Erotic Oddities - Fri. April 29th - 8PM

Oddball Films and curator Kat Shuchter present Erotic Oddities with the most bizarre and offbeat smut, burlesque and erotica of the collection. From insane pornographic cartoons to marionette strippers to bizarre stag films, this is one night of the strangest smut you'll ever see. In one of the earliest stag films, Getting his Goat (1923), a man is in for a surprise when he propositions sex through a hole in a gate. Eveready Hardon heads to the beach in the outrageous cartoon Buried Treasure (1928). Get ready for the disgusting pornographic animation featuring music by the Beach Boys and a vegetable gang bang (literally) with Sandy Sunrise in the Babysitter (1971). Play with your toys in a non-XXX excerpt of bizarro porno Orgy of the Dolls (1970s). Dracula is a groovy pimp in Vegas with a brothel full of vampire hookers in an insane excerpt of Ray Dennis Steckler's The Mad Love Life of a Hot Vampire (1971). Tour a museum of erotic art in an excerpt from the thinly veiled pornographic documentary Erotography (1970). It's a ridiculous homoerotic smorgasbord with clips from four 1970s beefcake shorts: naked men on pogo sticks in Wheee!, an alien encounter of the sexy kind in Three's a Crowd, gorilla/man love in Queen Kong and her Fay, and no description necessary for Naked Twister! A bisexual Amazon runs for her life and makes out with everyone in sight in Dionysus (1970s). We've also got a buffet of burlesque with Yvonne DeCarlo (Lily Munster) in Pearl of Bagdad (1930s), an exotic fire dancer in Fire Dance and our favorite marionette stripper in Doll Dance (1940s). Plus, even more sexy surprises in store!

Date: Friday, April 29th, 2016 at 8:00pm

Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco

Admission: $10.00 Limited Seating RSVP to RSVP@oddballfilms.com or (415) 558-8117

Web: http://oddballfilms.blogspot.com

Strange Sinema 99: Psycho Science - Thur. April 28th - 8PM

Oddball Films presents Strange Sinema 99, a monthly evening of newly discovered films, rarities and choice selects from the stacks of the archive. Drawing on his collection of over 50,000 16mm film prints, Oddball Films director Stephen Parr has compiled his 99th program of classic, strange, offbeat and unusual films. For Strange Sinema 99: Psycho Science Stephen Parr is featuring some of the most way-out and weird science films from the archive. Tonight’s program is anchored by the hilarious and bizarre Moody Institute of Science films, the Christian cult crackpot science company as well as other brilliant and bizarre examples of pseudo science in action. Films include Facts of Faith (1956, Color) featuring mind-blowing science experiments showcasing Dr. Irwin Moon, founder of the Moody Institute Moon running thousands of volts of electricity-god’s creation though his entire body!, Blind as a Bat (1956), the Moody Science bat truck goes on location to study the secrets of bat navigation (an Oddball favorite!), The Electric Eel (1954), in which an unhinged Dr. Irwin Moon shocks his employees with “eel” science, Slow as a Sloth (1954) features more mammal abuse experiments –this time with sloths and a loaded pistol! The program also features Sun Healing: The Ultra-Violet Way with Life Lite(1930s), a jaw-dropping forerunner of the infomercial, pitches an ominous health device that's "safe" to use on your own children, and The Mouse Activated Candle Lighter (1973), a bizarre Rube Goldberg inspired device quirks us out. Noir and B-movie legend Edgar G. Ulmer brings us a tale of tuberculosis for the kiddies with an animated TB bug in Goodbye Mr. Germ(1940). Find out what happens when your vision is flipped upside down (and you're paid to live like that for two weeks!) in the imported short Living in a Reversed World (1958). Plus! Rare clips from the 1950s B+W kinescope of Science in Action shot at the California Academy of Sciences including the Animal of the Week!

Date: Thursday, April 28th, 2016 at 8:00pm

Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco

Admission: $10.00 Limited Seating RSVP to RSVP@oddballfilms.com or (415) 558-8117

Web: http://oddballfilms.blogspot.com

Antique Animal Antics! - Fri. April 22nd - 8PM

Oddball Films presents Antique Animal Antics!, a program of vintage 16mm films full of adorable, hilarious and anthropomorphic animals from the 1940s-1970s. Decades before youtube, CGI, and the Buddies franchise, these furry film stars were doing tricks, wearing clothes, talking, singing and raising hell! This time around we've got singing bears, car-racing capuchin monkeys, hibernating hamsters, daring dachshunds, a talking horse (of course) and so much more. Find out whether a bear or a hippo might be the perfect pet for you - and hear it from the hippo's mouth - in the Speaking of Animals short: Your Pet Problem (1944). Tiny capuchin monkeys zoom around the track in tiny little race cars in Monkey Go 'Round (1961). Otto the German dachshund runs away from home rather than take a bath and sets off for adventure in A Doggone Story (1940s). Hollywood primate Zippy the Chimp hits the big top in Small Fry Circus (1956). Two bear cubs head out for some mischief and tangle with ants, bees, and bacon before destroying a campsite in Black Bear Twins (1952).  In Carroll Ballard's bittersweet The Perils of Priscilla (1969), a neglected pussy sets out on her own and hits the big city. The sexy siren Mae West sets a date with the world's most famous talking horse in an extremely bizarre slice of television history in Mae West Meets Mr. Ed (1964).  Hammy the Hamster is back and learning all about Hibernation (1961) from his talking animal friends. For the early birdies, The Blackbird (1979) is a bizarre live action tale of a bird wreaking havoc on a whole house and its inhabitants from Hungary. 

Date: Friday, April 22nd, 2016 at 8:00pm

Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco

Admission: $10.00 Limited Seating RSVP to RSVP@oddballfilms.com or (415) 558-8117

Web: http://oddballfilms.blogspot.com 

Cinema Soiree with Richie Unterberger - Asian Rock 'n' Roll Rarities - Thurs. April 21st - 8PM

Oddball Films invites you to a unique evening with author and musicologist Richie Unterberger for our Cinema Soiree Series, a monthly soiree featuring visiting authors, filmmakers and curators presenting and sharing cinema insights. Unterberger will be here to present film clips of rock performers based in Asia, as well as rock by Asian Americans and others of Asian descent from the 1960s to the present. It’s not possible to cover every Asian territory from which rock musicians have emerged or descended, but this program features artists based in or descended from more than half a dozen countries, including Japan, India, Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia, and the Philippines. Styles encompassed will include rockabilly, surf music, garage rock, indie rock, girl groups, psychedelia, punk, singer-songwriters, progressive rock, synth-pop, and more. Many of the performers are obscure to US audiences, yet there are also clips of songs and musicians who’ve made huge inroads into the American and global market. A couple of these records got to #1 in the United States; one of the most famous musicians of all time (and, later, his son) appear in a couple clips; and a few of the most renowned female fronted bands in the world are represented, as is an internationally acclaimed soundtrack composer and actor. Some of the more famous names include Shonen Knife, Yoko Ono, Mohammed Rafi, Kyu Sakamoto, Damo Suzuki (of Can), Fanny, Shanti, Cibo Matto, The Tielman Brothers, and the 5.6.7.8.'s. The evening will be foregrounded by 16mm films from the archive featuring more traditional Asian music including ethno-musicological short The Balinese Gong Orchestra (1971) and the campy educational primer Discovering the Music of Japan (1967).

Date: Thursday, April 21st, 2016 at 8:00pm

Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco

Admission: $10.00 Limited Seating RSVP to RSVP@oddballfilms.com or (415) 558-8117

Web: http://oddballfilms.blogspot.com

Future News: Walter Cronkite's 21st Century - Fri. April 15th - 8PM

Oddball Films presents Future News: Walter Cronkite's 21st Century, a program of episodes and highlights from the short-lived CB$ News show The 21st Century hosted by the legendary Walter Cronkite from 1967-1969. The show was a spin-off of The 20th Century that focused on the possibilities for the coming century including advances in utopian ideals as well as technology like computers, lasers, robotics, machine-made art, and even predicting 3D TVs and the inflatable furniture trend. The program often featured visionaries, sci-fi authors, and scientists postulating on the future of work, design, and technology. In The Communications Explosion (1967), Cronkite explores satellites, laser beams and talking computers and envisions a very different kind of internet. In Stranger than Science Fiction (1968), he examines how closely science fiction has predicted and influenced the real world of science and technology. Art for Tomorrow (1969) showcases early experiments with computer art as well as the technology-based artwork of contemporary artists Jean Tinguely, Yaacov Agam, Wen-Ying Tsai and Victor Vasarely. In At Home 2001 (1967), the crew gets domestic and attempts to imagine the future of design and technology for the home. Plus, eye-popping excerpts of The Futurists featuring an interview with Buckminster Fuller, Man-Made Man with electrodes guiding robotic arms, Bats, Birds and Bionics with a dancing robot man, Games Futurists Play including role play utilizing creepy masks, The Computer Revolution with a psychedelic visualization of how computers work on the most basic level. See how close they came to predicting this century over 40 years ago.

Date: Friday, April 15th, 2016 at 8:00pm

Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco

Admission: $10.00 Limited Seating RSVP to RSVP@oddballfilm.com or (415) 558-8117

Web: http://oddballfilms.blogspot.com 

Busby Berkeley - Sex, Surrealism, and Song - Thur. April 14th - 8PM

Oddball Films presents Busby Berkeley: Sex, Surrealism, and Song, a night of mind-blowing musical numbers from the wildest imagination in Hollywood choreography all on 16mm film from the archive. Clearly influenced by the concurrent surrealist movement in art and avant-garde cinema, Busby Berkeley numbers transformed masses of chorus girls into kaleidoscopic geometric patterns; blending dozens of bodies into one fleshy piece of moving art.  The evening features some of Berkeley's most iconic and insane work including three scenes from Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933): Ginger Rogers sings We're in the Money in pig latin whilst draped in monetary lingerie, Shadow Waltz with sixty neon violin toting showgirls, and the overtly political tearjerker My Forgotten Man. From Footlight Parade (1933), we bring you the risque Honeymoon Hotel number "with scores of bashful brides", Sitting on a Backyard Fence with dozens of dancers in kitty costumes, and the mesmerizing By a Waterfall sequence with reportedly 300 bathing beauties creating a human waterfall and then a series of morphing geometric shapes from a tank of water. Everywhere you look it's hundreds of Ruby Keelers, even coming out of her own eyeball in the hallucinatory I Only Have Eyes for You from Dames (1934). A smoking woman morphs into the Manhattan skyline and an army of tap dancers cause a frenzy that ends in one girl's death in The Lullaby of Broadway from Gold Diggers of 1935 (1935). Plus, two behind-the-scenes featurettes from the studios highlighting chorus girls and choreography: Three Cheers for the Girls (1943) and Calling All Girls (1942) which showcase snippets from Wonder Bar, The Singing Marine, Fashions of 1934, and Gold Diggers of 1937. Plus, Busby Berkeley-inspired Commercials, the trailer for Ken Russell's The Boyfriend (1971) and more!

Date: Thursday, April 14th, 2016 at 8:00pm

Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco

Admission: $10.00 Limited Seating RSVP to RSVP@oddballfilm.com or (415) 558-8117

Web: http://oddballfilms.blogspot.com 

What the F(ilm)?! 16: You Can't Handle the Spoof! - Fri. April 8th - 8PM

Oddball Films presents What the F(ilm)?! 16: You Can't Handle the Spoof!, an evening of some of the most bizarre, hilarious and insane films from our massive 16mm collection. This month, we're making a mockery of ourselves by offering you gut-busting parodies of Fellini, Bergman, Coppola, Lucas and more. May the farce be with you in the ridiculous Star Wars parody Hardware Wars (1978) replete with flying toasters, puppets, and z-grade special effects.  See the horror, the horror of Porklips Now (1980) shot in San Francisco and featuring a war between butchers in Chinatown and a spot-on Brando impersonation.  Play badminton against death in the Oscar-nominated Ingmar Bergman send-off De Düva (1968) starring a then-unknown Madeline Kahn speaking in mock Swedish.  Fellini takes a hit in the uproarious short Two (1971) written by and starring Renee Taylor (The Nanny). Mel Brooks and Ernie Pintoff mock experimental animation in the Oscar-winning animated short The Critic (1963). Another Oscar nominee - the knee-slapping Political Posture (1984) mixes commercial modeling and political ads for one great-looking campaign. Turn the channel for more bizarre fake commercials like maidenform sweat socks and horse food made from dogs in Nut House Nuggets (1950s). Simian crime fighter Lancelot Link makes a monkey out of spy shows in the Oddball favorite Lancelot Link Secret Chimp: To Tell the Tooth (1971). Daffy Duck hits his head and dreams he's "Duck Twacy: Famous Detective" in Robert Clampett's brilliant cartoon The Great Piggy Bank Robbery (1946). Plus more spoofy surprises for the early birds!

Date: Friday, April 8th, 2016 at 8:00pm

Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco

Admission: $10.00 Limited Seating RSVP to RSVP@oddballfilm.com or (415) 558-8117

Web: http://oddballfilms.blogspot.com 

Czech Please! - Animated Wonders from the former Czechoslovakia - Thur. April 7th - 8PM

Oddball Films presents Czech Please! an evening of mind-blowing animation from the former Czechoslovakia. From stop-motion puppets to cell-animation; from the adorable to the dark and thought-provoking, this evening will open your eyes to the brilliance, vision and creativity of some of the great Czech animators. Films include Jiří Trnka's exquisite parable of totalitarianism and named one of the top five animated films of all-time: The Hand (1965). Jiří Brdečka's Blessings of Love (1966) is a sublime tale of love and longing. Get a triple dose of Zdeněk Miler's beloved Little Mole in three new colorful acquisitions. In The Mole and the Music (1974), mousy and mole gather music from the birds to melt into a psychedelic record. The mole has the need for speed and soups up a toy convertible in The Mole and the Car (1963).  The mole finds a lollipop and can't figure out what to do with it in The Mole and the Lollipop (1970). In a huge departure from his mole cartoons, Zdeněk Miler also made the bleak allegory The Red Stain (1967) featuring a fisherman and his son trying to fight off an oncoming army. Head into the land of the kitties in the sweet fairy tale The Tom Cat's Meow (1974) The two-cutest bird friends you may ever see dance to the radio, take pictures of themselves and fight off a hungry cat in the darkly charming Queer Birds (1965). Set off for space in Kosmodrome 1999 (1969). Bulbous-nosed inventor Mr. Koumal (1968) deals with a series of amusing calamities following inventing fire, robots and wings. Plus more for the early birds! All shorts screened on 16mm film from the archive.

Date: Thursday, April 7th, 2016 at 8:00PM.

Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street, San Francisco


Admission: $10.00, limited seating RSVP to: 415-558-8117 or RSVP@oddballfilm.com
Web: http://oddballfilms.blogspot.com/

Learn your Lesson from Sid Davis - The Shockucational Master - Fri. Apr. 1st - 8PM

Oddball Films and curator Kat Shuchter present Learn Your Lesson from Sid Davis, the 37th in a monthly series of programs highlighting the most ridiculous, insane and camptastic educational films, mental hygiene primers and TV specials of the collection. This month, we are celebrating the career of the master of the educational scare film who would be turning 100 today. Sid Davis films were famously funded by an initial $1000 donation by John Wayne.  He went on to produce numerous classics of the educational scare film genre, priding himself by making each one for $1000- a miniscule amount even in its day. With sex, drugs, speeding, stranger danger and even puberty, this program touches on all of Davis' favorite topics.  We begin where he did, with The Dangerous Stranger (1950), about the threat of child molesters. Davis sold the film to police and schools, reaping $250,000 which he used to fund the rest of the treasures of the evening. Girls need to look out for creeps too in another stranger-danger short Girls Beware (1961).  Freak out on acid with the knee-slapping LSD: Trip or Trap? (1967) and mellow out with junior high pill-heads in Users-Losers (1971).  Sammy's got a need for speed that might turn deadly if he's not careful in What Made Sammy Speed (1957). Learn the ins, outs, outgrown shoes and all the changes in your body in You're Growing Up (1955) for the pre-pubescent set. Find out how stupid it was for Robert to give up on high-school in The Dropout (1962).  Plus more hilarious shockers in store!

Date: Friday, April 1st, 2016 at 8:00PM

Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street, San Francisco

Admission: $10.00 Limited Seating RSVP to: 415-558-8117 or RSVP@oddballfilm.com 

Web: http://oddballfilms.blogspot.com/