MAY MIDNIGHTS

MAY MIDNIGHTS

Posted on by spectacletheater
Friday May 3: SPECTACLE MANDATORY MIDNIGHTS presents INTREPIDOS PUNKS
Saturday May 4: EQUINOX
Friday May 10: WEEKEND NERD-A-THON presents ASSAULT OF THE PARY NERDS
Saturday May 11: WEEKEND NERD-A-THON and TROMA ENTERTAINMENT present BRIDE OF KILLER NERD
Friday May 17: DEVILHELM
Saturday May 18: SPLATTERDAYS presents BLOOD FEAST 2: ALL YOU CAN EAT
Friday May 24: ACT OF VENGEANCE
Saturday May 25: SPECTACLE MIDNIGHTS presents SPECTACLE ROULETTE
Friday May 31: REFLECTIONS OF EVIL

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FRIDAY MAY 3
SPECTACLE MANDATORY MIDNIGHTS presents
INTREPIDOS PUNKS
Francisco Guerrero, 198?
92 min. Mexico. In Spanish with all-new subtitles.

Don’t miss our showings of the sequel LA VENGANZA DE LOS PUNKS all month!

ENCORE SCREENING added SATURDAY, MAY 18 at 7:30 PM! Catch the entire INTREPIDOS saga back-to-back!

“I found this VHS in a box of tapes someone left on the sidewalk.
I was surprised it was a cool movie.”
Anonymous, the internet

“It’s 99.9% certain that this is the most gleefully assaultive display of a misappropriated cultural movement in history, which is by no means a criticism. […] This film isn’t recommended… it’s MANDATORY.”
Destroy All Movies!!! The Complete Guide to Punks on Film

“It wouldn’t be entirely beyond the pale to say that my entire life has been leading up to the moment I first heard of, then tracked down and watched this overwhelmingly fantastic slice of punk rock exploitation. […] Intrepidos Punks is a colossal juggernaut, a true giant striding across the landscape of sleazy movies. If you have not seen it, you will notice there’s probably a little hole in your soul. A hole shaped exactly like a busty blonde in a chainmail bikini, sporting gigantic hair and a grenade launcher. Let Intrepidos Punks plug that hole and finally make you complete.”
Teleport City

Intrepidos Punks is about a sexy apocalyptic biker gang led by a ruthless luchadore pushing drugs, racing choppers and killing the police who are helpless to stop them. And partying. Featuring the song “Intrepidos Punks” along with an unabashed rip-off of “Sweet Emotion” that improves significantly upon the original.

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SATURDAY MAY 4
EQUINOX
Jack Woods, 1970.
80 min. USA.

In August of 2012, Spectacle played host for the New York premiere of a shot-on-video horror anthology called SLAUGHTER TALES. The film was helmed in nearly every department by a then 15 year old from Philadelphia who goes by Johnny Dickie. Dickie wrote, directed, starred in, and provided a veritable cornucopia of practical special effects. With only a few locations and a long shooting schedule, SLAUGHTER TALES was a homegrown labor of love from a young filmmaker with an obvious appreciation of that slice of horror. While certainly not perfect, the film had it’s heart and head in the right place…usually removed from the body and covered in stage blood.

Though SLAUGHTER TALES likely won’t be relegated to the classic status of a film as mighty as EQUINOX (Sorry, Johnny!), it’s comforting to know that the idea that if you love movies, you can still get together with your friends and make something that lies somewhere between pet project and a sleeper cult hit to be discovered years later.

In 1965 a young Dennis Muren had a choice to make. He was 17 and could use the money his grandfather had set aside for him to either go to college or do something sensible and make a feature length genre defining, effects pioneering film. Having made the right choice, Muren and friends David Allen and Mark McGee set about making their vision come to life and over the course of the next two and a half years THE EQUINOX…A JOURNEY INTO THE SUPERNATURAL was born. Among their support group was none other than Forrest J. Ackerman (famed/revered/beloved editor of FAMOUS MONSTERS – who would also lend his voice to the film in an uncredited cameo!) who helped the gang to snag Fritz Leiber in the role of Dr. Waterman. Muren and Allen headed up the technical side and dove headfirst into the special effects. Monsters abounded, winged demons poured out the ether, and giants stomped around the screen with terrifying voracity. And all reportedly to the tune of less than $7,000!

With the film completed, Muren set out to show it to the world but that proved to be difficult. Initially trying for a TV release, Muren ended up shopping it around Hollywood. The premise and eye popping special effects grabbed the attention of Jack H. Harris. Harris had been the man who picked up THE BLOB (and later DARK STAR, SCHLOCK, FEAR OF A BLOB PLANET, DINOSAURUS, 4D MAN, etc). He shortened the title to EQUINOX and hired Jack Woods to beef up the run-time. Rehiring the original actors and casting himself as in the role of Asmodeus, Woods (with Ed Begley Jr on ass’t camera duties) retooled the creature feature and soon 35mm prints were stuck! The film was unleashed on the world and in the coming years would help mold the very essence of the “cabin in the woods” subgenre. Without EQUINOX arguably, there would be no EVIL DEAD series.

In the wake of EQUINOX many of it’s creators would flourish. Dennis Muren continued down the path of effects work and would soon have a wheelbarrow full of Acdemy Awards for his efforts on films like the STAR WARS trilogy, ET, JURASSIC PARK, DRAGONSLAYER, CAPTAIN EO, and more recently SUPER 8. David Allen also pretty much changed the game in terms of effects while working on films like WILLOW, HONEY I SHRUNK THE KIDS and became responsible for all things good in the world of Full Moon features with work on DOLLS, OBLIVION, and the PUPPET MASTER films to name a few. While this is Jack Woods only directing credit, he would end up with a lengthy sound department resume with titles like PHANTASM II and the STAR TREK franchise.

Spectacle Midnights are humbled and honored to present this film (a favorite around the Goth Bodega) with the kind permission of Jack H. Harris and featuring a very special video intro from Mr. Dennis Muren himself (!!!) to cap off what will undoubtedly be an unforgettable evening.

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FRIDAY MAY 10

WEEKEND NERD-A-THON presents

In case you weren’t aware The Spectacle has its share of NERDS, but rather than try and rehabilitate ourselves into cool, well groomed, productive members of society, we’ve said “whatever, let’s party…Nerd Style!”

The Spectacle’s WEEKEND NERDATHON. Midnights May 10th and 11th!

BE THERE and BE SQUARE!

First up…

ASSAULT OF THE PARTY NERDS
Dir. Richard Gabai, 1989.
USA. 82 min.

Now, I don’t know a lot about mathematical beauty, but here’s an elegantly simple cinematic equation so perfect it might make your calculator cry:

NERDS + PARTY = AWESOME MOVIE.

It’s true, and here’s a perfect example:

1989’s bare bones masterpiece, ASSAULT OF THE PARTY NERDS.

Writer-director Richard Gabai (Nightmare Sisters)  stars as Richard Spencer, president of Lambda Alpha Eta,  a fraternity consisting of him and three other guys , all prime examples of the genus NERDUS EXTREMUS.  These Lamda brothers have spent the last 4 years on the couch in front of the tube, but now graduation time is around the corner and these full time geeks intend to RAGE against the dying of the light. How? By throwing the “greatest party in the history of the school, if not the world.”  Now it’s just a matter of finding a way to bankroll the apocalyptic blowout and keeping the jacked up jocks from wringing their pencil-necks long enough to make NERD HISTORY!

Executive produced by prolific schlockmeister David DeCoteau (Sorority Babes and the Slime Ball Bowl a Rama) and featuring unforgettably kooky performances by Michelle Bauer (Cafe Flesh) and Linnea Quigley (Return of the Living Dead), Assault of the party nerds takes B movie minimalism to new heights and standards of good taste to a new low.

2 locations, 5 days of shooting,  a fast, funny script, nerds, jocks, tons of beer and one hell of a party! It all adds up to one essential NERDSTERPIECE!

With a killer soundtrack by Gabai’s own power pop outfit, The Checks, these nerds are  sure to get the party started!

Part of The Spectacle’s WEEKEND NERDATHON! Only at MIDNIGHT. MAY 10th!

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SATURDAY MAY 11
WEEKEND NERD-A-THON and TROMA ENTERTAINMENT present
BRIDE OF KILLER NERD
Dir. Mark Steven Bosko, Wayne Alan Harold, 1992
USA. 75 min.

The Spectacle’s WEEKEND NERDATHON continues with a view into the dark side of Nerdom!

Just when you thought nerd rage couldn’t get anymore twisted or revolting, The Spectacle and Troma Entertainment present BRIDE OF KILLER NERD, a seriously sick sequel that proves two nerds are better than one when it comes to revenge, especially when they’re in love.

Harold Kunkle is living a low key, quietly desperate existence in the wake of his revenge fueled killing spree (see Killer Nerd for more details). Angst ridden and contemplating suicide, Harold meets Thelma, another desperate nerd-soul who’s reached the end of her rope. These two love-nerds have finally found someone to live for, but will they live happily ever after? Come on,  what do you think?  After a nasty prank, this really odd couple does what nerds do best when pushed too far, they get revenge!

Toby Radloff, American’s Genuine Nerd is back in a powerfully understated performance this time around, but the film belongs to Heidi Lohr in an absolutely chilling performance as the BRIDE OF KILLER NERD.
This Ohio(bleaksville) shot sequel to the original cult SOV masterpiece has it all: pitch  black comedy, SPLATTER, dark glimpses into nerd psychology and SKA. Pretty scary, right?! A truly disturbing and vicious ride that gives the original a run for its money.

It’s shorter, it’s sicker, it’s only at MIDNIGHT!  Part of The Spectacle’s WEEKEND NERDATHON!

NERD! NERD! NERD! NERD!

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FRIDAY MAY 17
DEVILHELM
Dir. Craig Rahtz/Hibachi Chicken Films, 1999.
USA. 96 min.
English.

“When the Dark Elves, driven by hatred and greed, steal an evil relic known as the Devilhelm, chaos threatens the peaceful valley.  Only three ninja have the power and courage to stop this evil, and protect the earth from the ravaging powers of the Devilhelm.”

“Intense martial combat combines with supernatural wizardry to make Devilhelm an unforgettable adventure.”

Made over the course of three years in the woods of southwestern Ohio in the late 90s, Devilhelm is a virtually unknown exemplar of autodidactic backyard moviemaking.  Unconventional energy and invention is firmly on display, from the ambitious makeup and sets, to the primitive computer graphics and original soundtrack; most importantly, Devilhelm rides that right line of irreverence and sincerity that we all love when we hear the phrase “shot-on-video.”
‪Ninja stars are thrown, riddles are spoken, the re‬ ‪d stuff sprays freely, ‬ ‪and some pagan raver vomits up a ____.‬

Originally released on VHS mostly to family and friends, Spectacle Theater is excited to reintroduce Devilhelm into the audience and dialogue where it belongs.

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SATURDAY MAY 18
SPLATTERDAYS presents
BLOOD FEAST 2: ALL YOU CAN EAT
Dir. Herschell Gordon Lewis, 2002
USA, 92 min.

Fuad Ramses III is a caterer and is hoping to get a fresh start in Miami, by reopening the now defunct catering company once owned by his grandfather Fuad Ramses.

Things are going smoothly, and the residents of the neighborhood are impressed with his culinary aptitude, so much so, that he attracts the attention of the local socialite Mrs Lamply, who eventually hires Fuad to cater the wedding for her daughter, who is engaged to the town sheriff.

But, as he begins preparing for the big party, he discovers an ancient Egyptian statue of Ishtar which possesses Fuad, and commands him to use some pretty unconventional ingredients for the catering of the wedding; namely the wedding party!

As members of the brides attache continue to mysteriously disappear, the sheriff/groom grows suspicious of Fuad, but can’t seem to prove anything, and is considered just paranoid and jealous by his friends and coworkers who are all getting fat off of Fuad’s excellent cooking.

With the guests disappearing, and the wedding day fast approaching, can the sheriff stop Fuad’s possessed murder madness before the big day?!

NO, EVERYONE IS SLAUGHTERED, SERVED, AND EATEN!!

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FRIDAY MAY 24
ACT OF VENGEANCE (aka RAPE SQUAD)
Dir. Bob Kelljan
USA, 90 min.
English

Act of Vengeance is a 70s vengeance saga that sits alongside Coffy and Death Wish while delivering plenty of action and some grimy grindhouse moments. A man in an orange jumpsuit and a hockey mask has been stalking and tormenting women — you’ll never hear “Jingle Bells” the same way again. After Linda fails to find any help after her attack from useless yokels and the incompetent police, she vows vengeance, and collects a team of other victims to help hunt down attackers and other scum. Plenty of sticking it to the man, plenty of creepy POV voyeurism, Charlie’s Angels  style training montages, a pimp gets a serious beatdown in a scene Tarantino probably ripped off at some point, enough skin for the midnight crowd — this is pretty much a given.

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SATURDAY MAY 25
SPECTACLE MIDNIGHTS presents
SPECTACLE ROULETTE
Dir. ???, 19??/20??.
????. ??? min.
In any number of languages.

Once again it’s time to spin the chamber! What are we going to show?

Cooking shows hosted by puppets from Iceland? Italian dancefighting epics? Hologramsploitation? Hostage situation bloopers? Dog Wedding Massacre? Open heart surgery? Prison slime fights?

Well, that’s up to you.

The first 6 people to show up with a movie will be given the chance to lobby by showing 5 minutes of that film. After all 6 are shown, everyone votes and that’s what we watch!

If you want to participate, please do the following:

1. Show up at least 15 minutes BEFORE midnight with your proposed film. (Either a DVD or digital copy!)
2. Be prepared to introduce your 5 minute clip and lobby hard for your candidate.
3. COME CORRECT. Bring the craziest thing you can find, no half-steps!
4. Tell your friends!

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FRIDAY MAY 31
REFLECTIONS OF EVIL
Dir. Damon Packard, 2002
USA. 138 min

Obese, verging on diabetic, Bob (played by director Damon Packard) sells watches and over-consumes in a paranoid post 9/11 southern California landscape as the ghost of his sister, a victim of PCP overdose, desperately searches for him.
Beaming right into your third eye and sticking with you long after viewing like a bad acid nightmare, this tour de force by Packard makes a profound statement of American culture that no other director has dared show.

“It was shocking, intriguing, scary and subversive bad taste from beginning to end. But moments of humour and pathos shine through to keep you glued. Your “Mom” and the elderly couple in the cozy-bubble burb residence were just great. Seriously spot on!
— Ian Anderson (of Jethro Tull)

“Nothing short of genius.”
— Henry Rollins

“This guy is really sick, no I mean he is really sick…I’ve got kids in the house!”
— Sylvester Stallone

ARTHUR LIPSETT

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“As science grows, religious belief seems to have diminished… The new machines are now invested with spiritual qualities.”
ARTHUR LIPSETT

May 1st marks the anniversary of Arthur Lipsett’s death, weeks shy of what would have been his 50th birthday. Who was Arthur Lipsett? A remarkable, yet unsung experimental filmmaker, he received praise from some of the great auteurs of his time and inspired generations of Canadian artists. Despite this, his obscurity continues to shadow his influence. One might attribute this to his reserved character– which would become more reclusive and idiosyncratic as he struggled to support himself amidst a deteriorating mental health. Arthur turned down an offer to work with Stanley Kubrick and gave an inscrutable response to a Harvard invitation for artist residency, “ I cannot come to Harvard at this time in history.”

Others have drawn attention to the lack of support from the National Film Board of Canada, which was evident even in the late eighties. In a conference regarding Canadian artists, Stan Brackhage recalled how he had been given a print of Very Nice, Very Nice, one of a few that had been rescued from the NFB’s garbage. But Lipsett’s distinct visual style lives on: dense, baroque and engaging many types of meaning concurrently, constructed with a focus and precision that demands the same from the viewer.

Spectacle is proud to present a near-complete retrospective of Lipsett’s work, from high-quality remasters generously provided by the National Film Board of Canada.

PROGRAM I: SHORTS, 1961-1970
FRIDAY, MAY 10TH – 7:30PM
TUESDAY, MAY 14TH – 10PM
MONDAY, MAY 27TH – 10PM

VERY NICE, VERY NICE
1961. 7min. Canada.

While a junior artist and engaging a variety of trades on NFB produced projects, Lipsett began gleaning from his colleague’s trim bins, pulling together pieces of audio tape creating what would later become the soundtrack for Very Nice, Very Nice. With the support of producer Colin Low, he took a Leica and film to London where he showed a marked proficiency as a stills photographer. The photographs, collage and archive materials were assembled according to the audio track with very little modification to the audio itself. Produced for five hundred dollars, Very Nice, Very Nice was nominated in 1962 for an Academy Award in the category of Best Live Action – Short Subject and catapulted Arthur forward as the NFB’s new ‘boy genius’.

21-87
1964. 10min. Canada.

21-87 reasserts Arthur Lipsett’s focus on the absurd relationships between humans and their environments. Referred to as “fragments of a prophecy” by Lipsett himself, if Very Nice, Very Nice qualifies Lipsett’s perception of the external world 21-87 is its inverse, revealing his internal turmoil and foreshadowing his later break with public life.

This was a favorite at the USC film school, with many filmmakers later claiming influence; one, George Lucas, would go on to recycle this title several times in later feature films.

FREE FALL
1964. 9min. Canada.

Animated frame by frame with footage shot solely by Arthur, his first work as such, and replete with many in camera tricks including dissolving superimpositions, pixellation effects and syncopated rhythms, this is the filmmakers most striking usage of vertical montage. Free Fall is “an attempt to express in filmic terms an intensive flow of life… the transformation of a physical phenomena into psychological ones – a visual bubbling of picture and sound operating to create a new continuity of experience” reads Arthur’s proposal to the NFB.

Free Fall was originally intended to be a collaboration with John Cage who after an exchange of letters withdrew his participation over creative differences.

A TRIP DOWN MEMORY LANE
1965. 13min. Canada.

Finished in 1965 as a ‘time capsule’, this is Arthur’s first film of purely re-appropriated footage, utilizing five decades worth of excavated NFB newsreels. “There are hundreds of items, once front-page stuff, but all wrly grotesque when seen in this reshuffle of the past” reads the NFB catalogue.

FLUXES
1968. 24min. Canada.

Produced during a time of waning institutional support and deteriorating emotional health, Fluxes evokes Lipsett’s search for the “balance between the primitive, ritualized world and the universe of science and logic”. Described as oppressive and revealing a “phantasmagoria of nothing”, this was Lipsett’s longest, most erratic, and diffuse work yet.

N-ZONE
1970. 45min. Canada.

A departure from his collage films, N-Zone is a personal work, a spiritual quest, precisely structured around leftover photographs and sound bits, interspersed with live-action footage of friends and family. Poorly received by the Board, Lipsett took his severance and promptly left Montreal on sabbatical. Invoking the ethos of the Beats, “these ‘characters’ enact an unspoken confrontation between unbridled individuality and a society of conformity.” (Brett Kashmere) Despite later attempts N-Zone would be the last film Arthur completed with the NFB.

EXPERIMENTAL FILM
1963. 28min. Canada.

Directed by Arthur in the year following Very Nice, Very Nice, this early attempt to explain his films and encourage dialogue about experimental filmmaking features a panel discussion including film historian and famed film translator Herman Weinberg, national film critics Clyde Gilmour and Fernand Cadieux and NFB producer Guy Glover ,who would later produce Arthur’s Fluxes.

The participants comment on various experimental filmmakers of the time including Robert Breer, George Dunning, Jay Lenica, Walerian Borowczyk, and Arthur Lipsett, while afterwards Norman McClaren (director of the seminal Neighbors) describes some of his working methods.

PROGRAM II: ON LIPSETT
TUESDAY, MAY 7 – 10:00 PM
FRIDAY, MAY 17 – 10:00 PM
MONDAY, MAY 27 – 7:30 PM
REMEMBERING ARTHUR
dir. Martin Lavut, 2006
89 min. Canada.

Close friend and filmmaker Martin Lavut documents the personal influences and public legacy of Arthur Lipsett. The film traces Lipsett’s life and brief career up to his untimely death. The film investigates both man and filmmaker, shaped by interviews with his sister Marian, then-girlfriend Judith Sandiford and colleagues Colin Low, Robert Verrall, Ryan Larkin and Henry Zemel, who would later help produce Strange Codes, Arthur’s last completed film. Remembering Arthur is both a eulogy and a celebration, as well as an important time capsule shedding light onto Lipsett’s contributions to the heyday of avant-garde filmmaking.

THE LIPSETT DIARIES
aka Les journax de Lipsett
dir. Theodore Ushev, 2010
14min. Canada.

Surprised to learn that Arthur Lipsett originally lived on his street, Theodore Ushev visits the filmmaker’s old building. After meeting the conceirge, who knew Arthur, he’s shown an old locker where they find a small blue notebook with ‘Lipsett’ written on the cover and notes by the late filmmaker on the inside. The result of this encounter is this hand painted tribute animation written by Chris Robinson and narrated by filmmaker Xavier Dolan. The Lipsett Diaries was listed as one of the top ten Canadian films at the 2010 Toronoto International Film Festival.

HIGHWAY

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HIGHWAY
Dir: Deepak Rauniyar, 2012.
Nepal. 80 min.
In Nepali with English subtitles.
FRIDAY, MAY 10 – 10:00 PM
TUESDAY, MAY 14 – 7:30 PM
FRIDAY, MAY 31 – 10:00 PM

Highway tells many stories at the same time: a man and his wife have been trying unsuccessfully to have a child.  The man travels to a healer who gives him a special drink and tells him he must make love to his wife within 36 hours for it to work. This seems simple enough, and then the bandh.  A bandh, or general strike, usually consists of a group of people in a particular region or village of Nepal stopping traffic and blocking roads as a form of protest, for many apparent and not so apparent reasons.  A woman wants to visit her family but can’t pass.  Every aspect of life can be shut down or affected by the bandhs and is emblematic of Nepal’s many problems.  Highway moves between stories past and present, all different stories, unrelated. The only thing in common is that everyone needs to desperately get to Kathmandu.

An Official Selection at the Berlin Film Festival (2012), Highway is the debut film by Nepalese filmmaker Deepak Rauniyar who MOMA calls ‘a filmmaker of great ability and visual imagination’ and is the first Nepalese film to ever screen at a major international film festival.

 “MUST SEE: HIGHWAY” | Nepali Times
“Love It or Hate It, Daring Nepali Film Makes Waves” | NY Daily News
“BBC Man Stars in Nepali Feature Film” | BBC News Asia

FRANK HEATH “GRAFFITI REPORT FORM” & OTHER WORKS

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GRAFFITI REPORT FORM
Dir. Frank Heath, 2012.
52 min. USA.
INVASIVE SPECIES
Dir. Frank Heath, 2012.
11 min. USA.
ASYMPTOMATIC CARRIER
Dir. Frank Heath, 2013.
10 min. USA.
WEDNESDAY, MAY 29 – 8:00 PM

 

“& Other Works” is a series of screenings focusing on video and film from contemporary artists, organized by C. Spencer Yeh. “& Other Works” seeks out artists’ efforts which invite and evoke the cinematic experience, yet are typically looped on crowded walls or locked up in online isolation. “& Other Works” screens beginning to end, in an informal but focused communal viewing experience. In other words – “film, folks, fun.” The inaugural program features artist Frank Heath, who will be in attendance.

Invasive Species begins as a document of a peculiar request by phone, set against a beautiful day at Green-Wood Cemetery. The exchange meanders into multiple tangents, from parakeets to numerology, while the onscreen events turn bizarrely synchronous. Asymptomatic Carrier, created for this year’s Frieze Arts Fair NYC, flies over the abandoned North Brother Island in the East River. Wikipedia says “now a bird sanctuary, the island is currently abandoned and off-limits to the public… …from the 1980s through the early 2000s it supported one of the area’s largest nesting colonies of Black-crowned Night Heron. However as of 2011 this species has abandoned the island for unknown reasons.”

Graffiti Report Form is described a press release excerpt:

“Heath’s formally complex video Graffiti Report Form, which as the title suggests, was actually submitted to the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. What begins as a first person account of a concerned citizen wishing to report an instance of graffiti in Morningside Park becomes a film within a film and a subtle meditation on history, place, and narrative structure. Shot over a period of five years, this expanse of time is both compressed and extended through a confluence of interventionist gesture, historical anecdote, and fictional narrative. Dystopian survival story in the guise of an urgent militaristic transmission, the film elicits issues of public and private space, the arbitrary nature of anniversary, and the peculiar history of this specific park as the starting place for the infamous 1968 student revolt at nearby Columbia University.”

Frank Heath, born in St. Joseph, MO in 1982, lives and works in New York. Last spring, he made his first solo exhibition in New York at Simone Subal Gallery. Two-person shows include Bcc:, with Brendan Meara at Roots and Culture, Chicago (2011), and Econoline 1, with JJ PEET at Videotage Gallery, Hong Kong (2007). Past group shows and screenings include Matter Out of Place at The Kitchen (2012), Someone Has Stolen Our Tent at Simon Preston Gallery, New York (2012), Single Channel at Soho House, Miami FL (2011); Forcemeat at Wallspace, New York (2011); and Suddenly: Where We Live Now at Cooley Gallery, Reed College, Portland, OR; and Pomona College Museum of Art (2008, 2009).

LA VENGANZA DE LOS PUNKS

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LA VENGANZA DE LOS PUNKS
Dir: Damián Acosta Esparza, 1987
88 minutes. Mexico.
In Spanish with new English subtitles.
SATURDAY, MAY 11 – 7:30 PM
SATURDAY, MAY 18 – 10:00 PM
SUNDAY, MAY 26 – 7:30 PM

Please note the Saturday, May 18 screening time has changed from 7:30 PM to 10:00 PM to accommodate an encore screening of INTREPIDOS PUNKS. Catch the entire saga back-to-back!

FREE Venganza De Los Punks button with Admission!

Every cinema’s audience gets the film it deserves. Ladies and gentlemen, Spectacle is proud to present to you the sequel to Intrepidos Punks.

Like the mutant linebacker sibling of its literary-minded forebearer, La Venganza is bigger, louder, and naystee-er than it’s older brother—and dos veces más intrépido. As we wrote of the first, La Venganza is still about “a sexy apocalyptic biker gang led by a ruthless luchadore pushing drugs, racing choppers and killing the police who are helpless to stop them. And partying.”

Only this time, one police gets fed up, and goes sub-intrepidos to re-christen himself as the reigning angel of death and stamp out the punks with profane savagery. Snake torture, ritual satanic murder, live immolation, eye-gouging, mass-murder, acid disfiguration, and base depravity, La venganza de los punks is an almost surrealistic atrocity exhibition; it’s like an more vile cousin to Buñuel’s Land Without Bread, only it’s not a joke.

To defeat los punks, one must become los punks. #VERDAD

¿ES USTED INTREPID SUFICIENTE?
ESTE VERANO: #VDEVENGANZA

Get a FREE button of your choosing with admission, or nab all four designs for $5! Muchos gracias to Desiree Leary, la excelente fabricante de los botones!

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AN EVENING WITH PHIL TIPPETT

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AN EVENING WITH PHIL TIPPETT
Screening and Discussion
SATURDAY, MAY 4TH – 8PM & 10PM
Second screening just added at 10PM! ONE NIGHT ONLY!

Over the course of the last 3 short years, Spectacle has played host to a great number of extremely exciting, important, and often rare events that leave keep everyone high-fiving and sometimes shaking their heads in utter disbelief. On May 4th of this year we welcome a man who has undoubtedly shaped the vision of animation, special effects, and filmmaking itself for cinephiles the world over. Phil Tippett will grace our humble theater for a night of shorts, stories, and presentations from his career.

As a young boy Tippett was taken with the effects work of Ray Harryhausen and THE SEVENTH VOYAGE OF SINBAD and over the course of the next 4 decades turned that passion into a jaw-dropping resume. Pioneering stop-motion/go-motion effects techniques on films like the original STAR WARS trilogy, ROBOCOP, DRAGONHEART, JURASSIC PARK, STARSHIP TROOPERS, THE HAUNTING, and more. While earning enough Academy Awards to stock a bandoleer, Tippett also found time to helm his own studio and to take a seat in the directors chair for STARSHIP TROOPERS 2 and countless short films. This barely scratches the surface of the illustrious career of this legendary wizard. Currently, Tippett resides in California and is working on a project called MAD GOD. He’ll be presenting some of that along with a personal history of stop motion animation.

THE DRIVER’S SEAT

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THE DRIVER’S SEAT (aka The Three Lives of Identikit, aka Psychotic)
Dir. Giuseppe Patroni-Griffi
Italy, 1974
105 mins. English.
SUNDAY, MAY 5 – 10:00 PM
SATURDAY, MAY 25 – 10:00 PM
FRIDAY, MAY 31 – 7:30 PM

Of the many Euro arthouse B-pictures that didn’t make their way into the official story of Elizabeth Taylor’s career as she was eulogized in 2011, the variously titled Identikit – released in the U.S. under the original novella title The Driver’s Seat – is a bizarre curio from her Europhase, roughly 1968-74. During this period, Taylor — facing middle age and a mid-career slump, as well as an increasingly zaftig figure — took on roles from English and Continental directors offering riskier, more experimental work, which better accommodated her searching, passionate acting style like a muumuu. Among the menagerie of films were two in which she co-starred with her husband Richard Burton, Joseph Losey’s Boom! (1968, the film version of Tennessee Williams’ “The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore”) and Under Milk Wood (1972), both notoriously ill-begotten literary adaptations, if a hoot to watch. Losey’s underappreciated Secret Ceremony (also 1968), with a spooked and brunette Mia Farrow, typifies Taylor’s career during this period, in which she sinks her teeth into stark, enigmatic dialogue as she interprets characters of murky origin, motives and morality.

Identikit, adapted from Scottish novelist Muriel Spark’s (“The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie”) novella by Raffaele La Capria and Giuseppe Patroni Griffi (its director) sank like a stone at the box office when it was released in the U.S. in 1975 as an arthouse second bill. Its second life, as an Avco-Embassy video release in the 1980s, built up a new audience (when I first discovered it, dusty and rarely rented in a college town video store) as a Seventies relic that seemed to be the perfect accompaniment to box wine, marijuana and pizza. Now, in recent years, it seems to be entering a third, post-video phase of its cinematic life, as a number of gay critics have been dusting it off for a second look. Critics David Ehrenstein and Doug Bonner’s recent articles argue convincingly that its merits may add up to a film better than its historic “so-bad-it’s-good” reputation. It seems as though this orphan film is finally finding a home — and rightly so — within the queer canon.

Spark’s story, characteristically spare, is infused with Patroni Griffi’s outré sensibility as an Italian opera director and gay novelist famed for works that were known for their transgressive characters.

While Taylor certainly didn’t need any director to push her to lusty, emotionally naked performances (Suddenly, Last Summer had proved that 15 years earlier), it’s tempting to theorize that the combustible mixture of Patroni Griffi — an aristocratic, decadent figure of Italy’s literary scene whose own works pushed the envelope on sexuality and morality in post-war Italy — with Taylor, the definitive, volatile Hollywood diva — with a psychological thriller by the queen of the genre at the time, Muriel Spark — accounts to large degree the film’s abstract tone, theatrical direction and its subversive appeal to a gay audience.

Poster by Nate Dorr!
Poster by Nate Dorr!

A lonely woman, Lise (Taylor) flies from her home in a cold, northern European city (Munich) to Rome on a quest to find a man. She’s not looking for love. Who that man is, or what she wants from him is not clear to any of the people who encounter her, from an elderly tourist from Nova Scotia (Mona Washbourne), to a macrobiotic and sexually frustrated businessman from England. As she navigates the sultry streets of Rome, dodging terror attacks, shopping in empty department stores and wandering through hotel lobbies, she rebuffs offers, and threats, of sex. When it becomes clear what purpose she has in mind for this man, when she does meet him, all the loose ends of the story tie up elegantly in this scattered jigsaw puzzle of a film.

Taylor gives a performance of barely controlled madness, maybe one of the most bizarre of her career, resembling mid-70s Divine in a gaudy, multicolored dress (itself a central character in the film). You can’t take your eyes off her, not that Patroni Griffi lets you. Scene after scene features a tight shot of her head, filling the entire frame with her Medusa-like hair and staring, kohl-rimmed eyes as she delivers her odd bits of dialogue. It’s as though she’s sleepwalking,but with her eyes fixed on a point in the distance. After watching it a few times, I realized it was her choice of communicating her single-minded quest for her killer. When she has to deal with irritating obstacles in her path, ie., shopgirls and hotel maids, she becomes a screaming drag queen on a rampage. It’s both jaw-dropping and hilarious.

Even though her quest seems to be an asexual one, her spirit is charged with eroticism. She screams at an airport security guard who undresses her to check for explosives: “I hate to be touched!” Then later, once alone in her hotel room, she squeezes her own breasts passionately, hinting that she alone can bring herself pleasure.

In fact, apart from dowdy but adorable Helen (Mona Washbourne) an elderly tourist, the film’s sole exemplar of conventional middle-class sexuality is Bill (the great character actor Ian Bannen), a traveling businessman obsessed with his macrobiotic diet and related “one orgasm a day.” His clumsy attempts to seduce Lise, whose unpredictable outbursts make him lick his lips like a confused dog, only drive home the point how in over his head he is with her, her mysterious quest, and the raw sensuality of Italy.

“When I diet, I diet. And when I orgasm, I orgasm,” she tells him flatly, as he tries to convert her to his yang-focused diet. When his bags of brown rice burst in his pocket, pouring grain all over the Roman pavement, she taunts him over his premature spill. Again, the influence of Patroni Griffi is seen here. Conventional sexuality and middle-class mores burst on contact with the decadent outlaws in his plays and films (Metti, una sera a cena, One Night At Dinner, 1969).

In another revealing scene demonstrating the collision of straight society and perverse Lise, a frumpy, bespectacled woman struggles to explain to a detective her impression of the madwoman: “That multicolored dress…there was something unseemly about her, something of a prostitute…it’s as though she wanted to be noticed!” She then reveals, despite herself, that she admired her for it as a woman. A whisper of feminism (Spark) in a film that is frank in its depiction of Italian male lust (Griffi). And again, the dress. It inspires a whole range of emotions, from derisive laughter, to fury, to bewilderment. Obviously it’s a symbol for the unreadable Lise herself, her taste and her choices, but Griffi’s sensibility makes it a character that is as central to the plot as the overcoat in the Gogol short story of the same name.

Finally, after Taylor herself, the best thing in this “bad movie” is Vittorio Storaro’s luminous cinematography. Seizing on the chiaroscuro of Lise’s mental world, he paints the film like a canvas in a range of light and shadow, all of it looking supernaturally beautiful.

Now that Identikit’s questionable legacy is being reassessed by queer critics and bloggers, and as a result discovered fresh by a new generation, let’s hope for the best — assuming Rizzoli Films
won’t be shipping a pristine, vault print of it to some New York repertory theater anytime soon (if one even exists). Let’s hope that someone undertakes a quality, definitive digital transfer of the film to preserve it for future generations as a shined up statuette in Giuseppe Patroni Griffi’s filmography, and an example of how good “bad” art films of the ‘70s look today.

– David Savage

David Savage has been a New York-based film journalist since 1989, specializing in films of the 1960s and ’70s. He wrote for Vanity Fair in the mid-90s and also was a contributing editor at index magazine from 1996-2005. Since 2006 he has been a columnist at the UK film magazine Cinema Retro (www.cinemaretro.com).

TEENAGERS FROM OUTER SPACE

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TEENAGERS FROM OUTER SPACE
Dir. Tom Graeff, 1959
USA. 86 min.
SUNDAY, MAY 5 – 7:30 PM
FRIDAY, MAY 17 – 7:30 PM
SUNDAY, MAY 26 -10:00 PM

In this 1959 pulpy sci-fi low-budget classic, a spaceship manned by human-lookalike teenage aliens lands on Earth to find a grazing ground for their food source the “gargons” (lobster-lookalike air-breathing monsters). One of the aliens in the crew, Derek, is secretly part of an underground rebel faction with “humanist” ideals; he doesn’t believe the aliens have a right to colonize this new Earth-land! He flees from his crew to warn the humans, and the rest of the spacemen led by bad-guy Thor search for him to protect their mission. Derek rents a room from Betty and her Grandpa Joe to blend in. When Betty discovers Derek’s mission she joins him to fight the spacemen who are armed with x-ray gun vaporizers! Can Derek, Betty, Grandpa Joe and Betty’s clueless boyfriend Joe Rogers (played by director Tom Graeff) save this community before it’s too late?

*Rumor has it that director Tom Graeff (who wrote, directed, edited, produced and acted in TEENAGERS FROM OUTER SPACE) employed guerrilla cost-cutting tactics to save money on the film such as posing as a UCLA student. Following the film’s total failure at the box office, Graeff suffered a breakdown and proclaimed himself as the second coming of Christ. After an arrest for disrupting a church service, Graeff disappeared from Hollywood and committed suicide in 1970.

THE TELEPHONE BOOK

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THE TELEPHONE BOOK
Dir: Nelson Lyon. 1971.
80 min. USA.
Premiere of a New Restoration Shown in HD
FRIDAY, MAY 3 – 8:00 PM (LAUNCH PARTY)
SATURDAY, MAY 11 – 10:00 PM
SUNDAY, MAY 19 – 8:00 PM

Sexually frustrated gamine Alice (Sarah Kennedy) is freed from her apartment-bound malaise when she receives the world’s greatest obscene phone call from one “John Smith.” Setting out on picaresque journey through the Manhattan white pages in search of its maker, Alice encounters ego-crazed porn directors, perverted psychologists and priapic shut-ins. Her trip grows more and more deranged (interrupted by first-person interviews with phone freaks), climaxing in one of the nuttiest half-hours of 1970s cinema.

Directed by Saturday Night Live writer Nelson Lyon and produced by Merv Bloch, creator of some of the movie industry’s best ad campaigns, The Telephone Book is hilarious and disturbing in equal measure, featuring Warhol Factory regulars, a man with a never-ending erection, and a lurid animation sequence (that is mostly to blame for its X rating). This is the Everything You’ve Always Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid To Ask…for the porn-house crowd, with one caveat: it’s not porn and it never pretends to be.

Teaming up again with Vinegar Syndrome, Spectacle is excited to be hosting a sneak peek of the new digital restoration to be released this month.

Vinegar Syndrome is an exploitation film-focused distribution company founded by genre-film lovers for genre-film lovers. VS was developed to provide us with an opportunity to have a platform in order to cost-effectively restore and release the massive number of exploitation titles in their archive.

I’M GONNA TAKE YOU HOME: A NIGHT OF SOURCE FAMILY RARITIES

Posted on by spectacletheater

Dir: The Source Family, 1969-1974.
Approx. 90 min. USA.
Isis and E Aquarian of The Source Family and filmmakers Jodi Wille and Maria Demopoulos in attendance!
MONDAY, APRIL 29TH – 8PM
JUST ADDED — 10:00 PM SHOW!!
ONE NIGHT ONLY!

At the end of the 60s, The Source Restaurant was on everyone’s lips in every sense of the word. With an endless stream of celebrity clientele, good press, good food, and a heady vibe, they were pulling in $10,000 a day at its height. As the business grew, so did the staff.

At its helm was James Baker. Baker was born in Ohio and throughout his life dabbled in everything from a decorated military service to jiujitsu to being a stuntman to alleged bank robberies. After studying under Yogi Bhajan and ultimately settling on taking a higher path, Baker changed his name to Father Yod (and eventually Ya Ho Wha) and gathered his people together in a commune and formed The Source Family- devoted to a lifestyle based on other levels of consciousness through natural living, meditation, art, music, and communal utopia.

Meanwhile, a media circus and climate of fear was surrounding the Family in the wake of the Manson killings as folks were wary of another gaggle of longhairs with weird ideas and freaky jams. But The Source Restaurant flourished, and the Family grew. Following hours of meditation, spontaneous and lengthy jam sessions led to the recording of a purported 65 albums under an umbrella of different monikers and players – Father Yod and the Spirit of ’76 to Ya Ho Wha 13 to The Savage Sons of Ya Ho Wha, Yodship, and Fire Water Air.

As a jump off to a week-long celebration with events throughout the city- including the premiere of the new documentary The Source Family at IFC Center on May 1st- Spectacle is thrilled to welcome the filmmakers Jodi Wille and Maria Demopoulos as well as Isis and E Aquarian for an evening of rare archival interviews, live performances, deep cuts, cable access appearances, wisdom, and a wealth of stories from the people who actually lived it. Join us for a truly one of a kind evening.