OVERREACHING IMAGINATION: THE TWISTED FILMS OF CHARLES PINION

OVERREACHING IMAGINATION: THE TWISTED FILMS OF CHARLES PINION

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OVERREACHING IMAGINATION: THE TWISTED FILMS OF CHARLES PINION

Supersaturated with eyeball kicks and a non-mainstream aesthetic, psychedelic splatterpunk is one way to describe the underground films of low-budget auteur Charles Pinion. Consensus reality just gives up after a certain point and the nudity, madness, sacrilege and gore—lots of gore—spills all over the floor, slithers up your legs and eats your brain.

“Pinion’s imagination occasionally overreaches his limited budget, but the results are always impressive,” Shock Cinema’s Steve Pulchalski accurately pointed out in 1997.

Shooting on video, the frighteningly handsome director (and occasional actor in his own films) has called his work “the modern exploitation cinema,” otherwise known as “Pulp Video…where the narrative limits for sex, violence and depravity can be expanded and transcended…. Gruesome and prurient surface narratives combined with affordable reproduction techniques.”

As weird and disturbing as they are, Pinion’s movies are inclusive and fun: Don’t worry if it doesn’t make sense, just try and keep up and all will be revealed. Script may always be subservient to pacing, mood and the inclusion of any sort of exploitation element, but there is a sense of purpose, a propulsive drive to his pictures.

Keeping busy in a variety of mediums since 1996’s We Await, Pinion is now finishing his magnum opus, American Mummy—to be shown in 3-D!

The Spectacle wants to thank Charles Pinion with his assistance for setting up these screenings.

Showing at the Spectacle will be Pinion’s three films:

TWISTED ISSUES
1988, 80 min. USA

WEDNESDAY, JULY 10 – 10:00 PM
FRIDAY, JULY 19 – 10:00 PM

What began as a documentary covering Gainesville, Florida’s hardcore punk rock scene rapidly mutated into a weird and kinetic tale about a zombie skater seeking gory revenge, while still being a love-letter to and a slice-of-life of the skatepunks from the director’s hometown.

Full of more youthful energy than sense, Twisted Issues’ pace is breathless, covering lots of ground: skateboarding, astral projection, mad doctors and much more are thrown at the viewer, all scored to a hardcore soundtrack. According to punk-rock movie encyclopedia Destroy All Movies!!!, “the gore is relentless… Things take a decidedly psychedelic turn by the end, but homemade viscera and general creative drive triumph in a brutal intestine-war finale.”

Meanwhile, Film Threat Video Guide called Twisted Issues one of the “25 Must-See Underground Movies of the 1980s.” Featuring Pinion as a “dimension-hopping mastermind” who’s also the frontman for grindcore band Psychic Violents! Come and celebrate the 25th Anniversary of Twisted Issues!

RED SPIRIT LAKE
1993, 69 min. USA

SATURDAY, JULY 13 – 10:00 PM
SUNDAY, JULY 21 – 7:30 PM
SUNDAY, JULY 28 – 10:00 PM

Red Spirit Lake has been described by Basket Case creator Frank Henenlotter as “a disgusting art film: Poetic and elegant.”

Marilyn (played by the sexy Amanda Collins, the film’s co-author) has inherited a supernatural estate after her aunt’s mysterious death. Nude apparitions prance daily, while the groundskeepers are tormented every night by their memories of alien abduction.

Using any and all excuses for gore or nudity (male and female), Pinion’s unholy tribute to late-1960s/early-1970s exploitation films (especially those created by H.G. Lewis and Lucio Fulci) could also be packaged as “Clive Barker’s Last House on the Left,” where sexy poltergeists derail a home invasion with blood-splattered results.

While the subplots pile with reckless abandon, Marilyn’s visions grow more intense, and during a debauched weekend with some stoner/nudist pals, the gangsters who killed her aunt show up. But the ghosts and phantoms (and maybe even the aliens) have an agenda of their own—because Marilyn is the last of a long line of witches, and Red Spirit Lake is the center of their power.

Featuring underground filmmaker Richard Kern as an evil henchman and cult icon Kembra Pfahler as a naughty but goofy spook, Red Spirit Lake has plenty of “the good stuff” fans of B-movies desire: nudity, mayhem, hallucinations, nudity, psychotic violence—including murder by fisting!—and plenty more nudity in the snow. It’s the 20th Anniversary of this wild, wild movie, and it may be another 20 years before you see something like this again. With a surprisingly haunting soundtrack by Cop Shoot Cop, Clint Ruin and Lydia Lunch, Lunachicks and others.

WE AWAIT
1996, 54 min. USA

MONDAY, JULY 1 – 7:30 PM
SUNDAY, JULY 14 – 10:00 PM
TUESDAY, JULY 30 – 7:30 PM

We Await has been described as “an urban Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” but that’s only half the story—you’ve got to add, “as if written by Terrence McKenna,” because there’s a heavy “magic mushroom” vibe to this short, but very dense and thought-provoking film.

A con man gets embroiled with a family willfully communing with a sentient transdimensional jewel whose spores are highly psychoactive green fungus—that encourages a “group mind,” as well as a taste for human flesh! The family, including a “dog” who has chosen to be one, needs a vessel for the birth of “The Wise One,” and our hapless con man is the candidate. But first he must be prepared…

Calling We Await “beautifully edited and executed,” and Pinion’s “best, most playfully disturbing work yet,” Shock Cinema’s Pulchalski noted how “Pinion also captures a genuine sense of nightmarish, societal chaos.”

The director really has the knives out for televangelists and their disciples, showing family member Barrett (well-played by Pinion himself) getting himself all worked up into a killing frenzy while watching multiple, simultaneous TVs (a reoccurring audio-visual overload with the director), all broadcasting overwrought religious programming—before he goes out and slaughters some holy rollers by kicking their heads in.

There’s a real gnarly primordial vibe going on in We Await, as if ancient texts and mystic rites were not just being obeyed, but imprinted on the videotape, waiting to infect its viewers…

“Far darker than its predecessors,” writes Jack Sargeant, author of Deathtripping, “We Await reiterates Pinion’s fascination with mytho-poetic thematics, most clearly manifested when the family undertakes a ‘spirit drive’—a psychedelic journey in which they come face to face with a gigantic blood-smothered grimacing Jesus” (in a tribute to 1950s giant radioactive monster movie The Amazing Colossal Man).

Set in San Francisco’s Mission District but with enough bad vibes to send the City by the Bay to bottom of the sea, We Await features music by Crash Worship, Unsane, Eugene Chadbourne and many others.

VERMONT JOY PARADE

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Vermont Joy Parade: the Clock Tick and the Heartbeat

TUESDAY, JUNE 25 – 8:00 PM

In the final months of 2011, hot on the heels of a successful northeastern tour, and with a new album recorded with Ryan Power in the bag, Vermont Joy Parade made their way across the Atlantic Ocean to the European nexus of Berlin, Germany. They arrived with empty pockets and pipe dreams, piss and vinegar. They left with empty pockets and smoker’s cough, heartburn and indigestion. But somewhere in between they played every dusty nook and cranny of Berlin, graced some of the largest stages in Europe, and got lost in Poland – a lot. “Vermont Joy Parade: the Clock Tick and the Heartbeat”, directed by Vivian Strosberg, is the story of their chaotic, unpredictable, and comic journey. Part “Spinal Tap”, part music video, and part travelogue; it’s almost as fun as being there yourself. But not as claustrophobic.

Featuring songs from Vermont Joy Parade’s sophomore album, “New Anthem”, and guest appearances by Jared Leto, 20,000 teenage girls, and a drunk German alpine horn player.

91 minutes.

FILM AS A SUBVERSIVE ART: JUNE 2013

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TWO PROGRAMS from ‘THE ATTACK ON GOD’.
MONDAY, JUNE 24TH – 7:30PM & 10PM
ONE NIGHT ONLY!

Can film make revolution? What use is it if it can’t? Film critic Amos Vogel’s seminal work, Film As A Subversive Art, published in 1974, is both an argument for and a catalogue of cinema that refuses, rebels and repulses. Film “designed to eradicate the reactionary values of an establishment that had proven its bankruptcy.”

Vogel died in April 2012. In his honor, Spectacle Theater and The New Inquiry will be hosting a series of talks and screenings, taking selections of many of the near-impossible to see films from his book. June’s screening will feature banned blasphemies, comic crucifixions, and other atheistic anarchy.

FEMALE KUNG FU MIDNIGHTS

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FEMALE KUNG FU MIDNIGHTS

In conjunction with our summer-long screenings of The Street Fighter Trilogy, we present three female-centered kung fu flicks in our midnights section that prove they can hit as hard as Chiba!

Starting with the direct spinoff SISTER STREET FIGHTER, continuing on with the blaxsploitation/kung fu hybrid TNT JACKSON, and concluding with the hyper-kinetic ‘Girls With Guns’landmark FIGHTING MADAM, these films represent some of the best in female-driven kung fu-sploitation.

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SISTER STREET FIGHTER
Dir: Kazuhiko Yamaguchi, 1974.
86 min. Japan.
In Japanese with English subtitles.
SATURDAY, JUNE 15TH – MIDNIGHT
ONE NIGHT ONLY!

Etsuko Shihomi IS Tina Long, a martial arts master seeking revenge on drug lords who kidnapped her agent brother. With the help of dojo partner Sonny Chiba (who pops in for a brief cameo), she breaks into the drug lords’s compound and must plow through a legion of henchmen, including a group of Thai kickboxers called the “Amazon Seven”-  in order to get to the bottom of the dungeon lair to fight the boss and save her brother.

Released immediately after THE STREET FIGHTER became an international success, SISTER STREET FIGHTER saw Japanese film giant Toei create a successful spinoff that eventually lead to multiple ‘Sister’ sequels of varying quality and success. The original, much like THE STREET FIGHTER itself, remains the best of the bunch.


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TNT JACKSON
Dir: Cirio H. Santiago, 1974.
72 min. USA.
COMING IN JULY!

A staple of the early 70s drive-in circuit, TNT JACKSON was schlock producer kingpin Roger Corman’s attempt to cash in on the blaxsploitation craze and remains a fitting example of the kung fu craze muscling its way into every 70s genre.

Martial arts expert Diana ‘TNT’ Jackson travels to Hong Kong to search for her brother’s killer. She soon discovers an underworld heroin smuggling operation that may lead her to the murderer.  Will she karate chop her way through an army of henchmen and come face-to-face with her brother’s assailant?

Starring afro-haired ass-kicker Jean Bell (the first African American Playmate) in a script originally written by legendary character actor Dick Miller (before Corman had it rewritten), the film makes zero attempts at production values and plot imagination (essentially the same setup as SISTER STREET FIGHTER) but does features a criminal amount of funky 70s wardrobes, cheesy kung-fu ‘whooshes’, and a completely illogical topless fight scene that ranks at the top of exploitation’s most gratuitous, trashy moments.

If Pam Grier is too expensive, then you best call TNT Jackson!

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FIGHTING MADAM
(aka Angel, aka Iron Angels, aka Midnight Angels)
Dir: Raymond Leung & Teresa Woo, 1987.
93 min. Hong Kong/Taiwan.
In Cantonese/Mandarin with English subtitles.
FRIDAY, AUGUST 23 – MIDNIGHT

An Eastern 80s riff on ‘Charlie’s Angels,’ FIGHTING MADAM features a team of secret agents known as ‘The Angels’ attempting to take down an evil international narcotics organization posing as a mega-coroporation.

Produced at a crossroads for Hong Kong cinema between traditional kung fu and modern action, FIGHTING MADAM defined the ‘Girls With Guns’ sub-genre: an incredibly popular series of action films with all-female leads.

The simple plot setup is merely a template to work off for some of the most intense and insane set-pieces in all of action cinema. Featuring opium field battles, samurai sword clashes on speed bikes, ski-masked assassinations, fiery car crashes, reckless helicopter shootouts, and enough bare-knuckle brawling to fill 20 films, FIGHTING MADAM reaches unprecedented, operatic levels of expertly choreographed mayhem.

As we close out our summer-long tour of kung fu cinema, we salute what is surely one of the most batshit-crazy action films to ever emerge from Hong Kong.

PRAGDA PRESENTS: MADRID, 1987

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MADRID, 1987
Dir: David Trueba, 2011.
104 min. Spain.
In Spanish with English subtitles.

THURSDAY, JUNE 13TH – 8PM
ONE NIGHT ONLY!

Presented by Pragda as part of their CINEART Spain series. Pragda is a film distribution company created to promote, disseminate, and maintain the legacy of Spanish and Latin American cinema through unique cultural initiatives.

On a hot summer day in a vacant Madrid during a period of social and political transition in Spain, Miguel, a feared and respected journalist, sets up a meeting in a café with Ángela, a young journalism student. He takes her to a friend’s studio. His intentions are clearly sexual; hers are less clear. Chance events force them together for more time than they would have chosen, locked in a bathroom, naked, without the possibility of escape. Removed from the outside world, the pair, who represents polarized generations, is pitted in an unevenly matched duel involving age, intellect, ambition and experience. The political and social context of the period provides the background to the power shifts that continually take place between them over twenty-four hours.

OFFICIAL SELECTION – 2012 SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL

 

Starts With Dad presents: ORNAMENT, FREEWILL

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Starts With Dad presents:
ORNAMENT, FREEWILL

SATURDAY, JUNE 22ND – 8PM
ONE NIGHT ONLY!

Starts With Dad is a loose group with two goals: shoot something, show something. No need to be a filmmaker, an artist, or an actor. It’s all about the impulse to create, no matter how unprofessional.

It begins with a random passage of Aleister Crowley’s 777. This sets the theme. Get assigned a group, or put together your own. Go out and shoot something. Two months later, show something. Don’t stress details. Leave it rough. Just keep it coming.

You can see previous Starts With Dad films here. You will find human tissue obsessed housewives, artful pooping, scorned lovers, horny TV repairmen, deicidal squirrels, time travelers, juice cleanses, choreographed eggs, claymation testicles, jump rope gurus, manic-depressive chefs, self-shots, blatant plagiarism, and lots else besides.

If you’d like to make something for our next screening contact Will(wswelles@gmail.com) for additional details.

Or just come and watch all the somethings.

Spectacle MANDATORY MIDNIGHTS presents: I BURY THE LIVING

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Spectacle MANDATORY MIDNIGHTS presents:
I BURY THE LIVING
Dir: Albert Band, 1958.
76 min. USA.

FRIDAY, JUNE 14TH – MIDNIGHT
ONE NIGHT ONLY!

Albert Band contributed so much to the world of B-movies, not least of all his two sons, the Romulus and Remus of low budget genre cinema throughout the 80s and 90s, Charles and Richard Band. Long before Parasite, Re-Animator, Ghoulies, Puppet Master and the Full Moon video store onslaught of the 90s and 2000s, there was I BURY THE LIVING, a taphophilic delight starring Richard Boone (Have Gun Will Travel and the voice of Smaug in the 1977 Rankin & Bass version of The Hobbit)  and directed by the head of the Band bunch, Albert.

I BURY THE LIVING plays like an E.C. horror comic come to morbid life. A new caretaker at the Immortal Hill Cemetery begins to believe he holds the power of life and death in his hands. When the pins used as grave markers on the ominous cemetery map appear to predict the deaths of those around him. Is it merely coincidence or are sinister forces at work?

A tense and atmospheric descent into madness, I BURY THE LIVING is a lean, low budget treat with art direction that’s equal parts Man Ray and poverty row.  A must for lovers of great B movies and creepy cemeteries!

FMC PRESENTS

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The Film-Makers’ Cooperative Presents:
16MM FILMS BY JENNIFER REEVES & MM SERRA
1995-2002.
Approx. 43 min. USA.

FRIDAY, JUNE 28TH – 8PM
ARTIST IN PERSON!
ONE NIGHT ONLY!

Spectacle is proud to welcome back MM Serra to present an evening’s worth of rarely seen queer art-core on 16mm from the Film-Makers’ Co-op’s archives.

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THE GIRL’S NERVY
Dir: Jennifer Reeves, 1995.
5 min. USA.

Cut, pasted, painted and cracked film frames. A rhythmic play of flickering film elements.

SOI MEME
Dir: MM Serra, 1995.
6 min. USA.

An erotic dance performance by Goddess Rosemary; soundtrack by Zeena Parkins.

DARLING INTERNATIONAL
Dir: Jennifer Reeves & MM Serra, 1999.
22 min. USA.

In noir New York, a metal worker’s femme fantasies are explored. Starring Jennifer Reeves and MM Serra.

“An evocative work whose sexual sadomasochistic scenario, grainy visual texture and layered soundtrack render it highly tactile, fairly begging to be touched.” -Shannon Kelly, Sundance Film Festival

FEAR OF BLUSHING
Dir: Jennifer Reeves, 2001.
6 min. USA.

7200 painted frames flash by “suggesting a cinematic free-association.” Recognizable shapes flirt with the eye behind color and a textured veil.

DOUBLE YOUR PLEASURE
Dir: MM Serra, 2002.
4 min. USA.
w/ sound by Jennifer Reeves

Part of the “Ad It Up” series of commercial parodies, and an homage to Andy Warhol’s Kiss. Starring Jennifer Reeves.

Jennifer Reeves is a New York-based filmmaker working primarily on 16mm film. Reeves was named one of the “Best 50 Filmmakers Under 50” in the film journal Cinema Scope in the spring of 2012. Her films have shown extensively, from the Berlin, New York, Vancouver, London, Sundance, and Hong Kong Film Festivals to many micro-cinemas in the US and Canada, the Robert Flaherty Seminar, and the Museum of Modern Art.  Reeves has made experimental films since 1990. She does her own writing, cinematography, editing, and sound design. Her subjective and personal films push the boundaries of film through optical-printing and direct-on-film techniques. Reeves has consistently explored themes of memory, mental health and recovery, feminism and sexuality, landscape, wildlife, and politics from many different angles.

MM Serra is an experimental film/videomaker, curator, author, and Executive Director of the Film-Makers’ Cooperative, the world’s oldest distributor of independent media. She has produced, directed and edited more than fourteen works. Her own films, as well as her curated programs, have been screened at the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of Art, the Centre Pompidou, Cinematheque Francais, the London Film Festival, the Berlin International Film Festival, and the Oberhausen International Short Film Festival. Her most recent piece, BITCH BEAUTY, premiered at the 2011 New York Film Festival. Titillating, sumptuous, and always subversive, Serra’s short films focus on alternative cultures and intimate moments. They are simultaneously eye-opening and awe-inducing. Whether creating documentary portraits or colorfully dynamic exposés, Serra never fails to go where you would least expect.

The Film-Makers’ Cooperative is the oldest and largest archive and distributor of independent and avant-garde films in the world. Created by artists in 1961, as the distribution branch of the New American Cinema Group, the collection holds more than 5,000 films, videos and DVDs. The FMC is an active non-profit organization that hosts screenings and workshops for the public. MM Serra has been its Executive Director since 1991.

EPHEMERA: ACT NATURAL

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EPHEMERA: ACT NATURAL
1949-1972.
Approx. 80 min. USA.

SATURDAY, JUNE 8TH – 7:30PM
SATURDAY, JUNE 29TH – 7:30PM

No outlet served post-war American culture’s ebullient pride and prosperity better than that of the now-infamous educational film. Today these didactic artifacts are relegated to sideshow status by the likes of Pee-Wee’s Playhouse, Weird Al, MST3K and Adult Swim, all of whom freely lampoon these easy targets for their comically dated sensibilities.

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Our monthly EPHEMERA program aims to present these documents to a contemporary audience in perhaps a more even light, ideally free from the ironic framing that can easily overwhelm some of their more interesting details. Fortunately, the humor is irrepressible.

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June’s installment ACT NATURAL compiles moments from the common theme of psychological and emotional unease, particularly in adolescence. How best can Tom, Dick and Jane navigate the rough terrain of daily social interaction, family dynamics and self-actualization? If there must be something wrong with me, are things ever going to be okay?

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Preceding the feature collage will be the short WHY DOESN’T CATHY EAT BREAKFAST? (1972, 4m, Color, USA), a puzzling and surreal PSA that manages to eerily dance around its core theme of childhood body consciousness.

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Sources for ACT NATURAL include: Angry Boy (1950), Boy With A Knife (1956), Facing Reality (1954), Habit Patterns (1954), Jealousy (1954), Keeping Mentally Fit (1952), The Outsider (1951), Self-Conscious Guy (1951), Stage Fright (1949) and more!

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Special thanks to the Internet Archive, Rick Prelinger and everyone at the Prelinger Archive.

Rick Prelinger began collecting “ephemeral films”—all those educational, industrial, amateur, advertising, or otherwise sponsored—in 1982, amassing over 60,000 (all on physical film) before his Prelinger Archive was acquired by the Library of Congress in 2002. Since then, the collection has grown and diversified: now it exists in library form in San Francisco and is also gradually being ported online to the Internet Archive (http://archive.org), where 3,801 of its films are currently hosted (as of this writing).

Of course, the content of the Prelinger Archive’s films varies in accord with the variety of mankind. Historic newsreels, mid-century automobile infomercials, psychological experiments, medical procedurals, big oil advertisements, military recruitment videos, political propagandas, personal home videos, celebrity exposes, amateur narratives, scientific studies, war bulletins, instructional films, special interest op-eds, safety lessons, hobby guides, travel destination profiles and private industry productions all sit comfortably together in one marginalized category.

AN EVENING WITH IAN SVENONIUS

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AN EVENING WITH IAN SVENONIUS

FRIDAY, JUNE 21ST – 8PM
ONE NIGHT ONLY!

Ian Svenonius, legendary figurehead of the D.C. Punk/DIY scene as well as noted author, will be appearing IN PERSON at Spectacle to present his newly completed short film entitled WHAT IS A GROUP?. According to Svenonius himself, the film “will dismantle previously held ideas about all society’s dearly held conceits. Not for the faint hearted!” Don’t say we didn’t warn you!

Afterwards, the floor will be open for discussion, pressing questions, or fanboy/girl musings!

Ian Svenonius was most notably a member of the bands Nation of Ulysses  The Make-Up, Weird War, and Chain & The Gang; author of Supernatural Strategies for Forming a Rock ‘n Roll Group, Psychic Soviet, and host of the VICE talk show Soft Focus.

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