Oddball Films and curator Kat Shuchter present Spectral Cinema: Frightening Films for Friday the 13th with a selection of obscure horror shorts, haunting excerpts and spooky-kooky cartoons from the 1930s-1980s. Anjelica Huston stars in the made-for-tv adaptation of William Faulkner's Victorian haunter A Rose for Emily (1983). A man's conscience and a ghostly heartbeat won't allow him to get away with murder in a noiresque version of Edgar Allan Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart (1971). Spencer Tracy imagines a Hell full of thousands of writhing bathing beauties in a haunting excerpt from Dante's Inferno (1935). Betty Boop and Cab Calloway team up for one of the best (and spookiest) cartoons of the collection Minnie the Moocher (1932). Richard Burton narrates Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s ghostly Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1977), brought to life by director John Ryan with a lucid style of stop-motion animation using layered paper cutouts. Watch the rise of the original queen of the undead in excerpts from James Whale's stunning Horror masterpiece The Bride of Frankenstein (1935). Interpretive dancing spirits tear up an Old West ghost town in an excerpt from John Byner's Something Else (1970), a short-lived and incredibly rare musical television program. Plus, a crypt full of vintage Horror Trailers and more spooky surprises, spend your Friday the 13th right...with a fright!
Date: Friday, June 13th, 2014 at 8:00pm
Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco
Highlights Include:
Minnie The Moocher (B+W, 1932)
All time classic Fleischer Brothers cartoon featuring Cab Calloway and his Orchestra (seen live briefly at the beginning), Betty Boop and Bimbo. Betty runs away from home and runs across a swinging cavalcade of skeletons, ghosts and witches. The happening song contains thinly veiled sex and drug references: Minnie she meets up with a pimp, the king of Sweden, who gives her “somethin she was needin'”…then gets caught up with a pot headed coke-sniffing junkie who teaches her how to "kick the gong" (mainline heroin). One of the best cartoons of the Oddball collection.
A Rose For Emily (Color, 1983)
This compelling made-for-tv dramatization of William Faulkner's short story is worth it for Anjelica Huston's shyly sullen performance alone. Huston plays Emily Grierson, the last of the esteemed southern aristocratic Grierson clan, who grows more and more reclusive and fragile after the death of her father, clinging to the past so desperately that living in the present is out of the question. After years of rejecting suitors who would come calling, Emily takes a mediocre lover. But along with his abrupt disappearance and the resulting deterioration of Emily's psychological state, the film smolders into delicious delirium. Directed by Lyndon Chubbuck, with John Carradine in a cameo role.
The Tell-Tale Heart (B+W, 1971)
Arguably the best film adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's notorious tale of murder and conscience, this film made in 1971 features a moody noir-like quality in stark black and white. Directed by Steve Carver for AFI.
Dante’s Inferno (B+W, 1935, Excerpt)
This 1935 version of the afterlife stars Spencer Tracy, and claims “It Will Burn Itself In Your Memory Forever”. This haunting excerpt features the fires and torments of the netherworld. In the age of Busby Berkeley musicals, this Inferno is chock full of hundreds of writhing tormented souls. An awe-inspiring spectacle of beauties and brimstone.
John Byner's Something Else (Color, 1970, Excerpt)
In a rockin' spooktacular clip from this eclectic musical variety show, the Action Faction dancers don ghoulish garb and get down in a ghost town. These whirling ghosts will get your hairs on end and your feet a tappin'!
Rime of the Ancient Mariner (B+W, 1977)
Sir Richard Burton narrates this animated adaptation of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner, directed by John Ryan. The weathered sailor of the poem’s title tells that nightmarish tale involving the curse of the albatross, spectral seamen, and uncharted waters teeming with malevolent creatures. The hypnotic rhythms of Coleridge’s masterful verse are complimented by the film’s peculiar animation style, combining drawings that imitate woodcuttings in stop-motion, deep contrast shading, and meticulous camera movement.
Bride Of Frankenstein (James Whale, 1935, B+W, excerpts)
The most beautiful horror film of all time! It seems like everything that scares us about science gets the prefix “Franken” added to its name, and why not? The sparking machinery and the flashes of madness are among the highlights in this spine-tingling condensed version, but nothing can steal the spotlight from the monster’s fierce maiden fair.
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.
About Oddball Films
Oddball films is the film component of Oddball Film+Video, a stock footage company providing offbeat and unusual film footage for feature films like Milk, documentaries like The Summer of Love, television programs like Mythbusters, clips for Boing Boing and web projects around the world.
Our films 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.
