Starring: Tippi Hedren, Rod Taylor, Suzanne Pleshette, Jessica Tandy, Veronica Cartwright, Ethel Griffies
Killer animal movies can be pretty easy: tons of people are already afraid of sharks, loads of people can’t stand spiders, Indiana Jones hates snakes… but birds? Hitchcock manages to take some of natures most innocuous creatures and turn them into objects of relentless horror, setting an angry murder of them loose on a quiet California town. Hitch thrusts his stranded characters into the thick of mother nature’s wrath without pausing to explain the reason behind this bird-led insurrection. Besides, we all know why. (It’s because people are terrible).
Starring: Samuel L. Jackson, Julianna Margulies, Nathan Phillips, Rachel Blanchard, Flex Alexander, Kenan Thompson
An early example of crass corporate meme-building, it’s a film reverse-engineered from one deliciously silly title: Snakes on a Plane. Like something built in a B-Movie laboratory, Snakes on a Plane has the good taste to not bother with plot — something about a Hawaiian gangster trying to kill a witness — and wastes no time getting to what the audience really wants: Samuel L. Jackson fighting snakes on an airplane. Almost a decade on, with the heaping froth of internet hype finally gone, Snakes on a Plane still holds up as a fun delivery-method for every possible snake gag you can imagine: snakes in the toilet, snakes biting breasts, snakes on the end of your nose. Snakes. Snakes everywhere. And Sam Jackson is tired of them.
Starring: Thomas Jane, Saffron Burrows, Samuel L. Jackson, Jacqueline McKenzie, Michael Rapaport, Stellan Skarsgård, LL Cool J
What’s the old adage? Never genetically modify something that might want to eat you? Obviously, the researchers on board the sea bound laboratory Aquatica never heard that bit of advice. On the hunt for a cure for Alzheimer’s disease, the researchers mine the brain fluid of three genetically modified sharks whose brains grow larger and craftier by the day. When the largest of sharks manages to break free, it heads off on a crusade to free the other imprisoned sharks while eating just about everything that gets in its way. Run, LL Cool J!
Who will survive the attack of the ancient aztec god Q: THE WINGED SERPENT? A 35mm presentation.
It’s a bad summer to be a cop in New York City. First there’s a killer on the loose who’s leaving behind a trail of brutally mutilated bodies, then there’s a massive diamond heist across town, and on top of all of that, an ancient snake-bird starts snacking on the city’s finest rooftop sunbathers and underpaid window washers. The monster is Quetzalcoatl, an ancient Aztec god who’s taken roost inside the grungy, broken peak of the Chrysler Building. With the creature plucking up New Yorkers left and right, it’s up to the cops to storm the art-deco landmark and take the monster out before it can strike again.
Directed by sleaze-horror master Larry Cohen, Q: The Winged Serpent is chock full of unforgettable images: David Carradine waving a machine gun from the top of the Chrysler Building, cops spraying a dinosaur egg full of bullets, and a great deal of majestic cityscapes made complete by a silly looking claymation dragon flying into frame.
Part of Nitehawk’s July ANIMAL ATTACKS! midnite and brunch series.
Starring: Jennifer Lopez, Ice Cube, Jon Voight, Eric Stoltz, Jonathan Hyde, Owen Wilson
Jennifer Lopez, Ice Cube and Owen Wilson play a group of National Geographic filmmakers out to discover a long-lost Indian tribe on the Amazon River, but their journey downriver quickly becomes a boat ride to Hell when they save a stranded snake hunter (Jon Voight, looking like a piece of poached alligator meat), who hijacks their boat and forces them to help him hunt down a legendary anaconda. Bogged down by bad weather and a busted boat, the team must find a way to wrest control of their ship away from the crazed hunter and avoid becoming snake food.
Who will survive the attack of the killer FROGS? A 35mm presentation.
Snapping photos in the swamps of an isolated Florida island, nature photographer Pickett Smith (Sam Elliott) winds up at the home of the wealthy (and attractive) Crockett family. The Crocketts rule over the island’s ecosystem, planting crops where they don’t belong, dumping pollutants into water supply, and spraying down the marsh with pesticides to take care of the glut of frogs coming onto the island. In short, mother nature ain’t happy; and all the critters of the swamp – snakes, spiders, frogs, and even butterflies – have revenge on the mind. What happens next… you’ll just have to see for yourself. RIBBET!
Part of Nitehawk’s ANIMALS ATTACK! midnite and brunch series.
ART SEEN presents THE FUTURE IS WHATEVER, a selection of short film and video curated by artist Andrea McGinty. From narrative to experimental, relatable to weird, The Future is Whatever takes a humorous look at what it means to be present.
Featuring works by:
James Bayard
Al Bedell
BFFA3AE
Allison Brainard
Sean J Patrick Carney
Jen Catron and Paul Outlaw
Sam Cooke
Petra Cortright
Leah Dixon
Ben Dowell
Fake Injury Party
Nandi Loaf
Emily McMaster
Dominique Palladino
Birgit Rathsmann
Siebren Versteeg
May Waver
Proceeds from the screening will be donated to benefit the Bruce High Quality Foundation University, New York City’s freest art school, a learning experiment where artists work together to manifest creative, productive, resistant, useless, and demanding interactions between art and the world. The Future is Whatever is part of a full day of Williamsburg community events hosted by BHQFU, beginning with a picnic in the park and ending with an after party following the screening. Details will be posted here shortly!
ART SEEN is in partnership with frieze.
“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.
