This October, Simple Town screens their most frightening work, as well as a few horror shorts that have inspired them. This special event will feature a live performance by Simple Town.

OCTOBER 6TH, 8PM

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SCARY HOUSE
dir. Simple Town, 2020
3 mins

When one of our members, Sam, lost his Dad, he had to go and clear out the home that he grew up in. Weeks later, he brought us back to make “Scary House,” a slapstick short improvised in his Dad’s empty house.

Her Son Can’t Stop Growing
dir. Life of Luxury, 2021
21 min, USA

Life of Luxury is a YouTube collaboration that makes short films that are somewhere between Paranormal Activity and the MTV show Catfish. They play on trendy internet fears with big eye-catching thumbnails, and the videos themselves are both freaky and really funny.

SCARY CAR
dir. Simple Town, 2022
14 mins, USA

Four teens nearing their 30’s go into the woods to summon a being from another world. Things take a turn when one of them comes back changed. Selected for “Short of the Week.”

Rachel
dir. Andrew DeYoung, 2019
11 min, USA

This is truly the best comedy short if you haven’t seen it. John Early and Kate Berlant recreate an actual bizarre intruder event at a friend’s house. Andrew DeYoung directs the thing masterfully. The final shot is all-time.

AIRBNB (Premier)
dir. Simple Town & Andrew DeYoung, 2022
10 mins

Made in collaboration with Andrew DeYoung (director of “Rachel”), our latest short finds Simple Town checking into an AirBnb and discovering security cameras hidden around the house. Sam does not want his friends to find the camera in his room. Because he did something in there, and he doesn’t want them to see…

Simple Town is a Brooklyn-based comedy group that does film and live performance. Their work has appeared on Adult Swim, Comedy Central, and Short of the Week. Simple Town is Ian Faria, Caroline Yost, Sam Lanier, Felipe Di Poi & Will Niedmann. Ian directs; Felipe, Caro, Sam and Will perform.

ALL JACKED UP AND FULL OF WORMS
Alex Phillips, 2022
72 mins, USA.
English

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 21 – 10 PM
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 23 – 5 PM
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 27 – 10 PM
MONDAY, OCTOBER 31 – 7:30 PM

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Two strangers bond over eating addictive, hallucinogenic worms leading them on a psychotic bender full of murder and perversity through the back alleys of Chicago.

ALL JACKED UP AND FULL OF WORMS is a wildly dark, perversely funny, and shockingly sincere head trip through the seedy underbelly and industrial outskirts of Chicago.

Shot in sporadic chunks throughout the pandemic, WORMS is a rare labor of love that refuses to be pinned down or easily categorized – though if comparisons must be made, we’d say it falls somewhere between John Waters, John Cassavettes, and an actual cess-pool.

Ahead of its streaming debut in November and fresh off packed screenings at Fantasia + Fantastic Fests, Spectacle is proud to present this singularly perverse and delirious midnight flick that really does deserve to be seen with a squirming audience. Not for the faint of heart!

COCKAZOID
dir. Nick Verdi, 2021
USA, 85 min
In English

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 2 – 5PM
MONDAY, OCTOBER 10 – 10PM
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 15 – 7:30PM WITH Q&A *this event is $10
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 19 – 10PM

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Andrew, a delusional loner who wants to kill all white men in Massachusetts, returns to his hometown in the wake of family tragedy and goes on a murderous rampage.

“…a gripping, hard-hitting psychothriller with the grimy, realistic edge of John McNaughton’s Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer.” – CinemaSpection

“It plays like a horrific dream during which you’re just following this one person the entire time and you don’t want to keep learning these terrible things about them, but you can’t wake up. Lead actor Jimmy Laine, who plays that brooding and delusional loner named Andrew, was the glue that made the concept stick. His performance is heightened and effective, bringing you along with him on this spiral. It’s hard to take your eyes off him. If you’re looking for an underseen (and bizarre) gem from 2021, this is it.” – Lex Briscuto, Dread Central

“No redeeming qualities to this one IMO. A large portion of the movie is the lead making anguished faces while nothing happens. Felt like it had nowhere to go and nothing to say along the way.” – Adam Vass, Letterboxd user

THE OREGONIAN
Dir. Calvin Lee Reeder, 2011
USA, 81 min
In English

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 4 – 7:30PM
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 14 – MIDNIGHT
MONDAY, OCTOBER 24 – 7:30PM
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 28 – 10PM

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After a car accident on a lonely stretch of road, a woman finds herself stranded and badly wounded with no memory of her name. A series of strange encounters leads her through the woods and sand, searching desperately for the answers she needs to finally be at peace.

Calvin Lee Reeder’s first feature film The Oregonian could be described as “Purgatorial Noise Horror”. A juxtaposition of breathtaking Pacific folk wilderness against derelict lo-fi nightmares. An aggravating piece of surreality with a gooey black sense of humor. Ojai Manson/Hipster sensory assault, edited to all hell, soaked in sickening reds and otherworldly greens. You may never want to eat an omelette again.

Who’s Watching: The Early Films of the Pacific Street Collective

On Saturday, October 29th, Spectacle and Cine-Móvil will host a tribute to the Pacific Street Collective and their early works of counter-surveillance. This program celebrates the 50th anniversary of RED SQUAD (1972), which will be followed up by the equally audacious SURVEILLANCE: WHO’S WATCHING? (1971).

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 29TH – 7:30 PM

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Red Squad
dir. Pacific Street Collective, 1972
45 mins, USA.
In English

“An extraordinary work of investigative journalism.” – Richard Brody, The New Yorker

Made by then-NYU students under the tutelage of Martin Scorsese, RED SQUAD sees the Pacific Street Collective disrupt and annoy extrajudicial police and FBI surveillance units who continually intruded on anti-Vietnam War demonstrations throughout the ‘70s. Their brave efforts to disclose these wanton acts of targeted surveillance by a prejudiced police force was acclaimed by critics, including Amos Vogel who dubbed it “an extraordinary political film.”

Surveillance: Who’s Watching?
dir. Pacific Street Collective, 1971
60 mins, USA.
In English.

SURVEILLANCE: WHO’S WATCHING? can be seen as a direct precursor to RED SQUAD, as young members of the newly formed Pacific Street Collective position themselves as bait during a peaceful demonstration to out members of Chicago PD’s radical squad on television. Despite catching PD knuckleheads Maurice Daly and Truman Stromberg in the act of surveillance, all three members of the Collective were arrested and told to leave Chicago under threat of violence, a testament to their courage as politically-motivated documentarians at an early point in their careers.

Special thanks to Steve Fischler, Joel Sucher and Cine-Móvil.

Cine Móvil is a pop-up cinema collective spreading revolutionary culture across the five boroughs. Founded in the wake of the 2020 uprisings, the collective endeavors to bring together audiences to view and discuss radical cinema. Cine Móvil recognizes the role that culture plays in movements, and aims to uplift the revolutionary consciousness of people, connecting the films they screen with the real material conditions which people and organizations face in the present. Cinema is for the people!