Nitehawk celebrates May Day with a double-feature (our first!) screening of THE WICKER MAN!
Robin Hardy’s The Wicker Man is a provocative British film challenging sexuality, religion, nature, and the value of life. Oozing with sexual references (phallic inferences on regeneration, growth, and fertilization abound), every gesture is a seductive act: sex in the graveyard, young women jumping over a fertility fire, the “innkeeper’s daughter”, boys dancing around the Maypole. And all of these devious acts lead up to the big May Day spring festival when the slightly kooky Scottish community turns full-on creep – it still shocks audiences today! (We’ll be screening the new director’s cut!)
But of course, it’s the 2006 American re-make by Neil LaBute that is actually the campiest of the two. Deemed “absurd” by its star Nicolas Cage, pitting the two against each other will be the most daring gesture of all!
Starring: Christopher George, Lynda Day George, Frank Braña, Edmund Purdom
Never say that demented killers don’t have any goals. The beginning of Pieces shows an innocent young puzzle-loving boy killing his over-bearing mother with an ax and, thus, setting the course for a rather interesting obsession. Fast forward to forty years later, a college campus in Boston is experiencing a series of murders, all of young women whose body parts are stolen. Could it be him? Enter the Lieutenant who has his secret agent pose as a young college co-ed in order to lure the murderer and reveal his identity. Bloody and a favorite amongst horror fans, and surely one that has some serious mother issues, Pieces shows us that apparently you don’t have to go to Texas for a chainsaw massacre!
Our special screening of Bob Rafelson’s HEAD (starring The Monkees) includes an introduction by Eric Lefcowitz, author of MONKEE BUSINESS, prizes for the first ten audience members and a book signing!
Head is a trippy stream of consciousness film about the nature of free will co-written by Bob Rafelson and Jack Nicholson that stars…the Monkees! The ultimate psychedelic-musical-comedy-adventure in which The Monkees attempt to shed their innocent persona, the film begins with the band suddenly interrupting the dedication of a bridge and, from there, works backwards to show what led up to that moment. There’s go-go dancing, an inescapable black box, and a series of unrelated genre-film inspired vignettes. It’s a cinematic act that challenges reality and confronts the idea of scripted control versus total autonomy. It’s a movie for a “turned on audience.”
A mysterious gift transforms a bored boy’s life into one big mathemagical adventure in THE PHANTOM TOLLBOOTH! Presented in 35mm!
Norton Juster wrote The Phantom Tollbooth in 1961.
Milo is bored…really bored…until one day after school a tollbooth suddenly appears in his house. So he hops in the pint-sized car, sets course from the map, and heads out of San Francisco into a magical parallel universe of the Kingdom of Wisdom. The Phantom Tollbooth is a mixture of live action with animation (actually the last of the MGM films to combine the two) and is pretty trippy. Milo is accompanied by his watchdog “Tock” who has a last pocket-watch in his body as they travel to places like Mountains of Ignorance, the Doldrums, Dictionopolis, Digitopolis, and the Castle in the Air. The goal? To rescue Princess Rhyme and Reason! The eccentricity in this film is certain to enchant and educate the young ones while blowing the parents’ minds. Plus Chuck Jones (from Looney Tunes fame) co-wrote, co-directed and animated the film!
Part of Nitehawk’s February LITTLE BOOKWORMS brunch series.
A young boy searches to save his lost mouse from the Tower of London in THE BOY WHO TURNED YELLOW.
Similar to their lavishly beautiful films like The Red Shoes, acclaimed British directors Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger (aka The Archers) produce a colourful children’s masterpiece in their last collaborative venture, The Boy Who Turned Yellow. Originally made for the Children’s Film Foundation as an educational tool to explain the science of electricity to children, this film tells the story of a young boy who is in search of his pet mouse that he lost while on a field trip to the Tower of London. Heading back to London to find “Alice”, he turns yellow on the Tube and finds a man who travels via electricity, also yellow. Adults can search for subtextual message about this dreamlike science film that certainly eschews narrative cohesive for gorgeous visuals while kids enjoy the adventurous spirit!
We’ll also be playing a short animated film before the feature!
Part of Nitehawk’s CHEEKY MONKEYS May brunch children’s series.
Please sir, I want some more…an orphan runs away to hook up with young pickpockets in late 1880s London.
This Best Picture Academy Award winning film is a huge musical production based off the book Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens. In Act 1, we see young Oliver loses a bet to ask the cruel headmaster of the orphanage for some more gruel on behalf of the starving kids. Displeased with this gesture, Oliver is sent into labor at a funeral home where really awful acts cause him to escape. Heading into London in Act II, his life becomes more complicated as he falls into a seedy underworld helmed by a murderer and a pickpocket. It all may sound dark but, rest assured, Oliver gets the good life in the end! Although not as heavy as Dickens’ novel, the film retains some of the subtextual meaning for the adults while being more upbeat and entertaining for the kids.
Part of Nitehawk’s CHEEKY MONKEYS May brunch children’s series.
An apprentice witch, three kids and a cynical conman search for the missing component to a magic spell useful to the defense of Britain. Screening in 35mm!
Set in England during World War II, this Disney musical combines live action with lively animated sequences…and Angela Lansbury! The adventure in Bedknobs and Broomsticks starts during the Blitz when the three Rawlings children are sent to the safe Dorset village of Pepperinge Eye. There they are placed in the care of an apprentice witch, Eglantine Price, whose early attempts at magic create hilarious results (like turning young Charlie into a white rabbit). When she successfully casts a traveling spell on an ordinary bedknob something extraordinary happens…they fly to the animated Isle of Naboombu to find a powerful spell that will save England. Kids will be bewitched by the stunning visuals and creative storyline while adults will appreciate subtle nods like the two “ladies of the night” in the Portobello Road scene!
Part of Nitehawk’s CHEEKY MONKEYS May brunch children’s series.
Who will come out victorious in the battle to be the mother of…THE BABY? This cult classic screens in 35mm!
The Baby is arguably one of the most bizarre psychological horror movies ever produced and it’s a devilish delight to play a voyeur unto the madness. In addition to the main narrative premise revolving around a grown-up man-baby (and that’s enough!), there’s a bad ass mother, the molesting babysitter, incest, canned baby screams/laughter, tremendously bad hair, a swinging party, and duplicitous murder…essentially you have one hell of story on your hands. Laughing at this outlandishness while being completely in awe is part of The Baby’s irresistible charms. Bizarre from its very first moment, it descends into utter insanity with a twist ending that amps up the WTF factor exponentially. It’s camp without the pomp, horror without the gore, a bad movie gone awfully good.
Part of Nitehawk’s May ASK ME ABOUT MY MOTHER series.
A special murderous treat this Mother’s Day weekend as Nitehawk present the cult classic MOTHER’S DAY in 35mm!
Spend a very Troma Mother’s Day with us! In the vein of similar cabin-in-the-woods with a rape/revenge narrative like Last House on the Left and I Spit on Your Grave, Charles Kaufman’s Mother’s Day shows how an innocent reunion amongst three young women turns into a bloody disaster. These lifelong friends just wanted some camping fun for the weekend but wind up battling for their lives and sanity against backwards two punkish hillbillies who will do anything to impress their sadistic granny mother…and this includes fulfilling her incessant demands for torture and deranged depravity on unsuspecting visitors into their woods! The girls don’t take this brutality without fighting back however, when they do, there’s another plot twist on the way.
Part of Nitehawk’s May ASK ME ABOUT MY MOTHER midnite series.
Starring: Betsy Palmer, Adrienne King, Harry Crosby, Laurie Bartram, Mark Nelson, Jeannine Taylor
Things don’t go so well for the reopening of Camp Crystal Lake as the new counselors are stalked and slashed… but by whom? As the site for a young boy’s drowning many years earlier, someone or something is none-too-pleased that a new batch of sexually crazed young adults who will be the caretakers of young children. Stemming from tropes established in Italian giallo films like anonymous killer-point-of-view stabs and punishment for sexual activities, Friday the 13th produces one of the most iconic “Final Girls” in horror (Alice Hardy) and has enduringly made teenage activities a frightening cautionary tale. No real spoilers from us so you’ll have to wait until the end to discover why its maternal instincts are series worthy.
