After two sell out screenings, it’s back! Heavy Metal Splatterfest DEATHGASM shreds again at midnite.
After his mother is institutionalized, misfit Brodie is sent to live with his Uncle Albert and Aunt Mary, whose son David torments him. A heavy metal fan, Brodie forms a band called DEATHGASM with his friends Zakk, Dion, and Giles. When bandmates break into a local house, they discover that one of their idols, reclusive musician Rikki Daggers, lives there. Daggers gives the band magical sheet music, which a cult later murders him to find. Skeptical of the sheet music’s power, the band plays it, only to summon a demon. With the help of his crush, Medina, and his bandmates, Brodie must find a way to defeat the demon.
Starring: Val Kilmer, Gabriel Jarret, Michelle Meyrink, William Atherton
When a teenaged prodigy steps onto the prestigious campus of Pacific Tech, he’s partnered up with the school’s living legend: Chris Knight (Val Kilmer), a super-genius whose time at school has turned him into a world class slacker. The college’s resident jerk professor (William Atherton, naturally) plops the two of them onto a secret laser project, kicks back and lets the kids do all the work for him. Little does Chris and his gaggle of geeks know, the laser project is actually an undercover weapons project for the CIA.
Director Martha Coolidge first broke ground as a filmmaker in the New York documentary scene before moving to California to rub elbows with the Coppola clan at Zoetrope. She broke big when she took a sleazy teen exploitation script and flipped it into the fun and heartfelt Valley Girl. Before making Real Genius, Coolidge spent time rubbing elbows with actual eggheads at Caltech, and rewrote the script based off of her experiences.
Sex, rap, and family values? CB4, a 35mm presentation!
Hip hop parody CB4 follows a trio of two-bit rappers trying to make it in the rap game. After endless stalled attempts, the group finally strikes gold when they take on identities of a bunch of prison-bred lunatics out to shock anyone and everyone. The result is a machine-gun spoof on race and taste in popular music with sights set on pearl-clutching suburbanites, industry buffoons, wannabe rappers, furious afrocentrics, and psychotic gangsters.
Director Tamra Davis got her start directing music videos in the 1980s, an environment she found more welcoming to female directors. After working with acts like Husker Du, NWA, Sonic Youth and Black Flag, Davis moved on to features, first with indie crime drama Guncrazy and then breaking big with comedies like CB4, Billy Madison and Half Baked.
Part of Nitehawk’s September SHE MADE IT brunch, midnite, and special event series.
XX directors picked the film with the one place you don’t want to be buried…PET SEMATARY.
When a doctor uproots his family from Chicago to a small town in Maine, the bucolic piece of property they buy has a couple of a hiccups. First: there’s that mean-stretch of highway where semi-trucks rocket past in the middle of the night; then, there’s the pet cemetery, and well, it’s best not to go to the pet cemetery. Local legend has it that anything that gets buried in that cursed earth won’t stay dead for long, and when a truck runs down the good doctor’s youngest son, he soon finds out that what goes into the ground isn’t the same when it comes out.
Part of Nitehawk’s XX Selects midnite series featuring film selected by XX directors.
Exploitation pioneer Doris Wishman makes the move from nudies to slasher with A NIGHT TO DISMEMBER.
A mondo splatterfest from cult director Doris Wishman, A Night to Dismember chronicles a single bloody night in the life of the only remaining member of a cursed family. Production began for the film after Wishman witnessed the runaway success of Halloween and its imitators – smelling money in the air, the seasoned director hopped on the slasher bandwagon, casting porn actress Samantha Fox in the lead. Troubled from the get go, bankruptcy caused the project’s film lab to shut down and over half of the film ended up in the dumpster. Ever vigilant, Wishman finished her frankenfilm with reshoots and overdubs, amounting in a bizarro slasher mess for the ages.
Part of Nitehawk’s September SHE MADE IT brunch, midnite, and special event series.
Nitehawk and Nerd York City celebrate the 30th anniversary of cult horror anime VAMPIRE HUNTER D with a freshly remastered HD presentation from Sentai Filmworks and giveaways courtesy of Dark Horse Comics.
Humans have a rough run in the 10,000 year gap between our time and the blighted future of Vampire Hunter D. It’s the year 12,090 A.D., and humans live as serfs under the fierce rule of ancient aristocratic vampires and their personal cadre of ghouls, bandits and beasties. When one such lord falls for a young farm girl, she hires a wandering stranger as a bodyguard. Fortunately for her, this wandering loner is D, a legendary vampire hunter and the only person capable of standing up to the powerful vampire lord.
Directed by Toyoo Ashida of Fist of the North Star fame and based on a popular series of horror novels by Hideyuki Kikuchi, Vampire Hunter D is one of anime’s first blood-and-guts fantasies, blending elements of American westerns with classic European horror and cyber punk. The film garnered an international cult following thanks to the import-friendly home video market.
Part of Nitehawk’s September ANIME AFTER DARK midnite series.
Starring: Junko Iwao, Rica Matsumoto, Shinpachi Tsuji, Masaake Okura
4K restoration
A head-spinning thriller colored with shades of Alfred Hitchcock and David Lynch, Perfect Blue chronicles the downfall of a popular singer, Mima Kirigoe, whose carefully controlled life and image unravels after she abandons her singing career to take on a small role in a sleazy crime drama. As she tries to cope with a disappointed fanbase, Mima begins receiving threatening messages and discovers a popular blog written in her name that chronicles every detail of her life. Shaken by her stalker and objectified by sleazeball industry types, Mima starts hallucinating and loses track of reality, which proves problematic when her co-workers start turning up dead.|
A film festival favorite on its release, Perfect Blue kicked off Kon’s influential career as a director, who went on to helm several reality bending features like Paprika and Tokyo Godfathers before dying of cancer in 2010. Perfect Blue in particular proved to be a such an influence on Darren Aronofsky’s work that the director bought the rights to the film and lifted scenes wholesale for both Requiem for a Dream and Black Swan.
Starring: Kôichi Yamadera, Emi Shinohara, Takeshi Aono, Daisuke Gôri
A dark fantasy set in feudal Japan, Ninja Scroll spins a wild yarn about a wandering samurai, Jubei Kibagami, who’s hired to thwart a lesser lord’s plot to smuggle a boatload of gold from under the Shogun’s nose. Protecting the shipment are The Eight Devils of Kimon, a nasty gang of super-powered toughs with the likes of a blood-drinking golem, a blind swordsman, and an insect-controlling dwarf in their ranks, all led by a psychotic immortal from Jubei’s past.
An imaginative and lurid sex-and-violence action flick, Ninja Scroll has had more success in the U.S. market than it ever had in Japan. The movie helped usher in a wave of interest in Japanese animation in the 1990s when it became a video store staple alongside titles like Akira and Ghost in the Shell.
Starring: Koichi Yamadera, Unshō Ishizuka, Megumi Hayashibara, Aoi Tada
When a shady terror cell sets off a dirty bomb in the middle of a crowded highway, the Martian government offers up the largest bounty of all time to catch the perps. All that cash sets up the ears of the crew of The Bebop, a jazzy group of interstellar bounty hunters led by a kung-fu fighting, fast talking hipster named Spike Spiegel.
Based on the landmark television series, Cowboy Bebop: The Movie takes full advantage of its feature length budget, introducing a live-action feel to a medium known more for static set-ups than dynamic camera movement. The music by composer Yoko Kanno plays an equal role in the film’s easy coolness, blending elements of jazz, country-western, opera and Arabic music.
This August THE DEUCE turns up the dog-days-of-Summer heat when we take you to the The Harris Theatre for the high-tension thrill-ride – the acme of NYC actioners: NIGHT OF THE JUGGLER! Co-Presented by DEUCE-buddy and Times Square-centric archivist – Chris Poggiali from TEMPLE OF SCHLOCK!
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!
Ex-cop James Brolin goes ballistic and blows his top when a bonkers bozo from the bombed-out Bronx boondocks brazenly (and mistakenly) kidnaps his daughter… on her birthday! His blood a-boil – he’ll bust up every borough to get her back… Floozies and Fro-Yo… ex wives and ex cons… furious cab drivers and demented detectives… joggers and… jugglers?? He’ll tear it all apart! Just look at that poster – he’s tearing it apart!!!
Aka ‘New York Killer’ aka ‘Countdown In Manhattan’ aka ‘New York Connection’ aka ‘Pursued’ – NIGHT OF THE JUGGLER by any name is a bounty of bombastic fun – and a telling take on the politics of the City in its strapped-for-cash troubled times…
Part of Nitehawk’s THE DEUCE Signature Series.
