Summer Sinema @ Martinski Fine Arts

"The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men
Gang aft agley,
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain, 
 For promis'd joy!"
Robert Burns

And our plans did indeed go array: the big summer exhibition of a truly exceptional Polish outsider / folk artist Martinski Fine Arts had planned for the months of July, Aug and Sept fell through at the last moment, and thus our gallery walls are empty of art and white, white, white. And before we cry over spilt milk are run around like a chicken without a head to find a replacement exhibition, we have decided instead to take advantage of those white, white, white walls to show some films — public domain films that we have long wanted to see but, for the most part, have never got around to viewing.

And we invite you to join as we do so — for Summer Sinema every Wednesday at 20:30 at Martinski Fine Arts.

Film quality might sometimes be shaky, as all films are gleaned from the Internet Archives.

Free of charge!

Bring your own munchies!

Seating is limited (13 chairs)...

but you can bring your own!

All films in English!
 

Though we reserve the right to change it as we see fit when we see fit, the planned schedule is as follows:


Wednesday, 17 July 2013 @ 20.15: 

Dementia / Daughter of Horror
(1953, writ, & dir. John Parker)

You missed this one. The "beat-noir" classic — this one-shot-wonder (John Parker has never been heard of again) is more art than horror, and treads a fine line between Surrealism and cheese. That the director was talented is plain to see, as is the fact that the movie is an obvious labor of love, but one can only wonder why he never made another known movie after this beautifully arty-fartsy exploitation film...

The full film, at the YouTube:

Wednesday, 24 July 2013
@ 20.15:
Five Minutes to Live
(1961, dir. Bill Karn)

Title song to Five Minutes to Live: 

Aka Door-to-Door Maniac. Johnny Cash makes his feature film début in this low budget crime film written by a housewife (who also plays the lead female role) and co-starring a very young Ron "Opie/Richie" Howard, himself now one of Hollywood's most successful directors. Cash plays a guitar-playing psycho holding a woman and her son hostage in an extortion attempt that goes wrong... It was another ten years before he starred in his next feature film.

Trailer:

Wednesday, 31 July 2013
@ 20.15:

 The Sadist 

(1963, writ. & dir. James Landis)

Classic Horror calls The Sadist "horror cinema's best-kept secret." Aka Profile of Terror and Sweet Baby Charlie. The first film ever made based on the Charles Starkweather killings, the same source used by Terrence Malick in 1973 for his directorial début, Badlands. The Sadist is nasty little film is a cult favorite, and not only because it's stars Arch Hall Jr. Cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond now works with Spielberg and the like. Cine de Merde explains the movie: "This film is an exercise in pure vicarious sadism, and as such, it certainly fills the bill. Three good clean decent folks break down and pull into an abandoned-looking house/junkyard [making this a precursor to Texas Chainsaw Massacre and any number of its imitators], and are soon menaced by this overgrown baby-looking redneck goon who essentially tortures them, mentally and physically, for the next 90 minutes." 

Trailer:

Wednesday, 7 Aug 2013
@ 20.15:

 I Bury the Living
(1958, dir. Albert Band)

"A chairman is newly appointed the head of a cemetery and there is a map with pins on it in the shed. Black pins are for empty plots and white pins for taken ones. Something strange then starts happening: when the chairman puts pins in the empty plots, the owner of that plot dies. Several deaths occur and the police come to investigate. Has the chairman got supernatural powers? (imdb)"

Trailer:

 

Wednesday, 14 Aug 2013
@ 20.15:

 Werewolf in a Girl's Dormitory
 (1961, dir. Paolo Heusch)

 

Trailer: 

Austro-Italo trash. "When a new professor (Carl Schell — Maximillian's older brother) arrives at a girl's reform school, a series of werewolf attacks begin. [...] I expected little more from this than a forgettable horror/exploitation movie with maybe a touch of humor and lots of bad dubbing. Actually, it's better than that; there's a good sense of mystery to it, it has an assortment of interesting characters, and the subplot about the man having an affair with one of the students is far better than I anticipated (though I did expect it to be a red herring). It does still suffer from horrendous dubbing, though, and it did make me wonder how many foreign movies out there would have a better reputation if it weren't for this latter circumstance. At any rate, there's a lot more meat on the bones of this one than I expected. This one is worth a look for those willing to see past the dubbing." Dave Sincelair @ Fantastic Movie Musings & Ramblings

 The Fortunes sing The Ghoul in School

(from: Werewolf in a Girl's Dormitory):

Wednesday, 21 Aug 2013
@ 20.15:
TBA

Wednesday, 28 Aug 2013
@ 20.15:
TBA

And then the art comes back...