MASSACRE AT CENTRAL HIGH
Dir. Rene Daalder
USA 1976
35mm 87 min.
One of the original teen-retaliation classics, Rene Daalder's Massacre at Central high is especially fitting in the post-Columbine climate -- but it is primarily presented here as one of two offerings in tribute to the late Cheryl "Rainbeaux" Smith. Smith is only one in a great '70s cast that includes Robert Carradine, Kimberly Beck, Andrew Stevens and the chick who played Mary on TV's Eight is Enough. When a new student at Central High suffers abuse from local gang members and watches his fellow classmates endure similar and frequent humiliation, he takes matters into his own hands with an arsenal of weapons and explosives aimed at obliterating this social menace. Daalder cleverly avoids making a hero out of our vengeful protagonist; instead, we see his gradual mental deterioration as his retributive hand ceases to discriminate and the entire student body find themselves at his mercy. Blessed with some choice dialogue and suspect costuming decisions, Massacre at Central High is the epitome of the '70s meathead ethic fused with an apt social commentary. Daalder would go on to direct the bizarre post-apocalyptic musical Population: One starring members of the defunct LA band The Screamers.
--Kier-La Janisse

ORLAN: CARNAL ART
Dir. Stephan Oriach
France, 2002
35mm 75 min.
"A provocative documentary reproducing in massive detail the cosmetic surgery operations on French artist Orlan over a period of ten years, making the physical transformation of her body a radical performance destined to raise surgery into a new art form. As we repeatedly watch Orlan go under the knife, sometimes with local anaesthetic and the artist's crystal clear comments, the doc splices in interviews with people from the art and medical world analysing Orlan's experiment." (Jordi Sanchez-Navarro)
Inspired by the work of the Vienna Actionists and her own interest in the fascistic qualities of religious iconography, in 1990 she began a project called The Reincarnation of Saint Orlan, whereby she decided to recreate herself through plastic surgery. In a twisted version of 'appropriation' she has various parts of her body resculpted to resemble body parts from renaissance paintings -- the forehead of the Mona Lisa, the chin of Boticelli's venus, and so on. The use of a local anaesthetic is extremely dangerous, as it requires an epidural block that could result in deformation, paralysis or even death. Instead of photographs, her new medium would be composed of solely her own flesh.
-- Kier-La Janisse

LET ME DIE A WOMAN
Dir. Doris Wishman
USA, 1978
35mm 78 min.
Doris Wishman was the most prolific female filmmaker in the history of the American cinema. Loved and reviled with equal vigour, Wishman had completed 30 films at the time of her death, primarily nudies, roughies, and other underground exploitation fare. Let Me Die a Woman, produced towards the end of her peak period, may be the first commercial documentary on the subject of transsexualism, and the public response was incendiary, due to the graphic surgery scenes, her haphazard directing style, and the questionable treatment of her subjects and actors (which include Harry Reems and Vanessa De Rio in sequences lifted from her other films).
"One of my fondest memories of ol' 42nd Street was seeing this at the Anco Theater and watching the audience go absolutely berserk. And who could blame 'em? This, God help us, is a Doris Wishman mondo-style documentary on sex change, complete with surgical footage I still can't watch. A sort of 'GLEN OR GLENDA' goes to Hell. Dr. Leo Wollman, "MD, PHD, doctor, surgeon, psychologist, minister, and medical writer," lectures us from cue cards, discusses dildos, and acts as tour guide through a rather motley group of transsexuals, occasionally prodding them with his pointer."
(Frank Henenlotter, director of Basketcase)

"The pre-ops walk into meetings where the doctor tells them, 'You look beautiful today!' They don’t! They look like any other homely-as-shit mess Times Square pre-op, homicidal and ready to take out a switchblade to off themselves or someone else. The good Dr. tells pre-ops ­ people who merely have had the tit injections ­ that they’re women, and that’s a boldfaced lie. They’re men who have merely got some hormones and breast enlargement injections. That does not make them women. It makes them delusional and miserable, tied to a freak enabler svengali. It makes them hopeful for a future that will never manifest hand held by a quack with a creator complex who’s as disturbed as they are." (Michelle Clifford, Sleazoid Express)

GAMES
Dir. Curtis Harrington
USA, 1967
35mm 90 min.
Games marked director Curtis (Night Tide) Harrington's jump from independent B-pictures to the studio's A-list. A thriller whose ode to Diabolique is apparent in more than just the casting of French starlet Simone Signoret, Games is a lavish and kinky film that won Katherine Ross a Golden Globe for emerging talent. Paul and Jennifer Montgomery (James Caan and Katherine Ross) are a rich young couple living in New York. She has tons of daddy's money and he has a deep interest in pop art, Americana and the occult. They throw decadent parties where the hip New York intellectuals meet to test the boundaries of conformity. While Paul and Jennifer believe they are on the cutting edge of the swinging 60s, they soon learn that they are pikers. Signoret plays a cosmetics saleslady/con artist who charms her way into the Montgomerys' home and feigns an illness to stay with the couple, who are more than happy to have a new plaything. But the euro-dame wastes no time showing the couple that games can be taken to a higher level. She introduces them to the joys of Russian roulette. She then conspires with Jennifer to screw with Paul's mind by bringing a fourth player into the household fun. Norman (Don Stroud) is the neighborhood grocery delivery boy who wants nothing more than to ravish Jennifer. At this point the games become darker and deadlier. Considered by many to be Harrington's finest film.

Preceded by USHER (40 min. 35mm), Curtis Harrington's new adaptation of Edgar Allen Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher. Harrington plays the enigmatic writer Roderick Usher, who lives in an extravagant, secluded old house with his twin sister. A staple of the Gothic narrative, Poe's story fares well with Harrington's theatrical aesthetic.

PRETTY POISON
Dir. Noel Black
USA, 1968
16mm 95 min.
Predating Heathers by almost 20 years, Noel Black's darkly comic tale of a New England teenage rampage stars Tuesday Weld and Anthony Perkins in what many argue are their best roles ever. Perkins plays a young arsonist recently released from a mental institution who gets an inconspicuous job at a chemical factory in a small town where nobody knows about his dark past. Tuesday Weld plays the fresh-faced high school majorette Sue Ann who gets sucked in by his fabricated tales of being a secret agent. They play dangerous games that result in murder. But it soon becomes apparent that Sue Ann is the more unbalanced of the two, and Weld's performance as the manipulative teen is astounding, outshining even the former Norman Bates (the two would be teamed up again later with Play It As It Lays). A rare, offbeat treat written by Lorenzo Semple Jr. , who would go on to work for Dino De Laurentiis (King Kong, Flash Gordon).
--Kier-La Janisse

JAMES ELLROY'S FEAST OF DEATH
Dir. Vikram Jayanti
USA/UK 2001
Digi-Beta 90 min.
"I never knew her in life. She exists for me through others, in evidence of the ways her death drove them. Working backward, seeking only facts, I reconstructed her as a sad little girl and a whore, at best a could-have-been, a tag that might equally apply to me." - James Ellroy, "The Black Dahlia" (1987)
Those familiar the hard-boiled crime novels of 'Demon Dog' James Ellroy (L.A. Confidential)know that his dark, obsessive histories mirror the tragedy that has colored his own life, beginning with the brutal murder of his mother when Ellroy was ten years old. The mixed love and hatred Ellroy felt for his mother fuelled his interest in crime fiction and found a fantasy counterpart in the most celebrated crime in the annals of Hollywood, the 1947 murder and dismemberment of would-be actress Elizabeth Short, AKA The Black Dahlia. While portions of the film detail familiar terrain for Ellroy fans, the final third sees the ghost of Elizabeth Short preside over a revealing feast at Raymond Chandler's old hangout, The Pacific Dining Car, with Ellroy, a handful of lifer-homicide detectives from the LAPD and Los Angeles Sheriff's Department, and a guest appearance by Nick Nolte (who is supposedly spearheading a film adaptation of Ellroy's White Jazz). In a moment of reflection, one of the feast's guests proposes a new theory on the unsolved Dahlia case that sends a chilling hush over the entire room. Shot on 16mm and digital video for British television, Ellroy allowed director Vikram Jayanti full access on this death trip that weaves in and out of unsolved crimes and provides a haunting meditation on human savagery and grief.
--Kier-La Janisse