Nitehawk’s LIVE SOUND CINEMA presents a special one-nite pre-Halloween screening of Alfred Hitchcock’s silent film THE LODGER with a live score by MORRICONE YOUTH!
A Jack-the-Ripper type murderer called “The Avenger” is terrorizing London by targeting young blond women. How Hitchcockian! At the same time of these attacks, a mysterious man takes a room at the a family-owned boarding house and strikes up a relationship with the proprietor’s pretty blonde daughter. To thicken the plot, she’s engaged to a policeman hot on the trail of “The Avenger” who thinks her Lodger lover is the serial killer! Part of the restored newly restored “Hitchcock Nine” by the British Film Institute, The Lodger is considered the “first true Hitchcock film” and is, obviously, a thrilling way to kick start your Halloween.
Morricone Youth is a New York City band formed in 1999 dedicated to performing and recording old film and television soundtrack and library production music.
Starring: Kevin Van Hentenryck, Terri Susan Smith, Beverly Bonner, Robert Vogel
What’s in the basket? Well, it certainly isn’t a bushel of kittens. When country kid Duane Bradley arrives in New York with only his mysterious basket, he peaks the curiosity of everyone he meets and this intrigue kills. It actually contains his deformed siamese twin whom he’s on a pack to kill all those who considered him inhuman when born. Duh! As always, a lady comes into the picture and complicates things while the freak twin escapes to wreak havoc on, well, everyone. Basket Case is low budget and high gore, just how we like it.
Starring: Jeffrey Combs, Bruce Abbott, Barbara Crampton, David Gale
H.P. Lovecraft’s writings can be difficult to adapt to the big screen but this 1985 horror-comedy film, based on the story “Herbert West – Reanimator”, is by far one of the best…and the most entertaining. Brilliant but strange medical student Herbert West starts some trouble when he brings his professor (Hans Gruber, not from Die Hard) back from the dead. This, naturally, complicates things for everybody but particularly for one fellow med student and his girlfriend. Sure this is a comedy in this cult favorite but there’s gore a-plenty!
Halloween season can officially begin with Nitehawk’s screening of the maddest story ever told…SPIDER BABY!
Jack Hill’s Spider Baby is an absolute horror classic about the Merrye family who have a rare recessive gene that turns them into cannibals after a certain age. Save for the occasional murderous mishap, all is managed just fine by the family butler who takes care of the children and the older cannibals housed in the basement until distant relatives come in to inquire about the estate. Although in black and white, Spider Baby is full of colorful characters like the silently expressive Ralph Merrye (Sid Haig), the greedy Emily Howe (Carol Ohm), and the concerned caretaker Bruno (Lon Chaney Jr.). But it’s the young mischievous Merrye daughters who truly steal the show with their distorted grown-up behavior, vocal hatred of people, and the deadly game of playing spider.
Part of Nitehawk’s FINAL GIRL October program.
A young woman’s psychological state comes undone while alone in her London apartment in Roman Polanski’s REPULSION. A 35mm presentation!
The psychological unraveling of Carol’s mind in Repulsion is expressed through sequences of dream imagery, vivid hallucinations, and real life horror as only Polanski can produce on screen. When Carol’s sister leaves her clearly disturbed sister alone in their London apartment as she vacations with a gentleman, it sends Carol over the edge and into madness. From that point on the architecture of London, her apartment and its individual rooms becomes a living, threatening character to Carol: it lets evil men in, houses all foul and decaying things, and literally reaches out to consume her. Men, however how well or ill meaning, are not to be trusted and Carol’s ultimately (and innocently) fights back.
Part of Nitehawk’s FINAL GIRL October program.
Mario Bava ignites the Giallo genre with his Rome murder mystery, THE GIRL WHO KNEW TOO MUCH. A 35mm presentation!
Considered to be the first Giallo, Mario Bava’s seminal film The Girl Who Knew Too Much (aka La ragazza che sapeva troppo) is a beautiful composition of a murder mystery meets horror movie. Nora is a young American visiting family in Rome when the shock of her Aunt’s sudden death sends her into the stormy night…and into her own whodunit. Her obsessive desire to prove that someone killed a young woman on the Spanish Steps involves a rather handsome detective (John Saxon) and a sequence of unfolding haunting events. (One scene in particular was reconstructed by Martin Scorsese in his remake of Cape Fear). As is typical with the Bava’s master cinematography and storytelling, The Girl Who Knew Too Much perfectly balances out the fright with humor and gorgeous imagery as it shows one of the first final girls in contemporary horror film.
Part of Nitehawk’s FINAL GIRL October program.
A car accident ignites a father’s obsession with replacing his daughter’s destroyed looks in Nitehawk’s 35mm presentation of EYES WITHOUT A FACE.
George Franju’s Eyes Without a Face (Les Yeux Sans Visage) is a slow-paced meditation on horror. After a car accident disfigures his daughter Christiane, a brilliant surgeon named Dr. Génessier feels such guilt that he kidnaps young women in order to graft their perfect skin onto her face (an act depicted in one of the most graphic scenes in film). Wearing a stoic mask, Christiane keeps to herself and to their guard dogs in their remote French estate but when she discovers what her father is doing for her, she makes sure it never happens again. A mixture of hauntingly gorgeous and disturbing imagery, Eyes Without a Face is an influential part of horror cinema and one that shows the very powerful importance placed on a woman’s beauty.
Part of Nitehawk’s FINAL GIRL October program.
Style Wars is regarded as the indispensable document of New York Street culture of the early ’80s, the filmic record of a golden age of youthful creativity that exploded into the world from a city in crisis. It captured the look and feel of New York’s ramshackle subway system as graffiti writers’ public playground, battleground and spectacular artistic canvas. Opposing them by every means possible were Mayor Edward Koch, the police, and the New York Transit Authority. Meanwhile MCs, DJs and B-boys rocked the city with new sounds and new moves and street corner breakdance battles evolved into performance art.
New York’s legendary kings of graffiti and b-boys own a special place in the hip hop pantheon. Style Wars has become an emblem of the original, embracing spirit of hip hop as it reached out across the world from underground tunnels, uptown streets, clubs and playgrounds.
Following Style Wars, we’ll be screening Style Wars Revisited from 2003:
Style Wars Revisited picks up where the documentary film classic Style Wars left off twenty years prior. This time, Henry Chalfaunt and Tony Silver enlist filmmaker Joey Garfield to join in tracking down and interviewing the now infamous crew of graffiti writers to see how they have progressed as individuals, artists and representatives of the burgeoning Hip Hop culture. A must see addition to the original.
Nitehawk and Noisey present a special one night screening of FILMAGE: THE STORY OF DESCENDENTS/ALL with post screening Q&A with co-director Matt Riggle.
Long before punk rock inflicted its puncture wound on the map of mainstream music, the Descendents were in a garage brewing a concoction of pop, angst, love and coffee. FILMAGE: The Story of DESCENDENTS/ALL follows drummer and square-peg Bill Stevenson as he pushes himself and a rotating door of bandmates to achieve ALL, his relentless philosophy of “going for the utmost possible greatness” despite any and all setbacks.
Interviews with the band and contemporaries such as Dave Grohl (Foo Fighters, Nirvana), Mark Hoppus (Blink-182), Mike Watt (Minutemen), Brett Gurewitz (Bad Religion) reveal the untold tale of one of the most overachieving and influential bands in history.
Music Driven is presented in partnership with Noisey. Featuring Absolut Vodka cocktails.
Nitehawk and Noisey present a special one night screening of CHARLES BRADLEY: SOUL OF AMERICA with a post screening Q&A with Director Poull Brien & an after party in our cafe with Kings County Soul: Daptone DJ’s!
Charles Bradley: Soul of America follows the extraordinary journey of singer Charles Bradley during the electrifying and transformative months leading up to the release of his debut album “No Time for Dreaming.” Despite being abandoned as a child, a period of homelessness, the devastating loss of his brother and constant poverty, Charles Bradley never gave up on his life long dream to be a professional singer. With the help of producer and Grammy-winner Gabriel Roth (Daptone Records) and musician and label owner Tommy Brenneck (Dunham Records), Charles moved away from the James Brown covers he’d been performing for nearly half a century and focused on finding his own unique voice. This film shows the incredible rise of the 62-year-old aspiring soul singer and how his debut album rocketed him from a hard life in the Brooklyn Housing Projects to Rolling Stone Magazine’s top 50 albums of 2011.
Music Driven is presented in partnership with Noisey. Featuring Absolut Vodka cocktails.
