DCist’s subjective and selective guide to some of the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week.
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Robert Ryan in INFERNOMan in the Dark and Inferno in 3D
The AFI’s Noir City DC series continues this weekend with a pair of digitally restored femmes fatales from Hollywood’s first wave of 3D. Man in the Dark (1953) stars Edmond O’Brien as a crook who, in shades of A Clockwork Orange, becomes a guinea pig in an experiment to curb his criminal instincts. Co-starring noir regular Audrey Totter. Inferno stars Robert Ryan as a man left for dead who vows to take revenge on his no-good dame Rhonda Fleming. The AFI will be showing digital restorations of these rarely seen films, neither of which is available on DVD. Also screening this week is a 35mm print of the 2D noir Hell Drivers, starring Stanley Baker as an ex-con who takes a dangerous truck driving gig. The 1957 thriller features supporting roles for the next decade’s star spies: Sean Connery, David McCallum, and Patrick McGoohan.
Watch the trailer for Inferno.
See both movies in a double bill on Friday, October 25, introduced by Film Noir Foundation founder Eddie Muller and film noir scholar Alan K. Rode. Man in the Dark also screens on Monday, October 28; Inferno also screens Tuesday, October 29. The 3D films will be presented in DCP. At the AFI Silver.
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Christopher Lee in THE SATANIC RITES OF DRACULAThis year is the fortieth anniversary of horror classics The Exorcist and The Wicker Man. But there’s a lot more to the horror movies of 1973 than those crowd favorites. The AFI is in the middle of an ambitious program highlighting twenty horror films from 1973, many of them in rare 35mm prints. Tonight is your last chance to catch a print of Nicholas Roeg’s great Don’t Look Now . This week the AFI is also screening the James Bond-like Hammer horror The Satanic Rites of Dracula (October 26 and 31), starring Christopher Lee; and Brian DePalma’s Sisters (October 27 and 30).
Watch the trailer for The Satanic Rites of Dracula.
Through November 20 at the AFI Silver.
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Sure, you can watch a crummy print on YouTube. But this 1920 horror classic deserves to be seen on film in a dark theater, a better place to wake up from its avant-garde nightmare. The Alden Theater’s Classics of the Silent Screen series presents this landmark of German Expressionism in a rare 16mm print with German title cards (interpreted live by guest actor Ethan Watermeier). Composer Ben Model provides live musical accompaniment, and film historian Bruce Lawton will introduce the film and answer questions.
Wednesday, October 30 at 7:30 pm at the Alden, 1234 Ingleside Ave, McLean
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The Washington Pychotronic Film Society helps you celebrate Halloween this week with a typically provocative chiller. Three witches devise a potion that turns the city’s homeless people into bloodthirsty zombies. Is this a degrading exploitation of homelessness, or a scathing indictment of conventional perceptions of the homeless? I haven’t seen it, but an educated guess might lean toward the former interpretation. Producer and director Charles E. Cullen, the middle initial distinguishing him (I think!) from the serial killing nurse, is also responsible for such exploitations as Killer Klowns from Kansas on Krack and Slaughter Claus.
View the trailer.
Monday, October 28 at 8:00 pm at McFadden’s.
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Moyra Davey, courtesy of the artist and the National Gallery of Art.Les Goddesses
This weekend the National Gallery of Art’s ongoing series American Originals Now offers a program of video work by still photographer Moyra Davey. Les Goddesses takes its starting point from Mary Wollstonecraft, mother of Mary Shelley, and fuses her history and legacy with the history of early photography and the artist’s own personal life. Shown with My Necropolis.
Sunday, October 27 at 4:30 at the National Gallery of Art. Free.
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Also opening this week, men with no names in trouble: Robert Redford is at sea in All is Lost; and Michael Fassbender stars as The Counselor, directed by Ridley Scott from a script by Cormac McCarthy. We’ll have full reviews tomorrow.
