Starring: Betsy Palmer, Amy Steel, John Furey, Adrienne King, Kirsten Baker, Stuart Charno
Influenced greatly by Mario Bava’s Bay of Blood, Friday the 13th Part 2 brings in a new set irresponsible, sex-crazed camp counsellors to Crystal Lake. Five years after the horrible bloodbath at Camp Crystal Lake, it seems Jason Voorhees and his demented mother are in the past. Paul opens up a new camp close to the infamous site, ignoring warnings to stay away, and a sexually-charged group of counselors follow — including child psychologist major Ginny. But Jason has been hiding out all this time, and now he’s ready for revenge.
You’d be hard pressed to find a haunted house film more outlandishly fun than this Vincent Price classic. Starring as an eccentric millionaire, Price invites five strangers to spend the night in a “haunted” house and whomever survives will get one million dollars. Directed by the ultimate film showman William Castle, House on Haunted Hill is full of plot holes but the film’s charm is part of the fun-loving gimmick experience of the time period that would make Castle a legend. Just beware any flying skeletons in the theater.
Starring: Alice Lowe, Gemma Whelan, Kate Dickie, Jo Hartley
A pitch black, wryly British comedy from the mind of Alice Lowe (SIGHTSEERS), PREVENGE follows Ruth, a pregnant woman on a killing spree that’s as funny as it is vicious. It’s her misanthropic unborn baby dictating Ruth’s actions, holding society responsible for the absence of a father. The child speaks to Ruth from the womb, coaching her to lure and ultimately kill her unsuspecting victims. Struggling with her conscience, loneliness, and a strange strain of prepartum madness, Ruth must ultimately choose between redemption and destruction at the moment of motherhood. PREVENGE marks the directorial debut from Lowe, who is a true triple threat, writing, directing, and acting in the film during her own real-life pregnancy.
Starring: Marilyn Burns, Allen Danziger, Gunner Hansen, Jim Siedow, Edwin Neal, Teri McMinn, John Dugan, Paul A. Partain
Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is one of a handful of films that punctuate the very life-blood of cinematic history. Intensely brutal with very little reprieve or consideration for the audience, it came out of a rift of a socio-cultural framework, bursting onscreen with the evisceration of the family structure, youth culture, and cultural fragility in a post-Vietnam United States. Like Night of the Living Dead did five years earlier, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre reveals the unraveling framework of society and places the possibility of horror/death to occur anywhere; not in the Gothic castle nor in the fields of Vietnam but, more terrifyingly, in our surrounding neighborhoods. The film also reveals one of the first final girls (Sally) in the American slasher genre.
Sadie (Brianna Hildebrand, DEADPOOL’s Negasonic Teenage Warhead) and McKayla (Alexandra Shipp) are just a couple of high-school BFFs trying to get more followers for their blog. Except their on-line project is devoted to a local murder spree, and they’ve just captured and imprisoned the perpetrator. How do they keep the slaughter spree going so they have more to report on? Well, they’re willing and able to improvise… Director/co-writer Tyler McIntyre delivers a spirited satire of teenage values in the Internet era, coupled with a gruesomely imaginative creative killfest. The leads are right on target as girls whose status obsession has a body count, and the supporting cast includes Craig Robinson (also one of the film’s producers) in a very funny turn.
Starring: Owen Campbell, Charlie Tahan, Elizabeth Cappuccino,
Max Talisman, Sawyer Barth, Amy Hargreaves
Read More
Starring: Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem, Ed Harris, Michelle Pfeiffer, Domhnall Gleeson, Brian Gleeson, Kristin Wiig
A couple’s relationship is tested when uninvited guests arrive at their home, disrupting their tranquil existence. From filmmaker Darren Aronofsky (Black Swan, Requiem for a Dream), Mother! stars Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem, Ed Harris and Michelle Pfeiffer in this riveting psychological thriller about love, devotion and sacrifice.
Fierce, feminist pioneers of American grunge punk, the L7: Pretend We’re Dead documentary, directed by award-winning documentary filmmaker Sarah Price (American Movie, The Yes Men, Summercamp), is a culmination of the band’s re-ignited enthusiasm fueled by their fans’ outpouring of encouragement and support on social media when the band hinted at the idea of a documentary in early 2015.
Culled from over 100 hours of unearthed vintage home movies taken by the band, never before seen performance footage, and candid interviews, L7: Pretend We’re Dead chronicles the band’s triumphs and failures. It takes viewers on an all access journey into the 1990’s grunge movement that took the world by storm. Charged with lyrics that had political bite and humor which proved irresistible to the disenfranchised, the marginalized, and the punk, they helped define grunge as the genre of a generation.
In 2007, 11 years after one of the most influential American punk bands, Jawbreaker, called it quits, the three members, Blake Schwarzenbach, Chris Bauermeister, and Adam Pfahler reconnect in a San Francisco recording studio to listen back to their albums, reminisce and even perform together one last time. Follow the band as they retell their “rags to riches to rags” story writhe with inner band turmoil, health issues, and the aftermath of signing to a major label. Featuring interviews with Billy Joe Armstrong, Steve Albini, Jessica Hopper, Graham Elliot, Chris Shifflet, Josh Caterer and more.
Starring: Bruce Willis, Ed Norton, Bill Murray, Frances McDormand, Tilda Swinton, Jared Gilman
The year is 1965, and the residents of New Penzance, an island off the coast of New England, inhabit a community that seems untouched by some of the bad things going on in the rest of the world. Twelve-year-olds Sam (Jared Gilman) and Suzy (Kara Hayward) have fallen in love and decide to run away. But a violent storm is approaching the island, forcing a group of quirky adults (Bruce Willis, Edward Norton, Bill Murray) to mobilize a search party and find the youths before calamity strikes.