October 31st 2014. Trick or Treat of the Day.
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"This is Orson Welles, ladies and gentlemen, out of character, to assure you that The War of the Worlds has no further significance than as the holiday offering it was intended to be; The Mercury Theatre's own radio version of dressing up in a sheet and jumping out of a bush and saying "Boo!" Starting now, we couldn't soap all your windows and steal all your garden gates by tomorrow night, so we did the next best thing. We annihilated the world before your very ears and utterly destroyed the CBS. You will be relieved, I hope, to learn that we didn't mean it, and that both institutions are still open for business. So goodbye everybody, and remember please for the next day or so the terrible lesson you learned tonight. That grinning, glowing, globular invader of your living room is an inhabitant of the pumpkin patch, and if your doorbell rings and nobody's there, that was no Martian, it's Halloween."
New, continuing and one-night only series today include Acteurism: The Emergence of Ann Sheridan, 1937-43 and To Save and Project: The 12th MoMA International Festival of Film Preservation at MoMA, Queer Pagan Punk: The Films of Derek Jarman at BAM Cinématek, Industrial Terror at Anthology Film Archives, See It Big! Horror at Museum of the Moving Image, and the terrific midnight horror-a-thon A Nite to Dismember 2014! at the Nitehawk Cinema. The boogah-boogahery as follows;
Film Forum
TOUCH OF EVIL (1958) Dir; Orson Welles
THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI (1920) Dir; Robert Wiene
HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR (1959) Dir; Alain Resnais
MoMA
Acteurism: The Emergence of Ann Sheridan, 1937-43
THEY DRIVE BY NIGHT (1940) Dir; Raoul Walsh
To Save and Project: The 12th MoMA International Festival of Film Preservation
POPPY (1935) Dir; Kenji Mizoguchi
MISS OKICHI (1935) Dir; Tatsunosuke Takashima
BAM Cinématek
Queer Pagan Punk: The Films of Derek Jarman
THE DEVILS (1970) Dir; Ken Russell
Anthology Film Archives
ABBY (1974) Dir; William Girdler
HOMEBODIES (1974) Dir; Larry Yust
BowTie Chelsea Cinemas
MOMMIE DEAREST (1980) Dir; Frank Yablans
Museum of the Moving Image
POLTERGEIST (1982) Dir; Tobe Hooper
Nitehawk Cinema
EVIL DEAD 2: DEAD BY DAWN (1987) Dir; Sam Raimi
THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1935) Dir; James Whale
FRIDAY THE 13TH: PART 2 (1981) Dir; Steve Miner
DRACULA: PRINCE OF DARKNESS (1966) Dir; Terence Fisher
RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD (1985) Dir; Dan O'Bannon
Today's Pick? Let's be real now. As strong the tractor beam pull some of these films boast to an unabashed Cinegeek like myself, as tempting MoMA's THEY DRIVE BY NIGHT and POPPY, Film Forum's TOUCH OF EVIL, and the BowTie Chelsea's MOMMIE'S DEAREST EYEBROW PENCIL be, today belongs to the horror film, the only genre that exists solely to provide voluminous nightmare fodder. In glorious shades of grey and red.
Honoring that spirit several venues have committed themselves to the task admirably and in various fashions; BAM going arthouse with Ken Russell's THE DEVILS, Film Forum going silent roots resto with THE CABINET OR DR. CALIGARI, Anthology Film Archives going grindhouse (what else?), programming industrial filmmakers turned horror film freshmen with ABBY and HOMEBODIES, and Astoria's Moving Image going TOTALLY 80's with the Spielberg-produced POLTERGEIST.
All entice, all are highly endorsed by myself, all guarantee commensurate bang for your collective buck. However, only one begins at the Witching Hour, runs til daybreak, and serves you breakfast before you trundle off into that scariest of prospects: the start of Holiday Season 2014. Black Friday starts early this year. No relation to today.
The Nitehawk Cinema's creepy, kooky, mysterious and spooky, altogether ooky A Nite to Dismember 2014! is not quite sold out, but tix are slowly disappearing, like Dracula's post-Van Helsing ashes. If you're lucky enough to snag a last ticket be sure to RSVP to Flavorpill for a free bag of trick-or-treat goodies. Whether that means candy or not, hey, it's Halloween, there are no guarantees. Except of course that you'll survive the night at the Nitehawk. I'll shut up now.
For more info on these and all NYC's classic film screenings in October '14 click on the interactive calendar on the upper right hand side of the page. For the monthly overview and other audio tomfoolery check out the podcast, and follow me on SoundCloud! For reviews of contemporary cinema and my streaming habits (keep it clean!) check out my Letterboxd page. And be sure to follow me on both Facebook, where I provide further info and esoterica on the rep film circuit and star birthdays, and Twitter, where I provide a daily feed for the day's screenings and other blathery. Back tomorrow with a brand new Pick, til then Happy Halloween, Stockahz. And keep watching the skies.
P. S. We're swiftly returning to the winter climate, and believe it or not some of our fellow NY'ers have still yet to be made whole in the wake of the 2012 storm. Should you be feeling charitable please visit the folks at OccupySandy.net, follow their hammer-in-hand efforts to restore people's lives, and donate/volunteer if you have the inclination and availability. Be a collective mensch, Stockahz!
