Additional guests and special surprises to be announced, including prop and poster galleries and more.

Friday, June 15 - 7:30 PM

Double Feature:

THE THING, 1982, Universal, 109 min. Director John Carpenter re-imagined the 1951 sci-fi classic THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD produced by Howard Hawks as something darker, fiercer and altogether more disturbing, pitting sombrero-wearing helicopter pilot Kurt Russell and a crew of Arctic scientists (Wilford Brimley, Donald Moffat, Richard Dysart) against a ravenous, shape-shifting alien being. From the haunting opening shots of a sled dog fleeing across the snow, to the apocalyptic, fire-and-ice ending, this ranks with Ridley Scott’s ALIEN as one of the finest (and most beautifully crafted) sci-fi films of the past 20 years. The film was terribly underrated by critics on its initial release, but its stock has constantly risen in the ensuing decades as one of the most intelligent, scary and uncompromising horror films of the 1980’s.  Also starring Keith David, David Clennon.

CAT PEOPLE, 1982, Universal, 118 min. Dir. Paul Schrader. An intoxicating, visually delirious remake of the Val Lewton original, set in an Italian giallo vision of New Orleans that fearlessly takes the sexual implications of the story to its uncompromising, amoral finale. Virginal Nastassia Kinski wreaks havoc when she reunites with warped, repressed minister brother Malcolm McDowell, and falls in love with zoo curator John Heard. An immensely entertaining and stylish thriller, from the director of AFFLICTION. Discussion in between films with Director of Photography Dean Cudney (THE THING) and Camera Operator Raymond Stella (THE THING).

Saturday, June 16 – 3:00 PM

Family Matinee!

THE DARK CRYSTAL, 1982, Universal, 93 min. Dir. Jim Henson, Frank Oz. Legendary Muppets creator Jim Henson was initially inspired by a Lewis Carroll poem to create his own fairy tale about Jen, the last-surviving Gelfling, who is sent by his dying master on an epic quest to fulfill his destiny to heal the fractured Dark Crystal. After three years of brainstorming with a team that included renowned fantasy artist Brian Froud and screenwriter David Odell, Henson wove the ideas into a story that was then fleshed out by Odell, and the task shifted to bringing those words and images to life in this charming film which combined state-of-the-art technology to create a groundbreaking alchemy of puppetry and electronics on a scale never before attempted. Followed by a discussion with screenwriter David Odell.

Saturday, June 16 - 7:30 PM

Double Feature:

POLTERGEIST, 1982, Warner Brothers, 114 min. Dir. Tobe Hooper. The Freeling family’s normal, Reagan-era lives are shattered when malevolent forces kidnap five-year-old Carol Anne (Heather O’Rourke), forcing the desperate parents to seek assistance from a team of academic ghost hunters and a wacky psychic dwarf.  The germ of the story was Spielberg’s (largely inspired by the Richard Matheson-penned "Twilight Zone" episode, "Little Girl Lost") and the concept was as simple as it was revolutionary: stage a horrifying ghost story not in a creaky, hilltop mansion, but smack in the middle of suburbia. JAWS may have kept us out of the water, but POLTERGEIST made us confident that even the safety of our own day-lit homes was just one static-spewing TV set away from being breached by our worst nightmares. With Craig T. Nelson, JoBeth Williams, Dominique Dunne, Beatrice Straight.

Sunday, June 17 - 5:00 PM

70 mm Print! TRON, 1982, Buena Vista, 96 min. Dir. Steven Lisberger. When a hot-shot computer programmer and game designer, Flynn (Jeff Bridges), is ripped off by an unscrupulous corporate baddie, he derives a plan to get even, and, with the help of two programmer friends, infiltrates the corporate headquarters and discovers that the corporation is actually being run by an all-powerful rogue computer program, the MCP. Using the corporate lab’s new digitizing laser, the MCP zaps Flynn into the company’s mainframe where he battles doppelgangers of characters from the real world. Though the premise is simple, presaging the entire cyberpunk movement as well as films like THE LAWNMOWER MAN and THE MATRIX, it did manage to help usher in a new mode of creating imagery. It also succeeded in sneaking in a bit of meaningful subtext and elements from stories like THE WIZARD OF OZ and BEN-HUR into what could otherwise have been a simple "kids" movie. With an overall look derived from the backlit commercial graphics of the 70’s, and designs by concept luminaries Syd Mead, Richard Taylor and Jean "Moebius" Giraud, the film is regarded as being the first major motion picture to feature extensive computer graphics, although a great deal of the visuals were produced in more conventional animation stand methods using optical print filters and matte paintings.