Starring: Klaus Kinski, Isabelle Adjani, Bruno Ganz, Roland Topor, Walter Ladengast
Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu the Vampyre is the most hauntingly beautiful film to ever tackle the Bram Stoker legend of Dracula. As the story goes, Jonathan Harker travels to meet this elusive Count Dracula (played to a stunningly sick effect by Klaus Kinski) in order to secure land deeds in Wismar, Harker’s home town. Dracula follows him, bringing a wave of plague and destruction along with him, as he searches to steal the heart of Harker’s wife, Lucy. Perfectly paced, hazily dreary, and set to the most evocative score, Herzog’s Nosferatu elegantly intertwines death and love. Newly restored, its cinematic magic.
Escaped convicts and the family they’ve kidnapped engage in an overnight battle with vampires on the Mexican border in Robert Rodriguez’s FROM DUSK TILL DAWN! Presented in 35mm by El Rey Network!
The ‘From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series’ will also screen in the lobby prior to the film each night!
Directed by Robert Rodriguez and written by Quentin Tarantino, From Dusk Till Dawn is everything you’d want in an all action horror vampire movie. Escaped convict brothers with mental issues? Check. Sexy vampire queens? Check. Dirty jokes and deadly monsters? Check, check. Harvey Keitel as a bow-wielding pastor who lost his faith? Check. What starts out as questionable morality of two criminals who kidnap a family in order to flee into Mexico turns into a struggle of mortality as they surprisingly find themselves in an overnight battle to save their souls from bloodthirsty biker vampires. From Dusk Till Dawn is a fantastically unique twist on the generic vampire tale: unwitting visitors who find themselves fighting the undead done as only the Rodriguez/Tarantino combo could do. A big screen must see.
Part of Nitehawk’s BITE THIS August midnite series.
George A. Romero’s is-he-or-isn’t-he vampire film may just be his best! MARTIN is a special 35mm presentation that includes a post-screening Q&A with lead actor John Amplas moderated by Fangoria’s Sam Zimmerman!
The father of the modern cinematic zombie (the one and only George A. Romero) is also the creator of one of the most subtle vampire films ever made, Martin. Set in the decaying urban landscape of Pittsburgh, the film contains much of the underlying social and political concerns expressed in the his Dead works. Here we have a young man named Martin who has been sent to stay with his elderly relative. Things are a little tense between the two because dear old Martin has a tendency to kill people for their blood (with razors, not teeth). It’s never quite clear if he’s actually a vampire or just someone with mental issues but it’s this ambiguity, the focus on the fine line between reality and unreality, that makes Martin so great.
Print courtesy of the Joe Dante and Jon Davison Collection at the Academy Film Archive.
Part of Nitehawk’s BITE THIS August midnite series.
Starring: Catherine Deneuve, David Bowie, Susan Sarandon
Feed the People, Bed Stuy is a mutual aid group that provides free meals for food shares, strikes and jail support. The group provides free meals and grocery distribution every Saturday in Herbert Von King Park. To make an additional $10 donation to Feed the People, Bed Stuy, select the “Event + Donation” ticket on the checkout screen.
Few vampires are as cool and sexy as those in The Hunger’s love triangle. David Bowie. Catherine Deneuve. Susan Sarandon. Something strange starts to happen when a gerontologist researching sleep and aging gets entangled with a sensual vampire couple who hunt in the New York Club scene. After an incident with her lab primates expressing vampirish behavior, Dr. Sarah Roberts (Sarandon) meets a man named John (Bowie) who’s having difficulty dealing with the false promise of his lover (Deneuve). Apparently eternal life does not mean eternal youth once she’s done with you. Unfortunately, the next person is her sights for favorite is Sarah! Undead, undead, undead!
The unconventional relationship in Hal Ashby’s HAROLD AND MAUDE shows that life is truly worth living.
Harold is a wealthy young man of twenty who, suicidal and obsessed with death, meets the kooky eighty year old Maude (played by the eternally stunning Ruth Gordon) at a funeral. Although in opposite phases of life, Harold’s is beginning while Maude’s is ending, they find genuine love and affection for each other. Shifting from black comedy to anti-establishment, Ashby’s Harold and Maude wasn’t exactly an box office but its tone of acceptance and untraditional love has managed to live long after its release.
Part of Nitehawk’s A REASONABLE LENGTH August brunch series.
A doctor fights against his town’s alien invasion in the 1956 science-fiction classic, INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS.
The population of a small town is being taken over by emotionless alien doubles and Dr. Miles Bennell knows it. But these dopplegangers are sophisticated enough to answer all questions asked by the curious doctor. So he, along with Becky Driscoll, becomes determined to seek out the cause of this bizarre phenomenon even at the risk of seeming insane. As sci-fi does best, Invasion of the Body Snatchers comments on the era of its time by being a warning against communism or as a metaphor for totalitarian structures.
Part of Nitehawk’s A REASONABLE LENGTH August brunch series.
Stolen identity and blackmail abound in Edgar G. Ulmer’s quintessential noir classic, DETOUR.
A fast-talker loner club performer, a mysterious death, and a black-mailing dame…you can’t get more film noir than that. The best of genre, “King of the B’s” director Edgar G. Ulmer takes us cross country from New York to Los Angeles along with nightclub pianist as Al Roberts hitchhikes to visit his girlfriend. But after the driver he’s with suddenly dies, Roberts takes on his identity in order to avoid suspicion with the police. From that point, he only plunges deeper trouble with the law and the ladies.
Part of Nitehawk’s A REASONABLE LENGTH August brunch series.
From Paul Thomas Anderson comes the dark, lovely and unique film experience that is PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE. Presented in 35mm!
When I was younger and did a stand-up gig, it would take me two weeks to recover. Sometimes I’d get so panicked that I would stutter. – Adam Sandler
“A romantic comedy as wonderful as it is strange that expands the genre to its absurdist outer limits and makes us believe.” Adam Sandler gives an amazing and unusual performance as Barry Egan, a socially impaired owner of a small novelty business, who is dominated by seven sisters and is unlikely to find love unless it finds him. When a mysterious woman comes into his life, his emotions go haywire, fluctuating between uncontrollable rage, lust and self-doubt. Oh, and he’s also be extorted by a phone sex line owner.
Part of Nitehawk’s summer program COMEDIANS IN FILM (The Serious Comedian).
Starring: Woody Harrelson, Juliette Lewis, Robert Downey Jr., Tommy Lee Jones, Tom Sizemore, Rodney Dangerfield
Mickey and Mallory are a couple of psychotic serial killer lovers who kill people with joy, inventiveness, and without remorse. Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers is mesmerizing to watch and that makes sense because it’s a meditation on America’s (and the world’s) obsession with sensationalist tales and the media’s complicency in giving these stories fame. We can’t look away! A commentary of its time in the mid-1990s, twenty years later we can see how much (or how little) has changed in our consumptive media circus.
ART SEEN celebrates the Alec Guinness centennial with THE HORSE’S MOUTH! Screening beforehand is frieze video: Cocteau in Soho.
Based on Joyce Cary’s classic novel and written for the screen by Alec Guinness, The Horse’s Mouth brilliantly shows the struggle of artistic creation and how artistic integrity is often mixed with insanity. British painter Gulley Jimson is hell bent on doing things his own way, often to the detriment of his well being and relationships. Frustratingly, most of his artistic visions seem unfulfilled in his paintings until one day he discovers the public wall in which his work can be realized. Criterion says that Guinness “transforms himself into one of cinema’s most indelible comic figures” as he portrays the scruffy, grumpy and lovable Gulley. A comedic and sincere must see!
ART SEEN is in partnership with frieze. Featuring Absolut Vodka Cocktails.
