From April the 9th to the 22nd, the New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles is being programmed by one of my favourite directors and one of my favourite people period; Joe Dante.
Aside from being the super talented director of GREMLINS, THE HOWLING, EXPLORERS, INNERSPACE, PIRANHA, as well as an extraordinary episode in TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE; he’s also one of the nicest and most knowledgable fellows in the movie industry.
So come for the movies, come for the fun, but above all, if you count yourself as any kind of geek - come for an education.
I will be there as much as I can. Is going to be great.
I will now paste in Joe’s program of events and liner notes.
DANTE’S INFERNO - APRIL 9th - 22nd
“April 9 + 10 MONDO CANE and ZULU
It’s hard to imagine today the impact this tawdry but fascinating Italian “shockumentary” had on the world in 1962, when the bizarre customs of people in other lands seemed both exotic and horrifying to Western eyes. Its smash success spawned a whole genre of mostly phony Mondo movies, each outdoing the other for pure sleaze, which lasted into the 80s and paved the way for something much more upsetting: Reality TV.
ZULU is simply one of the great historical epics ever-100 stuff-upper-lip British soldiers battle 4000 Zulu warriors in a beautifully staged reenactment of the 1879 Battle of Roarke’s Drift. John Barry should have won (but didn’t) an Oscar for his brilliant score. The cast, led by producer Stanley Baker, is terrific, but the great Nigel Green steals the show as the consummate side-whiskered, mustached Victorian Sergeant-Major. With Jack Hawkins, James Booth, Patrick Magee and a very young Michael Caine, whose work here got him THE IPCRESS FILE.
April 11 + 12 HOLLYWOOD BOULEVARD and TRUCK TURNER
We called it “Day For Nothing” when we made it (shot in ten days around footage from 12 other movies on a bet with Roger Corman). One of the last of New World Pictures’ popular “three girl” drive-in movies where pretty girls doff their duds and chase around non-permitted LA locations. The late great Candice Rialson plays a version of herself as a naive Indiana girl trying to make it in scuzzy 70s Hollywood. Pulled from 42nd Street after two days, it seems to have survived as a cult movie. It’s certainly an accurate record of what it was like to make a New World Picture. Producer Jon Davison, co-director Allan Arkush and stars Mary Woronov and Dick Miller are scheduled to appear.
TRUCK TURNER, which came out late in the blaxploitation game, got lost in the Hollywood shuffle but it’s as dazzling a piece of action filmmaking as the 70s had to offer. Isaac Hayes is a bounty hunter on the trail of a big-time pimp whose vengeful, bitch-slapping squeeze is played by Star Trek’s Nichelle Nichols! Along for the violent ride are Yaphet Kotto, Alan Weeks, Scatman Crothers, Sam Laws and Dick Miller. One of the overlooked gems of the decade from director Jonathan Kaplan (HEART LIKE A WHEEL), who will introduce the film.
April 13, 14, 15 THE SADIST and CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM EATER
Fairway-International was a tiny company specializing in grade-C drive-in movies like WILD GUITAR and EEGAH! But from such unlikely soil springs a chilling surprise! James Landis’ intense 1963 drive-in classic is based on the same true crime story as BADLANDS- the serial killing exploits of Charles Starkweather and his underage girlfriend. Brutally unfolding in Real Time over 94 taut minutes, mad killer Arch Hall Jr. terrorizes our small cast in a junkyard — maybe the best-photographed junkyard ever, courtesy of the great Vilmos Zsigmond, who will appear in person on the 15th.
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM EATER is the greatest work of exploitation king Albert Zugsmith (SEX KITTENS GO TO COLLEGE)-a triumphantly surreal parade of seemingly inexplicable images starring a deliriously miscast Vincent Price as an aphorism-spouting soldier of fortune trying to get the lowdown on a girls-for-sale rin