Starring: Robert De Niro, Cybil Shepherd, Jodie Foster, Peter Boyle, Albert Brooks, Harvey Keitel

Adrift in New York City after the Vietnam War, socially awkward loner Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) takes up a job prowling the city’s streets as a taxi driver to deal with his insomnia. Exposed to no one but a rogues gallery of pimps, hustlers and perverts, Travis begins seeing the world as putrid and in need of cleansing. Through awkward, fumbling attempts at romance, Travis isolates himself further, leaving him alone to mull over his obsessions: guns, a phony presidential candidate, and a roughed-up underage prostitute.

Martin Scorsese’s masterwork, Taxi Driver is a brute of a film, one that scrapes characters from the gutter of New York City and rakes them out into the sun to see how they react. Essential on every level.

Love can be vicious.

Boy meets girl. Girl gives boy heroin. Boy kills girl. Boy dies too. The passionate and troubled romance between Sex Pistol’s bassist Sid Vicious and groupie turned girlfriend Nancy Spungen is the stuff of rock and roll legend, a tale that casts a long shadow of drug addiction, abuse and industry enabling. Anchored by a pair of powerful performances from Gary Oldman and Chloe Webb, Alex Cox’s SID AND NANCY is one of the best films about the lethal cocktail of sex, drugs and rock and roll ever made.

Starring: Isabelle Adjani, Sam Neill, Heinz Bennent, Margit Carstensen

Drawing elements from marital dramas, political thrillers and good old-fashioned blood-and-guts horror, Andrzej Żuławski’s Possession chronicles the dissolution of a marriage between a spy (Sam Neill) and his increasingly erratic wife (Isabelle Adjani).

Back from a mission abroad, Mark comes home to discover that his wife, Anna, wants a divorce. Unable to shake his wife’s sudden change in heart, Mark begins an investigation into her downward spiral only to discover that she’s come completely unraveled, a frothing, raving, violent shell of her former self. The source of her madness seems to come from within her Berlin apartment, and boy… it ain’t pretty.

Take a walk through the monochrome streets of Woody Allen’s MANHATTAN. Presented in 35mm!

Forty-two-year-old comedy writer Isaac Davis (Woody Allen) is dating a high school girl (an affectingly awkward Mariel Hemingway). He doesn’t see the relationship going anywhere, but the girl’s well of admiration towards him is a nice change of pace from his last relationship, which ended with his wife leaving him for another woman. Isaac’s best friend is married, but he spends most of his time with a bright young mistress, Mary (Diane Keaton), who, not surprisingly, Isaac has a thing for too.

Beautifully photographed by Gordon Willis, life in Woody Allen’s Manhattan is one defined by loneliness and a pervasive sense that there’s always something better out there, be it a new town, a new girl, or a new job. This universal yearning inspires Allen’s collection of troubled Manhattanites to trade around their affections like a deck of baseball cards.

Part of Nitehawk’s February I CHOO-CHOO-CHOOSE YOU brunch series.

The horrifying tale of a mysterious maniac, an abandoned estate, and madness gets its firey start one Christmas Eve in SILENT NIGHT, BLOODY NIGHT. A 35mm presentation!

Silent Night, Bloody Night (aka Night of the Dark Full Moon and Death House) is a strange and eerie thriller that kicks off on Christmas Eve in 1950 when a Wilfred Butler runs out of his house…on fire. Decades later, his grandson Jeffrey is eager to sell the now abandoned estate but, wouldn’t you know it, an inmate from the nearby institution for the criminally insane escapes and starts to seek bloody revenge in the house. The mystery unravels into a tale of incest, insanity and murder! This pre-slasher shocker is produced by Lloyd Kaufman also stars Warhol Factory legends Candy Darling and Ondine along with horror hero John Carradine!

Part of Nitehawk’s December XMAS CHOPPING midnite series.

THE DEUCE presents STRANGE BEHAVIOR, which premiered on the Deuce at the NEW AMSTERDAM THEATRE in October of 1981, under the alternate – and apropos – title: DEAD KIDS!

Q&A with special guest star Michael Murphy and Don Shor! 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!

The population of small town Galesburg, Illinois is down… about six feet! Something is turning the normally nice high school kids into murderous maniacs and petulant police chief/single dad, Michael Murphy, thinks it’s connected to high-jinks happening up at the local college Psych Department. Weird and wacky and one of a kind – with one of the best dance parties in movie history! Sock hops and silly shocks, mad scientists and syringes! Made on the cheap in Australia by Americans abroad – director Michael Laughlin and screenwriter Bill Condon – hit The Deuce as DEAD KIDS at the New Amsterdam in October of 1981 – a perfect Halloween treat for the tricks down on 42nd. Start your New Year right with this bit of frightful fun!

Complimentary drinks at the after-party courtesy of Bronx Brewery.

SecretFormula presents…
Spoons, Toons & Booze New Year Special

Your Favorite Saturday Morning Cartoons + Booze & Free Cereal + a Special Menu of First Episodes and Origin Stories to Start the New Year!

For the first Nitehawk Nasty of 2015, we celebrate one of the nastiest movies of the last decade: Rob Zombie’s twisted, sun bleached sequel THE DEVIL’S REJECTS.

When it comes to killin’, no one does it better than the Firefly family. It’s 1978, and after getting pegged for seventy-five homicides by the local P.D., the remaining members of the fiendishly charming Firefly clan (Captain Spaulding, Otis, and Baby) hit the road, hoping to outpace a psychotic sheriff (William Forsythe) who rationalizes his extreme methods with a righteous fury. Getting away should be easy enough. With the open road in front of them, the Firefly’s just need to keep a low profile until they hit the border — problem is, when you have a knack for knifings like these three, it can be hard to control yourself. After all, they’re doing the Devil’s work; and on this final ride, the Devil’s Rejects hope to secure their damnation by leaving a trail of mangled bodies in their wake.

Part of Nitehawk’s Nitehawk Nasties signature series.

A wayward hitman discovers a newfound purpose in life when he takes on a corrupt DEA officer on behalf of an orphaned 12-year-old girl.

In Luc Besson’s THE PROFESSIONAL, Jean Reno plays Leon, the best cleaner in New York City. When he’s not collecting on perfectly executed mob contracts, Leon spends his time alone in his apartment, watering plants and keeping himself in shape. He’s lonely, but a hitman with connections can wind up dead. When a corrupt, cocaine-addled DEA agent (Gary Oldman) kills the family living next door, Leon’s solitary life suddenly comes to a close as his orphaned neighbor, twelve-year-old Mathilda (Natalie Portman), comes to him for protection. Mathilda and Leon become an unlikely pair, as Leon teaches the eager young girl the secrets of his trade so she can avenge her family.

Part of Nitehawk’s January THE PERFECT CRIME brunch series.

Get Thanksgiving-ready at Nitehawk with these turkeys! 

It’s a few days before Thanksgiving and Windy City ad-man Neal Page (Steve Martin) is stuck in New York for the world’s most pointless marketing meeting. With a holiday flight to catch, Neal looks forward to spending time with his family in just a few short hours. It was supposed to be easy. He wasn’t counting on a blizzard sending his flight to Kansas, and he definitely wasn’t counting on meeting chatty shower curtain ring salesman Del Griffith (John Candy), his new partner in navigating the holiday hell of PLANES, TRAINS AND AUTOMOBILES.