Join us as The Flushing Remonstrance perform their chilling and kaleidoscopic live scores to the 1927 silent horror classic The Unknown and the legendary surrealist film Un Chien Andalou.
The Unknown
Director: Tod Browning
Starring: Lon Chaney, Joan Crawford, Norman Kerry, Nick De Ruiz, John George
Starring Lon Chaney and Joan Crawford, and directed by Tod Browning (Dracula, Freaks), The Unknown is one of the great silent films, with a startling and intense performance by Chaney as Alonzo, on the run from the law and hiding out in the circus as The Armless Wonder – a performer who uses his feet to hurl knives. Against a background of circus life and the sinister shadow of the underworld, The Unknown is a psychosexual fever dream of love and revenge.
Un Chien Andalou
Director: Luis Buñuel
Starring: Pierre Batcheff, Simone Mareuil, Luis Buñuel, Salvador Dalí, Jaume Miravitlles, Fano Messan
Un Chien Andalou is Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali’s groundbreaking depiction of fetish, religion, and obsessive sexuality that forever changed the aesthetics of film.
Starring: Elizabeth Hartman, Peter Kastner, Geraldine Page, Rip Torn, Karen Black, Tony Bill, Julie Harris
Come swoon with The Deuce on a riotously rollicking romp around 1966-ish NYC for a fun-filled amour-fou Valentine to the City of Dreams and Dreamers – where the follies and foibles of frisky youth are free to be… until that fateful day when (metaphorically speaking): YOU’RE A BIG BOY NOW!!
Rollerskating circulation-stackboy at NYPL ‘s Main Branch – bespectacled übernerd “Bernard Chanticleer” – leaves his overbearing/overprotective/over-the-bridge parents’ Great Neck nest to breathe deep of the (then more breathable) air of Fun City… and fumble his way along to “finding himself” while (and more desperately) hoping to find love amongst the fumbling… tubby-ish bumbling boy meets brazen Bad Girl… bumbling boy meets boring-ish Good Girl… bumbling boy bumbles both! Fumbling and tubby-ishly bumbling his way amongst Discotheque dancers! Experimental theater in the Village! Times Square peep-galleries! Boardinghouse-bound chickens! An albino hypnotherapist! With real-life husband and wife Rip Torn and Geraldine Page as the titular twerp’s taciturn parents – and set to a swinging stick-in-your-head soundtrack courtesy of Jonathan Sebastian & The Lovin’ Spoonful (netting them a bona fide Billboard hit with “Darling Be Home Soon”)… Having a melange of sensibilities ranging from the screwbally comedies of the past to the then-hipness of French New Wave, Coppola’s “calling card” film is both a referential frenetic reverie to the cliched growing-pain-hurdles on the way to “manhood” wrought gloriously ridiculous, and a fever-dream love-letter to the kaleidoscopic crazy-quilt cacophony of NYC!!
After a time under the tutelage of Roger Corman, for whom he wrote and directed DEMENTIA 13 and did other odds-and-ends duties – and before graduating from UCLA – the then 27-year-old Coppola was given “carte-blanche” for BIG BOY – his first solo feature AND his MFA thesis… the filming of which brought the Queens-bred kid back East where BIG BOY was a Big Deal here in The City… garnering constant updates in local NYC newspapers of its production progress and location shooting before having its big upper-brow premiere (’60s-swingingly heralded in ads as “Happens Today”) at 59th & 3rd Ave’s Baronet Theatre before bouncing over to Times Square’s Selwyn… So… is it a date?? XOXO from The Deuce!
Starring: Edward Connell, Barbara Hewitt, Frank Boers Jr., Jack Woods, with the voice of Forrest J. Ackerman
Check that date twice Deuce-denizens : this month we’re coming in late, as the chill of Winter (hopefully) thaws… The Deuce is ushering you into Spring on the EQUINOX! On the very night of the astrological event that is its namesake! But this home-made horror/fantasy hullabaloo hodge-podge of hands-on movie-making-magic, stop-motion special-effects, clay-mation monsters, and back-yard dramatics – aka The Equinox… A Journey Into The Supernatural – may just chill you to the core!
Four good-natured college kids hit the hills in search of a missing Geology prof… they also have a picnic… they also meet a park ranger named Asmodeus (?!!?) and discover a creepy castle… they also meet an ol’ coot in a cave who gives them a big-ol’ book that – uh-oh – happens to be the key that will unlock “THE OCCULT BARRIER BETWEEN GOOD AND EVIL”! – after which – having read aloud from said big-ol’ book… all kinds of craziness ensues!!
“SEE FOUR TEENAGERS FIGHT A DEVIL CULT”!
“SEE THE RING THAT ENSLAVES AND DESTROYS”!
“SEE THE SYMBOL THAT DEFIES THE HOSTS OF HELL”!
“SEE THE UNLEASHED POWER OF THE 1,000 YEAR OLD BOOK”! (told ya it was old!)
Who wouldn’t wanna see all those things?? And then… it’s monsters monsters everywhere as the demon Asmodeous (not really a park ranger after all) and his minions battle said good-natured picnic-loving friends over said big-ol’ book!
Originally completed in 1967, shot and edited over a period of two-plus years on weekends and school vacations under the helming of four good-natured under-21 creature-feature movie and Famous Monsters magazine fans – all of whom (Dennis Muran, Mark McGee, David Allen, Jim Danforth) would go on to take the art of special effects to unknown horizons (Google them!) – and who’s labor of love film they’d thought could mayyybe end up as late-night TV horror-show fare… Instead they find it being scooped-up by THE BLOB producer Jack H. Harris and souped-up by the Harris-hired Jack Woods, directing/shooting additional hair-raising and head-scratching shenanigans with the recast now-years-older leads – as well as giving himself the part of not-really-a-park-ranger Asmodeous! The result being a longer film with a shorter title… one that retains the youthful filmmakers’ fantastical (and fantastic!) monster-loving fanaticism, creative ingenuity, and home-movie sappiness and wroughts it large on the big screen… Where like-minded weirdos as such at Time Square’s Empire Theatre – not to mention all the nimrods in hot-rods who honked it up when it played drive-ins all across the South (except we did just mention it) – could marvel in its particularly puzzling mind-bending weirdness!!
And… as an extra special bonus side-trip for this trippy feature – The Deuce will be visiting with those movie-mavens of The Mahoning Drive-In for some off-Deuce discussion and fun!
Starring: Kani Kusruti, Divya Prabha, Chhaya Kadam
The light, the lives, and the textures of contemporary, working-class Mumbai are explored and celebrated by writer/director Payal Kapadia, who won the Grand Prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival for her revelatory fiction feature debut.
Centering on two roommates who also work together in a city hospital–head nurse Prabha (Kani Kusruti) and recent hire Anu (Divya Prabha)–plus their coworker, cook Parvaty (Chhaya Kadam), Kapadia’s film alights on moments of connection and heartache, hope and disappointment. Prabha, her husband from an arranged marriage living in faraway Germany, is courted by a doctor at her hospital; Anu carries on a romance with a Muslim man, which she must keep a secret from her strict Hindu family; Parvaty finds herself dealing with a sudden eviction from her apartment.
Kapadia captures the bustle of the metropolis and the open-air tranquility of a seaside village with equal radiance, articulated by her superb actresses and by the camera with a lyrical naturalism that occasionally drifts into dreamlike incandescence. All We Imagine as Light is a soulful study of the transformative power of friendship and sisterhood, in all its complexities and richness.
Starring: Abdullah Miniawy, Souhir Ben Amara, Khaled Ben Aissa
S is a young soldier in the Tunisian desert. When his mother dies, he gets a week’s leave and goes back home. But he never returns to the barracks and becomes the target of a manhunt through the backstreets of his working-class neighborhood, before vanishing into the mountains. Several years later, F, a young woman married to a rich businessman finds out that she’s pregnant. One morning, she leaves her luxurious villa and disappears into the forest.
Starring: Keith Carradine, Shelley Duvall, John Schuck, Bert Remsen, Louise Fletcher, Ann Latham, Tom Skerritt
In this Robert Altman period drama, Bowie (Keith Carradine) is an escaped convict who embarks on a crime spree with fellow former prisoners Chicamaw (John Schuck) and T-Dub (Bert Remsen). While in hiding between bank robberies, Bowie meets a young woman named Keechie (Shelley Duvall), and the two quickly fall in love. A life of crime doesn’t sit well with Keechie, however, so she and Bowie try to settle down, but the law is determined to bring him to justice.
Starring: Elliott Gould, Nina van Pallandt, Sterling Hayden, Mark Rydell, Henry Gibson, David Arkin, Jim Bouton
Print courtesy of the Robert Altman Collection at the UCLA Film & Television Archive
Private detective Philip Marlowe (Elliott Gould) is asked by his old buddy Terry Lennox (Jim Bouton) for a ride to Mexico. He obliges, and when he gets back to Los Angeles is questioned by police about the death of Terry’s wife. Marlowe remains a suspect until it’s reported that Terry has committed suicide in Mexico. Marlowe doesn’t buy it but takes a new case from a beautiful blond, Eileen Wade (Nina van Pallandt), who coincidentally has a past with Terry.
Starring: Lily Tomlin, Andie MacDowell, Julianne Moore, Tim Robbins, Bruce Davison, Jack Lemmon, Zane Cassidy, Matthew Modine, Anne Archer, Fred Ward, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Chris Penn, Lyle Lovett
Many loosely connected characters cross paths in this film, based on the stories of Raymond Carver. Waitress Doreen Piggot (Lily Tomlin) accidentally runs into a boy with her car. Soon after walking away, the child lapses into a coma. While at the hospital, the boy’s grandfather (Jack Lemmon) tells his son, Howard (Bruce Davison), about his past affairs. Meanwhile, a baker (Lyle Lovett) starts harassing the family when they fail to pick up the boy’s birthday cake.
Starring: Susannah York, Rene Auberjonois, Marcel Bozzuffi
A schizophrenic (Susannah York) confuses her husband (Rene Auberjonois) with her lovers and her self.
