Événement

NOIR CITY 14: SCREAMING MIMI / MICKEY ONE

Thursday, January 28: NIGHTCLUB PERFORMERS

The price of admission gets you into the evening double bill.

7:30
SCREAMING MIMI
(1958, Columbia Pictures. 79 min.)

Scr. Robert Blees, from the novel by Fredric Brown
Dir. Gerd Oswald

Released from a sanitarium after surviving the attack of a psycho-stalker, Virginia Wilson (Anita Ekberg) does what any sensitive, artistically inclined young woman would do -- she becomes an erotic dancer at the El Madhouse nightclub, where her sadomasochistic dance routines develop a rabid following -- including another murderous stalker. Her only protectors are "Devil," an enormous Great Dane, the club's lesbian proprietress (Gypsy Rose Lee), and, maybe, a sleazy square-jawed newspaper reporter.

9:15
MICKEY ONE
(1965, Columbia Pictures. 93 min.)

Scr. Alan Surgal
Dir. Arthur Penn

A stand-up comedian (Warren Beatty) known only as "Mickey" goes on the lam after falling deeply in debt to whom? His pursuit by "Them" assumes existential proportions, with surreal tableaux increasingly squeezing out reality. Combining familiar faces from 1940s films (Franchot Tone, Hurd Hatfield, Jeff Corey) with elliptical and ambiguous storytelling, Penn creates a unique -- and perplexing -- film that combines European art-house cinema with a traditional American crime movie.