Page 125 – Spectacle Theater

ROAR

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

ROAR
Dir. Noel Marshall, 1981
USA, 102 min.

SATURDAY, AUGUST 9 – 7:30 PM
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 13 – 7:30 PM
FRIDAY, AUGUST 29 – 7:30 PM

!!!BACK BY POPULAR DEMAND!!!

Made over the course of 10 years and with a reported 70 crew injuries – most notably a tiger mauling that resulted in what was perhaps Melanie Griffith’s first (and certainly not last) plastic surgery — ROAR emerges in hindsight as one of history’s most expensive home movies, a Hollywood albatross never released theatrically in the US.

Tippi Hedrin (THE BIRDS) and husband/producer Noel Marshall were at the time noted animal rights activists with a menagerie of cheetahs and tigers kept in waiting at their Acton, California ranch, “The Shambala Preserve”. They doubled the Golden State location as exotic Africa and cast themselves as an animal researcher and estranged wife, respectively, who reconnect against a backdrop of escaped tigers and evil game hunters, pouring $17 million dollars into a still-unrecovered black hole in the process.

But of course none of that counts in a film where Tippi Hedrin gets flipped upside down by an elephant en route to a would-be heartwarmer of an ending that lands closer to perverse surrealism. The notorious production had trouble corralling its fauna, and it shows all over: everything and everyone is out of control here. Perhaps most important is that however dunderheaded it may be, ROAR is exactly what it purports to be: a naïve safari picture in the tradition of Trader Horn and Hatari! whose raw encounter with the animal species triumphs over narrative, ethical, and – yes, hygienic – concerns.

FOUR FILMS BY PAUL MORRISSEY

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

Spectacle is thrilled to present four films by inimitable director Paul Morrissey: the trilogy consisting of FLESH, TRASH, and HEAT, and the superb WOMEN IN REVOLT.

Morrissey assembled a cast of fascinating New York personalities including Joe Dallesandro, transgender icons Candy Darling, Jackie Curtis, and Holly Woodlawn, Andrea Feldman and Jane Forth and proceeded to shatter bourgeois sensibilities with unrestrained sex, nudity, and drug use, free-floating expressions of gender and sexuality and spot-on satirization of high society, among other things. Yet these films are no mere provocation. Writing, directing, photographing and editing the films himself with small budgets, Morrissey transposed his visions into anarchic, free-wheeling works of genius.

Morrissey’s approach to filmmaking involved shooting piecemeal over time, on weekends or at night, and coming up with new scenarios as he went along. There is improvisation within scenes among the actors, but the fact that Morrissey himself improvised his own writing process, using what he’d just filmed to inform the material he would shoot next, resulted in films which are remarkably alive, full of chaos, humor and “reality”. His actors play themselves (or their public personas), and he shapes the loose, episodic material into works which possess their own internal cohesion and bear his remarkable style. Morrissey succeeds in doing much more than others who merely captured or regurgitated an idealized cultural milieu; he created truly great and fitting art from the downtown underground scene itself.

FLESH
Dir. Paul Morrissey, 1968
USA, 105 min.

THURSDAY, AUGUST 7 – 10:00 PM
TUESDAY, AUGUST 12 – 7:30 PM
FRIDAY, AUGUST 22 – 7:30 PM
SUNDAY, AUGUST 31 – 5:00 PM

Featuring Joe Dallesandro, Candy Darling, Jackie Curtis, Patti D’Arbanville and Geri Miller.

In FLESH, the first of Paul Morrissey’s trilogy which also includes Trash and Heat, Joe Dallesandro is roused out of bed to go and earn money prostituting himself, so that his wife can pay for her girlfriend’s abortion. He visits clients, teaches a new guy the ropes and feeds his (real life) baby crackers on the floor, completely naked, of course. Coming full circle, he ends up back in his bed trying to get some sleep while his wife and her girlfriend have sex.

The first several minutes of FLESH feature Joe Dallesandro sleeping, and they’re captivating. Dallesandro (Little Joe never once gave it away. Everybody had to pay and pay…) became a sex symbol for the gay and straight alike, with Vincent Canby writing, “His physique is so magnificently shaped that men as well as women become disconnected at the sight of him.”

TRASH
Dir. Paul Morrissey, 1970
USA, 110 min.

THURSDAY, AUGUST 7 – 7:30 PM
SUNDAY, AUGUST 17 – 5:00 PM
FRIDAY, AUGUST 22 – 10:00 PM

Featuring Joe Dallesandro, Holly Woodlawn, Andrea Feldman and Geri Miller.

In TRASH, the second film in Paul Morrissey’s trilogy, Joe Dallesandro is a heroin addict and burglar who can’t get it up thanks to junk. Holly Woodlawn makes her screen debut as Joe’s sexually-frustrated girlfriend/roommate. Woodlawn collects garbage for their ratty basement room in the Lower East Side, tries to get welfare by faking a pregnancy and preys on a teenaged boy from the suburbs who stops in to buy some grass. Meanwhile, Joe breaks into Jane Forth’s upscale apartment and surprises her there, and she can’t wait to see a real live junkie shoot up.

Upon the release of TRASH, George Cukor (a Lower East Side native) petitioned the Academy to formally nominate Holly Woodlawn for best actress for her role in the film. Needless to say, this went nowhere.

Warning: contains scenes of actual IV drug use (and simulated overdose).

HEAT
Dir. Paul Morrissey, 1972
USA, 102 min.

FRIDAY, AUGUST 1 – 7:30 PM
SUNDAY, AUGUST 10 – 7:30 PM
SATURDAY, AUGUST 23 – 10:00 PM
THURSDAY, AUGUST 28 – 7:30 PM

Featuring Joe Dallesandro, Sylvia Miles and Andrea Feldman. With music by John Cale.

For the third film in Morrissey’s trilogy, the filmmaker takes his coterie to Los Angeles for a sun-drenched parody of SUNSET BOULEVARD by way of Avenue B. Joe Dallesandro plays a former child star who lives in an LA motel and hustles to get by, pleasuring his repulsive landlady in exchange for a rent discount. Chain-smoking Sylvia Miles is a past-her-prime star with four ex-husbands and a big house in the hills who would love to keep Joe as her pet, except that her crazy daughter (Andrea Feldman) keeps getting in the way.

Feldman’s character is erratic and emotionally volatile, a role for which she was unfortunately well-suited. After having a smaller role in TRASH, she both anticipated and dreaded the fame she expected would follow the release of HEAT. Three weeks before the film’s premiere, she summoned a group of friends and ex-boyfriends to the living room of her parents’ 14th floor apartment and then proceeded to jump out the window in what she called her “final starring role.”

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

MONDAY, AUGUST 4 – 10:00 PM
THURSDAY, AUGUST 14 – 10:00 PM
SATURDAY, AUGUST 23 – 7:30 PM
THURSDAY, AUGUST 28 – 10:00 PM

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.”

Trigger Warning: This film contains depictions of sexual assault.

FINAL FLESH

Posted on July 22, 2014February 23, 2018 by spectacletheater

FINAL FLESH
Dir. Vernon Chatman
USA, 71 min.

TUESDAY, MARCH 8 – 10:00 PM
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 16 – 10:00 PM
FRIDAY, MARCH 25 – MIDNIGHT
SUNDAY, MARCH 27 – 7:30 PM

PURCHASE TICKETS HERE

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?”

THE LEFT-HANDED WOMAN

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

THE LEFT-HANDED WOMAN
a.k.a. Die linkshändige Frau
Dir. Peter Handke, 1978
West Germany, 119 min.
In German and French with English subtitles.

SATURDAY, AUGUST 2 – 7:30 PM
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 13 – 10:00 PM
SUNDAY, AUGUST 24 – 7:30 PM

Peter Handke, one of the most celebrated Austrian writers of the post-war generation, was primarily a playwright and a novelist, but he also tried his luck in the cinema. Between 1971 and 1992 he directed four feature films and worked on the screenplays for THE GOALIE’S ANXIETY AT THE PENALTY KICK (1972), THE WRONG MOVE (1975), and WINGS OF DESIRE (1987), all for Wim Wenders to direct. THE LEFT-HANDED WOMAN is Handke’s second self-adaptation, this time directed by himself and produced by Wenders.

Despite boasting an international cast, THE LEFT-HANDED WOMAN is an understated and unadorned portrayal of a single mother’s quotidian life, comparable in its sensibility to some of the work of Margarethe von Trotta, Helke Sander, and Helma Sanders-Brahms. Edith Clever (the star of Eric Rohmer’s Kleist adaptation, The Marquise of O) plays Marianne, a German living in Paris with her young son, Stefan. Her husband Bruno Ganz (WINGS OF DESIRE, THE AMERICAN FRIEND, DOWNFALL) returns from Helsinki, where he has spent several months and learned only one word in Finnish: olut (‘beer’). After a night of luxurious squandering in a hotel restaurant—where Bruno admires the centuries-old feudal tradition that headwaiter Michael Lonsdale (Truffaut’s STOLEN KISSES, Marcel Hanoun’s SPRING) represents—Marianne tells Bruno they should separate. The film is thus framed as a chronicle of this new turn in Marianne’s life: she resumes working as a translator, oscillates between resentment and tenderness toward her son, dreads Bruno’s increasingly aggressive visits, and becomes closer with Franziska, a German expatriate elementary school teacher played by Angela Winkler (Schlöndorff’s THE LOST HONOR OF KATHARINA BLUM).

Like the films of another part-time-cinéaste author, Marguerite Duras, THE LEFT-HANDED WOMAN is characterized by very deliberate pacing and precise, measured dialogue. But unlike Duras, Handke’s film is punctuated with sight gags, like Marianne in high heels walking on stilts in her living room and a cameo by a europunk Gérard Depardieu. There is also a walk-on part for Rüdiger Vogler (Wenders’ ALICE IN THE CITIES, von Trotta’s THE GERMAN SISTERS) as a milquetoast actor. In all its sparseness, THE LEFT-HANDED WOMAN is an exceptionally moving film about escaping from oppressive relationships, reactivating stagnating ones, and becoming open to new ones.

THE COMEDIC ODDITIES OF TRENT HARRIS

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

LUNA MESA with THE GREATEST LOVE STORY EVER TOLD (1985)
Dir. Trent Harris, 2011
USA, 60 min.

SUNDAY, AUGUST 3 – 5:00 PM New York City Premiere!
FRIDAY, AUGUST 15 – 7:30 PM
THURSDAY, AUGUST 21 – 10:00 PM

Trent Harris’ latest film LUNA MESA is his take on a travelogue that harkens back to the early booming days of mini-dv experimental features. With a mostly aimless and wandering narrative, the film follows along a photographer who is having a relationship with a videographer and then on one day, he is found shot dead in his hotel room in Cambodia. She discovers a mysterious notebook that is filled with random symbols and very cryptic messages and travels around the world to find out who murdered him. Harris’ mystery is void of his previously trademarked humor but instead flirts with unconventional convictions and focuses on jilted dialogue to round out his outsider outlook.

An added bonus to the screenings of LUNA MESA is an early little seen documentary from Trent Harris called THE GREATEST LOVE STORY EVER TOLD (20 min.) which interviews Joyce McKinney, a woman who was accused of kidnapping and raping a Mormon in London which became the subject of Errol Morris’ popular documentary TABLOID.

THE BEAVER TRILOGY
Dir. Trent Harris, 1979, 1981, and 1985.
USA, 83 min.

FRIDAY, AUGUST 8 – 7:30 PM
THURSDAY, AUGUST 14 – 7:30 PM
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 20 – 7:30 PM
MONDAY, AUGUST 25 – 7:30 PM

Perhaps one of the cornerstones of the comedy cult canon, THE BEAVER TRILOGY is a series of three shorts about a man named Groovin’ Gary. The first short is a documentary; filmmaker Trent Harris runs into the eccentric Groovin’ Gary by chance in a parking lot. After a series of relentless phone calls, Trent is convinced to go to a talent show at a high school where Groovin’ Gary will be performing in drag as Olivia Newton John. With performances from teenagers interspersed with this weirdo, the audience is predictably shocked and appalled by Gary’s talent.

The second short is a 100 dollar budgeted narrative remake with Sean Penn as Groovin’ Larry and is essentially a lo-fi parody of the original subject matter. The final vignette sees Crispin Glover in the starring role and is more robust, glossy, and thoughtful. It is also a slightly more delirious attempt at the narrative (perhaps taking more fictionalized liberties) with a turn to comedic melodrama. Each segment shows an evolution of the director’s perspective and respect for the subject while being delivered with warped humor and an oddly poignant finale.

PLAN 10 FROM OUTERSPACE
Dir. Trent Harris, 1995
USA, 80 min.

FRIDAY, AUGUST 8 – 10:00 PM
TUESDAY, AUGUST 12 – 10:00 PM
SUNDAY, AUGUST 17 – 7:30 PM
TUESDAY, AUGUST 26 – 10:00 PM

Perhaps set in a universe shared with Adventures of Pete and Pete or Pee Wee’s Big Adventure but shades dirtier and a 100% more Mormon, PLAN 10 FROM OUTERSPACE is Trent Harris’ madcap follow-up to his cult classic RUBIN AND ED. A female writer unearths a plague that might hold the secrets that ties the early Mormons with an alien race whose ultimate plan is for world domination. Filled to the brim with a cast of quirky outlandish characters, PLAN 10 FROM OUTERSPACE is a frantic conspiracy religious satire and remains true to Harris’ utter nonsense canon.

PLANET REVENGE LIVE SCORE

Posted on July 9, 2014December 24, 2019 by spectacletheater

SATURDAY, JULY 19 – 7:30 PM & 10:00 PM
ONE NIGHT ONLY!

On July 19th, Spectacle invites you for a ONE NIGHT ONLY collaboration: Planet Revenge! But rather than the lunging sci-fi epic suggested by the title, please join us instead for a languorous and lush tribute to everybody’s favorite orb, scored by Benjamin Felton’s Blood Revenge. Felton plays long form songs on electric guitar, inspired by equal parts finger-picked guitar playing, Indian classical music, the outdoors, and synthesizers; through loops and improvisation, an attempt is made at briefly changing how the performer and the audience experience a space and interact with each other.

Felton’s music can be considered as a blissed-out soundtrack for your commute to work, or as a sonic landscape of your favorite vacation spot – in this case, Mother Earth! Against a cornea-copia of cascading waterfalls, frozen ice, trickles of dew jogging down-leaf and swooping canvases of lakes, rivers, gullies and countrysides, Felton will use his guitar-power to interpret an already-established story told exclusively through visual images and field sounds, echoing unforgettable onscreen textures off of Spectacle’s four walls in a feast of sight and sound. Planet Revenge: so breathtaking, it’ll turn you into an environmentalist.

A Monday Evening with The Saturday Giant

Posted on July 8, 2014December 24, 2019 by spectacletheater

MONDAY, JULY 14 – 8:00PM & 10:00PM
ONE NIGHT ONLY!

On Monday, July 14th, Spectacle welcomes Phil Cogley (aka: The Saturday Giant) for an evening stop off on his latest tour.

The Saturday Giant is a one-man art-rock band from Columbus, Ohio, established in 2010. Since then, The Saturday Giant has produced three releases, played dozens of shows across the U.S., collaborated with technology conferences and performing arts groups, and become one of the most respected acts in his hometown—all while crafting an innovative and compelling live show in which he sculpts layers of guitars, drums, bass lines, beat boxing, keyboards and vocals into towering walls of sound, without the aid of prerecorded samples. Even while maintaining his rigorous touring schedule, The Saturday Giant is preparing his full-length debut for 2014.

Cogley will be performing to a selection of short films from the early age of cinema including Thomas Edison’s FRANKENSTEIN (1910), DW Griffith’s THE LONEDALE OPERATOR (1911) – later remade as THE GIRL & HER TRUST – and finally the haunting, melancholic, and beautiful THE LAND BEYOND THE SUNSET (1912).

A COCKETTES DOUBLE FEATURE

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

LUMINOUS PROCURESS
Dir. Steven Arnold, 1971
USA, 73 min.

THURSDAY, JULY 3 – 7:30 PM
FRIDAY, JULY 25 – 10:00 PM
WEDNESDAY, JULY 30 – 10:00 PM

Two young men wander into a building on the shore, where they have heard they can see the most elaborate sexual fantasies performed, like a smutty Locus Solus, in Steven Arnold’s definitely West Coast take on the psychedelic film as practiced by Jack Smith, Ira Cohen and Kenneth Anger. Meandering among a series of decadent tableaux, deeper and deeper into a world where identities and sexualities merge and split, well performed by none other than the Cockettes and scored by synth guru Warner Jepson, until the two young men finally realize they’re not just spectators, they’re to become the new additions. Trying to sum it up as a plot, however, misses the point of a film like this: it’s a phantasmagorical vision, a Symbolist paean, taking inspiration from butoh theater to Erich Von Stroheim to form a shabbily glamorous vision.

ELEVATOR GIRLS IN BONDAGE
Dir. Michael Kalmen, 1972
USA, 56 min.

THURSDAY, JULY 3 – 10 PM
WEDNESDAY, JULY 16 – 10 PM
WEDNESDAY, JULY 30 – 7:30 PM

Cockettes fans will find many similarities between Elevator Girls In Bondage and the live Cockettes shows of the late 60s and early seventies, combining psychedelia, slapstick and political critique into a film both of its time and unlike anything else.

Starring Spectacle favorite Rumi Missabu along with fellow Cockettes Pristine Condition, Hibiscus and Miss Harlow, the film gleefully subverts and exploits genre tropes, Marxist rhetoric and folks songs as the employees of a hotel decide to get revenge against poor wages and mistreatment as led by elevator girl Maxine (Missabu).

Fans of 70s underground cinema, queer cinema in general, and goofy satire mixed with sharp critique will definitely want to come out and see it for themselves.

MONDO AMERICA

Posted on June 21, 2014December 24, 2019 by spectacletheater

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

SATURDAY, JULY 5 – 7:30 PM
THURSDAY, JULY 10 – 10:00 PM
THURSDAY, JULY 31 – 7:30 PM

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.

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

SATURDAY, JULY 5 – 10:00 PM
TUESDAY, JULY 8 – 10:00 PM
THURSDAY, JULY 31 – 10:00 PM

Rarely seen Director’s Cut featuring contemporary documentary footage and original narration • 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.

WAVES OF MUTILATION

Posted on June 21, 2014December 24, 2019 by spectacletheater

Can’t make it to the beach this summer? This July, Spectacle invites you to snorkle in the depths of madness with three chilling features set by the sea. With a splash of carnage and psychological horror, WAVES OF MUTILATION will leave you shivering on the balmiest of nights.

Surf’s up—and it looks like a red tide.

INTERRABANG
Dir. Giuliano Biagetti, 1969
Italy, 93 min.
In Italian with English subtitles.

WEDNESDAY, JULY 2 – 10 PM
THURSDAY, JULY 17 – 10 PM
TUESDAY, JULY 29 – 7:30 PM

“It’s a symbol made of a question mark plus an exclamation mark: it represents the uncertainties of our era”

Named after a punctuation mark that essentially translates to ‘WTF?’ in modern times, INTERRABANG is a proto-giallo thriller set on an island featuring cat-and-mouse murder games. Photographer Fabrizio sets sail with his wife, her sister, and a model to do some location shooting. When they have engine trouble leaving the island, Fabrizio hitches a ride on a passing boat and goes to seek help, leaving the women waiting… as word of an escaped killer comes in over the radio…

Playing like a low-key, b-side version of Polanski’s Knife In The Water, INTERRABANG mixes Antonioni’s sense of composition and ennui with some bizarre plot turns and double-crossings. If you’re the right amount of sun-drunk and vibing for some 60s Italian bombshells languidly discovering a murder plot, then you’ve struck gold. Bring a mojito while you’re at it.

THE WITCH WHO CAME FROM THE SEA
Dir. Matt Cimber, 1976
USA, 88 min.

MONDAY, JULY 7 – 7:30 PM
TUESDAY, JULY 15 – 10:00 PM
SATURDAY, JULY 26 – 10:00 PM

Molly is a good-natured but troubled barmaid in a seaside town, haunted by repressed memories of the sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of her father. Her trauma manifests in a drinking problem and a twisted obsession with men; she dotes on her adoring nephews, idolizes her deceased father’s memory, and moons over burly football players like a lovestruck teen—even as she fantasizes about castrating them. During a night of particularly heavy binge drinking, Molly loses a few hours, and her grisly desires begin to leave the realm of fantasy.

Despite the dubious distinction of making the UK’s infamous ‘video nasties’ list, THE WITCH WHO CAME FROM THE SEA isn’t quite an exploitation flick. Surprisingly complex, and elevated by a truly inspired performance from lead actress Millie Perkins, this little film is too weird, and too bold to be anything but art.

MARY, MARY, BLOODY MARY
Dir. Juan López Moctezuma, 1975
Mexico/USA, 101 min.

WEDNESDAY, JULY 2 – 7:30 PM
MONDAY, JULY 7 – 10 PM
SUNDAY, JULY 27 – 7:30 PM

Juan López Moctezuma (ALUCARDA, THE MANSION OF MADNESS) directs this Mexican-U.S. shocker about a bisexual seductress artist with an insatiable bloodlust. Eerie beaches and surreal flamboyance make this a uniquely tingling seaside chiller that straddles the line between arthouse and grindhouse.