Page 132 – Spectacle Theater

DOUBLE DARE: AN EVENING WITH SMASH TV

Posted on March 14, 2015December 25, 2019 by spectacletheater

DOUBLE DARE: AN EVENING WITH SMASH TV
GUNSLINGER (63 min) and SKINEMAX (50 min)
edited by Ben Craw and Brendan Shields, 2014
USA, total program approx. 130 min.

THURSDAY, APRIL 23 – 7:30 PM (GUNSLINGER) & 10 PM (SKINEMAX)

Smash TV is back for a double feature at Spectacle! Join us for two full length VJ mixes as well as well as two new mixes of bonus material.

First up at 7:30 PM, GUNSLINGER is the ultimate tribute to the Old West. The Back to the Future III of our trilogy, if you will, Smash TV has bid a fond farewell to the neon excess of the 80s and set the controls of the DeLorean back to 1885. A simpler – and infinitely more dangerous – time. Painstakingly assembled from more than 50 Western movies, ranging from Sergio Leone’s early Spaghetti Westerns all the way up to 90s reimaginings such as DESPERADO and WILD WILD WEST, GUNSLINGER serves as a humble attempt to pay homage to one of the longest running and most influential genres of the silver screen.

Next at bat at 10 PM is the video that started it all. SKINEMAX is KOYAANISQATSI for a generation raised on late night television and B-movie VHS tapes. It’s long form entertainment for short attention spans. A nostalgic look back at a half remembered childhood growing up in the 80s and early 90s, SKINEMAX takes a close look at the culture of that era. The images that motivated, delighted, and terrified us on the silver screen, set to propulsive modern music that pines for a simpler time.

If that wasn’t enough, we’re presenting two NEW mixes of surprise material we love. Get ready for a night of VJ insanity!

FESTIVAL OF (IN)APPROPRIATION: CONTEMPORARY FOUND FOOTAGE FILMMAKING

Posted on March 14, 2015December 25, 2019 by spectacletheater

FESTIVAL OF (IN)APPROPRIATION: CONTEMPORARY FOUND FOOTAGE FILMMAKING
Dir. Various, 2010-2014
USA, Hungary, UK, Tajikistan, Sweden, Australia, 90 min.

THURSDAY, APRIL 16 – 8 PM & 10 PM

Spectacle is pleased to bring back the FESTIVAL OF (IN)APPROPRIATION for its seventh edition – ONE NIGHT ONLY!

Whether you call it collage, compilation, found footage, détournement, or recycled cinema, the incorporation of previously shot materials into new artworks is a practice that has generated novel juxtapositions of elements which have produced new meanings and ideas that may not have been intended by the original makers, that are, in other words “inappropriate.” Founded in 2009, the Festival of (In)appropriation is a yearly showcase of contemporary short audiovisual works that appropriate film or video footage and repurpose it in “inappropriate” and inventive ways. This year’s show is curated by Jaimie Baron, Greg Cohen, and Lauren Berliner. Sponsored by Los Angeles Filmforum.

ASTRO BLACK: RACE FOR SPACE by Soda_Jerk (Australia, video, 2010, 6:06)
DEMOLISHED EVERY SECOND by John Davis (US/Tajikistan, 16mm-to-video, 2014, 4:25)
SARA NOKOMIS WEIR by Brian L. Frye (US, video, 2014, 20:00)
LEXICON by Celeste Fichter (US, video, 2014, 2:36)
THE BAGS, PROBABLY 1971 by Joshua Yates (US, hand-processed 16mm-to-video, 5:11)
NO SIGNAL DETECTED by Péter Lichter (Hungary, video, 2013, 2:33)
TOHO by Sellotape Cinema (UK, video, 2013, 9:30)
NOTHING by LJ Frezza (US, video, 2014, 6:27)
ARRAY by Ben Balcom (US, video, 2013, 7:18)
MY CLOTHES WERE DRAGGING ME BACK by Maria Magnusson (Sweden, video, 2012, 4:53)
FALLING IN LOVE…WITH CHRIS AND GREG: WORK OF ART! REALITY TV SPECIAL by Chris E. Vargas and Greg Youmans (US, video, 2012, 14:00)
ITERATIONS by Gregg Biermann (US, video, 2014, 5:37)

Full program notes can be found on the Festival of (In)appropriation website.

JUCHE YOUR ILLUSION II: FILMS ABOUT NORTH KOREA

Posted on March 14, 2015December 25, 2019 by spectacletheater

Last month’s JUCHE YOUR ILLUSION I surveyed films made in North Korea. For the second part of the series, Spectacle presents three films about North Korea made by filmmakers outside the country.

North Korea’s seclusion results in a peculiar dichotomy; films emerging from within reflect a disconnectedness from the outside world, while works about North Korea made elsewhere must contend with the country’s deliberate attempts at obfuscation. These films largely rely upon brief glimpses, piecemeal second-hand information and, paradoxically, North Korea’s own propaganda, which outside filmmakers parse according to, or in spite of, their own subjectivity. Cinema from each side, generally oppositional to the other and informed by respective biases, can obscure as much as it reveals. It can also serve as a useful reminder of our own subjectivity vis a vis the more familiar propaganda inherent in our own domestic art and discourse.

The films in JUCHE YOUR ILLUSION II both reinforce and undermine the portrait of North Korea presented in the first part of the series. JUCHE II includes a work completely indebted to propaganda (in which upstate NY stands in for NK); a meticulously redesigned vacation video by a French tourist; and the video diary of a woman conflicted by her own familial ties to North Korea.

DEAR PYONGYANG
Dir. Yonghi Yang, 2005
Japan, 107 min.
In Korean and Japanese with English subtitles

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 1 – 10 PM
MONDAY, APRIL 6 – 7:30 PM
FRIDAY, APRIL 24 – 7:30 PM
TUESDAY, APRIL 28 – 7:30 PM

Yonghi Yang is one of nearly a million zainichi, Koreans living in Japan. Beginning in 1959 and lasting 20 years, many zainichi, even of South Korean nationality, left Japan for North Korea as part of a widespread repatriation movement inspired by North Korea’s economic growth and the promise of Korean reunification. These returnees have never been allowed to leave.

Three of those who went were Yang’s brothers, sent in the 1970s by their father, the leader of the pro-North movement in Japan. Yang documents several family trips to Pyongyang to visit her brothers, now grown and with families of their own, who survive in large part due to supplies shipped to them from Japan by their parents, who remained there along with Yang. Despite his sons’ poor living standards, Yang’s father remains staunchly loyal to North Korea, an ideological dilemma for Yang, who struggles to comprehend why her father broke apart his family and wishes to officially change her nationality to South Korea. Though he reproaches his daughter for what he considers her disloyalty to his life’s work, over the ten-year filming period, his steadfastness gives way to indications of regret and a willingness to compromise.

DEAR PYONGYANG received prizes at Berlin and Sundance and is at once an intimate portrait of a family divided by borders and ideology, a rare firsthand glimpse into daily life in North Korea’s capital and an unflinching meditation on the long shadow cast by Korea’s tragic past.

Thanks to Tidepoint Pictures

INTERNATIONAL TOURISM
aka Tourisme International
Dir. Marie Voignier
France, 48 min.
No dialogue; English intertitles

FRIDAY, APRIL 4 – 7:30 PM
TUESDAY, APRIL 7 – 10 PM
SATURDAY, APRIL 18 – 7:30 PM
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 22 – 10 PM

How does a dictatorship exhibit itself to the tourists visiting it? What kind of narration, actors, and staging does it summon? INTERNATIONAL TOURISM has been shot as a recording of a show on the scale of a whole country, North Korea. Museums, painters’ studios, cinema production houses, or a chemical factory are presented to us by North Korean guides whose voices we never hear—for the film has been completely dubbed in at the editing stage in order to create anew a sonorous universe completely disconnected from the official discourses: all sounds have been rerecorded in order to restore the density of spaces, the murmur of tourists, the gestures of the guides, with the exception of the voices. The guides do speak, but we never hear them, and paradoxically, this muteness reveals in a better, enfolded way the coercion of the regime on the spaces and the bodies.

The journey is interspersed with title cards, in which we learn that the President himself is concerned with every detail, that painting seems to replace photography, that all movies are overdubbed for fear of any excess. The film questions the way the nation fabricates its images, between politics, mythology and imagination. Amidst this confrontation between the images of power and the gaze of tourists, we perceive the silent choreography of the touristic guides—those rigid but gracious actors of a country in perpetual self-representation.

Courtesy of Marie Voignier

THE JUCHE IDEA
Dir. Jim Finn
USA, 62 min.
In Korean and English with English subtitles

SUNDAY, APRIL 5 – 5 PM
TUESDAY, APRIL 21 – 10 PM
SUNDAY, APRIL 26 – 5 PM

Yoon Jung, a South Korean video artist, moves to a collective farm & artist colony in North Korea with the hope of revitalizing Juche cinema for the 21st century. Jim Finn’s ingenious satire THE JUCHE IDEA is told through interviews with Yoon Jung at work on the farm (actually upstate NY), the films she makes as part of her residency (“The Tiny Dentures of Imperialism”, “English as a Socialist Language”), and a sampling of real North Korean propaganda and state-sanctioned films set against quotes from Kim Jong-il’s “On the Art of Cinema.”

THE JUCHE IDEA, one of Finn’s “utopian comedies,” and the final part of his Communist Trilogy, is a wildly inventive and experimental hybrid of mockumentary, satire, agitprop, science fiction and reality, which mocks and illuminates the concept of Juche and the cult of personality surrounding Kim Jong-il, while slyly pointing the finger at capitalism and America, itself a peculiar country in which movie stars, not film theorists, become beloved leaders.

150th CIVIL WAR ANNIVERSARY SPECTACLE-ULAR: HERSCHELL GORDON LEWIS’S TWO THOUSAND MANIACS! ON 16MM

Posted on March 5, 2015December 25, 2019 by spectacletheater

TWO THOUSAND MANIACS!
Dir. Hershell Gordon Lewis, 1964
The Southern United States, 87 min.
16mm Print Courtesy of Brian Darwas

SATURDAY, APRIL 11 – MIDNIGHT

“This centennial is a centennial of blood vengeance!”

“YEEEEEEEEE-hooooo! / Oh the South’s gonna rise again!”

“There’s a story you should know from 100 years ago,” begins the infectious, self-penned title song to Herschell Gordon Lewis’s TWO THOUSAND MANIACS!—which turned 50 last year. In fact, this April 12 marks the exact 150th anniversary of the Confederate bombardment of Fort Sumter, which ignited one of the bloodiest chapters in American history: The Civil War.

So to that end, as the clock strikes midnight on Saturday, April 11, we’ll screen one of the bloodiest chapters in cinematic history: TWO THOUSAND MANIACS!, HGL’s outrageously bonkers and indescribably gory 1964 trashterpiece about bloodthirsty southern rednecks unleashing Hell on unsuspecting passersby during the centennial commemoration of their town’s destruction by Union forces. The Yankee tourists, while initially charmed by the kind hospitality of their hosts, soon find themselves maimed and dismembered one-by-one through a series of cartoonish grand guignol games including live barbecuing, drawn-and-quartering by horses, and nail-filled barrel rolls. Will any of them survive the nightmare?

Though unabashedly lurid, grotesque, irreverent, and exploitational, TWO THOUSAND MANIACS! is one of the most compelling historical revisionist fantasies about the Civil War ever filmed, acknowledging the deep wounds, cultural rift and racial tensions that still existed one hundred years after the fact—and persist to this day. Unlike recent films like DJANGO UNCHAINED or TWELVE YEARS A SLAVE, racial violence is not depicted, and yet the evil racial underpinning of the white-on-white violence is clearly understood. There is also the difference that this film’s resolution leaves little catharsis or reassurance that this evil has been in any way defeated.

In the spirit of conservative values, we’ll forgo high definition projection in favor of sterling 16mm, the people’s film format, based on photochemical technology that dates to approximately the same time as the Civil War, the first major conflict to be extensively photographed. Rise again!

FEMME DOMME BABYLON, A TRIBUTE TO ILSA: THE KOMMANDANT, THE KADIN, AND THE WICKED WARDEN

Posted on March 5, 2015December 25, 2019 by spectacletheater

The name Ilsa is synonymous with the image of a dominant female. Since her first appearance as the Kommandant of a “medical” camp in the controversial ILSA, SHE WOLF OF THE SS, Ilsa (Dyanne Thorne), has gained a major cult following as one of the most notorious characters of the nazi exploitation genre. Throughout the course of her “lifetime”, Ilsa has been everything from a harem keeper to a warden at a womens’ prison. Legions of her fans have plastered her image in everything from songs to S&M club flyers. The first film in the series was so popular that it won an AVN award and ushered in a series of sequels, one of which was directed by the legendary Jesus Franco. This midnight series brings together three of the greatest Ilsa films. All hail the Kommandant!

ILSA, SHE WOLF OF THE SS
Dir. Don Edmonds, 1975
USA, 96 min.

FRIDAY, APRIL 3 – MIDNIGHT
FRIDAY, APRIL 17 – MIDNIGHT

“You are strong, stronger than HE”

The period between 1974-1978 was the golden age of Nazi exploitation. Films such as SALON KITTY, THE NIGHT PORTER, RED NIGHTS OF THE GESTAPO and more were very popular across Europe and North America. Nazi exploitation is a type of exploitation film that explores the subject of Nazi cruelty during WW2. These films were usually highly sexualized, highly fetishistic, and rampant with sadomasochistic themes. The majority of Nazi exploitation films were made in Italy, but some were made in France and the United States.

One of the most notorious Nazi exploitation films is ILSA, SHE WOLF OF THE SS. Whereas its other counterparts had story-lines that were considered to be more “historical accurate”, ILSA, SHE WOLF OF THE SS is considered to be rooted in pure fantasy. The film is said to be based on a combination of the life of Ilsa Koch, the wife of a concentration commander, and Stalag novels. Stalag novels were a popular type of pulp novel in Israel during the 50s and 60s that depicted sadomasochistic episodes between men and female members of the SS. Over the years the film has generated a lot of controversy due to its subject matter. Despite the controversy, the film has a huge cult following mainly due to the image of female dominance that Ilsa represents. To fetishist Ilsa is the ultimate goddess that they want to worship and worship they do in countless S&M clubs where Ilsa’s infamous uniform is popular attire with Dominatrixes. To feminists Ilsa is a symbol of a strong woman holding a typically male dominated role. Actually, the theme of “proving” herself to be just as good as any man at her job is a theme that is explored in several of the Ilsa films. Ilsa is a despicable villain to some, a hero to others, but one thing is for sure, she stands as a dominant, confident woman who is out to prove that not only can women easily hold typically male dominated roles, but they are in fact better than men. This is why the film is such a rarity in the Nazi exploitation genre and why some 40 years after its release it is still being talked about by such diverse groups of individuals.

Ilsa (Dyanne Thorne), is the Kommandant of Camp 9, a 3rd Reich “medical” camp tasked to sterilize women. During the day Ilsa works on various “experiments” to help with the German war effort. Her nights are spent with the company of male prisoners who she uses to try to satisfy her sexual desires. Ilsa seeks to advance her career and ranking in the 3rd Reich by working on a side “experiment”, an “experiment” that she believes will help Germany win the war. She wants to prove that “the carefully trained woman can withstand pain better than any man”. A theory which her male superiors take as a joke. All she needs is a subject to prove her theory, enter prisoner 332 aka Anna, the subject Ilsa has been looking for all along, a woman who does not fear pain. Will Ilsa break Anna? Will Anna prove Ilsa’s theory or will she bring about the downfall of the Kommandant?

ILSA, HAREM KEEPER OF THE OIL SHEIKS
Dir. Don Edmonds, 1976
United States, 87 min.

SATURDAY, APRIL 4 – MIDNIGHT

“Welcome to my company of eunuchs!”

Sheik El Sharif is a powerful man. What makes El Sharif so powerful you say? He owns land that is capable of producing millions of gallons of oil! Yet Sheik Sharif is only interested in extracting as little oil as he can. Enter Dr. Kaiser and Commander Adam Scott from the USA! They are looking to employ some “personal diplomacy” aka black mail to get El Sharif to produce more oil. What they didn’t count on was ILSA! After bidding farewell to the Fatherland, Ilsa fled to Arabia where she found a new job as a harem keeper and advisor aka Kadin to Sheik El Sharif. Ilsa along with her henchwomen Satin and Velvet, do everything from spying on foreign powers to training the women of the harem on how to use their tongues. What will Ilsa do to the Americans? Will she remain loyal to El Sharif or will she use this opportunity to usurp his kingdom?

ILSA, THE WICKED WARDEN
aka Greta, The Mad Butcher
Dir. Jesus Franco, 1977
United States, 90 min.

SATURDAY, APRIL 25 – MIDNIGHT

“You know her wound is like a kiss to her body.”

ILSA, THE WICKED WARDEN is the prodigal daughter of the Ilsa series. Originally, the film was not meant to be part of the series at all, but due to the popularity of the first three films, the producers took a film named GRETA, THE MAD BUTCHER and changed the title to ILSA, THE WICKED WARDEN. ILSA, THE WICKED WARDEN was directed by the legendary Jesus Franco and co-stars his wife and lifetime collaborator Lina Romay as Ilsa’s lover/informant/patient. WICKED WARDEN has a plot that is very similar to the other Ilsa films so it fits perfectly with the rest of the series. What makes it unique is that for the first time in the series Ilsa holds a position of absolute power. Ilsa’s “mental health clinic” is for women and run by a woman. Finally, Ilsa got the position she wanted and deserved.

Amy Phillips is desperately searching for answers in the death of her sister Rosa Phillips. Rosa was committed to Las Palomas, a clinic for the treatment of sexually deviant behavior in women, and died under mysterious circumstances. Amy enlists the help of her friend Dr. Arcos to get herself checked into the clinic under false pretenses so that she can investigate Rosa’s death. Unbeknownst to Amy the Las Palomas clinic is run by none other than Ilsa aka Dr. Greta! Dr. Greta is an expert at treating everything from sexual to political deviations. She uses a combination of electro-shock therapy, a leather whip, and the help of Juanna, her lover/patient, to keep her patients on the “right” path. Will Dr. Greta become wise to Amy’s plot? Will Amy ever find out what became of her sister?

RODRIGO D: NO FUTURO

Posted on March 4, 2015December 25, 2019 by spectacletheater

RODRIGO D: NO FUTURO
Dir. Victor Gaviria, 1990
Colombia, 93 min.
In Spanish with English subtitles

FRIDAY, APRIL 3 – 10 PM
TUESDAY, APRIL 21 – 7:30 PM
SATURDAY, APRIL 25 – 10 PM
THURSDAY, APRIL 30 – 10 PM

Sort of like a South American SUBURBIA, Victor Gaviria’s debut feature RODRIGO D: NO FUTURO trades the relatively cush reality of Reagan-era America for the drug money-fueled inferno of Medellin in 1988.

Here we follow adolescent ne’er-do-well Rodrigo D as he tools around town with his ne’er-do-well punk friends romancing babes, playing in shitty bands, dealing drugs, dodging cops, bumming beer money, and/or brazenly robbing people on the street.

As Colombia’s first ever film accepted at Cannes, RODRIGO D: NO FUTURO gained international recognition for its gripping neorealist depiction of Escobar-era Colombia, a place that three years later would earn the ignominious distinction of “murder capital of the world.” Six of the film’s actors were killed after the film wrapped.

Featuring a soundtrack almost black metal in its gritty nihilism, RODRIGO D: NO FUTURO is at once charming (who doesn’t love punkers terrorizing the neighborhood) and disturbing as Gaviria’s embedded position allows us to witness a society on the verge of implosion.

NEVER RECORDS: YOU ARE NOT LISTENING

Posted on March 3, 2015December 25, 2019 by spectacletheater

NEVER RECORDS: YOU ARE NOT LISTENING
Dir. Jason Wyche & artist, Ted Riederer, 2013
USA/UK, 76 min.

FRIDAY, MARCH 27 – 8 PM
ONE NIGHT ONLY!

A discussion about Ted Riederer’s project, NEVER RECORDS will follow the screening. Join us with director, Jason Wyche, and artist, Ted Riederer. Also joining us from Derry, Ireland will be the Context Gallery’s curator, Theo Sims, who made the project in Derry possible.

NEVER RECORDS: YOU ARE NOT LISTENING is a documentary film by Jason Wyche on the artwork of Ted Riederer, featuring artists and musicians: Ted Riederer, Arturo Vega, Jason Farrell, Damon Locks, Mark Garry, John O’Neil, Conor O’kane, SJ Downes, Fighting With Wire, The Q and many more.

NEVER RECORDS: YOU ARE NOT LISTENING is a feature length documentary about artist/musician Ted Riederer and his Never Records project. Shot on location in Derry, Northern Ireland and London, the film features performances from some of the United Kingdom’s brightest artists and musicians. NEVER RECORDS: YOU ARE NOT LISTENING explores power of art and music to unite, educate, and uplift a community. In an era overwhelmed by virtual communities, Riederer is attempting to create actual communities.

Previous screenings include: CBGB Film Festival (2013), RxSM Underground Film Expo (2013), Never Records Festival in Derry, Ireland (2013) and Official Selection at the Victoria Texas Independent Film Festival where the film won the Best of Fest award (2013)

The Never Records project began in 2010 and continues to circle the globe, creating ‘storefronts’ that are a catalyst for creative collaboration. The mock shops consist of a vinyl lathe, which Riederer uses to record the musicians and artists who visit the ‘storefront’. The Never Records archives, totaling over 350 recordings, are taken to every ‘storefront’ site.

In this film, Riederer sets up his record store in an art gallery overlooking the old city walls of Derry, a city which is a symbol of the Northern Ireland civil rights struggle. Over the course of month, he fills the mock shop with vinyl records recorded and cut, via vinyl lathe, on site. The shop becomes a locus of performance and community as musicians and performance artists alike perform around the clock, while visitors are encouraged to watch the performances and play records from the archive. Each artist and musician who records receives a record, and a record also stays with the archives. Nothing is for sale, as Riederer reminds artists and musicians what happens when money is taken out of art and music.

“It’s taken the city by storm. It’s been a cultural phenomenon here. Ted has been oversubscribed and the atmosphere it has created in the music scene and beyond is stunning. It has plugged people back into why music was important in the first place.”
-Stephen McCauley, Electric Mainline, BBC Radio Foyle

From the ruins of an abandoned Tower Records near Union Square in New York City to art galleries and store fronts around the world, Never Records has traveled from New York to Liverpool, Lisbon, Derry, Northern Ireland, London, and New Orleans. Future destinations include Mexico, Ecuador and Mongolia.

THEY ALL LIE (TODOS MIENTEN)

Posted on February 26, 2015December 25, 2019 by spectacletheater

THEY ALL LIE
aka Todos Mienten
Dir. Matías Piñeiro, 2009
Argentina, 75 min.
In Spanish with English subtitles

FRIDAY, MARCH 13 – 8 PM (FILMMAKER IN PERSON!)
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 18 – 10 PM
SUNDAY, MARCH 29 – 7:30 PM

To borrow the filmmaker’s own term: the delirium of Matías Piñeiro’s films is probably better experienced than read about, each title a whirligig construction equally distancing and mesmerizing. Todos Mienten, the Argentine prodigy’s second feature, was shot over the course of a few days in the former countryside home of Piñeiro’s aunt and uncle, where he spent summers as a child; in the film’s so-called narrative, a group of seven friends are convening to drink, smoke, play music, and exhume the ghost of Argentina’s seventh president, Domingo Faustino Sarmiento. Riffing off of a book Sarmiento wrote of his travels around the world, Piñeiro’s listless 20-somethings engage in a kind of sociohistorical game of dress-up, interchanging roles (both within the film’s isolated milieu and outside of it) as if engaging in Feats of (Narrative) Strength.

While Todos Mienten makes a point of bewildering its audience (broken into dissonant chapters, arrayed without even an acknowledged chronology) the air swirls with romantic intrigue (and/or sexual tension) that goes beyond mere words – even if they originally belonged to a tongue as silver-tipped as Sarmiento’s. Piñeiro’s mastery of light and camera is unnerving, with cinematographer Fernando Lockett’s camera regularly creeping around the ramshackle house’s corners with the type of breathless, slo-mo anticipation that usually results in finding a dead body. Todos Mienten is brilliantly choreographed arthouse cinema, as rigorously obsessed with creating the present anew as it is, inevitably, laden with reminders of the past.

“Piñeiro is making movies that point to one of the original questions raised by cinema: How does the imposition of writing—of language or of a lens—alter the world? His carefully structured films—balanced like mobiles, as he says—describe with precision that slippage between words and reality.” – Clinton Krute, BOMB

Spectacle is proud to host Matías Piñeiro and screenwriter Paul Felten (FRANCOPHENIA OR: DON’T KILL ME, I KNOW WHERE THE BABY IS and the upcoming ZEROVILLE) for a discussion of TODOS MIENTEN, followed by a Q&A, on Friday March 13th.

MARCH MIDNIGHTS

Posted on February 6, 2015December 25, 2019 by spectacletheater

FRIDAY, MARCH 6: SHE SHOULDA SAID NO
SATURDAY, MARCH 7: THE MASTER TOUCH
FRIDAY, MARCH 13: WITCHCRAFT 70
SATURDAY, MARCH 14: GOLDEN TEMPLE AMAZONS
FRIDAY, MARCH 20: THE MASTER TOUCH
SATURDAY, MARCH 21: SHE SHOULDA SAID NO
FRIDAY, MARCH 27: GOLDEN TEMPLE AMAZONS
FRIDAY, MARCH 28: WITCHCRAFT 70

SHE SHOULDA SAID NO!
Dir. Sam Newfield, 1949
USA, 70 min.

FRIDAY, MARCH 6 – MIDNIGHT
SATURDAY, MARCH 21 – MIDNIGHT

How bad can a good girl get?

Dateline, August 1948: Actors Robert Mitchum and Lila Leeds busted for drug possession (Leeds had three joints and eight Benzedrine tablets — STARS BUSTED IN POT ORGY! read the tabloids — and while Mitchum was knocked down to conspiracy while Leeds spent two months in prison. Mitchum’s career may have been over were he not fast friends with Howard Hughes, but Leeds had only been working in Hollywood for a few years and no high-powered friends, so upon her release in ’49 the first job offered her: Wild Weed, a Reefer Madness-style shock film directed by Sam Newfield (just one of the 277 films he directed: MST3K fans know him from JUNGLE GODDESS and I ACCUSE MY PARENTS). The film went nowhere and was quickly snapped up by master roadshow producer and Forty Thieves member Kroger Babb, who changed the name to SHE SHOULDA SAID NO!, put a salty picture of Leeds undressing on the poster, Babb fabricating a story that the film was made with the assistance of the United States Treasury and ran the film as a midnight in as many theaters as he could book, promising the true story of Leeds’ licentious liaisons.

As always with roadshow films, the truth is a bit different than the promise: Leeds plays Anne Lester, struggling to pay for her brother’s college costs, when she meets Markey (Alan Baxter), a dope dealer who invites her to a “pot party”. As expected, things quickly go from bad to worse as Anne loses her inhibitions, starts selling drugs, becoming estranged from her brother and trying to steer clear of the law. With a small role by character actor Jack Elam, some excellent montages, all the stoned giggling you can handle and a total bummer ending, SHE SHOULDA SAID NO! will hopefully steer young people back onto the straight and narrow. As Babb himself would say, WHY STAY DUMB?

THE MASTER TOUCH
aka Un uomo da rispettare
Dir. Michele Lupo, 1972
Italy/West Germany, 112 min.

SATURDAY, MARCH 7 – MIDNIGHT
FRIDAY, MARCH 20 – MIDNIGHT

There’s a reason why standards are standards, just as there’s a reason there’s so many “one last job” heist films — it’s the perfect recipe for car chases, double crosses, showdowns and schemes, and THE MASTER TOUCH offers not only all of the above, but some big-time actors. Steve Wallace (Kirk Douglas) is our genius safecracker, home from prison after three years, who wants only to settle in with his wife Florinda Bolkan (who could blame him), but is immediately offered a job — a heist involving an alarm system so sensitive the slightest sound can set it off. Douglas and Giulino Gemma (The Leopard, Tenebre, A Pistol For Ringo) know they have all of Hamburg’s police watching them, so they devise a clever alibi before taking down the biggest score of their lives — but we wouldn’t want to give away too much now, would we? With one of Ennio Morricone’s most brooding scores, THE MASTER TOUCH is a film not to miss.

WITCHCRAFT 70
Dir. Luigi Scattini/Lee Frost, 1970
Italy/United States, 95 min.
Mostly in English with Italian in English subtitles (sometimes)

If you’ve read anything on the internet about this film not written by Tenebrous Kate, it’s wrong, wrong, wrong (Shame on you, IMDB hacks! SHAAAAAAME!) so let’s try to stick to the facts: In 1969 director Luigi Scattini released Angeli Bianchi Angeli Neri (White Angel, Black Angel), a documentary about various occult practices around the world. This film was recut into two versions for English speaking audiences: The Satanists UK (for the British set) and our feature presentation WITCHCRAFT 70 for American audiences. These three films are not simply different dubs, but nearly different films altogether,. each not only containing exclusive material but entirely different narration. Of the three, WITCHCRAFT 70 is certainly the most Mondo, and for that we have our old pal Lee Frost to thank. If Luigi Scattini’s original film brings a wiggy mod sensibility (and copious nudity) to Satanic weddings and grave robbing, and The Satanists UK brings a cynical bent to the proceedings, WITCHCRAFT 70 brings us material more in line with other Lee Frost films like Mondo Bizzaro, Mondo Freudo, and the US version of The Forbidden. Plenty of everything you’d expect — Anton Lavey makes an entirely-suspected appearance, various black masses, voodoo practices, Baal worship, hippie cults, witches of all stripes and and more, much much more. With narration by Edmund Purdom (Pieces, Don’t Open ‘Til Christmas) and a good chunk of the original Piero Umiliani score, WITCHCRAFT 70 combines its source material with a post-Manson California vibe and a real/staged/who even knows aesthetic sure to please anyone who ever binge-watched In Search Of… episodes while incapacitated on Quaaludes. Those of you looking for a fact-checked detailed overview of the supernatural get exactly what you deserve. Those of you in the know on the whole Spectacle Midnights scene, however, are in for a deeply weird, nudetastic freakout you’re not likely to soon forget.

GOLDEN TEMPLE AMAZONS
aka Les amazones du temple d’or
Dir. Jess Franco¹, 1986
France, 86 min.
Dubbed in English

SATURDAY, MARCH 14 – MIDNIGHT
FRIDAY, MARCH 27 – MIDNIGHT

For many fans, the truly great works of Jess Franco took place in the sixties and early seventies, and everything he did since then doesn’t measure up. Fuck those dudes. This isn’t so say a film like GOLDEN TEMPLE AMAZONS stands next to Venus In Furs, Nightmares Come at Night or Female Vampire — this is Franco at his jungle pulpiest, far more H. Rider Haggard than Bram Stoker. Thirty seconds into GOLDEN TEMPLE AMAZONS and it’s an army of topless women on horseback galloping in slow-motion to synth-pop, which should give you a good idea of what you’re in for. Said amazons keep a fortress deep in the jungle, sitting atop a huge gold mine. A family of explorers set out to investigate the mine and were slaughtered by the Amazons, leaving only young Liana (Analia Ivars) alive. The tribe raised her as one of their own, never telling her the fate of her parents. Time passes, and Liana, now fully grown, learns the truth, and in order to get revenge on the Amazon tribe joins forces Imagine a role-reversed Greystoke and you’re on the right path, but add a healthy dollop of Franco-style humor (think Robinson and his Wild Slavegirls — there’s even a hilarious monkey named Rocky!), all the questionable sadism you’d expect from late 80s Eurocine Franco, the drum machine wizardry of Norbert Verrone and a few truly problematic performances and it’s almost like a role-reversed Greystoke, only, well, *not*. Welcome to the return of The Franco Files!

¹ To what extent this film was directed by Jess Franco (who we guarantee wrote the screenplay) or Alain Payet (director of Nathalie: Escape From Hell among a ton of French porn) is a matter of some dispute. If there are any film scholars who wanna get into this, please let us know, but for everybody else: if it walks like a Franco, and talks like a Franco…

81 / 83 WITH RAÚL RUIZ

Posted on February 6, 2015December 25, 2019 by spectacletheater

THE TERRITORY
Dir. Raúl Ruiz, 1981
Portugal, 104 min.
In English and French with English subtitles

TUESDAY, MARCH 3 – 7:30
MONDAY, MARCH 9 – 10 PM
FRIDAY, MARCH 20 – 10 PM
SUNDAY, MARCH 22 – 5 PM

Madness in excess but with a snowballing narrative effect, Raúl Ruiz’s THE TERRITORY takes peculiar people and surrounds them in a more peculiar setting and eventually plunges us into their inevitable lunacy. Ruiz’s hidden gem follows a group who embark on a hiking trip and get lost after ditching their guide. The situation turns vastly surreal with bright pops of color in photography but never turns into psychedelia. While the film is littered with non-sequitur jokes, it is more faithful to being an intellectual fantasy horror than a comedy. Compared to the bulk of his output during his eccentric 1980s era, THE TERRITORY can be considered one of Ruiz’s more accessible films of this time.

THREE CROWNS OF THE SAILOR
Dir. Raúl Ruiz, 1983
France, 117 min.
In French with English subtitles

THURSDAY, MARCH 5 – 7:30 PM
MONDAY, MARCH 16 – 10 PM
FRIDAY, MARCH 20 – 7:30 PM
SUNDAY, MARCH 22 – 7:30 PM

One of the 1980s’ art house masterpieces, Raúl Ruiz’s THREE CROWNS OF THE SAILOR is an absolutely absurd if not profound ghost ship tall tale that sails on a existential nonsense map to nowhere. Spoken in strange code, most of the cryptic language answers questions that were never asked and revels in its fractured fake histories. It is a story that is on another realm with multiverses being pulled through a singular and revelations of alternate characters that may have not existed. The film comes as a strategic stream of conscience that tries to shoe lace faded memories to the fragmented damaged stories. THREE CROWNS OF THE SAILOR is filled to the brim with over complicated ideas and none of them would work if humor and a grain of salt wasn’t included.

3 RUIZ SHORTS: VOYAGE OF THE HAND / ZIG ZAG / DOG’S DIALOGUE
Dir. Raúl Ruiz, 1985, 1980, and 1977
France, 25 min. / 31 min. / 22 min.
In French and English with English subtitles

TUESDAY, MARCH 3 – 10 PM
SUNDAY, MARCH 8 – 7:30 PM
MONDAY, MARCH 16 – 7:30 PM
THURSDAY, MARCH 19 – 10 PM

As a special supplemental collection to the two full lengths featured this month, these three shorts from Ruiz are perhaps his most notable and clever of this era. Presented in reverse chronological order, the program begins with VOYAGE OF THE HAND, one of his more successful impromptu nonsense nightmares. It focuses on the story of a man’s left hand, but in true Ruiz nature, many elements begin to blur. The second short ZIG ZAG is about a man reluctantly joining in a grand scale cartography game of conundrums where the rules constantly change and the scope grows infinitely. The final short in this collection is the landmark DOG’S DIALOGUE which set the off-center tone for the oncoming decades for Ruiz. Presented in the superior English language version, DOG’S DIALOGUE is an act of tomfoolery employing only stock footage and stills. By using clever repetition, what begins as a melodrama of a lovelorn woman breaks into other people’s narratives and eventually dissolves into an endless loop.