Page 128 – Spectacle Theater

HATCHET TO THE HEAD: AN UNHOLY TRINITY BY ÁLEX DE LA IGLESIA

Posted on June 30, 2015December 25, 2019 by spectacletheater

This Summer™, Spectacle is pleased to show a trio of earlier works by the great, madcap Spanish auteur (anti-auteur?) Álex de la Iglesia, better known of recent for his Elijah Wood-starring The Oxford Murders and his surrealist drama of the Spanish Civil War, The Last Circus. de la Iglesia’s howlingly funny body of work is marked as much by its wanton bloodshed and suffering as it is by a dexterity with words and aphorisms – hat-tips to the audience that there are no holy cows in this world.

Trigger warning: films include murder, rape, kidnapping, human sacrifice, drug use, live experimentation and acts of terrorism.

ACCIÓN MUTANTE (MUTANT ACTION)
Dir. Álex de la Iglesia, 1993
Spain, 90 min.
In Spanish with English subtitles

THURSDAY, JULY 2 – 10:00 PM
FRIDAY, JULY 10 – 7:30 PM
SATURDAY, JULY 25 – 7:30 PM

For those of us for whom DEMOLITION MAN wasn’t Boschian enough, there’s ACCIÓN MUTANTE! The film takes place in a dystopian near-future where a band of inept mutant troglodytes have made it their mission to target only the world’s most attractive – the other 1% – by blowing up sperm banks, attacking gyms and spas, etc. Led by the Frankensteinian Ramón (Antonio Resines), the kidnap Patricia (Frédérique Feder), a glowing socialite bride-to-be, and haul her to the off-planet mining colony where Ramón has arranged to collect ransom money from her post-Francoist generalissimo father – but of course, things get more complicated en route. Awash in blood and metal, de la Iglesia’s nihlistic debut (produced by Pedro Almodovar!) is both a rib-brusingly hilarious satire of 90s society and a production of surprising detail and muscularity, likened often to the early collaborations between Jeunet and Caro.

EL DÍA DE LA BESTIA (THE DAY OF THE BEAST)
Dir. Álex de la Iglesia, 1995
Spain, 103 min.
In Spanish with English subtitles

MONDAY, JULY 6 – 7:30 PM
FRIDAY, JULY 10 – 10:00 PM
TUESDAY, JULY 28 – 7:30 PM

After discovering the Antichrist will be born Christmas Eve, mousy but determined Basque theologian Ángel sets off for Madrid to be evil as possible in hopes of gaining Satan’s trust and stopping the Apocalypse before the holidays. He’s new to sin, but gets help from a friendly local metalhead in kidnapping TV psychic and paranormal investigator Cavan to help them out. Comic book goofiness barely disguises underlying social commentary – one priest stealing dead men’s wallets can’t compete with an overzealous, trigger-happy police force or xenophobic hate groups running amok.

PERDITA DURANGO
Dir. Álex de la Iglesia, 1997
Mexico/USA/Spain, 121 min.

THURSDAY, JULY 2 – 7:30 PM
WEDNESDAY, JULY 15 – 7:30 PM
TUESDAY, JULY 28 – 10:00 PM

Starring Rosie Perez and Javier Bardem’s worst on-screen haircut, PERDITA DURANGO is a violent whirl of sex, drugs, and ritual murder weaving across the U.S./Mexico border. Still mourning her sister’s death, Perdita joins Santeria priest/drug runner Romeo on his latest run – delivering frozen human fetuses to a beauty company in Vegas for processing into fancy face cream. To spice things up, they kidnap two clueless American teens to screw and sacrifice along the way. de la Iglesias’ portrayal of America as land of the Square blurs with Perdita and Romeo’s Latin world of brutal vitality, creating a cartoonish existence where investigator Dumas (played by James Gandolfini) perpetually getting slammed by cars is slapstick, violence and sex are indistinguishably intermeshed, and the only common ground is Herb Alpert’s Tijuana Brass.

EADEM MUTATA RESURGO: REMEMBERING CHRISTOPHER LEE

Posted on June 28, 2015December 25, 2019 by spectacletheater

Trying to sum the career of Christopher Lee in three films is absurd. This is better considered a look at three personal favorites, all films where Lee’s methodical ice-blooded elan redefined how generations of viewers considered tropes as well-worn as vampirism, devil worship and Bluebeardian bloodsoaked aristocracy. Not since the days of Conrad Veidt has anyone possessed a stare like Lee’s, and it’s our hope with these films that same stare pierces into your very soul this July.

THE TORTURE CHAMBER OF DR. SADISM
(aka Die Schlangengrube und das Pendel)
Dir. Harald Reinl, 1969
West Germany, 80 min.

FRIDAY, JULY 3 – 10:00 PM
WEDNESDAY, JULY 8 – 10:00 PM
SUNDAY, JULY 12 – 7:30 PM
SATURDAY, JULY 25 – 10:00 PM

Based loosely on THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM, THE TORTURE CHAMBER OF DR. SADISM is a mix of Bava-influenced gothic revenge from beyond the grave and Corman’s Poe films, telling the ghastly tale of Count Regula (Christopher Lee), killer of maidens, sentenced to be executed with a Black Sunday-style spiked mask hammered into the skull. Regula swears he will return to exact bloody vengeance. Secret passageways, ruthless highwaymen, and the body of Regula in his glass coffin, waiting for his time to rise…

THE CITY OF THE DEAD
(aka Horror Hotel)
Dir. John Llewellyn Moxey, 1960
UK, 78 min.

MONDAY, JULY 6 – 10:00 PM
SUNDAY, JULY 11 – 7:30 PM
TUESDAY, JULY 14 – 10:00 PM
FRIDAY, JULY 24 – 10:00 PM

“For all eternity shall I practice the ritual of Black Mass. For all eternity shall I sacrifice unto thee.”

Our film opens in Whitewood, Massachusetts in the year of our lord 1692 with a mob hunting down Elizabeth Selwyn, an accused witch, and sentencing her to burn upon the pyre. Selwyn prays to Lucifer for aid, pledging her service and cursing the people of Whitewood for all eternity. As the flames rise higher, we find ourselves in a classroom where Professor Driscoll (Lee) discusses the trial and execution to a mostly bored group of students, with one notable exception, Nan Barlow (Venetia Stevenson), who is so into the subject she wants to visit Whitewood for her senior paper on witchcraft. Driscoll sends her off, despite warnings from her dopey boyfriend, her disapproving brother and a guy at the filling station, and checks into the Ravenswood Inn, only to learn the town is not as it seems, and the practice of witchcraft is not relegated to history…A moody, beautifully shot black and white creeper in the spirit of the Val Lewton films or NIGHT OF THE DEMON, we’re happy to show it in the original unedited version with none of the cuts made for the HORROR HOTEL US cut you may have caught on a late night Creature Feature.

THE SATANIC RITES OF DRACULA
Dir. Alan Gibson, 1973
UK, 87 min.

SUNDAY, JULY 5 – 7:30 PM
SUNDAY, JULY 11 – 10:00 PM
THURSDAY, JULY 16 – 10:00 PM
MONDAY, JULY 27 – 10:00 PM

“Evil rules, you know. It really does.”

The last in Hammer’s run of Lee vs. Cushing Dracula films, the last Hammer film to use actual occultists as consultants, and a lurid stew of spy tropes, supernatural horror, black masses and one of the absolute best-ever monologues of cosmic dread and horror from Freddie Jones, playing Julian Keeley, a professor commanded to create a virulent variant on the black plague. Sidestepping earlier period-piece Gothic trappings for a thoroughly contemporary London, it’s both sleek and pulpy, with as many gunfights, dirtbike chases, double crosses, regular crosses, basement nightgown covens of undead brides and occult goings-on as one could possibly want. A secret sect of British VIPs perform unholy rites of sacrifice in order to appease their abominable lord! It’s always fun to watch Lee and Cushing face off, the secret agent/cop drama aspect keeps everything at a brisk clip, and it literally starts with a black mass in which a woman is sacrificed and returns from the dead.

HORROR EXPRESS
Dir. Eugenio Martin, 1972.
90 min. Italy/UK.
In English

SATURDAY, JULY 11 – MIDNIGHT

In this essential Trans-Siberian classic, the great Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing are rival anthropologists aboard a train en route from China to Moscow housing a crate with an amazing discovery: a primitive humanoid creature. The problem is, the creature’s body itself is the vessel for a shapeless, ancient alien entity hopping from body to body as hosts suck the memory, knowledge and brains from their victims. Lee and Cushing must combine their scientific expertise to understand and conqueror the otherworldly, demonic menace. In the meantime, Telly Savalas shows up as a domineering Cossack officer, and Argentinian spaghetti western star Alberto de Mendoza plays a nefarious, mad monk who renounces his faith and pledges his devotion to the ancient evil. Like THE THING re-written by Paul Theroux aboard a bullet train to hell and featuring creepy, eye-bleeding make-up effects, freaky blazing-eyed zombies and top-notch performances by Lee and Cushing, HORROR EXPRESS is a total classic!

BRONXPLOITATION

Posted on June 28, 2015December 25, 2019 by spectacletheater

By the early 1970s, fallout from construction of Cross Bronx Expressway, misguided rent control policies leading to insurance fraud and arson, and economic stagnation drew international attention to the South Bronx as one of the most shocking instances of urban decay in United States history. As buildings blazed and lots turned to rubble, families struggled in tenement housing while police contended with an epidemic of gangs, drugs and prostitution; in the meantime, a revolution was happening with street art and the birth of hip hop.

BRONXPLOITATION takes a look at the northern borough as represented on film and video as an area of social, economic, cultural and commercial exploitation, but also one of enduring spirit and creative renewal. Through documentary and fiction alike, the series visits hip hop’s origins in dance parties amid apocalyptic rubble, rides alongside police patrolling the country’s most dangerous streets, sits inside gang hangouts, and examines the public perception of the Bronx crimewave, whether through a housing tenement under attack by vicious thugs or an Italian exploitation movie set in a sensationalized future Bronx.

80 BLOCKS FROM TIFFANY’S (BEST OF SPECTACLE)
Dir. Gary Weis, 1979
USA, 67 min.

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 9 – MIDNIGHT
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 17 – 10PM
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 18 – 5PM
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 24 – 7:30PM

Special thanks to Gary Weis

A legendary cult documentary equally infamous for its subject matter as well as its scarcity, director Gary Weis traveled uptown in 1979 to provide an unflinching, hilarious, and sometimes shocking depiction of the South Bronx neighborhood and, in particular, two African American and Puerto Rican gangs known as the “Savage Skulls” and the “Savage Nomads.”

Facing severe sociopolitical decay throughout the 70s, the South Bronx is portrayed as a crime-infested, all out no-man’s-land war zone where the battle lines are drawn between warring factions of youth street gangs.

Commonly referred to as the real life version of THE WARRIORS, the film is a brilliant snapshot of a bygone era and a stark reminder of the damage that had been wreaked on parts of New York throughout the 70s; the abandoned districts, burnt-out buildings and human waste serving as the end point for a decade of mismanagement and unaddressed social problems. Spectacle is proud to present this landmark work in a brand new remastered version.

1990: THE BRONX WARRIORS 
Dir. Enzo G. Castellari, 1982
Italy, 93 min.

FRIDAY, JULY 3 – 7:30 PM
THURSDAY, JULY 9 – 10:00 PM
FRIDAY, JULY 31 – 7:30 PM

Medieval in its brutality and psychedelic in its execution, 1990: THE BRONX WARRIORS is among the crowning achievements of exploitation master Enzo G. Castellari (THE INGLORIOUS BASTARDS, KEOMA, THE BIG RACKET). And at that, it’s one of the most compellingly over-the-top, guttural pictures to capitalize on the 1970’s South Bronx crime wave. Handily cribbing from both ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK and THE WARRIORS, it presents a dystopian future scenario in which the Bronx is quarantined as a mob-ruled No Man’s Land lorded over by colorful gangs marked by their flamboyant dress and manneristic quirks. Into this anarchic world a young heiress flees her evil capitalist father, who employs a mercenary army to slaughter its way through the gangs who variously harbor and fight over her.

This is perhaps the most lavish, colorful and explosive production of both Castellari’s career and the Italian post-apocalypse subgenre it inspired. Its highlights include epic slow-motion shootouts, sword-vs-hockey stick brawls, creepy mimes with nunchucks and a legion of mounted police officers strapped with flame throwers roasting out the gangs against the backdrop of the Manhattan skyline. The cast includes blaxploitation stalwart Fred Williamson alongside Vic Morrow in his penultimate role.

THE POLICE TAPES
Dir. Alan & Susan Raymond, 1977
USA, 88 min.

WEDNESDAY, JULY 1 – 10:00 PM
TUESDAY, JULY 7 – 7:30 PM
MONDAY, JULY 13 – 10:00 PM
SUNDAY, JULY 26 – 7:30 PM

Special thanks to Alan & Susan Raymond

An alarming and distressing look into the tumultuous work of the 44th Precinct police officers in the South Bronx (a one square mile area that, in 1976, had the highest crime rate in New York City), THE POLICE TAPES peels back the skin to reveal a city at war with the civil servants assigned to serve and protect them.

Utilizing some of the earliest Portapak video equipment available, filmmakers Alan and Susan Raymond capture raw scenes of domestic violence, crime, and murder as well as the officers who gallantly try to maintain a sense of order in a neighborhood coming unraveled. What emerges is an uncensored portrait of a community fighting the consequences of urban poverty and the law enforcers’ difficult task of remaining righteous in a soul-crushing job.

A vital landmark in cinema vérité, THE POLICE TAPES influenced everything from HILL STREET BLUES to COPS and kickstarted the future Oscar-winning careers of Alan and Susan Raymond. To this day, the film maintains its striking power.

TENEMENT
aka GAME OF SURVIVAL aka SLAUGHTER IN THE SOUTH BRONX
Dir. Roberta Findlay, 1985
USA, 94 min.

WEDNESDAY, JULY 8 – 7:30 PM
THURSDAY, JULY 16 – 7:30 PM
MONDAY, JULY 27 – 7:30 PM

Special thanks to Roberta Findlay

Channeling NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD by way of DEATH WISH, this unabashedly sleazy thriller features a group of honest Bronx tenants fed up with the junkie punks squatting in their basement, who pass the time indiscriminately using rats as target practice and food alike. The residents call the police to remove the trespassers, but when the gang is released from booking that night, the vengeful siege begins. TENEMENT is a pat, fast-paced and action-packed thriller, but one of an uncommonly debased sensibility.

Director Roberta Findlay is best known for her sexploitation and hardcore films including ALTAR OF LUST and THE CLAMDIGGER’S DAUGHTER. Concurrently she and husband Michael created 1976’s SNUFF, inspiring outrage and widespread protest for its allegedly featuring actual murders later revealed to be a marketing ploy. Following Michael’s death, Roberta continued directing hardcore until becoming persona non grata among the industry for SHAUNA: EVERY MAN’S FANTASY, a hardcore documentary about drug addicted pornographic actress Shauna Grant’s shotgun suicide cashing in the following year.

But if anything pushes Findlay’s movies beyond the usual level of discomfort, it might be how shockingly well-made and entertaining they are despite an absolute disregard for taste and morality that makes LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT and I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE appear Puritanical in compare. Very clearly shot on location amid the rubble and decay of the decimated burrough, TENEMENT is a sleazy exploitation movie, to be sure, but one which by mere virtue of its existence is a bold, agitational indictment of a city squeezed through the bowels of Hell.

SOMETHING ELSE: A CELEBRATION OF ORNETTE COLEMAN ON FILM

Posted on June 24, 2015December 25, 2019 by spectacletheater

You can’t see outside yourself, but we do have imagination. The expression of all individual imagination is what I call Harmolodics. Each beam of imagination is their own unison and there are as many unisons as there are stars in the sky. — Ornette Coleman

ALL WEEK LONG from July 17 – 23!

Spectacle presents a special tribute to the great ORNETTE COLEMAN beginning July 17th, featuring a week-long run of Shirley Clarke’s recently preserved ORNETTE: MADE IN AMERICA. Artist C. Spencer Yeh will present his original rendition of Conrad Rooks’ 1966 film CHAPPAQUA with Ornette Coleman’s original score – there is no existing version of the film with this score in place. We’ll also be screening ALL MAGIC SANDS/CHAPPAQUA by experimental filmmaker Andrew Lampert, which combines Ornette Coleman’s The Chappaqua Suite with a lost and found feature-length Christian children’s adventure film shot the same year The Chappaqua Suite was recorded.

ORNETTE: MADE IN AMERICA
Dir. Shirley Clarke, 1985
USA, 85 min.

FRIDAY, JULY 17 – 7:30 PM
SATURDAY, JULY 18 – 10:00 PM
SUNDAY–TUESDAY, JULY 19–21 – 7:30 PM
WEDNESDAY–THURSDAY, JULY 22–23 – 10:00 PM

Advance tickets available here.

Ornette Coleman told his bandmates not to follow him, but to be with him. Shirley Clarke’s documentary eschews conventions to create a fittingly free-form portrait of one of the most original innovators of all time. Clarke began filming with Ornette Coleman in the 60s, and her film documents the evolution of his life and work over three decades, incorporating performance footage, conversation with his friends and fellow musicians, his return to his boyhood home, recreations of his childhood, and experimental riffs that could only result from a deep and fertile creative connection between filmmaker and subject.

Friends, collaborators and admirers appearing in the film include Don Cherry, Ed Blackwell, Charlie Haden, William S. Burroughs, Brion Gysin, Buckminster Fuller, Yoko Ono, Robert Palmer, Jayne Cortez, George Russell, Denardo Coleman and John Rockwell.

Special thanks to Milestone films.

CHAPPAQUA with Ornette Coleman’s CHAPPAQUA SUITE
Dir. Conrad Rooks, 1966 | Remixed by C. Spencer Yeh, 2015
USA, 48 min.

FRIDAY, JULY 17 – 10:00 PM
SUNDAY, JULY 19 – 5:00 PM
TUESDAY, JULY 21 – 10:00 PM
THURSDAY, JULY 23 – 7:30 PM

Advance tickets available here.

C. SPENCER YEH PRESENTS HIS OWN RENDITION OF CONRAD ROOK’S CHAPPAQUA WITH ORNETTE COLEMAN’S ORIGINAL SCORE THE CHAPPAQUA SUITE.

Conrad Rooks wrote, directed and starred in this psychedelic cult film based on his own experiences with drug and alchohol addiction and his therapeutic use of psychedelic drugs to treat that addiction. CHAPPAQUA features appearances by Ornette Coleman (credited as “Peyote Eater”), William S. Burroughs, Jean-Louis Barrault, guru Swami Satchidananda, The Fugs, Allen Ginsberg, Moondog and Ravi Shankar.

Conrad Rooks originally commissioned Ornette Coleman to score CHAPPAQUA, resulting in Coleman’s Chappaqua Suite. Upon hearing it, Rooks allegedly decided that the piece would overshadow his film and decided not to use it. In a tribute to Ornette Coleman, Spectacle presents its own rendition of CHAPPAQUA with Ornette Coleman’s original composition in place.

Special thanks to Milestone films.

SCREENING WITH:

POPULATION EXPLOSION
Dir. Pierre Hébert, 1968
Canada, 14 min.

A product of the first world’s population panic of the 60s and 70s, Pierre Hébert set his cut-out animation to a score by Ornette Coleman. He suggests that in many countries, freedom from famine and disease has created the new problem of overpopulation and that wealthier nations should increase all forms of aid to struggling nations.

Special thanks to the National Film Board of Canada.

ALL MAGIC SANDS/CHAPPAQUA
Dir. Andrew Lampert, 2012
USA, 80 minutes

SATURDAY, JULY 18 – 7:30 PM
MONDAY, JULY 20 – 10:00 PM
WEDNESDAY, JULY 22 – 7:30 PM – FILMMAKER IN ATTENDANCE!

Advance tickets available here.

June 15-17, 1965. Ornette Coleman’s trio featuring guest Pharaoh Sanders and a small string orchestra records the soundtrack for Conrad Rooks’ in-progress feature film CHAPPAQUA. Upon listening, Rooks recognizes the exquisiteness of Coleman’s boisterous music, but believes it will overpower his imagery and instead hires Ravi Shankar to compose the score. Coleman’s unused recording is issued that same year as the double LP set CHAPPAQUA SUITE.

July 1965. Nashville TV bigwig Al Gannaway produces a 16mm Christian children’s adventure movie with the working title ALL MAGIC SANDS. The story centers on an orphaned quartet (boy, two girls, a baby) washed ashore on a desert island in what just might be the Bahamas. There, they encounter a pile of branches that transforms into a dubious Jesus-esque bearded man, as well as a doppelganger family of naked black children. A failed epic that is equal parts semi-professional production and curiously cruel home movie, the original footage was left sitting untouched for many decades in a lab that went out of business.

ALL MAGIC SANDS/CHAPPAQUA (2012) synchronizes reels from an unfinished film with a rejected soundtrack, both of which were originally created within a month of each other. Lampert acquired all the known camera footage for ALL MAGIC SANDS and has assembled the intact reels (takes, mistakes and re-takes included) into a sequence that, rather serendipitously, is nearly the exact same length as Coleman’s classic score. A darkly funny and deeply strange chance discovery that feels, in ways, tailor made, this unexpected pairing of exact opposites makes for strangely ideal company. Coleman’s emphatic performance infuses the eye-popping color footage with sorrowful undertones and mysteriously sympathetic resonances. Filled with flashbacks, fast-forwards, circular starts and loose ends, ALL MAGIC SANDS/CHAPPAQUA is a feature-length film made of just middle.

DON’T BE AFRAID TO POGO

Posted on June 22, 2015December 25, 2019 by spectacletheater

DON’T BE AFRAID TO POGO
Dir. Chris Ashford, 2015
USA, 94 min.

WEDNESDAY, JULY 15 – 10:00 PM
ONE NIGHT ONLY! NEW YORK PREMIERE!

Spectacle is proud to present the New York premiere of DON’T BE AFRAID TO POGO, the story of 1970s punk band The Gears. Beginning as boyhood friends from North East Los Angeles, these musicians self-styled an infectious brand of surf/rockabilly/punk which they continue to play today. Despite local popularity and critical acclaim, the Gears rarely performed outside of Los Angeles, denying them the wider success that their contemporaries X, The Blasters, Los Lobos and The Germs would go on to achieve. DON’T BE AFRAID TO POGO chronicles singer Axxel G. Reese and The Gears’ history in rich detail, featuring rare archival footage and interviews with band members as well as Mike Watt (Minutemen), Johnny Stingray (The Controllers/Kaos), Billy Bones (The Skulls), Steve Metz (Mad Society) Miss Mercy (GTO’s), artist Richard Duardo and other punk luminaries. Featuring a soundtrack by X drummer DJ Bonebrake, DON’T BE AFRAID TO POGO is a heartfelt and overdue tribute to one of LA’s most underrated punk bands.

PERSISTENCE OF VISION

Posted on June 22, 2015December 25, 2019 by spectacletheater

PERSISTENCE OF VISION
Dir. Kevin Schreck, 2012
US, 83 min.

THURSDAY, JULY 30, 8 PM – DIRECTOR KEVIN SCHRECK IN ATTENDANCE
ONE NIGHT ONLY!

Advance tickets available here.

Striving to make the greatest animated film of all time, visionary animator Richard Williams (Academy Award-winning animation director of WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT) toiled for nearly three decades on his masterpiece, THE THIEF AND THE COBBLER — only to have it torn from his hands. Filmmaker Kevin Schreck has woven together mind-blowing animation, rare archival footage, and exclusive interviews with key animators and artists who worked with Williams on his ill-fated magnum opus to bring this legendary, forgotten chapter of cinema history to the screen for the very first time.

A tale of creative genius gone horribly awry, PERSISTENCE OF VISION is the untold story of the greatest animated film never made.

“An amazing film about an amazing artist. Rush out and see Persistence of Vision.” – Bill Plympton, acclaimed animator

“A fascinating slice of film history.” – Variety

“A Herculean accomplishment.” – indieWire

MONICA: THE WEBSERIES

Posted on June 11, 2015December 25, 2019 by spectacletheater

SATURDAY, JUNE 27 – 8PM
ADVANCE TICKETS AVAILABLE HERE!
ONE NIGHT ONLY

For one night only, Spectacle is proud to present the new webseries Monica in full – bookended with stand-up comedy (featuring Jacqueline Novak, John Early, Cole Escola, Erin Markey and Chris Laker) before, and a Q&A with the creators of Monica – writer/director Doron Max Hagay, and star/cowriter Lily Marotta after.

How many puff pieces have pointed to the exhausted trope of the beloved national celebrity poor, downtrodden and wanting nothing more than to be a “normal human being”? Doron Max Hagay’s brilliantly high-concept Monica explores not just this question but also what said journey might actually have felt like for one Monica Lewinsky (Lily Marotta), relocating from DC to New York at the age of 27. Inspired by Vanessa Grigoriadis’ article “Monica Takes Manhattan”, the show centers on Lewinsky’s clinching of a deal with HBO to make what would become the 2002 documentary Monica in Black and White.

Alongside pointed jabs about showbiz, fame, and nascent Brooklyn yupsterism, Hagay’s approach is both generous and hilarious. It delineates the world of difference between insta-celebrity’s place at the end of the 20th century and its position today. In the aftermath of the Clinton Administration, all Monica can do is be herself, one day at a time. Hagay’s series brings her image back into the public arena not for a cheap laugh but instead in the service of long-overdue re-normalization, whereby her quotidian triumphs and travails begin to look more and more like anybody’s from their mid-to-late twenties.

“Before hitting the show, Monica’s design buddy (Steven Phillips-Horst) suggests she swap a black baseball cap in place of the black beret; Monica: “Too Monica?” At the end of the doc pitch, the execs bid her “Welcome to HBO”; in response, her publicist floats: ‘Welcome to Monica.’ A cautious tale, Monica’s, foreboding the modern era of social media, shaming, trolling, deprivacy — like the moon, she belongs to everyone, though just out of reach.” – Craig Keller, Cinemasparagus

CORMAN IN THE CARIBBEAN

Posted on May 31, 2015December 25, 2019 by spectacletheater

Legendary producer-director Roger Corman was at the height of his prolific creative powers when Puerto Rican tax incentives sent the enterprising filmmaker and his crew—including future CHINATOWN screenwriter Robert Towne—to San Juan to make a movie. It ended up being three: while wrapping THE LAST WOMAN ON EARTH, Corman called up his LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS screenwriter to draft the script for CREATURE FROM THE HAUNTED SEA, and in the meantime he financed a quickie war picture, BATTLE OF BLOOD ISLAND. As a complement to our “Waves of Mutilation” series, we present “Corman in the Caribbean,” a pair of beachy island horror movies to cool off at the end of hot summer days.

CREATURE FROM THE HAUNTED SEA
Dir. Roger Corman, 1961.
USA/Puerto Rico. 75 min.

TUESDAY, JUNE 2 – 7:30 PM
THURSDAY, JUNE 11 – 7:30 PM
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 17 – 10:00 PM

Recently emboldened by shooting THE LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS in two days on a successful bet, Corman squeezed an extra movie out of his and his LAST WOMAN ON EARTH cast’s plane tickets by calling up screenwriter Charles B. Griffith (recently of LITTLE SHOP and A BUCKET OF BLOOD) to crank out a new script. The result is another madcap macabre satire that knowingly plays its low budget for big laughs.

Commenting on history as it unfolds, CREATURE FROM THE HAUNTED SEA was shot during the waning days of Cuba’s Batista government. It’s narrator introduces a story of “robbery, double-cross, and murder,” in which Renzo Capeto (Anthony Carbone), an American gambler and con man, is hired by Batista’s generals to help them abscond with the Cuban treasury. While fleeing revolutionaries by sailboat with secret agent “XK150”—played by future Chinatown screenwriter Robert Towne—on board as an infiltrator, Capeto hatches a plan to knock off the Cubans one-by-one while blaming it on a fictitious sea monster. Or is it fictitious? In a knowingly absurd twist, it just so happens that the same monster he’s invented just happens to be lurking beneath their vessel.

In few movies is the fun the cast and crew were having so apparent on screen. One gets the sense of the movie as a “working vacation,” and Griffith’s script provides the perfect opportunity for no one to take themselves too seriously: Towne might not have cut it as a leading man, but he and Carbone are perfect in their roles as deadpan hams. And yet against all odds, the movie is recognized by Corman as one of his most personal. Everyone is an inept con, there are no heroes—and in the end, the guy in the cheap monster suit with tennis ball eyes wins.

LAST WOMAN ON EARTH
Dir. Roger Corman, 1961.
USA/Puerto Rico. 75 min.

TUESDAY, JUNE 2 – 10:00 PM
TUESDAY, JUNE 9 – 7:30 PM

The first and bigger of Corman’s Puerto Rican thrillers, Last Woman on Earth is shot in widescreen color (advertised on the poster as “Vistascope”) and makes beautiful use of the Caribbean scenery. Anthony Carbone plays a wealthy industrialist on vacation with his wife in Puerto Rico—and as a workaholic, he brings along his young attorney (screenwriter Robert Towne, billed as “Edward Wain”) to discuss business matters. After scuba diving, the trio emerge to discover that apparently all oxygen had vanished, and and few people are left alive. While facing an uncertain future, new personal dynamics begin to develop among the three.

LAST WOMAN ON EARTH is a pithy doomsday thriller in the mold of THE WORLD, THE FLESH, AND THE DEVIL that doubles as a bourgeois critique. (For an auteurist reading, one can’t help but speculate about Corman’s own workaholic tendencies and estrangement from Hollywood’s monied elite.) One of the oddest pleasures of the film is Robert Towne’s frankly kind of bad performance as the young lawyer: according to Corman’s autobiography, he had taken so long, by Corman’s standards, to finish the script that the only way Corman could afford to fly him out to finish the script was to hire him as the co-lead. (Take a moment to let the logic of that settle in.) Nevertheless, he gets an A for effort.

CINAP CINATAS

Posted on May 29, 2015December 25, 2019 by spectacletheater

CINAP CINATAS
Dir. Darren Bauler, 2015 (compiled from source material 1982-1990)
USA, abt. 40 min.

THURSDAY, JUNE 4 – 7:30PM
ONE NIGHT ONLY!

“When the black stars align, you will be given a sign.”

In a time of the evils of role-playing games, the “audio pornography” of blood-spitting pentagram-wearing heavy metal, the rise of VHS Video Nasties and the political atmosphere of the Reagan reinvention of the Republican party as the home of the Moral Majority, the time was right for a decade-long consideration of what was known as Satanic Ritual Abuse. I (Darren) honestly believe there is an amazing documentary possible weaving all these threads into a cohesive whole, free of both right-leaning hysteria and leftist dismissal. This is not that documentary. Instead, it is a gratuitous blur of backmasking, Christian scare films, prime-time documentary footage, law enforcement training videos and more, edited for maximum nod freakout. We tag all the familiar bases here, from the Judas Priest trial to Ricky Kasso’s brutal murder of Gary Lauwers and subsequent suicide, along with many cases lesser-known these days. We look at brainwashing, hidden messages, desecrated cemeteries and endless throngs of kids with Venom patches and upside down crosses carved into their arms. Intended NOT to be a tongue-in-cheek goof nor a serious warning about the evils of the occult, it is our hope this experience stands outside simple opinion or smug dismissal. With an entirely new score written and performed by the director, CINAP CINATAS is necessary viewing for teenage delinquents, 80s fetishists and anyone curious about the “Occult renaissance” claimed over the past few years.

TRIGGER WARNINGS: animal sacrifice, child molestation, occult rituals, multiple unedited crime scenes, potentially seizure-inducing strobe effects, Geraldo Rivera

CRITICAL PARANOIA: DARK NIGHT RISING

Posted on May 29, 2015December 25, 2019 by spectacletheater

CRITICAL PARANOIA: DARK NIGHT RISING
A collection of conspiracy videos edited & curated by Ernest J. Ramon, 2015
USA, 87 min.

MONDAY, JUNE 1 – 10PM
SUNDAY, JUNE 7 – 7:30PM
TUESDAY, JUNE 16 – 10PM
TUESDAY, JUNE 30 – 10PM

You’re not allowed to believe in coincidences anymore. A Fast encroaching military police state, mind controlled assassins, domestic terrorism, secret societies, ritual sacrifices, clandestine psy-op programs, evil old billionaires clamoring for world domination! Tired old plots of a comic book franchise or prophetic and deliberate enigmas wrapped in bubblegum and subterfuge? Who or what really killed Heath Ledger? Has the Dark Knight vehicle become nothing more than a harbinger for horrors such as the Sandy Hook and Aurora Shootings, and the events of September 11th? What is the true meaning hidden behind the Dark Night Rising? Over the rainbow and through the looking glass, how deep does the rabbit hole go? All the way to a bat cave perhaps.