Sex, Censorship and Betty Boop: The Ladies of Pre-Code Hollywood - Thur. Sep. 5th - 8PM


Oddball Films and guest Curator Taylor Morales bring you, Sex, Censorship and Betty Boop: The Ladies of Pre-Code Hollywood, a collection of films exploring Hollywood’s fascination with female sexuality in the years before 1934, when the industry adopted the Motion Picture Production Code, a set of moral censorship standards that governed the US motion pictures industry between 1934 and 1968. The Code, which banned all forms of overt sexuality and “immorality”, forced Betty Boop to lengthen her skirt and cover her garter. This collection of films and cartoon shorts captures the good, the bad and the offensive of this remarkable pre-code period. Looking back at the era with a critical eye we see examples of sex as an avenue to power for females as well as a means of exploitation.  Our evening will begin with a dance lesson from the queen of sex appeal, Ms. Betty Boop, in the Fleischer brothers' short The Dancing Fool (1932). In this cartoon Betty Boop teaches her animal friends how to shake their stuff, and shakes her building to pieces in the process. Our next film, the Janus Films documentary, The Love Goddesses Pt. 1 (1965), explores the rise of female sex symbols from the silent film era through the 1930s. Greta Garbo, Mae West, Jean Harlow and other love goddesses grace the screen in classic scenes that taught the world how to love. We then turn from glam to ham with Red Noses (1932), a live-action comedy short about two female office workers sent to the Turkish baths by their boss when they are too sick to go to work. This thin plot is more of an excuse to enact a series of comedy bits involving scantily clad women on treadmills and mechanical horses. It does not disappoint. Next, we’ll move from the hilarious to the egregious with Polly Tix Goes to Washington (1934), a “baby burlesk” starring 3-year-old Shirley Temple, in one of her first films, as Polly Tix, a high-class call girl sent to Washington to seduce a congressman into voting on a Castor Oil bill. This film displays the darker side of pre-code sexuality, landing on the wrong side of the precarious line between satirical and sinister. We will come full circle with our last film, another Betty Boop cartoon, Minnie the Moocher (1932), featuring the first known filmed footage of jazz band leader Cab Calloway. When Betty runs away from home she finds herself in the company of a cast of scary creatures. Will she make it back home?

Date: Thursday, September 5th, 2013 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

Totally Strange 80's - Sex, Drugs and Roller Skates - Fri. Aug. 30 - 8PM

Oddball Films and curator Kat Shuchter bring you Totally Strange 80's - Sex, Drugs and Roller Skates. This bizarre and over-the-top evening features the oddest shorts of the 1980s, a decade known for its over-indulgence, bright colors, big hair and roller skates...roller skates!  The 80's insanity includes Dear Diary, a film about female puberty (1981) in which one incredibly awkward pubescent girl must deal with her changing body, sneaky friends and making out with pillows.  We'll all learn to Roller Skate Safely (1981) with our matching neon spandex.  Watch out for killer computers in Signal Syntax (1983) and double-headed alien puppets with drugs and grabby hands in Deciso 3003 (1982). Richard Dreyfuss warns us about the dangers of the 1980's drug of choice in the work-room PSA Cocaine Abuse: The End of the Line (1984).  Plus, Bill Plympton's surreal cartoon Your Face (1987), the itchy-kitschy Lice are not Nice (1985), and a whole decade's worth of great trailers, commercials and more snippets and surprises, with everything screened on 16mm.  So, tease your bangs, grab your skates and roll on down to Oddball!


Date: Friday, August 30th, 2013 at 8:00PM
Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street, San Francisco
Admission: $10.00 Limited Seating RSVP to: 415-558-8117 or programming@oddballfilm.com

Whack to School: Edu-tainment from the Ridiculous to the Sublime - Thur. Aug. 29 - 8PM

Oddball Films and guest curator Lynn Cursaro present: Whack to School: Edu-tainment from the Sublime to the Ridiculous, all far beyond the 3Rs. While it's time to ship the youngsters off to be educated about the newest technologies, we here at Oddball are harkening back to a simpler time, when lessons were learned on 16mm and mimes were used to teach about bullying! These strange, hilarious and occasional musical shorts will make you nostalgic for the strange analog school days of yore. Did someone really think the crying mimes of People Different, But Alike (1975) were going to bring bullies around? In If Mirrors Could Speak (1970s), a straight-talking looking glass gets real with a variety of young scofflaws. When things don't turn out as we'd like, it's time for the special effects magic of The Learning From Disappointments Game (1969). Shirley MacLaine digs deep to nail a reading of Noisy Nancy Norris (1967). How Long is a Minute (1971) labors to define the abstract idea of time. Too Many People (1970s) puts the terror of overpopulation into the hearts of 6th graders. A trio of girls fess up to being in "The Itty Bitty Titty Committee", in a deluxe excerpt from Junior High School (1978), which also features 16-year old Paula Abdul. Rhythm is Everywhere (1950s) and Just Awful (1971) wring every drop of drama out of a walk to school and boo-boo, respectively. For a respite from the roiling emotions, the cosmic brilliance of Schoolhouse Rock’s Three is a Magic Number and the eye-popping Crystallization (1975) will break up the tension. All projected on 16mm on vintage school-house projectors. Plus! Home-baked treats included in admission!

It’s Been One of Those School Days

Date: Thursday, August 29th, 2013 at 8:00PM.
Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street, San Francisco
Admission: $10.00, RSVP Only to: 415-558-8117 or programming@oddballfilm.com

Strange Sinema 67: Dangerous Minds - Fri. Aug. 23 - 8PM



Oddball Films presents Strange Sinema 67: Oddities From the Archives, an evening of offbeat discoveries and choice rarities from the stacks of Oddball Films’ 50,000 reel film archive. This month's installment - Strange Sinema: Dangerous Minds examines a darker, edgier time in American culture revealing systemic mental and social deterioration. Our program features Titicut Follies, Frederick Wiseman’s legendary 1967 banned documentary that exposed the sordid conditions inside the Bridgewater State Hospital for the criminally insane. Wiseman’s camera watches impassively as prisoners are bullied, stripped, drugged and kept in sub-human conditions by  callous and indifferent guards, social workers and buffoon-like psychiatrists. The film is intercut with some mesmerizingly surreal scenes straight out of a David Lynch film-the annual talent show "Titicut Follies" featuring the inmates (and some of the staff) in performance. The film was subjected to a lengthy lawsuits and prohibition which prevented it’s distribution. It is now considered largely responsible for instigating massive mental health reform in the United States. Wiseman later made a number of such films examining social institutions (e.g. hospitals, police, schools, etc.) in the United States. Flawlessly framed, Wiseman's style has a complete lack of narration, interviews or reflexive elements. Amos Vogel called Titicut Follies “a major work of subversive cinema and a searing indictment…of ‘the system'” in his seminal book Film as a Subversive Art. A rare film, previously banned from public screenings for over 20 years! Click here to see the trailer. Also screening will be several avant-garde shorts by the brilliant Arthur Lipsett, featuring the culturally disruptive montage Very Nice, Very Nice (1961) his first film nominated for an Academy Award and Freefall (1964) in Lipsett’s words “a vision of a world in the throes of creativity – the transformation of physical phenomena into psychological ones.”

Date: Friday, August 23, 2013 at 8:00PM
Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street, San Francisco
Admission: $10.00 Limited Seating RSVP to: 415-558-8117 or programming@oddballfilm.com

Psychedelicatessen: A Feast for Your Eyes - Thur. Aug. 22 - 8PM

Oddball Films and curator Kat Shuchter bring you Psychedelicatessen: A Feast For Your Eyes, a super fun, crazy night of our very favorite vintage eye-poppers, mind-benders, jaw-droppers and head-scratchers.  From hallucinatory dental hygiene to swingin' promotional films to surreal cartoons, this is one night your eyes will thank you for, if they don't fall out of your head!  The madness includes Match Your Mood (1968), a mind-bending advertisement for psychedelic 60's refrigerator covers; Le Monde Du Schizophrene (The World of the Schizophrenic, 1969) a super-surreal, Salvador Dali-like film produced by the Sandoz Pharmaceuticals (Makers of drugs as LSD);  Toothache of the Clown (1971) a nitrous-induced trip to the dentist; The Car of Your Dreams (1984) a super quick cut montage of the most over-the-top car advertisements of the 60s and 70s; I am a Mime (1971), which is even more insane than it sounds and one of the most baffling films of the collection; Both Sides Now (1972), the first computer generated music film, featuring a Joni Mitchell soundtrack; Mandatory Edits (1950s-1960s) a reel of footage deemed inappropriate for television that will take you from ancient times to WWII and back with a cavalcade of stars, sex and violence;  and Make a Wish (1972), with psychedelic animation and montage editing that make you feel like you stepped into the mind of madman.  Plus! Early birds can freak out with the classic Sid Davis shocker LSD:Trip or Trap (1967).  Everyone is advised to wear protective eyewear and chin guards, lest your eyeballs pop out of your heads and your mouths hang agape to dangerous levels! This is one trip you do not want to miss!

Date: Thursday August 22nd, 2013 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

Stop-Motion Explosion III - Thur. Aug 15 - 8PM

Oddball Films and curator Kat Shuchter bring you Stop-Motion Explosion III, a program of mind-blowing stop-motion animation from the 1930s to the 1980’s. In a world saturated with CGI, Oddball Films opens the vaults to celebrate when historical, fantastical and anthropomorphic creatures were hand-sculpted and manipulated into “life.”  Everybody's favorite little green shapeshifter gets into even more delightful trouble in a whole new batch of original 1957 Gumby Shorts.  Oscar nominated Clay, Origin of the Species (1964) by Eliot Noyes Jr. offers Darwinian metamorphosis through modelled manipulation.  Featuring handmade seal fur puppets, the beautiful Inuit short The Owl and the Lemming (1971) is a hypnotic rendering of a classic Eskimo folk tale.  The Czech's chime in with a puppet tale of keeping up with the Joneses in Duet (1960s) and with A Christmas Dream (1946), in which a little girl's toys come to life and even dance on the piano.  Will "California Raisins" Vinton brings us a claymation concert gone awry with Mountain Music (1975).  Bretislav Pojar's Nightangel (1986), made for the National Film Board of Canada combines stop-motion with breathtaking pinscreen animation to create an ethereal dream world.  Eggbert the egg learns a lesson in Courtesy: A Good Eggsample (1976).  And because no stop-motion show would be complete without a George Pal Puppetoon, we will be bringing back the stunning Art Deco marvel Cavalcade of Music (1934). With more stop-motion madness for the early birds, it’s a night millions of minute movements in the making! 



Date: Thursday, August 15th, 2013 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

Celluloid Sex - Fri. Aug. 16 - 8PM

Oddball Films presents Celluloid Sex, a night of vintage stag films, sexperimental shorts, social hygiene primers, bizarre burlesque, sexy trailers, commercials and so much more all from our eclectic archive of 16mm film. In the rare silent stag film On the Beach (1923 AKA Getting His Goat), sexy sirens lure a man to make love through a fence, only he gets more than he bargained for!  Get ready for Eveready Hardon, the well-endowed star of the first pornographic cartoon Buried Treasure (1928) and his raunchy beachside exploits.  Sex and experimental film blend beautifully in Scott Bartlett's Lovemaking (1970) and the bizarre LA Too Much (1968).  Sex-obsessed teens rock out, makeout and learn the secrets of playing The Game (1966). Lili St. Cyr, the one-time Queen of Burlesque, dirty dances her way clean in Bubble Bath Dance(1952). Plus Burlesque Screen Tests and Dancers (1950s), featuring Bunny Spencer’s screen test, a rooftop mambo and a masked dancer with a bowl of fire on her head; Vintage Commercials with Sex Appeal; Sexploitation Trailers, Girlie and Beefcake Reels and even more sexy surprises! 


Date: Friday, August 16th, 2013 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

Adjust Your Tracking - The Untold Story of the VHS Collector - Sat. Aug. 17 - 8PM

Oddball Films is proud to welcome filmmakers Dan Kinem and Levi Peretic in person for the San Francisco Premiere of Adjust Your Tracking: The Untold Story of the VHS Collector, a feature-length documentary that sheds light on the growing VHS culture and the community of collectors that still cherish what many refer to as a "dead format." It is a passion project made by true lovers of the format for not only people who love VHS, but also for people who can remember having to rewind a movie before they could watch it and for people who remember the glorious days of going to the video store each weekend to rent a movie. It was culled from over 1,000 hours of footage and over 100 interviews with collectors, distributors, and video store owners like Lloyd Kaufman (head of Troma Entertainment), Tony Timpone (former editor of Fangoria), Fred Vogel (director, August Underground), Sam Sherman (horror producer extraordinaire), Zack Carlson (producer American Scream), Mike McPadden (head writer, Mr. Skin), and many, many more.  Preceding the show, we will be hosting a VHS swap to buy, sell and trade your rare or ridiculous VHS cassettes!

Date: Saturday August 17th, 2013 
VHS Swap at 7:00PM, Screening 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

For more information: http://www.adjustyourtracking.com/

Learn Your Lesson...Boys - Shockucational Shorts for the Guys - Fri. Aug. 9th - 8PM

Oddball Films and curator Kat Shuchter bring you Learn Your Lesson...Boys - Shockucational Shorts for the Guysthe sixth in a series of programs highlighting the most ridiculous, insane and camptastic shockucational films and TV specials of the collection. This time it is all about the boys, from wet dreams, illiteracy, crying, making friends and dealing with bullying as just some of the hilarious lessons we'll learn...together! Kareem Abdul Jabar (with the help of Clarence Williams III and a little bleach in his brother's eyes) inspires one boy to admit his illiteracy in The Hero Who Couldn't Read (1984).  The White Shadow Ken Howard talks wet dreams and unwanted pregnancies while he roasts weinies with three unaccompanied youngsters in Facts for Boys (1981).  NFL great and needlepoint enthusiast Rosey Grier sings "It's Alright to Cry" from Free to Be...You and Me (1974).  In Shy Guy (1947), Dick York likes tinkering with his radio in the basement, but will he ever make any real friends?  Richard Widmark narrates the pointed tale of teenage delinquency, Boy with a Knife (1956).  Little James cut his finger and he feels Just Awful (1972), will he learn to man up?  Early birds will learn a lesson in homophobic bullying in Who's Different? (1986). Plus! More man-sized surprises in store!


Date: Friday, August 9th, 2013 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

Oddball Beach Party: Surf, Sand and Cinema - Thur. Aug. 8th - 8PM

Oddball Films Presents Oddball Beach Party: Surf, Sand and Cinema with a groovy, sexy, funny and tubular cinematic trip to the beach.  Just because San Francisco's own beach is too foggy and cold to traverse, doesn't mean we can't vicariously catch some waves, admire bikini clad beauties or twist with Louis Prima!  Louis, Keely Smith and Sam Butera and the Witnesses don their pedalpushers and set the South Shore of Tahoe on fire in the rare musical treat The Wildest (1958).  Catch some big waves and groovy tunes in the psychedelic surf-fest Hang Ten (1970).  Woody Woodpecker and Wally Walrus are out to ruin each other's beach vacations in The Beach Nut (1944).  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) from the Bikini Girls nudie cutie series.  Set out for exotic ports of call in the vintage cheeky travelogue Polynesian Holiday (1955), shot in stunning Kodachrome! One man inflates everything he needs for the perfect day at the beach, including a girlfriend in the mid-century cartoon gem and Oscar winner Ersatz (1961).  One lonely bug must make it across the hell of an extremely 80's Venice Beach to make it to a romantic shoreline rendezvous in Why'd the Beetle Cross the Road? (1984).  And Renee Taylor spoofs Fellini in the outrageous seaside romp Two (1971). Plus! Hawaiian Soundies, more sunny surprises and Choosing a Sunscreen (1989) for the Early Birds, this is one beach party you won't want to miss!  


Date: Thursday August 8th, 2013 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