Love hurts at Feb. 24 TTC!
Our “way back machine,” the video projector, takes aim at the silvery screen of SoDo Theatre, 114 S. Neil St., Champaign, IL, this Friday, February 24, for a second installment of Psychic Joker’s Time Traveling Cinema presented by C-U Confidential and Psychic Joker Entertainment! Come downtown and commiserate with us beginning at 10 p.m. as we build a true community micro-cinema in a clean, safe, and fully equipped environment with a paltry $5 cover, snacks costing a miniscule $1 per item, and boundless camaraderie for free!
From the throes of the public domain we embrace a pair of low-budget, eccentric dramas about broken hearts and cruel twists of fate. First up will be CYRANO DE BERGERAC (1950), a Hollywood adaptation of the famous stage play starring José Ferrer in his signature, Oscar-winning role as the poet-swordsman finding himself in a doomed love triangle. Just after the stroke of midnight, Curtis Harrington’s NIGHT TIDE (1961) will fashion a strange tale of a young sailor (Dennis Hopper) on shore leave that falls for a mysterious beauty (Linda Lawson) who may or may not be a mermaid!
The late University of Illinois professor Steven P. Hill reviewed the latter for Film Quarterly magazine, favorably comparing NIGHT TIDE to the dreamlike studio genre films of Val Lewton – particularly THE CAT PEOPLE – from the Forties. Hill summarizes, “Thus in some respects Harrington improves on what he inherits from Lewton, while in others … the writer-director owes nothing to Lewton, and demonstrates that plenty of independent filmic ingenuity went into the making of NIGHT TIDE, which has its interest apart from all the connections with its illustrious predecessor.” (Vol. 17 No.4, Summer 1964, pp.54-55)
We’ll see everyone on Friday!
~ Jason Pankoke
p.s. Swashbucklers, mermaids, and sailors attending the TTC this month earn our undying gratitude!
