The rest of this month has some exciting genre output on display at the wonderful Egyptian and Aero Theatres, hosted by the American Cinematheque.
Currently running, the Egyptian’s Lust and Larceny: Noir City, the 12th Annual Festival of Film Noir will wrap up on April 18. Friday, April 16 beginning at 7:30pm will be a double feature of 1955′s thriller Crashout, followed by 1954′s brutal revenge melodrama Cry Vengeance. Neither of these films are currently available on DVD. Saturday will see a double feature of horror director Lew Landers’ The Power of the Whistler from 1945 and starring Richard Dix (Val Lewton’s The Ghost Ship), as well as its follow up of the same year, Voice of the Whistler, directed by horror legend William Castle! In attendence will be Robert Dix, son of star Richard Dix.
Running from April 29 through May 2, the Egyptian presents A Wrinkle in Time: The Best of Time Travel Films. This crash course in the time-tested sci-fi subgenre will feature some of the greats, with themes ranging from post-apocalyptic dystopia, to threats to our future utopia.
First up on April 29th is a Planet of the Apes double feature, beginning with the original 1968 Planet of the Apes, starring Charlton Heston, Roddy McDowell, Kim Hunter and Maurice Evans. Heston’s astronaut Taylor crashlands on a seemingly alien world, where the laws of evolution are reversed, and a bigoted society of intelligent, yet hypocritical apes rule over a mute, savage population of wild humans. The presence of Taylor, a thinking, speaking man, threatens to turn this “upside down civilization” inside out. Mixing insightful social commentary, quirky humor and truly nightmarish spectacles, this film was a landmark of its genre, spawning four sequels, both live action and animated television series, a legion of merchandising, a muddled 2001 remake directed by Tim Burton and still another franchise reboot coming from Fox in 2012, Planet of the Apes was in many respects the proto-Star Wars and one of the first science fiction films to find truly mainstream success and recognition.
Following this will be 1971′s Escape from the Planet of the Apes, the third film in the series and what many consider to be the best of the four sequels. In a clever reversal of the original film, future apes Cornelius (McDowell), wife Zira (Hunter), and scientist Milo (Sal Mineo), crash land on then-present day Earth, where they struggle to survive the threats of a society terrified by what the existence of these apes says about the future of mankind. Filled with gentle humor, mind-bending temporal implications and examples of both tragic and terrifying fate, Escape is perhaps the most family friendly in the series, but not without a great deal of punch (can anyone imagine a big studio picture these days ending like this one does?).
Friday, April 30th offers a double feature of Star Trek: First Contact and James Cameron’s blockbuster sequel Terminator 2: Judgment Day.
1996′s First Contact – the eighth film in the venerable Star Trek franchise and the second of four Next Generation outings – is a harrowing action/adventure pitting traumatized Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) against dreaded foes The Borg, whose diabolical plot involves traveling back in time to the stop the “first contact” between mankind and benevolent aliens that will lead to the formation of the Federation. Featuring wondeful supporting turns by James Cromwell (Babe, RKO 281) and Alfre Woodard (True Blood), and directed by series regular Jonathan Frakes and co-written by Ronald D. Moore (Battlestar Galactica, Virtuality), First Contact is considered by most to be the best of the films featuring the cast of the Next Generation.
1991′s Judment Day is Cameron’s first, and so far only, sequel to one of his own films, bringing Arnold Schwarzenegger’s unstopable cyborg back to defend John Connor (Edward Furlong), the foretold savior of mankind from a coming robot apocalypse. Co-starring Linda Hamilton in her immortal role as the very definition of female strength, as well as Robert Patrick in his signature role as the deadly, liquid-metal assassin T-1000, everything about Terminator 2 is bigger and bolder than its predecessor, featuring ground-breaking visual effects and deftly combining action with themes of destiny, free will and surprising heart.
Saturday May 1st will play host to a triple feature, the entire Back to the Future trilogy! This series helped define a generation of moviegoing, mixing witty humor with stunning visuals and complex storytelling. Starring Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd in the roles that would make them immortal, the series finds ’80′s “slacker” teen Marty McFly (Fox) thrown backward in time by way of a time machine in the shape of a Delorean built by daffy genius Dr. Emmett Brown (Lloyd). Marty finds himself stranded first in 1955, before his adventures take him to the future of 2015, a parallel dimension version of 1985, and finally back to the Old West of 1885 — all along struggling to right the injustices of the past and get back home before getting killed or, even worse, managing to erase his own existence.
Finally, Sunday May 2 will wrap up the festival with a double feature of two of the time travel genre’s greats, produced and directed by some science fiction cinema’s best and brightest: 1960′s classic The Time Machine and Beyond the Time Barrier.
Based on the seminal novel by H.G. Welles, The Time Machine follows explorer George (Rod Taylor) into the distant future of the year 802,701, where humanity has diverged into two races: the peaceful, intellectual-deficient Eloi, who live on the surface of a lush, verdent, post-civilization paradise, and the shaggy, carnivorous Morlocks, who dwell in an underground, industrial labirynth and who prey upon the helpless Eloi like cattle. Produced and directed by legendary fantasy filmmaker George Pal (Destination Moon, War of the Worlds), The Time Machine is a slick, MGM production with class, fantastic visuals and a true sense of wonder, a film that inspired generations of kids that thrilled to its warm spectacle.
Edgar G. Ulmer is a genre filmmaker known mostly for his wonderfully perverse The Black Cat (featuring the first teaming of Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi), as well as what is considered to be the first true science fiction film of the 1950′s, The Man From Planet X, as well as for his notable film noir output. Relagated to B-budgets for almost his entire career, Ulmer none-the-less crafted atmospheric, thought-provoking genre cinema, and his career has gained serious academic attention in recent years. 1960′s Beyond the Time Barrier was produced in Texas in just 10 days (!), starring Planet X alum Robert Clarke as an Air Force Test pilot who finds himself thrust in a future filled with babes and mutants, who eventually rise up against their oppressors. With make-up by the legendary Universal monster creator Jack Pierce, and rushed out into theatres by American International to precede MGM’s big budget The Time Machine, Beyond the Time Barrier is a gem of this low-budget style Cold War sci-fi thriller, and a lot of fun.
Visit the official website of the American Cinematheque for a master calendar of events, as well as ticket information and more!
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