1980s

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A dysfunctional family in Madrid: Gloria is a cleaning lady, hooked on No-Doze, living in a crowded flat with Antonio, her surly husband, a cabby who adores an aging German singer he used to chauffeur; he’s also a forger. One teen son sells heroin, the other sleeps with men. Her mother-in-law keeps bottled water and cupcakes under lock and key, selling them to the family. Two alcoholic writers cook up a plot to sell a manuscript as Hitler’s memoirs, if Antonio will transcribe it in Hitler’s hand. He agrees, so they ask the German singer to play the role of the original owner since her past affinity for Nazi memorabilia makes her a likely candidate. Meanwhile, Gloria has given away one son to a sex-crazed dentist, and grandma picks up a pet lizard. Can this chaos be tamed?Read More »

Curtains is a 1983 Canadian cult horror film directed by Richard Ciupka, and starring John Vernon, Samantha Eggar, Linda Thorson and Lynne Griffin. The plot tells the story of a group of actresses targeted by a masked killer at a prestigious director’s remote mansion where they are auditioning for a role in a movie.

After having a markedly troubled production that included reshoots spanning two years, the film became a staple of late night television, only to later receive attention through word of mouth among genre fans, many of whom cite the Lesleh Donaldson’s ‘ice skating’ murder scene as the memorable highlight.Read More »

Tsuyoshi Shindo came to the town of Tamari to prove the innocence of his friend, Sakaguchi. Sakaguchi was accused of attacking the president of Shimoyama Kensetsu, a local construction company, with a knife. Shindo knew Sakaguchi was not capable of committing such a crime. During his investigation, Shindo discovered the town and its police force to be under the control of Shimoyama. That made Shindo a marked man, with Shimoyama’s henchmen attacking in an effort to force him to end his investigation and leave town.Read More »

This two-part TV movie was, of course, sparked by the November 1978 mass suicide of 913 people at the South American religious “colony” of Jonestown. The catalyst for this tragedy was cult-leader Reverend Jim Jones (played by Powers Boothe, who won an Emmy for his performance), head of the so-called People’s Temple. The film traces the life of Jones from his days as an idealistic 1960s activist. He drifts into penny-ante confidence scams and bed-hops from woman to woman, before electing to pass himself off as a modern messiah–eventually believing his own feverish sermons. The climactic scenes are chillingly staged in a near-documentary fashion, with Puerto Rico and Georgia substituting for Guyana. Ned Beatty plays the ill-fated Representative Leo Ryan, while James Earl Jones has a cameo as 1930s religious-leader Father Divine; most of the other main characters are composites of real people. Originally broadcast April 15 and 16, 1980, The Guyana Tragedy was adapted by Ernest Tidyman from the Washington Post and Charles A. Krause’s Guyana Massacre: An Eyewitness Account.Read More »

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Two old women who happen to be pickpockets stole money from Simon, the taxi driver. The police are unable to find the thieves, so Simon decides to find them himself. In his search he sinks deeper and deeper into the Hungarian crime world. He becomes a criminal and then his rampage begins until the unpredictable climax.Read More »

A young girl and a man struggle to understand their place in urban Japan, all the while holding dark secrets.Read More »

An American tourist on vacation in Turkey is hounded by a street vendor into buying a carved head she doesn’t want; then she is cast into prison for smuggling an antique.Read More »

Summer 1984, Paris and Liza, a new love. The town turns slowly into Guayaquil, where the director had his “jewish and tropical” childhood.Read More »

The second-to-last of the TV plays made by Beckett for the broadcaster Süddeutscher Rundfunk (SDR) in Stuttgart is a reduced black-and-white vision containing the following elements: evening light, dreamer (A), dreamed ego (B), dreamed hands R (right) and L (left). Again, Samuel Beckett is operating with minimalist variations and blurred grey tones. In the first shot, the camera is static. The dreamer hears from the wings the last notes of a ‘lied’ – Schubert’s identically titled ‘Night and Dreams’ – and then rests his head in his hands. His dreamed image drinks, a hand pats his forehead, another hand holds his hand, his head sinks down onto the table, a hand is placed on his head. This sequence is repeated, with Becket varying the dream sequences as full-size images.Read More »