Starring: Allan Berendt, Hope Stansbury, Patricia Gaul
A howlingly-good time awaits this October on THE DEUCE – when gutter-auteur Andy Milligan’s monster-mash-up BLOOD spills across the screen – eliciting more laughs than screams – as it did with the scuzzballs at Times Square’s Selwyn Theater in 1974… or was it 1976? Or both!?!
With 1970s Staten Island doubling for “1930s London” – the Wolfman’s son and Dracula’s daughter live in less-than marital bliss and spend their time raising blood-sucking plants!?! While blood-thirsty bats turn townsfolk into cannibals!?! With real-estate chicanery and philandering leading to multiple murders!?! And then come even more plot improbabilities to make your mind spin! Mad scientists with deformed lab assistants, vampires, and man-eating plants are just the beginning – but there’s seemingly no end to the hatred spewed by and at everyone involved!!
Yet again Milligan cobbles together his usual mix of over-the-top theatrics and acting (with muse extraordinaire, Hope Stansbury in a stand-out performance), paltry period costumes, and a non-stop barrage of bitter dialogue – sprinkled with some cut-rate gore and skin-crawly “sex” to pander to the perverts of his Times Square “audience” – and fashions what may be the best of his singular, stridently demented, lunatic dreams… it’s actually atmospheric!
Starring: Claudia Jennings, Sam Gilman, Douglas Dirkson
Sink your teeth into a Cajun feast of fury this November when THE DEUCE serves up a hot-plate of back-woods revenge with Beverly and Ferd Sebastian’s everglades-exploitationer GATOR BAIT – heating it up as it did the denizens of Times Square’s Harris Theater in the sweaty summer of 1974!
Like a bayou bobcat, ‘Desiree Thibodaeu’ has a ferally fine time supporting her siblings by poaching from the bounty of the swamp she calls home… until some slack-jawed rednecks and a long-standing family feud lead to a bout of brutal barbarity that pits our gutsy gal of action against a putrid patriarchy of psychos, sickos, and prejudiced scumbags who soon discover they’ve bitten off more than even a gator could chew… when they become the hunted at the hands of the hillbilly hell-cat hell-bent on revenge!
With the verdant setting evocatively lensed by Ferd and a screenplay by Beverly that strikes a stridently feminist note, it’s still the incomparable Claudia Jennings – in her second film with the husband-wife Sebastian directing team – igniting the sun-scorched steamy swamp as ‘Desiree’ – and dishing out some well-deserved comeuppance on everyone who done her and her family wrong – that sets this no-budget exploitation actioner on fire!! And you won’t stop singing her theme song, “Desiree,” to yourself either… yes-sir-ee, I gar-run-tee!
Starring: Regina Baff, Mildred Burke, John C. Becher, Annie McGreevey, Jane O’Brien, Sierra Pecheur
This September, THE DEUCE is gonna grab you by the throat and hit ya BELOW THE BELT… the low-budget, shot-in-1974, all-female wrestling romp that walloped the weirdos of Times Square’s Selwyn Theater when it finally hit the screen in 1980!
Bored with her going-nowhere job, NYC waitress Rosa Rubinsky decides to take a career turn into the wrestling ring – reinventing and redubbing her Polish persona into “The Mexican Spitfire”! Tedious travelling between two-bit towns and trying to survive on bout-to-bout bounty take the forefront in this gritty behind-the-scenes slice of a subculture in its pre-TV glitter days… Low on glamor and glory but brimming with gusto – these gutsy gals give it their all as real actors mix it up with real wrestlers – like the dirty-dealing, mostly toothless Jane “Tommy The Terrible” O’Brien!
Engagingly adapted from Rosalyn Dexter’s semi-autobiographical novel To Smithereens by Sherry Sonnet and director Robert Fowler, BELOW THE BELT is a scrappy ride with a real feel for time and place and a real care for its characters… A rarely seen road movie of camaraderie and choke-holds that takes a wild ride with some amazing women… BELOW THE BELT hits the spot! We have a winner!!
Starring: Bill Skarsgård, Maika Monroe, Kyra Sedgwick, Jeffrey Donovan
Mickey and Jules are lovers on the run, headed southbound for a fresh start in the Sunshine State. When their car dies after a gas station robbery, they break into a nearby house looking for a new set of wheels. What they find instead is a dark secret, and a sweet-as-pie pair of homeowners who will do anything to keep it from getting out.
Starring: Jack Nicholson, Cher, Susan Sarandon, Michelle Pfeiffer
Three small-town friends, Alexandra (Cher), Jane (Susan Sarandon) and Sukie (Michelle Pfeiffer), each having lost the man in their lives, are feeling unfulfilled — until a furtive stranger, Daryl Van Horne (Jack Nicholson), arrives and begins courting each of them in turn. Eventually, Daryl tells them that they are witches. But as the three friends spend more time at his mansion, enjoying themselves and learning about their powers, they begin to worry about Daryl’s ultimate intentions.
Starring: Rick Jason, Millie Perkins, Lonny Chapman, Vanessa Brown
Molly is haunted by vivid memories of abuse and molestation at the hands of her father, who was a ship’s captain; now middle-aged, Molly is obsessed by the ocean and images associated with pirates and sailing lore, which fill her with both fascination and loathing. Single and lonely, Molly longs for a man, and is openly attracted to strong, burly types, but at the same time she bears a deep hatred for them, and sometimes murders and dismembers the men she lures into her home.
Starring: Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Hayley Squires, Leo Bill, Julian Barratt, Steve Oram, Gwendoline Christie
Part of the nation-wide 2019 Art House Theater Day.
A lonely woman (Marianne Jean-Baptiste), recently separated from her husband, visits a bewitching London department store in search of a dress that will transform her life. She’s fitted with a perfectly flattering, artery-red gown–which, in time, will come to unleash a malevolent curse and unstoppable evil, threatening everyone who comes into its path.
Accessibility: Closed Captions, Assisted Listening, Descriptive Audio
Starring: Robert Pattinson, Willem Dafoe, Valeriia Karaman
From Robert Eggers, the visionary filmmaker behind modern horror masterpiece The Witch, comes this hypnotic and hallucinatory tale of two lighthouse keepers on a remote and mysterious New England island in the 1890s.
Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Robert De Niro, Zazie Beetz, Bill Camp, Frances Conroy, Brett Cullen
Joker centers around the iconic arch nemesis and is an original, standalone fictional story not seen before on the big screen. Phillips’ exploration of Arthur Fleck, who is indelibly portrayed by Joaquin Phoenix, is of a man struggling to find his way in Gotham’s fractured society. A clown-for-hire by day, he aspires to be a stand-up comic at night, but finds the joke always seems to be on him. Caught in a cyclical existence between apathy and cruelty, Arthur makes one bad decision that brings about a chain reaction of escalating events in this gritty character study.
Starring: Scarlett Johansson, Adam Driver, Laura Dern, Alan Alda, Ray Liotta, Julie Hagerty
Marriage Story is Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Noah Baumbach’s incisive and compassionate portrait of a marriage breaking up and a family staying together.
