Directed by Bette Gordon and written by Kathy Acker, Variety is the story of Christine (Sandy McLeod), a woman in the city looking for work and ending up in the ticket booth of the Variety, a job that her boyfriend Mark (Will Patton) hates. None of the men that she encounters turn her on, even though a co-worker named Jose (Luis Guzmán) tries. Then she meets Louie (Richard M. Davidson), an older wealthy man who takes her to a baseball game before disappearing. She becomes obsessed with him and her sexuality is awakened by this man and a series of prank phone calls (Spalding Gray is the voice).

According to Downtown Express, “The film is a sort of Who’s Who of downtown street cred: music by John Lurie, cinematography by frequent Jarmusch collaborator Tom de Cillo, script by former sex worker and Pushcart Prize-winning feminist novelist Kathy Acker, and roles played by Spalding Gray, Luis Guzmán, Mark Boone Junior and photographer Nan Goldin, who also took production stills.” Despite that, the theater isn’t really in Times Square. It’s the Variety Photoplays, which was located on Third Avenue between 13th and 14th Streets in the East Village, the same theater as Taxi Driver where Jodie Foster jumps into the cab to escape her pimp.

As a feminist filmmaker, Gordon got criticism and praise for making a film about pornography. Yet I loved Christine’s character, someone fascinated and also upset by the sex that she spends so much of her time around, but it’s not real sex, it’s created for the male gaze. However, it inspires her, even as she reads her sexually frank writing to a boyfriend who doesn’t seem to care, is surrounded by men who just see her as the law of the invisible sex object and the strange man who keeps ghosting her. This movie has stuck with me since I watched it and I wonder, did Louie come back to meet her in that alley?

Thanks to the British Film Institute, there’s a list of films that played Scala. To celebrate the release of Severin’s new documentary, I’ll share a few of these movies every day. You can see the whole list on Letterboxd.

The first movie in Godfrey Reggio’s Qatsi trilogy — followed by Powaqqatsi and Naqoyqatsi — this combines Ron Fricke’s cinematography and Philip Glass’s score to create a feeling of zen or restlessness, depending on how it is viewed. There are no words as Reggio said, “…it’s not for lack of love of the language that these films have no words. It’s because, from my point of view, our language is in a state of vast humiliation. It no longer describes the world in which we live.” Instead, the Hopi word koyaanisqatsi is all we know, which means “life out of balance.”

Reggio and Fricke met when the director was working on a media campaign for the Institute for Regional Education and the American Civil Liberties Union. These ads were about how technology controls the world and invades our privacy. The TV spots were so popular people called stations to see when they would air again; it was also successful in that it got ritalin eliminated as a behavior controlling drug in New Mexico schools. Afterward, with just $40,000 left in his budget, Fricke told Reggio that they should make a film.

Shot with a mix of styles and media — 16mm, 35mm made with a 16 mm zoom lens shot on to 35 mm film with a zoom extender, time lapse photography, captured stills in New York’s Time Square with chemicals changing up the results, the New York traffic and congestion time lapse work of cinematographer Hilary Harris and even images added of the Great Gallery at Horseshoe Canyon by Francis Ford Coppola, who became a champion of the movie —  Koyaanisqatsi is about giving you an experience. The director has even said that what the movie is about is up to you. It ends with these three prophecies:

• “If we dig precious things from the land, we will invite disaster.”
• “Near the day of Purification, there will be cobwebs spun back and forth in the sky.”
• “A container of ashes might one day be thrown from the sky, which could burn the land and boil the oceans.”

You can watch this on Tubi.

Thanks to the British Film Institute, there’s a list of films that played Scala. To celebrate the release of Severin’s new documentary, I’ll share a few of these movies every day. You can see the whole list on Letterboxd.

Sada Abe (Eiko Matsuda) is a former prostitute who now works as a maid in a hotel, where she falls for the owner, Kichizo Ishida (Tatsuya Fuji), an affair that starts simply with non-stop sex and continues to become an obsession, as she doesn’t want to share him even with his wife. Soon, their love games include strangling one another during sex and her holding a knife to his manhood, saying that she’s going to take it with her. Well, that’s exactly what happens, as she accidentally kills him while they make love and takes his member with her, walking with it inside her before she’s arrested.

Directed and written by Nagisa Ōshima, who also made Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, this is a rare mainstream film that doesn’t shy from unsimulated sex, made in a culture that even hides the mere glance at female genitals. It was made in France, while in Japan, it was fogged and blurred so that it could appear in theaters.

Eiko Matsuda had worked in sexploitation films but was never treated as harshly by the public as she was when this film was made, finally moving to France and ending her acting career. Society remains unfair, as her male partner in the movie, Tatsuya Fuji, regained his career after two years.

This was based on a true story and Sada Abe did not fade from the world after serving five years of her six-year sentence even though she asked for the death penalty. The police record of her interrogation and confession became a best-selling book. Over the next few years, the public perception of her moved from a pervert to someone who murdered for love. She acted in a traveling show and worked in a bar in downtown Tokyo for twenty years before appearing in Teruo Ishii’s documentary History of Bizarre Crimes by Women in the Meiji, Taishō, and Shōwa Eras. When  Oshima tried to find her before making this movie, he learned that she was in a nunnery, yet most reports claim that she disappeared.

Thanks to the British Film Institute, there’s a list of films that played Scala. To celebrate the release of Severin’s new documentary, I’ll share a few of these movies every day. You can see the whole list on Letterboxd.

Partly adapted from the 1952 non-fiction book The Devils of Loudun by Aldous Huxley, which was turned into the play The Devils by John Whiting, United Artists had already given up on this movie after seeing how controversial Ken Russell’s screenplay was. Warner Brothers then took over but its rough sexual and violent nature, not to mention how it presented religion, led to major issues. It’s since been banned in several countries and was heavily edited for release in many countries, with several places never seeing its original uncut version.

Two scenes were cut and have rarely been shown, one where nude nuns sexually use a statue of Christ while Father Mignon watches and masturbates, as well as another that showed Sister Jeanne (Vanessa Redgrave) masturbating with the charred femur of Grandier (Oliver Reed) after he is set ablaze for his crimes.

As for Rusell, he said, “I was a devout Catholic and very secure in my faith. I knew I wasn’t making a pornographic film… although I am not a political creature, I always viewed The Devils as my one political film. To me, it was about brainwashing.”

Behind the very human — and at times occult and otherworldly — moments of the film, the dramatic narrative behind The Devils is Cardinal Richelieu working to influence Louis XIII and get him to stop the Protestants from rising up. However, Louis forbids Richelieufrom destroying the town of Loudun, having made a promise to its Governor to keep the town intact.

Whiole Loudun’s Governor has died, the town is now controlled by Urbain Grandier (Reed), who may be a popular man of God, but is also a man who has secretly married a woman. Meanwhile, Sister Jeanne des Anges, the deformed abbess of the local Ursuline convent who is sexually obsessed with Grandier, grows upset that the man she is in love with has not taken her.

The cardinal gets what he wants by accusing Grandier of witchcraft, bringing in Father Pierre Barre, a professional witch-hunter whose exorcisms are even more salacious than the crimes he has been sent to investigate. He unleashes a sexual firestorm amongst the nuns and a mockery of a trial that somehow finds Grandier convincing Barre that he is innocent. Yet it is too late. Despite his innocence, the town is destroyed.

How metal is this film? Ministry sampled it for their song “Golden Dawn” and other artists such as Belphegor and Skinny Puppy have also used dialogue from this movie.

Santa (Pierse Stevens) has had it, so he’s blowing off steam by telling a young boy by the name of Peter (Jude Forsey) four holiday horror stories. Perhaps, just maybe, he’s also a killer. Actually, he’s totally a killer, a former mall Santa who has had enough.

In the first, Toby and Chloe’s Christmas Nightmare,” three killers dressed as an elf, Santa and a snowman — named like a Tarantino gang with pseudonyms like Mr. Red (Tony Fadil), Mr. Green (Sonny Denham) and Mr. White (Jeff Kristian) — pull off a home invasion and murder an entire house before adopting a girl named Chloe (Eloise Henwood) and teacher her how to be a killer.

“The Ventriloquist Who Stole Christmas” has Henry (Mark Beauchamp) and his snowman dummy Mr. White getting over life’s hardships through being a serial killer, just like his father. I mean, you fail an audition, you get beat up and your wife Jade (Bibi Lucille) leaves you, you have to start murdering.

“Merry Krampus” has, you guessed it Krampus coming to Louise (Lucy Pinder) and her son Luke (Rafi Wilder) being visited by Krampus after he blames himself for her latest boyfriend leaving.

“The 12 Kills of Christmas” is about Father McShane (Jeff Kristian), who has dementia, but can barely remember all of his sins like molesting the boys in the choir. As his daughter Maria (Olivia Hespe) takes care of him, a ghost of the past makes sure that he does.

Directed and written by James Crow, this is over two hours long and has no reason to be that way. It feels like the Mr. White segment was going to be a full-length film, as it’s 50-minutes long, but it ended up being part of this. I wish that it all flowed together better, but if you’re looking for something mean spirited and cruel this holiday season, you’ll probably enjoy this and you’re not concerned with being on the nice list.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Thanks to the British Film Institute, there’s a list of films that played Scala. To celebrate the release of Severin’s new documentary, I’ll share a few of these movies every day. You can see the whole list on Letterboxd.

Nathan Juran came to America from Romania. His brother became quality control master Joseph M. Juran. As for Nathan, he went from art directing The Razor’s Edge to directing movies like 20 Million Miles to Earth, Jack the Giant Killer, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad and this movie, which was written by Mark Hanna.

Nancy Archer (Allison Hayes) has some problems. Her husband Harry (William Hudson) is sleeping with every woman in town but her. She has mental health issues that have been going on for some time. And she likes to throw drinking and driving on top of that cocktail. One night, driving drunk from an angry evening at a bar, she runs into a flying saucer whose pilot gets out and grabs her.

Somehow, she gets away and no one believes her. After all, she just got out of a mental institution and in 1958 — well, 2024 as well — no one believes women. As for her husband, he’s just with her because she’s worth $50 million and is more interested in Honey Parker (Yvette Vickers, Playboy Playmate of the Month July 1959; her centerfold was shot by Russ Meyer). Nancy begs him to search for the UFO with her and as they drive through the desert — she has agreed to be hospitalized again — they find the alien. Harry runs and Nancy wakes up irradiated in her pool house.

Honey convinces Harry to shoot up his wife and kill her off. He walks into her room and only finds a giant hand as his wife starts to grow in size and anger. Dr. Isaac Cushing (Roy Gordon) and Dr. Heinrich Von Loeb (Otto Waldis) try to keep her sedated and the butler (Ken Terrell) finds the UFO, which is being powered by Nancy’s diamond necklace, which has the largest diamond in the world on it. Yes, the richest woman in the world who has the largest piece of jewelry is trapped in a loveless desert marriage that is fought out in dive bars.

Nancy heads back to the bar and tears the roof off, killing Honey before grabbing her husband. As she walks through bullets, one lawman fires at the power lines and kills her, but at least her husband dies too.

They almost made a sequel to this and Dimension Pictures was going to have Paul Morrissey remake it, then Jim Wynorski said he would with Sybil Danning. Christopher Guest then remade it with Daryl Hannah as an HBO movie. Now, Tim Burton and Gillian Flynn have said that they are making a new one, so we’ll see.

Roger Corman designed the poster for this movie. Nothing in the art happens in the movie, but who cares? It’s the most perfect idea of what we want to see.

Thanks to the British Film Institute, there’s a list of films that played Scala. To celebrate the release of Severin’s new documentary, I’ll share a few of these movies every day. You can see the whole list on Letterboxd.

Jake and Elwood Blues (John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd) went from a musical comedy sketch on Saturday Night Live to a $30 million budget mission from God as they careers of the Not Ready for Prime Players left New York City and set out for Hollywood.

There was a bidding war for this movie. After all, SNL, Animal House and The Blues Brothers album were all huge. Belushi was suddenly the star of the week’s top-grossing film, top-rated television show and singing on the number-one album all at the same time.

Universal won and what they got was a new writer in Aykroyd who wrote a long script that director John Landis was still writing and didn’t have a final budget until well after shooting started, at which point Belushi was already going wild in Chicago, drinking and drugging up a storm while cars were crashed everywhere and money was pretty much set ablaze.

It doesn’t matter. This movie is still remembered long after its star and all that money have gone away.

Raised in an orphanage and taught the blues by Curtis (Cab Calloway), the brothers became blood when they cut their middle fingers with a guitar string from Elmore James, the King of the Slide Guitar.

The past is important in this film, as Aykroyd demanded Calloway, James Brown, Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin to be cast and get musical numbers. Universal wanted younger acts and disco stars. They lost.

The story is simple. The brothers want to raise money to save their orphanage. That’s it. That’s the story. The rest is a road movie full of comedic scenes that you can basically come into any time that you want.

They could have filmed what happened during the making of the film and had just as great of a film. For example, there was an entire bar on set, The Blues Bar, staffed with drug dealers. And on one night shoot, Belushi disappeared. Aykroyd looked around and saw a single house with its lights on. He walked over and the owner of the house said, “You’re here for John Belushi, aren’t you?” He had walked into their home, asked if milk and a sandwich, and went to sleep. This is why he was nicknamed “America’s Guest.” Belushi was also called “The Black Hole” because he would lose his sunglasses after nearly every scene.

Beyond Paul Reubens, Steven Spielberg and Carrie Fisher, there’s a secret Colleen Camp cameo. Look for her Playboy poster in Ellwood’s cell.

I remember this movie running so many times on HBO in my youth and watching it nearly every time. I could watch it right now, even after watching it to write this.

Thanks to the British Film Institute, there’s a list of films that played Scala. To celebrate the release of Severin’s new documentary, I’ll share a few of these movies every day. You can see the whole list on Letterboxd.

Donald Cammell was raised in a home “filled with magicians, metaphysicians, spiritualists and demons” and spent his childhood bouncing on the knee of “the wickedest man in the world” Aleister Crowley. Originally a painter, he became a screenwriter before meeting the Rolling Stones through Anita Pallenberg.

Performance was supposed to be a light-hearted swinging ’60s romp, but it ended up being what John Simon of New York Magazine called “the most vile film ever made.” It’s the story of two men*, Chas (James Fox), a brutal street thug, and Turner (Mick Jagger), a rock star who has gone into hiding.

Chas was a member of an East London gang, a man of violence who is prized for his ability to get money for his employer Harry Flowers. However, his complicated past with another gangster and that man’s murder has ostracized him from the gang and put him on the run and into the orbit of Turner and his two women, Pherber (Pallenberg) and Lucy (Michèle Breton).

By the end of the film, fuelled by drugs, cross-cutting techniques, a disjointed narrative and no small amount of magic, the two men have switched identities, with Chas displaying Turner’s face and Turner, well, not having a face any longer.

Warner Brothers thought that with Jagger in the movie they getting a Rolling Stones movie that young people could go see. Instead, they got a movie filled with drugs, sex, violence and ideas about cross-dressing and sex transforming identity that would still be dangerous half a century later.

The behind the scenes events — the house in Lowndes Square used in the film was investigated for drugs, Keith Richards was outside in a car fuming because Jagger and Anita were really having sex, Fox stopped acting for fifteen years to become an evangelical Christian — are just as interesting as the film, but the movie itself is astounding.

It was almost unreleased, as a Warner exec would complain, “Even the bathwater was dirty” and the wife of one of them would throw up at the premiere. Ken Hyman, the leader of Warner Brothers, decided that “no amount of editing, re-looping or re-scheduling would cover up the fact that the picture ultimately made no sense.” The film was shelved for two years until Hyman left and even then, the movie was re-edited and the Cockney accents were redubbed.

Time has been kind to Performance, a movie that points out the juxtaposition between the violent lives of East End with the rock and roll world of London. “A Memo to Turner” predates music videos. Bands from Coil to Big Audio Dynamite and Happy Mondays all referenced or sampled the movie while it’s been an influence on so many directors.

As for Cammell, he struggled against the mainstream after this movie — and with Marlon Brando, who kept asking him to write films and then deciding not to make them — before making Demon Seed, a film that deals with transformative sexuality, just like Performance. He’d make White of the Eye and Wild Side before killing himself with a shotgun. Kevin Macdonald (co-director of the story of his life, Donald Cammell: The Ultimate Performance), said “He didn’t kill himself because of years of failure. He killed himself because he had always wanted to kill himself.”

I held back watching this for years, because I wanted to make sure that I was ready for it. I needed to be prepared for this film, to not use it as wallpaper or background noise. It deserved more than that. And I’m glad I waited. It was worth it.

*It’s directed by two men as well, Cammell and Nicolas Roeg, who would go on to make Don’t Look Now, The Man Who Fell to Earth and The Witches.

Thanks to the British Film Institute, there’s a list of films that played Scala. To celebrate the release of Severin’s new documentary, I’ll share a few of these movies every day. You can see the whole list on Letterboxd.

Reggae singer Jimmy Cliff plays Ivanhoe Martin, who was based on the real-life Jamaican criminal Rhyging, who may not have been a musician or a drug dealer but was the “original rude boy” and a folk hero in that country. Cliff said, “Rhygin was very much on the side of the people; he was a kind of Robin Hood, I guess you could call him.”

Director Perry Henzell believed that this movie was a success in Jamaica because people there had never seen themselves on the screen nor heard their native dialect, which may be English but still needs subtitles.

Cliff’s character moves to the big city, where he’s wowed by a screening of Django and just wants to make music, like the song which gives this movie its name. But the record producer he records it for controls the world of Jamaica’s music and even if it is a hit, he’ll probably never see the money. After falling into a life of crime, he becomes the kind of Hollywood gangster of his young dreams, sending photos to the press holding machine guns like some kind of Jamaican Dillinger. He’s doomed to die in the streets, riddled with bullets, but he’s going to grab every moment of glory that he can before the inevitable strikes him down.

New Line released this in February 1973 in the U.S. but it took over a year before midnight showings started building an audience. The soundtrack would introduce reggae to American listeners while Ivan was referenced in The Clash’s “Guns of Brixton” with the lyrics, “You see he feels like Ivan, born under the Brixton sun. His game is called surviving, at the end of The Harder They Come.”