Friday,
March 4 ~ Sunday, March 6
Groovy
Movies: Far-Out Films of the Psychedelic Era
The
‘60’s was a decade when political and pop culture became one.
This was the era of the Missile Gap and the Space Race, the
Black and Sexual Revolutions, the Vietnam War and Pop Art. Crumbling
censorship laws gave way to a new era of permissiveness which
allowed Hollywood to take a chance on maverick directors and
their outlandish, excessive, often times brilliant films. Local
movie critic Irv Slifkin has vividly captured the era in his
new book Groovy Movies: Far-Out Films of the Psychedelic
Era. Hosted by the author himself, Film @ International
House is pleased to present some of Slifkin’s favorite films
as we attempt to recapture the mind-blowing, revelations of
this iconic decade.
Friday,
March 4 at 7:00pm
The
Seven Minutes
dir.
Russ Meyer, USA, 1971, 16mm, 115 mins, color
 After
the success of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, sexploitation
maestro Russ Meyer chose to adapt Irving Wallace's bestseller
The Seven Minutes to the screen. A courtroom drama
involving a controversial "dirty" book, Meyer’s auteur
stamp is all over these minutes, from the hyperactive
editing to the political pontificating about censorship and
freedom of speech. Fox afforded the filmmaker the largest budget
of his career, which subsidized a truly bizarre cast that featured
Russ regulars Charles Napier, Henry Rowland and Edy Williams,
comic Jackie Gayle, up-and-coming actors like Tom Selleck and
Wayne Maunder (TV's "Custer"), and old pros like Yvonne
De Carlo, John Carradine and Philip Carey, and, as himself,
Wolfman Jack.
Saturday,
March 5 at 7:00pm
Special
Double Feature!
Two
Films, One Admission
Taking
Off
dir.
Milos Forman, USA, 1971, 35mm, 93 mins, color
 Director
Milos Forman’s first American film is a warm and hilariously
subversive comedy about parents trying to cope with their runaway
children. The focus is on bewildered Buck Henry and Lynne Carlin
as they try to deal with daughter Linnea Hancock’s flight to
Greenwich Village hippie life — and end up expanding their consciousness
as much as she does! With Tony Harvey, Georgia Engel and music
by the Incredible String Band.
followed
at 9:00pm by
Skidoo
dir.
Otto Preminger, USA, 1968, 35mm, 97 mins, color
Teutonic
meets psychotronic when Otto Preminger (Laura, The Man With
the Golden Arm) takes on late sixties San Francisco. Jackie
Gleason plays a retired hit man who's pressured by Cesar Romero
and Frankie Avalon into going to prison to rub out Mickey Rooney.
And that’s just for starts. Once in the joint, Gleason is accidentally
turned on to acid and experiences a series of great “epiphanies”
that has him reconsidering his mobster life. The film features
a cast of Hollywood greats including Groucho Marx in his final
film role (a mafia kingpin named “God”) and a stripping Carol
Channing! Skidoo is Preminger's counterculture
folly, a one-of-a-kind journey into whacked-out psychedelia.
Sunday,
March 6 at 2:00pm
The
Jokers
dir.
Michael Winner, UK, 1967, 35mm, 94 mins, color
Director
Michael Winner's dazzling (but rarely-screened) satire of Swinging
London, features Michael Crawford (pre-Phantom of the Opera)
and Oliver Reed as a pair of rich, freewheeling brothers making
the rounds of posh parties. Their anarchic spirit gets the better
of them — and a string of increasingly elaborate pranks results
in their making off with the Crown Jewels. The first movie written
by Britain's premier comedy-writing duo Dick Clement & Ian
La Frenais (The Commitments and Still Crazy).
Sunday,
March 6 at 7:00pm
Billion
Dollar Brain
dir.
Ken Russell, UK,
1967, 35mm, 111 mins, color
 For
the third and final film in author Len Deighton's Harry Palmer
trilogy, producer Harry Saltzman turned to up-and-coming British
director Ken Russell — and wound up with the most wildly surreal,
and strangely poetic, film in the series. Michael Caine returns
as Harry Palmer, the low-key, irresistibly sexy thief-turned-spy,
who finds himself wrapped in fur and roaming around the Scandinavian
tundra with the gorgeous and enigmatic Francoise Dorleac (Catherine
Deneuve's sister). Together they try to foil the megalomaniacal
plans of American general Ed Begley who turns in one of the
most deranged performances of the decade.
|
