| Holyfuckingshit: The straight dope / Saturdays in May at 10:15pm |
 You thought it was harmless to smirk at a PSA, or smoke out and have a laugh at an After School Special. Well, let me give you the score, kiddo — you try even one of these anti-drug movies, and you’ll be hooked. You can’t just watch one. They may try to harsh your mellow with their cranked-up up visions of how dabbling drug use turns you into a fractured freakazoid on the fast track to the stone orchard — but be warned: nothing is more addictively entertaining to a candy-flipping cabbage head than a scare film. In your buzz-bombed brain, these allegedly harrowing horror shows become goofball giggle-fests that satisfy your mental munchies. At first. But then you need the harder stuff: murderous acid-blasted baldies, blood-thirsty turkey-headed stoners, or a coked-out James Woods punching Sean Young repeatedly in the face. So here’s the straight dope, my friend: These are movies are the “high” way to hell my friend. Turn on, Tune in. Drop Dead.
5/3 @ 10:15pm / SERIES: the straight dope
Stoned
shown with
Blood Freak
Blood Freak is an anti-weed, pro-Jesus monster gore freakout concerning Elvis-esque biker Herschell, who’s caught between the Bible-quoting bombshell Angel and her pothead sister, who drags him down into a hazy cesspool fueled by the one-two punch of cannabis extremis and food additives (did we mention Herschell’s a human guinea pig working for irresponsible food researchers?). The combination of reefer, stuffing and experimental seasonings mutates Herschell into a giant turkey-headed man-thing who seeks revenge by slaughtering every last drug freak in Miami. Will the Lord step in and end this madness? Only the oily dime-store philosopher/on-screen narrator (co-director and nudist Brad Grinter) knows for sure. Before the
feature we have Stoned, a Reagan-era After School Special starring Scott Baio as a geeky student whom, in a pathetic effort to fit in, goes tokin’ in the boy’s room and falls slave to the evil weed. Predictably, he becomes a giggling, snack-craving skate-boarder who puts the “high” in high school and an oar to his poor brother’s head.
Blood Freak Dirs. Brad F. Grinter & Steve Hawkes, 1972, 35mm, 86 min.
Stoned Dir. John Herzfeld, 1980, 16mm, 44 min.
Tickets - $10
5/10 @ 10:15pm / SERIES: the straight dope
 Blue Sunshine
Would you want you doctor to be tripping on LSD? How about your child’s babysitter? In Jeff Lieberman’s hilarious and horrifying parody of drug scare films, we’re shown a world where lurking beneath the surface of every hippie-cum-yuppie who thought he could hit the pipe without paying the piper, lies a potential latent bald-headed Mansonoid. Or, as the film’s original poster screamed, “WARNING! If you are one of the millions who took hallucinogens in the late '60s...you may be a human time bomb about to explode into a bloody nightmare of uncontrollable killing.” In the film, Zalman King discovers that all his college buddies that dosed on a particularly potent brand of acid, Blue Sunshine, are suffering from more than decade-delayed flashbacks. These upstanding socially responsible citizens lose their hair, and transform into super-strong, bloodthirsty maniacs howling at the “blue sunshine” in the night sky. Who will be next – could it be you?
Blue Sunshine Dir. Jeff Lieberman, 1976, digital presentation, 89 min.
Tickets - $10
5/17 @ 10:15pm / SERIES: the straight dope
The Boost
In this feature-length PSA based on a novel by drug culture expert and Nixon speechwriter Ben Stein (“Win Ben Stein’s Money”), James Woods plays a intense, verbose and neurotic salesman full of nervous energy and jittery ticks — and this is before he does his first line of coke. When Woods meets a millionaire who plays fairy godmother and flies him out to gutter-glittery Los Angeles to sell tax-shelter real estate, all seems good, for a while, but tough times lead him face down into a pile of the Devil’s Dandruff. While it’s fun for a while (midnight private jet to Vegas to see Steve Martin, anyone?), it becomes a one-way rail ticket to the bottom, and soon he’s freebasing coke in a Hollywood slum with a septuagenarian, and torturing his beloved dollhouse-perfect housewife Sean Young. James Woods + cocaine = a rip-snortin’ good time.
Dir. Harold Becker, 1988, 35mm, 95 min.
Tickets - $10
5/24 @ 10:15pm / SERIES: the straight dope
The People Next Door
Filled with top-notch actors, The People Next Door is one of the most backwards “Let’s poke concerned parents in the eye!” drug films ever. Eli Wallach and Julie Harris (East Of Eden) play the typical booze-swillin’, chain-smoking, sleeping pill-popping naïve parents who are stunned to discover their sweet little sixteen-year-old daughter is a nympho LSD freak, whom they then feel the burning need to hospitalize. Dad suspects his own long-haired older son of giving her the “stuff” and throws him out of the house, while Mom seeks advice from the neighbors (Hal Holbrook and Cloris Leachman), who can barely contain their own children, and their own dark suburban secrets. Amongst the futile family therapy scenes, nude bikers and trippy freak-outs are enough generation gaps to plow a speedboat through, and this film delivers a solid slew of suburban spew, enough middle-class chaos to send any parent into catatonia.
Dir. David Greene, 1970, 35mm, 93 min.
Tickets - $10
5/31 @ 10:15pm / SERIES: the straight dope
 Chasing Rainbows: A Drug Movie Bender
This is a video addict’s ultimate pipe dream; on this night, we dig into our secret stash for the purest cuts of drug-movie contraband to create a virtual cornudopia of classic PSA’s, classroom scare films, After School Special excerpts, trip scenes, withdrawals, and other “high”-lights from Hollywood’s campiest and kookiest morality tales. Pick your poison, we got what you need: clips about crack, smack, Jack and weed; dexies, bennies, gremmies, and brownies; pinners n’ bombers; French blues and Chicago greens; pink hearts, blue moons, and red devils, and maybe even green clovers; moon gas and disco biscuits; robin’s eggs and mother’s little helpers; California cornflakes and Frisco speedballs; gooney birds and gorilla pills; bumblebees, brain ticklers, and chicken powder — and beer. In other words, it’s gonna be a long night, so come impaired.
Tickets - $10
| Holyfuckingshit: disco fever dreams / Saturdays in June at 10:15pm |
 The allure of the ‘70s discotheque was that it was a sensuous fun fair for adults, a magnanimous multi-colored playground onto which folks of all kinds could project their weekend fantasies of drugs, drink, dancing and doin’ it. For most people, the Saturday night disco was an interstellar escape, where everyone’s a shiny alien sequined superstar, oozing with positive energy, self-confidence and bad cologne. The disco films of the era took that vibe and vigorously shook it all over the screen, keeping the party train rolling from out of the clubs and into the cinema, in the face of all rational thought. Like the best club music, these movies are not made to be experienced at home, but should be seen in the throbbing party atmosphere of Holyfuckingshit! Get out, come to the theatre, we’ll be playing these doozies LOUD. And don’t forget – we only have a tiny bathroom, so no screwing in the stalls or doing rails off the sink. Do that shit in your car.
6/7 @ 10:15pm / SERIES: disco fever dreams
The Apple
It boggles our minds that Xanadu is currently getting the high-profile off-Broadway revisit treatment rather than The Apple, for The Apple is ten times gaudier, and a gazillion times stranger. Set in the "near-future" of 1994, this absurd-o Biblical allegory concerns the perils of young Canadian couple of Alphie and Bibi, who enter a Eurovision-like global music contest and are discovered by the malicious Mr. Boogalow, the Satanical manager of The BIM (an all-powerful fascistic funk band), who exploits them for his own ungodly gain. If that already sounds like a hoot, toss into the mix gay henchmen, bad accents, chorus-girl fire squads, circus acts, disco odes to amphetamines, hippies, sequined jock straps, kvetching yentas, clothed orgies, Carpenters rip-offs, flying Cadillacs, and a jivin' production number set in the depths of Hell -- all brought to you by director Menahem Golan, also responsible for Over The Top and The Delta Force!
Dir. Menahem Golan, 1980, 35mm, 86 min.
Tickets - $10
6/14 @ 10:15pm / SERIES: disco fever dreams
 Can't Stop the Music
The most shocking thing about Can’t Stop The Music, the Village People quasi-biopic, is neither that Felipe The Indian chooses to wear his headdress out on the street as casually as a baseball cap, nor that David The Construction Worker at one point sings a ballad called “I Love You To Death” to a…female?, but rather that their co-star Bruce Jenner manages to come off even more enjoyably leaden than fellow athlete-turned-actor Shaquille O’ Neill. Riding high off his success in the late ‘70s with Grease, flamboyant producer Allan Carr next turned his attention to the Village People, hired (of all people) aging “Rhoda” co-star Nancy Walker to direct, and turned out this startling paean to glitter, milkshakes, Halston couture and split-screen musical numbers. Worth the price of admission alone is the “YMCA” sequence, a Busby Berkeley-style love letter to athleticism and gay bathhouse frolicking that’ll leave you scratching your head so furiously, your scalp will come off in your hand.
Dir. Nancy Walker, 1980, 35mm, 124 min.
Tickets - $10
6/21 @ 10:15pm / SERIES: disco fever dreams
Disco Godfather
The one-and-only Rudy Ray Moore aka Dolemite aka Petey Wheatstraw drives the cinema train straight off the tracks with Disco Godfather, the world’s only kung fu dance party anti-angel-dust comedy. Rudy stars as an ex-cop turned popular DJ/nightclub owner, who grabs the viewer’s attention by the kidneys from his first astounding and jiggly purple-suited entrance. When his nephew gets all strung out on PCP, hallucinating something fierce, he dives headfirst into the equally ridiculously garbed underworld to investigate, to almost no positive effect whatsoever. The film is a trademark heady mix of kick-ass distended elements, a blend of serious anti-drug talk, dance, martial arts and Rudy’s repetitive catchphrases (“Put A Little Slide In Yo’ Glide” and the truly haunting “Put Your Weight On It!”), which moved one anonymous Internet reviewer to write: “This movie was like witnessing the Civil War. It was loud, hard to understand what people were saying, and downright horrifying.”
Dir. J. Robert Wagoner, 1979, 35mm, 93 min.
Tickets - $10
6/28 @ 10:15pm / SERIES: disco fever dreams
 Skatetown U.S.A.
The Caligula of rollerskate movies! Dozens of movie clichés are thrown in a blender and then poured all over a mirror ball and refracted onto the Skatetown U.S.A. roller rink, where everyone from Flip Wilson to Billy Barty to Scott Baio to Ruth Buzzi to Dorothy Stratton collide headfirst with Patrick Swayze (in a smoldering debut as bad boy disco skate gang leader “Ace”.) This insane and entertaining movie has romance, drug humor, blindsiding slapstick violence and a motorized skate race on a pier that compares with the chariot race in Ben Hur, but staffed by Air Supply lookalikes. Alongside the garish clothes and DJs magically shooting lasers out their fingers is some honestly terrific skate choreography — and Marcia Brady making out with Horshak from “Welcome Back, Kotter.” In short, it’s The Rock and Roller Disco Movie Of The Year.
Dir. William A. Levey, 1979, 35mm, 98 min.
Tickets - $10
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