It's Not Easy Being Beautiful - Thurs. Oct. 4th - 8PM



Oddball Films and curator Kat Shuchter bring you It's Not Easy Being Beautiful, a fun and fashionable night of vintage films that highlight the endless steps of beauty women must take on a daily basis, from makeup to hair to fashion to diet.  Our beauty regime begins with glamorous undergarments, as we can see in the Special Edition segment on Frederick's of Hollywood (1970s), replete with sexy teddies and padded panties sold to you by frumpy old women.  From there, we must build the foundation, with a creamy liquid foundation, of course, as we learn what goes into the makeup we pile on our faces in Accent on Beauty (1930s).  Then, it's time to get dressed and JC Penney's has a whole fabulous array of frocks and sweater-sets for three young ladies on a cross-country shopping spree in The Scenemakers (1960).  Learn how to stay beautiful, even as a beach bum, including how keep your clothes clean, or at least off, in the sexy short Beachcombing Belle (1949). Learn how to keep a trim figure and your hubby's admiration in the antiquatedly offensive Battle of the Bulge (1950). Once you're all dolled up, it's time to fight off the wolves howling at your sexy gams, as seen in Tex Avery's sexy fairytale Red Hot Red Riding Hood (1943).   Beauty is not just for biological women, as the early and groundbreaking gender-bending portrait Behind Every Good Man (1965) demonstrates.  And if you find you love spreading the beauty, you too can be like young Cindy and explore Beauty for a Career (1960s).  With vintage cosmetics commercials, Tony Curtis hosting a poolside party for the winners of Miss Universe 1955, Jayne Mansfield knocking Mickey Rooney speechless at the 1958 Golden Globes and tons of other sexy surprises, it's bound to be one beautiful night for boys and girls alike!







Date: Thursday, October 4th, 2012 at 8:00pm
Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco
Admission: $10.00 Limited Seating RSVP to programming@oddballfilm.com or (415) 558-8117





Seuss on the Loose! - Fri. Oct. 5th - 8PM




Oddball Films presents Seuss on the Loose!  a night of curious creatures, surreal landscapes and imagination gone wild, all from the mind of the inimitable Dr. Seuss. Theodor Seuss Geisel was an American writer, poet, and cartoonist widely known for his legendary children's books written under the pen name Dr. Seuss. Geisel also worked as an illustrator for advertising campaigns and was a political cartoonist for a New York City newspaper. During World War II, he worked in an animation department of the U.S. Army, where he co-authored Design for Death, a film that later won the 1947 Academy Award for Documentary Feature.  Highlights include: The Cat in the Hat (1972), The Cat in the Hat appears to bored kids and things get way out of hand; The Lorax (1972), in which a boy meets a mustached defender of nature and learns about danger of mankind’s greed; Green Eggs and Ham (1974), are constantly offered to a unnamed character who refuses to try them up until his last straw; The Sneetches (1974) a tale about star-belly Sneetches and plain-belly Sneetches who waste all their money on trying to segregate themselves from one another. The Zax (1974), a story exploring the idea of pride where two Zaxes run into each other while trying to get somewhere and refuse to move out of the way to let the other one pass. Horton Hatches the Egg (1957), watch an elephant help hatch a bird’s egg while she relocates to Palm Beach. Plus clips from the only feature film ever written by Theodor Seuss Geisel, The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T (1953) an inventive musical fantasy where a little boy dreams 500 children being forced to master a concert piece for 5,000 fingers! Also the US Army’s propaganda  short Private Snafu vs. Malaria Mike (1944) written by Geisel. The quirky animated film shows Snafu (Situation Normal All F*cked Up) learning the hard way about the consequences of not protecting himself from malaria infection. 


Date: Friday, October 5th, 2012 at 8:00pm
Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco
Admission: $10.00 Limited Seating RSVP to programming@oddballfilm.com or (415) 558-8117

Bikes on Film - Benefit for NDDivis - Fri. Sept. 28 - 8PM


Oddball Films and NDDivis present Bikes on Film: Benefit for NDDivis, a free-wheeling evening of vintage bicycle films to benefit saving the historic Harding Theater.  Neighbors Developing Divisidero is a non-profit organization that is currently fighting to save the Harding Theater from being demolished and condo-ified.  To help in their efforts to save our collective cinematic and community history, Oddball opens it’s doors and screen to bring you a fun evening full of films about bike safety, maintenance, history and more. See the legendary One Got Fat (1963) with children dressed as monkeys attempting to bicycle to a picnic without ending up in traction, and watch real monkeys ride bicycles with Marquis the chimp and family in Monkey Tale (1952).  Join Bill Cosby as he demonstrates all the ways that Bicycles Are Beautiful (1974).  Visit Copenhagen: The Bicycle City (1955) and see youngsters transform their bicycles into works of art from Industry on Parade (1954).  Get a slapsticky look at the history of bikes while following one youngster across town in Just Like A Car (1972) while Sid Davis teaches us How To Protect Your Bike (1973).  With snacks from Malaysian bike-powered food cart MamaKSF.  Whether you like bikes, want to save Historical buildings or just like a campy night with great folks, make sure you come on down to support NDDivis.





Date: Friday, September 28, 2012 at 8:00pm
Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco
Admission: $10.00 Limited Seating RSVP to programming@oddballfilm.com or (415) 558-8117




A Hard Road To Easy Street - Thurs. Sept. 27 - 8PM


Oddball Films and guest curator Soumyaa Kapil Behrens bring you A Hard Road to Easy Street, an evening of films on adventures, real and imagined, that reveal it’s not so easy to be living the good life in today’s world.  The program explores the journey of personal and creative place-making through the lens of groundbreaking queer cinema, vintage animations, satire and hard hitting documentary film.  The highlights of the program include Lloyd Reckord’s 1965 short, Dream A40, one of the first queer films of its kind, a film that goes on the road with two men and their feelings, the bold and sometimes too truthful More Than A Dream, (1974), following two working class families-one white, one black-in the South who have been transformed by the civil rights movement.  The Boo Boo Monster Enters A Beauty Contest (1973) has delightful character renderings and a groovy musical score that scats the audience along with rhythm and an independent spirit while He Was Her Man (1937), harkens back to the beginnings of Merrie Melodies with a classic battle of sexes.  The Good, Good, Good Life (1974) is a bizarre and musical story about finding happiness in shiny things and Of Cats and Men (1977) animates the historical journey of the domestic cat from Egyptian times to his current seat atop the hearts of men.  No matter if you are a boo boo monster, a human being or a kitty cat, the road to success is rife with wrong turns and misleading situations.  Who prevails and who perishes?  Find out Thursday night at Oddball Films!

Date: Thursday, September 27, 2012 at 8:00PM
Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street, San Francisco
Admission: $10.00 RSVP Only to: 415-558-8117 or programming@oddballfilm.com 

Dinky Hocker: A Special Evening With the ABC Afterschool Special - Thurs. Sept. 20 - 8PM


Oddball Films, with Lynn Cursaro, presents: Dinky Hocker: A Special Evening with the ABC Afterschool Special. Nothing satisfies the appetite for over-the-top adolescent angst like an Afterschool Special and Dinky Hocker (1979), really hits the spot. Meet pudgy Dinky Hocker, a bright high schooler with two insatiable hungers: mom’s attention and any sugary snack she can get her hands on! Dinky's mom keeps the home cookie jar stocked, but is much too preoccupied with counseling young drug addicts and saving rivers for any other maternal chores. After reinvention via dieting fails, Dinky schemes to give mom the shock of her life. Stellar performances by Wendie Jo Sperber (Bosom Buddies) as Dinky and iconic TV mom June Lockhart (Lassie, Lost in Space) are balanced with moments of ham-fisted teen drama. Living room rolfing, anyone? Preceding, Dinky: Middle-schoolers pitifully demonstrate the privations of a crowded world with very small portions in Too Many People (1975). When Woody Woodpecker stays put for the winter, hunger leads to tried and true animated brutality in Pantry Panic (1941), one of his first cartoon outings.  Also: A luscious buffet of Vintage Food Commercials will be served up,  Ã  la Oddball, throughout the screening.  And . . . home-baked treats for all from the Kuritorial Kitchen (while supplies last!).



Date: Thursday, September 20th, 2012 at 8:00PM.
Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street, San Francisco
Admission: $10.00, RSVP to: 415-558-8117 or programming@oddballfilm.com 

Strange Sinema 56 - Friday Sept. 21 - 8PM



Oddball Films presents Strange Sinema 56, a monthly screening of new finds, old gems and offbeat oddities from Oddball Films’ collection of over 50,000 film prints. This evening features a series of short, confounding and plainly strange films ranging from unique animation to spellbinding science to silent slapstick.  Works include the brilliant Canadian filmmaker Arthur Lipsett’s Very Nice, Very Nice (1961), a sardonic re-reading of 1950s consumerism, mass media and popular culture, Charlie Chaplin’s silent Laughing Gas (1914) where he pumps his patients with laughing gas, pulls out the wrong teeth and knocks them out with clubs, the Mouse Activated Candle Lighter (1973), a bizarre Rube Goldbergesque short demonstrating the principles of motion, Crystallization (1975), award-winning filmmaker Carroll Ballard’s cinematic science excursion into microcinematography and electronic music, another short by Arthur Lipsett- Free Fall (1964) featuring dazzling pixilation, in-camera superimpositions, percussive tribal music, syncopated rhythms and ironic juxtapositions, Rhinoceros (1965), Polish master Lenica utilizes cutouts creating an animated version of Ionesco’s play about conformity, Experimental (1974), famed director Robin Lehman’s brilliant montage of feats of flight produced with the Experimental Aircraft Association. Other films include the euphoric Dream Flowers (1930s) featuring opium poppy harvesting and smokers, an eye-opening verite view of Texas cheerleaders  Beauty Knows No Pain (1971) by famed American photographer Elliott Erwitt, and a rare film They Shall See (1972) by Los Angeles filmmaker Nicholas Frangakis with cinematographer Steve Craig in a theological orientation to the mystery and beauty of nature, without narration and produced by the Franciscan Communications Center.  These films will amaze, delight, confound and inspire, so be sure to come get your strange on!

Date: Friday, September 21, 2012 at 8:00pm
Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco
Admission: $10.00 Limited Seating RSVP to programming@oddballfilm.com or (415) 558-8117

Crime Watch! - Fri. Sept. 14 - 8PM


Oddball Films and guest curator Landon Bates bring you Crime Watch!, a program chock-full of cops and their criminal counterparts.  Every film will be markedly different from every other, but all will work together to create a sort of panoramic noir.  We’ll begin with Parole (1956), a real live, harrowing parole hearing, shot across the bay at San Quentin, in which an anonymous felon fleshes out his perspective before a board of judges, attempting to have them understand what might drive a man to murder, in hope of being granted some leniency on his sentence.  We’ll then switch point of views, to that of the law enforcement officer, with Arrest (1970’s), a reenactment of an arrest, involving the pursuit of a blonde man suspected of robbery and murder, armed with a pistol and a half-empty bottle of Jim Beam.  Buster Keaton follows, stumbling into frame in his classic Cops (1922) short, wherein he singlehandedly and unwittingly stirs up a city’s entire police force, swiftly becoming public enemy no. 1.  Shoot, Don’t Shoot II (1973) is an unusual “educational” film that tests cadets-in-training on whether or not to deploy their firearms in given situations; though its aim may be to train, so, too, it very definitely entertains.  Cheating in Gambling (1949) gives us a privileged look at the hands of a master card manipulator, John Scarne, who, literally, wrote the book on card hustling.  And, finally, we’ll conclude with a characteristic bang! Flesh and Leather (1951), our only purely fictional narrative film of the night, is a sort of sum of all the elements featured in the preceding films, replete with cops, crooks, killings, and a fixed game; and, it’s set amid the fogbound alleys of our very own San Francisco.  Stay off the
 streets for the evening and opt instead to watch these arresting crime films at Oddball.  Plus! In addition to the films will be certain circular treats, in commemoration of National Cream-filled Donut Day!

Date: Friday, September 14th, 2012 at 8:00pm
Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco
Admission: $10.00 Limited Seating RSVP to programming@oddballfilm.com or (415) 558-8117


Ladyfest Bay Area Presents: One Good Turn - Thurs. Sept 13 - 8PM

Oddball Films welcomes Ladyfest Bay Area for a filmic celebration of strong powerful women throughout history in the program One Good Turn, curated by Christine Kwon.  Including the rare and chillingly beautiful piece St. Louis Blues (1929), Bessie Smith's only screen performance before her tragic death.  Examine the myth and reality of the dutiful housewife in the disparate pieces Andean Women (1974) and 1970’s Breakfast Commercials featuring Patricia Neal for Maxim coffee. And none is more iconic of a young girl’s imagination than Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1981), a pedantic yet uncanny animated retelling of the children’s classic. The centerpiece of the night features a segment of Carl Dreyer’s acclaimed masterpiece The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928), and rounds out with Union Maids
(1976), an inspiring and insightful exploration of the labor movement in the 1930s, told through the eyes of three women who bravely fought for equal rights during this period. Refined, ravishing, and rife with complexity, the ladies in this collection serve to dispel the myth of the magical woman and present something much more real — women who play, fight, and work, and look damn good doing it.   


Date: Thursday, September 13th, 2012 at 8:00pm
Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco
Admission: $10.00 Limited Seating RSVP to programming@oddballfilm.com or (415) 558-8117

Buggin' Out with Live Insect Pre-Show - Thurs. Sept 6th - 8PM



Oddball Films and guest curator Kat Shuchter bring you Buggin’ Out, a night of vintage 16mm films crawling with all your favorite insect friends and foes.  From mesmerizing nature films to charming cartoons from around the world to kitschy educational primers, we take this night to celebrate all things buggy.  Watch the rare and delightful Ferda the Ant (1941), a Czech puppet-animation sporting the first wire-framed creatures on film.  Merrie Melodies brings us Bug Parade (1941), replete with countless sight gags about a bevy of cartoon bugs.  View the beauty and intricacies of the beehive while it’s projected 10 feet high in Bees: Backyard Science (1978) and marvel at the incredible metamorphosis of lepidotera in The Monarch Butterfly Story (1987).  The Japanese bring us the cutest dancing bug party ever, in the trippy stop-motion version of the Aesop’s Fable The Ant and the Grasshopper (1967). Marvel at the ferocity of tiny adversaries when termites square off against hungry ants in The Battle of the Centuries (1932). Get ready for the itchy-kitschy Lice are not Nice (1985), a hilarious classroom primer on that playground scourge, head-lice.  Meet the fly’s worst nightmare in Carnivorous Plants (1965).  With vintage insecticide commercials, creepy-crawly trailers, free gummi-worms and tons of other surprises including a special appearance by the  Bay Area's award winning Insect Discovery Lab, visit with Giant African millipedes, Australian walking sticks, giant thorny phasmids, and eastern lubber grasshoppers and a few mystery guests , this is one night that will leave you itching for more!





Date: Thursday, September 6th, 2012 at 8:00pm.
Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street, San Francisco
Admission: $10.00 Limited Seating RSVP to: programming@oddballfilm.com or 415.558.8117.

I Want You To Bite Me! - Fri. Sept. 7 - 8PM


Oddball Films and guest curator Emily Schleiner present I Want You To Bite Me!, an evening that examines and celebrates those glorious shape-shifting bloodsuckers, Vampires; both the lore and the fearful psychological fascination. Vampire lore, in one form or another, has existed in different cultures throughout the ages. From the Mesopotamian and Hebrew traditions, and even on to the monsters from the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Laugh at and shiver from tales of vampires and their precursors!  Sink your fangs into delicious excerpts from the famous Dracula (1931), starring Bela Lugosi, a confection that introduced the legendary Count Dracula and his spider eating minion Renfield to the silver screen.  Delve into a psychadelic mishmash of otherwordly Tibetan demons from ancient scroll paintings in Tanka (1976), by David Lebrun.  Hide your femoral artery for Doom of Dracula, excerpted from House of Frankenstein (1927), a short film about a conscienceless professor-impersonator who brings Dracula to life!  On the lighter side, see hilariously spooky bits from Bud Abbott and Lou Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948), directed by Charles Barton, where the wacky duo encounter Dracula! A 1970s anti-smoking commercial takes the form of a melodramatic vampire scene called Ashes of Doom!  The rarely screened Teeth Are for Chewing (1971) gives incisive information about your incisors. Catch the 1970’s documentary about animal hunters, their canine teeth, and their killer instincts in Predators of North America (1981) as well as excerpts from the documentary Freud: The Hidden Nature of Man (1970) where you will learn about our human impulses that lie just beneath the surface!  And watch Felix the Cat hypnotize a hippo!   Whether you enjoy a good startle or some hilariously dated antagonists, there is something here for everyone, humans and bloodsuckers alike!


Date: Friday, September 7th, 2012 at 8:00pm.
Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street, San Francisco
Admission: $10.00 Limited Seating RSVP to: programming@oddballfilm.com or 415.558.8117.