| holyfuckingshit: homemade horror / Saturdays in November (see times below) |
 My friends, we've passed the danger signs, gone through the bottom of the barrel, and seen the edge of the exploitation world. There is no further down. There's B-movies, there's Z-movies, and then there's these movies...homemade horror movies. These backyard bloodbaths, shot on the formats of the masses (VHS and Super-8), are goofy, gory and always exuberant. Share the giddy delights these directors must have felt finding DIY solutions to make their gory dreams come true. Ah, the simple pleasure of watching someone take a hacksaw to a rubber halloween mask filled with chicken guts, evoking nothing more than a horror freak taking a hacksaw to rubber halloween mask filled with chicken guts. These seriously surreal efforts exemplify the true spirit of "amateur" filmmaking in the best sense of the word--movies made for the love of it. In this case, the love of blood and guts.
11/01 @ 10:30pm / SERIES: homemade horror
 Mondo Homemade Horror (featuring Sledgehammer)
For this Cinefamily "Mondo" night, we've sliced and diced of our favorite scenes from the world of '80s homemade horror, creating a virtual smorgasbord of Super-8 splatter and a cavalcade of camcorder carnage. We've scoured the dusty shelves of the last remaining mom-and-pop video stores, looking for the most lurid oversaturated cover boxes guaranteed to have caught the eye of gorehound connoisseurs on the lookout, and pieced together the greatest moments of the last great exploitation frontier--the home video market. To close the night, we offer our most obscure, interesting find: Sledgehammer. Virtually the first SOV (shot-on-video) horror film ever released, this weirdly compelling mystery film is a claustrobphobic white-walled, windowless condo-like vision of hell that seems as bare and spare as a Beckett play--an early 80s soap opera dream sequence curdling into a slo-mo homicidal hallucination.
Tickets - $10
11/15 @ 10:00pm / SERIES: homemade horror
The Abomination
shown with
The Deadly Spawn
This perfectly-paired double feature is an all-out goopy-aliens-with-big-teeth blowout! The Abomination is a trippy Texan Super-8 feature that plays like a Robitussin'd nightmare. Poor Momma is feeling ill, and yakks up the biggest lung muffin ever, which she dismisses as just a "tumor", but it's really a parasitic beast that hypnotisizes her doting son into going on a killing spree to feed it, complete with oceans of gornography. Next, The Deadly Spawn, a rare case where the monster is actually as awesome as the one depicted on its VHS cover art. Perfectly capturing the sleepy small-town it was shot in, this low-budget wonder easily delivers the goods, giving us an unforgettable horde of slimy man-chomping menaces (with entire heads made of super-sharp teeth) who land near a farmhouse and proceed to shred everyone in sight.
The Abomination Dir. Bret McCormick, 1986, 100 min.
The Deadly Spawn Dir. Douglas McKeown, 1983, 35mm, 78 min.
Tickets - $10
11/22 @ 10:00pm / SERIES: homemade horror
 Black Devil Doll From Hell
shown with
Tales From The Quadead Zone
Who is the hell is Chester Turner? Easily the the most mysterious auteur to emerge from the ‘80s camcorder underground, Turner shocked unsuspecting video renters with these two notorious and demented visions. Black Devil Doll From Hell features a Bible-thumping virgin who buys a creepy dreadlocked dummy, to find that it walks, talks, and is ready to bust a nut. After an astonishingly extended, and awkwardly artificial rape sequence, the doll our poor heroine is unable to find another "man" to satisfy her. Trust us, you won’t be prepared enough for this grimy, foul, and incredibly quotable taboo-buster ("I've slept with many men--several, to be exact."). Also featured is his follow-up omnibus, Tales From The Quadead Zone, with Ms. Jones as a bereaved mom who entertains her invisible ghost son with two spooky stories, which involve rednecks fighting over sandwiches and a dead body getting dressed up as a clown. As Shocking Videos said, "Difficult to endure, impossible to forget, and loads of fun to discuss afterward."
Black Devil Doll From Hell Dir. Chester N. Turner, 1984, 70 min.
Tales From The Quadead Zone Dir. Chester N. Turner, 1987, 62 min.
Tickets - $10
11/29 @ 10:00pm / SERIES: homemade horror
Weasels Rip My Flesh
shown with
Long Island Cannibal Massacre
If home movie gorenography is a religion, then Nathan Schiff is its Pope. Starting while still in high school, Schiff produced absurdly gory, indiosyncratic and indulgent micro-masterpieces were made for no intended audience other than the friends and family who made them with him. Shot with no money and lots of heart, these plasma-spattered Super-8 labors of love are a snapshot of horror history long gone, filled with fetid atmosphere, cribbed music, and homegrown special effects. Full of ingenious solutions to no-budget problems, Schiff's films helped to pioneer the DIY homemade horror craze which continues in our digital, straight-to-DVD era. Schiff's first film at the age of 16, Weasels Rip My Flesh, appalled his fellow high school students with its rampaging killer weasels and deliriously absurd finale, while the relentless Long Island Cannibal Massacre exposes Nathan’s East Coast home turf as a breeding ground for rampaging psychopaths as a determined cop ! hunts down some bloodthirsty lepers. Eventually, Schiff started to play these films occasionally for club audiences, having to mix the soundtracks live with favorite rock songs by the likes of the Beatles and the Who. Now is your first and only chance to see jack-of-all-screams Nathan present these two milestones in person, with their original makeshift music soundtracks that couldn’t be cleared for their home video release. When you hear the phrase "teenage home movie horror", Nathan Schiff's films are everything you dreamed they would be. Nostalgic, warm, dazed and confused masterpieces of lo-fi goodness, with lots and lots and lots and lots of blood and guts.
Weasels Rip My Flesh Dir. Nathan Schiff, 1979, 67 min.
Long Island Cannibal Massacre Dir. Nathan Schiff, 1980, 95 min.
Tickets - $10
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