Cinema Soiree - International Rock A Go-Go with Richie Unterberger - Thur. Nov. 3rd - 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 is back – after two jam-packed previous shows – to present rare film clips of rock performers from around the world - and mostly from non-English speaking countries - from the 1960s through the 1980s including musical rarities from Brigitte Bardot, Nina Hagen, Nico, Kleenex and Shonen Knife. Rock music has long been dominated by performers from North America and the United Kingdom. Tonight, however, Richie Unterberger will open your eyes to an even wider world of rock. Much of the material shown tonight is unavailable on commercial video, and even the clips that are in commercial circulation are rather off the beaten track. Included will be artists from France (Francoise Hardy, France Gall and Brigitte Bardot), Holland (Shocking Blue), Denmark (Savage Rose), Sweden (Tages), Germany (Nico, Can, and Nina Hagen), Uruguay (Los Mockers), Greece (Aphrodite's Child), Switzerland (Kleenex), and beyond. Before the show, we'll be screening groovy 1960s 16mm French Scopitones from our massive stock footage film archive.


Date: Thursday, November 3rd, 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

Vintage Halloween Cinema Spooktacular - Fri. Oct. 28th - 8PM


Oddball Films presents Vintage Halloween Cinema Spooktacular, a program of vintage 16mm films to get us in the mood for All Hallows' Eve with cartoons, ridiculous educational films, giant genitalia costumes, Satanic smut, witches, ghouls and made-for-tv terrors. Halloween Safety (1985) gives us valuable lessons about awesome robot costumes, horrible face makeup and of course, tainted candy. One man heads out to the Halloween parade in Greenwich Village dressed like a real dick in the mini-doc Halloweenie (1986, print courtesy of the Jenni Olson Queer Archive). Comic strip Krazy Kat comes back to the big screen to fight off ghosts and other haunts, while his puppy fights with a skeleton in the silly romp Krazy Kat in Krazy Spooks (1933). Be careful what you wish for, you might just bring back the undead in the classic tale of horror: The Monkey's Paw (1979). Visit a seance to bring back the ghost of the greatest illusionist of all time in a segment of Houdini Never Died (1978), narrated by Burgess Meredith. Bud and Lou meet up with Frankenstein's monster, Dracula and the Wolfman for one crazy monster-mash in the ridiculous condensed version of Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein (1944). With rockin' musical breaks featuring some interpretive-dancing spectres in an Old-West ghost town from John Byner's Something Else (1970), the dancing witches of Ida Lupino's La Strega (1962), and Stone Cold Dead in the Market (1946), a Soundie about justifiable homicide. Plus, a coffin full of Horror Movie Trailers, Sweet Treats, Scary Surprises and more!
Date: Friday, October 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

Strange Sinema 105: World’s Strangest Films - Thur. Oct. 27th - 8PM

Oddball Films presents Strange Sinema, a monthly evening of old finds, rare gems and newly discovered films from the stacks of the archive. Drawing on his collection of over 50,000 16mm film prints- the largest archive in Northern California - Oddball Films director Stephen Parr has compiled his 105th program of offbeat, quirky, experimental outtakes and unusual films. Strange Sinema 105: World’s Strangest Films is a tribute to the weird, the wacky and just plain stupid films in our archive. Films range from educationals, amateur and home movies, odd featurettes, news outtakes, screen tests, art films, stag films and wacky animal stars! We’ll start off with the The Cat Who Drank and Used Too Much (1987), an Oddball audience favorite about a beer drinking, drug addicted cat; the very weird Universal Studios featurette Fraud By Mail (1944) focuses on bizarre dangerous mail order fraud: nose shapers, spine straighteners, eye mallets, pendiculators and more; The Wizard of Speed and Time (1979), a supersonic and hilarious dash across the country at hyper-speed; Burlesque Screen Tests and Dancers (1950s), featuring Bunny Spencer’s screen test, a rooftop mambo and a masked Afro-Cuban dancer with a bowl of fire on her head; Deciso 3003 (1982), the world’s first alien teen sex ed puppet film where even puppets (designed by legendary Julie Taymor) feel ashamed; hop on board for what some say is America's first hardcore porn, the notorious silent stag film A Free Ride AKA Grass Sandwich (1915); Movie Sideshow (1933), an offbeat kaleidoscope of human marvels featuring a carnival barker, newsreel clips of a man sealed into sealed into a block of ice, and a "human fire extinguisher" who drinks water and kerosene, starts fires and puts one out; Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp (1971), Get Smart meets James Bond as A.P.E. (Agency to Prevent Evil) monkey detective Lance Link battles a C.H.U.M.P. (Criminal Headquarters for Underworld Master Plan) dentist who secretly implants radio transmitters into teeth; Frank Film (1973), Frank Mouris’s classic of independent cinema presents 11,592 separate shots of common objects forming complex, rapidly moving patterns that Andrew Sarris called "a nine-minute evocation of America's exhilarating everythingness” Plus! Airplane Wing Tests, Blind as a Bat and much more cinematic detritus from the archives! Sinema just doesn’t get stranger than this!

Date: Thursday, October 27th, 2016 at 8:00PM
Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street, San Francisco
Admission: $10.00 Limited Seating RSVP to: 415-558-8117 or RSVP@oddballfilms.com 
Web: oddballfilms.blogspot.com

Stop-Motion Explosion! - Fri. Oct. 21st - 8PM

Oddball Films and curator Kat Shuchter bring you Stop-Motion Explosion!, a program of mind-blowing 16mm stop-motion animation from the 1930s to the 1990s. 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.” This program features stop-motion heavy-hitters Ray Harryhausen, George Pal, Rankin/Bass, Art Clokey, Will Vinton, Jiri Trnka, Hermann and Ferdinand Diehl, and Eliot Noyes Jr., with tons of new finds and a few all-time favorites. Blast off with everybody's favorite green clay boy when Gumby and Pokey go in search of The Small Planets (1957). Claymation master and Oscar winner Will Vinton gives us the breathtaking tale of The Little Prince (1979). Puss in Boots (1940) is a gorgeous puppet animation by the Diehl brothers and funded with Nazi money. Oscar nominated Eliot Noyes Jr. creates a parable of gender equality with little clay creatures in The Fable of He and She (1974). The National Film Board of Canada and Pierre Trudeau sculpt paper into the puppet of a young boy tormented by his parents' bickering and lost in an imaginary world of clowns and robots in Enfantillage (1990). Special effects wizard Ray Harryhausen brings us a cheeky interpretation of Mother Goose Stories (1946). Pinocchio gets a shot at the Hollywood life in Rankin/Bass' Ring-A-Ding-Ding Pinocchio (1960). Czech visionary Jiri Trnka animated one boy's need to ever-increasing speed in Passion (1961). Plus, a 1958 Voting PSA with anthropomorphic donkey and elephant puppets, The Early Bird Gets the Worm (1930s) an amateur rarity, and a snippet of George Pal's Shoe Shine Jasper (1947). Come early to see when A Lunchroom Goes Bananas (1978). It's a night one million minute movements in the making!

Date: Friday, October 21st, 2016 at 8:00 pm

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

Cults, Sects and Mind-Control - Thurs. Oct. 20th - 8PM

Oddball Films and curator Kat Shuchter present Cults, Sects and Mind-Control, a program of vintage films, trailers, original news footage and TV specials about the extremities of beliefs that can lead to brainwashing, violence and even murder. It's October, and that means it's time to examine the darker reaches of our souls, beginning with the tenuous grasp we each have on our own self-will. This program will investigate many of the most famous, most destructive cults of the 20th century, many of whom had their roots in San Francisco. We will begin with two outrageous long-form trailers, one for the docu-drama Manson (1973) containing real footage of "The Family" and The Lash of the Penitentes (1936), a pseudo-documentary of a sect of Catholic flagellators. CBS news looks into cult brainwashing tactics in Cults: Choice or Coercion (1979). One young ex-Moonie stars as himself in a reenactment of his journey with the Unification Church until his benevolent capture and deprogramming in the super-rare TV-special Moonchild (1983). Witness an excerpt from the outrageous "documentary" Mondo Cane (1962) about a tribe of New Guineans that worship cargo planes. And for such a heavy show, we'll need a bit of comic relief, in the form of Dan Akroyd starring as the didactic preacher of the Church of Jack Lord (from Hawaii 5-O) in a segment of the underground classic Mister Mike's M*nd* Video (1979). Di$ney's Chicken Little (1943) warns of falling for sweet-talking foxes reading from Mein Kampf. From Friz Freleng comes a similar allegory: Fifth Column Mouse (1943) only with a freewheeling community of mice that become slaves to a hungry cat until they stand up and fight back with a mechanical bulldog. In De Overkant (1966), Belgian filmmaker Herman Wuyts brings us a bleak interpretation of a totalitarian society in which independence equates to death. And finally, from San Francisco's own News Outtakes, an original 1977 news broadcast of Jim Jones and members of the People's Temple after a fire was set at the temple on Geary, and original uncut footage of the 1975 capture of Patty Hearst, the poster-heiress for brain-washing and Stockholm syndrome. All films are original 16mm prints from our 50,000 title archive and most are not available to view anywhere else. 
Date: Thursday, October 20th, 2016 at 8:00 pm
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

Bay Area Bizarre - SF's Strangest Amateurs, Indies, Smut, and Home Movies - Fri. Oct. 14th - 8pm

The San Francisco Media Archive and Oddball Films present Bay Area Bizarre - SF's Strangest Amateurs, Indies, Smut, and Home Movies in conjunction with the 14th Annual Worldwide Home Movie Day. This night of 16mm cinema from the 1930s-1970s includes swimming horses, drag fairy tales, children acting as adults, homegrown erotica, psychedelic animation and rare films by hometown heroes George Kuchar, Chick Strand, and Vince Collins. We begin with Welcome San Francisco Movie Makers (1960) a rare introductory film for the San Francisco Amateur Filmmakers Club. Local legend George Kuchar's Lady from Sands Point (1967) is a zippy, trippy portrait of artist Betty Holiday. Underground Film (1970) is a television arts program segment on the Bay Area's own Chick Strand, going in depth into her process and displaying excerpts of several of her most important films of the 1960s. Get a taste of some homegrown auto-worship with the Kodachrome time capsule San Francisco Excelsior: Low Rider Car Show (1965). Witness the baffling From Here to Profanity (1959), a local amateur film with children acting out adult rolls. San Francisco co-stars in The Screening Room (1970s), an erotic tale of two lovers shooting a porno in Renaissance costumes, then seeing themselves on a North Beach screen. The camptastic Sinderella (1962) retells an age-old fairy tale with a cross-dressing twist for a new generation. Blackie the Wonder Horse Swims the Golden Gate (1938) stars our own local equine hero in all his glory. Plus, local animator Vince Collins' psychedelic patriotic nightmare 200 (1976), and The Black Sabbath Parade (1970). And if you have home movies on 16mm film, we will project them on the big screen before the show, so bring us your family treasures and join us for a night of the Bay Area Bizarre!


Date: Friday, October 14th, 2016 at 8:00 pm, bring and screen your 16mm films starting at 7:30pm
Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco
Admission: $10.00 (half price if you bring a film) Limited Seating RSVP to RSVP@oddballfilms.com or (415) 558-8117
Web: http://oddballfilms.blogspot.com
http://www.centerforhomemovies.org/hmd/ 

Killer Science: Nature's Horror Show - Thur. Oct. 13th - 8PM

Oddball Films presents Killer Science: Nature's Horror Show, an evening of vintage 16mm science and nature films from the 1930s-1970s highlighting the dark, grisly, and deadly aspects of Mother Nature's wrath. From man-eating sharks to killer hurricanes to hungry bugs and battling squids, it's one night of nature's fury you won't want to miss. Leonard Nimoy explores the mysteries of the earth's deadliest storms when he goes In Search of Hurricanes (1978). Marvel at the ferocity of tiny adversaries when termites square off against hungry ants in The Battle of the Centuries (1932). Then, go under the sea to see the manta rays, battling squid and killer eels that are the Demons of the Deep (1938). Decades before Jaws, the British Pathé warned Australian visitors and newcomers to The Shark Menace (1955). For a little sci-fi fun, we revisit a highlight reel Tarantula (1955) to witness a giant arachnid that lays waste to a whole town. Plus, segments and snippets galore including the faux-suicidal lemmings of Di$ney's White Wilderness (1958), the bugs that bring on the end of the world in the pseudo-documentary The Hellstrom Chronicle (1971), and a mantis looks to a caterpillar for dinner in The Butterfly with Four Birthdays (1965) from one-man-band turned amateur-filmmaking legend Sid Laverents. Everything screened on 16mm film from our massive stock footage archive.


Date: Thursday, October 13th, 2016 at 8:00 pm
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

Nevermore - The Horrific Tales of Edgar Allan Poe - Fri. Oct. 7th - 8PM

Oddball Films is kicking off the haunted month of October with Nevermore: The Horrific Tales of Edgar Allan Poe, a ghastly evening of rare 16mm short films and animation based on the Gothic novels and short stories of the grandfather of modern horror: the inimitable Edgar Allan Poe. We begin the night with trailers for two classic Hollywood adaptations: Roger Corman's House of Usher (1960) starring Vincent Price, and Phantom of the Rue Morgue (1954) with Karl Malden. Veteran actor Monty Woolley brings to life the claustrophobic Cask of Amontillado (1954) in a short but chilling rendition. Ray Bradbury heralds the writer and the tradition of the Gothic literary movement in A Discussion of the Fall of the House of Usher (1975). Czech animation legend Jan Svankmajer breathes new death into The Fall of the House of Usher (1980, video) utilizing disorienting camera angles and visceral claymation. Grief takes wing in the breathtaking optically printed animation The Raven (1978) featuring the engravings of Gustave Dore. The melancholic love poem Annabel Lee (1971) evokes more ghosts of lost love. Guilt sends one man into the grip of madness in the haunting adaptation of The Tell-Tale Heart (1971). Plus, a puppet of Edgar Allan Poe weighs in on The Strange Case of the Cosmic Rays (1957) in an excerpt from Frank Capra's Bell Science Special and show up early for a pre-pubescent Anthony Michael Hall starring in an ABC Weekend Special The Gold Bug (1980). Drive your hearse down to Oddball and get your October started with a fright!


Date: Friday, October 7th, 2016 at 8:00 pm
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 - San Francisco's Wild History Groove with Mary Kerr - Thur. Oct. 6th - 8PM

Oddball Films welcomes documentary producer/director Mary Kerr for our Cinema Soiree Series, a monthly soiree featuring visiting authors, filmmakers and curators presenting and sharing cinema insights. Kerr will be presenting her documentary San Francisco's Wild History Groove - a look into the untold stories of the Bay Area's Beat scene and unsung artists. The film is a “wild” history of the 50s underground art and poetry scene in California. These individuals produced unusual art as well as spirited poetry, unique to the West Coast. Their mantra was "don't sell out"--no compromising for money or recognition. They took risks, exploring new directions in their work and in the way they lived their lives. This documentary shows the viewer how and why it happened. It brings insight into what developed in San Francisco among these Beat Era rebels. To foreground this fascinating documentary, we'll be screening several 16mm Beat Era rarities from of the archive including the Oscar nominated absurd Beat rhapsody Help My Snowman is Burning Down! (1964) and The Interview (1960) - the hilarious animation from Ernie Pintoff and Lenny Bruce and featuring fictional horn-playing hep-cat Shorty Petterson as he gives a truly bizarre interview. Also screening are excerpts of the incredibly rare documentary USA Poetry: Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1969) with poetry readings filmed at City Lights Bookstore.


Date: Thursday, October 6th, 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

Marc Huestis’ Notes from the Underground Archives: How a Tacky 50's Educational Film Found In a Trashcan Jump Started My Film Career - Tues. Oct. 4th - 12PM

Oddball Films would like to invite you to our new Seasonal Seminar Series. We'll be opening the vaults of our incredibly unique stock footage company and film archive and inviting intriguing professional personalities to share their unique insights in various realms of cinema for filmmakers, post-production professionals and students inside San Francisco’s strangest film archive and microcinema.   Our first guest, Marc Huestis is a cultural institution and a living local legend.  An award-winning filmmaker, festival organizer, and presenter, Huestis is a larger than life camp icon. He will be on Oddball’s cine-stage divulging his dirty secrets of underground filmmaking centered around his cult masterpiece Whatever Happened to Susan Jane? (1982). The film utilizes the 1950s social guidance film The Outsider to hilarious effect in its flash back sequences, recontextualizing the didactic mental hygiene short into a campy nostalgia-fest. It's also an opportunity for students and professionals to tour a working film archive and to see the ins and outs of the exciting world of stock footage, film restoration, digitization and screening. This warehouse of celluloid delights is the home to over 50,000 tins of actual, tactile film, from 8mm to 16mm to 35mm; from feature films to educational shorts, military training films, antique erotica, ephemeral films, ethnographic pieces, commercials, and animation. Oddball Films has provided unique stock footage for projects like Transparent, Going Clear, Behind the Candelabra, Milk, Mythbusters, Boing Boing, and more commercials, documentaries, music video, feature films and television worldwide. In today's world of digital media, most college students won't even remember film as a medium, despite its long and glorious history and its potential to survive long beyond any digital media type. This is a chance to re-instill a love of the original moving picture format in the next generation of media makers, as well as demonstrate one of the many facets of the production world that often goes unnoticed.


Tuesday, October 4th 2016
Tour and lunch at 12, talk and Q+A at 1PM, light lunch provided
$15.00, limited seating RSVP to info@oddballfilms.com
Oddball Films, 275 Capp st. San Francisco, CA 94110