Cult

Toronto International Film Festival writes:
Exorcist author William Peter Blatty intended for his adaptation of his own novel Twinkle, Twinkle, “Killer” Kane to be directed by William Friedkin; when studios rejected the script, Blatty put up half the budget himself, convinced the Pepsi-Cola conglomerate to provide the balance, and stepped behind the camera to make his directorial debut. Set near the end of the Vietnam War, The Ninth Configuration takes place in a spectacular castle that has been commandeered as a mental hospital for military veterans.Read More »

Synopsis:
A blonde fashion model, Tulia is lured to an isolated country estate by a creepy older woman, Sara. There she meets Theo, orphan and homeless boy who has given a home by Sara. They call each other as aunt and nephew. He is photography-obsessed and even creepier than Sara. Tulia doesn’t seem too perturbed to learn that a previous female model, Rhonda that went there has disappeared without a trace, nor does she find it strange that her first night there they get her drunk and engage her in perverse game of strip poker. She almost has sex with the boy while the old woman secretly watches but he isn’t able to rise to the occasion. The next day he takes her into town and pays a friend to rip her clothes off and nearly rape her while he takes pictures. This doesn’t seem to bother her either because soon she’s involved in another bisexual three-way sex/photography session with them. There is also an allusion to the old Bluebeard story-the model has been forbidden to enter the boy’s mysterious darkroom.Read More »

Batwoman is called to investigate a whacked out scientist that is capturing wrestlers and using their spinal fluid to create a Gill Man.Read More »

Quote:
Beautifully dark movie which grants Mia Farrow the freedom to showcase the strange range of her gift. Elizabeth Taylor stays close with a deep and sensitive touch, flashing a legitimate side of herself, oft covered up. Robert Mitchum achieves repulsive perfection lurking in the garden, symbolic of the disgust and fear we share in our hide. The entire cast in breath and stone include every sense in totality, placing the actors and ourselves together to spy on each other from above, and within the ornamental mansion. Intense hallucinogenic 1968 camera shots intimately portray the family by chance’s horrific existence. Read More »

Music icon David Byrne was inspired by tabloid headlines to make his sole foray into feature-film directing, an ode to the extraordinariness of ordinary American life and a distillation of what was in his own idiosyncratic mind. The Talking Heads front man plays a visitor to Virgil, Texas, who introduces us to the citizens of the town during preparations for its Celebration of Specialness. As shot by cinematographer Ed Lachman, Texas becomes a hyperrealistic late-capitalist landscape of endless vistas, shopping malls, and prefab metal buildings. In True Stories, Byrne uses his songs to stitch together pop iconography, voodoo rituals, and a singular variety show—all in the service of uncovering the rich mysteries that lurk under the surface of everyday experience.Read More »

Two ill-matched teenage girls form a punk band and soon have New York City by its ears.Read More »

Synopsis:
Harlem’s African-American population is being ripped off by the Rev. Deke O’Malley (Calvin Lockhart), who dishonestly claims that small donations will secure parcels of land in Africa. When New York City police officers Gravedigger Jones (Godfrey Cambridge) and Coffin Ed Johnson (Raymond St. Jacques) look into O’Malley’s scam, they learn that the cash is being smuggled inside a bale of cotton. But the police, O’Malley and lots of others find themselves scrambling when the money goes missing.Read More »

Synopsis:
This film, with no dialogue at all, follows a psychotic young woman’s nightmarish experiences through one skid-row night.Read More »

A deranged 15th Century prison colony chaplain exploits his power to get money for his church including murder and grave robbing committed by his vampire mistress and one-eyed hunchback assistant.Read More »