“Let’s go out to dinner tonight. Then we’ll take in a double bill at The Lyric. Torture Dungeon and Bloodthirsty Butchers. Okay?”
“Who watches those movies in the first place?”
– Dusty and Candy in FLESHPOT ON 42ND STREET

This June 11, YOU DO!! When THE DEUCE JOCKEYS venture off 42nd Street to THE PENTHOUSE THEATRE for TORTURE DUNGEON… WRITTEN, DIRECTED, PHOTOGRAPHED, COSTUMED, SET DECORATED – AND MORE – BY ANDY MILLIGAN!

Screenwriter John Borske will be in attendance for a Q&A following the film.

Plus: Prizes and surprises, Bronx Brewery Pale Ale at the after-party, and music by DJ BONES! Hosted and presented by THE DEUCE JOCKEYS: Jeff, Andy, and Joe!

Milligan’s trade-mark “swirl camera” shines its jaundiced eye on scheming royalty and nefarious nobility in this Medieval bit of Machiavellian mayhem shot for a pittance in the boondocks of Staten Island and populated by petulant princesses, horny hunchbacks, idiot inheritors to the throne, and double crossing dukes!! Who will wear the throne of Tarragon?!? Murder! Torture! Forced insemination!! With a witty and smart script and actors ranging from Milligan regulars giving it their all, to those more stupefied wrangled from the Staten Island streets – TORTURE DUNGEON delivers a deliriously daffy look into the fringes of exploitation film-making and the fun that can be had frolicking there…

Andy Milligan made movies on the (real) cheap for real cheapskates. If they’d been made for the “downtown” crowd – they’d probably be considered experimental art-films today. But – financed by self-styled “moguls” out to make a quick buck exploiting a particularly Times Square movie-going public – they were destined to the trash heap of just more Deuce fodder. Milligan’s idiosyncratic take on the “sex, violence, and horror” genre flick is so particular and strange – today it’s hard to imagine his films playing in any theater. But, in Times Square, they did. Almost exclusively. This month THE DEUCE takes you “off-Deuce” for an excursion into the outer-environs of 42nd Street and the Penthouse Theater, the former balcony of The Strand – around the corner, but still very much “Times Square.”

National Security expert Bill Arkin, military analyst Tyler Rogoway and special guest, Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Judith Miller to talk Ed Snowden and the NSA’s massive secret surveillance program revealed in CITIZENFOUR.

The Academy Award winning 2014 documentary that takes you right into the escape of Edward Snowden and the mindset of his accomplices and handlers — Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras. Poitras was working on a film about post-9/11 surveillance when Snowden — “Citizen Four” — contacted her. Others had written about, even blown the whistle on the NSA, but Snowden brought out the goods: 1.77 million Top Secret documents, certainly the largest public haul of any insider. The rest is history still in the making.

Judith Miller is a journalist and author specializing in terrorism, the Middle East and other national security issues. She won the Pulitzer-Prize working for New York Times from 1977-2005, becoming its first bureau chief in the Arab World.  She reported on the first Iraq war and then became famous, some would say infamous, for her reporting on weapons of mass destruction leading up to the second Iraq War. In 2005, she spent 85 days in jail to protect confidential sources, receiving the Society of Professional Journalists’ “First Amendment Award.” She is author of four books, most recently, The Story: A Reporter’s Journey. She blogs at www.judithmiller.com and can be seen as a regular commentator for Fox News.

Part of IT’S A CONSPIRACY series presented by Gawker Media.

National Security expert Bill Arkin and military analyst Tyler Rogoway will lead a discussion on Persian Gulf conspiracy caper THREE KINGS.

David O. Russell’s 1999 gore-filled but hilarious meditation about the first Gulf War might start with the greatest opening scene ever in depicting the chaos behind the “first CNN war.” Starring George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg, Spike Jonze, and Ice Cube, it is loosely about a movie about war, Iraq, soldiering, and morality. The limousine scene at the culmination is priceless, as is the absurdity of greed and fear mixed in a caper by these American soldiers to steal Kuwait’s gold, which Saddam stole and secreted in southern Iraq. Nora Dunn plays a Christiane Amanpour clone that looks mighty prescient in conveying journalistic zeal and invitation to danger for the story.

Part of IT’S A CONSPIRACY series presented by Gawker Media.

Gawker Media executive editor John Cook & former Investigations Editor Sam Biddle will lead a discussion on Watergate-era thriller THE PARALLAX VIEW. A 35mm presentation.

The 1974 classic that landed smack dab in the middle of real life Watergate and introduced Alan J. Pakula (All the President’s Men) and his unique filming to a nutjob audience.  Warren Beatty plays a reporter who becomes entangled in an elaborate shadow organization that hires and brainwashes innocents to assassinate political candidates.  Invoking Lee Harvey Oswald, Timothy McVeigh and modern day suicide bombers, The Parallax View depicts corporate America as manipulating the political process, and killing with impunity. Not possible.

What better duo to end our conspiracy film series than John Cook and Sam Biddle? John Cook is currently the interim Executive Editor of Gawker Media and former Investigations Editor for Gawker Media and editor and reporter at The Intercept and Gawker. Sam Biddle has been at the center of many of Gawker’s biggest investigations and was voted “Employee most likely to get in a tussle on the Space Needle.”

Part of IT’S A CONSPIRACY presented by Gawker Media.

The Brooklyn Film Festival presents BUT NOT FOR ME with introduction and Q&A with director Ryan Carmichael and actors from the film.

But Not For Me combines hip-hop and spoken word performance with stories of self-realization and love. Will is a young writer living in the big city, and barely scraping by on his copywriter’s salary. When he meets Hope, his beautiful and enigmatic new neighbor, he is certain he has found the inspiration and the validation he’s been seeking. But as he struggles to find his way, Will learns he must reconcile his youthful vision of life with the complexities of the real world in order to find true fulfillment.

The Brooklyn Film Festival presents ABBY SINGER/SONGWRITER, with introduction and Q&A with director Onur Tukel and members of the cast.

In Abby Singer/Songwriter, Jamie Block – a divorced stockbroker has-been who was once an indie-rock star signed to Capitol Records – meets Onur Tukel, a hapless middle-aged filmmaker who has just moved to Brooklyn. In this coming-of-middle-age story, Onur persuades Block to sink his money into a series of increasingly absurd music videos to promote his comeback as a musician. Desperate to impress his two beautiful, nonchalant teenaged daughters, Block casts them in the videos, which then play on multiple screens throughout this hallucinatory film. As tension mounts between director and musician Block’s bank account and grip on reality dwindle.

A two-hour video variety show of rare footage and pop culture commentary.

Comedian Kevin Maher presents an obsessive look at the Animal Attack genre: from recent CGI beasts to the nature-gone-wrong films of the Drive-In era. This two-hour multi-media show includes dozens of film clips featuring crazed cats, angry bears, giant spiders, Freudian snakes, killer cockroaches, a racist dog and much more. With special guest presentations by Jon Abrams (Editor-in-Chief, Daily Grindhouse), Wendy Mays (creator of SPACE CAT) Matt Glasson (co-host, Kevin & Matt Geek Out About Zombies) and Tom Blunt (film blogger and variety show host)  

Plus Kevin hand-picked some of his favorite scenes from the genre, including: the most pretentious animal incident, best gratuitous animal attack, and cinema’s fakest reptile (hint: it’s not DinoCroc).

In IRRATIONAL MAN, Woody Allen focuses on a small town college campus, where philosophy professor Abe Lucas (Joaquin Phoenix) finds himself in an existential crisis. He discovers a new purpose in life when he enters into a relationship with one of his students (Emma Stone).

Nitehawk’s LIVE SOUND CINEMA presents the Spanish silent film based on the tale of Snow White, BLANCANIEVES, with a live score by BLACK LODGE!

An evil step-mother, amnesia, and a band of bullfighting dwarfs transform the legendary story of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” into Blancanieves; Pablo Berger’s “love letter to European silent cinema.” Set in 1920s southern Spain, this silent black-and white modern film has our Snow White as a young female bullfighter fleeing her past and embarking on an adventure that will lead her towards a destiny unlike any other. Blancanieves was Spain’s official entry for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar for 2012.

Providing the live score to Blancanieves is Black Lodge, a collective of musicians led by guitarist/composer Geoff Gersh, who re-score films then perform live to them. 

A documentary on THE DAMNED, the first English punk artist to release a single and album. Director Wes Orshoski in attendance for a post-screening Q&A!

From Lemmy filmmaker Wes Orshoski comes the story of the long-ignored pioneers of punk: The Damned, the first U.K. punks on wax and the first to cross the Atlantic. This authorized film includes appearances from Chrissie Hynde, Mick Jones (The Clash), Lemmy and members of Pink Floyd, Black Flag, GNR, the Sex Pistols, Blondie, Buzzcocks, and more. Shot around the globe over three years, the film charts the band’s complex history and infighting, as it celebrated its 35th anniversary and found its estranged former members striking out on their own anniversary tour, while still others battle cancer.

Part of Nitehawk Cinema’s MUSIC DRIVEN signature series. Presented with our media partner, Noisey.