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The Slumber Party Massacre

Starring: Michelle Michaels, Robin Stille, Michael Vilella

The only female directed slasher of the 1980s, The Slumber Party Massacre was written by famous feminists Rita Mae Brown, and intended as a sleazy parody of an already sleazy genre. Director Amy Holden Jones thought otherwise, flipping Brown’s cheeky script into straight horror.

The result is a self-aware slasher eager to drill some fresh holes in the genre, all while still delivering on that good ol’ teenage sex and violence. The story is appropriately ridiculous, about a girls’ basketball team hosting a slumber party that’s stalked by an escaped lunatic – and it isn’t long before the long showers, clothes changing and sexy phone calls give way to an ever mounting pile of mangled bodies.

The Green Berets

John Wayne stars as a tough colonel who leads a squad of Green Berets and a liberal war correspondent on a dangerous mission to capture a Viet Cong general. A 35mm presentation and introduction by Andrew Kirell, Editor-in-Chief, Mediaite.

Loosely based on the novel of the same name by Robin Moore, The Green Berets is an anti-communist and pro-Saigon film produced at the height of America’s involvement in the Vietnam War. It shows the conflicts and complications of warfare as cynical war correspondent George Beckworth, who works for a liberal newspaper, becomes complicent in the violence towards the Viet Cong. He joins tough-as-nails Col. Mike Kirby (John Wayne) on a special mission in South Vietnam and while he initially protests the U.S. torturous interrogation strategies, he transforms into a gung-ho fighter after witnessing the Viet Cong atrocities. In its heightened cinematic way, The Green Berets gives a voice to the stories that, at the time, people were only witnesses through media produced newsreels.

Part of the Journalists in Film series by VICE News and Nitehawk Cinema.

Network

Starring: Faye Dunaway, Peter Finch, William Holden, Robert Duvall, Beatrice Straight, Wesley Addy, Ned Beatty

I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore! Fired after twenty-five years as an anchorman on UBS, Howard Beale proclaims on his last broadcast that he was going to commit suicide and, although he doesn’t, his on-air rant of self destruction becomes an unexpected ratings sensation. Fueled by the ambitious programming executive Diana Christensen, the focus of the network takes on a new trashy but lucrative turn that is to the disappointment of the news division president Max Schumacher (Beale’s longtime friend and Christensen’s occasional lover). Forty years after release, Sidney Lumet’s satirical film about the exploitative nature of trash news television is more relevant than ever.

Medium Cool

VICE News and Nitehawk’s Journalists in Film series launches with Haskell Wexler’s MEDIUM COOL, a film about a television news reporter who becomes involved with the political power of imagery during the violence of the late 1960s.

Special recorded introduction by Robert Forster and in-person introduction by Jason Mojica, Editor in Chief of VICE News.

It’s 1968, and the whole world is watching. With the U.S. in social upheaval, famed cinematographer Haskell Wexler decided to make a film about what the hell was going on. Medium Cool, his debut feature, plunges us into the moment. With its mix of fictional storytelling and documentary technique, this depiction of the working world and romantic life of a television cameraman (Robert Forster) is a visceral cinematic snapshot of the era, climaxing with an extended sequence shot right in the middle of the riots surrounding the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. An inventive commentary on the pleasures and dangers of wielding a camera, Medium Cool is as prescient a political film as Hollywood has ever produced. – Criterion

Part of the Journalists in Film series by VICE News and Nitehawk Cinema.

Spoons, Toons & Booze Gone Wild (May)

SecretFormula presents…

Spoons, Toons & Booze Gone Wild

Your Favorite Saturday Morning Cartoons + Booze & Free Cereal + a Special Menu of Cartoons Featuring the Sexiest & Most Scantily Clad Toons on TV!

Do you miss your childhood Saturday mornings of waking up early to gorge on cereal and cartoons? If so, Secret Formula has the ultimate brunch for the kid in you…Spoons, Toons & Booze! We’ve got all your favorite Saturday morning cartoons, delicious cocktails and a free all you can eat sugar cereal bar, not to mention Nitehawk Cinema’s delicious brunch menu.

Before the FCC ruined everything, cartoons got away with some pretty sexy stuff on television. This month, we’re screening episodes featuring sexy babes and beefcakes, beach bodies, scantily clad toons and even more sexiness that was almost too hot for TV! If you’re turned on by anthropomorphic mice in tight jumpsuits, this is the show for you. 

– Over 80 cartoon series from the 1930?s through the 90?s and YOU get to choose what we watch!

– A special menu of episodes featuring the sexiest and most scantily clad toons on Saturday morning!

– A free all you can eat cereal bar filled with all the sugary, marshmallowy, fruity, chocolaty cereal you crave! Soy and regular milk available. 

– Special cereal-themed cocktail menu including “The Sonny”, a White Russian topped with Cocoa Puffs, and the “The Complete Breakfast” with Cinnamon Toast Crunch-infused rum, Bailey’s Irish Cream and iced coffee!

– Cereal Shots! Drop a shot of Baileys or Kahlua in to booze up your cereal bowl!

– Compete in contests to choose which cartoons we watch and win sweet prizes from Nitehawk Cinema!

Dark City

A man wakes up with no memory in a nightmarish world without sun in DARK CITY.

In a city perpetually shrouded in night, a man named John Murdoch wakes up in a motel room with total amnesia. He is immediately accused of a series of brutal murders (none of which he remembers), a woman who claims to be his wife and a very mysterious doctor.  In his quest for the truth about his memory, why the city is always dark, why no one notices, and why people walk around comatose after midnight, Murdoch discovers an underworld run by telekinetics called “The Strangers” who possess the ability to alter the city and its inhabitants. Can he stop them before they destroy him and his mind completely?

Part of Nitehawk’s FUTURE NOIR midnite series.

Liquid Sky

Invisible aliens in a tiny flying saucer come to Earth looking for heroin and find it in the early 80s new wave scene. 35mm presentation!

This independent science fiction films uses the new wave downtown scene of the early 1980s to show a rather dystopic and ugly version of the future. Campy and stylish with a heavy dose of depressing, Liquid Sky shows a world where tiny aliens descend to feed their heroin-like addiction of a “drug” produced after sexual climax. They use real heroin addict Margaret as their tool to score but she doesn’t mind it when her partners are vaporized because they’re all jerks anyway! With great production design and a heavy dose of punk attitude, Liquid Sky paints a rather dismal portrait of this scene as Marget kills, a scientist tracks the aliens’ intentions, and society falls apart around them all.

Part of Nitehawk’s FUTURE NOIR midnite series.

Supermensch

In his directorial debut, Mike Myers documents the astounding career of Hollywood insider, the loveable Shep Gordon.

Shep Gordon is the consummate Hollywood insider. Gordon has become a beacon in the industry, beloved by the countless stars he has encountered throughout his storied career. Shep is known for managing the careers of many musicians – a career that began with a chance encounter in 1968 with Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix. He even found time to invent the “Celebrity Chef.” Though the chef as star is part of the culture now, it took Shep’s imagination, and his moral outrage at how the chefs were being treated, to monetize the culinary arts into the multi-billion dollar industry it is today. In this film, Gordon’s unlikely story will be told by those who know him best, his pals.

Obvious Child

Brooklyn comedian Donna Stern gets dumped, fired and pregnant just in time for the worst/best St. Valentine’s Day of her life.

For aspiring comedian Donna Stern, everyday life as a female twenty-something provides ample material for her incredibly relatable brand of humor. On stage, Donna is unapologetically herself, joking about topics as intimate as her sex life and as crude as her day-old underwear. But when Donna gets dumped, loses her job, and finds herself pregnant just in time for Valentine’s Day, she has to navigate the murky waters of independent adulthood for the first time. As she grapples with an uncertain financial future, an unwanted pregnancy, and a surprising new suitor, Donna begins to discover that the most terrifying thing about adulthood isn’t facing it all on her own. Anchored by a breakout performance from Jenny Slate, OBVIOUS CHILD is a winning discovery, packed tight with raw, energetic comedy and moments of poignant human honesty.

The Double

Based on the novella by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, a man  who is driven nearly to breakdown after finding out his life has been usurped by a doppelgänger.

Lost, lonely and invisible, Simon James is shocked when a new employee, James Simon, bears a striking resemblance to himself but is the polar opposite in temperament. He is more assertive, brash, risk-taking. James asks Simon why he doesn’t have a girlfriend. Simon is interested in Hannah, but his shyness keeps him from expressing his feelings for her. James coaches Simon on how to woo Hannah. Then Simon finds that James has gone behind his back and started a relationship with Hannah. This leads to a violent confrontation between Simon and James.