So, settle into the first of winter, with a log in the hearth, a rum toddy by your elbow and the night wind whipping and whispering without. Without a venue, that is. Well, the venue's at your place or a friend's place and you can set it up any way you wish. You might have to dig around for some of these titles (that's half the fun) but you'll be glad you did.
Season Trailer.
THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE (Dario Argento, Italy, 1969)
A young American writer in Rome witnesses an attack in a gallery in which a woman is left crawling near death on the floor. He tries to help but is trapped in a double glass door, powerless to intervene. It's the first of a series of attacks that will lead him deeper and deeper into dark mystery. Dario Argento's debut is a giallo which uses the classic form as a springboard for a new stylistic iteration, both more colourful and nasty than its inspirations. That said, it's also frequently hilarious with one of the most entertaining police detectives you'll find in the genre. Add to that a score by Ennio Morricone in a playful experimental mood and you have something both of its time and timeless. The film equivalent of the power chord assault on track one of the first Led Zeppelin album.
JUGFACE (Chad Crawford Kinkle, USA, 2013)
A community of backwoods folk who arrange marriages and sacrifice to a blood red pit. All goes well until young Ada, who's gettin' hot n heavy with her own brother, is chosen as a sacrifice (this happens by a kind of divination and pottery ... really!) She's pregnant. This ain't gonna end well. Guess she could just high tail it to the city but there's a problem. That pit they find so godlike ... um, it really seems to be godlike. A strange and intense tale of responsibility that, if flawed, works through sheer pluck.
LAKE MUNGO (Joel Anderson, Australia, 2008)
Young Alice Palmer drowns while swimming in a dam on a day out. Through interviews, home movies and family (and some not so familial) photos we learn about her from her family and other people who knew her. As this begins to get a little too intimate we are taken to their experiences of her presence in the house and efforts in contacting her posthumously. Is fantasy just spiritual comfort food? What of the evidence of hidden cameras, accidental sightings and the thing on the phone from Alice's holiday at Lake Mungo? Grief is not just tears, it's a greedy emotion and a personal entertainment industry. Joel Anderson's extraordinary tale of a haunting is presented like an extended episode of Australian Story, using a mix of professional and non-actors with a mix of performance and improvisation which seldom feels less than real. That's before you get to the genuinely clever use of technology as an extension of the best and worst of our humanity.
WHY DON'T YOU PLAY IN HELL? (Sion Sono, Japan, 2013)
Sion Sono bids a very fond farewell to the art of 35 mm film making (having gleefully adopted digital video much earlier) plunges into the punk ethos that drives his best work and style-checks a kind of history of Japanese cinema while he's about it. A gang of guerilla filmmakers inadvertently stirs a turf war between two Yakuza gangs but finds a strange means of reconciliation: make both sides stars in their own movie version of the feud. Violent, anarchic and frequently hilarious. "Long live the Fuck Bombers!"
HAROLD AND MAUDE (Hal Ashby, USA, 1971)
My favourite rom com. The meet cute is at a funeral. He's depressed and stages his own mock suicides for his mother's attention. She's a force of life and the strong poetry of the everyday. He's a Californian manboy, rich, idle, about twenty. She's a life model and saviour of smog smothered plants, about seventy. It works because it shouldn't. One of the most naturally funny and wrenching films ever.
THEY LIVE (John Carpenter, USA, 1988)
"Put the glasses on!" A drifter finds a job on a construction site and heads back with a co-worker to the homeless camp on the edge of town. At night there seem to be odd chanting prayer meetings in town but on investigation the soup kitchen folk are up to something. Picking up a pair of sunnies he finds in the hall our hero strides into town and finds that the glasses translate billboards from advertising to commands like OBEY and CONSUME. Not only that, all the high lifers and authority figures he sees through the specs look like bug eyed monsters. Our guy is big and strong and angry and has found out that you can't un-know things. John Carpenter's take on Reagan's America pulls no punches (and throws plenty) and remembers to push the thrill essential to all good satire.
A young American writer in Rome witnesses an attack in a gallery in which a woman is left crawling near death on the floor. He tries to help but is trapped in a double glass door, powerless to intervene. It's the first of a series of attacks that will lead him deeper and deeper into dark mystery. Dario Argento's debut is a giallo which uses the classic form as a springboard for a new stylistic iteration, both more colourful and nasty than its inspirations. That said, it's also frequently hilarious with one of the most entertaining police detectives you'll find in the genre. Add to that a score by Ennio Morricone in a playful experimental mood and you have something both of its time and timeless. The film equivalent of the power chord assault on track one of the first Led Zeppelin album.
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