Action

April in San Francisco - Nikkatsu Action Cinema, Zombie Strippers, and more!

Just received this Dead Channels press release in the mail, and figured a good number of you would be interested. Heck, I was already planning on writing up something about the Nikkatsu films myself. And, provided work and school calm down enough for me to take a daylong break, I might just be able to see a few of them. Now for the press release:

www.deadchannels.com
www.myspace.com/dead_channels

What’s coming up?

Classic Japanese action films; mobsters at the Peep Show; Flaming Sin meets Sweeney Todd; the (420-friendly) Starslyderz Experience; Jay Lee’s Zombie Strippers; as well as SASSY!!! (and strange old movies) in the Vortex Room.

April 10th - 13th at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
No Borders, No Limits: 1960’s Nikkatsu Action Cinema

Tickets are available at www.ybca.org/tickets/production.aspx?performanceNumber=4876
For more information about the series visit www.outcastcinema.blogspot.com

Presented for the first time in the US, this series of super-stylized action films celebrates the golden age of Japan’s oldest and boldest film studio, Nikkatsu. Influenced by both Hollywood and the French New Wave, these films reflect the Westernization that swept away old values, while teaching an entire generation a new Japanese meaning of cool. All films are presented on 35mm film with new digital subtitles by Outcast Cinema.

Thursday, April 10 — A Colt is My Passport (7.30pm),
Friday, April 11 — Roughneck (7.30pm) and Gangster VIP (9.30pm),

Saturday, April 12 — Red Handkerchief (7.30pm) and Glass Johnny: Looks Like a Beast (9.30pm),
Sunday, April 13 — Like a Shooting Star (aka The Velvet Hustler) (7.30pm).

Friday, April 18th at the Lumiere Theatre
Director Jay Lee joins us for the Opening Night of Zombie Strippers!

As seen on CNN and in Entertainment Weekly!
www.sonypictures.com/movies/zombiestrippers
www.myspace.com/zombie_strippers

 
Zombie Strippers is based on the classic French existential Theatre of the Absurd play Rhinoceros by Eugene Ionesco… plus it has zombies, strippers and zombie strippers.

Written and directed by Sundance and SF IndieFest veteran Jay Lee (Noon Blue Apples, The Affairs of God, The Slaughter), Zombie Strippers stars the incomparable Jenna Jameson, and the nightmare man himself - Robert Englund, and will be released nationwide on April 18, 2008 – so watch for it in a theater near you.

Jay will be at the Lumiere Theatre in San Francisco on Friday April 18th to introduce and host the Opening Night’s post-film Q&A’s. See you there!

Saturday April 19th at the Vortex Room
Underworld Cinema: The Life and Work of J.X. Williams + Peep Show

www.jxarchive.org
www.myspace.com/jxwilliams

On Saturday, April 19th at 9:00pm, the late-night, subversive film action continues at The Vortex Room (182 Howard at 7th) with Peep Show  and other Tales from the J.X. Williams Archive!

Film scholar, curator, and archivist Noel Lawrence will host the evening to give a detailed introduction on the making of the film, and the colorful life of its notorious director. Lawrence will include material from his forthcoming documentary “The Big Footnote”, and will also present three of J.X’s short films from the late 1960’s: “Psych-Burn”, “Satan Claus”, and “The Virgin Sacrifice”. 

Wednesday May 7th at the Thrillpeddler’s Hypnodrome:
Dead Channels presents THE STARSLYDERZ EXPERIENCE

As seen in High Times!
For more madness visit their website: www.starslyderz.com

Check out the trailer: www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUHARVzuqvQ

Directors/writers/stars Garrin Vincent and Mike Budde (with their randy alien puppet pals) will join us at the Hypnodrome (575 10th Street) to host their 420-friendly cult epic! Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em.

“The accumulated snarky-satiric musings of every American ex-teen raised on Star Trek, Star Wars, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, Transformers and fantasy videogames have birthed Starslyderz, perhaps the cheesiest — and giddiest — sci-fi spoof since 1980’s Flash Gordon (or 1974’s Flesh Gordon for that matter). Randy, ridiculous futuristic adventure features nonstop low-end f/x and pop culture in-jokes that will resound most among those as young as helmer Garrin Vincent and his collaborators. But even over-30s will recognize Starslyderz as an impressive home-made camp epic that blows away lame Troma-style efforts. Cult status is assured.” – Dennis Harvey in Variety magazine

Fridays and Saturdays through May 3rd at the Hypnodrome:
Flaming Sin: London’s Grand Guignol - and a bonus on Sweeney Todd

www.thrillpeddlers.com
www.myspace.com/thethrillpeddlers

In an amazing coup for Bay Area theatre, a lost one-act play by the legendary Noel Coward has its American premiere in San Francisco. The Better Half was recently unearthed-after 85 years in limbo-by a pair of Welsh academics. Coward wrote it in 1921, at the age of 22, for London’s Grand Guignol Company, which specialized in scandalous comedies and terror plays. It was performed in May 1922 - but never again (until now).

Thrillpeddlers are presenting the Coward play as part of Flaming Sin: London’s Grand Guignol. Also on the bill is The Old Women, or A Crime in a Madhouse, Andre de Lorde and Alfred Binet’s quintessential Grand Guignol shocker, which will comprise the terror portion of the evening. Set in a French insane asylum for women, the play was notorious for its unsettling mixture of suspense, gruesomeness, and farce.

Thrillpeddlers are also featured in the documentary Grand Guignol: A Theatrical Tradition - a stand-out bonus feature on the 2-disc special edition of Tim Burton’s Sweeney Todd.

Meanwhile – Cosmic Hex is in the Vortex Room (at 1082 Howard, SF)
www.myspace.com/thevortexroom
www.cosmichex.com
 
April 11, 2008

9pm: The Baron of Arizona (1950) (dir: Samuel Fuller) - 16mm projection. Vincent Price, Ellen Drew 11pm: Alexander the Great (1968) (dir: Phil Karlson) William Shatner, Adam West, John Cassavetes

April 18, 2008
9pm: Yeti: Giant of the 20th Century (1977) (dir: Gianfranco Paroini) - 16mm projection Antonella Interlenghi, Mimmo Craig

11pm: The Holy Mountain (1973) (dir: Alejandro Jodorowsky) Alejandro Jodorowsky, Hector Salinas

April 25, 2008
9pm: The Big Cube (1969) (dir: Tito Davison) - 16mm projection Lana Turner, George Chakiris
11pm: Attack of the Mushroom People (1963) (dir: Inoshiro Honda) Akira Kubo, Kumi Mizuno

Saturday, April 26th
SASSY!!! meets the Queen of Outer Space

www.myspace.com/sassytheband