Wednesday, March 31, 2010

The Name of The Game is KILL!

One of my favorite things about living in LA is all the movie theaters willing to play weird crap. You have to be choosy when it comes to picking your cult items.

You could end up with gold:



or garbage


But sometimes the choice is made for you. Occasionally a title will just sound too mind blowing to pass up.

Last week while on the phone -
Dad: Are you at home?
Me: No, driving over to a movie theater.
Dad: That's fun. What are you seeing?
Me: Old horror film from the 60's.
Dad: What's it called?
Me: (Long pause) The Name of The Game is Kill!
Dad: Oh.

THE NAME OF THE GAME IS KILL! I can't just pass that up, leave it alone. What if it never gets a DVD release? I'd go to my grave wondering just what a film with a title that good could possibly be about!

The Silent Movie Theater (yes, the movies have sound*) was a packed house, with a mob of people resorting to sitting in the aisles.

The movie details the exploits of a Hungarian immigrant hitchhiking his way through the US who ends up embroiled in some family drama involving three crazy sisters and their mother who run a gas station in the middle of nowhere. It seems as though the patriarch of the family disappeared years earlier but no ones account of what happens seems to add up.

Honestly no film could match that title, not even one featuring this dance number:

or the now immortal line "Father used to write the loveliest of poems about midgets with eye problems."

I'd love to talk about the shock ending but:


However while the film didn't light the world on fire the fact that the cinematographer was in the audience and participated in a Q& A moderated by Joe Dante (huh?) happened to be Vilmos Zsigmond was worth the price of admission. I had no idea the Oscar award winner had anything to do with a curio like this and it was pretty cool to see him talk about how much of a dick the director was**

The screenwriter was also in attendance and discussed how he had written the original draft when he was 19 and the project had been passed around for years, ending up in the hands of John Frankenheimer and Roman Polanski (who added the immigrant part) . Since he was paid every time the story was optioned the writer lived off The Name of The Game is Kill! for a decade! Man, I HAVE to be doing something wrong.

With that out of the way I have high hopes for Biredemic...

*They USED to only play silent movies but the theater is now run by the good folks behind Cinephile video, the best video store in all of LA.

**Impatient, the director jumped up to removed a low hanging board that was interfering with a shot...only to misjudge where a grip was standing and to accidentally drive a nail from the board into the gentleman's skull.

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Top 5: Personal favorites as of 3:34, Tuesday March 23rd 2010

5. Mulholland Drive
4. Brazil
3. Kiss Me Deadly
2. Taxi Driver
1. Blade Runner

WTF Movie Night

We've (Moi, Rich, Garrett, Phil and Joe) been doing random movie nights out here for a while (apologies to Phil's poor fiance Kelly who had to put up with many a splatter film) But it was after a Halloween movie marathon spilled over into the rest of one otherwise normal weekend that WTF Movie Night was truly born. We've met (semi) weekly since then and I am blessed to have friends with as questionable tastes in films as I do.

So far we've tackled, in no particular order:
-Torso
-Salo / 120 Days of Sodom
-The Eliminators
-Body Double
-Mute Witness
-Untold Story
-McBain
-Funky Forest
-Chocolate (the autistic girl who knows kung fu one, not the Johnny Depp one)
-Machine Girl
-Tokyo Gore Police
-To Live & Die in LA
-Dead Snow
-Zardoz
-The Chaser
-The Saddest Music in the World
-Death Bell
-3000 Miles To Graceland
-Nekromantik
-Nekromantik 2
-Richard Kern Short Film Festival
-They Live
-The Washingtonians
-Whole
-Lady Snowblood
-Sukiyaki Western Django
-Valerie and Her Week Of Wonders
-Invasion U.S.A.
-Starcrash
-Burial Ground
-My Bloody Valentine
-The Prowler
-Wild Zero
-Maniac
-Teeth
-Robot Jox
-Leprechaun in the Hood
-Nightmare Detective
-Evil Dead Trap
-After Last Season
-Death Bell
-The Man From Hong Kong
-Hausu

and

-Confessions of a Shopaholic

I'm sure I'm leaving some off...

A call to arms

When I was a kid I read a book called *ahem* "The Snarkout Boys and the Baconberg Horror".

http://www.amazon.com/Snarkout-Boys-Baconburg-Horror/dp/0451162420

It was about a group of kids fighting a werewolf in their small town. The number one thing that I remember from the book actually isn't the supernatural night beast but that that the heroes would go to their movie theater after hours and run any movie they felt like. Even little kid me liked the sound of that, the idea of watching weird crap after hours with friends.

I'm hoping this blog is an extension of that, where I can post an update on strange film stuff that I find interesting and you might do the same.