Forty Deuce

(source)

Moments with Tony

"Every mother must pay for...The Sins of the Daughter!"

and yes, you CAN smoke in our theatre...

even if John Waters sez you can't...

the previous post demands a credit sequence...

by all accounts, this film is supposed to be terrible, but what an amazing credit sequence! makes me want to flip and play with my long golden locks in front of a fan... directed by Robert Freeman, the photographer who shot the covers of "With The Beatles, "Beatles For Sale", "Rubber Soul" and "Help!" for The Beatles. and that theme song!? I want to trade in all my new Nirvana albums for the old Nirvana!

General Cinema Corporation

Kino Balázs

One of the best niche theatres I've ever seen was in Berlin - right around the Alexanderplatz, in the Balázs-Kino Hungarian cultural centre.


They operate a first-run theatre out of one of the conference rooms - a wood-panelled eurolounge socialist screening room. When I was there it was to see a late night screening of the mighty Vampyros Lesbos (in German with no subtitles). And they cranked the soundtrack.



They were serving cold bottles of beer at the popcorn stand (and they didn't even pour it into a cup!) and they showed cigarette commercials before the trailers. I'm surprised people didn't just start smoking at the screening, but I guess you have to have some rules.

meanwhile over at Yonge

Ahhh... what used to be Yonge Street. It was the main drag. If you straightened out Times Square, you would have an idea of its importance. So many cinemas dotted the street. Now... nuthin. With the literal fall of the Uptown in 2004, the street that means so much to the identity of Toronto is devoid of any space that shows films, with the exception of some of the live theatre venues that are transformed during the Toronto International Film Festival and some multiplex places in the north. That doesn't count. Here is an example of what played on Yonge Street (Fun Street), ironically, at "The Yonge" and some pics of the strip. The ad came from some time I researching library when I was thinking of doing a zine on Toronto's cinema history, long since abandoned, but revitalized thanks to the inter-web. Expect more of this in future postings.

1965 (source: Stephen Bulger Gallery)

Today

Moebius Strip

 

Found these pictures on an obsessive little webpage documenting images of movie theatres in film. I remember seeing the Toronto-shot Exit Wounds - we were in the Uptown, and at one point the camera panned down to show the Uptown theatre sign - it was the first time I saw the theatre I was in in the film I was watching.

T Plays It Cool

Here's the trailer for 1972's Trouble Man, which was recently released on DVD by Fox - a California pastiche of Shaft. Says the narrator: "He carries two guns. One to stop trouble and one to make trouble!" You have to want to love a movie where Mr. Carlson from WKRP plays a slumlord and the dad from The Waltons is a sleazy hustler. All this and a Marvin Gaye soundtrack too!



This is the exactly the kind of movie that would have been playing at the Rio, the last of the Yonge Street grindhouses - the home of '4 Big Hits' for 4 dollars. Movies from 9 am until 5 am. I saw a couple of blaxploitation films there - Shaft's Big Score! and Truck Turner with Isaac Hayes.

when the Bloor was Eden

Okay, this is a Toronto-centric posting. That is where I am from. These are the streets that I roam. But before my time in the city, the cinema currently known as The Bloor was known as Eden and showed a very different kind of movie. Even though The Bloor reccently hosted Darryl's Hard Liquor and Porn Festival, what was regularly on the screen back in the day attracted a different kind of crowd.

THEN

WHAT WAS PLAYING THEN

AND NOW

tripple goodness

The Royal: Gone but not forgotten

It re-opens on the 24th of Nov. Fingers crossed for good programming...

pic taken by Lorne Chaitov

they never made it to the Stars...

Pulled this ad from a Cannes market issue of Variety from 1979. Notice the proud announcement of an "imminent film start". Can't seem to find any listing for this film, but Bo Svenson was in a comedy with Thomas Milan in Italy circa 1978, so that might explain his potential involvement. Click on the image to make it BIGGER!

a start

Part One: A Dark And Stormy Night

It's Friday night and I'm bummed. Why? In June Toronto lost four of its rep cinemas. This city is regarded by outsiders as a great film town, but that seems to be an observation made by guests here for festivals. Yup, lots of good fests, but the regular selections of films playing in the "hip" downtown area is limited.

Here is the selection of offerings for tonight, the Friday of the Halloween weekend in downtown chain cinemas in Toronto:

AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH; BLACK-EYED DOG; BON COP, BAD COP (a fun Quebec cop comedy that has just topped PORKY'S as the biggest grossing Canuck film); CATCH A FIRE; DEATH OF A PRESIDENT; DELIVER US FROM EVIL; FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS; FLICKA; INTO GREAT SILENCE; LITTLE CHILDREN; LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE; MAN OF THE YEAR; MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES; MARIE ANTOINETTE; OPEN SEASON; RUNNING WITH SCISSORS; SAW III; SHORTBUS; SHUT UP & SING; TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE: THE BEGINNING; THE DEPARTED; THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA; THE GRUDGE 2; THE ILLUSIONIST; THE JOURNALS OF KNUD RASMUSSEN; THE LAST KING OF SCOTLAND; THE PRESTIGE; THE QUEEN; THE SCIENCE OF SLEEP; TIDELAND; TRAILER PARK BOYS: THE MOVIE.

Nine films that I would consider seeing, but none fitting the Halloween theme! Nope, not seeing horror sequels. Heck! There aren't even any downtown screens playing JACKASS: NUMBER TWO or JET LI'S FEARLESS, film I still have to catch up on!

And the choices for alternative screens like The Bloor (really the last downtown rep house) also are lacking:

The Bloor Cinema
WAL-MART: THE HIGH COST OF LOW PRICE; THE BLACK DAHLIA; THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW

The Ontario Cinematheque (a division of the Toronto International Film Festival)
STROMBOLI; LE CHAT DANS LE SAC (a Quebecois classic from the sixties)

Blah! For spooky screenings this sucks! I could go on a rant of big box mulit-plexes, creative bankruptcy in movie-land, the evil of home video, that is not what I want to do. I feel I can complain a little since I did work on providing chilling cinema in years past at The Royal (in my opinion, the best of the rep cinemas and one of the ones that bit the dust in June, but is being revived on Nov 24th) and with Kung Fu Fridays - TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, PHANTASM, HAUNTED COP SHOP, ENCOUNTER OF THE SPOOKY KIND, MR. VAMPIRE 1 & 3, RETURN OF THE DEMON and others (thanks go to Tim Smy for believing in the spirit of cinema!). Okay, we just had the first edition of the Toronto After Dark Festival, but that was only a quick rush of flicks, really not the basis of my whining.

I have this manufactured nostalgia for going to the movies as growing up in the countryside, I never had the chance to have the proper "grindhouse" experience. Our TV only got 2-3 stations and the video age was just starting. My folks took me to films in the nearest city like Logan's Run and Barbarella. Thanks to voraciously reading through newspapers of the film listings for Toronto and the copies of Cult Movies and the Psychotronic Movie Guide that my parents gave me as a young impressionable lad, I have this strange affinity, despite never having sat in a fleabag cinema trying to watch trashy flicks, ignoring the snores of winos or bickering drug addicts. Ahh, the "grindhouse" experience! For an appreciation of the grime and sleaze of the 42nd Street cinema beat, read Steve "Shock Cinema" Puchalski's memories of the Selwyn.

Last weekend I attending a screening of HAXAN - WITCHCRAFT THROUGH THE AGES introduced by cinema sleaze historian Jack Stevenson. Selected for the Pleasure Dome experimental film series, it took place at CineCycle, run by Martin Heath, an avid cycle enthusiast and also film collector and projectionist.
A truly unique space, Cinecycle is in Martina's studio, a coachhouse/garage in an alley behind the 401 Richmond arts building below Queen and Spadina. Exposed brink walls, arcane old steam heat pipes line the wall, bike frames and parts mingle with film projector parts, fold up chairs and an expresso bar that also serves wine is a totally different way to see films in this day and age of the amusement park multiplex experience. Talking with Jack and Martin about the joys of seeing films and the projected experience I think kick started some ideas that had been laying dormant.

I set up a blog that was to tie in to the Kung Fu Fridays screening series that I was running, which ended with the closure of the Revue Cinema in June. I kept it going to share kung fu cinema pop culture nuggets and images from my own collection or from discoveries on the web. Over the short course since starting that blog, I found myself posting non-kung fu cinema items that loosely fit in the "grindhouse" spirit. Hence, I am setting up this blog to celebrate smelly celluloid palaces in the spirit of double, tripple and dusk til dawn bills! Not meaning to be a forum for reviews and news like many other existing sites, but a depot for visual rememberances of the temples. More images than words here possibly. Some scribbles about what played, what the cinemaas were like, the experience of them, etc., but mainly images of posters, lobbies, ads, and associated images from a range of horror, sci-fi, spaghetti western, kung fu, thriller, music, sex-ploitation, and forg art flicks.

And no, this is not any kind of viral marketing for the Tarantino/Rodriguez GRINDHOUSE project due out soon. Looking forward to that film, but keeping my expections at a reasonable level and not scouring the internet which tends to over-hype the whole experience.

This blog is done in the spirit of the various film zines that inspired me in my young adult years like Killbaby, Sub-Terannea, Trash Compactor, Monster! European Trash Cinema, Subhuman, Shock Cinema, Slimetime, Pyschotronic, M.A.M.A and others. Also inspired by the blogs: Datajunkie, Booksteve's Library, Bubblegum Fink, and of course, The Groovy Age of Horror.

Let the postings begin...