APRIL PROGRAM

8.30 Doors open
9.00 Feature
Heated and Improved Sound
same venue as always

April 5th

Wolfen – Michael Wadleigh 1981
Wolfen is a highlight of 80’s horror cinema, and the only other feature by the maker of the “Woodstock” documentary. An otherworldly tale of ancient Wolf entities that feed off the destitute denizens of New Yorks slums.. The film features great “point of view” sequences through the enhanced perception of the wolves. Based on the novel by Whitley Strieber; who later became the world’s most famous alien abductee, certainly carries the idea of a cosmos where man isn’t master. Wolfen also contains strong subtexts concerning the destruction of nature by humanity and the plight of the “original” Americans.

April 12th

The Medusa Touch – Jack Gold 1978
Richard Burton gives a customarily grandiose performance as John Morlar the writer and apocalyptic telekinetic, who narrowly survives a brutal bludgeoning by a mysterious assailant. Morlars’ unwavering wrath emanates even from his broken and comatosed body on the hospital bed. Through investigation we discover that he has the power to cause floods, fires and air crashes (one scene eerily reminiscent of September 11). The film works both as supernatural thriller and as a curious commentary on political anger, terrorism, and even ecology. The attempted portrayal of Morlar as evil limply distracts from the sheer pleasure of watching his retribution against the British establishment, as he bumps off Headmasters, Tories, Hanging Judges and Archbishops.

April 19th

Spiderbaby – Jack Hill 1964
As featured in the seminal RE-Search tome “Incredibly Strange Films”, Spiderbaby is a story of a degenerative disease that emerges in the Merrye Family, a family sealed off from normal society. Starring Lon Chaney Jr as Bruno, the Merrye Chauffeur / Guardian in his last film performance also sings the ghoulish title song, which sets the tone for this psychosexual horror farce. Jill Banner plays Virginia’ a girl who thinks she is a spider, wielding a net and two carving knives as fangs. Overall this film could be seen an “Adams Family” for perverts or as one reviewer puts it “a TV sitcom directed by Luis Bunuel. Spiderbaby somehow bridges the gap between “Psycho” and “Texas Chainsaw Massacre”

April 26th

The Amazing Mr Bickford – 1987
In Bruce Bickford’s studio in Santa Monica, California; there exist another time zone. In his world nothing is stable, and no meaning is fixed. In claymation and line drawing, highways become primordial jungles, Cars become smoke become monsters, Rock clubs undulate with violence and become graveyards. The morphing landscape is unbelievably complexed and obsessive, and its parade of filmic clichés that twist uncontrollably according to the logic of dreams. Bickford is an American surrealist that could be seen as an artist operating in the same unconscious America explored by David Lynch.

Monster Road – Brett Ingram 2004
Monster Road explores the wildly fantastic worlds of legendary underground animator Bruce Bickford. Tracing the origins of Bickford’s remarkably unique world view, the film journeys back to Bickford’s childhood in a competitive household during the paranoia of the Cold War and examines his relationship with his father, George, who is now facing the onset of Alzheimer’s Disease. Entirely self-taught, the sixty-year-old Bickford now works alone in a makeshift basement studio in his house near Seattle making films for no apparent audience.