Oddball Films and curator Kat Shuchter bring you The Dark Artists - Witches, Warlocks, and Satanists, a program of vintage 16mm netherworld delights with saucy cartoons, lost TV episodes, experimental marvels, satanic smut and more! Ida Lupino directs a witchy episode of Boris Karloff's Thriller - La Strega (1962), starring a then-unknown Ursula Andress who must shake her witchy past to fall in love with a handsome stranger. This tragic romance features palpable chemistry between Andress and Alejandro Rey, Jeanette Nolan's scene-stealing performance as one of the most authentically creepy witches ever with her coven of interpretive dancing witches, and (of course) loving close-ups of Andress' gorgeous face. Kenneth Anger teams up with Anton LeVay for the psychedelic satanic symphony Invocation of my Demon Brother (1969) with music by Mick Jagger. Betty Boop faces off against the horned one in Hell, and brings down the temperature with her icy stare and her seductive dance in the Fleischer Brothers' Red Hot Mamma (1934). George Melies applies his own patented brand of film magic to The Witch's Revenge (1903). The rise of occultism in the late 60s and early 70s led to many "investigations" like the hippy-witchy Occult: X-Factor or Fraud (1973). Burlesque Queen Betty Dolan is half-devil, half-dancer and all delightful in the magnificently costumed mid-century Satan-Tease. A young-witch must cast a spell on her beloved in the lovely poetic short Mantis (1971). Plus! Original trailers for Burn Witch Burn and The Omen, sinful sweets for all and even more satanic surprises for one Devil of a night!
Date: Thursday, October 20th, 2016 at 8:00 pm
Thriller - La Strega (B+W, 1962, Ida Lupino)
The film is described by notorious avant-garde filmmaker Kenneth Anger as “An assault on the sensorium” features“underworld powers gathering at a midnight mass to shadow forth Lord Lucifer in a gathering of spirits”. Invocation is a quintessential late 1960 freak-out, containing a montage of drug use, pagan rituals, an albino, stock footage of the Vietnam War, the Rolling Stones in concert and abstract imagery all played back at various speeds. The film is accompanied by a repetitive, droning Moog musical score created by Mick Jagger. In the words of avant-garde film critic P. Adams Sitney “It is Anger's most metaphysical film: here he eschews literal connections, makes images jar against one another, and does not create a center of gravity through which the collage is to be interpreted... the burden of synthesis falls upon the viewer.” Filmed in San Francisco at the Straight Theater in the Haight and the William Westerfield house on Fulton where Anger resided for a brief time. The film stars Anton LeVay, founder of the Church of Satan and Bobby Beausoleil a former member of the Manson family.
Betty Boop in Red Hot Mamma (B+W, 1934)
It was a cold and snowy night and Betty is freezing cold in her skimpy nighty, but when she blazes a fire in the fireplace, she finds herself in a cartoon inferno, face to face with the Devil himself, and you know no man is a match for Miss Boop!
Mantis (Color, 1971)
Follow a young witch as she lures a handsome wanderer to her woodland cottage and subdues him with love rituals. This really beautiful (and really rarely seen!) film straddles the line between narrative and poetic films. As short as it is, Mantis leaves you under its spell.
Curator’s Biography
Kat Shuchter is a graduate of UC Berkeley in Film Studies. She is a filmmaker, artist and esoteric film hoarder. She has helped program shows at the PFA, The Nuart and Cinefamily at the Silent Movie Theater and was crowned “Found Footage Queen” of Los Angeles, 2009. She has programmed over 250 shows at Oddball on everything from puberty primers to experimental animation.
About Oddball Films
Our screenings are almost exclusively drawn from our collection of over 50,000 16mm prints of animation, commercials, educational films, feature films, movie trailers, medical, industrial military, news out-takes and every genre in between. We’re actively working to present rarely screened genres of cinema as well as avant-garde and ethno-cultural documentaries, which expand the boundaries of cinema. Oddball Films is the largest film archive in Northern California and one of the most unusual private collections in the US. We invite you to join us in our weekly offerings of offbeat cinema.