to chronicle the culture of drugs and criminality that existed in Rio’s favelas, but it forgoes the neorealist approach in favor of a nicely toasted version of Late Cinema Novo expressionism; there are oblique feats of subtly fried cinematography that appear as if they were processed not through the camera lens, but somehow willed into existence by tetrahydrocannabinol itself.

Basically, if you like weed, drag, and violence, then good news from Earth: you have a higher purpose this month.

DON’T DELIVER US FROM EVIL
Dir. Joël Séria, 1971
France, 110 min.
In French with English subtitles

FRIDAY, JANUARY 9 – 7:30 PM
TUESDAY, JANUARY 13 – 7:30 PM
SATURDAY, JANUARY 17 – 7:30 PM
SATURDAY, JANUARY 31 – 7:30 PM

Part of the Spectober IV series.

[TRIGGER WARNING: Attempted sexual assault of a minor]

“Really about the obsessive nature of female friendship, of girls suffering a tedious, square world filled with hypocrisy and becoming hopped up by literature and the forbidden and hellfire and all the stuff that’s so intense when you’re 15, [DON’T DELIVER US FROM EVIL] is a fiendish paean to the freaky bad girl—girls who, when staring into that bland void would rather, quite literally, burn out than fade away.” – Kim Morgan, Sunset Gun

Special thanks to Pete Tombs and Mondo Macabro

One of the great unhearalded works of early ‘70s youth rebellion, DON’T DELIVER US FROM EVIL is about a pair of upper-class parochial school BFFs who swear themselves to Satan and set out, in their own seemingly innocent way, to inflict pain and cruelty on do-gooding “idiots.” Over the course of a summer, the two have neighboring country vacation homes, and when Anne, the instigator of the two, is left on her own, her place becomes a haven for all kinds of wickedness. The girls amuse themselves with sexual intimidation of their neighbor, restaging Christ’s Carrying of the Cross with a lame groundskeeper, holding a Satanic ceremony, and seducing a married man. When they return to school, they make the ultimate statement of contempt for middle-class values.

The film is as much about hiding under the covers with flashlights and dirty books and sneaking cigs and communion wine as it is figuring out where to hide a body. It’s not difficult to imagine why the film never received US distribution: it’s not a lurid exploitation that could appeal to a grindhouse crowd, but its arthouse style and whimsy is rooted in too much anti-bourgeois perversion to appeal to sophisticated New Yorkers. (Though Amos Vogel does single it out in FILM AS A SUBVERSIVE ART.) Consider it a cross between Jean Eustache and Michael Haneke with a bit of Buñuel and Larry Clark thrown in—but one that seems uniquely attuned to its young, rebellious female protagonists. It’s a true diamond-in-the-rough.

Rally your best friend and check it out: this is essential bad girl viewing.

THE EMPEROR’S NAKED ARMY MARCHES ON
Dir. Kazuo Hara, 1988
Japan, 122 min.
In Japanese with English subtitles

FRIDAY, JANUARY 2 – 7:30 PM
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 7 – 7:30 PM
SUNDAY, JANUARY 25 – 5 PM
~~MONDAY, JANUARY 26 – 7:30 PM~~ **closed due to inclement weather**

Part of The Bitter Truths of Kazuo Hara series. Special thanks to Tidepoint Films.

[TRIGGER WARNING: Wartime violence and atrocities]

THE EMPEROR’S NAKED ARMY MARCHES ON is a more plainly political, but no less revealing, portrait of Japan since World War II. Kenzo Ozukaki was tireless in his campaign against the commonly held idea in Japan that Emperor Hirohito was not responsible for war atrocities during World War II, even getting arrested in the process. Ozukaki ambushes former soldiers into giving him the answers that he is obsessed with finding. His obsession is unsettling; even people who agree with him politically seem unwilling after a certain point to stand in solidarity with Ozukaki, as his methods get more outrageous, and eventually violent.

The film became surprisingly popular in Japan, earning Hara the New Director Prize from the Directors Guild of Japan (and only 16 years after his first film GOODBYE CP!) and drawing relatively large crowds for such controversial and alienating subject matter. Errol Morris has put THE EMPEROR’S NAKED ARMY MARCHES ON in his top 5 films of all time, high praise from a master of the documentary film (Michael Moore likes it too, if that’s more your speed). Through the entire movie, Hara remains a silent witness to Ozukaki’s increasing fanaticism and devotion to the only version of the truth he can possibly accept; but when is silence irresponsible? When are those in charge responsible for things they let happen? When is inaction morally indefensible?

FINAL FLESH
Dir. Vernon Chatman
USA, 71 min.

FRIDAY, JANUARY 9 – 10 PM
SATURDAY, JANUARY 17 – 10 PM
FRIDAY, JANUARY 23 – 10 PM
SATURDAY, JANUARY 31 – 10 PM

Writer/director Vernon Chatman of PFFR (WONDER SHOWZEN, XAVIER: RENEGADE ANGEL) discovered the existence of “websites whereupon one can hire professional porn production companies to do the sick and custom bidding of your panting loins’ darkest yearn.” He chose four different custom-porn-making sites, and submitted segments of a highly detailed script, or as he called it, his “purest truths”, to each of them. The results form the “8-part prepocolyptic triptych in D minor” (or perhaps the 4-part “cinematic exquisite corpse”) that is FINAL FLESH.

This epic and disturbing saga cannot be adequately explained or summarized, but by way of an attempt, it concerns the Pollard family (who shape-shift in their representation by the four different smutmakers).

The family is calmly discussing their impending death by atom bomb when Mrs. Pollard recounts a dream in which she sensually bathes herself in the “Tears of Neglected Children”. Daughter Pam goes to the Psycho Sexual Burn-Ward (the bathroom) and reads the Koran on the toilet: “Yahweh ordered a double-latte. When the barista handed it to him, it was too hot, so Yahweh threw it in the janitor’s face. The end.” Pam then gives birth to an egg (“this is so hot”) and a piece of raw steak which she names Mr. Peterson and breastfeeds. Mrs. Pollard and Pam then hatch a plan to convince their patriarch to return to the womb (“get up in there”), before Mrs. Peterson recounts her life’s regret: “I didn’t want to have a family, I wanted to murder the president. I wanted to use his blood to oil the machinery of capitalism.” The atom bomb drops but the adventure continues as they re-emerge in God’s womb, reincarnated as a different set of amateur porn actors…

If FINAL FLESH is not the greatest film of the 21st century, then I just creamed in my demon. “It’s the same thing every Thanksgiving. Remember?”

GAEA GIRLS
Dir. Kim Longinotto and Jano Williams, 2000
England/Japan, 106 min.
In Japanese with English subtitles

SUNDAY, JANUARY 11 – 5 PM
MONDAY, JANUARY 12 – 10 PM
TUESDAY, JANUARY 20 – 10 PM
FRIDAY, JANUARY 30 – 10 PM

Part of the Three Films by Kim Longinotto series. Special thanks to Women Make Movies!

This fascinating film follows the physically grueling and mentally exhausting training regimen of several young wanna-be GAEA GIRLS, a group of Japanese women wrestlers who are just as violent as any member of the World Wrestling Federation. One recruit, Takeuchi, endures ritual humiliation not seen on screen since the boot camp sequences of FULL METAL JACKET.

“Longinotto and Williams’s ability to penetrate facades is remarkable. The filmmakers build their story in a way that’s more compelling and suspenseful than many narrative films.” – Chicago Film Festival

Film synopsis courtesy of Women Make Movies!

THE KILLING OF AMERICA
Dir. Sheldon Renan & Leonard Schrader, 1982
USA, 90 min.

SATURDAY, JANUARY 3 – 7:30 PM
SATURDAY, JANUARY 10 – 10 PM
TUESDAY, JANUARY 13 – 10 PM
THURSDAY, JANUARY 29 – 10 PM

Part of the Mondo America series.

ALL OF THE FILM YOU ARE ABOUT TO SEE IS REAL. NOTHING HAS BEEN STAGED.

So begins the 1982 shockumentary THE KILLING OF AMERICA, a film that, even among its mondo movie contemporaries, stands out as one of the grimmest and most infamous films ever produced. So much so, in fact, that to this day it remains effectively unreleased in The United States.

If violence is the disease, then THE KILLING OF AMERICA is the microscope. Compiled almost entirely from news broadcasts, security camera footage, etc, THE KILLING OF AMERICA chronicles nearly every major violent incident of the era, from the JFK assassination onward. The America presented here is land characterized by widespread burnout and disillusionment. Add to that the increasing pervasiveness of the mass media, as well as an obscene overabundance of firearms, and you are left with a sobering portrait of a sick society, in which insanity and paranoia breed easily. Meanwhile, three decades later…

Directed by Sheldon Renan & Leonard Schrader (brother of Paul Schrader), and featuring a noteworthy narration by voiceover master Chuck Riley.

THE MARATHON FAMILY
Dir. Slobodan Šijan, 1982.
SFR Yugoslavia, 92 min.
In Serbian with original English subtitles by Spectacle!

FRIDAY, JANUARY 2 – 10 PM
THURSDAY, JANUARY 8 – 10 PM
MONDAY, JANUARY 12 – 7:30 PM
SUNDAY, JANUARY 18 – 5 PM

Part of the Three Yugoslavian Comedies by Dušan Kovačević series.

Adapted by Kovačević from his play Maratonci trče počasni krug (1973)

Šijan and Kovačević followed up the smashing success of WHO’S SINGIN’ OVER THERE? with the arguably even greater THE MARATHON FAMILY (the Serbian title translates to, “The Marathoners Run the Victory Lap”), based on one of Kovačević’s earliest plays. Set in a small village in 1935, it explores the offbeat personal and political tensions amid a family of six generations of contemporaneously-(mostly-)-living undertakers.

THE MARATHON FAMILY is as grim and anarchic — not to mention hilarious — as anything Šijan and Kovačević have ever done, and no less rooted in recent history of social relations. It represents various points of transitions: the assassination of King Alexander I of Yugoslavia, portrayed through the actual newsreel on which it was captured; the transition to sound film in Yugoslavia’s cinemas; and, among the family, tensions over the ailing business affairs of their cemetery and the economic motivation to pursue new crematorium technology. Due to the latter, the family also becomes mixed-up with a local gangster, whose team of grave robbers refurbish old coffins — and naturally, the undertakers are also behind on their payments. Meanwhile, the youngest, most dim-witted member of the Marathon family becomes romantically ensnared with the gangster’s disturbed daughter, whose behavior grows increasingly erratic when she’s fired as the cinema’s pianist.

Barreling through comedy, tragedy, death, pornography, murder, incineration, and historical sea change, THE MARATHON FAMILY is at once as tar-black and uproarious as movies get.

THE SNOW WOMAN
aka Kaidan Yukijorô
Dir. Tokuzô Tanaka, 1968
Japan, 79 min.
In Japanese with English subtitles

SATURDAY, JANUARY 3 – 10 PM
TUESDAY, JANUARY 6 – 10 PM
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 14 – 7:30 PM
SUNDAY, JANUARY 18 – 7:30 PM
~~TUESDAY, JANUARY 27 – 10 PM~~ **closed due to inclement weather**

Part of the Spectober IV series.

The story of Yuki-Onna, the Snow Woman, who kills any man who sets his eyes upon her, is best-known to western audiences as one of the segments in Masaki Kobayashi’s 1965 portmanteau horror classic KWAIDAN. Made just three years later, Tokuzô Tanaka’s poetic and haunting feature-length interpretation adheres to the basic outline of the folk tale (which is also referenced in Kurosawa’s DREAMS), infusing it with added emotional depth and political subtext and one-upping Kobayashi’s version with some truly inspired and terrifying set-pieces.

Shigetomo, a master sculptor, and his apprentice Yosaku set out for the Mino Mountains to find the suitable wood from which to carve the Buddhist statue for the state temple. Caught in a blizzard, they take refuge in a hut, where the Snow Woman finds them asleep. She murders the sculptor but, struck by Yosaku’s “youth and beauty”, impulsively decides to spare him if he promises to never tell anybody what he witnessed. He returns safely to his village but soon falls in love with a new arrival named Yuki, who is really the Snow Woman disguised as a human.

THREE LIVES
Dir. Kate Millett, 1971
USA, 70 min.

SUNDAY, JANUARY 11 – 7:30 PM **Kate Millett and Robin Mide in attendance!**
THURSDAY, JANUARY 15 – 7:30 PM
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 21 – 10 PM
SUNDAY, JANUARY 25 – 7:30 PM

Part of the In Our Own Words: Feminist Non-Fiction Films of the 70s series.

“Kate Millett’s Three Lives is a moving, proud, calm, aggressively self-contained documentary feature…” – Vincent Canby, The New York Times

Feminist author Kate Millett was a second-wave powerhouse; in 1970, she published Sexual Politics, called by Norma Wilson “one of the first feminist books of this decade to raise nationwide male ire,” and which, obviously, made her an enemy of Norman Mailer. In 1971, Millett brought together an all-female crew, under the name Women’s Liberation Cinema, to film three women’s remembrances of their lives.

THREE LIVES portrays three women: Robin Mide, an artist; Lillian Shreve, a chemist; and Mallory Millet-Jones, Millett’s own sister. The camera is a quiet observer, letting the women, from three different paths and generations, tell their own stories without outside interference. Through these women’s personal revelations, a narrative of living under the patriarchy is revealed. The personal is political, indeed.

Courtesy of Kate Millett.

VIY
Dir. Konstantin Yershov & Georgi Kropachyov
1967, 78 min.
In Russian with English subtitles

SUNDAY, JANUARY 4 – 5 PM
MONDAY, JANUARY 5 – 10 PM
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 7 – 10 PM
FRIDAY, JANUARY 23 – 7:30 PM

Part of the Spectober IV series.

A young student must pray for 3 days over the body of a recently deceased woman – believed to be a witch – while her restless spirit and a gang of ghouls temp, prod, and terrorize him to no end. Based on the story (also called Viy) by Nikolai Gogol, the film boasts some excellent effects work and a beautiful score.

WOMEN IN REVOLT
Dir. Paul Morrissey, 1971
USA, 97 min.

TUESDAY, JANUARY 6 – 7:30 PM
SATURDAY, JANUARY 24 – 7:30 PM
~~MONDAY, JANUARY 26 – 10 PM~~ **closed due to inclement weather**
FRIDAY, JANUARY 30 – 7:30 PM

Part of the Four Films by Paul Morrissey series.

[TRIGGER WARNING: This film contains depictions of sexual assault.]

Featuring Candy Darling, Jackie Curtis, Holly Woodlawn and Jane Forth. With music by John Cale.

What do you mean “Come down off the trapeze and into the sawdust”? That’s circus talk.

Three of the most indelible transgender icons of all time play militant feminists in this incredible film which is so much more than parody. Jackie Curtis and Holly Woodlawn have had it with men and their foul ways, so they join a militant feminist organization called PIG (Politically Involved Girls). Candy Darling is a wealthy socialite from Park Avenue (or Long Island – they can’t keep it straight) who they draw into the group to give it legitimacy, but it turns out that she’s having an incestuous relationship with her brother. Regardless, the three quickly become enemies: “I could just plunge a knife right into her back.” “Oh no, it’s too bloody!” “Well, I could do it and just not look.” Holly Woodlawn becomes a Bowery bum and Jackie Curtis can’t stop hiring male prostitutes, while Candy becomes a famous actress: “I’m sick of incest and lesbianism. I’m ready for Hollywood.”

After WOMEN IN REVOLT previewed on 59th Street, it was protested by a feminist organization, who mistook the film for a caricature of feminism rather than a caricature of the popular discourse around feminism, not to mention a caricature of traditional gender roles. Candy Darling reportedly declared, “Who do these dykes think they are anyway? Well, I just hope they all read Vincent Canby’s review in today’s Times. He said I look like a cross between Kim Novak and Pat Nixon. It’s true – I do have Pat Nixon’s nose.”

THE YEAR OF THE CANNIBALS
aka I cannibali
Dir. Liliana Cavani, 1969
Italy, 95 min.
In Italian with English subtitles

MONDAY, JANUARY 5 – 7:30 PM
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 14 – 10 PM
TUESDAY, JANUARY 20 – 7:30 PM
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 28 – 7:30 PM

Part of the Tales of Turbulence from Emilia-Romagna series.

Liliana Cavani is probably best known for her portrayal of a complex erotic relationship between a former SS officer and a concentration camp survivor in her 1974 film THE NIGHT PORTER. Largely overlooked however is her 1969 feature, THE YEAR OF THE CANNIBALS, which investigates a different kind of obscene authority and the “natural rebellion” it provokes.

In this loose adaptation of Antigone set in a near-future Milan, the State has forbidden the removal of the bodies of rebels that litter the streets. As a result, the corpses are stepped over and ignored by the citizens, reminding us how a comfortable private existence in the metropolis everywhere means turning a blind eye to misery. Britt Ekland (THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN) and Pierre Clémenti (PIGSTY, THE CONFORMIST) band together as vigilante body-snatchers in defiance of the decree, and ultimately face repression and execution. A radical chic romp that recalls A HARD DAY’S NIGHT and Clémenti’s work with Groupe Zanzibar, THE YEAR OF THE CANNIBALS also offers a sober early analysis of the notorious “years of lead” in Italy, characterized by witch-hunts and wholesale incarceration of suspected militants.

“I intended to use the language of myth and universal symbols to avoid the revolutionary speeches that had become a cliché by 1969-1970. … [The Year of the Cannibals] is not the chronicle of a revolution, … but the spectral analysis of reality beyond the various episodes that characterized the demonstrations. I believe it is a comprehensive analysis, and primarily a discourse of generations.” -Interview in Écran #26, June 1974

BEST OF SPECTACLE MIDNIGHTS 2014 – PART 2

Posted on December 22, 2014December 24, 2019 by spectacletheater

FRIDAY, JANUARY 1: DON’T GO IN THE HOUSE
SATURDAY, JANUARY 2: TURKISH PARANORMAL ACTIVITY

FRIDAY, JANUARY 9: AMERICAN COMMANDOS
SATURDAY, JANUARY 10: LITTLE MARINES

FRIDAY, JANUARY 16: LILLIAN THE PERVERTED VIRGIN
SATURDAY, JANUARY 17: BACK STREET JANE

FRIDAY, JANUARY 23: WEREWOLF IN A GIRLS DORMITORY
SATURDAY, JANUARY 24: ANIMAL PROTECTOR

FRIDAY, JANUARY 30: DIGITAL MAN
SATURDAY, JANUARY 31: LASER MISSION

DON’T GO IN THE HOUSE
Dir. Joseph Ellison, 1979.
USA. 82 min.

FRIDAY, JANUARY 1 – MIDNIGHT

D. Boon asked, “What makes a man start fires?” Donny’s coworkers at the garbage disposal plant call him a fag and a sicko when he stands coldly transfixed as the incinerator envelops a co-worker in flames. He returns home to find his mother dead: his long-suffering guardian, who punished him as a child by holding his arms over the stove’s open flames. The curdled scars on his arms say nothing of the hideous psychological brand on his brain. His homicidal passion ignited, Donny does what any frustrated man would do: buys a flamethrower, builds a steel room, and lures women home so he can set them ablaze then arrange their charred corpses in his sitting room.

A decidedly sick ripoff of PSYCHO, DON’T GO IN THE HOUSE is perhaps less along the lines of a cheapie slasher than a film that seems to at least some extent be legitimately interested in creating a character portrait around a disturbed mind. (When Donny decides he’s been cured and changes from his working class duds into a new leisure suit, you almost want to believe he’s going to find true love at the discotheque instead of lighting a bunch of people on fire.) Consider it TAXI DRIVER with a blowtorch and the grindhouse version of a Scorsesean Catholic guilt complex. Future SOPRANOS wiseguy Dan Grimaldi turns in a memorable performance as Donny, and the film has some truly creepy moments and shocking scares.

ARTIFACT VIDEO CLUB PRESENTS:
TURKISH PARANORMAL ACTIVITY
Dir. Hasan Karacadağ, 2012
Turkey, 119 min.

SATURDAY, JANUARY 2 – MIDNIGHT

Nodding to our international colleagues running Nollywood movie clubs, VCD videotheques, and illicit storefront cinemas, this year Spectacle inaugurates ARTIFACT VIDEO CLUB, a new monthly midnight series of bootlegged contemporary pop cinema from around the world. Pitched between armchair anthropology, misapplied critical theory, and superfried midnight madness, ARTIFACT VIDEO CLUB is an intrepid exploration of vernacular cinema from around the globe: things from countries whose film industries’ stateside visibility is generally restricted to annual consulate-sponsored showcases touting prestige productions. These are not such films.

Purposefully half-baked, the series is conceptually aligned with Ghana’s bootleg Hollywood video screenings, virus-infested Russian piracy sites, taxi stand televisions, Crown Heights bodegas DVD selections, the nether-reaches of YouTube trailer shows, and movies from two years ago that have an 8.7 IMDb rating based on tens of thousands of votes, yet of which apparently nothing has been written in English. Like the films it presents, it has been authorized by no one.

We begin with what we are calling TURKISH PARANORMAL ACTIVITY. Though the seasoned Z-grade movie explorer is no doubt familiar with Turkey’s circa-1980 mockbusters like TURKISH STAR WARS, TURKISH WIZARD OF OZ, TURKISH E.T., TURKISH BATMAN, TURKISH STRAW DOGS, et al, one might believe this practice has been displaced by such contemporary arthouse darlings such as Nuri Bridge Ceylan, Rasit Celikezer, and Fatih Aiken. And yet it continues through the efforts of those such as Islamic Turkish horror filmmaker Hasan Karacadağ, who over the last decade has produced a steady stream of remarkably effective (and truly scary) unofficial horror remakes that unabashedly reinterpret hits from trend genres like J-horror, found footage, and torture porn via the The Quran — sort of like if Hollywood worshipped Allah instead of Mammon.

The plot of this one is simple: after a young woman experiences intensified sleepwalking episodes, her husband places cameras around the house to monitor her activity. As more unexplained, increasingly malevolent experiences occur during the night, including those which threaten their young daughters, the couple consult with a holy man and learn that they are being persecuted by the Quranic spirits of the Dabbe and Jinn — and may be under possession themselves. Because the PARANORMAL ACTIVITY films are so quintessentially formulaic, the well-studied, brazen appropriation of TURKISH PARANORMAL ACTIVITY renders it, at minimum, exactly as good as its North American counterparts (and, pleasantly, more gory). Only by framing its consumer-tech-steeped narrative in Islamic belief and folklore, it also presents a dialectic between tradition and modernization, portending grim consequences of secular living. The simple virtue of it’s existence amid a revitalized, international appreciation for Turkish arthouse cinema also suggests something of the country’s uneasy, unreconciled relationship to its history of exploitation cinema.

But maybe we’re over-explaining ourselves: TURKISH PARANORMAL ACTIVITY is totally awesome and scary as fuck.

AMERICAN COMMANDOS
Dir. Bobby A. Suarez, 1989
Philippines, 89 min.
In English.

FRIDAY, JANUARY 9 – MIDNIGHT

Trigger Warning: Sexual Assault

Envelop yourself in our patented FUZZ-O-VISION VHS tape technology!

What’s deadlier than an American Hunter? An AMERICAN COMMANDO(S). Christopher Mitchum, our second or third favorite action star-turned-California politician, returns as an American commando in this high-stakes Southeast Asian shoot-’em-up directed by the legendary Bobby A. Suarez (AMERICAN COMMANDOS).

At the outset, as a gas station attendant in the outskirts of Philippines, Dean Mitchell (Mitchum) bravely kills a bunch of druggie scum by flipping over their car with bullets. Nice! But the problem with killing doper thugs with guns is they have doper thug friends with guns. When these human vermin exterminate Mitchell’s wife and child, they tell him they’ve settled the score – but really, they’ve only upped the stakes. Mitchell is a Vietnam vet, and, reuniting with his fellow war buddies, he traces the group to Saigon before going – that is, returning – deep into the dark heart of the jungle. And once there, he learns that the truth of who is behind the drug killings is far more criminal than he could have imagined.

AMERICAN COMMANDOS is a bleak, brute force actioner relieved only by non-stop moments of extreme unintentional humor, usually in the form of meaningless, blank expressions of loss, anguish, and victimhood. It’s the American right’s most constipated attempt to reconcile (or circumvent) the lessons of Vietnam. As the Bond-esque end credits song states: “He lost everything he had / He came close to going mad / He’s so good / But he is also bad.”

Mm. Anyway: explosions, Filipino-Italo soundtrack, righteous fist shaking toward an absentee God, rocket-firing motorcycle, and squibs galore. What’s not to like?

LITTLE MARINES
Dir. A.J. Hixon, 1991
USA, 87 min.

SATURDAY, JANUARY 10 – MIDNIGHT

Awkwardly shot like a pervert peaking on these kids in the woods, A.J. Hixon’s LITTLE MARINES is the story of three turds that go camping. It’s not really an adventure film since it is mostly just a series of mishaps and fuck-ups and offers no resolutions to these kids problems. Most famous for its really long shaving scene featured at the Found Footage Film Festival, LITTLE MARINES has many more precious moments including bizarre flashbacks to their friend who died of cancer, a cool dude that tries to give them a handful of joints, a not so cool dude that is probably a child molester, a bully that has a gun, and a moment when the fatty admits that his father never said he loved him and the fatty’s friends say nothing. Its what you can expect from good ol’ Christian entertainment.

For this screening, the Spectacle will be screening the VHS tape that features the original music they probably couldn’t get the rights to when it came out on DVD!

The Franco Files Presents:
LILIAN THE PERVERTED VIRGIN (Lilian la virgen pervertida)
Dir. Jess Franco (as Cliford Braun), 1984
Spain, 79 min.

FRIDAY, JANUARY 16 – MIDNIGHT

It’s fitting that as soon as Spain lifted the ban on pornography, Jess was the first through the hardcore gate with Lilian, The Perverted Virgin.

It’s the 13th of the 19 films he’d do with Golden Productions, so Lina Romay and Antonio Mayans are there of course, but the star here is Katja Bienert, who plays Lilian, found on the beach by Mario (Mayans), who listens to her tell the story of her abduction and torture at the hands of two wealthy perverts (Romay, naturally, and Emilio Linder). Betrayal, manipulation, wigged-out drug scenes, Jess as a drunk police official (again), freaky stage acts — it’s got everything you’d hope for in a Franco film.

With an excellent score by Pablo Villa and some excellent cinematography by Juan Soler, it’s an excellent introduction to Franco’s 80s classics.

WARNING: Hardcore pornography, including bondage.

BACK STREET JANE
Dir. Ronnie Cramer, 1989
USA, Runtime N/A

SATURDAY, JANUARY 17 – MIDNIGHT

“Yesterday she was a thief … today she’s an extortionist … tomorrow she’ll be rich … or dead!”

Screamed the tagline of BACK STREET JANE, the first stand-alone feature from musician, visual artist and filmmaker Ronnie Cramer. Shot in lurid 16mm, BACK STREET JANE is the rare Film Noir-inspired film that doesn’t come off as imitation. This is genuine, bare-knuckle low-budget filmmaking, as gritty as it gets. A tough-as-Hell jaunt to the wrong side of town so packed with drugs, violence, sex and vengeance that upon release it garnished high praise from scores of indie review zines and mags across the country; including Psychotronic Video, who said: “Non-stop double-crosses and plot surprises in the tradition of movies like ‘The Killing’ and ‘The Asphalt Jungle’!” – Psychotronic Video

WEREWOLF IN A GIRLS DORMITORY
(aka: LYCANTHROPUS)
Dir. Paolo Heusch, 1961
Italy, 83 min.

FRIDAY, JANUARY 23 – MIDNIGHT

“Mary has a marvelous ability for always being in trouble.”

Spectacle Midnights are about to give going back to college the old college try. There’s a ghoul in school and it’s a wonder anyone can even get a quality education amidst all the blackmail, seduction, and carnage.

A new professor, with a murky past, arrives at school for troubled girls outside of a quiet little town besieged by wolf attacks. On his first night there, a young girl is savagely torn apart just outside of the school. With the mile long suspect list growing ever shorter as the stack of bodies grows taller, the film – penned by the legendary scribe Ernesto Gastaldi (The Long Hair of Death, The Horrible Dr. Hitchcock, Torso, My Name is Nobody, Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key, The Case of the Bloody Iris, etc.) this film keeps you guessing til the end. Featuring a snappy theme song and a soundtrack peppered with bassoons and flutes and presented UNCUT with footage TOO SHOCKING FOR SIXTIES CENSORS!

“I saw. You’re a beast not a man my dear so go to the Devil.

I haven’t done anything.
I haven’t done anything.”

ANIMAL PROTECTOR
Dir. Mats Helge, 1988
Sweden/USA, 96 min.

SATURDAY, JANUARY 24 – MIDNIGHT

Like Spectacle after-dark idols Godfrey Ho (HARD BASTARD) and Arizal (AMERICAN HUNTER), Swedish filmmaker Mats Helge singlehandedly helmed dozens of cornea-crushing Z-grade action pictures in the 70s and 80s, only a fistful of which are accounted for today. Perhaps second-famous after his much-whispered-about THE NINJA MISSION, ANIMAL PROTECTOR sees Helge standing at the cynosure of 80s late-night movie financing. Shooting in and around a Scottish castle, Helge’s camera betrays a magnetic pull towards David Carradine’s demented hardass Colonel Whitlock. Lording over an operation guarded by special ops, infantrymen and non-American Green Berets, Whitlock is no mere animal-experimenting megavillain but a damn Reagan-era Doctor Moreau.

For a time, Helge’s bleak vision is like watching a powerful Bond villain with no comeuppance anywhere near to the horizon. But justice does indeed touch down at Whitlock’s doorsteeple in the hands of C.I.A. agent Santino (A.R. Hellquist), plus a bevy of uzi-gun toting blondes in shredded jeans and camo. Impassioned to free Whitlock’s mammalian victims (if without an escape plan beyond the island), the crew chews up scores of foot soldiers and flunkies before running smack into its greatest obstacle: Whitlock. Carradine the order-barker suddenly morphs into Carradine the wild man of kung fu, exploding out of the castle and onto the beach. There, Santino’s mission vanishes into the sunrise in a one-on-one deathmatch that can only define both men as animal.

DIGITAL MAN
Dir. Philip J. Roth, 1995
Nevada. 91 min.
In English.

FRIDAY, JANUARY 30 – MIDNIGHT

Hot on the heels of 2013’s sold-out screenings of Richard J. Pepin’s Hologram Man, Spectacle offers up this late-night cyberwar curio fielded from the pixelated precipice between Atari and The Matrix. Starring an Altmanesque corps of noteworthy surnames, Philip Roth’s Digital Man concerns a glitch in national security so cruel, it’d be divine if it weren’t so damn digital: a time-traveling supercyborg touches down in the small-town Southwest just in time to hijack an apocalypse’s worth of nuclear launch codes.

Fresh off a realm too insane in its violence and punishment for mere humans to enter, the Digital Man must be stopped – and it’s up to a motley crue of wisecracking heavyweights (some military experts, some shotgun-toting salt of the earth) to take him out, analog style. Tons and tons and tons and tons of fireball explosions (replete with slo-mo backflips and brutal, spaghetti-worthy shootouts) ensue, culminating in one night you can’t merely “attend” while on your laptop.

Digital Man is a very entertaining movie, with good acting, excellent photography and outstanding F/X. It does suffer from a mediocre script however. A very good, overall effort from a bunch of actors who fall into the category of “where have I seen them before?” A rating of 8 out of 10 was given. – VCRanger, IMDB

lets get down to brass tax where can we get this movie someone upload cmon it cant be ilegal look at it buying it would be a magor crime – Jamie Mcfayden, YouTube

I’ve seen Digital man almost a decade ago when it came to video. My dad rented me this movie to watch over the weekend since he was leaving with my mom. I loved it so much that I’ve watched it five or six times in 48 hours !!! – thebigmovieguy, IMDB

Don’t just settle for T2 ,experience this equal ,yet lower budget Sci-Fi action outing,with martial arts giant Matthias Hues in the lead. – “A Customer”, Amazon

I rented this when it came out on video. I remember thinking the special effects and costumes were pretty cool back then. And in the early-to-mid-1990s computer animation was a novelty, so that added to the movie’s appeal. (And back then CGI looked cooler with those smooth surfaces.) – felicity4711, YouTube

LASER MISSION
Dir. BJ Davis, 1989
USA, 84 min.

SATURDAY, JANUARY 31 – MIDNIGHT

On Saturday February 1st at MIDNIGHT, we are celebrating what would have been the 49th birthday of BRANDON LEE. Who is that, you ask? You’re reading this on a computer, right?

Before he was THE CROW (but definitely after his LEGACY OF RAGE), Lee was Michael Gold – a cocky, self-righteous asshole who upends his fully free agent status and chooses to accept a LASER MISSION on offer from the CIA (but, like, eschewing CASH MONEY USA in favor of action man SWAGGER ethics). There’s something about the WORLD’S LARGEST DIAMOND gone missing, along with some LASER expert (expertly lazied by ERNEST BORGNINE) being held in Angola (or somewhere) by the KGB (or Cuban military or some Austrian madman or something). All this adds up to is TROUBLE and the potential END of the WESTERN WORLD as we KNOW IT. When not donning gross disguises to fool bumbling cartoon humans, Gold is totes in NEGGING WAR III with terminal television episoder DEBI MONAHAN (who may or may not be portraying a daughter or a double agent or whatever).

Even if you HAVE seen LASER MISSION, you won’t want to MISS our special WIDESCREEN presentation, with all the EXPLOSIVE action (and sometimes admittedly great wide tracking shots) as NEVER BEFORE SEEN in domestic US BARGAIN BINS and FIFTY-FILM DVD collections. Unfortunately we weren’t able to get our hands on the legendary FULLY UNCUT version on GERMAN VHS, but if you come by SATURDAY FEBRUARY 1ST, maybe we’ll SHOW you some STILLS AND talk you THROUGH THE cuts.

If you HAVEN’T seen LASER MISSION, then grab your favorite brand of adult diapers and head the hell over here. Sounds appealing? Then make like an ORANGE and GET JUICED.

BEST OF SPECTACLE MIDNIGHTS 2014 – PART 1

Posted on November 30, 2014December 24, 2019 by spectacletheater

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 5: ARGOMAN
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 6: MAGIC OF THE UNIVERSE
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 12: ALL THE COLORS OF THE DARK (16MM)
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 13: TORSO
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 19: NINJA VENGEANCE
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 20: BLACK SAMURAI

ARGOMAN
aka THE FANTASTIC ARGOMAN
aka ARGOMAN THE FANTASTIC SUPERMAN
aka THE INCREDIBLE PARIS INCIDENT
Dir. Sergio Grieco (as “Terence Hathaway”), 1967
Italy, 92 min.
In English.

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 5 – MIDNIGHT

This April, Spectacle is pleased to unleash one of its long-hidden midnight treasures: ARGOMAN THE FANTASTIC SUPERMAN. The batshit cousin of swingin’ sixties psych-thriller DANGER: DIABOLIK, and a likely inspiration for AUSTIN POWERS, ARGOMAN is so awesomely weird and hilarious that it is truly unclear whether the film is intended as parody. Like Diabolik, Argoman is a cross between superhero and supervillain and 100% superstud — a Batman-style Playboy vigilante, real name “Sir Reginald Hoover,” who lives in a high tech-pad decked with leopard-print everything and an endless supply of supergadgets and suspended sex beds at his disposal. He is also totally psychic, and one of his best moves is extending his palm really intensely and thinking “kill each other!” really hard until his opponents, such as the Chinese army, kill each other. And solving problems by cleverly levitating objects into new positions. He is also really great at psyching out giant cardboard robots and killing them, too.

In this, the first of one adventures, Argoman comes up against the vaguely amphibious and diabolical Jenabell, alias The Queen of the World, infiltrating to heart to enter her secret lair — or is it the other way around? Due to ARGOMAN’s excellent screenplay, you will be guessing until the very final moments, abetted by one of the great Italian lounge-cheese soundtracks. Indeed, ARGOMAN is the best superhero since Val Kilmer.

FREE ADMISSION FOR ANYONE WHO COMES WEARING AT LEAST 60% SPANDEX!

MAGIC OF THE UNIVERSE (Salamamgkero / The Magician / Monster of the Universe)
Dir. Tata Estaban, 1986/1988
Philippines, 84 min.
Dubbed in English.

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 6 – MIDNIGHT

BELIEVE in MAGIC. A wizard accidentally loses his daughter to an unimaginable evil. He risks hat and wand to make things right. Cast of tens includes humans and puppets.

ALL THE COLORS OF THE DARK
Dir. Sergio Martino, 1972.
Italy. 95 min.
In English.

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 12 – MIDNIGHT; IN 16MM!

Sergio Martino reteams with muse Edwige Fenech for a Polanski-esque paranoid nightmare about a woman, Jane, who begins to lose her mind after taking heavy meds following a miscarriage. As she grows cold toward her partner, warms up to her sexy neighbor Mary—played by Marina Malfatti from THE NIGHT EVELYN CAME OUT OF HER GRAVE—who encourages her to get her act together by, er, joining a devil-worshiping sex cult. Somehow, this only makes things worse. When a phantasmic stalker gets into the mix and Jane participates in ever-more ritualistic murder orgies, things spiral further into madness.

ALL THE COLORS OF THE DARK is Sergio Martino’s most surreal film, featuring a number of delirious nightmare set pieces. As always, Fenech is fantastic, and as ROSEMARY’S BABY knockoffs go, this is one of the best.

TORSO
aka The bodies bear traces of carnal violence
Dir. Sergio Martino, 1973
Italy, 93 min.
In English with a few previously cut scenes in subtitled Italian.

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 13 – MIDNIGHT

This film was originally part of the All the Colors of Giallo: Sergio Martino Midnights series.

TORSO is the fifth and final giallo by under-appreciated genre master Sergio Martino. Having perfected the lurid and stylish pulp-literary whodunnit with films like THE STRANGE VICE OF MRS. WARDH and THE CASE OF THE SCORPION’S TAIL, here he strips the giallo formula down to its raw essentials, breaking it down into a new form of distilled carnage-by-numbers that anticipates the American slasher—which has never approached this level of bravura panache.

The plot is absurdly minimal: a masked man is killing college coeds along with anyone else who threatens to reveal his identity. The police’s only clue is a red scarf, which is probably intended as a mocking allusion to the red herring. (At one point, a character who thinks she’s identified the killer remembers he was wearing a black scarf with an abstract red pattern rather than a red scarf with an abstract black pattern—yet they look identical.) No matter the details: the film is pure sex and dismemberment, ranging from necking in cars to lesbian exhibitionists to a drug-fuelled hippie orgy, which, in one of the film’s most memorable sequences, results in someone wandering half-naked and stoned through thick fog in a dew-drenched forest before encountering the killer, clad in a leather jacket and ripped stocking mask, appearing like a swampy apparition. The film unlikely culminates in an incredibly nail-biting and grisly protracted suspense sequence that is pure edge-of-your-seat cinema.

Thanks to our friends at Blue Underground, we’re pleased to present the film in a stunning transfer made directly from the film’s original, uncut elements. We’ll show it with the English-language soundtrack, which has a minute or two of previously excised footage in subtitled Italian.

NINJA VENGEANCE
Dir. Karl Armstrong, 1992
USA, 87 min.
Screening directly from glorious VHS! Feel the fuzz!

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 19 – MIDNIGHT

[Trigger Warnings: Racial slurs and violence]

What’s so funny about fists, love, and understanding? In NINJA VENGEANCE: everything. Part anglicized martial arts extravaganza, part ineptly intentioned racesploitation picture, NINJA VENGEANCE is like a mix between THE INTRUDER and SAMURAI COP, and every bit as glorious as that tease suggests.

Chris is a young stud from Wyoming breezing through the small Texas town of Maynard on his way to “a seminar” when his bike (“one‘uh those foreign jobs”) breaks down. The local racists look kindly upon Chris’s aryan disposition, but when he encounters the entire police force in Klan outfits murdering the town’s educated young black man, he unleashes his righteous ninja fury on them, and they get super pissed and put him in jail. As if bars could hold a ninja trained on the beaches of Wyoming, and who packs throwing stars, ninja rope, and how-to paperbacks called “Ninja” and “Jujitsu” when he travels! Is it too much to hope that the movie might climax with two white people, one of them in a sheriff’s outfit, karate fighting in front if a giant burning cross? NO.

NINJA VENGEANCE reflects everything that is wonderful and terrible about the early 90’s obsession with shopping mall-style karate, and also what happens when a bunch of karate champions from Texas try to make a movie about racism. (Uh, let alone a bunch of a karate champions from Texas trying to make a movie, period.) The result, while undeniably earnest and progressive in its intentions, is also flagrantly backwards in execution. Like, if you’re going to make an anti-racist movie, you might not want to give characters names like “Mike’s white friend” and “Mike’s black friend,” to say nothing of the problematic westernization of martial arts. As an added bonus, the film has a punchdance-worthy power rock theme song by the same Brad Rushing who is also credited as second unit director of photography. A very talented bunch, and a shame that somehow pretty much no one involved in this movie went on to do any others ever.

Tonight’s screening will be presented from VHS, the way god fuckin intended.

BLACK SAMURAI
Dir. Al Adamson, 1977.
USA. 88 min.

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 20 – MIDNIGHT

ENTER THE DRAGON’s “Kicking-rhymes-like” Jim Kelly stars in this amazing attempt to cram every possible comic book conceit into a single blaxploitation kung fu occult spy movie. Kelly is Robert Sand, Agent of D.R.A.G.O.N., coerced by shady government operatives into traveling around the world in pursuit of evil warlock Janicot and his legion of henchmen (notably including several little people, some of whom know karate, and others who just wield large shotguns). He’s going to need all his kung fu skills to get through this mission–along with shotguns, supercharged trick cars, a mariachi band, decorative live snakes, and an actual JETPACK. I honestly didn’t even know jetpacks were real until I saw the Jim Kelly flying around in one, plain as day, without any apparent special effects, and looked up jetpacks on Wikipedia.

Anyway: that platonic-ideal, balls-to-the-wall, kitchen-sink exploitation movie you’ve always wanted to see but never knew how to find? It’s showing at Spectacle tonight.

BEST OF SPECTACLE 2014 – PART 1

Posted on November 29, 2014December 24, 2019 by spectacletheater

As the year draws to a close, Spectacle would like to acknowledge the audiences, artists and distributors who have pitched in their support, vision and feedback. Thank you for another brilliant year! We’ll save you a seat in 2015.

DIVORCE IRANIAN STYLE
Dir. Kim Longinotto and Ziba Mir-Hosseini, 1998
Iran/England, 80 min.
In Farsi with English subtitles.

MONDAY, DECEMBER 1 – 7:30 PM
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 9 – 10 PM
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 14 – 5 PM
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 20 – 7:30 PM

Part of the Three Films by Kim Longinotto series. Special thanks to Women Make Movies!

Hilarious, tragic, stirring – this fly-on-the-wall look at several weeks in an Iranian divorce court provides a unique window into the intimate circumstances of Iranian women’s lives. Following Jamileh, whose husband beats her, Ziba, a 16-year-old trying to divorce her 38-year-old husband, and Maryam, who is desperately fighting to gain custody of her daughters, this deadpan chronicle showcases the strength, ingenuity, and guile with which they confront biased laws, a Kafaka-esque administrative system, and their husbands’ and families’ rage to gain divorces.

With the barest of commentary, acclaimed director Kim Longinotto turns her cameras on the court for a subtle, fascinating look at women’s lives in a country which is little known to most Americans. Directed by Kim Longinotto and Ziba Mir-Hosseini, author of Marriage on Trial: A Study of Islamic Family Law.

“A fascinating verite-style documentary that counters with compassion, humor, and a keen nose for spotting empathetic characters, strong-willed women, and dramatic moments, the traditional stereotypes of women in the Muslim world as passive victims.” – Hamid Naficy, Author, ‘The Making of Exile Cultures: Iranian Television in Los Angeles’

EXTREME PRIVATE EROS: LOVE SONG 1974
Dir. Kazuo Hara, 1974
Japan, 98 min.
In Japanese with English subtitles.

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 2 – 10 PM
MONDAY, DECEMBER 8 – 7:30 PM
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 20 – 10 PM
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 23 – 7:30 PM

Part of The Bitter Truths of Kazuo Hara series. Special thanks to Tidepoint Films.

Shot over several years, EXTREME PRIVATE EROS: LOVE SONG 1974, a documentary about Hara’s ex-lover was a clarion call against a historically reserved Japanese culture. The film follows Miyuki Takeda, Hara’s ex and father of his son, as she navigates new relationships (first with a woman, and then with an American GI in Okinawa), raises her son, and explores life in 1970s Japan as an outspoken feminist. But the film isn’t just a portrait of the vulnerabilities of a radical feminist single mother, in a time when that wasn’t heard of; Miyuki often takes the opportunity of being filmed by her ex to let loose with what she really thinks about him as a partner, as a lover, and as a filmmaker.

As well as a portrait of two complicated, damaged people, the film is a portrait of Okinawa as a dysfunctional city, damaged by two decades of American military presence. Hara films the GI bars and the underage prostitutes that frequent the bars for business. Hara takes a detour into the life of a 14-year-old “Okinawa girl” Chichi, whose life converges and diverges from Miyuki’s story in intriguing ways.

Released around the same time as the groundbreaking PBS series An American Family (and predating the similarly-themed SHERMAN’S MARCH by a decade), EXTREME PRIVATE EROS takes a long, hard look at gender roles, romantic relationships, and what it means to be a family in 1970s Japan. Hara’s out-of-sync sound and hand-held photography are disorienting and intimate at the same time, giving the feel of an experimental film to a film with very real content. The results are bitter and sometimes hard to watch, but always compelling.

THE FALLS
Dir. Peter Greenaway, 1980
UK, 195 min.

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 18 – 7 PM
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 21 – 5 PM

A sprawling science fiction microbudget epic, Peter Greenaway’s THE FALLS is one of the more successful experimental features in accessibility and one that lasts 3 plus hours to boot. Known as Peter Greenaway’s favorite film of his own work, THE FALLS goes through a catalog of 92 individuals whose last name starts with the word “Fall” that were victimized by an event known as the VUE or the Violent Unknown Event. It’s told in a deadpan mock documentary style with numerous narrators, has a strange narrative current that somehow ties these characters together, can be seen as a mutated sequel to Alfred Hitchcock’s THE BIRDS, and boasts a playful score from Michael Nyman to wrap it all together.

Manic and mechanical, THE FALLS keeps you in focus with its absurdities and allows you to to solve the encyclopedic mystery with comic redundancies and run-ons. Indulgent in the best way possible, it’s truly mad in execution and in thought.

GO DOWN DEATH
Dir. Aaron Schimberg, 2013
USA, 87 min.

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 4 – 7:30 PM
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 10 – 10 PM
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 14 – 7:30 PM
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 19 – 10 PM

Spectacle is pleased to present Aaron Schimberg’s staggering debut feature GO DOWN DEATH. Acclaimed as one of the most distinctive and visually stunning films of the past year, it sits uneasily among rote indie festival programming. Naturally, we feel we make a great pair.

GO DOWN DEATH is a wry, sinister realization of a strange new universe, a cross-episodic melange of macabre folktales supposedly penned by the fictitious writer Jonathan Mallory Sinus. An abandoned warehouse in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, stands in for a decrepit village haunted by ghosts, superstition, and disease, while threatening to buckle under rumblings of the apocalypse. Soldiers are lost and found in endless woods, a child gravedigger is menaced by a shape-shifting physician, a syphilitic john bares all to a young prostitute, and a disfigured outcast yearns for the affections of a tone-deaf cabaret singer. Highlighted by offbeat narrative construction, stunning black-and-white 16mm cinematography, and immaculately detailed production design, GO DOWN DEATH is a distinctively original film informed by American Gothic, folk culture, and outsider art.

Distributed by Factory 25

GOODBYE UNCLE TOM
Dir. Gualtiero Jacopetti & Franco Prosperi, 1971
USA, 135 min. Director’s Cut.
In Italian with English subtitles.

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 4 – 10 PM
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 13 – 7:30 PM
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 17 – 10 PM
MONDAY, DECEMBER 22 – 10 PM

Rarely seen Director’s Cut featuring contemporary documentary footage and original narration. Part of the Mondo America series. Special thanks to Bill Lustig and Blue Underground.

Few films have the mixed legacy accorded to MONDO CANE, the first film by Gualtiero Jacopetti and Franco Prosperi. The box office smash was nominated for the Palme d’Or and nearly won an Oscar for Riz Ortolani’s song “More,” which became a staple at weddings. It invented it’s own dubious genre, shock anthropology, and transformed the common Italian word for “world,” mondo, into a neologism conjuring all that’s bizarre, outrageous, and stranger than the fiction it questionably purports not to be. It’s the international signifier for extreme international weird.

When critics caught up with the put-on, they were relentless in their assault on the duo. By the time they released AFRICA ADDIO, a lurid chronicle of violence in the wake of decolonization in Tanzania and Kenya, they were accused of every kind of ethical violation from flagrant racism to paying soldiers to murder people before their cameras. The duo was hurt, and felt they had to do something to dispel accusations of intolerance.

So they made GOODBYE UNCLE TOM — one of the most challenging, notorious, anti-American, and maligned films of all time.

At a glance, it has very little to do with mondo. Allegedly, the idea took root when Jacopetti suggested the duo make MANDINGO into a documentary — this being many years before Richard Fleischer’s own scintilating Hollywood adaptation. The result is like if Peter Watkins and Ken Russell adapted Kyle Onstott’s taboo-shattering pulp novel about slave breeding and deciding to drive the historically rooted horrors of slavery home further by cranking them up a notch.

Making the tongue-in-cheek claim of being an actual documentary about American slavery, the film charts the entire institution of slavery from arrival (it is widely acknowledged as being the first movie ever set significantly on a slave ship) through supposed emancipation. Pulling many of the least pleasant historical realities of American slavery out from under the rug and rendering them in unhinged expressionistic extremes, it presents the institution as a grotesque atrocity exhibition including rape, infanticide, bizarre medical experimentation, and even a Bathory-esque blood bathing. And it’s all framed with contemporary newsreel footage of present-day civil rights violations and quotes—many of them presented with wry-self critique—from leaders or controversial figures including Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Eldridge Cleaver, and Amiri Baraka, resulting in what Pauline Kael called “the most specific and rabid incitement of the race war” (while acknowledging that people of color seem to appreciate it much more than herself).

Or as Roger Ebert wrote, “They have finally done it: Made the most disgusting, contemptuous insult to decency ever to masquerade as a documentary.” Yet to be fair, one might point out that the “mockumentary” genre the film pioneers—Watkins is the only filmmaker who comes to mind who previously described such a patently fabricated scenario, i.e., one taking place before motion picture cameras were invented, as a “documentary”—was still an almost totally unfamiliar lexicon.

And with that barefaced claim, few movies are as gleefully, sadistically fixed upon a program of not-giving-a-fuck — which one might recognize as a front for a genuine core of outrage. It predates Pasolini’s canonical SALO, a like-minded piece of shock as an instrument of anti-bourgeois (an aim for which its privileged critical positioning might indicate it has failed), but is explicitly linked to the contemporary reality of American racism. Richard Corliss shouts out GOODBYE UNCLE TOM in his positive review of 12 YEARS A SLAVE — and yet one could not leverage the criticism that many, including Kareem Abdul Jabbar, made of 12 YEARS: that it stirs a rage that is compartmentalized into the past and portrayed as history without an acknowledgement of the human motivations that allow slavery to continue to exist around the world. Conversely, GOODBYE UNCLE TOM concludes with documentary footage of peaceful black protesters being brutalized by the national guard, followed by happy-go-lucky Southern Civil War re-enactors who restage history with an outrageously apparent disregard for the complexity and human debasement it represents. As the Italian narrator happily intones on the final line of the film, “It’s wonderful to return home on this splendid day in May and take a nice shower to wash away the past.”

Of course, part of the trouble of GOODBYE UNCLE TOM is that we can’t simply settle upon a simple, revisionist attitude. It’s undeniably an unpleasant, problematic, and troubling film—but one worth revisiting for those willing to confront tangled knots of history and their representation on screen.

HEAD AGAINST THE WALL
aka La Tete Contre Les Murs
Dir. Georges Franju, 1959
France, 95 min.
In French with English subtitles.

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 4 – 7:30 PM
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 14 – 7:30PM
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 29 – 10PM

Part of the Views from the Inside series from 2014 and reappearing alone in September 2016 as Best of Best of Spectacle.

Anouk Aimee. Charles Aznavour. A shimmering black motorcycle jacket. Georges Franju’s HEAD AGAINST THE WALL taps into cinema’s inherent attractions but renders its own utterly untenable, less a cautionary tale than a smoldering portrait of loss. Behind the gates of a countryside sanitorium lives young Francois (future filmmaker Jean-Pierre Mocky), the hotheaded son of a stuffy lawyer – a wild one in the Brando tradition on the outside, bored to sedation within. Francois knows he’s sane, but while waiting for this latest convulsion of The System to pass, all he can do is look at the people around him – and now, without the comfort of his on-and-off girlfriend Stéphanie (Aimee), his visage isn’t pretty.

Blessed with the same magisterial stillness and dark beauty that gave EYES WITHOUT A FACE its inimitable power, Franju’s feature debut is both straightforward and serpentine. The screenplay (adapted from a Herve Bazin novel) posits man’s place in society as anything but certain; as Francois seeks validation from parties neutral to his domineering father, his individuality seems to vanish. What develops is not a critique of doctors or hospitals, but instead of French paternalism at large. Under the heel of a society founded on class expectations, Francois doesn’t lose his freedom so much as he realizes it never existed in the first place.

“He seeks the madness behind reality because it is for him the only way to rediscover the true face of reality behind this madness… Let us say that Franju demonstrates the necessity of Surrealism if one considers it as a pilgrimage to the sources. And Head Against The Wall proves that he is right.” – Jean-Luc Godard, Cahiers du Cinema

“Whether it’s the weird, eerily erotic gaze of a female inmate or a strange gathering of doves or a cityscape by night that seems as dank and claustrophobic as the asylum walls themselves, Franju’s mastery and palpable adoration of effect is ever evident.” – Glenn Kenny, The Auteurs

HOPE
aka Umut
Dir. Yılmaz Güney, 1970
Turkey, 100 min.
In Turkish with new English subtitles by Spectacle.

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 2 – 7:30 PM
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 7 – 5 PM
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 13 – 10 PM
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 17 – 7:30 PM

Part of the Yılmaz Güney: The Indomitable South series.

HOPE is considered a landmark in the history of Turkish cinema. Güney called it an “epic of verité” due to its break with the conventions of Turkish commercial cinema, the gleaming sets and powdered starlets typical of Yeşilçam (the Turkish Hollywood). Although it is often compared to De Sica’s BICYCLE THIEVES, HOPE also has much in common with Glauber Rocha’s BLACK GOD, WHITE DEVIL—with its rural merchant protagonist who gets fleeced one too many times and turns to a messianic preacher for guidance—and with Ousmane Sembene’s BOROM SARRET, the tale of a poor horse-cart driver in Dakar getting kicked around by the law.

Güney’s character, Cabbar, drives a horse-driven cart in Istanbul. Business is bad, and the rapidly modernizing city leaves little room for a man who uses such quaintly obsolete means to earn his living. His wife, mother, and five children depend on him, and their domestic life is characterized by constant threats and abuse. Indebted to everyone he knows, Cabbar’s fate is sealed when a bourgeois asshole in a sports car mows down one of his parked horses. Unable to borrow more money to replace it or even pay back his existing debts, Cabbar tries his luck at the lottery, then turns to armed robbery. Unfortunately, the American tourist he and his friend try to hold up fails to understand their threats and chases them away in anger. Furious at his creditors and indifferent to other cart drivers’ efforts to organize in a union, Cabbar falls under the influence of a hodja, a kind of wise-man witch-doctor, who promises him buried riches. Cabbar and his friend sever their bonds to the city and join the hodja in a clearly insane quest for treasure hidden in the surrounding desert.

Although it is often interpreted as a critique of the backwards superstitions rampant among the uneducated Turkish proletariat, HOPE should be read instead as a revolutionary call to break with old forms of organizing (whether in the family or in labor unions) and to embrace a non-instrumental form-of-life. It is a manifesto for the abolition of homo economicus and for the reenchantment of the world.

IN A GLASS CAGE
aka Tras el cristal
Dir. Agustí Villaronga, 1986
Spain, 111 min.
In Spanish with English subtitles.

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 3 – 10 PM
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 7 – 7:30 PM
MONDAY, DECEMBER 15 – 10 PM
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 19 – 7:30 PM

A huge thanks to Nico B. from Cult Epics.

[Trigger Warning: Sustained, recurring scenes of torture and sexual abuse—frequently involving children—presented in harsh, unsparing tones with a palpable, fascist historical context.]

A deeply unnerving film situated in the middle of a variety of genre film lineages, Agustí Villaronga‘s IN A GLASS CAGE blends morose, art-house chamber drama with psychologically-challenging giallo horror and unflinching exploitation film brutality into a force of will that will likely plant itself in your mind forever.

The narrative is historically-weighted yet mostly hedged in back-story. Death-camp Nazi doctor Klaus (Günter Meisner) flees to Spain after the Holocaust, where the emotional toll of his systemic, compulsive physical and sexual abuse of children during and after the war leaves him suicidal. A botched attempt lands him immobilized in an iron lung, cared for by his tormented wife Griselda (Marisa Paredes) and innocent young daughter Rena (Gisela Echevarria). Soon, a strange and aggressive man (David Sust) arrives and takes control of Klaus’ care… at the elder man’s insistence.

Inspired by the notorious, prolific 15th century child-killer Gilles de Rais, Villaronga immediately tapped Günter Meisner (multiple-time Adolf Hitler, Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory) for the role of Klaus, but the actor refused, disgusted with the content of the film. Eventually, he relented, claiming—apocryphally—that he could not get the script out of his mind. Meisner himself had been in a Nazi death camp as a youth.

This marked the first film for Catalan writer/director Agustí Villaronga, who would go on direct Black Bread (2010), winner of numerous Gaudí and Goya awards and the first Catalan-language film to be shortlisted for the Oscars.

Original poster designed by Preston Spurlock.

LIQUID SKY
Dir. Slava Tsukerman, 1982
USA, 112 min.

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 5 – 10 PM
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 9 – 7:30 PM
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 23 – 10 PM

[Trigger Warning: Graphic sexual violence and drug use.]

Spectacle is honored to present the unforgettable cult classic LIQUID SKY—the story of a weekend in New York’s hyperrealist, queer, neon, drug fueled, dangerous, and dystopian 1980s featuring cast of underground models, electroclash singers, shrimp-obsessed housewives, scumbag clubbers, addicts, necrophiliacs, and a German Ufologist. Deadpan humor and eroticism, satire and horror, camp and realism make LIQUID SKY several bolts of lightning striking the same bottle.

NAKED KILLER
Dir. Clarence Fok Yiu-leung, 1992
Hong Kong, 93 min.
In Cantonese with English subtitles.

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 3 – 7:30 PM
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 6 – 10 PM
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 11 – 10 PM
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 16 – 10 PM

Part of the Far East Femmes with Firearms series.

A gleefully sleazy, over-the-top CAT III camp romp about dueling lesbian contract killers and the impotent policeman caught in the middle, NAKED KILLER is a joyous ode to all things (s)excessive.

Following a traumatic crime bust gone awry, Hong Kong cop Taninan can’t seem to perform in the line of duty or in the bedroom… until he meets the enchanting seductress/killer Kitty. Their tango is soon cut short by Sister Candy, a veteran assassin who snatches Kitty away and teaches her the ways of professional execution and how to tap into her sensual side. Almost just as quick, two of Sister Candy’s previous students show up to murder their former teacher, prompting an all-out lesbian assassin war.

With tongue planted firmly in-cheek, director Fok Yiu Leung crosses titillating eroticism with a strong sociological undercurrent denouncing male piggishness. But he also knows how to entertain, and wildly so: copious amounts of milk drinking, dick slicing, office shoot-’em-ups, underwater knife fights, and Skinemax soft-core lesbian playfulness all wrapped up in a engrossing amount of 90s neon bliss… it’s all here and then some.

This is the 1992 summer action blockbuster you deserve.

“Imagine the erotic world of Basic Instinct exaggerated into a kung-fu cartoon of sexy lesbian avengers executing quadruple leaping somersaults in a deadly assault against the opposite sex.” -The New York Times

“John Woo on acid… Naked Killer breaks Mach 5 within the first 10 minutes and never lets up. Bursting with colorful lighting, angles, and set pieces, it’s a panoply of Nineties sex and violence, decadence for decadence’s sake, with little moralizing thrown in. A genuine crowd-pleaser…” -The Austin Chronicle

“It’s like nothing you’ve ever seen before… a stylized girlie graphic novelization of psycho hot babe killers as channeled through and re-imagined by Quentin Tarantino… Naked Killer is girl power gone gonzo, a geek’s wet dream doused with libido lightening messages about Chinese society’s misogyny.” -Pop Matters

WHO’S SINGIN’ OVER THERE?
Dir. Slobodan Šijan, 1980.
SFR Yugoslavia, 86 min.
In Serbian with original English subtitles by Spectacle.

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 5 – 7:30 PM
MONDAY, DECEMBER 8 – 10 PM
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 16 – 7:30 PM
MONDAY, DECEMBER 22 – 7:30 PM

Based on an original screenplay by Kovačević. Part of the Three Yugoslavian Comedies by Dušan Kovačević series.

This highly quotable classic, which screened Un Certain Regard at the 1981 Cannes Film Festival, charts the journey of a ramshackle bus across the Yugoslavian countryside toward Belgrade on April 5, 1941. Lorded over by an impetuous conductor and his numbskull son, the passengers constitute a vertiable ship of fools, misfists, and outcasts: among them a disgruntled WWI vet, a goofy hunter, a fatalistic consumptive, libidinous newlyweds, a suave pop singer, and a pair of young gypsy musicians — the source of pointed social tensions — whose folk numbers provide the film’s Greek chorus.

A prime example of the Aristotelian Unities in screenwriting, it follows the little scrapheap-that-could through encounters with highwaymen, funerals, soldiers, and other odd situations, rolling inexorably toward an unexpectedly resonant conclusion.

Fondly remembered to this day, WHO’S SINGIN’ OVER THERE? was declared by the Yugoslavian Board of the Academy of Film Art and Science (AFUN) to be the best Yugoslavian film made between 1947 and 1995.

KINETIC CINEMA PRESENTS A SCREENING AND DISCUSSION WITH MIMI GARRARD

Posted on November 27, 2014December 24, 2019 by spectacletheater

Dir. Mimi Garrard
USA, 90 min.

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 11 – 7:30 PM

Guest Artist, Mimi Garrard will show works in video from 1964 to 2014 spanning her prolific career as a dancer with the legendary Alwin Nikolais, as a choreographer, and later as a video artist. The program features the work of Mimi Garrard, Alwin Nikolais, James Seawright, and Bela Tarr. It includes work created outdoors and in the studio, in color and black and white, from pure movement to theater.

Mimi Garrard studied and danced with Alwin Nikolais and his colleagues at the Henry Street Playhouse. He produced her concerts from 1964 to 1971. In the early 1970’s she began touring under the National Endowment Touring Program, performing in colleges and universities throughout the United States as well as in South America. Her last concert for the stage was in 2001 at the Kitchen. September 11, 2001 she saw the twin towers fall from 155 Wooster Street where she was living at the time. This was a catalyst for change and she decided to create dance for video.

In 2002, she began to produce half-hour programs for Manhattan Neighborhood Network which gave the incentive to work consistently. She has created 148 programs to date. Her video work is also shown in festivals worldwide, and is in museums and galleries. In the Spring of this coming year she is looking forward to a new adventure showing her collaborative work with James Seawright on the dome of the planetarium in Jackson, Mississippi in a biennial program honoring Eudora Welty. She received a life-time achievement award from the Institute of Arts and Letters in Mississippi.

ABOUT KINETIC CINEMA

Kinetic Cinema is a regular screening series produced by Pentacle in conjunction with Spectacle and curated by invited guest artists who create evenings of films and videos that have been influential to their own work as artists. When artists are asked to reflect upon how the use of movement in film and media arts has influenced their own art, a plethora of new ideas, material, and avenues of exploration emerge. From cutting edge motion capture animation to Michael Jackson music videos, from Gene Kelly musicals to Kenneth Anger films, Kinetic Cinema is dedicated to the recognition and appreciation for “moving” pictures. We have presented these evenings at Collective: Unconscious, Chez Bushwick, IRT, Launchpad, Green Space, Uniondocs, CRS, 3rd Ward, Fort Useless and The Tank in New York City, as well as at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia.

For more info on the current Kinetic Cinema season please visit Pentacle’s website.

Kinetic Cinema is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

THE STIRRING OF A THOUSAND BELLS

Posted on November 27, 2014December 24, 2019 by spectacletheater

THE STIRRING OF A THOUSAND BELLS
Dir. Matt Dunning, 2014
USA, 50 min.

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 12 – 8 PM
NY PREMIERE! ONE NIGHT ONLY!

With an intro and Q&A from director Matt Dunning!

Advance tickets available here.

Spectacle is thrilled to present this ONE NIGHT ONLY New York premiere of director Matt Dunning’s hypnotic two-part exploration of Indonesian gamelan in the modern world.

As one of the oldest musical forms in the world, gamelan remains a cultural touchstone on the islands of Java and Bali. Defined by the ringing of metallophones and drums, the music has exerted an outsized influence on Western ears for over a hundred years.

The first part of Dunning’s work takes us to the city of Solo during the annual festival of Sekaten, marking the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad. Old and new collide in this cosmic carnival of sight and sound rarely witnessed outside of Indonesia.

The second part of the film documents the classical Javanese court dancers of Srimpi Muncar at Mangkunegaran Palace overlaid with images filmed throughout the island of Java.

Director Matt Dunning will be in attendance to intro the film and share “deleted scenes” and other ethnographic nuggets post-show!

Special thanks to Sublime Frequencies!

Negative Pleasure Publications Presents Jeans 3 Launch Party

Posted on November 17, 2014December 24, 2019 by spectacletheater

Negative Pleasure Publications (Felony Comics, Night Burgers)
celebrate the release of their latest comics anthology, Jeans 3, with
a night of erotic dread at Spectacle, featuring screenings of Death
Game (1977) and The Pit (1981), two twisted tales pulsating with lust
and rage, drenched in blood and guaranteed to hurt your emotions.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 21:
10:00 PM: DEATH GAME (1977)
MIDNIGHT: THE PIT (1981)
Separate $5 Admission for Each Screening

DEATH GAME
Peter S. Traynor, 1977

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 21 – 10:00 PM

In Death Game (1977) (10:00 PM), a suburban family (Seymour Cassel) man finds two
free-spirited teenagers (Colleen Camp and Sondra Locke) on his doorstep one stormy night. What starts as a night of seduction turns into a morning of madness and murder.

Death Game, allegedly based on a true story, is sick a sleazy, but showcases a surprisingly prestige pedigree. Seymour Cassel was nominated for an Academy Award for his role in John Cassavete’s Minnie In Moskowitz in 1971 and would go on to work with the likes of Sam Peckinpah, Barry Levinson, Warren Beaty, Nicolas Roeg and Wes Anderson. Sondra Locke had appeared in The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter and Willard and would go on to become a frequent collaborator with Clint Eastwood (as well as the director of the bizarre “Ratboy”). Colleen Camp had roles in both mainstream (Smile, Funny Lady) and exploitation (The Swinging Cheerleaders) before Death Game, and would go on to appear in dozens of films, including Apocalypse Now, Clue, Wayne’s World and Election. Despite this aura of legitimacy, Death Game is pure trash in the best possible sense, a sweaty, feverish collision of sex, violence and outright insanity.

THE PIT
Dir. Lew Lehman, 1981.
97 min. USA.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 21 – MIDNIGHT

Death Game is paired with another tale of desire and despair, and one of the most mind breakingly weird movies ever made, The Pit (1981) (Midnight), a huge influence on the Negative Pleasure ethos.

FORGET KILL BILL, DEATH WISH AND STRAW DOGS: here is a revenge fantasy you can actually relate to. At 12-years-old, Jamie Benjamin already has a CV of torture that would make Dawn Weiner blush: the hot librarian at elementary school tears up the erotic collages he makes with her photos; the cool kid at recess splits his lip open; Jamie’s nubile live-in babysitter only has eyes for an indifferent jock; and even the old woman down the street tries to mow him down with her motorized scooter (“he’ll probably grow into one of those hippies…”). It’s not clear exactly what’s wrong with the kid—he shows signs of autism, and a creepily over-affectionate mother might have something to do with it—but he finds solace in friendship with his teddy bear and the afternoons he spends visiting a pit in the woods full of bloodthirsty, primordial trolls. The youngster does his best to see that they’re looked after, but a kid can only steal so much meat from the butcher truck before another solution is in order—and if it can satisfy two problems at once, so much the better.