Thursday, February 04, 2010

POOR PRETTY EDDIE + THE LONERS screening tomorrow night!



Cultra Video Presents "The Art of Exploitation"
Cinefamily @ The Silent Movie Theatre
611 North Fairfax Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90036-1714
(323) 655-2510

POOR PRETTY EDDIE (1975) 8:00 pm
Directed by Richard Robinson, 1975, 35mm, 92 min.

"There is a buffet of loathsomeness here." - The Video Vacuum

A hot and swampy reworking of Jean Genet's "Theatre Of The Absurd" touchstone "The Balcony" (weirdly making this Shelly Winters' second appearance in an "adaptation" of the play,) POOR PRETTY EDDIE is a cracked, campy, offensive and skull-peeling genre film that's hard to pin down into just one genre; it's a brilliant composite of blaxploitation, hicksploitation and Gothic horror laden with astounding pseudo-avant-garde visuals. Black singer Leslie Uggams gets trapped in a small Southern town full of dim-bulb racists (including a crispy-fried Dub Taylor, Slim Pickins and a homicidal Elvis impersonator) who rape and terrorize her repeatedly, until she extracts a queasy, greasy revenge. Right up there on the "race-baiting grindhouse gobsmackers best-of" list with FIGHT FOR YOUR LIFE, POOR PRETTY EDDIE (also known as REDNECK COUNTY and BLACK VENGEANCE) is propelled even further by the lysergic, elliptical film editing of Frank Mazzola, master cutter responsible for the montage on Donald Cammell films like PERFORMANCE and DEMON SEED!

Maverick editor FRANK MAZZOLA will be appearing in person to do a Q&A about POOR PRETTY EDDIE!


THE LONERS (1972) 9:45pm
Directed by Sutton Roley, 1972, 35mm, 79 min.

One character actor we rarely think of as once looking studly is Dean Stockwell, but The Loners features a brawny, albeit slightly ridiculous turn by Stockwell as an Indian half-breed on the lam from the law after committing a measly, accidental teensy-weensy bit of manslaughter, in a tale that's somewhere in-between EASY RIDER, BONNIE AND CLYDE -- and GIGLI?! Yup, that's right. Along with our loner hero and the desperate girl he picks up along the way, there's also a mentally retarded teenage sidekick. Aging legend Gloria Grahame also pops up as well as the oppressive mother figure (in the '70s tradition of former glamour queens playing oppressive mother figures, such in WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH HELEN?), in this unassuming and tense character drama filled with heapin' helpings of violence, nihilism and nuttiness.

Plus! A mystery third feature from Jerry Gross!

Tickets : $10

Buy tickets : http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/96610

View clip : http://www.cinefamily.org/calendar/friday_early.html#cultra1

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