Movie Mondays: Tell ‘Em Movie Mondays Sent Ya

By John Semley

As a means of rounding up Toronto’s various cinematic goings-on each week, Movie Mondays compiles the best rep cinema and art house screenings, special presentations, lectures, and limited engagements.

So much good stuff going on at the movies this week, including (but not limited to) the expansive adventures of man-children, the song-and-dance routines of men dressed as women, the horrible screams of men with monsters growing in their stomachs, and the siren song of some good old-fashioned Satanic panic.

The Toronto Underground Cinema has been acing the double-bills lately. After last week’s back-to-back of the Ghostbusters films, they’re one-upping themselves this week, while maintaining their healthy Sigourney Weaver quota, with the first two Alien films, i.e. the only good Alien films; those made before Alien spun out into one of the more bloated and dull science fiction franchises.
On Monday, The Underground (186 Spadina Avenue) is teaming up with Rue Morgue magazine and Suspect Video to present a double-bill of Ridley Scott’s Alien and James Cameron’s Aliens. The occasion? Well, besides both of these movies being perfectly, though very differently, awesome, Tuesday marks the release of the Alien Quadrilogy on Blu-Ray. And Suspect will be on location at The Underground hawking copies starting at midnight. So for only $120, you can buy two good movies, and two you’ll never ever watch. But they’ll be on Blu-Ray! All the dark will be even darker! The sound of toxic xenomorph saliva six times crisper!

But even better than seeing the films at home on your fancy-schmancy Blu-Ray home theatre system is seeing them in theatre on beautiful, non-digital 35mm prints. And the first two Alien films makes an exceptional double-bill beyond their franchise continuity. Where the 1979 original is a gripping nail-biter, a kind-of “Jaws in space,” Cameron’s sequel turns down the edge-of-your-seat horror in favour of more action, high-tech weaponry, and robot mech suits. And aliens. Aliens has way more aliens. It also has one of the hammier performances Bill Paxton’s ever turned in, which is reason enough to see it.
So go. See it! The Underground presents Alien Monday at 7 p.m. followed at 9:15 p.m. by Aliens. And remember, in The Underground, nobody can hear you scream! (Except the people beside you, so pipe down, will ya?)

It’s really rare that sequels are as good as something like Aliens. Like remember Big Top Pee-wee? That was terrible! Pee-wee Herman’s a great character, but his man-child charm only works when it’s juxtaposed with something oppressively sane, or at least passably normal. Not when he’s tripping around a circus and talking about planting a hot dog tree. Who ever heard of such a thing?!
But 1985’s Pee-wee’s Big Adventure works precisely because it doesn’t do this. While certainly wacky, it at least moors its protagonist in something like the real world, where his zany antics can rub against waitresses, biker gangs, and Hollywood execs with hilarious results. It’s one of those great kids’ movies that nobody bothers making anymore: the kind that you can revisit as an adult and enjoy beyond the whole nostalgia trip.
And with that Tim Burton exhibit coming to town soon, it’s fun to revisit his first film, which contains many of the hallmarks of his subsequent work, from memorable Danny Elfman soundtracks to tacky claymation and sinister clowns. The Bloor (506 Bloor Street West) is screening Pee-wee’s Big Adventure Wednesday at 4:15 p.m. and again at 7 p.m. on Thursday. If you’re going to ride your bike there, make sure you lock it up with a sturdy lock, lest it fall prey to that awful Francis Buxton!

If you’re anything like us, you can’t hear Aerosmith’s “Dude (Looks Like a Lady)” without thinking of Robin William’s dressed as an old nanny playing air-guitar on a broom in Mrs. Doubtfire. And when the memory of Mrs. Doubtfire bubbles back to the surface of your consciousness, you probably can’t help but think: “What the hell? Who greenlighted Mrs. Doubtfire?” Well you see, Mrs. Doubtfire took the man-as-mom formula pioneered in unfunny comedies like Mr. Mom and Mr. Nanny (“A man changing a diaper? Whatever!”) and steeped it in the tradition of man-in-drag comedies like Tootsie or Some Like It Hot.
But you know what makes Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Hot better than Mrs. Doubtfire? Everything. First off, it has two dudes (Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon) looking like ladies: forced to go undercover as women after witnessing a mob execution (which, come to think of it, Sister Act pretty much ripped off). And it has Marilyn Monroe, who is widely regarded as being one of the actresses who is among the least difficult to look at. Some Like it Hot is also widely regarded as one of the best cross-dressing films ever made, right up there with The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and Yentl.
If you want to dress in drag this week, there’s probably a whole slew of Rocky Horror–themed Halloween parties you can attend. But if you want to see one of the seminal films of the cross-dressing subgenre, get on over to The Revue (400 Roncesvalles Avenue) at 9:15 on Wednesday for Some Like It Hot. Or just rent Ladybugs.

It’s a fact: there’s no panic quite as compelling as Satanic Panic. Like remember in the ‘80s when the media was hung up on the idea that every pimply teenager decked out in Angel Witch and Metal Church patches was offering blood sacrifices to Lucifer and getting down with all kinds of other occult nonsense? Well, that was awesome. Because in the Reagan era, Satanists were everywhere: in your preschools, in your churches, working the cash register at your corner convenience stores, and pulling the strings at the highest level of government. In 1987, in an especially panicky TV special, Geraldo Rivera estimated the number of highly organized Satanists in the United States at over one million.
This is precisely the kind of wistful moral panic coursing through Ti West’s The House of the Devil. Released in 2009, House could easily pass as a 1980s direct-to-VHS Satanic panic picture, from its 16mm stock and retro soundtrack (The Fixx! Yes!) to its assumption that Satan worshippers are everywhere, and if you’re not careful, they’ll snatch you up and torture you in the name of the Dark Lord. And in the tradition of Rosemary’s Baby, The House of the Devil isn’t just chock full o’ occult awesomeness, but it’s exceptionally suspenseful: scarier more in its implications and deferrals of violence than in its jump-scares and gore.

It’s also the perfect Halloween movie, in a pseudo-Pagan, celebration-of-Samhain kind of way. Fittingly, the TIFF Bell Lightbox (350 King Street West) is screening The House of the Devil at 11:59 p.m. on Friday, just one minute before the witching hour proper. It’s the most fun you can have paying tribute to Satan without having to spill any actual virgin blood or prance around a Maypole naked.

Photos by Eugen Sakhnenko/Torontoist.