Weird Science Weekend at the Guild Cinema
David Cronenberg Double Feature
Saturday & Sunday, March 26-27
THE FLY – directed by David Cronenberg, 1986, 96 minutes.
Co-Presented with Bubonicon 43.
Showtimes are 3:15 pm and 7:00 pm
David Cronenberg’s 1986 remake of the science fiction classic about a scientist who accidentally swaps body parts with a fly is both smart and terrifying: an allegory for the awful processes of slow death and a monster movie with a tragic spin. Jeff Goldblum gives a masterful performance as a sweet, nerdy scientist whose romance with a writer (Geena Davis) makes him more fully alive. Next thing you know, a tiny oversight in an experiment causes him to transmogrify, gradually, into something more like an insect than a human. This is Cronenberg (Scanners, Videodrome) country, so expect The Fly to be a gross-out, but in the way that disease corrupts the body and can make a loved one unrecognizable on every level. This is one of Cronenberg’s best films, and maybe one of the important movies of the 1980s.
VIDEODROME – directed by David Cronenberg, 1983, 87 minutes.
Co-Presented with Bubonicon 43.
Showtimes are 5:15 pm and 9:00 pm
When Max Renn goes looking for edgy new shows for his sleazy cable TV station, he stumbles across the pirate broadcast of a hyperviolent torture show called Videodrome. As he unearths the origins of the program, he embarks on a hallucinatory journey into a shadow world of right-wing conspiracies, sadomasochistic sex games, and bodily transformation. Renn’s ordinary life dissolves around him, and he finds himself at the center of a conflict between opposing factions in the struggle to control the truth behind the radical human future of “the New Flesh.” Starring James Woods and Deborah Harry in one of her first film roles, this is one of writer/director David Cronenberg’s most original and provocative works, fusing social commentary with shocking elements of sex and violence. With groundbreaking special effects makeup by Academy Award-winner Rick Baker, it has come to be regarded as one of the most influential and mind-bending science fiction films of the 1980s.
The Guild Cinema is located at 3405 Central Avenue NE, in the Nob Hill area.
Website: www.guildcinema.com