24 Hours of Movie Madness!
This October, THE MUSIC BOX OF HORRORS rises from the grave with a 24-hour movie marathon guaranteed to drive you MAD! Featuring frightening flicks on the big screen, plus special guests, giveaways, vendors, and much more! The terror begins on Saturday, October 24th at Noon.
Films Announced:
AMITYVILLE II: THE POSSESSION - Dir. Damiano Damiani, 1982, 104min, format TBD
Diane Franklin in person for a post-film Q&A!
One may think that bringing in a respected and seasoned Italian director like Damiano Damiani (A BULLET FOR THE GENERAL, GOODBYE & AMEN), and powerhouse cinematographer Franco Di Giacomo (FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET) would class up the joint. Lucky for us, they did the opposite and delivered the most grim, salacious, perverse, shocking, and most importantly, best film of the AMITYVILLE series. Pulling from Hans Holzer's book, Murder in Amityville, alongside a healthy spoonful of THE EXORCIST, AMITYVILLE II returns to that damned house where the portal remains open and hungry to possess! Scribed by Tommy Lee Wallace (HALLOWEEN III: SEASON OF THE WITCH), and starring Diane Franklin, James Olsen, & Burt Young, this prequel or sequel or whatever it is ascends to a mind-melting third act never attempted or achieved in the Amityverse again.
ATTACK THE BLOCK - Dir. Joe Cornish, 2011, 88 min, 35mm
In this expertly paced genre debut by Joe Cornish, a gang of resourceful South London teens experience some “28 DAYS LATER shit” and defend their council estate after ape-like aliens descend on Guy Fawkes day. Using motor bikes, samurai swords, fireworks, and a whole lot of gumption, they bravely fight the unknowable horror with the help of an NHS nurse (future Doctor Who Jody Whittaker). ATTACK THE BLOCK has heart and humor, dives into the politics of policing, and amplifies the meaning of finishing what you start. It also gives horror films the Black heroes it needed. The kids are alright, innit. - Courtesy of American Cinematheque
BLACK MAGIC WITH BUDDHA - Dir. Lo Lieh, 1983, 94 min, DCP
US Restoration Premiere! | In Cantonese with English subtitles
Ben, a Chinese man living in Thailand, returns from Papua New Guinea after stealing the brain of an ancient mummy to fulfill his dreams of wealth and marriage. But his act unleashes sacrifices, possessions, and a wave of bizarre deaths. Directed in 1983 by Hong Kong cult actor Lo Lieh, starring Shaw Brothers icons Chen Kuan-tai and Candice Yu and Thai stars Sinjai Plengpanich and Pumi Patanayut, this long-lost horror resurfaces 42 years later, fully restored in 4K and presented in a never-before-seen cut. - Bangkok International Film Festival
DANSE MACABRE - Dir. Dudley Murphy, 1922, 8 min, DCP
Murphy's conception of a cinematic symphony first realized in his THE SOUL OF THE CYPRESS (1920) is furthered with this short dance film conceived and performed by dancer Adolph Bolm in collaboration with Ruth Page. Murphy makes original contributions through his depiction of the devil via superimposition and extensive use of animation to begin the film. The mood is stylishly enhanced by Francis Bruguière's dramatic lighting effects and the powerful use of color tints and tones. The coup de grace is the synchronization of the dance to Saint-Säens' music. The film represents a successful early attempt to coordinate music, dance and lighting into a pure aesthetic experience, hence the descriptive nomenclature Visual Symphony. - Courtesy of Bruce Posner
THE GERMAN CHAINSAW MASSACRE - Dir. Christoph Schlingensief, 1990, 63 min, 35mm
Ultra-rare 35mm print! | In German w/ English subtitles
"...shot in 10 days in mid-April 1990 in response to the imminent dissolution of the communist German Democratic Republic and the integration (or, if you prefer, annexation) of its federated states into the democratic and capitalist Federal Republic of Germany, made official on October 3 of the same year. On November 9, the borders between the GDR and FRG were opened; on the 24th of that month, THE GERMAN CHAINSAW MASSACRE played for its first audiences in a now-unified Bundesrepublik Deutschland, exorcised of the specter that once haunted Europe, at the 24th edition of the Hof International Film Festival in Bavaria.
...a hasty, slapdash, febrile film for a hasty, slapdash, febrile time, as the leaders of a new Germany flung it heedlessly into a global community in which unfettered ravening capitalism would be law of the land, of all lands; an imbecilic film for a culture steeped in imbecility, a world governed by imbeciles. Against stupidity, as Schiller would have it, the Gods themselves contend in vain. As his gesture of protest, Schlingensief offers us giddy, gibbering surrender." - Nick Pinkerton
THE HAUNTED HOUSE - Dir. Edward F. Cline & Buster Keaton, 1921, 21 min, DCP
Featuring live musical accompaniment by Maxx McGathey
One of Buster Keaton’s most famous works, this movie is designed in two parts, both closed environments. The first is the bank where Keaton’s character works, a place thrown into complete chaos by his antics, until such time as he falls victim to his own mischief. The banking hall ends up looking like a giant fly-trap, actors stuck to the floor or to each other, pathetically and comically gesticulating. When Keaton’s hopeless cack-handedness results in his being fired, he takes refuge in a haunted house inhabited by bandits who manipulate a series of secret clockwork mechanisms. He also finds there an actor dressed as Mephistopheles, whom a hostile audience has hounded out of the theatre. Keaton remains trapped in this place, until such time as he can penetrate its workings and thus make the trap not a trap. […] He passes, in other words, from one room-space to the next, unfailingly assimilating every experience, moving from foolishness to wisdom as gradually it dawns that appearances are not what they seem. From beginning to end, the story operates a profound alteration in Keaton’s character and as always, his point is that people do not remain static. Life is about change. Changing is learning to live. - Courtesy of Cahiers du cinéma
I SAW THE DEVIL - Dir. Kim Jee-woon, 2010, 144 min, 35mm
Lee Byung-hun (A BITTERSWEET LIFE) and Choi Min-sik (OLDBOY) feature in this tormenting tail featuring a government agent pursuing a serial killer with a relentless series of ‘catch and release’ attacks, exacting revenge in a way that challenges the limits of everyone involved, including the audience. Director Kim Jee-woon (A TALE OF TWO SISTERS) drags you to the heart of darkness with this exploration of wrath and begs the question; how far can retaliation go and remain justified?
THE LEOPARD MAN - Dir. Jacques Tourneur, 1943, 66 min, 35mm
A dead-end border town becomes a microcosm of social tension, mortal fear, and the bloody legacies of conquest in THE LEOPARD MAN (1943), the last of producer Val Lewton and director Jacques Tourneur’s storied three-film partnership at RKO Pictures. The film’s tightly-constructed narrative follows the repercussions of a stage gimmick gone awry: when a black leopard escapes a nightclub performer’s control and a young girl is subsequently mauled, the New Mexico night takes on an air of lurking, unseen menace. In lieu of a defined main character, THE LEOPARD MAN observes the escalating dread and recrimination among a sharply-rendered cross-section of the town’s inhabitants, from wealthy landowners to Indigenous inhabitants, streetwalkers to pipe-smoking professors. Released within weeks of their justly-revered I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE, THE LEOPARD MAN trades its predecessor’s fever-dream atmosphere for a more naturalistic approach, but is every bit as bleakly bone-chilling–and just as scathing in its indictment of colonization. The film concludes with a haunting memorial procession commemorating the slaughter of Natives at the hands of the Conquistadors—a sequence art historian Alexander Nemerov calls “one of the greatest of all Lewton’s scenes.” The enveloping darkness of THE LEOPARD MAN demands to be witnessed in the stark contrast of this black-and-white 35mm print. - Block Museum
SUSPIRIA - Dir. Dario Argento, 1977, 94 min, 35mm
Ultra-rare IB Tech 35mm print! | English-language, original UK release version
A fairy tale construction at once grim and florid, Argento’s best-known film finds Jessica Harper’s American ballet dancer arriving at an exclusive academy in Germany where she discovers a dark past and occult forces at work in the present. With some of Argento’s most perversely ingenious set pieces, a plum part for former Fritz Lang muse Joan Bennett, and a spine-tingling theme by Goblin that will haunt you to the grave. - Metrograph
More films to be announced