Starring: Tisa Farrow, Ian McCulloch, Richard Johnson

As always Italian director Lucio Fulci brings stellar kills and a killer score with the ‘sequel’ to Romero’s Dawn of the Dawn (Italian title is Zombi)  in which remote island horrors reach the island of Manhattan in the form of a zombie. Basic story, a daughter goes searching for her father who’s gone missing after trying to cure the recent epidemic of the dead walking on tropical Matul Island. Little does she and her newfound sailing friends know that there’s no hope on that island or that it’s already reached the shores of New York. Whether it’s a wooden stick through the eye, a zombie attacking a shark, or watching Mia Farrow’s sister deal with the zombie apocalypse, Zombie ticks all the living dead boxes and then some.

THE JERK was a poor black sharecropper’s son who never dreamed he was adopted.

Comedy is the art of making people laugh without making them puke. – Steve Martin

Naive bordering on idiocy, Navin’s charm and perseverance take him far away from his poor Mississippi farmhouse and into the glitz of Hollywood. Not only does he discover his “special purpose” bumbling through the country but he gets the dog and the girl and, quite by accident, creates an invention that makes him a millionaire. But as we all know, money doesn’t buy you anything but grief and poor loveable Navin finds out the hard way. Plus, this is Steve Martin at his best – doofy, funny, a little bit dirty and totally adorable.

In Sleeper (a futuristic science fiction comedy), Woody Allen plays a health food store owner and jazz musician who, after being involuntarily cryogenically frozen, is woken up 200 years later in 2173.

As one would expect in Sleeper, Miles Monroe (Woody Allen) is a nerd who brings all of his 20th century neurosis and insightful quips into the ridiculousness of the totalitarian state in which he now finds himself living. Monroe comedicly bumbles through his new role on being the representative of what was made obsolete…the past! And so he fights the oppressive government while falling in love with the woman he hates, poet Luna Schlosser (Diane Keaton). The film is full of mockery of science fiction classics, full of physical comedy, and the banter between Allen and Keaton is on point. If ever there were a futuristic loser/hero, it’s Sleeper!

 Part of Nitehawk’s WE CAN BE HEROES August brunch series.

Giallo hits the American streets of New York with our second Lucio Fulci film of the month, New York Ripper.

If it talks like a duck in this early 1980s Fulci horror fest, then it’s your New York Ripper. But burnt out detective Lieutenant Fred Williams is hot on the trail of the man brutally killing random ladies in New York City (and we’re talking some serious knifely aggression towards women here). There’s lots of razor blades, gore, and sexual acts with random strangers (S&M anyone?) going on here but through all that is the element of media fame and psychoanalysis. Part of the honorable group of “Nasties” banned in the UK for decades, New York Ripper is Italian-made American horror at its unfinest.

Part of Nitehawk’s August I Heart New York Horror midnite series.

Starring: Tom Atkins, Bruce Campbell, Laurene Landon, Richard Roundtree

Few filmmakers in the ’80s captured that decade’s uniquely grimy New York City vibes quite like William Lustig, and a prime example of that is the sleazy, gruesome, fun-as-hell cult classic Maniac Cop. Written by fellow NYC horror legend Larry Cohen, it’s one part living dead subversion, more parts slasher and action, and altogether delightful.

And, along with other beloved films 1980’s Maniac and his work restoring classic genre cinema via his retro home video label Blue Underground, it’s why Brooklyn Horror is honoring Lustig with its first-ever Leviathan Award, the festival’s new award dedicated to horror’s most impactful trailblazers. Join us for a special Maniac Cop 35th anniversary screening complete with a Q&A with Lustig and an award celebration. —Matt Barone

Director Peter Glantz will be in attendance both days, featuring a Q&A with Noisey editor Ben Shapiro!

Nitehawk and Noisey present August’s MUSIC DRIVEN film Lightning Bolt: The Power of Salad.

In the summer of 2001, filmmakers Peter Glantz and Nick Noe followed the noise rock band Lightning Bolt from New York to California to make the tour documentary, Lightning Bolt: The Power of Salad (and Milkshakes) capturing nineteen of their jaw-dropping shows.  Loud and aggressive, the duo formed in Providence, Rhode Island in 1994 by Brian Gibson and Brian Chippendale and quickly became known for their guerilla-style live performances (like not actually playing on stage). This documentary features cameos from indie rock celebrities, Pink and Brown, along with interviews featuring the friends and family of Gibson and Chippendale.

A young woman seeks violent revenge after four men brutally violate her and leave her for dead in our August Nitehawk Nasty, I Spit on Your Grave.

Also known as “Day of the Woman”, the infamous I Spit on Your Grave is a very violent representation of sexual abuse and revenge. Jennifer Hills is an aspiring writer who rents a country home to focus on her work but her life drastically alters when she is repeatedly gang raped, beat up, and left for dead by four local men. Whereas in many films of the era, that’s where the story would end, Meir Zarchi’s movie takes us much further into the realm of revenge attacks that are equally as brutal and cruel. The line blurs as to whether justice is being enacted or more mindless violence is being perpetuated. Graphic and disturbing, I Spit on Your Grave is not just a “nasty” film to watch but a must see part of the horror cinema cannon.

Part of the Nitehawk Nasties signature series.

Starring: Patty Mullen, Joanne Ritchie, James Lorinz

The cinematic life of Frankenstein continues in this offbeat 1990 movie where a young medical student sets out to revive the decapitated head of his dead fiancee with, you guessed it, the body parts of prostitutes. As it always is when trying to make a person from scratch, first you have to do the gruesome task of gathering these body parts and, then, you have to deal with the monster you’ve created. All camp and slutty, Frankenhooker leads us through New York bars, streets, and subway on one sewn together sexy adventure. Some things are better off left dead.

Starring: Dan O’Bannon, Dre Pahich, Brian Narelle

As John Carpenter’s first (read: student) film, Dark Star has a certain unpolished quality to it but, yet, it still bears the markings of what his future feature films would look like. It’s a space adventure story about a crew, twenty years into their mission, who find that things start to go hysterically wrong: there’s a mysterious creature who has gone from pet to terroriser, a dead commander frozen with no advice to offer, and a computer in the throes of an existential crisis. Look beyond its amateur quality (one character is played by multiple actors) and there’s substantive material being addressed here: who am I and why do I exist?

Our September ART SEEN program visits the realm of science fiction and post-apocalyptic representations with Chris Marker’s La Jetée (1962) and Ben Rivers’ Slow Action (2011). Artist Film Club presents: Slater Bradley’s she was my la jetée and FRIEZE VIDEO: Remembering Chris Marker.

The first in our post-apocalyptic double-feature is the landmark featurette by Chris Marker, La Jetée, in which a tale of time travel is told through still images. Established in the context of a post-nuclear Third World War, where the survivors live underground in the Palais de Chaillot galleries in post-apocalyptic Paris, La Jetée unfolds into a scientific quest to revisit the past and to ‘rescue the future’. It’s an exploration of memory, time and space, and the advancement of life on our planet in a compelling and succinct manifestation of imagery.

Following La Jetée, is the recent work Slow Action by British filmmaker and artist Ben Rivers. Slow Action is a post-apocalyptic science fiction film which exists somewhere between documentary, ethnographic study and fiction. Earth in the distant future, when the sea level has risen to absurd heights forming new isolated islands and archipelagos. Two narrators read accounts from a great library of Utopias, describing the four islands seen in the film.

Ben Rivers is the recipient of FIPRESCI International Critics Prize, 68th Venice Film Festival for his first feature film Two Years At Sea; the Baloise Art Prize, Art Basel 42, 2011; shortlisted for the Jarman Award 2010/2012; Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award for Artists, 2010. 

Artist Film Club:
Slater Bradley‘s she was my la jetée. Shooting on super 8 and HD film and integrating subtly moving stills, in “she was my la jetée” Bradley fixates on the face of an alluring woman, whose hair blows in the wind as she speeds down a river atop a boat. The resulting meditation on the changing nature of film in the modern world is mirrored in the narrative, in which the artist looks back at an unattainable past love, as though recalling a dream.

FRIEZE VIDEO: Remembering Chris Marker (produced in association with Pundersons Gardens). Curator Stuart Comer, artist Beatrice Gibson and artist/writer Jeremy Millar pay tribute to the late Chris Marker.

Part of Nitehawk’s Art Seen signature series. In partnership with frieze.