Co-present by Cultra & Temple of Schlock...it's looking really good. We got a better print of POOR PRETT EDDIE on Friday, and editor Frank Mazzola's gonna come!
http://www.cinefamily.org/calendar/friday_early.html
Cultra Video presents: The Art Of Exploitation / Friday Double Features in February
"Grindhouse" culture has solidified its niche in the mainstream as one of cinema's great renewable resources for laughs and good times. Today's filmgoer is familiar with its seemingly bottomless pit of wild outfits, cheap thrills, eyecatching outré excesses of sex and violence -- it's fair to say we all know what's up. And god bless! But the most amazing thing about '70s exploitation is that it still has so much more to give. These films weren't all just mustaches and hot pants -- they were also, intentionally or accidentally, artistic outlets for aspiring film students, movie-loving outsiders, and all manner of dreamers. Sharing our point of view is the new DVD label Cultra Video, whose mission is to restore and release these long-forgotten exploitation gems with an emphasis on their artistic value, trashy good times or not. They've let us open their vaults and share their discoveries, with four great double-features plus a bonus mystery third film for each Friday night -- so let the festivities commence!
Series co-presented by Temple of Schlock
2/5 @ 8:00pm / Series: Cultra Video Presents: The Art of Exploitation
Poor Pretty Eddie
shown with
The Loners
Poor Pretty Eddie - 8:00pm
"There is a buffet of loathsomeness here." - The Video Vacuum
A hot and swampy reworking of Jean Genet's "Theatre Of The Absurd" touchstone "The Balcony" (weirdly making this Shelly Winters' second appearance in an "adaptation" of the play,) Poor Pretty Eddie is a cracked, campy, offensive and skull-peeling genre film that's hard to pin down into just one genre; it's a brilliant composite of blaxploitation, hicksploitation and Gothic horror laden with astounding pseudo-avant-garde visuals. Black singer Leslie Uggams gets trapped in a small Southern town full of dim-bulb racists (including a crispy-fried Dub Taylor, Slim Pickins and a homicidal Elvis impersonator) who rape and terrorize her repeatedly, until she extracts a queasy, greasy revenge. Right up there on the "race-baiting grindhouse gobsmackers best-of" list with Fight For Your Life, Poor Pretty Eddie is propelled even further by the lysergic, elliptical film editing of Frank Mazzola, master cutter responsible for the montage on Donald Cammell films like Performance and Demon Seed!
Dir. Richard Robinson, 1975, 35mm, 92 min.
The Loners - 9:45pm
One character actor we rarely think of as once looking studly is Dean Stockwell, but The Loners features a brawny, albeit slightly ridiculous turn by Stockwell as an Indian half-breed on the lam from the law after committing a measly, accidental teensy-weensy bit of manslaughter, in a tale that's somewhere in-between Easy Rider, Bonnie and Clyde -- and Gigli -- ? Yup, that's right. Along with our loner hero and the desperate girl he picks up along the way, there's also a mentally retarded teenage sidekick. Aging legend Gloria Grahame also pops up as well as the oppressive mother figure (in the '70s tradition of former glamour queens playing oppressive mother figures, such in What's The Matter With Helen?), in this unassuming and tense character drama filled with heapin' helpings of violence, nihilism and nuttiness.
Dir. Sutton Roley, 1972, 35mm, 79 min.
Watch an excerpt from "Poor Pretty Eddie"!
Tickets - $10
2/12 @ 8:00pm / Series: Cultra Video Presents: The Art of Exploitation
Fleshpot On 42nd St.
shown with
The Body Beneath
Fleshpot On 42nd St. - 8:00pm
Andy Milligan might not be as renowned or respected as Paul Morrissey, but his films not only cover the same obsession with inner city blight, hustlers, homosexuality, cross dressing, gender bending, and compulsive violence -- they also offer an even more intimate examination of New York’s seamy underground. In what is perhaps Milligan's most seminal effort, Fleshpot On 42nd St. follows hooker/petty criminal Dusty as she wanders around Times Square, eventually shacking up with Cherry Lane, a beleaguered cross-dresser. Starring porn vets Harry Reems and Laura Cannon in career performances, and featuring both Milligan’s trademark low-fi DIY approach to filmmaking and a tenderness to what would normally turn out to be rather squelchy sex scenes, Fleshpot is a crucial cinematic study of the people and culture of the long-lost Deuce.
Dir. Andy Milligan, 1973, 35mm, 80 min.
The Body Beneath - 9:45pm
Most artists have a muse, something that gets their creative juices flowing or gives them inspiration during a mental block. Andy Milligan's muse, one which might be surprising to the uninitiated, was Victorian England, which he usually recreated on his native Long Island. For The Body Beneath, however, Milligan was granted the opportunity to shoot in the land he’d so long been crafting across the Atlantic. Body is well within Milligan’s usual aesthetic -- a combination of gaudy and lurid -- but is also the director's highest budgeted work, and in it he pulls out all the stops with a bloody vampire tale of a fanged Catholic priest that's extremely polished by his usual standards. Nevertheless, his trademark handheld cinematography and bizarre dialogue survive in full force, making the film another deliciously bizarre odyssey into the mind of one of underground cinema’s most intriguing characters.
Dir. Sutton Roley, 1972, 35mm, 79 min.
Watch the trailer for "The Body Beneath"!
Tickets - $10
2/19 @ 8:00pm / Series: Cultra Video Presents: The Art of Exploitation
Teenage Divorcee
shown with
Honky Tonk Nights
Teenage Divorcee - 8:00pm
Hard to believe that as early as 1971, there would already be nostalgia for the suddenly-bygone era of '60s free love, but San-Diego based filmmaker Laurence Mascott clearly had passion that would not die for the world of hippedom, and thus was born Teenage Divorcee (aka Josie's Castle), which is equal parts eccentric travelogue, drug bummer dramaturgy and salacious swinger smorgasbord -- all continuously punctuated by a giant sackful of lilting musical montages. Three friends (including Star Trek's George Takei and future Fright Night director Tom Holland) all become disillusioned and get divorces at the same time; their half-baked "great idea" is to move to San Diego and build a commune, and of course it quickly falls apart in a haze of drug deals gone south, uncomfortable tandem bike rides and icky Reinassiance Fair-themed orgies. This madcap sexploitation melodrama digs deep, showing everything Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice only hinted at.
Dir. Laurence E. Mascott, 1972, 35mm, 85 min.
Honky Tonk Nights - 9:45pm
Porn auteur Charles DeSantos' Honky Tonk Nights demonstrates the more noble aspirations of a sleaze-slinger; it's a light-hearted softcore mixture of comedy, romantic drama, and countrified tunes, set in a smoky saloon and plied with plain silly amounts of nudity. Here, sexploitation stalwarts Georgina Spelvin, Chris Cassidy, and Serena are cast in leading and supporting roles -- ones which really do require them to act, and to everyone's surprise, they do it quite well. What's more, stripper icon Carol Doda (and her Russ Meyer-approved bust) also features in a sumptuous side role; don't miss her go-for-broke performances of songs such as "The Pain of Life."
Dir. Charles DeSantos, 1978, 35mm, 71 min.
Tickets - $10
2/26 @ 8:00pm / Series: Cultra Video Presents: The Art of Exploitation
Game Show Models
shown with
The Boob Tube
Game Show Models - 8:00pm
Having started off life as the off-kilter AFI-funded art film The Seventh Dwarf, Game Show Models is a unique beast, reconciling the nitty gritty of the music biz with a bunch of outta-left-field nudity and assorted sleaze grafted on at the eleventh hour. Stuart is a PR firm exec whose task is to help usher in a childish and churlish new singing starlet; he discovers that the entertainment biz ain't what it's cracked up to be after he beds her and she gets all weird, and after his co-workers start brandishing guns and making uncomfortable sexual advances on him! Whether The Seventh Dwarf was never fully finished, or whether it was purchased and re-cut with new footage, we'll never know -- but what's evident is that there's some haphazardly inserted scenes featuring a sex-themed game show (hosted by Dick Miller!), on which bearded professor-like contestants fondle naked ladies through glory holes and then later screw them while standing up. Y'know -- the usual. Featuring inexplicable cameos by film critic Charles Champlin and jazz cat Willie Bobo, and a bewildering downtown L.A. mime interlude, Game Show Models is a roaster of a rare breed.
Dir. David N. Gottlieb, 1977, 35mm, 88 min.
The Boob Tube - 9:45pm
The whopping success of the 1974 television parody sketchfest The Groove Tube ushered in a slew of quickie, uneven sex-filled clones, but none of them went the extra distance in getting so queerly specific as The Boob Tube, which exclusively covers the soap opera sweet spot. Composed of a phony daytime drama concerning a studly doctor and all the nymphets that want a bonk from his reflex hammer, the film is filled with the usual ludicrous plethora of twists and turns the genre calls for, and is periodically interrupted by some zany and naughty commercials. The Boob Tube's charm comes from its cast's sincere attempts to play it all straight-faced, and it also scores points for being puerile, witty and raunchy all at the same time.
Dir. Christopher Odin, 1975, 35mm, 82 min.
Tickets - $10
http://www.cinefamily.org/calendar/friday_early.html
Cultra Video presents: The Art Of Exploitation / Friday Double Features in February
"Grindhouse" culture has solidified its niche in the mainstream as one of cinema's great renewable resources for laughs and good times. Today's filmgoer is familiar with its seemingly bottomless pit of wild outfits, cheap thrills, eyecatching outré excesses of sex and violence -- it's fair to say we all know what's up. And god bless! But the most amazing thing about '70s exploitation is that it still has so much more to give. These films weren't all just mustaches and hot pants -- they were also, intentionally or accidentally, artistic outlets for aspiring film students, movie-loving outsiders, and all manner of dreamers. Sharing our point of view is the new DVD label Cultra Video, whose mission is to restore and release these long-forgotten exploitation gems with an emphasis on their artistic value, trashy good times or not. They've let us open their vaults and share their discoveries, with four great double-features plus a bonus mystery third film for each Friday night -- so let the festivities commence!
Series co-presented by Temple of Schlock
2/5 @ 8:00pm / Series: Cultra Video Presents: The Art of Exploitation
Poor Pretty Eddie
shown with
The Loners
Poor Pretty Eddie - 8:00pm
"There is a buffet of loathsomeness here." - The Video Vacuum
A hot and swampy reworking of Jean Genet's "Theatre Of The Absurd" touchstone "The Balcony" (weirdly making this Shelly Winters' second appearance in an "adaptation" of the play,) Poor Pretty Eddie is a cracked, campy, offensive and skull-peeling genre film that's hard to pin down into just one genre; it's a brilliant composite of blaxploitation, hicksploitation and Gothic horror laden with astounding pseudo-avant-garde visuals. Black singer Leslie Uggams gets trapped in a small Southern town full of dim-bulb racists (including a crispy-fried Dub Taylor, Slim Pickins and a homicidal Elvis impersonator) who rape and terrorize her repeatedly, until she extracts a queasy, greasy revenge. Right up there on the "race-baiting grindhouse gobsmackers best-of" list with Fight For Your Life, Poor Pretty Eddie is propelled even further by the lysergic, elliptical film editing of Frank Mazzola, master cutter responsible for the montage on Donald Cammell films like Performance and Demon Seed!
Dir. Richard Robinson, 1975, 35mm, 92 min.
The Loners - 9:45pm
One character actor we rarely think of as once looking studly is Dean Stockwell, but The Loners features a brawny, albeit slightly ridiculous turn by Stockwell as an Indian half-breed on the lam from the law after committing a measly, accidental teensy-weensy bit of manslaughter, in a tale that's somewhere in-between Easy Rider, Bonnie and Clyde -- and Gigli -- ? Yup, that's right. Along with our loner hero and the desperate girl he picks up along the way, there's also a mentally retarded teenage sidekick. Aging legend Gloria Grahame also pops up as well as the oppressive mother figure (in the '70s tradition of former glamour queens playing oppressive mother figures, such in What's The Matter With Helen?), in this unassuming and tense character drama filled with heapin' helpings of violence, nihilism and nuttiness.
Dir. Sutton Roley, 1972, 35mm, 79 min.
Watch an excerpt from "Poor Pretty Eddie"!
Tickets - $10
2/12 @ 8:00pm / Series: Cultra Video Presents: The Art of Exploitation
Fleshpot On 42nd St.
shown with
The Body Beneath
Fleshpot On 42nd St. - 8:00pm
Andy Milligan might not be as renowned or respected as Paul Morrissey, but his films not only cover the same obsession with inner city blight, hustlers, homosexuality, cross dressing, gender bending, and compulsive violence -- they also offer an even more intimate examination of New York’s seamy underground. In what is perhaps Milligan's most seminal effort, Fleshpot On 42nd St. follows hooker/petty criminal Dusty as she wanders around Times Square, eventually shacking up with Cherry Lane, a beleaguered cross-dresser. Starring porn vets Harry Reems and Laura Cannon in career performances, and featuring both Milligan’s trademark low-fi DIY approach to filmmaking and a tenderness to what would normally turn out to be rather squelchy sex scenes, Fleshpot is a crucial cinematic study of the people and culture of the long-lost Deuce.
Dir. Andy Milligan, 1973, 35mm, 80 min.
The Body Beneath - 9:45pm
Most artists have a muse, something that gets their creative juices flowing or gives them inspiration during a mental block. Andy Milligan's muse, one which might be surprising to the uninitiated, was Victorian England, which he usually recreated on his native Long Island. For The Body Beneath, however, Milligan was granted the opportunity to shoot in the land he’d so long been crafting across the Atlantic. Body is well within Milligan’s usual aesthetic -- a combination of gaudy and lurid -- but is also the director's highest budgeted work, and in it he pulls out all the stops with a bloody vampire tale of a fanged Catholic priest that's extremely polished by his usual standards. Nevertheless, his trademark handheld cinematography and bizarre dialogue survive in full force, making the film another deliciously bizarre odyssey into the mind of one of underground cinema’s most intriguing characters.
Dir. Sutton Roley, 1972, 35mm, 79 min.
Watch the trailer for "The Body Beneath"!
Tickets - $10
2/19 @ 8:00pm / Series: Cultra Video Presents: The Art of Exploitation
Teenage Divorcee
shown with
Honky Tonk Nights
Teenage Divorcee - 8:00pm
Hard to believe that as early as 1971, there would already be nostalgia for the suddenly-bygone era of '60s free love, but San-Diego based filmmaker Laurence Mascott clearly had passion that would not die for the world of hippedom, and thus was born Teenage Divorcee (aka Josie's Castle), which is equal parts eccentric travelogue, drug bummer dramaturgy and salacious swinger smorgasbord -- all continuously punctuated by a giant sackful of lilting musical montages. Three friends (including Star Trek's George Takei and future Fright Night director Tom Holland) all become disillusioned and get divorces at the same time; their half-baked "great idea" is to move to San Diego and build a commune, and of course it quickly falls apart in a haze of drug deals gone south, uncomfortable tandem bike rides and icky Reinassiance Fair-themed orgies. This madcap sexploitation melodrama digs deep, showing everything Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice only hinted at.
Dir. Laurence E. Mascott, 1972, 35mm, 85 min.
Honky Tonk Nights - 9:45pm
Porn auteur Charles DeSantos' Honky Tonk Nights demonstrates the more noble aspirations of a sleaze-slinger; it's a light-hearted softcore mixture of comedy, romantic drama, and countrified tunes, set in a smoky saloon and plied with plain silly amounts of nudity. Here, sexploitation stalwarts Georgina Spelvin, Chris Cassidy, and Serena are cast in leading and supporting roles -- ones which really do require them to act, and to everyone's surprise, they do it quite well. What's more, stripper icon Carol Doda (and her Russ Meyer-approved bust) also features in a sumptuous side role; don't miss her go-for-broke performances of songs such as "The Pain of Life."
Dir. Charles DeSantos, 1978, 35mm, 71 min.
Tickets - $10
2/26 @ 8:00pm / Series: Cultra Video Presents: The Art of Exploitation
Game Show Models
shown with
The Boob Tube
Game Show Models - 8:00pm
Having started off life as the off-kilter AFI-funded art film The Seventh Dwarf, Game Show Models is a unique beast, reconciling the nitty gritty of the music biz with a bunch of outta-left-field nudity and assorted sleaze grafted on at the eleventh hour. Stuart is a PR firm exec whose task is to help usher in a childish and churlish new singing starlet; he discovers that the entertainment biz ain't what it's cracked up to be after he beds her and she gets all weird, and after his co-workers start brandishing guns and making uncomfortable sexual advances on him! Whether The Seventh Dwarf was never fully finished, or whether it was purchased and re-cut with new footage, we'll never know -- but what's evident is that there's some haphazardly inserted scenes featuring a sex-themed game show (hosted by Dick Miller!), on which bearded professor-like contestants fondle naked ladies through glory holes and then later screw them while standing up. Y'know -- the usual. Featuring inexplicable cameos by film critic Charles Champlin and jazz cat Willie Bobo, and a bewildering downtown L.A. mime interlude, Game Show Models is a roaster of a rare breed.
Dir. David N. Gottlieb, 1977, 35mm, 88 min.
The Boob Tube - 9:45pm
The whopping success of the 1974 television parody sketchfest The Groove Tube ushered in a slew of quickie, uneven sex-filled clones, but none of them went the extra distance in getting so queerly specific as The Boob Tube, which exclusively covers the soap opera sweet spot. Composed of a phony daytime drama concerning a studly doctor and all the nymphets that want a bonk from his reflex hammer, the film is filled with the usual ludicrous plethora of twists and turns the genre calls for, and is periodically interrupted by some zany and naughty commercials. The Boob Tube's charm comes from its cast's sincere attempts to play it all straight-faced, and it also scores points for being puerile, witty and raunchy all at the same time.
Dir. Christopher Odin, 1975, 35mm, 82 min.
Tickets - $10
