East End Film Festival starts smoking.

As you may have heard, we've been invited to host a screening at the East End Film Festival. Quite flattering if I'm honest and pretty damn exciting.
The EEFF are hosting a series of horror screenings, which we are just a small part of.
Check this out:

Julia’s Eyes (Los Ojos de Julia) Dir. Guillem Morales Spain, 2010, 114min RIO Cinema Monday 2 May 23.30 From producer Guillermo del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth), this Orphanage-esque chiller sees Julia travel with her husband to visit her sister, who is near blind because of a degenerative illness. Discovering that her sibling has taken her own life, she begins to investigate while going blind herself, only for things to become even more dark and mysterious, as nothing is what it seems. Starring Lluís Homar (Broken Embraces) and Belén Rueda (The Orphanage), this is a superior mystery that was a huge hit in its native Spain, seen by more than a million people.


Agnosia Dir. Eugenio Miro Spain, 2010, 97min RIO Cinema Friday 29 April 23:30 A young woman suffering from a rare neuropsychological disorder that impairs her senses is manipulated by two dangerous men in pursuit of a strange secret. A ravishing mystery with a dark, atmospheric early twentieth century setting.


Then on the 2nd, we'll be pitching our screen up at the Old Blue Last in Shoreditch for a Movie Mayday.
Electric Sheep Magazine will be screening shorts from midday, followed by the classic Jodoworsky mindfuck Holy Mountain, followed by Argento classic and CB favourite Suspiria.
Complete with intros and conversation from Kim Newman and Cine Excess's Xavier Mendik.
The EEFF is working on a theme of Secret Societies and asked if we had anything in mind that might work with the aforementioned... and by fuckery have we!!!
But, in keeping with the secret theme... we ain't telling you.
We promise it's strong enough, engaging enough, weird enough and visually striking enough to hold it's own beside these giants.
So take a punt and a pint and join us at the Old Blue Last as we screen our Super Secret Special Screening at 6pm on Monday the 2nd.


We have had to skip our normal Mucky Pup evening this month in order to do the EEFF, but we'll be back there on the 6th June.

Shogun Assassin: The Shirt

Look, it's even got a nifty little tag on it and everything!

We still have a few of these left and will be sorting out an online shop thing soon. But if you want one now, contact us via Facebook or twitter they are £20 each including postage.

Details:
30 hand printed shirts using discharge ink were made.
We have some Mediums, Large's and X Large's left.

Shogun Assassin: The Mix Tape

Graham Murphy of Flashback Records is Cigarette Burns resident DJ. He's been working in used record shops for longer than most of us have had decent musical taste. I'm often asked what Graham played and this little number -



Became quite a little twitter hit - probably because it's FUCKING AWESOME!

So I thought it might make sense to ask him for his playlist.
We'll start with Shogun Assassin, but he's promised to put pull together the tracks from a few of the previous nights.

Acid Mothers Temple - La Novia (excerpt)




The Spacemen - Flowers of the South


The Astronauts - Banzai Pipeline




Moon Stars - Guitar Music LP Track 5, side 1


Carnabeats - Chu! Chu! Chu!




Takeshi Terauchi & the Blue Jeans - A Poor Woman Who Does Watertricks

The Whitefield Brothers - Taisho

Jean Francois Engel - Expo in Tokyo

Pierre DuTour Et Son Orchestra - Elephant Theme

Pop off Tuesday - This Old Lady 7" Version

John Cooper Clarke - Kung Fu International

Takeshi Terauchi & the Blue Jeans - Music for a Local Festival

The Golden Half - Movin'

Teddy Robbin & the Playboys - Norman's Family




Wanda Jackson - Fujiyamma Mama




The Vapors - Turning Japanese

Guitar Wolf - Red Rockabilly




Takayuki Hijikata - Magic Water

Yellow Magic Orchestra - Firecracker




Ultrafunk featuring Mr Superbad Freddie Mack - Kung Fu Man

Curtis Mayfield - Kung Fu




Fugi - Red Moon

Flower Travelling Band - Satori Part 2




Nishinihon - Super Station




Ghost - Hypnotic Underworld Part 2: Escaped and Lost Down in Medina


So there you have it.
Graham's remit is fairly simple: Keep to the film... somehow.

It's pretty simple, really.

I often get asked "Are you screening it on 35mm."

In short, unless it has been stated, regularly, no.

If we had a 35mm, we'd be screaming about it, and you'd know it.

The first film we screened at the Rio Cinema was Danger: Diabolik, at the time I was super excited, and looked over the Atlantic, at the New Beverly and the Alamo Drafthouse, and what they were doing and said "We must have the 35mm of Danger: Diabolik."

I threw a bit of a fit, I'll admit it. Fortunately I knew where one was and we were able to source it without tooooo much trouble.

As the night got nearer and I was doing more research about DD, I found out that a scene was cut from the original UK prints. I started to get nervous...

We can't show a cut film! And who'd have thought DD was cut?!? Why hadn't I checked earlier!?

Well, we had the print, it was there and a test was run and the print was damaged, it showed signs of previous breaks and broke about 5 minutes into the test screening and the sound was pretty poor.

Balls!

Ok, fall back plan.

Hearts heavy with defeat, we screened the DVD.

After the screening, there wasn't a single person who complained. Fellow film geeks were stunned, the DVD looked and sounded great! Morricone wowed us with Deep Deep Down and Bava made us dizzy with his swirls and colours.

Success!

Second screening.

A big one this time, one you just don't fuck with.

Suspiria.

Right! Now. We must get the 35mm.

Ok... it's cut... hmmmm.... and every single review regarding previous screenings with this same print are dire and filled with venom....

But ho! what have we here? A gorgeous BluRay, fully remastered with love and care, over seen by the folks at Cine Excess?

Well... What choice have we got really?

We love the films we screen and we love being able to screen these films. Simple really.

Sure our whole world is becoming digitised and I hate that as much as anyone. But when the point is to share fantastic films with friends, who may or may not know them, they need to look and sound as good as they possibly can.

And it's that simple.

First port of call will always be, where is the best possible source, be it 35mm or DVD or BD.

Also, Cigarette Burns will never knowingly show a cut film.

If that means we can't show certain films, then so be it, sorry Ilsa.

That said, find me print collectors who want to show their films.

...and all I got was this t shirt.

Tonight we unleash the dogs.

Well, not really dogs, more like shirts.
Not even "like" shirts, they are actual shirts.

For each film we screen at the Rio Cinema, we will release a shirt in celebration of that film.
All designs are hand illustrated by Mark Mitchell, the shirts are all hand printed with love and are strictly limited.
If they sell out on the night, that's the end of them. If there are any left over I will let people know via our twitter feed and on facebook, so get following and liking.

In honour of tonight's Ms. 45 screening, we proudly present:


White and red on black, with white and red sleeve print.
Only 30 printed, so you best make your way to the Rio if you want one.

Next month, we'll be screening Shogun Assassin... What magic will Mark bring? Only time will tell...

Ms. 45 - Monthly Film Bulletin review by Kim Newman

Found, tucked in a box in Tony Paley's attic was this little gem, a cover story on the 1984 video release of our upcoming feature, Abel Ferrara's Ms. 45 - Angel of Vengeance. And so, culled from the pages of the BFI's long running Monthly Film Bulletin, since merged with Sight & Sound is Kim Newman's review:

Spoiler WARNING!


Ms. 45: Angel of Vengeance
U.S.A., 1980
Director: Abel Ferrara-

Thana, a mute girl who works as a seamstress in Manhattan's garment district, is attacked and raped by a masked thug while walking home. When she reaches her apartment, she finds it being rifled by a housebreaker who also tries to rape her. Defending herself with a paper weight and an electric iron, Thana kills him, then carves up the body and stores it in the fridge for gradual disposal. While on one of her dumping expeditions, she is accosted by a street punk whom she promptly shoots dead with the burglar's .45. Later, a pushy photographer tries to pick Thana up with hollow promises of a career in modelling, and she returns with him to his studio before shooting him. Thana's boss Albert and gay/feminist workmate Laurie become increasingly worried about her erratic behaviour and moodiness. By night, stalking the city in a whorish outfit, she continues her crusade, gunning down various sexists-a violent pimp, a kerb-crawling Arab, and a threatening street gang. While she is trying to execute a barfly who has been lamenting his wife's infidelity, Thana finds that the gun has jammed, whereupon the victim takes it from her and shoots himself. Albert prevails upon Thana to accompany him to a Halloween party, during which he intends to seduce her. He finds her gun concealed under a fancy dress nun's habit, and she shoots him. She proceeds to pick off all the men in the room, but is stopped when Laurie stabs her in the back. Unable to shoot a woman, she utters a single word ("sister") and dies.


While it is undeniably true that the splatter/nasty genre, in its treatment of female flesh as meat to be carved, tends to exhibit a particularly unpleasant brand of sadistic sexism, the form does contain possibilities for militant feminism unmatched even by the likes of A Question of Silence or Born in Flames. In I Spit on Your Grave, the leader of a gang of degenerate rapists is allowed to express to the heroine the theory that, by wantonly displaying her body, she has "asked for" her violation. His uncharacteristic intellectualising of the issue is immediately undercut by the most physical retort possible -the girl castrates him in the bath and leaves him bleeding to death. With The Driller Killer, his first feature, Abel Ferrara acknowledged the sexism of the splatter movie by explicitly avoiding it, presenting a psycho whose preferred victims were not desirable young women but undesirable old men. In Ms .45 (a film whose very title has proved too much for many audiences), Ferrara, aided by the presence of the extraordinary Zoe Tamerlis, gives a rigorously feminist reading of the always problematic revenge-for-rape genre. The film signals the seriousness with which it will tackle the subject in its treatment of the initial rapes. While the incidents are profoundly shocking, they horrify mainly because of their abruptness (at least in the currently available, slightly trimmed version) and the monstrosity of the performances. Ferrara, who appears as the first rapist under his Jimmy Laine pseudonym and pops up throughout the film in nightmare flashes as the incarnation of masculine evil, presents the two unconnected assailants as merely less restrained examples of the _ attitudes espoused, not only by the chattering street people who proposition every passing woman, but by the smooth-talking photographer, the paternally lecherous Albert, and the shoe salesman who proudly admits that he reacted to the discovery of his wife's bisexuality by strangling the cat. With such a relentless parade of unsympathetic male characters, the film has little need of explicit sexual violence to make its points. The complete absence of nudity, and the remarkably soft-pedalled violence, compare strikingly with I Spit on Your Grave-which drags out the rape sequence for over half its running time--or even with such mainstream, male-oriented versions of the same basic story as Hannie Caulder, Death Weekend and Sudden Impact.
A Polanski connection suggested by the decaying rabbit in The Driller Killer is furthered here by a few clutching hands and a body in the bath out of Repulsion, and by Tamerlis' resemblance to the Nastassia Kinski" of Tess. However, while Polanski cannot refrain from making fetishes of his striking heroines, Ferrara presents Tamerlis' Thana as a neutral figure whose power over her victims derives from her ability to inspire and then contradict their fantasies of femininity. In the case of the shoe salesman, who pours out the story of his marriage to the mute girl in a bar, the moment of Thana's failed attack on him coincides with his own dawning awareness of his shortcomings; hypnotised by her silent reproach, he acquiesces in his own execution. The usual escape clause in the genre has the raped woman turning into an avenger by assuming masculine qualities (Raquel Welch learning gunfighter skills in Hannie Caulder, Brenda Vaccaro exhibiting her un-womanly technical aptitude in Death Weekend, Sondra Locke competing with Clint Eastwood in Sudden Impact). But Ferrara has Thana become more seductively feminine in appearance as she transforms into a feminist vigilante. The reductio ad absurdum of this process-and indeed of the whole genre -finds Thana murdering such varied male stereotypes as Count Dracula, a cowboy and a drag bride, while incarnated as a furious, gun-toting nun.

KIM NEWMAN


We will be hosting a rare London screening of Ms. 45 at the Rio Cinema in Dalston on 19th March. You don't want to miss this!

(Extra thanks to Tony's lovely wife for the scans)

Equinox and beyond...

What were you doing at age 17? Fast Forwarding through a VHS of Eurotrash to the saucy bits? Searching for a pub that ignored your fresh face and served you without ID? Or were you, like the makers of Equinox, applying the German holistic-art concept of gesamtkunstwerk to stop-motion animation? In 1962, accomplished pianist, student of classical literature, precocious little shit, and special effects enthusiast, David Muren joined an effects-nerd collective advertised in the back of influential American magazine Famous Monsters Of Filmland. Together with part time film journo Mark McGee and animator Dave Allen, Muren and gang experimented with various effects in their back garden for years. Honing their skills before finally deciding (via an injection of cash that was due to be spent on Mullen's education) to make the leap into making a full length feature.


Armed with a 16mm Bolex camera, a crew of friends and a script by cthulu-nut McGee they set out into the woods and over the next 2 and a half years of weekends, school holidays and light evenings, they filmed the story of a wholesome group of young kids who head out for a lovely day in the country, get given an evil book by a cackling old man (Mullen's Grandad), which then unleashes creatures from the very pits of hell. These hell-pit creatures were then constructed and lovingly animated in a makeshift studio in Mullen's dad's shed: making The Equinox... A Journey into the Supernatural, quite literally, a Backyard production.


Although intended as a way to exercise their special effects skills, and perhaps get a few bucks from a late night horror tv show, The Equinox... A Journey into the Supernatural was spotted by Jack H Harris, producer of The Blob, who saw the marketability of the kids vs. demons flick, and got his mate Jack Woods, a professional sound editor, to shoot some extra footage to pad out the film to a sell able length. He added and edited in a whole new plot line about a creepy mounted policeman, starring himself as the leering law man.
This new fuller version of the film had the title shortened to just Equinox and went on to be a success on the drive-in circuit.


While a little-watched film, Equinox's legacy is undeniable. Mullen went on to revolutionise special effects, working as visual effects supervisor on the Abyss, Terminator 2, and Jurassic Park and all pivotal films in the development of CGI, and shaping many of our childhoods, working on the visual effects for the proper Star Wars trilogy and E.T. He won 6 Oscars and is the only effects artist to have a star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame. Dave Allen went on and had a career producing fantastic, and characterful, stop motion such as the little Batteries Not Included aliens, the Young Sherlock Holmes graveyard confectionery attack, the Puppet Master's puppets and the Demonic Toys. McGee carried on writing and directing genre fare such as Sorority Party Massacre II and Bad Girls From Mars.


Of the four main stars, only Frank Bonner, the slightly more devil-may-care male lead, carried on working in show business. He made himself a healthy acting career with various American TV sitcoms, including a regular gig as one of Screech's fellow teachers on Saved By The Bell: The New Class. Jack Woods went back to sound editing and ended up working on such sequels as Critters 2, Look Who's Talking Too and Naked Gun 2 1/2

But legacy: Schmagacy. Is this flick worth a watch or what?

Fuck yes.


Even if you are not charmed by the effects of yesteryear there is still tons to enjoy. The characters were obviously created by a bunch of bookish young men with little real world experience. The men in Equinox, tackle the increasingly bizarre situations with hilariously stoic good sense while the women are pretty young things who will wander off and get into trouble when there's not a man around to tell them what to do. Evil Dead fans will have a field day. With it's teenagers find necrotelecomunicony thing and unleash all manner of terrors plot, Equinox can easily be viewed as a prequel. Deadites will also see echoes of Sam Raimi's camera work in some of the scenes, most obviously in an early crucifix-related freakout scene early in the picture.

So, whether you want Evil Dead 0.5, a chance to see hoe today's top FX bods got started, or just an enjoyably clunky creature feature, Equinox will show you a good time.

Join us as we visit this classic tomorrow evening at the Mucky Pup.

Sleeping beauties

"Oh my god" I gasped when I saw this.

What a fantastic shot. No clue where it originates.
Looks like a scan from a book, anyone know?

Daughters of Darkness at the Rio - 19th Feb

"Silly tales of ghouls chased away by garlic, and vampires, shrinking from crosses."


We'll have none of that. No more of these middle of the road, twilight vampires, let us instead return to the classier roots: a time of manipulation and seduction, where devious villains coerced their prey, lured them, gained their trust and then devoured them. A time where respect and nobility were important parts of the dreaded Count and his mythic brethern’s lore.

These are the creatures of the night we have come to love and fear, before the 80s saw them driven to nomadic life styles, hiding by day and tearing through the American wastelands by night. Before they were forced to hunt in the cold of an Alaskan night, they were prowling the grand hotels of Europe and seducing who they could, when they could, to exist.

Which leads us to our feature presentation at the Rio Cinema on 19th February: none other than one of the most acclaimed vampire films of all time, Daughters of Darkness. Harry Kumel's masterpiece is loved by those in the know, fanatics and historians, yet largely overlooked by most.

Daughters of Darkness sees Delphine Seyrid embody, for there is no other word, the seductress Elizabeth Báthroy, the infamous Hungarian Blood Queen. Swaggering onto the scene like Marlene Dietrich, oozing power and confidence, she seduces, entraps and divides a newlywed couple, never for a second letting her eye off the prize: the gorgeous French-Canadian, Valerie.

Oh the sights she has to show her....

So join us at the Rio as we screen one of the most overlooked, and yet well respected vampire films of all time: Daughters of Darkness.

Click here for the Facebook Event Page

Fun starts around half 11 with Dee Dee's Vintage who will be sprucing up the place and invoking the spirit of Countess Báthroy with vintage wares and ambiance we will have Flashback Record's very own Graham Murphy how will be taking to the decks a comprehensive collection of suitably undead vinyl goodies to set the mood before and after the screening, the Rio's bar will remain open throughout the film and after, a brilliant night is guaranteed. All for a measly £7.50.

Click here to pre book

The Rio Cinema is mega easy to get to and from-
Buses, 38, 56, 67, 76, 243, 242, 149, plus East London Line to Dalston Junction and the Overground to Dalston Kingsland all drop you off at the Rio's doorstep and plenty of night buses back.

In space no one can hear you laugh...

Star Crash has got less of a cohesive plot than a series of random happenings one after another. Luckily for us, these are really cool moments. As such, the plot is best recounted in the rushed manner of a schoolboy who’s had too much e-number-heavy fizzy pop while at the cinema.

“They’re-in-space-and-then-they-get-chased-by-the-space-police-who-are-robots-and-a-green-man-then-they-go-to-prison-and-then-they-are-rescued-by-the-space-police-who-are-now-good-and-they-go-to-fight-the-evil-king-but-they-crash-and-there’s-kung-fu-cavemen-and-giant-robots-then-they-are-in-a-giant-robot-fist-then-it-all-blows-up-and-it’s-wicked”


“Breathe, Little Billy, breathe”

Made in the post-Star Wars, sci-fi crazy, late 70s, Starcrash was conceived, written and directed by Luigi Cozzi, (who’s most noteworthy other credit is as director of the Italian language version of Godzilla, cobbled together out of the original Gojira, the Americanized Raymond Burr version and some cheaply colourized World War Two footage). Often criticised for being a cheap Star Wars rip off, Starcrash was actually written before A New Hope was released. Visionary Cozzi struggled to make a film that lived up to his original aspirations, however budgetary constraints and a constantly nagging studio demanding he “make it a bit more star warsy” was bound to lead to problems. This uphill battle was not made easier when prop failures and poorly exposed film of some of the exciting climaxes of sequences resulting in unusable and ultimately lost footage, and thus plot strands that never really pay off. However, Signore Cozzi deserves a tip of the hat in recognition of managing to piece together an thoroughly enjoyable cinematic experience from what was left.


Starring Caroline Munroe (who readers of a certain age will fondly remember as the slave-girl from 7th Voyage Of Sinbad) as the clothes-phobic intergalactic smuggler Stella Starr, Joe Spinner delivers the wide eyed pantomime villain Count Zarth An (following small parts in Taxi Driver and the first two Godfather films, he fancied a bit of proper acting) , and drunken heartthrob David Hasselhoff as the space prince.


For such rushed shambles, the production design is gorgeous. From the opening shot of a charmingly obvious miniature space ship (I’m sure I spotted some sprues from an airfix kit stuck on the side) cruising through an every-felt-tip-in-the-packet, spacescape (reputedly made by literally hanging fairy lights in front of some black cardboard, no Star Trek style poring over NASA’s star maps for these cats) to the final scenes in front of the Alien King’s snazzy throne the Italian eye for design shines through.


Special mention must be made of the score, composed and conducted by the great John Barry who sadly passed away this month. While he is quite rightly best remembered for his bombastic Bond scores and heartbreaking work on Midnight Cowboy and The Deer Hunter, he was also willing to put the graft in on less prestigious projects. Echoes of his better known work can be heard throughout, most clearly during an “entering the villain’s lair” sequence to my ears, and the whole thing sounds lovely.

Most importantly, it’s got a fist shaped space station, a comedy-accented robot, a mechanical giant with tits, and a lightsaber-wielding android tackling two bionic swordsmen. Get in touch with your inner 9 year old, load him up on cheap orangeade, and enjoy.

Float through the stars with us on Monday the 7th at the Mucky Pup More info here