1) Silver Scream Spook Show features The Creature from the Black Lagoon at Plaza Theatre.
2) Pastor Troy performs at Apache Cafe.
3) Caribbean Carnival parades along West Peachtree Street and parties at the Masquerade.
4) Decatur Arts Festival celebrates its 21st year.
5) Polaroidland opens at Mint Gallery.
(Photo © Universal Pictures)
The monthly burlesque-and-B-movie festival The Silver Scream Spookshow at the Plaza Theatre presents She Demons at 1 and 10 p.m. Sat., Feb. 28. The 1958 schlock fest features a remote island, dancing jungle girls, snaggle-toothed monster chicks and guys in Nazi uniforms, so it looks sort of like Werewolf Women of the SS, only in black and white and not fake. The trailer calls it “A FRIGHT-Mare of Blood-Chilling HORROR,” so you know it’s serious, because a frightmare is a lot worse than a regular nightmare:
1) Photojournalist Kristen Ashburn speaks about her exhibit Bloodline: AIDS and Family at Atlanta Photography Group Gallery.
2) Fringe Factory celebrates its one-year anniversary at the Highland Inn Ballroom Lounge.
3) Silver Scream Spook Show screens Giant Monsters All-Out Attack at the Plaza Theatre.
4) The Features and Selmanaires play the Earl.
5) The Rialto Center hosts Swamp Gravy, a folk-life play about Georgia.
(Photo by Kristen Ashburn)
On Sat., Jan. 31 at 1 and 10 p.m., The Plaza Theater’s monthly Silver Scream Spook Show presents a movie with one of the all-time great titles, Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack. From 2001, it’s the 25th film about Godzilla, the famed fire-breathing dinosaur mutant. Godzilla’s behavior has fluctuated over the decades from evil to good to insipid “friend of children” and back again, and Giant Monsters All-Out Attack finds the radioactive reptile back to being evil, like a classic recidivist. His former adversaries like Mothra and King Ghidorah rise to protect Japan from Godzilla’s rampage. It’s great fun, but frankly, not quite as impressive as director Shusuke Kaneko’s previous giant monster film, Gamera III: The Awakening of Iris, which is one of the best (if least-appreciated) Japanese “man-in-suit” monster flicks ever made. Here’s a couple of mini-trailers for Giant Monsters All-Out Attack: enjoy the weird toy commercials that come with them:
1) Hairspray opens at the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre.
2) The creators of the Silver Scream Spook Show and Atlanta Horrorfest host Splatter Cinema at the Plaza Theatre, with a screening of Street Trash.
3) Bernie Schein discusses If Holden Caulfield Were in My Classroom at the Margaret Mitchell House & Museum.
4) Helen Kim and Robert Henry perform at Kennesaw State University.
5) Vickie Robin discusses Your Money or Your Life at Wordsmiths Books.
(Photo © 2006 Phil Martin)
1) Unknown Hinson and Syrens of the South perform at the Earl.
2) Apex Museum hosts Kwanzaa Festival.
3) North Mississippi Allstars play Variety Playhouse.
4) Professor Morte and Retch bring us another Silver Scream Spook Show.
5) Airoes play East Atlanta’s 529.
(Photo © Osmund Geier)
I think there’s a method to the Silver Scream Spook Show’s madness in programming Mad Monster Party? for the weekend after Christmas. The 1969 kiddie flick features stop-motion animation from Rankin/Bass, producers of holiday classics like “Rudolph, The Red-Nosed Reindeer” and “The Year Without a Santa Claus.” Parents looking for things to do with the kids will have fresh memories of that trademark “Animagic” animation style. Co-written by Mad Magazine creator Harvey Kurtzmann, the story features a gathering of classic movie monsters like Dracula and Frankenstein and includes voice work from Boris Karloff and Phyllis Dinner. Screening at 1 and 10 p.m. Sat., Dec. 27 at the Plaza Theatre, Mad Monster Party? was a huge influence on Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas:
1) The American War: Photographs by Al Rockoff continues at Composition Gallery.
2) Make the long trek to Athens for Georgia vs. Georgia Tech, then stick around for Duke Spirit at 40 Watt Club.
3) The Silver Scream Spook Show presents The Crawling Eye at the Plaza Theatre.
4) Broke & Boujee play the Five Spot.
5) Shawn Mullins plays Variety Playhouse.
(Photo by Al Rockoff)
Since Halloween takes place next Friday, The Silver Scream Spook Show at The Plaza Theatre celebrates a little early with 1955’s Bride of the Monster, screening at 1 and 10 p.m. on Sat., Oct. 25. Notorious director Ed Wood depicts a mad scientist (Bela Lugosi) with a hulking manservant (former wrestler Tor Johnson), a suspiciously rubber-looking octopus and a plan to create a race of “atomic supermen.” It’s marginally better than Wood’s Plan 9 From Outer Space, in much the same way that being hit with a 10-pound weight is “better” than being hit with a 20-pound weight. One of the best scenes of Tim Burton’s Ed Wood biopic re-creates Lugosi’s fight with the octopus, as shown in this hilarious clip with Johnny Depp and Oscar-winner Martin Landau. Here’s the original trailer:
In addition to the shlocky movie, the Silver Scream Spook Show features comedy from host Professor Morte and bawdy retro entertainment from Blast-Off Burlesque.
Any of the 2,500 or so people who head out to the Starlight Six Drive-In this weekend will feel like they’re attending a family reunion.
Drive-Invasion, the annual harmonic convergence of Atlanta’s lowbrow-culture scene, brings together punk-inspired rockabilly, garage and surf rock, hot-rod and custom-car contests, and a slew of old horror and science-fiction movies, shown from dusk practically till dawn.
It’s the signature event in a scene that over the past decade has flourished by celebrating fading cultural landmarks and old pop trends. With the help of a creative cadre of musicians, performance artists, promoters and tinkerers, ancient theaters such as the Starlight and the Plaza, and converted industrial spaces such as the Alcove Gallery, are taking the past and bringing it alive with a new, uniquely Atlantan energy. Lowbrow culture has taken root in Atlanta.
The word “lowbrow” has come to describe the embrace of a whole range of 20th-century pop-culture trends with a decidedly DIY spirit – from the hot-rod scene of the Roaring ’20s and the post-World War II tiki-bar craze to pop-surrealist, cartoon and comic-book art. The West Coast hipsters seem to celebrate all things lowbrow with a sense of irony that hints at trendiness.
But in Atlanta – where highways and power centers sometimes overshadow a more homegrown personality – a tightly knit group of creative spirits seems to have left irony behind in favor of an authentic lowbrow aesthetic with its own Southern accent.
Read the rest of this article here.
(Photo by David Lee Simmons)
On Sat., Aug. 23, the Silver Scream Spook Show, the Plaza Theatre’s monthly presentation of vintage horror film and burlesque entertainment, presents Curse of the Demon, a supernatural classic from 1957. Alternately known as Night of the Demon, the film features one of horror films’ most famous monster mug shots. Ironically, Curse’s now-iconic demon was almost not part of the final cut, but a late addition at the studio’s insistence that appears only at the beginning and ending of the film. Here’s a short clip:
Curse’s occult story features a scholarly skeptic (Laura’s square-jawed Dana Andrews) who exposes frauds, only to discover that a coven leader (Niall MacGinnis) may actually known how to summon dark forces. It may be the masterpiece of director Jacques Tourneur, who established himself as an expert in building mood and ratcheting up our fears of the unseen and unknown (especially in his collaborations with producer Val Lewton, including the original Cat People and I Walked With a Zombie). If the X-Files sequel and M. Night Shyamalan’s recent efforts left suspense-seekers disappointed, Curse of the Demon will show you how it’s done.
Curse of the Demon screens at 1 and 10 p.m., Aug. 23.
“A tidal wave of terror engulfs the screen!” On Saturday the Silver Scream Spook Show, the Plaza Theatre’s raucous monthly screening of classic — or at least memorable –horror movies, presents It Came From Beneath the Sea from 1955. The legendary Ray Harryhausen provided the special effects for this tale of a giant octopus that wreaks havoc, memorably putting the squeeze on the Golden Gate Bridge. Fun fact: to save time, Harryhausen only animated six of the model’s tentacles and nicknamed it a “hextapus.” Incidentally, It seems to have inspired the neat-o giant “kraken” scenes from Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Dead Man’s Chest. It Came From Beneath the Sea plays at 1 and 10 p.m. on Saturday, July 26. Here’s the vintage trailer:
Monster Bash is like Drive-Invasion without the humidity and with more makeup. OK, it was already pretty warm on Sunday when hot-rodders, devil dolls, rock ’n’ rollers and ghouls of all ages got all tatted up at the Starlight Drive-In. The event sold out, with barely a parking spot available by mid-afternoon in which rockers and sci-fi/horror-movie fans could camp out, cook out and rock out. (”It’s like an inner-city version of a hippie fest,” said one Basher during the post-sundown viewing of Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla (which was followed by The Werewolf vs. Vampire Woman).
To read more and view the image gallery visit PopSmart.
