a highly-opinionated selection of things happening around town, and sometimes out of town. this month's page here.

sat. oct. 2

eagle rock music festival
twentieth century 3:45 7:30, midnight 5:35 9:20 @ new beverly
pee-wee's big adventure MIDNIGHT @ bruin theatre
the devil in the flesh @ lacma
the nanny 9:40 PM @ lacma
claudine, aaron loves angela @ ucla film archive
psychic handbook @ the smell
13 ghosts @ silent movie theatre
dollar babies mini-film fest 10 PM @ silent movie theatre
help!, two of us @ egyptian theatre


sun. oct. 3

belle & sebastian @ palladium
cloak & dagger (1984) 3:15 7:30, wargames 5:15 9:30 @ new beverly
gerrymandering FREE 7 PM @ ucla film archive
brent weinbach @ smug shift @ ucb theatre
dead meadow, exploding flowers @ echoplex
haunted honeymoon @ echo park film center filmmobile
so cow, neonates @ the smell
dollar babies mini-film fest 2 PM @ silent movie theatre
imagine: john lennon, the u.s. vs. john lennon @ egyptian theatre
to do better: films by kevin jerome everson @ filmforum @ egyptian theatre


mon. oct. 4

guided by voices @ wiltern
cloak & dagger (1984), wargames @ new beverly
erie 8:30 @ redcat
back to the future: the ride @ pehrspace


tue. oct. 5

francoiz breut @ the fretted frog
back to the future the ride 7 PM @ origami vinyl
upsilon acrux, bipolar bear @ the smell
cartoon monster mash 8 PM @ jerry beck's animation tuesdays @ silent movie theatre
angel, vice squad @ grindhouse film fest @ new beverly
dunes 7:30 PM @ skylight books


wed. oct. 6

poisoned paradise: the forbidden story of monte carlo 8 PM @ silent movie theatre
la strada, juliet of the spirits @ new beverly
twilight zone: the movie, tales from the dark side: the movie @ egyptian theatre
cesar's last fast 7 PM FREE @ hammer museum


thu. oct. 7

the like @ detroit bar
tremellow @ little joy
deep red 8 PM, opera @ silent movie theatre
shesaw @ silver factory studios
la strada, juliet of the spirits @ new beverly
black sabbath, dr. terror's house of horrors @ egyptian theatre
inspector bellamy FREE @ melnitz movies


fri. oct. 8

chapterhouse @ troubadour
back to the future the ride @ the smell
mutant girls squad 8 PM, alien vs. ninja @ silent movie theatre
dreamcatcher MIDNIGHT @ silent movie theatre
la strada, juliet of the spirits @ new beverly
gone with the pope MIDNIGHT @ grindhouse film fest @ new beverly
from a whisper to a scream, tales from the hood @ egyptian theatre
mary lynn rajskub @ steve allen theater
confessions of a dangerous mind, moon @ aero
the big combo @ lacma
they made me a fugitive 9:10 @ lacma


sat. oct. 9

tenebrae, the gates of hell, the evil, the giant claw, breeders, the outing, etc @ twelve hour horror marathon @ new beverly
terminator 2 MIDNIGHT @ bruin theatre
la font 7 PM @ origami vinyl
the finches @ echo curio (?)
mary lynn rajskub @ steve allen theater
box of moonlight 5:30, conviction (sneak preview) @ egyptian theatre
pather panchali 5 PM @ lacma


sun. oct. 10

the pope @ the smell
haunted castle @ epfc filmmobile mobile screening
winter kills 5:30 @ egyptian theatre
assorted morsels: new 16mm films by amy halpern @ filmforum @ egyptian theatre


mon. oct. 11

radar bros. @ el rey
the haunting (1963) 8 PM @ arclight hollywood
exit through the gift shop 7:30 9:30 @ new beverly
lewis klahr: dreaming over the flux of things past 8:30 PM @ redcat


tue. oct. 12

herschell gordon lewis: the godfather of gore 8 PM, two thousand maniacs @ silent movie theatre
dirt dress @ viper room
exit through the gift shop 7:30 9:30 @ new beverly


wed. oct. 13

the kid 8 PM, a dog's life @ silent movie theatre
diary of a mad housewife, a woman under the influence @ new beverly
corin tucker band @ el rey
sex lies and videotape @ aero
off! FREE 7 PM @ amoeba
off! @ club lingerie
el ten eleven @ bootleg


thu. oct. 14

the yes men @ ucla royce hall
counter culture counter cinema: an avant-garde film festival @ MOCA PDC
paranoia 8 PM, eyeball, dirty pictures @ silent movie theatre
diary of a mad housewife, a woman under the influence @ new beverly
rocco and his brothers @ aero


fri. oct. 15

rosemary's baby, chinatown @ new beverly
cotton comes to harlem, shaft @ ucla film archive
dunes, foot village @ the smell
mary lynn rajskub @ steve allen theater
counter culture counter cinema: an avant-garde film festival @ MOCA PDC
the house of the devil 8 PM, dead alive @ silent movie theatre
bonjour tristesse @ lacma
kit 7:30 PM @ vacation


sat. oct. 16

green and wood @ spaceland
rosemary's baby 7 PM, chinatown 4:30 9:40 @ new beverly
counter culture counter cinema: an avant-garde film festival @ MOCA PDC
mary lynn rajskub @ steve allen theater
strait jacket 6 PM, homicidal @ silent movie theatre
black devil doll from hell 10 PM, TBA @ silent movie theatre
dirt dress @ soundbite studios
the genesis of an art: film to 1908 @ spielberg theatre @ egyptian theatre
leave her to heaven 5 PM @ lacma
sister nancy, roots radics, etc @ dub quake @ echoplex


sun. oct. 17

man on the flying trapeze 4:00 8:40, never give a sucker an even break 5:30, monkey business 7:00 @ new beverly
coffy 7 PM, cleopatra jones @ ucla film archive
sister nancy, black emeralds, etc @ dub quake @ echoplex
they live 9 PM @ madex's guerrilla drive-in, downtown


mon. oct. 18

never give a sucker an even break, monkey business, man on the flying trapeze @ new beverly
akran FREE @ ucla film archive
frankenstein (1931) 8 PM @ arclight hollywood
stingray sam 7:15, the american astronaut @ 7 dudley cinema
the ten commandments @ egyptian theatre
ezra buchla @ pehrspace


tue. oct. 19

demon lover diary 8 PM @ silent movie theatre
arsenic and old lace 1 PM @ lacma
the clonus horror, the clones @ grindhouse film fest @ new beverly
the sea and cake @ wiltern
lynda barry 7:30 PM @ skylight books


wed. oct. 20

modern times 8 PM @ silent movie theatre
the last campaign of governor booth gardner 7 PM, the most dangerous man in america: daniel ellsberg and the pentagon papers @ ampas linwood dunn


thu. oct. 21

amer 8 PM, perfume of the lady in black, what have you done to solange? @ silent movie theatre
eugene chadbourne @ the smell
irma vep, demonlover @ egyptian theatre


fri. oct. 22

the slaves @ the smell
emma mae, the human tornado @ ucla film archive
the diabolical dr. cinefamily's horrifying anthology of horror anthologies 8 PM @ silent movie theatre
the third man, brighton rock @ new beverly theatre
pulp fiction MIDNIGHT @ new beverly
dirt dress @ pehrspace
mary lynn rajskub @ steve allen theater
the shining MIDNIGHT @ nuart
carlos (long version) 7 PM @ egyptian theatre
mark sultan @ spaceland
woom @ echoplex


sat. oct. 23

abbott and costello's hold that ghost 2:00 8:00 PM @ alex theatre
halloween and mourning movie night (TBA) @ heritage square
ghostbusters MIDNIGHT @ bruin theatre
gordon's war, willie dynamite @ ucla film archive
macabre, mr. sardonicus @ silent movie theatre
a night to dismember 10 PM, don't panic @ silent movie theatre
the third man, brighton rock @ new beverly theatre
the sentinel MIDNIGHT @ new beverly
mary lynn rajskub @ steve allen theater
between displacement and nostalgia: conflicted memories of cuba 6 PM @ redcat
carlos (long version) 6 PM @ egyptian theatre
the robber, the silence @ aero
beggars of life @ lacma
sergio aragones 5 PM @ book soup
haunts of angelino heights scavenger hunt 4 PM @ la conservancy


sun. oct. 24

thomasine & bushrod, buck and the preacher @ ucla film archive
carlos (long version) 3 PM @ spielberg theatre @ egyptian theatre
here: a survey of films and videos by vincent grenier @ filmforum @ echo park film center
house on haunted hill @ epfc filmmobile mobile screening
haunts of angelino heights scavenger hunt 4 PM @ la conservancy
the pope @ the sex


mon. oct. 25

lonesome @ ucla james bridges
la font FREE @ silverlake lounge
revelations of the everyday 8:30 PM @ redcat
the blob (1988) 8 PM @ comedy death-ray w/ brian posehn @ silent movie theatre


tue. oct. 26

dr. jekyll and mr. hyde (1932) 1 PM @ lacma
reigning sound @ the echo
thrones @ spaceland
lair of the white worm 8 PM, gothic @ silent movie theatre
the curse of the werewolf, frankenstein must be destroyed @ new beverly
get low, tomorrow @ aero
giant drag @ bootleg


wed. oct. 27

reigning sound @ spaceland
jason simon 7 PM FREE @ vacation vinyl
the curse of the werewolf, frankenstein must be destroyed @ new beverly


thu. oct. 28

films by cameron jamie FREE 7 PM @ hammer museum
all the colors of the dark 8 PM, the strange vice of mrs. wardh @ silent movie theatre
dr. phibes rises again, the return of count yorga @ new beverly
the raven, the black cat @ egyptian theatre
idiots and angels @ aero


fri. oct. 29

amazing grace, cooley high @ ucla film archive
audacity @ the smell
jon brion @ largo
changeling @ aero
mary lynn rajskub @ steve allen theater
shadow of a doubt @ lacma
cloak and dagger (1946) 9:30 PM @ lacma


sat. oct. 30

phantom of the opera @ royce hall organ & silent film @ ucla royce hall
shaun of the dead MIDNIGHT @ bruin theatre
baby doll @ ucla film archive
mary lynn rajskub @ steve allen theater
trick or treat 8 PM @ cinefamily heavy metal halloween party @ silent movie theatre
ghostbusters (70mm) @ egyptian theatre
fright night, don't look in the basement, candyman, bloody birthday, phantasm, cemetery man @ dusk-to-dawn horrorthon @ aero


sun. oct. 31

dr. jekyll and mr. hyde (w/ live organ accompaniment) @ walt disney concert hall
the wolf man (1941) 4:00 7:00, the invisible man (1933) 5:30 8:30 @ new beverly
ganja & hess 7 PM, blacula @ ucla film archive
haunted silent shorts @ epfc filmmobile mobile screening
house on haunted hill 6 PM, the tingler @ silent movie theatre
the monster squad 5 PM @ aero


mon. nov. 1

the wolf man, the invisible man @ new beverly
spectacles of light 8:30 PM @ redcat
dirt dress FREE @ spaceland
bill plympton in person 8 PM @ silent movie theatre


tue. nov. 2

stranded in canton 8 PM @ silent movie theatre


wed. nov. 3

ornette coleman @ ucla royce hall
the devil's claim 8 PM @ silent movie theatre
scream festival: noisefold 8:30 @ redcat
tell them anything you want: a portrait of maurice sendak 7 PM, the beaches of agnes @ ampas linwood dunn


fri. nov. 5

trans am @ spaceland
exploding flowers @ DIY gallery


sat. nov. 6

kevin greenspon @ the smell


sun. nov. 7

expo '70 @ echo curio (?)
score 8 PM @ silent movie theatre


mon. nov. 8

expo '70 FREE 7 PM @ origami vinyl
a century ago: the films of 1910 - refining the one-reeler @ ampas linwood dunn
dirt dress FREE @ spaceland


tue. nov. 9

roman polanski shorts 8 PM @ silent movie theatre


wed. nov. 10

moonhearts, nobunny @ spaceland
space land and time: underground adventures with ant farm 7 PM FREE @ hammer museum


thu. nov. 11

dean wareham plays galaxie 500 @ troubadour


fri. nov. 12

hausu MIDNIGHT @ nuart


sat. nov. 13

best coast, dunes @ troubadour


sun. nov. 14

best coast, dunes @ troubadour


mon. nov. 15

southern california landscapes via experimental film 7 PM @ 7 dudley cinema
dirt dress FREE @ spaceland


fri. nov. 19

grass widow, wild flag @ spaceland
hard target MIDNIGHT @ nuart


sat. nov. 20

the loons, clinic @ troubadour


mon. nov. 22

thom andersen: out of the car and into the music of the streets 8:30 PM @ redcat
dirt dress FREE @ spaceland


tue. nov. 23

off! 7 PM FREE @ vacation vinyl


wed. nov. 24

black angels @ el rey


fri. nov. 26

pee-wee's big adventure MIDNIGHT @ nuart


sat. nov. 27

three stooges films 2:00 8:00 PM @ alex theatre


mon. nov. 29

dirt dress FREE @ spaceland


thu. dec. 2

louis ck @ gibson amphitheatre


fri. dec. 3

high plains drifter MIDNIGHT @ nuart


sun. dec. 5

pharoah sanders, nels cline, han bennink, etc @ ucla royce hall


fri. dec. 10

raising arizona MIDNIGHT @ nuart


sat. dec. 11

polls @ christmas sweater festival iv


mon. dec. 20

celestial celluloid 6 PM @ 7 dudley cinema


wed. feb. 23

godspeed you black emperor! @ music box



WHAT IT IS:




AARON LOVES ANGELA
(1975) Directed by Gordon Parks Jr.
Aaron (Hooks) is a black teen searching for his identity, independent of what adults tell him he should be. He loves Angela (Cara), a young Puerto Rican woman who also loves Aaron, even though her family is against it. An inter-racial romance, a Blaxploitation version of Romeo and Juliet, this film marked the borders between Harlem and Spanish Harlem, African Americans and Puerto Ricans. Like many other titles, the film makes use of its grim 1970s New York locations, North of 96th Street, adding a degree of realism off set by Gordon Parks Jr.'s narratively absurd fantasy ending. Certainly, the most underrated of the late director's blaxpoitation cycle films, this one also attempted more serious content.
Columbia Pictures. Producer: Robert J. Anderson. Screenplay: Gerald Sanford. Cinematographer: Richard C. Kratina. Cast: Kevin Hooks, Moses Gunn, Irene Cara, Robert Hooks. 35mm, 99 min. 


A DOG'S LIFE
Also screening is A Dog's Life, the 1918 short that the presages The Kid, and features the Tramp's sweet misadventures in the company of a young pup, who happily watches by as Chaplin hides from the cops, taunts hard-faced gangster types, and tries to get the girl! Dir. Charles Chaplin, 1918, 35mm, 33 min. 


AKRAN
(1969) Directed by Richard Myers
Ohio-based avant-garde filmmaker Richard Myers calls his work "dream films," and so it is with this his first feature film. A collage of images of restless youth, landscapes of alienation, the Vietnam War, consumer civilization and overt racism, Akran is non-narrative but deeply connected to our collective unconsciousness. Amos Vogel described it as "a Joyce-like, dense and somber mosaic of memory and sensory impressions, a texture instead of a plot, a dream-like flow of visually-induced associations." Writing in 1969, Roger Ebert effused that Akran "is the single most important event of this year's Chicago Film Festival, Akran is so good, so inventive, so radically original, that it may even be flatly rejected by the audience... It is beyond our previous experience.'' The problems of restoring such a heterogeneous work are manifold.
Screenplay: Richard Myers. Cast: Robert Ohlrich, Pat Myers, Jake Leed. 16mm, B/W, 118 min.
IN PERSON: Mark Toscano, preservationist, Academy Film Archive.


Alien Vs. Ninja
"That title isn’t enough for you?...in the context of crowd-pleasing fun, it far outshines Hollywood’s lame summer product." -Joshua Rothkopf, Time Out New York
“In medieval Japan, no one can hear you scream! Whoever wins -- we lose! It came to our planet for the thrill of the hunt but it picked the wrong man! It's an alien, a big disgusting alien who wants to rip out our intestines and tear off our heads. It comes from a planet where everything is goopy and disgusting and the only language it speaks is horrible violence. It's like a drunk redneck with a gun set loose at a wedding reception. This sick extraterrestrial freak even wants to impregnate our species with its hideous jelly babies. It is unstoppable. It is unkillable. It is unbeatable. But it made one mistake: it forgot to make itself ninja-proof. Like some kind of ultra-stupid, ultra-gory version of the Mighty Moronic Power Rangers, Alien Vs. Ninja> is the kind of boneheaded movie that does exactly what it says on the box. There are ninjas, and they fight an alien and by the end so many buckets of gore have been emptied, so many prop swords have been soaked in green alien gunk and so many copyright laws have been violated that the entire Dumb Movies Genre needs to go on vacation!” -- New York Asian Film Festival
Dir. Seiji Chiba, 2010, HDCAM, 85 min. 


All The Colors of the Dark
One of the wildest, trippiest thrillers to come out of Italy, this nightmarish mixture of Rosemary’s Baby and Blood and Black Lace was the second hit teaming of director Sergio Martino and his voluptuous leading lady Edwige Fenech. Here she plays a London wife recovering from a car crash and miscarriage whose best friend decides to help her out by -- uh, initiating her into a Satanic cult where she’s forced to drink fox blood and participate in an orgy. Then there’s her suspicious husband, her even more suspicious sexy female neighbor, and recurring visions of her mother’s stabbing death. Bruno Nicolai’s incredible sitar-laced score and a staggering experimental opening nightmare sequence are just the icing on this very decadent cake (shown very heavily cut in the U.S. as They’re Coming to Get You), proudly presented in an extremely rare uncut 35mm presentation you’ll probably never see in L.A. again! DJ Mahssa (of Dublab) will be here to spin tunes before and in-between the films!
Dir. Sergio Martino, 1972, 35mm, 94 min. 


AMAZING GRACE
(1974) Directed by Stan Lathan
The old lady in the neighborhood whips an establishment candidate for mayor into a true candidate for the people. This Blaxploitation comedy stars Jackie "Moms" Mabley, a normally foul-mouthed black stand-up comedian who slogged away on the "Chitlin' Circuit" for decades. Born Loretta Mary Aiken in North Carolina in 1894, she ran away from home after two rapes, two children and one awful older husband to become a comedy fixture in segregated comedy clubs, earning $10,000 a week at Harlem's famed Apollo. She appeared uncredited in Emperor Jones (1933) and a couple of late 1940s films, as well as on TV's "Bill Cosby Show" before she passed in 1975. Tyler Perry's Medea is, of course, a child of Moms.
United Artists. Producer: Matt Robinson. Screenplay: Matt Robinson. Cast: Moms Mabley, Slappy White, Rosalind Cash, Moses Gunn, James Karen. 35mm, 99 min. 


Amer
The giallo has its own particular way of being obsessed with the surface and substance of the female body: satiny skin torn and sliced, innards plumbed deep with shards of windows and falling knives, wind at every turn to whip hair into eyes -- everything from the outside world seems to want in, in, in. In Amer, Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani’s avant-garde smash-and-grab appropriation of the genre’s conventions, we finally get inside that giallo heroine’s head. In a defiantly dreamlike atypical structure, this eye-poppingly lurid tale (shot on super-saturated 35mm slide film) follows the same character’s psychosexual, psychedelic awakening and decline as a traumatized child, burgeoning adolescent, and wanton adult. All in all, hang onto your Freud, because this is one exploration of the male gaze, the female body, and the erotic (and horrific) terrain in between that no self-respecting art- or genre-lover should miss.
Dirs. Hélène Cattet & Bruno Forzani, 2009, 90 min.


The American Astronaut
Some of our staff’s picks for this series are based upon fond childhood memories, and some are simply high points in their respective genres -- but staff member Kat’s pick is a film that drew her a new personal cinematic roadmap: the highly unique “Forbidden Zone-by-way-of-Eraserhead-and-Cormac-McCarthy” early Twenty-First century musical The American Astronaut, directed by Cory McAbee and with music by his own uncategorizable band, The Billy Nayer Show. Kat says: “Years ago, my friend J.J. Giddings (from Tuscon, AZ’s Cinefamily counterpart The Loft) gave me this film on DVD, promising that it would be my new favorite. Not believing myself to be a fan of outer-space cowboy musicals, it was shelved unwatched for a long time. Eventually, J.J. forcibly sat me down and watched it with me. It blew my brain apart -- it made me realize that the perception of genre boundaries and classifications are more or less arbitrary. This film is so much more than it seems. The music is catchy and cool. It’s weird and wonderful. It’s going to be fun.”
Dir. Corey McAbee, 2001, 35mm, 94 min. 


ANGEL
(from IMDB)
15 year-old Molly is the best in her class in high school. Nobody suspects that the model pupil earns her money at night: as prostitute "Angel" on Sunset Blvd. The well-organized separation of her two lives is shattered when two of her friends are slain by a necrophile serial killer. She's the only eye witness and becomes a target herself. The investigating Detective Andrews helps her, not only to survive, but also to query why she keeps on humiliating herself and to stop it.
1984, USA, 94 minutes.
Robert Vincent O'Neil and Ross Hagen will appear IN PERSON, schedule permitting, to discuss! Directed by Robert Vincent O'Neil, written by Robert Vincent O'Neil & Joseph M. Cala, starring Donna Wilkes, Cliff Gorman, Susan Tyrrell, Dick Shawn, Rory Calhoun, Ross Hagen


ASSORTED MORSELS: NEW 16MM FILMS BY AMY HALPERN
Amy Halpern is a filmmaker and artist who works with light, camera and movement.  She has been making abstract films since 1972. Halpern moved to Los Angeles in 1974, where in 1975 with a handful of other filmmakers she founded (and named) the Los Angeles Independent Film Oasis, devoted to presentation of avant-garde film work, and completed a graduate degree in film at UCLA.  She has worked on many Hollywood and independent feature films as gaffer and/or cinematographer, including Charles Burnett’s My Brother’s Wedding, Pat O’Neill’s Decay of Fiction and David Lebrun’s Breaking the Maya Code.  In 1975 she was one of the founders of the Los Angeles Independent Film Oasis, devoted to presentation of avant-garde film work.  She has also had a long career as a teacher of film and writing at U.S.C., Otis-Parsons Art Institute, Cal State L.A., and Cal State Northridge. Born and raised in New York City, Halpern studied & performed in modern dance with Anna Sokolow & Lynda Gudde, worked in the early 1970s in 3-D shadow-play with Ken Jacobs’ New York Apparition Theatre and co-founded New York’s Collective For Living Cinema.  Amy Halpern in person! 


BABY DOLL
(1956) Directed by Elia Kazan
Baby Doll centers on Archie Lee Meighan (Malden), the middle-aged owner of a dilapidated cotton gin, and his young bride, Baby Doll (Baker). Archie Lee promised the girl's dying father that he would not deflower her until she reached the age of twenty. But on the eve of her twentieth birthday, his hopes of consummating the marriage are dashed by a series of comic events, setting off a tense game of manipulation and revenge with his competitor, the smooth talking Silva Vacarro (Wallach). Featuring superb performances and a crackling script by Tennessee Williams, Baby Doll is a bitingly funny and playfully perverse Southern Gothic farce.
Warner Bros.. Based on the play "27 Wagons Full of Cotton" by Tennessee Williams. Producer: Elia Kazan. Screenplay: Tennessee Williams. Cinematographer: Boris Kaufman. Editor: Gene Milford. Cast: Karl Malden, Carroll Baker, Eli Wallach, Mildred Dunnock. 35mm, 114 min. 


Beggars of Life
1928/b&w/100 min./silent | Scr: Benjamin Glazer, Jim Tully dir: William Wellman; w/ Louise Brooks, Wallace Beery, Richard Arlen. | Restored by George Eastman House with funding provided by The Film Foundation.
Famous for her frank portrayals of sexuality in silent German masterworks by G.W. Pabst, Louise Brooks was an American dancer and flapper film actress born and raised in Kansas. This rare melodrama was her last American feature, largely shot on location and directed by William Wellman; it follows the exploits of an abused country girl running from the law who joins up with a group of rail-riding hobos (including Wallace Beery). Its macabre opening—in which a drifter attempts to strike up a conversation with a man who proves to be a corpse—gives way to a hair-raising montage of superimpositions and dissolves that recreate Brooks' account of his demise. Brooks' natural rapport with the camera is on strong display here, and it's easy to see what Pabst might have noticed when he purportedly glimpsed her in the role of a circus performer in Howard Hawks' A Girl in Every Port: her "unguarded American smile—a spontaneous dazzler that she, not unreasonably, expects can get her anything." (J. Hoberman)—Doug Cummings. 


Between Displacement and Nostalgia: Conflicted Memories of Cuba
“Memories of Underdevelopment… conjures up the uncertain mood of Havana just after the revolution. The effect is fascinating. A must-see.” –The Guardian
Tomás Gutiérrez Alea: Memorias del subdesarrollo (Memories of Underdevelopment), Cuba, 1968, 97 min., 35mm.
Followed by a discussion with Cuban novelist Edmundo Desnoes.
And by Miguel Coyula: Memorias del desarrollo (Memories of Overdevelopment), USA/Cuba, 2010, 113 min., HDCAM
One of the first international successes of Third Cinema, Tomás Gutiérrez Alea’s classic film was banned in the United States for five years, a victim of the embargo on post-revolutionary Cuba. Memories of Underdevelopment imaginatively transposes Edmundo Desnoes’ eponymous stream-of-consciousness novel into a modernist cinematic space. Desnoes’ ambivalence toward the new regime grew, and in 1979 he defected to the United States, where he wrote Memories of Overdevelopment, a companion piece to his earlier work. His writings in turn inspired young Cuban filmmaker Miguel Coyula, who uses the digital-media tools of his generation to comment on the issues that have fascinated Desnoes: the hunger to embrace a revolutionary cause versus political disillusionment, feeling displaced in one’s own country and in permanent exile in the country of one’s choice, the protracted conflict between underdevelopment and overdevelopment, and, last but not least, acerbic sexual politics. Desnoes will share his point of view on both films, creating a dialogue between Gutiérrez Alea’s masterpiece and Coyula’s multilayered visual experiment.  In person: Edmundo Desnoes and Miguel Coyula


The Big Combo
1955/b&w/88 min. | Scr: Philip Yordan; dir: Joseph H. Lewis; w/ Cornel Wilde, Richard Conte, Brian Donlevy, Jean Wallace, Lee Van Cleef. | Restored by UCLA Film & Television Archive with funding provided by The Film Foundation.
Joseph H. Lewis' brutal detective thriller is a prime example of the film noir, largely on account of John Alton's harsh cinematography, which emphasizes extremes of black and white with few intermediary grey tones, and transforms backrooms, bedrooms, and alleys into abstract arenas for dueling obsessions. Lieutenant Diamond is frustrated but unyielding in his pursuit of organized crime boss Mr. Brown (Richard Conte, in a suave and sadistic performance), who relishes power gained through hatred and resolve. Brown's girlfriend is Susan—whom Diamond also desires—a one-time pianist now exhausted and trapped by the sensual cravings of her psyche. Images assault the viewer: shadowy figures in pursuit of a lone woman, a hearing aid that doubles as a torture device, a lover's ecstatic face trembling in close-up. Lewis' fractured world adopts style as its substance, making every maneuver seem like a futile struggle against isolation and madness.—Doug Cummings.


Bill Plympton In Person
Bill Plympton, The King of the Independent Animation, makes his first Cinefamily appearance, and presents a program of his classic shorts, new films, works-in-progress and a selection of vintage cartoons that inspired him! Bill’s session with us includes: Shuteye Hotel, a film noir murder mystery; Santa: The Fascist Years, which uncovers Santa's un-jolly past (featuring Mathew Modine); Eat, a comedy set in a French restaurant; and, Sex and Violence, which was, according to Plympton's website, "too extreme for the men's magazine market." Clips from his forthcoming animated feature Cheatin' and his "Hear ‘Em Say" music video for Kanye West will also be screened. After the program, stick around for a Q&A with Bill, moderated by Jerry Beck! 


THE BLACK CAT, 1934, Universal, 65 min. Dir. Edgar Ulmer. Cat-fearing Bela Lugosi pursues devil-worshipping Boris Karloff through his crazed, Bauhaus-on-acid mansion, sitting atop the bodies of thousands of WW I vets.  Q&A between films with Bela Lugosi Jr., actress Louise Currie, director Mick Garris, publisher and artist Kerry Gammill, editor and screenwriter Sam F. Park, writer James Farr and artists Charlie Largent, Chris Moreno, Rafael Navarro and Jeff Preston.


BLACULA
(1972) Directed by William Crain
One of the finest of filmic Dracula adaptations, Blacula combines social satire, political commentary and campy extravagance in revising and transgressing the horror genre. As Mamuwalde, an African prince cursed by Count Dracula in 1780 and awoken in 1972 Los Angeles, William Marshall conveys the pathos and dignity of the title role and refuses stereotypical representation. Also notable is the stunning opening credit sequence by Sandy Dvore.
American International Pictures. Producer: Joseph T. Naar. Screenplay: Raymond Koenig, Joan Torres. Cinematographer: John M. Stevens. Cast: William Marshall, Vonetta McGee, Denise Nicholas, Thalmus Rasulala. 35mm, 92 min. 


BLOODY BIRTHDAY
(from IMDB)
In 1970, three children are born at the height of a total eclipse. Due to the sun and moon blocking Saturn, which controls emotions, they have become heartless killers ten years later, and are able to escape detection because of their youthful and innocent facades. A boy and his teenage sister become endangered when they stumble onto the bloody truth.  Dir. Ed Hunt, 1981, 85 mins.


Bonjour Tristesse
1958/color & b&w/94 min./Scope | Scr: Arthur Laurents; dir: Otto Preminger; w/ Deborah Kerr, David Niven, Jean Seberg. Restored by the Museum of Modern Art and Sony Pictures with funding provided by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and The Film Foundation.
While Otto Preminger was known for melodramas (Laura, Angel Face) and courtroom dramas (Anatomy of a Murder, Advise and Consent), his sense of cool detachment and even-handedness in judgment and composition was unusual and elevating. This CinemaScope adaptation of Francoise Sagan's novel of the same name charts the carefree dalliances of an idle rich father and daughter pair, Raymond (David Niven) and Cecile (Jean Seberg, whose spunky performance inspired her role in Godard's Breathless) on the French Riveria; but when a sophisticated fashion designer comes to visit Raymond, Cecile's close relationship with her father is threatened. Shot on location like many Preminger works, the film makes unusual use of black-and-white for the present day scenes that take place in Paris and sumptuous color for the flashbacks set on the Cote d'azur. But Preminger carefully undermines the film's pictorial beauty by gradually exposing the tensions lurking beneath the surface; as the drama progresses, the widescreen frame feels increasingly restrictive, limiting the spaces between characters, and provoking an unbearable lightness of being.—Doug Cummings. 


BOX OF MOONLIGHT, 1996, Lionsgate Films, 112 min. Dir. Tom DiCillo. John Turturro plays Al Fountain, a depressed engineering foreman who hits the road in search of an idyllic locale that brought him his fondest childhood memories. What he finds there does little to improve his mood, but on the way home he picks up a Davy Crockett-costumed young man with car trouble (Sam Rockwell) who helps him discover that there’s more to life than the boredom to which he has become accustomed.


BRIGHTON ROCK
Pinkie Brown (Richard Attenborough) is a small town hoodlum who's gang run a protection racket based at Brighton race course. When Pinkie orders the murder of a rival, Fred (Alan Wheatley), the police believe it to be suicide. This doesn't convince Ida Arnold (Hermione Baddeley), who was with Fred just before he died, and she sets out to find the truth. She comes across naive waitress Rose (Carol Marsh), who can prove that Fred was murdered. 1947, UK, 92 minutes.  Directed by John Boulting, screenplay by Graham Greene, starring Richard Attenborough, Carol Marsh, Hermione Baddeley, William Hartnell.


BUCK AND THE PREACHER
(1972) Directed by Sidney Poitier
Marking his directorial debut, Sidney Poitier stars with Harry Belafonte in this historical epic Western set in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War. Poitier's Buck is a trail guide leading emancipated slaves westward in search of homestead opportunities and protecting them from vicious bounty hunters. Belafonte delivers one of his finest performances as a charlatan preacher along for the ride.
Columbia Pictures. Producer: Joel Glickman, Sidney Poitier. Screenplay: Ernest Kinoy. Cinematographer: Alex Phillips Jr.. Cast: Sidney Poitier, Harry Belafonte, Ruby Dee, Cameron Mitchell. 35mm, 102 min. 


CARLOS, 2010, IFC Films, 330 min. Director Olivier Assayas' epic, searing and relentlessly thrilling portrayal of the Venezuelan revolutionary Ilich Ramirez Sanchez has been praised by the Los Angeles Times as "THE BOURNE IDENTITY with more substance, or MUNICH with more of a pulse," and received much well-deserved buzz at this year's Cannes Film Festival. Sanchez (played by Edgar Ramirez) is a fascinating real-life figure with an explosive rise and fall - he managed to found a worldwide terrorist organization and raid the OPEC headquarters before being caught by the French police in 1975. Don't miss this stunning telling of an unbelievable moment in history, in a five-screening limited run at the Cinematheque! In French with English subtitles.  Director Olivier Assayas will introduce the Oct. 22 and 23 screenings.


Cartoon Monster Mash!
(feat. Screen Novelties' Ghostly Ghoulash and The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad)
A triple-headed monster of an animation show! Our annual Halloween showcase begins with animation historian Jerry Beck presenting a collection of classic animated Monster cartoons and clips, including The Groovie Goolies, Milton the Monster, and King Kong. Then, he'll be joined by the creative weirdos from Screen Novelties, one of the foremost stop motion animation studios, who have curated a special spooktastic show featuring several monster movies of their own along with clips and shorts of their most dearly beloved creepy creations. And finally as the witching hour approaches we conclude our night with a very rare screening of Disney’s classic The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, featuring the head-rolling Halloween favorite The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (along with the autumnal treasure The Wind in the Willows). Join us for this night of gruesome goodies!
The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad   Dirs. James Algar, Clyde Geronimi, and Jack Kinney, 1949, 35mm, 68 min. 


CELESTIAL CELLULOID
Film historians John Cannizzaro & Gerorge Russell screen 16mm films (some with live music accompaniment) from the early 20th century. Classic comedy, drama and avant-garde cinema on the big screen with the hypnotic projector hum expand the viewing experience.


A Century Ago: The Films of 1910 – Refining the One-Reeler
Presented on a 1909 hand-cranked Power’s Model 6 Cameragraph motion picture machine restored and operated by Joe Rinaudo.  “A Century Ago: The Films of 1910” will include an early D.W. Griffith Civil War film “The House with Closed Shutters”; Vitagraph’s “Jack Fat and Jim Slim at Coney Island” featuring John Bunny; “The Actor’s Children,” the first film of the New Rochelle-based Thanhouser Company; the Selig Company’s production of “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz”; Essanay’s “Aviation at Los Angeles, Calif.,” and surprises galore. Most prints will be in 35mm and are drawn from the collections of the Academy Film Archive, the Library of Congress, George Eastman House, the Museum of Modern Art and the UCLA Film & Television Archive.  Featuring live musical accompaniment by Michael Mortilla.


César's Last Fast
Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program presents a Work-In-Progress screening of the documentary film César’s Last Fast, a film about the private sacrifice behind César E. Chávez’s struggle for the humane treatment of farm workers, and the impact his inspirational legacy has had on a new generation of activists, organizers, and community leaders. Following the screening, Academy Award-nominated actor Edward James Olmos will host a panel discussion featuring César Chavez’s son, Paul Chavez, the filmmakers, and Dr. Mario Garcia, author of The Gospel of César Chavez. (Running time: 60 min. Dir: Richard Ray Perez)


CHANGELING
George C. Scott is a recently widowed musician who moves into an old house inhabited by the spirit of a child who lived there 70 years ago. Genuinely eerie, with some good shocks and--as you might expect from the cast--top-notch performances all around. Peter Medak---Canada---1979---109 mins.  Peter Medak and Joel Michaels in person! 


CLAUDINE
(1974) Directed by John Berry
James Earl Jones plays a garbage collector who loves Claudine but is afraid of the emotional commitment that comes with raising a family. Oscar-nominated for a role originally written for cancer victim Diana Sands, Diahann Carroll made the plight of a working class black woman who alone must provide for her five children more than a welfare statistic. After decades on the blacklist, director John Berry returned to mainstream Hollywood with this serious black drama, which does not fit the mold of Blaxploitation, but would have never been produced, were it not for the success of the genre. And while the film attempts a realistic portrayal of working class black life, it is caters to Hollywood sentimentality.
20th Century Fox Film Corp.. Producer: Hannah Weinstein. Screenplay: Lester Pine, Tina Pine. Cinematographer: Gayne Rescher. Editor: Luis San Andres. Cast: Diahann Carroll, James Earl Jones, Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs, Tamu . 35mm, 92 min. 


Cloak and Dagger
1946/b&w/104 min. | Scr: Albert Maltz, Ring Lardner, Jr.; dir: Fritz Lang; w/ Gary Cooper, Robert Alda, Lilli Palmer. | Preserved by UCLA Film & Television Archive in cooperation with Paramount Pictures with funding provided by The Film Foundation.
The originator of the spy movie genre, Fritz Lang, offered up this suspenseful anti-Nazi thriller immediately after the war. Gary Cooper plays a nuclear physicist recruited by the American government to establish contact with a Hungarian colleague working with the Nazis; low-key and straight-laced, Cooper's stoicism serves as counterpoint to the film's exciting set pieces and anticipates today's taciturn action stars. Lang's masterful sense of visual logic and economy sharpens each sequence as incidental events and chance occurrences—a passing photographer, a stalled car, a stray cat—become pivotal events. The dark and frequently wet locations lend terrific atmosphere to the story, originally intended (according to Lang experts) as a critique of unchecked science in the atomic age.  But Warners ultimately replaced the final reel to soften the punch, and destroyed the original ending. The film has been issued on DVD numerous times, but it has always been plagued by technical problems due to poor print conditions; this is a rare opportunity to see it in pristine form.—Doug Cummings. 


THE CLONES
(from IMDB)
A nuclear scientist is "cloned" by foreign agents, then struggles against terrifying odds to prove he is himself and not the clone. Producers note that the word Clones was rarely, if ever, heard in the American vocabulary before this picture was released. 1973, USA, 95 minutes.  Directed by Lamar Card & Paul Hunt, starring Michael Greene, Gregory Sierra, Otis Young, Susan Hunt, Stanley Adams, Alex Nicol, John Barrymore Jr.


The Clonus Horror
This 1979 sci-fi/horror creeper from Robert S. Fiveson stars Peter Graves as a U.S. Presidential candidate who heads a secret project to clone top government officials and harvest their duplicates so that they can live longer lives. Tim Donnelly stars as an escapee from the project who returns to Clonus in an effort to stop the horrors inside. Immortalized on Mystery Science Theatre 3000, Clonus is a cult classic of low-budget sci-fi horror. 1979, USA, 90 minutes.
Myrl A. Schreibman IN PERSON, schedule permitting, to discuss the film!
written, directed & produced by Robert S. Fiveson, written & produced by Myrl A. Schreibman, starring Tim Donnelly, Paulette Breen, Dick Sargent, Keenan Wynn, David Hooks, Peter Graves.


CONVICTION, 2010, Fox Searchlight, 107 min. Dir. Tony Goldwyn. Hilary Swank plays Betty Ann Waters, a working mother who puts herself through law school in an attempt to represent her brother (Sam Rockwell), who has been wrongly convicted of murder. Rockwell is at once captivating and heart-wrenching as a man on the brink of despair, having exhausted all his appeals with different public defenders. Discussion following with actor Sam Rockwell. No one will be admitted to this screening without a ticket to BOX OF MOONLIGHT.


COOLEY HIGH
(1975) Directed by Michael Schultz
Four high school friends in the Class of '64 try to survive their senior year and graduate from an inner city high school in Chicago, back when the city was racially segregated, but also featured a large African-American middle class. At moments sweet and funny, this was also a serious attempt to portray African American life in terms less shrill than Blaxploitation allowed. Princeton-educated black director Michael Schultz consciously constructs a low-budget African American version of American Graffiti, financed by American International Pictures that took in millions, despite its bleaker vision. The film featured a cast of mostly amateurs, some of whom, like Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs went on to long Hollywood careers.
American International Pictures. Producer: Steve Krantz. Screenplay: Eric Monte. Cinematographer: Paul Vombrack. Cast: Glynn Turman, Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs, Garrett Morris, Cynthia Davis. 35mm, 107 min. 


COTTON COMES TO HARLEM
(1970) Directed by Ossie Davis
Ossie Davis marked his directorial debut with an adaptation of Chester Himes' Harlem detective novel. New York City police detectives "Grave Digger" Jones and "Coffin" Ed Johnson investigate an opportunistic preacher they suspect is exploiting the community with a back-to-Africa scheme. Combining action, drama, humor and satire, Cotton Comes to Harlem features a varied cast of characters, elaborate chase scenes and vivid on-location shooting.
United Artists. Based on a novel by Chester Himes. Producer: Samuel Goldwyn Jr.. Screenplay: Ossie Davis, Arnold Perl. Cinematographer: Gerald Hirschfeld. Cast: Godfrey Cambridge, Raymond St. Jacques, Calvin Lockhart, Judy Pace, Redd Foxx. 35mm, 97 min. 


THE CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF
(from IMDB)
In Spain, Leon is born on Christmas day to a mute servant girl who was raped by a beggar. His mother dies giving birth and he is looked after by Don Alfredo. As a child Leon becomes a werewolf after having been taken hunting. As a young man, he works in a wine cellar and falls in love with the owner's daughter Cristina. One full moon, he again turns into a werewolf and terrifies the town.  1961, UK, 91 minutes. Directed by Terence Fisher, starring Clifford Evans, Oliver Reed, Yvonne Romain, Catherine Feller, Anthony Dawson.


Deep Red
Dario Argento fans love arguing over whether this or Suspiria is his best film, but there’s a good case to be made that this isn’t just his finest achievement but also the best giallo ever made, period. David Hemmings (in one of his best roles) plays an English pianist who witnesses the brutal murder of his psychic neighbor and is drawn into a nightmarish web of clues involving grisly children’s drawings, a nasty Christmas double homicide from the past, a ghoulish lullaby, and a rising body count (including one standout scene swiped by John Carpenter for Halloween). Driven by Goblin’s ferocious and legendary rock score, this all-time classic features some of the scariest images Argento ever put on film (brace yourself for the dummy!) and works like gangbusters with an audience on the big screen; don’t even think of missing this one, proudly presented here in its 30-minutes-longer, richer uncut Italian version in a very rare 35mm screening.
Dir. Dario Argento, 1975, 35mm, 126 min.


Demon Lover Diary
Young cameraman Jeff Kreines found himself in the center of a moviemaking maelstrom in 1975, when he was hired by brash, self-obsessed first-time filmmakers Donald Jackson and Jerry Younkins to serve on their first chaotic venture into production: the no-budget, regional trash-horror juggernaut Demon Lover (aka The Devil Master). Krienes' filmmaker girlfriend Joel DeMott had the right instinct to point her own 16mm camera on the whole tension-laden tumultuous affair -- and the legendary Demon Lover Diary was the result. With a shaggy older-brother nod to Chris Smith’s unforgettable American Movie, this crude and biting saga chronicles fifteen days in the lives of Demon Lover’s cast and crew: their passions, their frailties, and ultimately, their frightening capability for emotionally savaging each other. With only a brief theatrical run in 1980 and no home video release, Demon Lover Diary stands as one of the most significant "lost" documentaries; its power lies not only within its novelty (an unrivaled peek into the making of an ultra-obscure 1970s trash film,) but also with its blunt, unfiltered snapshot of human obsession. Prepare to be haunted by this glorious hybrid of the Maysles at their most affecting and gutter-horror at its most sublime.
"Don and Jerry, factory workers who grew up on comic books and B-movies, are fulfilling a lifetime dream: they’re producing their own low-budget horror movie. Jeff and Joel, lovers and cinema-verité filmmakers, and a friend of theirs named Mark have come out to Michigan to help the dream come true: they’re shooting The Demon Lover for Don and Jerry. Two weeks after production starts, Jeff and Joel and Mark are fleeing Michigan — bullets ricocheting off the car -- lives and a complete record of the events in jeopardy. The subject of my film isn’t just the ups-and-downs of making a horror movie. It’s about cultural snobbery, the disintegration of friendship, puppy love, violence, boredom, money -- a diary about encountering the Midwest when you’re from someplace else.
A note: I wouldn’t want anyone to think the horror movie wasn’t Serious Business. After all, Don and Jerry’s method of financing it is a model for all filmmakers. Don mortgaged his furniture and car — which netted $3000 -- and Jerry cut off his finger in an industrial “accident.” The finger netted $8000. Jerry’s only regret was that if he’d waited a year, he would have gotten $15,000 for it." -- Joel DeMott
Dir. Joel DeMott, 1980, 16mm, 90 min.


The Devil in the Flesh
1987/color/114 min.  | Scr: Enrico Palandri, Ennio De Concini, Marco Bellocchio; dir: Marco Bellocchio; w/ Maruschka Detmers, Federico Pitzalis, Anita Laurenzi
"Raymond Radiguet began his masterpiece—the romantic novel Le Diable au Corps—when he was 17 or 18 and published it in 1923, the year he died of typhoid fever at the age of 20. Helped no doubt by Radiguet's liaison with Jean Cocteau, Le Diable au Corps was an instant success. It's also been an enduring one, at least in France: a classic to be discovered by youthful readers with the same kind of excitement that American college students come upon Ernest Hemingway, J. D. Salinger and Kurt Vonnegut. Its World War I story, about the passionate affair of an adolescent boy and an older woman married to a French soldier at the front, is no longer as shocking as it once was.  However, its cynicism (early critics found it unpatriotic) continues to speak to successive generations of restless young people at odds with inherited tradition. In 1947, Claude Autant-Lara directed the definitive film version (starring newcomer Gérard Philipe), but Marco Bellocchio has made no attempt to adapt the Radiguet original. Instead, he uses it loosely, more or less as inspiration for a contemporary romantic drama in which he once again explores his favorite themes- family relationships and the individual's relationship to the society that represses him. Photographed in bright, shiny, primary colors, which (intentionally, I suspect) give everything, even the characters, the look of plastic, it is also more studiously erotic than anything Radiguet (or Autant-Lara) would have dared. "—Vincent Canby, The New York Times 


The Devil's Claim
Tall. Stoic. Devilishly handsome, with a smoldering, unforgettable stare. A Zen master as well as a master thespian, producer, director, novelist and martial arts practitioner, the Japanese-born Sessue Hayakawa was one of the most exceptional leading men to grace the silent screen, forging ahead with his own wildly successful production company (Haworth Pictures) in the late 1910s after being offered one too many typecast “exotic villain” roles. In The Devil’s Claim, produced at Haworth and part of the final batch of American films he made before emigrating to another successful film career in Europe, Sessue plays the dual role of Akbar Khan, an Indian novelist who falls for a young Colleen Moore, and “Hassa”, the hero in Akbar’s series of adventure tales featuring an underground cult world of Satanic worship. In addition to the pleasures of its rip-roaring narrative, The Devil’s Claim is a prime example of Hayakawa’s unique Zen-influenced acting technique, in which the practice of muga (an “absence of doing”) brings about a complete antithesis of the broadly theatrical gestures and over-emoting so common to many of the era’s performers.
Dir. Charles Swickard, 1920, 35mm, 70 min. (Restored 35mm print courtesy of the George Eastman House; restoration funded by AFI/The Film Foundation) 


The Diabolical Dr. Cinefamily's Horrifying Anthology Of Horror Anthologies
(feat. Night Train To Terror & Creepshow)
Most movie all-nighters have five movies, six movies, tops -- that means, at most, maybe half a dozen bloody finales, three or four twist endings, and a cool premise or two. That’s nothing. How about SIXTEEN different horror stories, one after another? You don’t like one? Wait half an hour, it’s gone! They said it couldn’t be done, but we’ve found a way: our dark secret is the “omnibus” movie, in which several short films (often with different casts and directors) are bundled under one umbrella. The Diabolical Dr. Cinefamily is gonna stitch together several of these anthology films, exhibiting classic five-for-one winners (like Creepshow) in their entirety or just grabbing a favorite single short from another, to create one gruesome, mammoth cinematic centipede of horror films! And to kick off the night, we promise a rare 35mm screening of --  Night Train To Terror.
What would happen if God and the Devil decided the fate of mankind while on a train ride? This is a question that has plagued us for eons, a question that the producers of 1985's horror anthology Night Train To Terror felt compelled to answer. Well, OK, maybe what they felt compelled to do was take three trashy, unreleasable horror films they collectively owned, stitch ‘em together haphazardly and re-release them as an anthology. The result is a barely comprehensible jumble of scenes and story threads that ends up feeling like an experimental piece filtered through an ‘80s horror cheese sensibility. MTV-reject rock bands, occult Nazis, stop-motion giant insects, Cameron Mitchell -- you just never know what this crazy movie is going to throw at you next. It’s that rare blend of the inexplicable and the highly entertaining. This will likely NEVER screen again in 35mm in the U.S., so make sure you catch it while you have the chance!


DIARY OF A MAD HOUSEWIFE, 1970, Universal, 103 min. Director Frank Perry’s brilliant comedy-drama satirizes the psychological rat race of a middle class married couple in New York City, circa 1970. Carrie Snodgress’ Oscar-nominated performance as abusive Richard Benjamin’s isolated wife is one of the standout portrayals of the New Hollywood. As Snodgress’ marriage continues to disintegrate, she takes a lover (Frank Langella) to fill up the emotional vacuum. Before long, she finds that this solution is no solution at all. Frank Perry’s spouse and frequent writing collaborator, Eleanor, adapts the best-selling novel by Sue Kaufman. Be sure to keep your eyes peeled for Alice Cooper’s performance in a swinging party scene. "… great movie making." - Roger Greenspun, The New York Times


Dirty Pictures
Leave it to Italian genre king Umberto Lenzi to find the worm in the big juicy apple of ‘70s free love and permissiveness. Supposedly Lenzi didn’t really want to make this one a giallo (and this film certainly stretches the definition to its limits), but rather a countercultural film along the lines of Easy Rider -- legend has it that producer Carlo Ponti strong-armed him into completing the “trilogy” that also included the 1967 film Paranoia, and the 1969 film Orgasmo (which later was retitled Paranoia in the States, and is the Paranoia we’re showing earlier in the evening). The results are great, however you slice it. Like all the best Lenzi films, Dirty Pictures is full-blooded in both its sleaze and cinematic invention. With cinematographer Alfio Contini (The Night Porter) behind the camera, Lenzi downplays explicit sexuality in favor of gialloesque stalkery, and stars Irene Papas and the smokin’ Ornella Muti keep things steamy. As with Paranoia, Dirty Pictures saves the best for last, sucker-punching the audience with a deliciously pessimistic coup de grace.
Dir. Umberto Lenzi, 1971, 35mm, 90 min. 


DR. PHIBES RISES AGAIN
(from IMDB)
The moon rises at a predestined angle and awakens the sleeping Dr. Phibes three years later. To his dismay, he finds his house has been demolished and his papyrus scrolls stolen, the scrolls he needs to find the Pharoah's Tomb in Egypt, where the River of Life flows. After identifying the source of the papyrus theft, he packs and leaves for Egypt with his assistant Vulnavia, still intent upon awakening his dead wife Victoria. The parties responsible for the theft of Phibes' scrolls suffer an attrition problem as Inspector Trout chases him across the world. 1972, UK / USA, 89 minutes. Winner Best Director Sitges International Film Festival. Directed by Robert Fuest, starring Vincent Price, Robert Quarry, Peter Cushing, Valli Kemp, Peter Jeffrey, Fiona Lewis.


DR. TERROR’S HOUSE OF HORRORS, 1965, 98 min. Dir. Freddie Francis. This was the first in Amicus’ long-lived series of horror anthologies and is certainly among the best, with Peter Cushing starring as the mysterious doctor who tells five men’s bizarre fortunes on a nocturnal train trip. With Christopher Lee, Michael Gough and a very young Donald Sutherland.


Dollar Babies Mini-Film Fest
After the breakout success of his first few novels, Stephen King did a radical and awesome thing. As King states in his foreward to the published screenplay of The Shawshank Redemption: "Around 1977 or so, when I started having some popular success, I saw a way to give back a little of the joy the movies had given me... I established a policy which still holds today. I will grant any student filmmaker the right to make a movie out of any short story I have written (not the novels, that would be ridiculous), so long as the film rights are still mine to assign. I ask them to sign a paper promising that no resulting film will be exhibited commercially without approval, and that they send me a videotape of the finished work. For this one-time right I ask a dollar. I have made the dollar-deal, as I call it, over my accountant's moans and head-clutching protests sixteen or seventeen times as of this writing [1996] -- I'd look at the films -- then put them up on a shelf I had marked 'Dollar Babies.'"
The results have been dozens and dozens of adaptations, from the most charmingly amateurish of home movies to ambitious attempts by future big-name directors (Frank Darabont’s first Stephen King adaptation was a “Dollar Baby”). It’s a chance to see the the other version of Children of the Corn or The Lawnmower Man, and to see if you think the student filmmaker with a 16mm Bolex did it better than Hollywood!
SATURDAY NIGHT LINEUP: The Boogeyman (1980), Disciples of the Crow, Last Rung on the Ladder, Lawnmower Man, Paranoid: A Chant; Saturday's night of films will conclude with a 35mm screening of feature-length "dollar baby" Riding The Bullet (w/ director Mick Garris in person!).
SUNDAY AFTERNOON LINEUP: Home Delivery, Rainy Season, My Pretty Pony, The Boogeyman (2010), Luckey Quarter, The Man Who Loved Flowers, Grey Matter, Cain Rose Up, Flowers for Norma; Sunday's afternoon of films will conclude with a screening of the feature-length "dollar baby" Everything's Eventual, directed by J.P. Scott!


DON'T LOOK IN THE BASEMENT
(from IMDB)
Nurse Charlotte Beale arrives at the isolated Stephens Sanitarium to work, only to learn that Dr. Stephens was murdered by one of the patients and his successor, Dr. Geraldine Masters, is not very eager to take on new staff. Charlotte finds her job maddeningly hard as the patients torment and harass her at every turn... AKA The Forgotten and Death Ward #13.  Dir. S.F. Brownrigg, 1973, 89 mins.


Don't Panic!
Ouija boards! Boozed-up moms! A grown man in cartoon pajamas! In Don't Panic, goofball cinema at its most exquisite, strange things happen to a young man. Most of it involves an Ouija board, some gore, and a Satanic (sort of) force. The young man fights evil, falls in love and wears some ultra-cool bedclothes. He also sings the theme song. This film needs to be seen with a crowd, so you have someone you trust at your side to turn to and mutter "WTF?!" to when necessary -- probably every three minutes. If you don’t have fun during Don’t Panic, maybe you need to talk to a Religious Leader of your choice about why there’s no more fun in your life. Just, whatever you do, don’t -- don’t -- oh, forget about it. Shown from a rare 35mm print!
Dir. Rubén Galindo Jr., 1988, 35mm, 90 min.


ERIE
Erie consists of single-take, 16mm black-and-white sequences filmed in and around communities near Lake Erie, including Niagara Falls, Buffalo, Cleveland and Mansfield, Ohio. The scenes relate to African American migration from the South to the North, contemporary conditions, realities affecting workers and factories in the automobile industry, theater, and famous art objects. “With a sense of place and historical research, my films combine scripted and documentary elements with rich elements of formalism. The subject matter is the gestures or tasks dictated by the socio-economic, physical, or weather conditions affecting the lives of working class African Americans and others of African descent.” Everson is an internationally acclaimed photographer and filmmaker and has made four feature-length and 70 short films. His work has screened at the Centre Pompidou, The Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Studio Museum in Harlem, Whitechapel Gallery, and at other museums and festivals throughout the world.
“[Everson] has carved a place for himself outside both the typical expectations of documentary and the conventions of representational fiction.” –Artforum
In person: Kevin Jerome Everson


THE EVIL
(from IMDB)
A psychologist buys an old mansion at a bargain price and asks a colleague and his students to help him fix it up. Things are fine until a cross is removed from a stone door in the basement and Satan himself starts wreaking havok on each person one by one. Their only hope of ever leaving alive or dead is the ghostly resident that built the house.  AKA House Of Evil.  Dir. Gus Trikonis, 1978, 89 mins.


Eyeball
With its abundance of empty-headed victims and suspects, thumping, cheeky Bruno Nicolai score, and trendy lesbi-antics, Eyeball is a tasty slice of giallo provolone for any fan of cheese, Italian style. Playing like an insane mash-up of Ten Little Indians and If It’s Tuesday, This Must be Belgium, this Italian-Spanish co-production follows a progressively shrinking busload of tourists through sunny Barcelona as a red-gloved killer with a penchant for eyeball-plucking takes their lives and their left eyes. On its own terms, this ludicrously slash-happy outing makes for energetic and eye-popping viewing, a poorly dubbed treat for fans of Eurotrash at its trashiest.
Dir. Umberto Lenzi, 1975, 35mm, 91 min. 


Films by Cameron Jamie
Cameron Jamie makes enigmatic and captivating documentary films exploring American and European vernacular cultures and their rituals. For this special event, we will be screening Jamie’s trilogy of films BB (1998–2000), Spook House (2002–2003) and Kranky Klaus (2002–2003), along with his latest film (making its American debut and Los Angeles premiere), Massage the History (2007–2009). These films all explore the idea of the home: from haunted houses, to suburban backyards, to domestic holiday rituals, to living room dancing. Together the four films create a hallucinatory and poetic vision of what goes on behind closed doors and also what is right in front of our eyes that we don’t seem to acknowledge.


FRANKENSTEIN MUST BE DESTROYED
Baron Frankenstein (Peter Cushing) is at it again, working on illegal medical experiments. This time he teams up with Karl Holst (Simon Ward), a young doctor, and his fiancee, Anna (Veronica Carlson), as they kidnap the mentally ill Dr. Brandt (George Pravda) to perform the first brain transplant. Terence Fisher---Great Britain---1969---101 mins. 


FROM A WHISPER TO A SCREAM (aka THE OFFSPRING), 1987, Moviestore, 99 min. Dir. Jeff Burr. Spine-tingling master Vincent Price is Julian White, an esteemed historian in a small Tennessee town who, after the execution of his murderer niece, relays bone-chilling stories from the town's past to a local reporter. Literal undying love, a creepy recluse hermit and a house full of malicious orphans all make up the bizarre, Southern Gothic history lesson White craftily preaches! Screenplay by Courtney Joyner, Darin Scott and Jeff Burr. With Clu Gulager, Cameron Mitchell, Rosalind Cash, Susan Tyrell, Angelo Rossitto, Martine Beswicke, Terry Kiser and Lawrence Tierney. "It has a mood throughout of foul things squirming toward the light." - Michael Wilmington, Los Angeles Times.  Discussion between films with Rusty Cundieff, Darin Scott, Clu Gulager, C. Courtney Joyner and others to be announced!


GANJA & HESS
(1973) Directed by Bill Gunn
Bill Gunn wrote and directed this complexly layered, highly allegorical and lusciously photographed iteration of vampire mythology. Lauded at the 1973 Cannes Film Festival, Ganja & Hess dramatizes the psychology of addiction and engages with the tensions between European and African diasporic culture and religion, all while exploring "otherness" in its myriad forms. This not-to-be-missed experience is one of the masterpieces of American art cinema.
IN PERSON: Marlene Clark.
Producer: Chiz Schultz. Screenplay: Bill Gunn. Cinematographer: James E. Hinton. Cast: Marlene Clark, Duane Jones, Bill Gunn, Sam Waymon, Leonard Jackson. 35mm, 113 min. 


THE GATES OF HELL
(from IMDB)
In the small New England town of Dunwich, a priest commits suicide by hanging himself in the church cemetery which somehow opens the gates of hell allowing the dead to rise. Peter, a New York City reporter, teams up with a young psychic, named Mary, to travel to the town where they team up with another couple, psychiatrist Jerry and patient Sandra, to find a way to close the gates before All Saints Day or the dead all over the world will rise up and kill the living.  AKA City Of The Living Dead.  Dir. Lucio Fulci, 1980, 93 mins.


THE GENESIS OF AN ART: FILM TO 1908, approx 90 min. From the Lumiere Brothers' grand views of old New York to Georges Melies' fantastic "A Trip to the Moon," we will enjoy some of the wittiest, most beautiful and thought-provoking primitives, including early experiments in filmic storytelling, from Porter to Pathe, preserved on amazing 8mm prints.


GERRYMANDERING
(2010) Directed by Jeff Reichert
In recent years America has seen a surge in "gerrymandering," the re-drawing of electoral boundaries to influence elections. Jeff Reichert's penetrating documentary explores how this tool disenfranchises communities and consolidates partisan power. Illuminating graphics and animation, along with testimony by numerous experts (notably California governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger) round out this exposé of one of the most insidious forces in politics.
HDcam, 81 min.
IN PERSON: Director Jeff Reichert and Former Governor Gray Davis. 


GET LOW
Robert Duvall is as great as ever in this surprisingly light reworking of an allegedly true Appalachian tale dating back to the 1930s. He plays Felix Bush, an elderly loner who comes out of hiding to plan (and attend!) his own funeral. He entrusts the festivities to an undertaker (Bill Murray), but the arrival of an old flame (Sissy Spacek) changes the proceedings. With Lucas Black and Bill Cobbs. Aaron Schneider---USA---2009---103 mins.  Robert Duvall in person!


THE GIANT CLAW
(from IMDB)
When electronics engineer Mitch MacAfee spots a UFO as "big as a battleship" from his plane, the Air Force scrambles planes to investigate. However, nothing shows up on radar, and one of the jets is lost during the action. MacAfee is regarded as a dangerous crackpot until other incidents and disappearances convince the authorities that the threat is real. Some believe it is a French-Canadian folk legend come to life, but it turns out to be an extraterrestrial giant bird composed of anti-matter whose disregard for human life and architecture threatens the world.  Dir. Fred F. Sears, 1957, 75 mins.


GONE WITH THE POPE, 1976, Grindhouse Releasing, 83 min. Writer-director-producer Duke Mitchell stars as Paul, a criminal with an unholy scheme: to kidnap the pope and charge "a dollar from every Catholic in the world" as ransom. This deliriously entertaining saga was shot in 1976 but remained unfinished until 2009. Now fully realized in 35mm!


GORDON'S WAR
(1973) Directed by Ossie Davis
Ossie Davis directs this engaging and politically charged tale of a Vietnam vet who returns to his Harlem home to find it overrun with drugs and corruption. Using combat tactics he learned in the army, he joins forces with other veterans to fight an inner-city war on drugs. Gordon's War offers a social critique of systematic urban disenfranchisement in a highly dramatic and poignant film.
20th Century Fox Film Corp.. Producer: Robert L. Schaffel. Screenplay: Howard Friedlander, Ed Spielman. Cinematographer: Victor J. Kemper. Cast: Paul Winfield, Carl Lee, David Downing. 35mm, 90 min. 


Gothic
No one knew what to expect when cinematic bad boy Ken Russell tackled his first bona fide horror film in 1986, and the result, Gothic, shocked more than a few unprepared viewers. The late Natasha Richardson became an instant star in the making with her harrowing turn as Mary Shelley, who spends a fateful weekend in 1816 with Lord Byron (Gabriel Byrne) and her poet lover Percy (Julian Sands) -- a short span of time that would inspire her to write "Frankenstein". Along with her unstable cousin and the repressed, gay Dr. Polidori, they each agree to come up with a scary story and descend into a night filled with monsters, hallucinations, drug use, masturbatory stigmata, eyeballs appearing in female breasts, and a pounding score by ‘80s synth-pop god Thomas Dolby! The terrible DVD of Gothic currently in circulation doesn’t even begin to convey the visual richness of this unique, fascinating film, shown here in 35mm for maximum freak-out effect.
Dir. Ken Russell, 1986, 35mm, 87 min. 


Here: A Survey of Films and Videos by Vincent Grenier
Vincent Grenier in person!
Vincent Grenier is a pioneering North American film-and-video artist who has left his distinctive mark on the San Francisco, Montreal and New York avant-gardes. Grenier’s work evinces a keen photographic eye and a subtle sense of how images combine to create feeling. With influences as disparate as Eastern painting, Dryer’s Jeanne d’Arc and Ernie Gehr, Grenier has charged his cinema with an electric self-reflexivity whose energy does not preclude moments of absolute clarity and even meditative stillness. The evening will range widely in terms of technique, form and format, but each work achieves a unique poetry that can be at once tough, tenuous and tender.  – Madison Brookshire


Homicidal
With the murderous mood set, we then get positively Homicidal with William Castle's fevered riff on Psycho that ups the Hitchcock's ante every chance it gets. The enigmatic Jean Arless will leave an almost as much of an impression on the audience as she does on her victims in this film that is so intense and terrifying that we will take a “Fright Break” before the last reel in order to give those too scared to continue a chance to collect a refund before the final mindblowing twist is untwisted. Those brave enough to stay out of Coward's Corner will have bragging rights that they doubled up on the crazy and lived to tell the tale -- just so long as they don't tell the secret!
Dir. William Castle, 1961, 35mm, 87 min. 


House On Haunted Hill
Halloween is the best night of the year to spend a night in a good, old-fashioned haunted house, and this All Hallows’ Eve, Vincent Price invites five strangers and 185 members of the Cinefamily to spend the night in House on Haunted Hill. This is the house that no kid has ever dared to enter. So far the ghosts have murdered only seven people -- won't you come and make it eight? While we can't promise you $10,000 for surviving the night, we can offer a great time and a chance to see one of Castle's greatest innovative screen processes, “Emergo!”, live and in person! William Castle's daughter, Terry Castle, will be here in person to introduce the films, and talk about her father's career in the fright business!
Dir. William Castle, 1959, 35mm, 75 min. 


THE HUMAN TORNADO
(1976) Directed by Cliff Roquemore
Rudy Ray Moore stars as Dolemite, a pimp who is overweight, slow-moving, rhyming and the image of uncool, yet seems to be blissfully ignorant of these deficits. In this hugely successful sequel to Dolemite (1975), our hero helps his friend Queen Bee save her night club from a group of white Mafia types; but forget the silly plot, which is as ludicrous as the hero's outrageous pimpwear, i.e. no more than a series of set pieces that allow the hero to do his thing. Watch instead Rudy Ray Moore, a true African American original, the godfather of rap, part toaster, part trickster, a womanizer with a paunch, a Kung Fu fighter with two left feet.
Producer: Rudy Ray Moore. Screenplay: Jerry Jones. Cinematographer: Fred Conde, Bob Wilson. Cast: Rudy Ray Moore, Lady Reed, Jimmy Lynch, Howard Jackson, Gloria Delaney. 35mm, 98 min. 


IDIOTS AND ANGELS
Angel is a selfish, abusive, morally bankrupt man who hangs out as his local bar, berating the other patrons. One day, Angel mysteriously wakes up with a pair of wings on his back. The wings make him do good deeds, contrary to his nature. He desperately tries to rid himself of the good wings, but eventually finds himself fighting those who view the wings as their ticket to fame and fortune.  Dir. Bill Plympton, 2008, 78 mins.  BILL PLYMPTON IN PERSON!


Inspector Bellamy
Two of the giants of French cinema, Claude Chabrol and Gerard Depardieu, team up for the only time for the the director’s 50th and final feature film, a wry thriller about a police commissioner trying to balance professional instinct with family duty. Once again, Paul Bellamy (Depardieu) and his wife are spending their vacation at her family home in a quiet town. But just as they’re settling into their reassuringly predictable h...oliday routine, his perennially troubled younger brother shows up, joined by a mysterious stranger seeking Bellamy’s protection. Post-screening discussion of Chabrol’s life and legacy with Bill Krohn, Christa Fuller and Janet Bergstrom Official Selection: Berlin Film Festival; AFI Festival; SXSW Film Festival "A diabolically witty homage to the mystery writer Georges Simenon." – Stephen Holden, THE NEW YORK TIMES "An exquisite slice of crime." – Olaf Moller, FILM COMMENT "A playful dramatic murder mystery. Depardieu gives his most pleasing performance in some years." – Mike Goodridge, SCREEN INTERNATIONAL Director: Claude Chabrol An IFC Films release In French with English subtitles 35mm, 110 minutes 


IRMA VEP, 1996, Zeitgeist Films, 96 min. Dir. Olivier Assayas. "[A] dark, brittle…comedy about a film company remaking Feuillade’s silent serial LES VAMPIRES…A once prestigious French director (Jean-Pierre Léaud) casts Hong Kong star Maggie Cheung (playing herself) as villainess Irma Vep, and his sexual infatuation with her is matched by that of the costume designer who escorts her around Paris. The feverish pace of the shooting seems to unleash bad vibes as well as desire, and Assayas follows the delirium as if he were at the center of a hurricane." – Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader. In French with English subtitles.  Discussion between films with Olivier Assayas.


THE KID
"But it was in The Kid that Chaplin seemed to realize, at last, precisely what was required." - Walter Kerr, The Silent Clowns
In this milestone early Chaplin feature, the Tramp adopts an abandoned toddler (Jackie Coogan) whom he discovers in an alley, and raises him to become his sidekick in a variety of schemes and cons. Chaplin's first feature-length directorial effort, The Kid is a moving and hilarious portrait of paternal love, or as the film's first intertitle says, "A picture with a smile, and perhaps a tear..." As well, it's the landmark work of genius in which Charlie the jester metamorphasized into Charlie the full-blooded actor, whose iconic dignity in the face of comic adversity made him one of our greatest cinematic treasures. Dir. Charles Chaplin, 1921, 35mm, 68 min.


Lair of the White Worm
First up, Russell tackles an adaptation of Bram Stoker’s bizarre, seemingly unfilmable story of a worm cult terrorizing the British countryside, coming up with an outrageous, campy cult classic that delivers so much entertainment value per minute it’ll make your head spin. Slinky Amanda Donohoe stars as the high priestess of a pagan god who’s risen again to claim fresh victims, with a foppish, very young Hugh Grant leading the attack against her as the descendant of her ancient rival. You also get impaled nuns, Jesus being attacked by a giant serpent, a very unlucky boy scout, a lesbian catfight on a plane, random Citizen Kane jokes, more phallic imagery than you can shake your stick at, and nighttime soap queen Catherine Oxenberg dangling over a giant pit in her underwear! What’s not to love?
Dir. Ken Russell, 1988, 35mm, 93 min. 


Lewis Klahr: Dreaming Over the Flux of Things Past
“Visually seductive stories... Klahr gets the peculiar power of American mass culture exactly right.”–Chicago Reader
Prolix Satori, USA, 2008-10, 77.5 minutes, digital video
Master collagist Lewis Klahr returns to REDCAT with a new series, Prolix Satori. A departure for him, the series is both open-ended and ongoing, with a variety of thematic focuses, and will include a combination of very short works (under a minute) and feature-length films. It will also function as an umbrella for various sub-series. This program offers seven digital films from Prolix Satori, including five pieces from “The Couplets”: Wednesday Morning Two A.M. (2009, 6:30 min.), Sugar Slim Says (2010, 7 min., with music by Mark Anthony Thompson performed by Chocolate Genius), Nimbus Smile (2009, 8:30 min.), Nimbus Seeds (2009, 8:30 min.), and Cumulonimbus (2010, 9:30 min.). “The Couplets” are generally structured around the pairing of pop melodies and the theme of romantic love as expressed in the songs’ lyrics. Also screening: False Aging (2008, 15 min.) and Lethe (2009, 23 min.).  In person: Lewis Klahr


LONESOME
(1929) Directed by Paul Fejos
Lonesome is one of those late silents that was re-released with talking sequences in the transition period to sound. Today it is considered a masterpiece for its simple story, breath-taking cinematography and stencil color. Fejos was a true independent who soon returned to Europe where he became an anthropologist, but with this film he left his mark.
Universal Pictures. Screenplay: Edward T. Lowe Jr., Mann Page, Tom Reed. Cinematographer: Gilbert Warrenton. Cast: Barbara Kent, Glenn Tryon, Fay Holderness, Andy Devine. 35mm, 69 min.
IN PERSON: Caroline Frick, Senior Curator, George Eastman House.  


Macabre
Macabre is a taut little race-the-clock picture about a kidnapped doctor's daughter and the his panicked attempts to save her! This was Castle’s first foray into horror (though he’d made some fine noir thrillers), and there’s the extra pleasure of the ever-jovial Jim Backus (Mr. Howell from “Gilligan’s Island”, and the voice of Mr. Magoo) sliming it up in a script by regular Castle pen-man Robb White. And don't worry about the welfare of the loved ones you may have to leave at home this night because, just as Castle did back in 1958, each and every member of the audience for this show will be issued a certificate for a $1,000 life insurance policy -- from Lloyd's of London! -- to cover anyone who dies of fright during the screening.
Dir. William Castle, 1958, 35mm, 72 min.


MIDNIGHT
Claudette Colbert, Don Ameche, and John Barrymore star in this delightful comedy written by Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett. Colbert is a gold-digger unsatisfied with her cabbie boyfriend (Ameche). To her delight, a French aristocrat asks her to pose as a Hungarian Countess in order to distract his wife's latest love interest. Mitchell Leisen---USA---1939---94 mins.


MIRACLE MILE
Casey’s pick, Miracle Mile, has haunted more than one Cinefamily staff member with its intense and altogether familiar telling of its end-of-the-world scenario -- especially since it takes place right down the street, at the corner of Wilshire and Fairfax! Casey says: “Miracle Mile is my absolute favorite 'guy running around the city all night trying to figure it all out' movie. Drenched in neon paranoia with an ever-present pulsating score by Tangerine Dream, Miracle Mile  both terrified me and enthralled me as a kid living under the very real threat of Nuclear War. What you think is a quirky love story immediately turns into a mad journey of survival against some of the most surreal Los Angeles imagery, all sparked by perhaps the most chilling phone call in cinema history. Anthony Edwards is perfect as the protagonist, left wondering what is real and what is not, all the while chasing and warning every one he can of the possible impending doom. Bleak and unsettling, Miracle Mile will leave you stunned and breathless by the end."
Dir. Steve de Jarnatt, 1988, 35mm, 87 min.  


Mr. Sardonicus
Those who survive the treacherous waters of Macabre are then invited to spend an evening with Mr. Sardonicus, a man whose face has become monstrous after a great trauma, and the strain to find a cure has curdled his soul to match his hideous visage. Castle said that this film was his favorite to make and it's easy to tell why: from the gothic trappings to the wild makeup effects, there are few films that mix fun and fright in such a weird way. And just to give it that Castle touch, Mr. Sardonicus is the only film to feature the Punishment Poll. Long before technology allowed us to advance our favorite new pop music sensation to the next round through text messaging, Castle developed a process by which the audience could choose the fate of the villain -- which we’ll utilize this evening. How will you judge Mr. Sardonicus?
Dir. William Castle, 1961, 35mm, 89 min.


MODERN TIMES
Charlie Chaplin's silent homage to the human spirit, in which Chaplin is the victim of industrial boom. He plays a factory worker gone looney by the assembly line, who falls in love with a down-and-out young lady and tries through various and eccentric means to find a bit of financial peace. A great comedy, and a great film.  Charles Chaplin---USA---1936---87 mins. 


The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers
Directed and produced by Judith Ehrlich, Rick Goldsmith
In 1971, Daniel Ellsberg, a leading Vietnam War strategist, leaks 7,000 pages of top-secret documents to The New York Times, a daring act of conscience that leads directly to Watergate, President Nixon’s resignation and the end of the Vietnam War. 35mm. 94 mins.
Academy Award nominee: Documentary Feature


The Nanny
1999/color/106 min. | Scr: Daniela Ceselli, Marco Bellocchio; dir: Marco Bellocchio; w/ Fabrizio Bentivoglio, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, Maya Sansa
A Pirandello adaptation set in pre-World War I Rome, The Nanny examines the subject of motherhood, a theme that runs throughout Bellocchio's work. A fraught relationship develops when a stern psychiatrist and his estranged wife hire a wet nurse to care for their new-born child. The matriarch is dejected; she is incapable of bonding with her baby, even less feed it. But the illiterate, country girl who's usurped her has abandoned her own infant son in order to take the job. All around them the bourgeois order of Rome is collapsing amid proletarian riots, red flags and Socialist strikes. "This time Bellocchio is not encumbered by auto-biographical concerns and is free to take advantage of more opportunities. In a dramatic birth scene, the 'mother figure' is dismantled into a series of characters, of different gender and social class. Although inspired by the text of Luigi Pirandello, The Nanny is not particularly Pirandellian. The Sicilian writer is more cynical and his short story features a greater dose of evil and pessimism. Bellocchio's characters have been softened through greater complexity; there is more room given to the contrast between the world of men and women, wealth and poverty, origins and culture. Non-Italians will also enjoy the brilliance with which Bellocchio reveal aspects of Sicilian culture that have heretofore remained mysterious."—Alessandro Bruno 


A Night To Dismember
This Doris Wishman gorefest isn’t so much an exercise in necessity as it is a boon to all mankind! After a peeved lab worker destroyed forty percent of her original negative, Doris was forced to compensate, and A Night To Dismember was born. ‘80s porn star Samantha Fox returns home after a stint in a mental institution, and from there, erratic violence and dreamy visuals bounce around 4-track-cassette-tape aesthetics, while the docu-styled lens of a spastic Super-8 camera whirs on. Hairstyles change constantly. Soundtrack cues comprised of Jazzercise schlock, public domain spooks, and wailing rock overlap in triplicate. Dialogue and sound effects are supplied by Doris's mouth, crackling vinyl, and gloriously hideous post-dubbing -- and there's even some psychedelic sex and random nudity! A Night To Dismember is the bizarro, out-to-lunch experience that trumps ‘most any other in its genre -- and it just might change your life. Projected from Doris Wishman's personal Beta-SP master!
Dir. Doris Wishman, 1983, digital presentation, 69 min. 


Opera
Largely considered to be his last truly great work, Dario Argento's Opera possesses most of the stylistic hallmarks the mad Italian director is known for: crazy camera movements, unconventional scoring and song placement, tricked-out lighting and Hitchcock-on-PCP sequences of suspense and violence. The story is simply a reworking of “Phantom of The Opera” by way of the giallo, the genre Argento had undisputably mastered at this point in his career. His longtime musical colloborator Claudio "Goblin" Simonetti is back to do some scoring, this time with superstar producer Brian Eno in tow, which is a good thing considering how central the music is to the story. The film has some true standout moments of classic, hyper-creative Argento imagery, such as the scene in which a woman's eyes are taped open with needles as she’s forced to watch the killer brutally stab someone to death. Does that sound like a good time to you? Then you need to get yourself to the theatre, 'cause this is one opera that won't put you to sleep!
Dir. Dario Argento, 1987, 35mm.


THE OUTING
(from IMDB)
An ancient genie is released from a lamp when thieves ransack an old woman's house. They are killed and the lamp is moved to a museum to be studied. The curator's daughter is soon possessed by the genie and invites her friends to spend the night at the museum, along with some uninvited guests...  Dir. Tom Daley, 1987, 87 mins.


Paranoia
Also known as Orgasmo, this Italian-French co-production written and directed by Umberto Lenzi is one of the sexiest, yet most undervalued gialli of its time. Don’t go in expecting a double-digit body count or an unseen killer wearing shiny leather gloves; Paranoia is a perverse game of cat-and-mouse played by wealthy widow Carroll Baker (throwing herself into the role with naked abandon) and dubious houseguests Lou Castel and Colette Descombes. Rated X in the U.S. for Baker’s copious nude scenes, this mindbending drive-the-widow-crazy caper is capped by a deliciously cynical sting-in-the-tail that is molto-Lenzi.
Dir. Umberto Lenzi, 1969, 35mm, 91 min. 


Pather Panchali
1955/b&w/115 min. | Scr/dir: Satyajit Ray; w/ Kanu Bannerjee, Karuna Bannerjee, Subir Bannerjee. | Restored by the Academy Film Archive with funding provided by The Film Foundation.
Inspired both by Italian neorealism and time spent with Jean Renoir on the set of The River (another restoration by The Film Foundation), Satyajit Ray adapted his moving debut feature from a novel about a poor Brahmin family living in Bengal. Shot on location, largely with nonprofessionals, and using available light, the film captures everyday events, rural textures, and the precarious livelihood of its characters with a powerful mixture of tenderness and lack of sentiment. Ray's refined visual sense (he was a working illustrator) informs images such as children dancing in a downpour or glowing flax undulating in the wind. The film proved to be such an international success, it spawned two sequels that collectively became one of world cinema's most beloved trilogies. Sadly, the original negative of the film was lost in a fire, and like many Ray pictures, India's humid climate and poor storage facilities wreaked havoc on surviving prints, reducing the film's resonant lyricism to a mass of scratches and degradation. This 2005 restoration premiered on the film's fiftieth anniversary.—Doug Cummings. 


Perfume of the Lady In Black
Is it a giallo or is it a Polanski-esque psychological creeper? Perfume of the Lady In Black is both. Prepare for a trip into the fraught mind of “Silvia” (scream queen Mimsy Farmer in her greatest role), a work-obsessed young woman haunted by visions of the eponymous woman in black and a ghostly young girl in white -- but shot with a hot yellow color scheme and bursting into stylish, grisly episodes with enough regularity to satisfy even the most sated giallista. Is Silvia being gaslighted by her boyfriend and weird neighbours? Why do they hang out with a strange witch doctor? Or is she slipping into murderous dementia all by herself? A real bizarre one-off by the obscure but first-rate Francesco Barilli, it’s an eerie mystery/horror hybrid, with a genuine kickass shocker of an ending -- one of the great undiscovered treasures of Italian cinema, it remains sadly unavailable in the U.S. in any format (look for Cult Epics’ upcoming DVD release!) An unmissable high point of Italian delirium.
Dir. Francesco Barilli, 1974, 101 min.


Poisoned Paradise: The Forbidden Story of Monte Carlo
Romantic Monte Carlo. Apparently, a forbidden place. A place where deadly-yet-fun sins, such as greed and lust, are the dealers in the house of Passionate Melodrama -- and the house always wins. The perfect setting for a radiantly young, still-developing Clara Bow, in one of her earliest leading roles, to teethe on the scenery -- and for the audience to watch, enraptured, as she learns before our eyes to demolish it completely with trademark wit and sparkle. See! Clara as an independent gamblin’ lady! Look! As she loses it all and goes to live “like brother and sister” with a handsome young artist! Hey! That’s not what brothers and sisters ought to do! Lustrously photographed by Karl Struss, later the cinematographer of Sunrise and the 1925 version of Ben-Hur, it’s one of Clara’s three collaborations with director Louis J. Gasnier, a man who knew serious European sophistication (probably owing to his native French-ness.)
Dir. Louis J. Gasiner, 1924, 35mm, 70 min.


THE RAVEN, 1935, Universal, 61 min. Dir. Lew Landers. Demented, disappointed-in-love surgeon Bela Lugosi operates on escaped murderer Boris Karloff, disfiguring him. He then uses the tormented fugitive as an instrument for revenge against his enemies, including the woman (Irene Ware) who spurned him. One of Universal’s most maniacal chillers.


THE RETURN OF COUNT YORGA
(from IMDB)
Count Yorga continues to prey on the local community while living by a nearby orphanage. He also intends to take a new wife, while feeding his bevy of female vampires.  1971, USA, 97 minutes. Directed by Bob Kelljan, starring Robert Quarry, Mariette Hartley, Roger Perry, George Macready, Walter Brooke.


Revelations of the Everyday: Films and Videos by Vincent Grenier
Vincent Grenier, a native of Québec City, Canada, has lived in New York City and Ithaca, New York, since the 1970s and over the past four decades has produced one of the most significant bodies of experimental films and videos of his generation. “My works directly confront the ideas of spatiality and temporality as a continuum and unsettle the notion of a universal human experience,” Grenier writes. “These films and videos move towards fracturing space and time in order to release how the everyday, and the specific, hold within them ineffable, untranslatable, revelations of light, color, form, and composition.” His work has been shown at The Museum of Modern Art, New York Film Festival, the Whitney Museum, the International Film Festival Rotterdam, and Media City Film Festival, Ontario. His films are included in the Art Gallery of Ontario, the National Gallery of Canada, The Donnell Library Center, and other institutions in Canada and the United States. Program includes Tabula Rasa, Here, Surface Tension #2, North Southernly, While Revolved, Armoire, Burning Bush, and others.
In person: Vincent Grenier 


THE ROBBER (DER RAEUBER), 2010, Films Distribution, 90 min. On the day of his release from jail for a previous bank heist, Johannes Rettenberger redefines "breaking parole:" He exits the prison, walks down the street, and holds up yet another bank. At once a tense thriller and fascinating character study based on a bizarre true story, director Benjamin Heisemberg' s crime drama was nominated for the prestigious Golden Bear award at the 2010 Berlin International Film Festival. In German with English subtitles. 


ROCCO AND HIS BROTHERS
Luchino Visconti's brilliant work concentrates on the dramatic clash between two differing value systems--an intellectual belief in the cause of progress and emotional nostalgia for a decaying past. The struggle is played out by two sons, Rocco (Alain Delon), a gentle boy, who is in conflict with Simone (Renato Salvatori), a loutish boxer. Both are in love with Nadia (Annie Girardot), a prostitute, and are bound by old traditions that neither can escape. Considered by many critics to be Visconti's greatest film. Luchino Visconti---Italy---1960---170 mins. 


Roman Polanski Shorts
(w/ brand-new live scores by SzaZa!)
Co-presented by The Polish Cultural Institute In New York and Unsound Festival
Before making beloved classics like Chinatown, Rosemary’s Baby and Repulsion, Roman Polanski cut his teeth on a series of short films shot in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, produced mostly at the renowned Lodz Film School in Poland. From the playful filmmaking exercises Murder and Teeth Smile (1957), through the metaphorical Break Up the Dance (1957) and Mammals (1962) to his award-winning graduation film Two Men and A Wardrobe (1958), these films reveal Polanski’s surreal and dark style, his masterful storytelling ability, and the restless search for the truth about human nature -- however crooked and evil it would turn out to be. A key ingredient to the genius of these shorts is their unpredictable music scores, often written by Polish jazz pioneer Krzysztof Komeda. We’ll highlight this legendary alchemy by presenting this evening of Polanski’s early works in 35mm with live accompaniment by the Polish electroacoustic duo SzaZa -- whose use of clarinets, violin, analog loopstations, subtle effects and interaction with the audience both pays tribute to the work of the late Mr. Komeda, and takes these seminal films in intoxicating new directions!
Roman Polanski: Shorts with Live Music by Sza/Za is presented by Cinefamily and the Polish Cultural Institute in New York, in association with Unsound Festival. Additional support provided by Trust for Mutual Understanding and Janus Films. 


SCREAM Festival: Noisefold
Co-presented with the Southern California Resource for Electro-Acoustic Music (SCREAM)
“Whether seen simply as a work of art or encountered as an intellectual and spiritual event, the loss of self that occurs during a NoiseFold performance is balanced by a gain of understanding.” –The End of Being
Melding real-time animation and generative electronic sound within the legacy of cybernetics, NoiseFold unleashes a suite of selected movements in its live cinema works nFold 1.0, ALCHIMIA, and Neu_Blooms. Using sensor-activated computer systems and complex audiovisual feedback models, co-founders Cory Metcalf and David Stout synthesize a mesmerizing array of bio-mimetic visual forms that generate sound, celebrating the evolution of visual music as a form of instrumental play with semiautonomous systems. From subtle lifelike emanations to roiling upheavals of sound and light, their audiovisual events are at once familiar, mysterious, and strange. The result is a powerful synaesthetic experience where noise, music and image interact on a symphonic scale.


THE SILENCE (DAS LETZTE SCHWEIGEN), 2010, Bavaria Film International, 118 min. When a child's bicycle is discovered in a wheat field - in the exact location of a heinous crime committed 23 years earlier - and when local girl Sinikka mysteriously goes missing, a town is thrown into a haze of anxious uncertainty. At once a tense police procedural and a subtle yet devastating portrayal of a family's struggle to come to terms with the unthinkable, director Baran bo Odar's assured drama examines the ripple effect of violence on a community. In German with English subtitles. Discussion following with directors Benjamin Heisemberg and Baran bo Odar.


SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA LANDSCAPES VIA EXPERIMENTAL FILM
Filmed over the course of two years near the town of Moreno Valley, Vera Brunner-Sung's (in person) COMMON GROUND ('08, 27m) documents the demolition of military family homes and the erection of a business park in their stead. A clear-eyed look at destruction for the sake of progress, this examination of land use and social history offers the audience a journey into both the past and the future.  “… a trip into Southern California, a land whose cyclical process of abandonment, decay, demolition and reconstruction is a sign of how the economy is making a mark on the land.” – Torino Film Festival. Moving from east to west and back, Alexandra Cuesta's (in person) PIENSA EN MI ('09, 15m) offers a portrait of urban landscape in motion from the intimate perspective of public transport in our city. Over the course of the day, images of riders, textures of light and fragments of bodies in space are woven together to create an unexpected, visually arresting poem. Winner of The Map of Time Award, 48th Ann Arbor Film Festival. Madison Brookshire's (in person) OPENING ('07, 25m) reveals the city in the landscape and the landscape in the city. Many of the images come from overlooked, “in-between” spaces, such as off-ramps and back alleys. Shown with its original live score. “…a quiet but grand record of the contemporary American landscape” – Andy Ditzler. “[OPENING] is attentive to small movements—cars in the distance, a herd of sheep. Austere but intensely focused compositions suggest that mindful observation can render ordinary sights meaningful.” – Fred Camper, Chicago Reader. Brookshire’s BONK PIFF BOP ('05, 25m) is both a documentary and a comedy. It stars two brothers—one is 2 years old and the other 7—and documents their phenomenological relationship to the video camera. It is sweet and funny, but also full of dark humor. It is a portrait of a family as well as a rare window into the mind of a particularly precocious and verbal 2 year old.


Space, Land, and Time: Underground Adventures with Ant Farm
Space, Land, and Time is the first film to consider the work of the 1970s architecture collective Ant Farm, best known for Cadillac Ranch. Radical architects, video pioneers, and mordantly funny cultural commentators, the Ant Farmers created a body of deeply subversive multidisciplinary work predicted much of the technology we take for granted today. Incorporating archival video, new footage, and animation based on zany period sketches, this film is about the joy of creation in a time when there were no limits. (2010, 78 min. Dirs: Laura Harrison and Beth Federici)
A discussion with Ant Farm’s Chip Lord will follow the screening.


Spectacles of Light: Films and Videos by Peter Rose
“[The Man Who Could Not See Far Enough is] a powerfully formal, analytic inquiry into the very nature of vision and cinema.” –The Village Voice
Since 1968, Peter Rose has made more than 30 films, tapes, performances, and installations. Many early works raise intriguing questions about the nature of time, space, light, and perception, and draw upon his background in mathematics. His subsequent interest in language as subject, and video as a medium, has generated a substantial body of work that plays with the feel and form of sense, concrete texts, political satire, oddball performance, and a kind of intellectual comedy. Rose’s recent installations return to an examination of landscape, time, and vision, and works on this program propose an annotated, nocturnal portrait of a vanished culture. Rose’s work has been widely exhibited in venues such as The Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Biennial, the Centre Pompidou, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Film Society of Lincoln Center, and the Rotterdam International Film Festival.
In person: Peter Rose


STINGRAY SAM ('09, 62m)  A dangerous mission reunites STINGRAY SAM with his long lost accomplice, The Quasar Kid. Follow these two space-convicts as they earn their freedom in exchange for the rescue of a young girl who is being held captive by the genetically designed figurehead of a very wealthy planet.
"Few films have me chuckling from beginning till end, but this one managed to do it. Well, except when I was laughing. McAbee's 'Stingray Sam' is a cleverly made loving tribute to the serials of old and a darn funny one too."


Strait-Jacket
It's a night of William Castle psychodrama! First, we break out of the loony bin with Strait-Jacket. What’s the gimmick, you may ask? Well, technically none -- but one could argue that having Joan Crawford (pitched at full What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? tilt) as a recovering axe-murderess is pretty carny in and of itself. Her scene-devouring performance is amazing, and "Psycho" novelist Robert Bloch's script is a twisty delight that delivers tension and surprises a-plenty. And who’s that as Ms. Crawford’s first victim? Why it’s The Six-Million Dollar Man himself, Lee Majors, in this fine and rarely seen example of Grande Dame Guignol.
Dir. William Castle, 1964, 35mm, 90 min. 


Stranded In Canton
Legendary photographer William Eggleston, working with filmmaker Robert Gordon, recently edited thirty hours of video footage he’d shot in 1974 of friends, family, and eclectic characters encountered in the bars and back roads of his hometown of Memphis, as well as New Orleans and the Delta region. The hypnotic result is Stranded in Canton, a film that consistently teeters on the edge of dream and nightmare states. Its nocturnal visions of bar denizens, musicians (including Furry Lewis), transvestites and a variety of semi-crazies comes off like a Cassavetes all-nighter filmed by David Lynch at his most unsettling: faces loom out of darkness, shot in infrared, displaying pale glowing skin and deep black eyes. There’s even a real-life geek-off (yes, the type with chickens)! And it’s mesmerizing, partly thanks to the outsized characters who fill the screen, and partly because Eggleston turns the “home movie” into art -- Father of Modern Color Photography he may be, but he kicks just as much ass in eerie B&W, wrenching glorious images out of the early Sony Porta-Pak to conjure a febrile, desperate atmosphere that captures the Southern Gothic with an extraordinarily raw and rambling intimacy. Special guests TBA!
Dir. William Eggleston, 1974/2008, digital presentation, 77 min.


The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh
Stunning Euro screen goddess Edwige Fenech shot a huge dose of sexual adrenaline into the Italian thriller craze with this landmark mixture of horror and twisty mystery, courtesy of stylish director Sergio Martino. Here, she plays the dissatisfied wife of a diplomat who’s still haunted by visions of a perverse relationship with her knife-wielding ex -- one who used to play weird rape games during rainstorms and is now popping up to send her roses and menacing death threats. Will Fenech go mad from all these disturbing dreams? Or is someone trying to drive her mad? Featuring a gorgeous soundtrack by Nora Orlandi, some amazing scenes like a party where girls rip off each other’s paper clothes, and a plot twistier than a drunken conga line, this essential slice of ‘70s Italian pop culture, also known as Blade of the Ripper, is making a very rare 35mm appearance back on the big screen where it belongs.
Dir. Sergio Martino, 1971, 35mm.


THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, 1956, Paramount, 220 min. "Let his name be stricken from every pillar and obelisk!" orders imperious pharaoh Yul Brynner, as favored son-turned-religious rebel Charlton Heston prepares to lead his people from bondage in Egypt. Cecil B. DeMille’s glorious remake of his earlier 1923 TEN COMMANDMENTS emphasizes the colossal spectacle of the biblical epic, but never downplays the tremendous human emotions at the core of the story. Andrea Kalas, Vice President of Archives, and Ronald F. Smith, Vice President of Restoration at Paramount Pictures will introduce the film. Exhibition of jewelry and costumes from the film. Coffee & cake will be served during intermission.  The 88th Anniversary of the Opening of the Egyptian Theatre! L.A. Premiere of the Groundbreaking 6K Digital Restoration. Original Roadshow Version! 


TENEBRAE
(from IMDB)
With Argento's trademark visual style, linked with one of his more coherent plots, Tenebrae follows a writer who arrives to Rome only to find somebody is using his novels as the inspiration (and, occasionally, the means) of committing murder. As the death toll mounts the police are ever baffled, and the writer becomes more closely linked to the case than is comfortable.  AKA Unsane.  Dir. Dario Argento, 1982.


They Made Me a Fugitive (aka I Became a Criminal)
1947/b&w/99 min. | Scr: Noel Langley; dir: Alberto Cavalcanti; w/ Trevor Howard, Sally Gray, Griffith Jones. | Restored by the BFI with funding provided by The Film Foundation.
This early British film noir comes courtesy of lesser known Brazilian director Cavalcanti, who was described by The Guardian in July 2010 as having "made a handful of the most polished, imaginative and downright enjoyable films of the 1940s." His background in avant-garde silent films (assisting Marcel L'Herbier and Louis Delluc, among others) and GPO Film Unit documentaries paved the way for this gritty revenge thriller. An unkempt Trevor Howard stars as a former RAF hero who falls in league with a group of black marketeers, turning to crime as a cure for his postwar ennui. When he stops short of drug dealing, his accomplices frame him for murder, and he vows payback. Highly influenced by French poetic realism (the style first referred to as "noir"), the film makes atmospheric use of wintry Soho locations, and its unexpected violence (intensified in one scene by a spinning camera and distorted lens) and potent sense of fatalism provoked strong reactions; surprisingly, it passed British censors uncut but was released in America with twenty minutes truncated.—Doug Cummings. 


13 Ghosts
We've got a baker's dozen here to spook you in Castle's 13 Ghosts! In this freaky-deaky creeper, the occultist Dr. Zorba leaves to his nephew in his will a humungous haunted mansion full of a dozen spooks that take a variety of crazy forms, like safari animals and skeletons on fire! When you arrive to the theater, you will find that Castle has brought us quite a tricky treat in the form of Dr Zorba's patented Ghost Viewer. With the Ghost Viewer in hand, you will have the choice during the film to use it to prove your bravery and set eyes upon each of the unlucky 13, or use it to make them disappear and hope that what you can't see, can't hurt you!
Dir. William Castle, 1960, 35mm, 85 min.


Thom Andersen: Out of the Car and into the Music of the Streets
“Andersen’s film frees images from the yoke of instrumentality, revealing the city for what it is and allowing us to see what we otherwise cannot. It is at once theory and practice; not content to simply describe the new cinema, it embodies it… It teaches us how to see. ” –Bright Lights Film Journal
These three sad, funny, beautiful works take you through Los Angeles, 2009, and Munich, 1967/1968. Thom Andersen’s new film Get Out of the Car (2010, 34 min., 16mm) responds to his award-winning documentary Los Angeles Plays Itself by recording the city’s most evanescent signs, memorializing some of its vanished monuments and musical history. Get Out of the Car is screened with two 1960s shorts that served as points of inspiration and departure: The Bridegroom, the Actress, and the Pimp, (1968, 23 min., 35 mm) by Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, with music by Johann Sebastian Bach and dialogue by Saint John of the Cross in a radical condensation of Ferdinand Bruckner’s three-act play Sickness of Youth; and The Little Chaos (1967, 10 min., 16mm) by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, a mordant commentary on the sickness of contemporary German youth, with music by Richard Wagner and the Troggs.
In person: Thom Andersen


THOMASINE & BUSHROD
(1974) Directed by Gordon Parks Jr.
A young couple rob banks in 1911 New Mexico in this Blaxploitation Western, which also riffs on Bonnie & Clyde. Playing against gender stereotype, she is an ex-bounty hunter, while he is a good-natured horse whisperer. They give their money to "Mexicans, Indians, poor whites…" Naturally, they are chased by a mean white lawman, dedicated to protecting big capital, and must therefore meet a violent end. Like it's model, this is also a love story with funny, tender moments between the principals. Slightly off beat and low budget, this film featured the late Vonetta McGee, who was one of the unsung stars of the genre, here playing opposite Max Julien, who also wrote the script.
Columbia Pictures. Producer: Harvey Bernhard, Max Julien. Screenplay: Max Julien. Cinematographer: Lucien Ballard. Cast: Max Julien, Vonetta McGee, George Murdock, Glynn Turman. 35mm, 95 min.


The Tingler
Our month-long celebration of William Castle concludes with the spine-tingling horror of The Tingler, Castle’s weirdo masterpiece of gimmickry about a lobster-shaped monster that feeds on terror within the human body! Aside from being the first film to use LSD as a plot device, the original theatrical run was presented in “Percepto,” whereby theater patrons were administered buzzer shocks in their seats, to simulate the monster’s attack. The result, of course, was giddy insanity, as star Vincent Price’s voice urges patrons to “scream for your lives!” Best of all, The Tingler features a major subplot based on the Silent Movie Theatre itself and its original owners, the Hamptons. Feel a tingle up your spine as you watch these scenes set in the very location where you are sitting -- and maybe a tingle on your tuchas when we shock you Castle-style with real wired seats!
Dir. William Castle, 1958, 35mm, 82 min. 


TO DO BETTER: FILMS BY KEVIN JEROME EVERSON
“Grounded in historical research and a strong sense of place, Kevin Jerome Everson’s films and videos combine documentary and scripted elements with a sparse, rugged formalism. His ongoing subject matter is the lives of African Americans and other people of African descent, often working class, but he eschews standard realism in favor of strategies that abstract everyday actions and statements into theatrical gestures: archival footage is re-edited or re-staged, real people perform fictional scenarios based on their own lives, historical observations intermesh with contemporary narratives. His films suggest the relentlessness of everyday life—along with its beauty—but also present oblique metaphors for art-making.
Many of his works return to Mansfield, Ohio, where Everson was born and raised. The community's past is examined in Company Line, in which city employee Curley Lanier explains why he and his family left Alabama in the late 1950s to migrate North: “To do better…I guess.” The remarks betray a sense of deep ambivalence about the promises of upward mobility in America that runs through this collection of recent projects; fifty years later, the people of Mansfield still aren’t sure what “better” means.” –Ed Halter and Thomas Beard May 2009.  Kevin Jerome Everson in person!  Los Angeles premieres!  Total running time: 89 minutes including a 10 minute intermission.


TOMORROW
Robert Duvall turns in an exceptional performance in this overlooked 1972 gem, based on a story by William Faulkner. Duvall plays a Mississippi cotton farmer who finds a pregnant and unconscious woman on his land and nurses her back to health. A relationship develops with the abandoned woman, but circumstances lead to deep trouble for both of them. Horton Foote wrote the screenplay for this fine, understated film. Joseph Anthony---USA---1972---102 mins.  Robert Duvall in person!


TRICK OR TREAT
Cinefamily Heavy Metal Halloween Party & Fundraiser
As is our yearly tradition on Hallows’ Eve, the Cinefamily’s sold its soul to rock n’ roll, and joined forces with our Dark Lord to throw the best Halloween party ever -- heavy metal style. ‘Cause if Halloween is the Devil's favorite holiday, then surely heavy metal is his favorite music. We’re gonna start the night right with an in-house video mash-up tribute of all the greatest gonzo heavy metal horror moments -- of which there are many! Then, a 35mm screening of Trick Or Treat -- the only horror film with acting performances by both Ozzy Osbourne and Gene Simmons, along with a hard-thrashing score by “Fastway” (Motorhead’s "Fast" Eddie Clarke, and Flogging Molly’s Dave King) that will strain your phalanges’ ability to spew forth devil horns. Then, once the movie’s over, we’re gonna clear the couches, light the candles, bang our heads, and hail sweet Satan and the bells of hell. Live metal cover bands! Human sacrifices! Ghoulish giveaways! Costume prizes! Best Halloween ever -- Heavy Metal Halloween!!!!!
Trick Or Treat   Dir. Charles Martin Smith, 1986, 35mm, 98 min. 


VICE SQUAD
This "sensationally brutal" (New York Times) genre flick follows a Hollywood hooker (Season Hubley) who's enlisted by a rogue LAPD cop (Gary Swanson) to help nab a brutal, murderous pimp (Wings Hauser). The plan backfires, however, when the pimp springs from prison and starts trying to track down the prostitute responsible for his demise. Gary Sherman's flick is  as action-packed and perverse as 80s B-movies come.  Gary Sherman---USA---1982---93 mins. 


What Have You Done To Solange?
Schoolgirls gone bad, a knife-wielding killer, and nasty secrets involving an illegal abortion are just a few of the shocks awaiting you in this note-perfect example of the giallo, one which went unrecognized for decades in America but is now recognized as one of the genre’s essential classics. Philandering schoolteacher Fabio Testi becomes entangled with a malicious killer when his student girlfriend spies on a murder in the woods, and when he can’t provide an alibi, he soon becomes the main suspect as more bodies begin to pile up. Ennio Morricone’s dreamy musical accompaniment and sterling ‘scope photography by future trash-film god Joe D’Amato make this several cuts above your average thriller, plus you get a surprise third-act appearance by Camille Keaton, the abused star of I Spit on Your Grave! Don’t miss the chance to catch this sleazy masterpiece, but be prepared to take a long, hot shower when you get home.
Dir. Massimo Dallamano, 1972, 35mm, 103 min. 


WILLIE DYNAMITE
(1974) Directed by Gilbert Moses
Willie Dynamite is the second most important pimp in New York, but he wants to be Number 1, so like Avis he sets about rationalizing his production line, expanding his stable of "hoes" and otherwise enforcing capitalist methods of exploitation. With The Mack and Super Fly, Willie makes a trilogy of pimp films, which today appear outlandish enough to qualify as camp, what with their neon colored 70s fashions, exaggerated misogyny, pimp mobiles, and non-stop, barely motivated action. Attitude is all. Roscoe Orman, so beloved as Gordon on "Sesame Street" plays against type a mean pimp who deserves all he gets. African American director Gilbert Moses moved from a Tony Award on Broadway to Hollywood for this film, his only work in the genre.
Universal Pictures. Screenplay: Ron Cutler. Cinematographer: Frank Stanley. Cast: Roscoe Orman, Diana Sands, Thalmus Rasulala, Joyce Walker. 35mm, 102 min. 


WINTER KILLS, 1979, Avco-Embassy (Canal Plus), 97 min. Director William Richert fashions a fierce lampoon of events surrounding the JFK assassination. Jeff Bridges, idealistic brother of the slain president, has his life turned topsy-turvy when he’s handed newly-uncovered evidence of a conspiracy. With John Huston and Anthony Perkins.