Can you believe it? You survived another miserable year on this wretched Earth, which can only mean one thing – it’s time for The 8th Annual Spectacle Shriek Show! A chance to reward all your hard work by allowing your brain to slowly turn into a big, wet blob and leak out of your ears as you subject it to sights so unholy, you’ll never be the same. You earned it, champ. So settle in to what one person (probably) called “the only comfortable chairs in any theater in New York City” for 12 to 14-ish hours of mutant cats, Filipino vamps, real (?) snuff footage, possessed psychics, lots of zombies, and one rampaging bear. We’ll have the usual cavalcade of shorts, music videos, and more and, as always, tickets are $25 for the full day or $5 for individual films!

NOON: THE DEAD TALK BACK

1:30 PM: THE BLOOD DRINKERS

3:00 PM: DR. BENDERFAX

4:30 PM: EFFECTS

6:00 PM: UNINVITED

7:30 PM : BLOODY MUSCLE BODY BUILDER IN HELL

10pm: FEAR NO EVIL

MIDNIGHT: TERROR A LA MUERTE

ONLINE TICKETS HERE
FB EVENT

POSTER!

Poster Art by Benjamin Tuttle

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THE DEAD TALK BACK
dir. Merle S. Gould, 1957.
USA. 65 minutes.

After a model is murdered **WITH A CROSSBOW** on the porch of her boarding house, metaphysical philosopher Henry Krasker (Aldo Farnese, best known as Philly UHF children’s show host “Dickory Doc” and “Adam Android”) uses the weapon as a means of communicating with the dead to find out who killed her! Toiling in his lab he sets up a seance so the spirits can speak…with, like, car horn sounds for some reason? Also, there’s a cool scene in a groovy record store featuring some heady bongo work. Meanwhile the murderer is still at large in their shared apartment complex – who can it be? The religious zealot? The pervy German? The local DJ? The old-ass landlord?

Made in 1957 but shelved until 1993, when it aired as part of beloved cult show MST3K, the film was originally set to be released by Headliner Productions, who were responsible for bringing such cinematic gems as Ed Wood’s THE VIOLENT YEARS and THE SINISTER URGE into the world. It was also one of the first movies to utilize Electronic Voice Phenomenon (EVP) recording, now a staple of ghost-hunters everywhere.

THE BLOOD DRINKERS
(aka KULAY DUGO ANG GABI, BLOOD IS THE COLOR OF THE NIGHT)
dir. Gerardo de Leon, 1964
Philippines. 88 minutes.

Ronald Remy plays a bald, hoity-toity doctor (who also happens to be a vampire) who’s heartbroken by the deteriorating health of his wife Katrina. And so he sets forth to traverse the countryside with his dwarf assistant, sexy vampiress, and floppy rubber bat in search of blood to aide her revival. They also have to obtain her twin sister’s heart; you know how twins are.

When it comes to THE BLOOD DRINKERS, the devil truly is in the details. Though it’s often touted as the Philippines’ first color horror film, THE BLOOD DRINKERS’ rich tapestry is ironically due to full-color film stock being scarce in the region. To compensate, many scenes were color coded with rich tints of red (during vampire attacks) and blue (when things are safe), adding visual depth to a film already rich in symbolism.

Director Gerardo de Leon had an actual medical license he eschewed to become a filmmaker and racked up over 80 directing credits in his career, including the stellar MAD DOCTOR OF BLOOD ISLAND, also starring Remy. Producer Cirio H. Santiago and actor Vic Diaz went on to be involved in the 1978 chef-kiss worthy John Carradine film VAMPIRE HOOKERS.

DR. BENDERFAX
Dir. Tom Hosler, 1997.
USA. 85 min.

Special thanks to director Tom Hosler!

The titular Dr. Benderfax (Nigel Hazeldine) is an esteemed researcher (read: mad scientist) willing to go the extra mile for his experiments investigating a rare psychic phenomenon known as the “Telefaximial Field.” Unfortunately for the good doctor and his lovely assistant Nurse Clench (Caroline Hazeldine), many of the “volunteers” end up in the morgue. Actually on brief reflection, it’s probably more unfortunate for the patients. After some finagling the medical duo end up in a local nuthouse and use this fresh batch of patients to further their research. Just as they’re on the verge of a major breakthrough, in saunters Dr. Andrew…

Fresh out of college in 1992 Tom Hosler decided to make his “first and only feature script worthy of production.” Armed with a savings account and several credit cards, the film was shot over the course of many weekends. After multiple years of post-production, the film finally saw the light of day in 1997. Fans of last year’s Joe Sherlock double-up MONSTER IN THE GARAGE/DIMENSION OF BLOOD take note – DR. BENDERFAX is a true-blue Shriek Show entry if there ever was one, and it’s chock full of schlock, gore, yuks/yucks, and a genuine feeling of fun.

EFFECTS
Dir. Dusty Nealon, 1980.
USA. 84 min.

Special thanks to American Genre Film Archive. 

RIP producer Pasquale Buba (April 16, 1946 – September 12, 2018)

Deep in rural Pennsylvania (aka Romero Country), a film crew is holed up making a low-budget horror movie. Helmed by director Lacey Bickel (real-life filmmaker Tom Harrison of TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE fame), the crew is plagued by scheduling hiccups and close quarters. At first, not everyone is having a bad time, as the cinematographer and gaffer begin a romantic entanglement.

Suspicions arise when, during a late night hang session fueled by cheap beer and plenty of cocaine, some of the director’s early work gets passed around. The gritty footage shows what appears to be an actual murder of a woman by a man in an executioner’s hood. Tensions flare up and the line between fiction and reality blurs – is anyone safe?!

A cinematic love letter to practical effects and regional horror, EFFECTS is the product of many Romero Regulars with ties to MARTIN, DAWN OF THE DEAD, and CREEPSHOW. Though the material enters some very dark territory, it’s clear the crew were friends having fun covering each other in as much stage blood as they could handle. An underseen gem that, like THE DEAD TALK BACK and BLOODY MUSCLE BODY BUILDER FROM HELL, was shelved for almost 25 years (due to a distribution error), until it was finally released by Synapse on DVD and later picked up by our friends at American Genre Film Archive.

THE UNINVITED
dir. Greydon Clark, 1988.
USA. 90 min.

Strange things are afoot at the lazily named Genetic Laboratories when two chowderhead scientists discover a mysterious growth in their test subject – A CUTE CAT! The cat escapes and while trying to make its way out of the lab attacks many a security guard with some help from the grotesque mutant living up in its guts.

Meanwhile, it’s Spring Break, baby; time to get wild with Suzanne (Sharri Shattuck from DEATH SPA) and Bobbi (Clare Carey from WAXWORK) in that famous party city – Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The two get kicked out of a fancy hotel for loitering and are “saved” by  wealthy Wall Street tycoon Walter Graham (TV star Alex Cord), who invites them aboard his yacht. The ladies meet up with some bozo dudes (including SILK STALKING’s Rob Estes!) who they invite along for the ride. On the way to the yacht, they just happen to pick up a stray cat…and carnage ensues.

As evidenced by past programming we here at Spectacle are suckers for a killer cat movie, so when you combine that with director Greydon Clark and the one-two punch star power of George Kennedy and Clu Galager – you know you’ve got something special on your hands.

BLOODY MUSCLE BODY BUILDER IN HELL
(aka JIGOKU NO CHIMIDORO MUSCLE BUILDER)
dir. Shinichi Fuzakawa, 1995
Japan. 62 min.
In Japanese with English subs.

Heartbroken over a recent breakup Naoto (director Shinichi Fuzakawa) turns to working out to soothe his worried soul – and to get jacked in the process. One day mid-workout, his photojournalist ex-girlfriend calls him up with hopes he’ll help her investigate a haunted house.

Joined by a local psychic, the trio make their way to the property once owned by Naoto’s deceased father, who decades ago murdered someone on the grounds! Upon their arrival the presence of evil is all around them, and soon after demons take hold of the psychic. It seems the angry spirit of Naoto’s stepmother isn’t going to let them off easy – or maybe at all!

Another entry in this year’s lineup that almost never was – BLOODY MUSCLE BODY BUILDER IN HELL was made in 1995, edited in 2005, finished in 2009, and not released until 2012. Clocking in at just over an hour, BLOODY MUSCLE BODY BUILDER IN HELL doesn’t waste any time getting to the bleeding heart of the matter. Although it’s often compared to 1977’s HOUSE or described as “the Japanese EVIL DEAD,” the film manages to subvert all expectations and take viewers on a ride unlike anything they’ve ever seen. Truly one of a kind.

Special thanks to Wild Eye Releasing.

FEAR NO EVIL
dir. Frank LaLoggia, 1981.
USA. 99 min.

“One can only say that if George Eastman had lived to see the use to which his cameras and film, which brought prosperity to the city, have been put, he might have gone into another line of work.” – Tom Buckley, The New York Times (Feb. 6, 1981)

Outside a castle in upstate New York, Father Damon kills a man he believes to be Lucifer, but not before he promises to return. Flash-forward to the early 60’s when a child with the unhallowed name of Andrew is born, paralyzing his mother in the process. A local priest is visited by a woman named Margaret claiming to have knowledge of the late Father Damon, saying not only did he strike down Lucifer but that he himself was the angel Raphael. Could another angel be in their midst?

Now a senior in high school, Andrew is an awkward nerd who gets constantly bullied. In his daydreams he feels drawn to the looming castle set to be demolished to make way for a new golf c(o)urse. Strange things begin happening to Andrew’s tormentors – their guts explode, they’re plagued by terrible nightmares, they feel…inclined to…make out with him in the showers of the locker room.

The night of the big dance Andrew finally makes his way to the castle, where he summons undead monsters and wreaks havoc on his classmates. Margaret arrives with backup wielding the cross of Father Damon, and the battle to save the world is ON!

The debut writing/directing/producing effort of then 26 year old Frank LaLoggia, FEAR NO EVIL certainly doesn’t get as much praise as it deserves. A psycho bible study with wild effects work (that cost $250,000 to produce!), and a soundtrack featuring the likes of Patti Smith, The Rezillos, The B52’s, The Talking Heads and more!

TERROR A LA MUERTE
(aka: MIEDO A LA MUERTE, SCARED TO DEATH)
dir. Mario Alcantara, 1989.
Mexico. 98 min.
In Spanish with English subs.

Famed martial arts instructor (and one-time Chuck Norris student) Ruben Gonzalez plays famed martial arts instructor Ruben Gonzalez, whose daughter is mauled to death by a bear while meeting her boyfriend. A loco local named Nestor becomes convinced she’s his lost love, so he takes her body home and puts her in a dress. Nestor whiles away the hours talking to the corpse and feeding the ghoulish undead creatures he keeps locked in his basement.

Gonzalez sets out with a team to get his daughter’s body back, managing to piss off law enforcement and biker gangs alike along the way. Upon their arrival, Nestor won’t go down without a fight and sets the zombies on the rescue team. Luckily for everyone (but especially Gonzalez), the zombies also know martial arts. Don’t worry, the bear shows back up too.

TERROR A LA MUERTE is listed in some places as a sequel to Gonzalez’s earlier film GARRA DE TIGRE, but information on either film is hard to come by, making this rare screening a must-see!

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 22 – 5 PM
ONE NIGHT ONLY! FILMMAKER Q&A!
(This event is $10.)

THE SHORT FILMS OF CHRISTOPHER JASON BELL
Various. Approx 80 mins.
In English.

FB EVENT

Critic, programmer and longtime Spectacle comrade Christopher Jason Bell has been a fixture of the NYC independent filmmaking scene for the better part of this last decade. This selection of short films (hand-picked by Bell, promising a few surprise inclusions) features a Manhattan-set meet-cute with a remarkable slice of real talk at its core, a magic-realist meditation on loneliness inspired by a racist remark made by Ridley Scott to The Hollywood Reporter, a single-take metamovie called THE MOVIE, a hilarious paean to American society’s brain-pureeing embrace of the STAR WARS franchise starring Carl Kranz, a docudrama (?) about one man’s mission to turn his 60th birthday into a live reenactment of the courtroom scenes from MY COUSIN VINNIE, and a lot more.

For whatever reason (probably related to his fidelity to the “slow cinema” techniques of Tsai Ming-Liang, Abbas Kiarostami and many more), Bell is underrated; among critics and programmers, the lion’s share of the hype has transferred instead to directors whose quirk-tastic output is littered with obvious cinephile signposts, and who may also be the children of millionaires. That’s a damn shame: Bell counterbalances a rib-bruising sense of humor with a startling humanism, and his prolific output suggests a filmmaker restlessly experimenting with finding new ways to reconcile cinema with that crazy problem known as “real life” and the people who live within it.

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 22 – 7:30 PM
ONE NIGHT ONLY! FILMMAKER Q&A!
(This event is $10.)

THE WINDS THAT SCATTER
2015. 79 mins.
In English, and in Arabic with English subtitles.

In just a few years, Bell’s feature debut THE WINDS THAT SCATTER (named from an obscure Qu’ranic verse) would prove eerily prescient: it’s the story of a Syrian immigrant named Ahmad (Ahmad Chahrour) who resettles in New Jersey, but struggles to find a steady job. While the film chronicles his boredom and alienation, Ahmad’s diffidence in search of employment belies a greater despair, the creeping awareness that everything available to him is entry-level at best, the kind of work that was once made available to teenagers. Ahmad’s paralysis gives way to a sad and low-key majestic meditation on the disjunction between highfalutin American ideals and the reality facing people without the privilege of being born here. Set against the landscape of the anonymized corners of the tri-state area, THE WINDS THAT SCATTER is transformed by the cajoling, caustic humor of Ahmad’s friend Mohammad (played by Mohammad Dagman), and Bell’s sensitivity to working with these unconventional leading men, both of whom contributed to the film’s screenplay.

“In casting Ahmad Chahrour, Bell hit a proverbial goldmine of actorly riches; but not only does Bell deserve credit for this casting decision, he also deserves kudos for providing us with such an honest prospective of an abundantly plain, Muslim man. All the while, Bell forges intelligent comments about the impoverished economic state of rural America. Sure, Ahmad’s ethnicity and citizenship limit his employment opportunities, but The Winds That Scatter reflects more than just the Muslim immigrant experience. Sadly, this is a story of modern day working class existence in the United States.” – Hammer To Nail

CHRISTOPHER JASON BELL is a former critic for the blog The Playlist and an active filmmaker. His first feature THE WINDS THAT SCATTER premiered at Northside Festival and went on to play in Madrid, South Korea (winning Best International No Budget Feature Film at the KIXFF), Cambodia, Chile, Argentina, and numerous places in the USA. His latest short film, MOHAMMAD SO-AND-SO, premiered at Sarasota Film Festival in 2017 and can now be viewed on Amazon Prime. He has completed his second feature INCORRECTIONAL and hopes to premiere the film in 2018.

QUEERCORE: HOW TO PUNK A REVOLUTION
dir. Yony Leyser, 2018
Germany/US, 83 mins

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 23 – 5 PM 
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 23 – 7:30 PM
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 28 – 10 PM
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 29 – 10 PM

ONLINE TICKETS HERE

In the mid-1980s, Bruce LaBruce and G. B. Jones, a pair of young Canadians, introduced the world to the burgeoning Toronto queer punk scene through homemade zines and scrappy films. In this pre-Internet era, there was no way of knowing that queercore consisted of just two people. Soon enough, their subversive creation spread beyond their bedrooms to attract actual adherents, spawning a radical underground subculture that challenged both the mainstream gay and homophobic punk scenes.

DESIRE WILL SET YOU FREE director Yony Leyser returns to Spectacle with this rich, completist archive of rare footage and narration from a sprawling guest list that includes Justin Vivian Bond, Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, Team Dresh, Pansy Division, Silas Howard, John Waters and many, many more.

Special thanks to Altered Innocence.

“You Americans have such a simple view of the world. You think that everything can be seen and touched and weighed and measured… You think you discovered reality, but you don’t even know what it is.” – Mora, Night Tide

Curtis Harrington wore many hats across his decades long career – critic, film historian and preservationist, script doctor, producer, director – but his fascinations with the occult and penchant for pushing the envelope were ever present.

A forerunner of New Queer Cinema, Curtis’ career began as a film critic – reappraising the now highly regarded works of Josef von Sternberg, as well as acting as the original champion of the artistry of James Whales’ work.

After writing, directing and starring in a few of his own independent shorts through the 40’s and 50’s (including a notably surreal version of Poe’s THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER), he moved to LA where he linked up with mentors and peers like Maya Deren, Anais Niin, and Kenneth Anger (even serving as cinematographer on PUCE MOMENT).

He bulldozed his way into Hollywood through a mix of luck and sheer willpower, bouncing between independent features and a series of television gigs, managing to direct episodes of shows like Dynasty and The Twilight Zone and surprisingly weird made-for-TV-movies like WHO SLEW AUNTIE ROO? and DEAD DON’T DIE. He frequently butted heads with producers, with several of his films being recut and altered without his permission.

This September, Spectacle is proud to present a small selection of mostly-untouched films from his deep catalogue, each of which fuses his love of high camp, Grand Guignol, the occult, and capital-m-Movies. Join us, won’t you?

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NIGHT TIDE
1961, 86 min.
dir. Curtis Harrington

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 3 – 7:30 PM
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 9 – 5 PM
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 11 – 10 PM
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 15 – 10 PM
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 20 – 7:30 PM

Part thriller, part gothic romance, NIGHT TIDE follows the budding relationship between a sailor on shore leave (Dennis Hopper in a very early starring role) and a sideshow “mermaid” named Mora who may or may not be a mythical siren.

An incredibly accomplished debut featuring lush black and white photography, we are proud to present a fancy blu-ray remaster of this classic creeper.

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THE KILLING KIND
1973, 95 min.
dir. Curtis Harrington

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 2 – 7:30 PM
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 10 – 7:30 PM
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 22 – MIDNIGHT
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 24 – 10 PM

Somewhere between WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE? and HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER lies THE KILLING KIND. One of Harrington’s nastier offerings (though not without his trademark gallows humor), the film follows the exploits of Terry Lambert and his uncomfortably affectionate mother as he “re-acclimates” to society after a 2 year stint in prison for a gang rape he was ‘forced’ to participate in.

Starring John Savage, Ann Sothern and Cindy Williams, THE KILLING KIND has aged all too well as a portrait of privilege and denial, not letting anyone off the hook as each character attempts to deflect responsibility for their own terrible deeds. Pour yourself a glass of chocolate milk and buckle up.

NOTE: we will be screening a DVD re-master, several steps up in quality from the garbage scan currently featured for free on Am***n Pr**e

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RUBY
1977, 85 min.
dir. Curtis Harrington

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 4 – 7:30 PM
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 7 – MIDNIGHT
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 12 – 7:30 PM
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 19 – 10 PM

To call Ruby an EXORCIST/CARRIE knockoff misses the point entirely. Easily his biggest ‘hit’ (he happily touted it as the most profitable horror movie pre-Halloween), Harrington’s love of southern Gothic and period pieces is in full display here, as always more interested in creeping dread than shock.

Ruby follows the titular Ruby Claire (played with panache by Laurie Piper) and her mute daughter, Leslie, sixteen years after Ruby’s mobster beau was murdered while she was pregnant with their daughter.

Ruby now runs a drive-in theater staffed by the former mobsters who murdered Leslie’s father. In the days leading up to Leslie’s 16th birthday, sinister events become more and more frequent….and bodies start dropping like flies.

Best known via a TV edit often played on midnight creature features (re-edited and with additional material shot without Harrington’s knowledge, leading him to remove his name from the TV version), Spectacle is proud to present a crisp blu-ray remaster of the uncut theatrical version, closest to Harrington’s original vision.

While often recognized for pioneering the video essay in the 1990s, the scope of Mark Rapport’s film and video work is significantly more wide-ranging and amorphous than any critical superlative could ever let on. With a 40+ year long career that includes a feature length period musical, more than a dozen short-form video essays, an autobiographical TV special, and a jumbled up blue movie – Rapport’s oeuvre can often feel as hard to define as the plot of one of his films.

This September and October catch up on a sampling of his eclectic output – his complete narrative features along with a few key narrative shorts. Starting in 1970s New York alongside such luminaries of the American underground cinema like Yvonne Rainer and Jonas Mekas, Rappaport quickly developed his voice through a string of micro-budget features shot primarily within the confines of his Soho loft. Conjuring an exhilarating body of work that can feel equal parts familiar and belonging to a world of its own, these films feature plots that turn Hollywood cliche into alienating mysteries; corny dialogue loaded with unexpected emotional and philosophical weight; staid blocking reminiscent of classical painting; and unreliable voice-over narrators speaking in droll monotones. October is Part 2 of this series, featuring THE SCENIC ROUTE, IMPOSTERS, and CHAIN LETTERS.

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PART II: OCTOBER 2018

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THE SCENIC ROUTE
Dir. Mark Rappaport, 1978
United States, 76 min.
In English

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 2ND – 7:30 PM
MONDAY, OCTOBER 8TH – 7:30 PM
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 18TH – 10:00 PM

“I wouldn’t even tell you a lie, much less the truth.”

Estelle (Rappaport regular Randy Danson) spends most of her time cruising for strangers and chancing upon murder victims in public places (yet somehow none of them are related to the double-barrel shotgun killer we keep hearing about). She gets involved with a man named Paul, but leaves him once her sister, Lena, returns home from the insane asylum (Lena killed a former boyfriend of Estelle). Once Lena starts bringing men to the house it isn’t long before Lena brings Paul over and a love triangle develops.
Like the ever-changing array of wallpaper in Estelle’s apartment (gold stars against American-flag blue, a 16th century painting, a blown up photograph of Lena and Paul kissing), THE SCENIC ROUTE is a meld of styles and forms that never quite settles into any one direction across its 75 minute runtime. Self-consciously staid framing, recurring references to the orpheus myth through painting and opera, and repetitive unreliable voice-over are just a few of the devices Rappaport uses to capture the romantic malaise that haunts the characters.

Mark Rappaport on THE SCENIC ROUTE:

“Two sisters. And the man who is caught between them. Love, jealousy and revenge. All the standards components of melodrama – but a very dry melodrama. Expectations are thwarted and rechanneled. Instead of explanations and motivations, visual counterparts are offered. The film slides back and forth between passion and an irony which redirects it but doesn’t dilute it. A film about myths and mythmaking, about the Madame Bovary in each of us, about delusions and romance in a fragile world where violence erupts randomly and unexpectedly. The film was made very cheaply in and around New York where violence is a way of life and everyone always talks of going away.”

SCREENING WITH:

POSTCARDS
Dir. Mark Rappaport, 1990
United States, 25 min.
In English

Set against kitschy green-screened images taken from the backs of postcards, Rappaport’s first experiment with digital video shows the director taking his fascination with artifice and canned emotion into new aesthetic dimensions to tell a story of two lovers separated by the American highway system.

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IMPOSTERS
Dir. Mark Rappaport, 1979
United States, 105 min.
In English

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 7TH – 5:00 PM
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 17TH – 10:00 PM
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 30TH – 10:00 PM

“All bourgeois dreams end the same way – marry royalty and escape.”

Winner of best first feature at the Chicago International film festival despite being his fifth, IMPOSTERS was described by Rappaport as “the unholy union of The Maltese Falcon with (parts of) Remembrance of Things Past.” The film concerns a pair of murderous three stooges-esque magicians who always wear the same outfit and are on the search for a mysterious stolen jewel; an upper-class man (who is also secretly a werewolf) bent on possessing a promiscuous magician’s assistant by taking her photograph and buying her Victorian dresses; and more half-truths, miscommunications, doppelgangers, and queer undertones than any summary could ever do justice. With a greater attention paid to dialogue than in his previous films, IMPOSTERS often feels like a distant cousin to the anarchic comedies of Hollywood greats like The Marx Bros. and W.C. Fields with their rat-a-tat dialogue and irreverent stance towards genres.

“Each couple and/or two-way pattern threatens and comments on every other, so that straight and gay sensibilities, male and female characters, and passive and aggressive roles seem perpetually at loggerheads, fighting their way through insults and betrayals into bitter, neurotic stalemates. […] A lot of the time, it’s difficult to know whether to laugh or scream, and like certain other obsessive directors, Rappaport often tries to have it both ways.”

– Jonathan Rosenbaum

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CHAIN LETTERS
Dir. Mark Rappaport, 1985
United States, 96 min.
In English

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 5TH – 10:00 PM
MONDAY, OCTOBER 8TH – 10:00 PM
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 30TH – 7:30 PM

“Everything is plot. It’s just not always clear what it is.”

A chain letter telling the reader to send pictures of their favorite things to ten people they know links nine New Yorkers in Mark Rappaport’s last narrative film. As a tapestry of torpid affairs, passive aggression, and repressed violence builds across the characters, their lives start to intersect in labyrinthian and only slightly meaningful ways. In true Rappaportian fashion various non-sequiturs occur throughout, including but not limited to: a made-up tv series about a government conspiracy to plant micro-chips in people’s brains that tell them to buy frito lays and be polygamous; the completely unexplained murder of a postman by a masked man; a reoccurring pair of blonde prostitutes named babra and abraca-debra; and a life-size connect the dots porn sketch.

SCREENS WITH:

EXTERIOR NIGHT:
Dir. Mark Rappaport, 1993
United States, 36 min.
In English

Using brightly colored characters set against black and white backdrops ripped from classical noirs like THE BIG SLEEP and MILDRED PIERCE, EXTERIOR NIGHT tells the story of a teenager solving the mystery of his grandfather’s murder in what might be Rappaport’s most straightforward narrative, despite its period-blurring intertextuality.

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PART I : SEPTEMBER 2018

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LOCAL COLOR
Dir. Mark Rappaport, 1977
United States, 116 min.
In English

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 7 – 7:30 PM
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 15 – 7:30 PM
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 16 – 5 PM
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 19 – 7:30 PM
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 26 – 10 PM

Running through the full gamut of soap opera devices – including psychically connected twins, suicide, incestous desire, and more affairs than you can shake a stick at, LOCAL COLOR’s many protean narratives resemble something like a dream (as hinted at by the film’s opening series of pans across the eight main characters fast asleep). As Rapport himself has described:

“LOCAL COLOR is a film about eight people whose lives overlap and touch the lives of several others among the eight, in strange and sometimes unexpected configurations. Familial ties, sexual involvements, an inescapable past, shared dreams – these are some of the links that bind them to one another. They inhabit a universe of coincidence and chance, excessive emotionalism and dry irony. Flamboyant melodrama in dreary, desperate lives – operatic passions ground underfoot by the crushing flatness of daily existence. It is melodrama stripped bare, drained of the heavy breathing we associate with soap opera. Told with elliptical conciseness it combines the heavy, fruity passions of old cinema with the understated, often unstated, chilliness of the new cinema. The plot itself is too complicated to synopsize with any degree of coherence. In a sense, the movie is the plot and the plot is the movie. Except that the plot is irrelevant. Suffice it to say that there is enough of it to choke a horse. And of course there is a gun which figures prominently in the proceedings.”
– Mark Rappaport

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MOZART IN LOVE
Dir. Mark Rappaport, 1975
United States, 99 min.
In English

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 6 – 7:30 PM
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 9 – 7:30 PM
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 13 – 10 PM
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 30 – 5 PM

“This is the story of three loves, perhaps four.”

Like a bizzaro version of Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub’s CHRONICLE OF ANNA MAGDALENA BACH as filtered through the voice of a Woody Allen-esque nebbish new yorker, Rappaport’s MOZART IN LOVE is a treat for fans of rom-coms and classical opera alike. Recounted in sparse epistolary voice-over, the story concerns the mainly true tale of Mozart’s affair with a trio of sisters and the various romantic dramas that ensued. Plot, however, takes second place to long unbroken chunks of actors lip-syncing Mozart’s arias in painterly static compositions set against artificial backgrounds that range from rear-screen projections of classical images to bright single-colored mattes. With sporadic jumps into the modern world (one character watches TV in her living room, another goes for a long car ride, and at one moment Mozart is swapped out with a song from GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES); costumes that are as frequently surrealist as classical; and alienating shifts between polished recordings and amateur renditions of the music; Rappaport delivers a host of Brechtian devices that dissect our notions of love, representation, and social codes.

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CASUAL RELATIONS
Dir. Mark Rappaport, 1974
United States, 80 min.
In English

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 5 – 7:30 PM
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 7 – 10 PM
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 10 – 7:30 PM
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 29 – 7:30 PM

“Shortly after Susan got up, she decided she would watch television all day.”

A vampire movie, a skin flick, a murder mystery, a structuralist film, and a soap opera all rolled into one – Rappaport’s first film, CASUAL RELATIONS, is a formidable exercise in the narrative ambiguities that would dominate many of his films to come. Rappaport casually moves from one sequence to the next, leaving the viewer no tools to understand the relationships between the various stories. Yet the casual relations of the film’s title proves to be significantly more than a simple structural clue — the characters that we encounter through the film’s episodes all seem to exist in a pointless sort of casualness to their environment that is equal parts droll and melancholic. Some notable characters we meet include a woman so intent on staring into space all day that she refuses to acknowledge her ringing phone, a different woman who is resigned to watching TV all day after no one picks up her phone calls, two former lovers who share a long wordless drive to a motel while Mick Jagger sings on the radio, a man trying to pick up another man at a screening of disaster footage, a skin flick actress posing naked while listening to her photographer berate his wife and kids, and a man obsessed with a photograph of the ocean. Shot in pieces over a year and a half, CASUAL RELATIONS is an important testament to the inventiveness of DIY filmmaking and the underground New York film scene of the 1970s.