The Puzzle Within the Castro Theater's July Calendar

A new month, a new Castro Theater calendar. The calendar came out last week but I've been so busy that...same old excuse - too busy to blog.

This was an easy one although I have yet to solve one of these puzzles without help.

July 8 - Redd Foxx was immediately recognizable despite looking younger than the Sanford and Son days when h I first saw him.

July 9 - I did not recognize this woman.  When I showed my co-worker the calendar, he immediately recognized Betty White.  I would guess the photo is from around the time White was on the Mary Tyler Moore Show.  I watched that show during its original network broadcast as a child but didn't recognize White.  I'd like to think I would have made the connection but my co-worker was too quick in identifying White for me to make that claim.

July 15 - I immediately recognized Dan Ackroyd and John Belushi as the Blue Brothers.  Obviously there was a film called The Blues Brothers (1980) staring Ackroyd & Belushi but the Blues Brothers released several albums and performed live at many venues including the final show at Winterland.  When performing, Ackroyd & Belushi did not break character and they developed intricate backstories and biographies of the characters.  They also hired top-notch musicians for their band.

Redd, White and Blues can only mean Red, White and Blue in celebration of Independence Day.

I drew a blank on the guy sitting on the wall in the July 4 rectangle.  I'm not sure if the July 4 item is part of the puzzle.

As for the films, July looks like a good month at the Castro.  I'm a big fan of Jaws (July 3).  Robert Shaw gave a great performance.  I've long wanted to see Night of the Hunter (July 11).  Another favorite of mine is The Exorcist (July 12).  Mercedes McCambridge's voice performance is incredible.  The Craft (July 13 with Peaches Christ) is one of my guilty pleasures.  It's the first time I saw Fairuza Balk.  On July 17, they are screening a pair of Jim Jarmusch's anthologies - Mystery Train and Night of Earth.

The San Francisco Silent Film Festival and the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival occupy much of the  rest of the Castro's July calendar.

Castro Theater Calendar - July 2013

All About Evil and the Peaches Christ Experience

I caught All About Evil at the Victoria Theater on the first day of a four day run.

All About Evil starring Natasha Lyonne and Thomas Dekker; with Cassandra Peterson and Mink Stole; directed by Joshua Grannell; (2010) - Official Website

All About Evil premiered at the 2010 San Francisco International Film Festival at the Castro Theater. As I much I love the Castro Theater, it was a shame that the film premiered there because All About Evil was filmed and set at the Victoria Theater.

Director and screenwriter Joshua Grannell (aka Peaches Christ) to the film on the road after its premiere on the Tour de Fierce. It's played in a dozen cities since SFIFF with a stage show before each screening. It was extra special that the film was screening where it was filmed. Several of the characters in the film (different actors) were working the front of the house prior to the show. When the show started, they danced and sang on stage. This didn't make a lot of sense before the screening but afterwards, I realized they were performing songs which paralleled the film. Then Peaches came out and sang a song or two and told a few stories. The pre-film show was billed as "The Peaches Christ Experience in 4-D!" The best song was "Shh! Means Shut the Fuck Up Bitch!"

Then it was on to the film. Deborah Tennis (pronounced Deh-bore-rah Ten-niece) owns the Victoria Theater, a movie house previously and lovingly owned by her late father. As a young girl, Deb had a mishap on stage involving her urine and a faulty electrical connection. By the way, I think some of the seats in the Victoria were wired because when an electrocution occurred during the stage show, several people screamed extra loud. Back to the film, the electrical mishap has left Tennis (Natasha Lyonne) with a white shock of hair into her adulthood. Making ends meet as a librarian, Tennis spends her nights working the ticket booth and concession stand at the Victoria which has become a grindhouse. Attendance is down and things aren't looking good. Deb's evil stepmother arrives with a document she demands Deb sign. She wants to sell the Victoria to land developers and pocket the cash. After some insults about her father, Deb stabs her stepmother in a moment of rage. The murder is caught on the security camera and that tape is mistakenly projected onto the screen. The sparse audience loves the film which they think is a PSA before the film. The audience loves the realism of the short film.

Tapping into her creative energy (not to mention her inner rage), Deb goes about torturing and killing people on film and showing the encounters before feature films as "A Deborah Tennis Production." The audience and city go nuts for the films which have names such as The Maiming of the Shrew and I Know Why the Caged Woman Screams. Deb recruits her deranged projectionist, a pair of psychotic twins just released from an insane asylum and a sociopathic junkie to costar in her films and work at the Victoria.

Deb's #1 fan is Steven (Thomas Dekker), a high school student with a big thing for horror films and a smaller thing for older women like Deb and who can blame him since his mother is Cassandra Peterson (Elvira Mistress of the Dark whose poster adorns Steven's bedroom wall). Steven, whose popularity rises when his longstanding friendship with Deb becomes known, begins to suspect that the Tennis Production films are more vérité than cinéma. You can guess what happens.

Featuring black humor, Natasha Lyonne impersonating everyone from Bette Davis to Katharine Hepburn to Mae West and frequent cameos by Peaches, All About Evil is a lot of fun. The film is more campy than black comedy (I would have preferred the opposite) but what can you expect from a drag queen in San Francisco directing his first feature film?

After the film, some of the cast took questions from the audience. If I recall correctly, Peaches said she was already at work on another film. I'd pay to see his next film based on All About Evil. Also, Peaches announced that she will perform a Christmas show at her home base of the Bridge Theater in December.

Over the closing credits, they had posters for fictitious Deborah Tennis Productions. I really enjoyed the titles and posters - The Slasher in the Rye, The Satanic Nurses, The Diary of Anne Frankenstein, MacDeath, Gore and Peace, etc.

Actually, last year or perhaps earlier this year, I saw a Gore and Peace poster at the Victoria. I thought that was a great name for a horror film. It turns out that was going to be Deborah Tennis' first feature length film where she poisons the audience on film à la Jonestown. The poster was up at the Victoria Theater for filming of All About Evil. I went to the Victoria Theater website to see the showtimes for Gore and Peace but of course, there were no showtimes. In a sense, I was punked by Peaches during the filming of All About Evil.

From Rome to Manila

I never caught a Midnight Mass screening with Peaches Christ. "She" hosted a midnight series at the Bridge for many years. Famous for their elaborate stage shows which preceded the films, the Midnight Mass series was well-attended and highly praised. Between the raucous crowds and late nights, I never got around to a Midnight Mass. I would have liked to have seen the Elvira and Tura Satana appearances. (I've never seen Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!).

Last year, Peaches announced she would semi-retire from the Midnight circuit. Since then, Joshua Grannell (Peaches' alter-ego) has written and directed a horror film which premiered at the San Francisco International Film Festival. The film, All About Evil, packed the Castro Theater. The film was shot in San Francisco and set at the Victoria Theater. I read somewhere that All About Evil will screen at the Victoria later this year.

In addition, Peaches returns to the Bridge for a Midnight Mass on July 2 and 3 with a screening of Prince's Purple Rain (1984). That film brings back memories from high school - I knew a girl named Nikki; I guess you could say she was a sex fiend; I met her in a hotel lobby...

Anyway, that is a long lead up to say that the Bridge is continuing its midnight series but not with Peaches Chist (July 2 & 3 notwithstanding). On May 28 & 29, the Bridge is screening Gone With the Pope which caught my attention.

Gone With the Pope is a never-before-seen exploitation film starring writer/director Duke Mitchell (Massacre Mafia Style) as Paul, a gangster with an unholy scheme: to kidnap the pope and charge "a dollar from every Catholic in the world" as the ransom. Shot in 1975 as Kiss the Ring, Gone With the Pope was unfinished at the time of Duke Mitchell's death in 1981. Sage Stallone and Bob Murawski of Grindhouse Releasing rediscovered Gone With the Pope in 1995 and vowed to save it from obscurity. Academy Award-nominated film editor Murawski (The Hurt Locker) spent 15 years completing Gone With the Pope from the surviving film elements.

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The YBCA will screening noted Filipino director Brillante Mendoza's Kinatay (2009) on June 12 and 13. I have seen Mendoza's Serbis and Slingshot in the past year or two and am interested enough to view Kinatay. Those two films showed the gritty and seamy side of the Philippines and Mendoza seems to have ratcheted it up for Kinatay.

Brillante Mendoza is the most sophisticated, fearless Filipino filmmaker working today. Kinatay, for which he won the Best Director award at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, is a harrowing journey into the heart of darkness (take heed: sensitive viewers should go nowhere near this film). It traces a 24-hour odyssey in the life of a trainee policeman, from his wedding to an endless night out with corrupt colleagues and a junkie prostitute. With a nerve-shredding pace and gritty, verite-style photography, Kinatay is an unforgettable denunciation of societal and political corruption in Manila.