First Friday Fright Night
Starting April 4 and continuing throughout the year, the Colonial will bring the darker side of movies to Phoenixville on First Fridays. Cinema masters such as Romero, Kubrick, Hooper, Scott, Jackson and Brooks (yes, Mel Brooks) will be darkening our doorstep. Come and witness madmen wielding chainsaws, hungry zombies, crazed robots, aliens and a tap dancing Frankenstein as they thrill and entertain. Show times will vary, but will generally be at 9:45pm.
The Evil Dead
Directed by Sam Raimi. US. 1981. NC-17. Running time: 85 min.
- Fri, Jun 6, 9:45 pm
Twenty years after its original theatrical release, Sam Raimi's The Evil Dead still feels like the punchiest horror flick this side of a Dario Argento gialli. Made on a shoe-string budget, The Evil Dead is difficult to assess for what initially seems like nothing more than B-movie schlock. Ash (Bruce Campbell) and his friends take a weekend trip to the woods only to stumble across the mysterious Book of the Dead. Spells are unleashed, friends go zombie and Ash is forced to test the limits of his squeamishness. Raimi's script is riotously deadpan, his compositions undeniably breathtaking and inventive. The director relentlessly fashions the film's first half as a creepy-crawly sweat chamber with evil seemingly taking the form of an omniscient, roaming camera. Raimi takes so much joy in poking fun at his five protagonists you might wonder why Kevin Williamson even bothered Screaming. (Ed Gonzalez, Slant.com)
This film will be shown on DVD.
Click here to continue reading Ed Gonzalez's review on Slant.com.
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
Directed by Tobe Hooper. US. 1974. R. Running time: 83 min.
- Fri, Aug 1, 9:45 pm
To get a sense of the anxieties and preoccupations of a certain era, it's usually instructive to look at its horror movies. For example, official reckoning on the Vietnam War wouldn't come until years after the fact, but the ugly extremes of human atrocity were on display at the drive-in, where horror films were making a dramatic shift away from the supernatural and into the real. Though George Romero and Wes Craven had broken ground with Night Of The Living Dead and The Last House On The Left, respectively, Tobe Hooper's 1974 movie The Texas Chain Saw Massacre remains the Vietnam era's definitive horror classic, if only for its unvarnished, documentary-like images of humans led to the slaughterhouse. With it and its sequel 12 years later—both recently released on reverent new DVD sets—Hooper had the misfortune of making films simultaneously of and ahead of their time. (Scott Tobias, The Onion)
Click here to continue reading Scott Tobias' review on The Onion AV Club.
Click here to read Eric Henderson's review on Slant.com.
Alien
Directed by Ridley Scott. UK. 1979. R. Running time: 117 min.
- Fri, Sep 5, 9:45 pm
Unlike its increasingly baroque series of sequels, Ridley Scott's original 1979 "Alien" is a film about human loneliness amid the emptiness and amorality of creation. It's a cynical '70s-leftist vision of the future in which none of the problems plaguing 20th century Earth — class divisions, capitalist exploitation, the subjugation of humanity to technology — have been improved in the slightest by mankind's forays into outer space. Although it has often been described as being a haunted-house movie set in space, "Alien" also has a profoundly existentialist undertow that makes it feel like a film noir — the other genre to feature a slithery, sexualized monster as its classic villain. (Andrew O'Hehir, Salon.com)
Click here to continue reading Andrew O'Hehir's review on Salon.com.
Blade Runner - The Final Cut (2007)
Directed by Ridley Scott. US. 1982. R. Running time: 117 min.
- Fri, Oct 3, 9:45 pm
More obsessive fans than I will have to parse the alterations found within Blade Runner: The Final Cut, Ridley Scott's latest—and supposedly last—version of his seminal 1982 future noir. To these eyes, the most discernable change is simply AV-related, as the considerable upgrades in the audio and video departments lend newfound luster to the influential classic's portrait of dystopian 2019 Los Angeles, in which Harrison Ford's Deckard, a semi-retired cop known as a blade runner, attempts to track down a foursome of renegade slave cyborgs known as replicants. Even as it deliberately harks back to '40s pulp fiction and many of its elements now appear creakily dated byproducts of the '80s (hello, Sean Young's hair!), the radiant image and sound clarity helps reconfirm Blade Runner (loosely based on Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?) as a landmark achievement in inventive prognostication. Whether it be its narrative fatalism or its haunting evocation of its urban setting, a multicultural techno-grunge hellhole drenched in rain, infested with advertising and shrouded in mist, the film continues to be the mother of modern sci-fi, blending disparate genres with philosophical queries to produce a work that remains, 25 years and reams of critical analysis later, the style-over-substance Scott's only substantive text. (Nick Schager, Slant.com)
Click here to continue reading Nick Schager's review on Slant.com.
Click here to read Keith Phipp's review on The AV Club.com.
Young Frankenstein
Directed by Mel Brooks. US. 1974. PG. Running time: 106 min.
- Fri, Nov 7, 9:45 pm
Brooks is at his best with this hilarious spoof of the Frankenstein films, hitting every comic mark with uncanny accuracy. Wilder stars as the soon-to-be-demented doc, Dr. Frankenstein ("That's Frahnkensteen") giving an inspired comic performance. Great in supporting roles are Marty Feldman as Igor ("That's Eyegor"), the sardonic wit of the laboratory set, Madeline Kahn as the Bride of Frankenstein, and Peter Boyle as the monster. Authentic sets from the 1930's films, astounding black and white cinematography, and an atmospheric score by John Morris contribute to the sheer delight of this comedy classic. (TLA Film & Video Guide)
This film will be shown on DVD.
Dead Alive
Directed by Peter Jackson. NZ. 1992. NR. Running time: 104 min.
- Fri, Dec 5, 9:45 pm
Before Heavenly Creatures [and the Lord of the Rings trilogy] Peter Jackson made this wild zombie-splatterthon that ranks, without a doubt, as the goriest film ever made, bar none! Originally filmed as Brain Dead, this coal-black comedy barrage of pus-spewing, entrail-eating wackiness follows the story of an over-bearing mother, her charming, but somewhat wimpy son, his spicy Latina lover, a kung fu fighting priest, and a very rabid Sumatran rat-monkey. This highly entertaining, limb-shredding homage to such directors as George Romero and Sam Raimi is a must-see for those who like heavy doses of slapstick mixed with their horror. (TLA Film & Video Guide)