Conservator's Choice

October 31, November 5, 2005

October 31 (Monday) 7 pm - Introduced by Julie Buck

The Horror! Halloween Trailers Treats

With the boom of DVD and the Internet over the last five years, movie trailers are more popular than ever. A two-minute advertisement that usually sums up a film's plot and cast, the trailer attempts to seduce the audience and often barely relates to the actual quality of the film production. In fact, the best trailers could be considered exemplars of an art form in their own right. Focusing on the horror genre, join the Harvard Film Archive for this special Halloween screening as we present the most horrifying (and hilarious) trailers of all time.

November 5 (Saturday) 7 pm - Introduced by Julie Buck

Funeral Procession of Roses (Bara no sôretsu)

Directed by Toshio Matsumoto
Japan, 1969, B&W, 105 min.
With Peter, Furamenko Umeji, Osamu Ogasawaro
Japanese with English subtitles

An amalgam of Godardian visuals, mondo gore, 60s pop psychedelia, and gay Japanese culture, the film is a fascinating reworking of the Oedipus Rex story. Transvestite club kid Eddie is tormented by odd violent memories of his late mother burning his father's face out of a photograph, which he now saves as the only keepsake of his family. He ís also involved in a love triangle with Gureko, a gay club owner, and Leda, the club's madam. What follows is a narrative film punctured with man on the street interviews, experimental insertions of film leader, animation, and comic dialogue balloons popping out of character's mouths, and excessive, almost cartoonish violence. Recently discovered in the HFA's vault, A Funeral Procession Of Roses is a rarely screened classic of Japanese New Wave cinema.

November 5 (Saturday) 7 pm - Introduced by Julie Buck

A Clockwork Orange

Directed by Stanley Kubrick
UK, 1971, Color, 136 min.
With Malcom McDowell, Patrick Magee, Michael Bates

Directly influenced by Matsumoto's Funeral Procession of Roses, Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange is violent dark comedy that pushed the envelope on many levels--visual, social, political, and sexual--and is one of a very few films that remains as divisive today as when it was first released. Kubrick, influenced by Matsumoto's split-second editing, youth gang imagery, and accelerated montage sequences, created a film that is rightly known as a masterpiece of visceral horror.