Darktown Strutters
Midnite weekend screenings happen on Friday & Saturday nights (meaning arrive on Friday and/or Saturday night by 11:45pm for seating, the movie starts after midnite)!
Director: William Witney Run Time: 90 min. Format: 35mm Rating: PG Release Year: 1975
Starring: Trina Parks, Edna Richardson, Bettye Sweet, Shirley Washington, Roger E. Mosely, Norman Bartold, Otis Day, and Dick Miller
With musical guests: The Dramatics and Curtis Price
The Deuce is Stax-in’ it high this year and ridin’ inta Spring with the April-foolish phantasmagoric fantasia: DARKTOWN STRUTTERS!! Aka: GET UP AND BOOGIE! And boogie you will when Syreena (Diamonds Are Forever’s Trina Parks at her most winningly, comically winsome) and her Strutters girl-gang of deliriously decked-out 3-wheeled motorcycle mamas maraud their way through a whacked-out Watts in search of Syreena’s kidnapped abortion-clinic commandeering mom: Cinderella!??! “Watts that?” you say?? Yes!! The Deuce is taking you back to 3 years after the warm humanistic hoe-down-y realism of WATTSTAX for a furiously freaked-out funked-up flipside!! A Looney Tunes come to life, rife with mind-bending, jaw-dropping unbelievability! Garish! Gonzo!! Gloriously gauche!! Jam-packed with weirdos and “WTF?!?”!! Kung-fu and cycle-ridin’ KKK-ers… and an evil Colonel Sanders-y rib-restaurant magnate who’s up to some shady cloning experiments whilst throwin’ a bone to his mansion basement/dungeon/laboratory dwelling musical “guests”!!
Directed by since-the-30s B-pic journeyman William Witney – with much of his Roy Rogers, Dick Tracy, Crimson Ghost serial-y sensibilities still intact – and written by Miami Blues helmer George Armitage, in – as legend has it – 3 days, as one script-length, unbroken, run-on sentence!! A fever-dream stream of conscienceless unconsciousness that only the jazzed-up junk-lovin’ jokers of Times Square’s Harris Theatre could cream their jeans for… The Deuce suggests you bring an extra pair – unless you’re comfortable with that!!
Trailer
UPCOMING SPECIAL SCREENINGS
SEE ALLThe Future of Film is Female: Shorts Program No. 1
The second annual evening of short films from The Future of Film is Female
The Future of Film is Female: Shorts Program No. 2
The second annual evening of short films from The Future of Film is Female